They leave the proper path and, in their usual way, scramble up higgledy-piggledy. Anna stumbles along behind the ill-matched couple. In her brother's eyes they are a well-matched couple, but her brother is the only one who thinks so. He keeps up with Sophie, making an effort. It costs Anna, who is unfit, an even greater effort. To think what a lot of sport people in America go in for. There's not much time left till then. Sophie is simply Sophie. Anna reaches out one tentative hand, then a second, to gain a hold, but she can't get a grip and almost plunges into the void, for she had overlooked the edge of a quarry. Three buzzards are circling high overhead. Or are they hawks. They utter shrill cries. Rainer has certain sensations on seeing this natural landscape which has already been changed by Man's shaping hand and he gives a detailed account of them. Anna asks in a hoarse croak if they oughtn't to sit down. You're totally unfit, says Sophie, but go on, sit down. Anna would like to go underground in America, to get to know a life different from the one she's already familiar with and start a new one. With the big pond between herself and her parents. And a lot of land too. She knows it's her only chance. She got the good grades for it. Since the mood as they sit there is so friendly, she tries to describe her America plans in detail, including plans for stays in sundry American cities, which she wants to pay for herself by working. She has already worked out an exact itinerary and is only waiting for a definite go-ahead. Today Rainer feels a sort of brotherly affection when he considers his sister, as she displays this unusual enthusiasm in front of Sophie, bright Sophie, like an animal displaying the prey it's killed. For one brief moment he feels that Anna and himself, together, are a wall that Sophie cannot penetrate. But the moment quickly passes. Sophie kicks at the wine-producing slope with the toe of her shoe, again and again, because she needn't care about the state her shoes are in, and abruptly announces that a short time ago their form teacher phoned up Sophiemother to ask if she (Sophie) mightn't like to go to America next year since a scholarship was available. She doesn't want to and she considers it kind of unfair, seeing that Anna's grades are better. But it seems you have to be capable of especially good behaviour when you're abroad because nobody knows you or where you come from. So they decide on a basis of background, which is totally absurd in a levelled, classless country like America, with its liberal-minded, permissive people. But that's the only reason Sophie can think of. Why she was chosen and not Anna.
The latter falls silent, horrified. Which has long been one of her favourite habits. And even Rainer shifts down a gear and asks if Anna can't have the scholarship if Sophie's declining it anyway. Sophie says no, she asked that too, but they're going to let it lapse this year since there isn't a worthy candidate. Rainer says it's a pity about that nice scholarship. But what he is really thinking is: Thank God Sophie's not going away, now we'll still be a couple and will be able to start university together.
Death is in Anna's white eyes. They become totally transparent, and the cold pours forth from the depths like liquid oxygen. She sinks back. None of the beauty of the landscape can reach her pupils any more. The news has struck Anna dead. The tempting prospect of escape abroad recedes forever. Anna hits her forehead with her fist, but nothing comes out and nothing goes in either.
The Vienna Lovers, with the babbling brook below them and God amidst the violins above them, do not notice this. They do not even notice that this love only travels from Rainer to Sophie and does not make the return trip. Rainer is about to give a brief report on the aforementioned love, or even to slip an arm round Sophie, beside whom he is standing on the brink of the precipice, where vines planted with utter regularity are growing, a synthesis of Art and Nature, Nature being the vine and Art the method of planting, when Sophie says that you have to get out of yourself, beside yourself, beyond, because you're normally in yourself, all the time. And she spreads two sheepswoolpulloverarms.
What you're also in is my heart, coos Rainer.
Anna eyes a busy beetle and stamps on it.
Don't kill creatures, listen to me, admonishes Sophie, because I want to go for the record, I want to hit my limits as fast as I can, for instance by making a bomb. I know the ingredients, I asked my mother the scientist, the chemist.
Anna is far away, Rainer is closer to the loved one and feels himself filling his trousers in panic. He says: Sophie, final exams aren't far off, don't you think we should do it afterwards, so we don't get expelled if they found out, or don't you think it'd be better not to do it at all? Sophie asks if he's scared.
Rainer says: No, I want to know my limits too, but they're somewhere completely different, in an artistic direction.
Anna says nothing. She also crushes three ants underfoot (one of them busy carrying something, the scrap of worm-or whatever it is-is also turned to fricassee by Anna's sole) plus her own bleeding heart, though that belongs to Hans. They have done enough damage to other people's property by now, and to other people.
Rainer says: Look, honest, I'm not scared, but I don't think it's smart to try something like that with so little time to go before our school-leaving exams, which will entitle us to take any course of study we want.
Sophie says: Down, boy, and listen. We'll have to make it out in the open, of course, so that it blows strangers up, not us, right? Okay so far. You need a broad-necked Erlenmayer retort, the big kind that takes about 500 millilitres. Next, you need two test-tubes, one filled with volatile nitric acid, the other with a 1:1 mixture of potassium chlorate and sugar. Is that clear?
Rainer says it's clear all right but in all probability he won't do it because in his opinion the best time of his life is shortly to begin, student days, which I'm not going to ruin by throwing bombs, I'm not crazy, and anyway you're only joking really. It's not in your nature. It would definitely be in my nature but I'm not going to do it because I'm staying calm and sensible and in future I'm going to be calm and sensible on your behalf as well. What is more, Love is a far mightier explosion in a body than any bomb, it's a dazzling flash straight out of Nature. As you are no doubt aware, you have been in love with me for a long time, even if you aren't admitting it to yourself.
Anna damages an object, to be exact: a vine, by peeling strips off the stem.
Then (Sophie drags on) the two test tubes have to be inserted into the retort, which you have filled with ether, in such a way that their bases touch the floor of the retort. The test tubes are stoppered, and they and the retort are then sealed with wax.
The delightful environs of Vienna are piercing Anna like a white-hot drill, there is no rear wall to offer resistance and so they drill right through and out the back of Anna. Anna cannot find anything else to kill, so she herself is beginning to die off, which is often a slow and painful process. She would rather kill other living creatures, but it's not yet the time of year.