rabe bit the crispy tips off his herring tails. Abbot Johannes ceded his third herring to the Dominican monk. As long as they were eating, all four were silent, except that the vicar of Saint Mary's muttered something in Latin between the first and second and the second and third herrings.
When at last the twelve backbones lay neatly side by side, the abbot, the commander, the doctor of canon law, and the Dominican returned to their subject. It was decided that on the occasion of the next jubilee — which Pope Boniface was not to proclaim until 1390—Dorothea would be provided with the pilgrim's pence and dispatched to Rome under the escort of Frau Martha Quademosse, a Dominican agent. Then they would wait and see whether the pilgrim survived the rigors of the journey and the unaccustomed climate. Frau Quademosse would send reports.
Dorothea did indeed fall seriously ill when shown the Veil of Veronica, the famous relic preserved at Saint Peter's in Rome, but she recovered miraculously in spite of Frau Quademosse's ministrations and was in the pink of health when, along with other pilgrims, she entered Danzig through Jacob's Gate on the Sunday after the Ascension.
With her aged husband's consent, the four dignitaries had decided that in the event of her returning alive they would announce his death and let it be known that the child Gertrud had been entrusted to the care of the Benedictine nuns in Culm. The house on Bucket Makers' Court had belonged to the Dominicans since Dorothea's pilgrimage, and the indebted swordmaker had to pay rent to the monks.
This, too, was done. Pronounced dead (an empty coffin was buried in the graveyard of Saint Catherine's), swordmaker Slichting was glad to be relieved of his debts and free at last from the cross of his marriage. Three days before Dorothea, surrounded by the throng of pilgrims announced by Frau Quademosse, paid her first visit to the Cathedral Church of Saint Mary, father and daughter moved secretly, with the help of the Dominicans, to Konitz, where Slichting joined the guild under another name and, since a war was on, became a wealthy man again, married Gertrud to a swordmaker, and lived to a ripe old age, old enough to take cognizance of the fulfillment of Dorothea's prediction that the Teutonic Knights would be defeated at Tannenberg.
Once the preparations decided on at table were complete, Abbot Johannes declared that he was now prepared to have the widowed Dorothea immured under her maiden name of Swarze in Marienwerder Cathedral.
This was done, after some delay (resulting perhaps from Polish intrigues) in obtaining the bishop's consent. In a solemn ceremony, the pious penitent was removed from the world on May 2, 1393, in the presence of the four forward-thinking dignitaries, and lodged under the southern staircase, which led to the choir loft. Each brick was blessed. The wool of the divine lamb was mixed into the mortar. At last Dorothea had won her freedom. Only one small opening remained, through which she could breathe, receive small amounts of Lenten fare, pass out her meager feces, follow the Mass in the cathedral, take daily Communion, and confess her holy progress to Johannes Marienwerder, who proceeded to write her life story in Church Latin; but there was no possibility of publishing it until 1492, when it was printed by Jakob Karweysse, Danzig's first book printer.
The four dignitaries also swore over the platter where the backbones of twelve Scania herrings lay alternating head and tail in their original order, that in case Dorothea Swarze, known as Dorothea of Montau, should be immured, they would institute canonization proceedings immediately after her death — they gave her six months.
This, too, was done. But the immured woman lasted longer than expected. She died on June 25, 1394. Whereupon her cell, after numerous believers in miracles had looked in through the opening and gazed for a moment at the corpse stretched out on the floor, was sealed up tight. True enough, canonization proceedings were initiated without further delay, and Grand Master von Jungingen of the Teutonic Order communicated his special interest in a Prussian saint to the canonization commission. But unfortunately the disorders attendant on the Great Schism obliged the postulator to transfer the file to Bologna for safekeeping, and there it was lost. So nothing came of the proceedings. The Teutonic Knights didn't get their saint. And if, on the basis of the sparse evidence now available, the canonization proceedings resumed in 1955 should be carried to a successful conclusion, I doubt if anyone will derive real pleasure from this late tri-
umph of Catholic infallibility except my onetime Latin teacher, Monsignor Stachnik, who has always taken a pious interest in Dorothea.
The four dignitaries soon left the swordmaker's house. No more work sounds rose up from Bucket Makers' Court. Now the swift-flowing Radaune could be heard. A Baltic twilight was falling. The four were of good cheer, for they felt sure that their manly good sense had led them to plan wisely. Roze expressed his conviction that the canonization of Dorothea would swell the collections for additions to Saint Mary's. Only Commander Walrabe von Scharfenberg expressed concern lest with Satan's help this woman, who might be a witch after all, live longer in her immurement than they had so carefully planned.
When on their way out the four dignitaries cast a last glance into the smoky kitchen, they saw the child Gertrud playing with moldy graveyard wood. Old Slichting sat by the fire as though forgotten. Dorothea was kneeling as usual on dried peas, which she was planning to cook, thus softened, the next day. They heard her praying:
"What blissful pain thy spere Doth giv me, Jesus dere…"
To llsebill
Dinner is getting cold.
I'm not punctual any more.
No "Hello, here I am!" pushes the accustomed door.
Trying to approach you indirectly,
I've gone astray — up trees, down mushroomy slopes,
into remote word fields, garbage dumps.
Don't wait. You'll have to look.
I could keep warm in rot.
My hiding places have three exits.
I am more real in my stories
and in October, our birthday time,
when the sunflowers stand beheaded.
Since we are unable to live
today's day and the bit of night
I offer you centuries,
the fourteenth, for instance.
We are pilgrims on our way to Aachen,
feeding on pilgrim's pence.
We've left the plague at home.
This on the Flounder's advice. In flight again. But once — I remember-in the middle of a story that was headed for some entirely different place, across the ice to Lithuania, you found me with you: you, too, a hiding place.
My dear Dr. Stachnik
One who remembers Dorothea and sets out to record her Lenten soups, or even to oppose a diabolical or High Gothic antitype to the sublimity of the (still-uncanonized) saint, is bound to come up against your more pious than secure erudition, can be certain of your criticism, and will have to reckon with your Catholic indignation; for you have appropriated Dorothea, every bit of her.
When you were still (with small success) my Latin teacher and I a dull-witted Hitler Youth, you were already specializing in Dorothea of Montau and the fourteenth century, although the times (the war years) offered small opportunity for escapism. After all, you had been the local chairman of the Center Party (until it was prohibited in 1937) and its deputy in the Danzig Volkstag. As a tacit opponent of National Socialism, you had to be careful. And yet Nazi persecution followed you even to our musty schoolroom, though it hardly made a dent in the thick heads of your students.