Olga, page 12
My son,
Since you left us and went to Berlin, your mother has been ill. She has always had a weak chest, and this is not her first inflammation of the lungs. But her fever, shortness of breath, expectoration, and pain have never been this bad.
I am afraid she is going to die. I never leave her bedside.
When she speaks, her words are addressed to you. Come back. Take over the estate and the factory, marry, have children. Let us see young life again here. Sometimes one must take a blow in order to understand. We understand now that what matters is not what we think, but what you want.
Come soon.
Your Father
The letter was written in black, upright, broad handwriting; the nib had scratched, leaving tiny ink blots, and slipped to make a hook in the signature. Had the father written the letter in great agitation? Or in great haste, because he hoped that the letter, sent immediately, would reach Herbert before he set off for Nordaustlandet?
I had no clear image of Herbert’s parents. I knew from Olga’s stories that they were very attached to Herbert. To him, or to the bearer of the family name and inheritance? Did both parents share the same view? His father had signed the letter not “Your parents,” but “Your Father”—had he long differed from Herbert’s mother in his view of their son’s marriage, and had he finally persuaded her to agree?
If the letter had reached Herbert, would it have changed his and Olga’s destiny? Would Olga have accepted the role of unwanted daughter-in-law? Would she have wanted to live with Herbert and their children under the noses of her parents-in-law? Would Herbert have given up his dreams and become a settled, reliable lord of the manor and factory owner?
What might have been, had things been different? It was neither here nor there. This wasn’t what determined whether Olga’s life had unfolded as it was supposed to or had been a mistake. Yet it preoccupied me.
28
With Olga’s letters I took my time. The thread around them was tied in a bow; I meant to undo it, but I pulled the wrong way, and because I didn’t realize it at first, I kept drawing the knot tighter. I didn’t use a knife or scissors; I picked the knot apart, untangling the loops and ends, and finally managed to pull the thread out of its knot and away from the bundle, long and thin and blue.
I laid the letters out on the big dining table, five rows of five letters. The envelopes were white; the handwriting, with the Soennecken fountain pen’s thin upward and thick downward strokes, was blue. The stamps with Germania’s head in profile were colorful, one red ten-pfennig stamp or combinations of gray and brown two-, three-, and five-pfennig stamps. In the top left-hand corner she had written “Poste restante.” The first letter was written on August 29, 1913, the last on December 31, 1915. The second letter, dated August 31, 1913, was marked “Read first!” I laid out the letters from the 1930s to the 1970s in a sixth row.
I went into the kitchen and fetched a kitchen knife with a sharp, pointed blade that I could use to open the envelopes without damaging them further. Starting with the last, I slit the envelope, took out the letter, and stroked it flat, and by the time I had opened the first, the written pages and slit envelopes lay beside each other in two neat piles.
In one of the letters I found a photograph. Olga was sitting on a chair, a smile on her face and her hands in her lap; beside her stood a boy of about ten with wide, frightened eyes. I knew her as a girl in the garden and as a mature woman after her flight; this was the first photograph of her as a young woman. She was not pretty; her face was not sweet or charming, but it had openness and clarity, and Viktoria was right, her prominent cheekbones gave her a slightly Slavic look. In this picture too her hair was pulled back in a bun.
I didn’t want to start reading just yet. I felt as if I had an appointment with Olga, as if she would be here soon, but I would have to wait a while longer. And so I waited for her, and thought about the girl and young woman I hadn’t met, of Fräulein Rinke at whose feet I had played, who had visited my sickbed and understood me when my parents did not, of Olga and our meetings and activities in her later years and the closeness between us. I remembered her bearing, the sound of her voice, the clear gaze of her green eyes.
I went back into the kitchen, made tea, filled the thermos, and took it with me to the dining table. It was afternoon; the sun was shining outside and the birds were singing.
I picked up the first letter and read.
