TWO WEEKS AFTER the encounter in the infirmary garden, Herr Doktor Hermann offers Elfriede an unusual question in the middle of their afternoon discussion.
“Would you say, Elfriede,” he intones, making a bridge with his hands, “would you say that you love your husband?”
ELFRIEDE’S HUSBAND. DOES SHE LOVE him? They were married four years ago. She’d celebrated her eighteenth birthday only a month before the wedding, in a small party attended by her parents and siblings and prospective sisters-in-law (her husband is an orphan) and Gerhard himself—of course—aged thirty-three, the giant Baron von Kleist who was doing her such a preposterous honor as to marry her. Of course, her beauty was to blame for that. Why else should a baron of such ancient lineage, of considerable fortune and figure, stoop to marry the daughter of a mere burgher? They had met skating on the village pond, a democratic location. Elfriede was an especially graceful skater, and Gerhard was not, and whether by accident or intent he had crashed into her, just gently enough that she wasn’t hurt, but so decisively that he had no choice but to apologize profusely for the accident and buy her a cider. “Why, he’s in love with you,” her mother whispered eagerly the next day, after the baron paid an afternoon call to assure himself of Elfriede’s recovery, and Elfriede—well, Elfriede was too overwhelmed, too flattered, too mesmerized to understand whether she returned that love or not. Gerhard von Kleist was not exactly handsome, but he was tall and magnificently built, he was well-dressed and well-read, he had a disarmingly earnest way about him, and above all he was Gerhard von Kleist! He was a nobleman, the hereditary master of Schloss Kleist; he was a great man, he was an officer in the army, he hunted often with the Kaiser himself. By April they were engaged; by June the banns were called, and on the first of July they were married in the beautiful church in the village, disapproving sisters-in-law to one side and ecstatic parents to the other, amid much good-natured congregational whispering about the baron’s haste to make the flaxen-haired Elfriede his lawful bride.
Before they left for the church, in the carriage bedecked with flowers, Elfriede’s mother pressed a lace handkerchief into her hand, as tradition required. Elfriede was to mop up her bridal tears with this linen square, and afterward to fold it and tuck it away in her drawer on her wedding night. There it’s supposed to lie, until one day, when Elfriede dies, the Cloth of Tears will shroud her cold, dead features. Tradition. As it turned out, Elfriede didn’t cry at all during the ceremony that united her to Gerhard, nor in the carriage to Schloss Kleist while Gerhard held her hand snugly beneath her massive wedding dress, nor during the wedding banquet in the schloss’s baroque great hall, two hundred years old, bearing an exquisite resemblance to the wedding cake itself. (Her mother exclaimed over the dryness of the Cloth of Tears, when she extracted it unused from Elfriede’s bodice as she prepared her daughter for bed.) And she did not cry when Gerhard himself entered the nuptial chamber, smelling pungently of soap, dressed in pajamas and a silk dressing gown. Elfriede had drunk several glasses of champagne, and her new husband appeared to her in a haze as he approached the monumental bed on which his bride sat. He knelt—such a big, powerful man, thirty-three years old, kneeling before her!—and covered her hands with kisses. Elfriede stared down at his wheaten head, worshiping her, and felt a sincere, loving warmth move her heart. A sincere connection to Gerhard, who had shared this day with her, who had stood by her side, the two of them united against all those curious guests and well-wishers. “I will be gentle, my dearest girl,” he promised, removing her nightgown with trembling fingers, kissing her mouth and her breasts and everything else, and Elfriede, dazed and tender, lay back on the embroidered bedspread while he climbed on top of her, and still she didn’t cry. He untied the belt of his dressing gown and shrugged it off, but he didn’t remove his pajamas. Perhaps he didn’t want to frighten her. In any case, he reached inside his pajama trousers and drew out his organ, primed for business, and Elfriede, being somewhat drunk for the first time in her life, couldn’t help glancing at this thing that had consumed her curiosity since adolescence, this object designed by nature to plant seeds inside her womb. At the reality of her husband’s erection, however, the tears sprang at last to her eyes. “Oh no!” she said, but it was too late. Gerhard’s face had already clouded over with rapture, he was already fitting this startling, stiff machine—nothing like the harmless anatomy of the classical statues, God have mercy, of the Renaissance paintings—between her legs. As he shoved his way in, saying her name and invoking his love for her while he split her apart, she gripped the pillows and wept, but the Cloth of Tears was already tucked away in her bureau, unreachable and useless.
HERR DOKTOR HERMANN’S QUESTION IS strange not because of its intimacy—certainly they have touched on intimate subjects before—but because of its specificity. How do you feel about your husband? he should have asked instead. By inserting the word love inside the query, he’s compromised the honesty of her answer.
Elfriede stares at the bridge made by his long, latticed fingers, and his face just above, which seems a little flushed, though today’s weather is far from warm. “Why do you ask?” she says.
“Because it is important for me to know, as your doctor. As your doctor, I must know these vital details, Elfriede, so we may progress in your treatment.”
Dr. Hermann’s fingernails are small and shallow, almost as if the tips of the digits had been chopped off at some uniform length, or else cut short at his creation. Elfriede thinks of her son’s tiny fingernails, like fragments of seashells, and how she used to gaze on them in awe and also fear, unable to understand how such delicate ornamentation could have come from her. From Gerhard and his bear paws.
“Of course I love my husband,” she says.
Dr. Hermann considers. “You say ‘of course,’ Elfriede. Why do you say ‘of course’? Is it necessary for a wife to love her husband?”
“A wife would be a beast if she didn’t love a man such as my husband. She would be unworthy of life.”
Herr Doktor’s hands spring apart. He turns to his notebook, lifts the pen lying in the crease, and writes something down. When he looks up again, his cheeks are even more flushed than before, and the tip of his nose.
“Are you a beast, Elfriede?” he asks. “Are you unworthy of life?”
Elfriede rises from her chair. Because the weather’s blustery, they’re indoors, inside Dr. Hermann’s private office, equipped with comfortable armchairs and a sofa. On the wall opposite Elfriede hangs a painting of the Ringstrasse in Vienna, where the large, baroque houses remind her of Schloss Kleist.
“Excuse me,” she says. “I’m going to get a little air.”
ACTUALLY, THERE’S NO SUCH THING as a little air in a place like this, a monastery arranged on the slope of a mountain so as to be far from mankind and nearer to God. You walked outside and encountered huge mouthfuls of it, you had to gulp to keep pace, to save yourself from drowning, and sometimes there was so much air you turned your back on the wind and made your way along with your shoulders hunched against this onslaught.
Today’s such a day, a day that doesn’t know it’s supposed to be August instead of October. You can actually see the wind as it hurtles between the peaks, dragging along thick shreds of clouds, and you feel it as an ocean current. Cold and forceful it strikes you, sharp and wet at the same time, turning your cheeks and your fingers numb, any skin you dare to lay bare. Elfriede, wearing a thick, belted cardigan but no coat, no jacket of any kind, relishes the hardship. She trudges along the path that leads downward toward the trees, a trail she knows well, every rock, every kink of landscape. The heads of the wildflowers huddle low to shield themselves, like Elfriede herself. The surrounding peaks are invisible inside this mass of howling clouds. No, forget the surrounding peaks, even her own mountain is lost to sight, the slope disappears before her, and she walks on faith alone, curling her fingers inside her sleeves to keep them warm.
Then
