Wilhelmine gave an extravagant sob, then moaned, “Berta! My poor dear! You can’t give that away! Berta! I simply can’t accept it! You have no idea what you’re doing!” She turned away, indignant.
Wilhelm sighed with relief. His fears had been needlessly bleak.
Berta came down from her bed, stood like a sparrow before Wilhelmine the dove, got up on her tiptoes, teetered, then, clumsily, but with unswerving resoluteness, placed the necklace with the Madonna trinket around Wilhelmine’s neck. When she saw what she’d done, she sat back on the bed, said, “So. So,” and began twiddling her thumbs frantically.
“Wilhelmine!” Wilhelm shouted. He had forgotten he was in a public place. “Wilhelmine!”
Wilhelmine looked over at him, helpless and contrite: “What should I do then, Wilhelm? What should I do? Wilhelm? You give it back to her. I can’t bring myself to spoil her happiness. You do it,” she whispered to him, and shrugged feebly.
Wilhelm knelt down in front of Berta, gathered up the fallen roses, and laid them back on her lap. “You have given Wilhelmine great joy. That was very generous of you,” he said, and cursed himself ten, twenty, a hundred times for every word he spoke.
Berta looked down at the roses’ slightly blemished buds, plucked off the petals and the leaves, giggled, and fell silent.
The inwardness she had struggled for, tirelessly and to no purpose, now suffused her face, and it would never leave her thereafter.
The Wise Little Mother saw this, and was pleased.
WILHELM CRIED AND LEFT
And Wilhelm cried.
The last time Wilhelm cried, he had been crawling after Rudolf’s head. Finally he grabbed hold of a shock of hair and pulled up on that trunkless head, thinking to seal away in his memory the features of his only friend, until he realized the thing he held was no longer Rudolf at all, it was little more than a scalp, that there was nothing left of Rudolf to hold onto; so he gave up and kissed what remained of Rudolf’s head, blown off by the machinery of war; he kissed the eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, and forehead over and over, he daubed himself with Rudolf’s blood, longing to reattach the severed head to its torso, to breathe life back into his friend amid the torrent of bullets and grenades. His comrades in the trenches looked on with disgust as this bizarre spectacle unfolded, and went on dealing death from their various emplacements.
This time, Wilhelm didn’t wail or bellow as he had then, and his features weren’t quite so contorted. Instead, his sobs were soft, silent in fact; he cried without making a sound.
Berta’s hands edged warily toward his face, and she wiped away his tears, helpless and a little awkward. She looked past him as she did so. There was nothing left to say.
Wilhelm stood, turned around, and walked out. Wilhelmine watched him, perplexed, lingered a while longer in Ward 66, and finally said, “Well, Berta, until next time! Of course we’ll come visit you again!” Berta got up and pressed the roses into Wilhelmine’s hands, so forcefully that to refuse her would be uncalled-for. Berta turned, looked over at the Wise Little Mother, said, “So. So,” shrugged, and giggled.
Wilhelmine left.
WAS THE LONGING STILL THERE, AND THE BURNING SILENCE?
Having turned all the “on-the-one-hands” and “on-the-others,” all the “ifs” and “buts” over and over in her mind without arriving at any conclusion, the a-man-a-word-and-then-you’re-lost Berta turned to the Wise Little Mother for advice. “My Berta was looking inward, and so was my Rudolf. They really were, weren’t they? So why is it, Wise Little Mother, if I may ask you a question, why is it my Berta looked so little like the Madonna from the painting, and my Rudolf so little like the Christ Child?”
The Wise Little Mother twiddled her thumbs and said nothing.
“If I may ask the Wise Little Mother’s opinion. Could it be that the molding hands of life disfigured them once it was over? I’m only wondering. Could it be that the molding hands of life outwitted me? Is that something we should consider?”
The Wise Little Mother folded her hands and ardently prayed her “Hail Mary, full of grace …”
The a-man-a-word-and-then-you’re-lost Berta had really believed that the only thing she needed was to get the Madonna necklace back from the fortress depository, after which she’d be able to figure out whether or not the molding hands of life had played a filthy trick on her. Or perhaps she simply needed the Madonna trinket as a barrier to shield her from what she’d seen as she carried out her deed.
But even once she had it, a-man-a-word-and-then-you’re-lost Berta had still never mastered the inwardly turned gaze she had believed was her only means of finally triumphing over the molding hands of life. Only when she hung her Madonna around Wilhelmine’s neck did her doubting and brooding compulsion fall away from her like withered autumn leaves, and then she understood that she had lost, and that life, with its molding hands, the weight of things, had won. Was the longing still there, and the burning silence? Giggling Berta’s inward gaze gave no indication one way or the other. Only on occasion did the thing the old woman called the wound of life still flare up in Berta’s eyes.
A NEW RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WISE LITTLE MOTHER
The old woman, well schooled in all that pertained to the wound of life, had seen straight through the events of 13 January, 1963.
“There’s no doubt about it. The wound of life is challenging me, trying to step in and hinder Berta’s recovery.”
Putting a stop to this was her most sacred duty, and to that end, she philosophized away that particular day and its lamentable events, until finally they seemed like a mere trifle. But trifles of this kind still damaged the fortress, creating the impression it was nothing more than the inevitable result of an upbringing that had failed out there in that Sodom and Gomorrah world, where the wound of life holds court and Babylon founders. And this was a terrible affront to the fortress’s edifying work, its mission of scrupulously cultivating sainthood, which it carried out in the most exemplary manner.
In other words: the old woman would not stand for a challenge to her merit with respect to Berta, for whom she felt great responsibility, as if she herself had borne her. No, she would not be defied by the wound of life, which had crept its way so shamelessly into Ward 66.
On January 14, 1963, the Wise Little Mother stood witness to Berta’s final deliverance, a responsibility the old woman accepted with great solemnity.
On January 14, 1963, Berta washed the man, the word, and all her lostness out of her life. This is according to the words of the old woman who watched her do it.
Berta stood at the sink and washed herself slowly and deliberately. Then a-man-a-word-and-then-you’re-lost Berta swam down the drain with the sweat from yesterday’s nightmare and into the fortress’s sewers.
“This is your awakening, Berta dear, a blessing from our fortress. Here is where you sweat out life, that awful dream. Isn’t that true, Berta dear? That life is no more than an awful dream?”
Berta giggled.
“Yes. Indeed. Guilt cries out from this dream. Indeed. The dream never leaves you in peace, it forces visitations on us, it never frees us from guilt. Everywhere we turn it confronts us with Sodom and Gomorrah. Say it now, Berta dear: the visitation has passed, the terrible dream is washed away, the colossus of life has been toppled. There is no more Sodom and Gomorrah, no more guilt, and no more dream.