the mood of the piano concerto on the organ through a mysterious registration, which they had succeeded in doing.
Suddenly the music broke off abruptly. Golie was so moved by the music that he stopped kicking, and when he saw me, he stormed toward me, hiding his tears in my apron. I took him in my arms, tried to comfort him, and asked him what was wrong with him. As I noticed, he had no right words to describe his condition. He just stammered almost incomprehensibly: "It is so sad!" Then I understood the word "awesome" out of his sobs. I soberly assumed that he, a particularly sensitive young man, had been so overwhelmed by the emotions of the music that he had to give in to his mood and discharge his feelings in a tear-burst. Steffen just came crawling into the organ box from the front to see what was going on. He understood the situation quite well, after I had started an explanation that Golie nodded or shook his head. He had always covered his eyes with his hands.
Suddenly Grinder said: “I would like to play specially for you” and again his eyes disoriented me. I was so ruptured: as a mother, as a women in love, as a lover of music...
A letter from Marietta
From time to time it happened that communication as in the Middle Ages was possible via letters or, better said, a kind of message in a bottle. There was a mail center in every major city, where the few strangers who had embarked on an arduous journey brought messages with them and left notes with them. Thus, a ruin on the Marienplatz in Weilheim, which had subsequently been equipped with an oblique weather protection, was marked for news. Anyone who happened to be around looked from time to time to see if there was something for themselves or their neighbors there. Anyone who went on a journey took with them what pointed in his direction. So one day I was very surprised that a nice neighbor, just the one with the tractor Paco, brought me a letter from the city. I opened the brown cardboard lid: Marietta had signed it. I sat down at the window, as it gradually became dark in the room, and heard in the spirit of Marietta's deep voice:
Dear Mary Lou, I only hope that my letter reaches you. It's all so different and yet so similar to yours in Polling. The radiation damage is exactly the same here. We found shelter in an old school outbuilding in a beautiful valley, through which flows a stream called "Orla". The Orla is like our Tiefenbach and flows in Orlamünde in the Saale as our brook in the bunting. The school stands on a hill and you can look over the whole valley. It had been a beautiful property before the disaster, and Langenorla was certainly no less sleepy than our poll. But the destruction caused by a bomb attack in Jena is similar to yours around Munich. Jena is only about 30 km north of us. The way here in many stages had been very, very difficult. Everywhere the same need. The impact in Ingolstadt, Nuremberg and Bamberg, we had to migrate widely. We were specifically warned against the lethal radiation dose in these centers. It was a bit easier over the Thuringian Forest. The deep valleys shield the radiation slightly. That's why more people have fled here than elsewhere. I think overpopulation is the right word for it, and the crime rate is immense. We were promptly robbed; and though Hannes bravely resisted, they took away everything we had possessed of value. We are here half starved and arrived quite demolished in our lovely valley. Although it is close to Jena, but also close to Rothenstein, where this maternity clinic is, which actually exists. So it was not a rumor, but a fact, and I'm glad we came here. The hardships are forgotten now, Hannes can work at a neighbor to food, and I already had an initial investigation in the mountain, as we call the clinic. The doctor there was very nice and said that I could soon receive a child as soon as they had a free place in the mountain. Imagine, I am already on the waiting list on number 49! In the next few months, it would be my turn. I look insane, although it even before I shudder to live for nine months in the mountain, without the sun and with little light. That must be to provide the embryos with enough protection from the radiation. Unfortunately, the thing has a catch: Hannes may not be the father! All men seem to be infertile by now. Only artificially fertilized embryos have a chance to grow up healthy. The doctors say that they have a special radiation resistance. A natural conception has only a tiny chance of giving birth to a healthy child. The doctors refuse to take this risk. They say that would be waste of resources here. Hannes was pissed off when he heard about it. You know that it can be hot-tempered, and I was able to stop him with gentle force them to hold a larger riots in the mountain. Now, as a precaution, I always go there alone and do not tell him. That's the way it works best.
I think of you so often and of what luck you have to find such a healthy and gifted child. This thought gives me strength, because I think that even if I were to give birth to a child now, it is still similar to you and your golie. I've resigned myself to that, and Hannes, too, is behind it. That is probably the tragedy of our time. But it hurts! But I just babble in the day and do not even know if you can ever read my lines, not to mention if you understand everything that goes on inside me. But you are and will remain my best friend, and I know that you are sympathetic to me. I am already feeling better with this knowledge! Try to write to me too. I would like to stay in touch with you, especially if I'm in the mountains for so long!
Greetings and kisses
your
Marietta
The paper at the end curled at some points, as if someone had shed tears on it. But all that was already some time ago. It may be that the letter had been on the road for months. I too had the eyes overflowed while reading. I sat quietly for a long time. Instead of answering, I just hugged my now big 'baby' and hugged Golie tightly. "How nice that I have you," was all that I could say to sobbing.
When I read her letter, I sat down at my table and tried to formulate an adequate answer:
Dear Marietta,
I have no one here to whom I can entrust my LORD. But I can not stand my mixed feelings anymore. You will not believe what is going on in this small Polling. A stranger arrived to play Steffens organ and I am afraid to be completely at the mercy of him! You know me in my old times as a self-determined strong woman. But this is gone! I am his slave now! Impossible to think independently. I am totally torn as a mother and loving woman. Where is my way out?
Imagine he played the organ and I kicked the bubble bar, naked, enchained, blindfolded. He plays Chopin and I was not anymore on earth. I forgot all about the catastrophe and in my mind I only saw him, although I was in the organ box, far away.
Before I teased him and played the disagreeable one. He forced me with his horsewhip, he always carries with him, to undress me. I enjoyed the lashes on my skin.
Then I heard the music and was delighted about the beautiful pain. I know I am crazy!...
I could not go on writing. My description of the most intensive moment in my whole live overwhelmed me.
I crumpled the paper and threw it in my oven.
You have to be an actor
Gerstenmayer felt very uncomfortable and constantly looked around. But no one followed him as he stepped out of Baum's rumpled flat, at least nobody he'd noticed. Nevertheless, he felt watched. Glances met and pierced him from behind; he felt that. To make matters worse, it was also black in the sky, and a downpour announced.
Gerstenmayer considered what he should do now. Go to a public shelter and wait for the rain to stop? Just recently Christiane, his assistant, had told him about a double murder in one of these.
Then it occurred to him that the subway shaft had just been uncovered and that it was possible to walk well down there once you had crossed the Danube. The part of the shaft under the river has been under water since the disaster.
Out of deliberation, he forgot all about the explosive paper he wore