Part Three
August 29, 1913
How could you lie to me like that? Will you be back before winter sets in, I asked, and you said yes—it was our last night, we had made love, we were so close—if the truth wasn’t sacred to you then, when is it sacred to you? Have you always lied to me? Do you see me as a child you can just fob off with any old story? Or too stupid, as a woman, for your great manly thoughts? Did you want to spare me? It was yourself you spared, not me. If you had told the truth, I would have told you the truth. You did it in Karelia, so you can do anything? You were lucky in Karelia. You’ve always been lucky, all your life. It’s gone to your head, and driven you out of your mind.
Two people have left your expedition. You had lied to them too. Did you want to be like Amundsen? Only announce the great goal when there was no going back, only victory or defeat? Amundsen wanted to beat Scott—whom do you want to beat? Who apart from you is even interested in Nordaustlandet and the passage and the pole? Better in the bloom of life to be snatched away—you said it had nothing to do with the expedition. That too was a lie. You want to become a hero by perishing. So go!—No, I don’t wish such a terrible thing. But don’t think that you will perish a hero up there. Heroes die for a great cause. You are dying for nothing. No daring struggle and no serving humanity. You’re just freezing to death.
How can you do this? Throw me away, our love, our life, for an empty gesture? I know you aren’t suited to an ordinary, bourgeois life; I have never asked it of you. But we had a life together, a life with interruptions, the kind a man and a woman have to endure when she stays at home and he has to go far away, as a soldier or explorer or captain. It was our life. Even though we yearned for each other when you were away, seized by wanderlust, when you were with me we were happy. It was an uneven happiness, but a true happiness. Our happiness. Does it matter less than the gesture with which you want to let yourself be snatched away in the bloom of life? What sort of asinine poem is that, anyway—in the bloom of life to be snatched away—nothing and no one is snatching you away!—in the struggle to serve humanity—humanity begins with humans, with you and me.
Again and again I allowed myself to be charmed by you, by your sparkling eyes when you were making plans or recounting stories, when you were setting off or on your return. You were like a child dazzled by the world and by life. But children don’t put themselves at risk. They go to extremes, but they don’t go beyond them. It’s part of their charm. Your charm, I see now, is a rotten charm.
You have lied to me—lied twofold. If you had told me what you were planning, I would have fought you. I would have shouted, begged, wept; I would have done all I could to dissuade you. If you had gone ahead nonetheless, at least we would have had it out with each other. Perhaps I would have understood you, seen a truth behind the empty gesture and the hollow words.
At first I was furious. Now I’m just sad. You have destroyed what was ours. As to why you did it, one reason is as bad as another: you were too cowardly for the truth, or too lazy for it, or else you gave no thought at all to the damage you were doing with your lies. I don’t know how things between us can continue.
August 31, 1913
Herbert, my darling,
Are you holding this letter first? Don’t read the other one. When I heard that you were staying on the ice for the winter, I was insane with worry. I reproached you. I was hurt that you were putting your life and our happiness at risk. But I don’t want to reproach you. You want to test yourself, your men, your equipment; you want to be ready for your great feat. Or have you already set off on your great feat? I want to believe in you. I am hoping with you and praying for you. I hope you have the right clothes and the right provisions and that you get along with your men and retain your confidence. The newspaper says that you left too late, that it will soon be winter. I now know that, for you, it wasn’t too late. You’re not avoiding the winter; you’re seeking it.
It’s myself I reproach, not you. For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve always been daring, and since Karelia you think that, for you, there are no limits. It lights you up. I love your capacity for enthusiasm, for spending yourself, for throwing yourself into things and surmounting obstacles. I love your light. This is who you are; I cannot love you as you are and at the same time expect you to be sensible.
I am sensible. I should have talked to you and tried to dissuade you from spending the winter on the ice. Perhaps I would not have succeeded. But perhaps I would.
You will only read what I am writing to you once it’s all over. I so wish my letters could accompany you, so you would always find one waiting for you: when the ship arrives, when you set off, when you set up camp. To me, it feels as if you’re going to read my letter very soon and look troubled because I’m worried, and smile, because I love you for your light, and frown, because I would have tried to dissuade you from spending the winter on the ice. I have to force myself and tell myself that I am writing a letter that will lie unread for a long time. When you read it you’ll be back in Tromsø; you’ve just telegraphed me and I’m not worried anymore. If you know, telegraph me tomorrow or the day after to say when your ship will arrive in Hamburg, and I’ll be standing on the quay waiting for you. I miss you now, and I’ll be missing you when you read this. Until you’re back with me again.
