How can anyone stand it out there with those people? Poor Marie, how would she be able to stand it? I was so upset, my chest felt tight, but what else was I to do? Marie couldn’t sleep on our sofa anymore, and Erwin was tired of it all, too; he’d wanted to be rid of her long ago. I pedaled and pedaled. I didn’t stop. I just wanted to get away, right away!
I wanted to get away from my guilty conscience as well.
After a while there was water running down my cheeks. I thought at first it was because the cycling made me sweat so much. But then I realized it was tears.
Marie goes to her room next to the kitchen straight after supper.
It is a small room. A bed, a table, a chest of drawers, and a chair, there’s no space for anything else.
The washbasin and jug stand on the chest of drawers.
A small window opposite the door. If she goes to the window, which way will she be looking? Maybe toward the woods? She’ll know in the morning. Marie would like to see the woods from her window.
The windowsill is covered with dust. So is the table, so is the chest of drawers. The room has been standing empty for some time. The air is stale and musty. Marie doesn’t mind.
She opens the drawer in the table. There’s an old newspaper cutting inside, yellow with age. And a pillowcase button and the metal screwtop of a preserving jar. Marie closes the drawer again.
The bed stands to her right. A simple brown wooden bed frame. The quilt has a blue-and-white cover, and so does the pillow.
Sighing, Marie sits down on her bed. She stays there for a while, looking around her room.
Giving her thoughts free rein.
She misses Traudl and the children. But it’s nicer sleeping in a bed than on the sofa, and she won’t have to see Erwin for a while now either.
Erwin didn’t like her, Marie sensed that as soon as she moved to Traudl’s place at New Year. It was the way he came through the door, no greeting, no handshake, nothing. He just asked Traudl, “What’s she doing here, then?” And he jerked his head Marie’s way without even looking at her.
“She’ll be staying with us until she finds a new job.” That was all Traudl said.
“I don’t like other folk living off of me,” was all he said in return.
She, Marie, acted as if she hadn’t heard him say that. But it hurt, because Erwin is such an oaf. She’s never told her sister so, but she’s thought it all the same.
He thought she was “stupid,” and “simple,” “mental,” “not quite right in the head,” she’s heard him say all those things and more, too, but she’s never protested. Because of Traudl and because of the children.
Thank God there are children here on this farm, too, thinks Marie.
She gets along well with children. She once found a motto on a page in a calendar saying, “Children are the salt of the earth.” She took note of that. She likes those old calendar mottos, and when she meets an especially nice child she takes out the page from the calendar and reads the old saying over and over again.
Marie sighs, gets off the bed, starts putting her things away in the chest of drawers. Begins settling into her room. She stops again and again. Sits down on her bed. Her arms keep dropping to her lap, limp, heavy as lead. She keeps thinking back to the past. Thinks of Frau Kirchmeier and how much she liked working for the old lady. Even if she was getting more and more peculiar.
Thinks of her brother Ott. He was the same sort as Erwin. You had to watch out with him. She’d been helping at his home a few weeks back when his wife was doing so poorly. She was glad to get away again.
She pulls herself together. No use sitting around all the time thinking about life, Marie tells herself. She must finish settling in and go to sleep, so that she can get up early in the morning. She’s wasted enough time already.
She carefully goes on putting her possessions away. Keeps daydreaming, her thoughts stray all the time, she thinks of that first meal with her new employers.
The farmer, a big, strong man, silent. Didn’t say much all through supper. He just gave her a brief good evening when he came in. A firm handshake, a glance sizing her up, that was all.
His wife, very silent, too. Older than her husband. Careworn, tight-lipped. It was the wife who said grace.
The daughter, now, she was nice to Marie. Asked if she had other brothers and sisters besides Traudl, asked about any nieces and nephews, what their names were and how old.
I could get along all right with her, thinks Marie.
And then the children . . .
The children in this house were nice. Nice kids, especially the little boy. He smiled at her straight away. He kept wanting to play. She joked with him. Took him on her knee and played “rocking horse,” the way she always did with her sister’s children. Let him slide off her lap with a bump. The little boy had gurgled with laughter.
When their mother sent the children to bed, Marie rose to her feet, too.
“I’ll go to my room now,” she said, “I have to put my things away. Then I can start work first thing in the morning.”
She wished them all goodnight and went to her room.
But she’s planning to stay at this farm only until she finds something better, she knows that now. Although the children are nice, and the farmer’s daughter is someone she could get along with. The farm is too far out in the country; she’d like to be closer to Traudl.
Marie has almost finished tidying her things away. Just the backpack to unpack now.
Outside, the weather is even worse. The wind is blowing harder and harder, a stormy wind.
I hope our Traudl got home all right, she thinks.
The window doesn’t fit particularly well, the wind blows through the cracks in the frame. Marie feels a draft. She turns to the door. It is standing slightly ajar, and Marie goes to close it. Then she sees the door slowly opening wider and wider, creaking. She stares with incredulous amazement at the widening gap.
Marie can’t make up her mind what to do. She just stands there, rooted to the spot. Eyes turned toward the door. Until she is felled to the ground without a word, without a sound, by the sheer force of the blow.
From all evil,
deliver them, O Lord!
From Thy anger,
deliver them, O Lord!
From the rigor of Thy justice,
deliver them, O Lord!
From the gnawing worm of conscience,
deliver them, O Lord!
From their long and deep affliction,
deliver them, O Lord!
From the torments of the purifying fire,
deliver them, O Lord!
From the terrible darkness,
deliver them, O Lord!
From the dreadful weeping and wailing,
deliver them, O Lord!
By Thy miraculous conception,
deliver them, O Lord!
By Thy birth,
deliver them, O Lord!
By Thy sweet name,
deliver them, O Lord!