As Brigitte returned downstairs, she met Frau Hoffberger coming up — a courageous woman, widowed during the first war, who liked to talk. “So where on earth were you, Brigitte? I was horribly worried about you. But it wasn’t too bad, was it? Did you hear our artillery! Herr Flatt, who was in the other war with my late husband, says we were attacked by a hundred planes, and they were all shot down or chased away, it’s a marvelous victory and our city can be proud, Brigitte, what a headache I have, and Frau Sachs, she fainted away as soon as our big guns opened up! And she’d brought her poodle down with her, I do think pets should be absolutely forbidden in shelters, I mean, I know animals are also at risk and they’re family for some people, but there’s hygiene and morale to be considered… Oh well, it’s all blown over, I don’t mind telling you I’m relieved, they won’t be back in a hurry after the hiding we gave them. You’ll see tomorrow, I’m sure those fire-crackers of theirs did far more harm than noise” (Frau Hoffberger meant this the other way around), “Herr Flatt says the Americans are the most incompetent flyers, they get a search beam in their eyes and down they go… Herr Jochsl didn’t agree, he was so jumpy I had to tug him by the sleeve and tell him, discreetly, don’t go on like that, Herr Jochsl, someone might turn you in, of course I know what a patriot you are, but… He was teary eyed as a girl, and a veteran too! They say he’s a Social Democrat! The electricity’s out, by the way, but it’s sure to be fixed tomorrow. Oh dear, how am I going to get through my day tomorrow, I’ve lost at least two hours’ sleep…”
“Good night, Frau Hoffberger,” said Brigitte. “Go right to bed.” In her own room, Brigitte ran her hands over her face several times, as though to remove an invisible veil and firm up her shaky features… The candle burned in the middle of its porcelain flower. How many flowers would be needed for this night’s graves, how many flowers? One enormous flower of light and fire, and of calm, for the city, for us all, Lord! For the world! She opened the old iron-filigreed casket containing His letters, in chronological order and tied with a ribbon. Some of these missives, delivered by the military postal service, contained only expressions of love, but there were others — so overwhelming and she could hardly read them — which had arrived after the notice of His Death on the Field of Honor for Folk and Fatherland: there were also photostats of the official report and the divisional order of His citation, and a photo of His Iron Cross, all forwarded to the fiancée by the fiancé’s parents.
Moments overlap, time is no longer continuous, but it was sometime later — which is to say, after the death notice but before the first heavy bombardment — that an olive-green private on furlough turned up, a shy, grim-looking young man who would only identify himself as Günther. He placed a parcel on the table and said, “Here are His letters. I have read them, at His request. The whole of Germany should read them. Good day, Fraülein.” “But you can’t just leave!” cried Brigitte despairingly. The crumpled forage cap came off again.
He had a receding hairline, pale sparse eyebrows, the face of a young athlete recovering from an illness. Overcoming his embarrassment he began, “Pardon me, Fraülein, I only…”
“You were his friend?”
“Yes.”
“You know how it happened?”
“Yes.”
“I want to know everything. I have the right to know everything.”
Maybe he was measuring her strength, and the anxiety at the bottom of the little strength he saw. Frauenkind, a child-woman; there are also Männerkinder, child-men, you see them on the firing line, despite their fear, because combat and unknown horrors frighten them less than the idea of letting their weakness show; they make good soldiers and excellent corpses (but not very good wounded: they tend to weep and moan and their misery aggravates their pain…). Brigitte understood that he was going to hurt her, badly, unsparingly, out of a kind of pitiless kindness. She begged him: “Go on, tell me, I’m not afraid of anything…”