My thoughts and my love go with you. I don’t know how long you will still be on board ship or when you’ll arrive in Nordaustlandet.
I’m picturing it: snow, ice, mountains, rocks, glaciers, the snow piled up in drifts, the ice in towering floes, the glaciers full of fissures, and above it all a night sky under which the pale sun appears only for a few hours on the horizon. When I picture it, I am afraid.
I am praying for you. But it’s as if God cannot hear me, as if he’s as far away as you, somewhere in the north, in the snow and ice. But perhaps it’s good that he is where you are. God, protect my beloved.
Your Olga
September 21, 1913
Dear Herbert, who is my first thought on waking and last thought before I go to sleep,
Today is Sunday, the church service and the organ playing are finished, and the school does not demand that I think about the children instead of you. We’ve been having sunny, warm summer days, but autumn is in the air today, and looking up into the trees, I see the first yellow leaves. I can’t think of the weather without thinking of you. May God give you mild weather.
School started again three weeks ago. As always, for the first week the children were still mentally on holiday; they couldn’t sit still, and during the breaks they ran about and scuffled like young pups. Some of them were probably wishing they were back helping with the harvest, where I’d seen them slaving and sweating away. In the second week they were calm and quiet; that too is always the same, as if they’ve given up. This past week they’ve woken up again and have been joining in since then. Every term I worry in the second week that the children will stay calm and quiet. But every term the third week comes and saves us.
Fortunately, the school inspector didn’t visit until the third week. He watched sternly, and when he tried to conduct the children’s singing at the end, they didn’t make a sound until he let his monocle drop from his eye and sang loudly along with them. He was nice to me. He said that when I was transferred to Gumbinnen district, they’d been worried about me. There had been rumors, and while the management didn’t concern itself with rumors, it did have to identify and avert any risks. Well now, whatever had happened, my lessons were good, and he was glad to have me as one of the district’s teachers. What rumors, I wanted to know. Let’s forget it, he said; there’s nothing in your file.
All I knew back then was that Viktoria had spoken ill of me to the pastor. She must have done the same to all her girlfriends’ fathers who were aristocrats or in the military or who ran the province as senior government officials. I still don’t understand Viktoria. I don’t understand why she pretended to be out when I called. In the end I waylaid her, and she actually ran away from me, down the street, and ducked behind the fence near the school. I knew where she was, I spoke to her, but she didn’t answer, didn’t come out from behind the fence, and I didn’t want to drag her out. Perhaps I should have.
Why, Herbert? Because I’m no longer the poor orphan, grateful for the crumbs that fall from her table? Because I’ve studied? There are also those on the school board—not the inspector, but others—who intimate to me that I shouldn’t think I’m special just because I’ve studied; I’m merely a teacher. When—to commemorate your lecture there—I went to another lecture at the Tilsit Patriotic Society, about the preparations for the 1916 Olympic Games in Berlin, and tried to ask a question, I was ignored until I stood up, only to be told that we were out of time. Isn’t it enough that I can’t vote? That I earn less than a male teacher? That I can’t be the headmistress of a school? Isn’t it enough that they discriminate against us—do they have to humiliate us as well?
I’ve never spoken to you about these things, not even about Viktoria. I was too proud. And I was afraid of what you would say. I know it made you uneasy that I went to the training college and became a teacher. But what was I supposed to become? And could I have been your helpmeet during your preparations if I’d become a maid or gone to work at the factory? How lovely it was last autumn, when you were writing your lecture and your letters and reading them out loud to me, and we would talk about them! You would sit at one end of the table and I at the other, knitting, or sewing, or sticking labels on the jam we made—do you remember?
Do you yearn for our quiet room?
When you return from the cold, will you find it so lovely and cozy here that you won’t be plagued by wanderlust anymore? Come home, my darling, come home.
Your Olga
October 19, 1913
Once again I am with you, Herbert. But how could it be otherwise—you were with me all afternoon, making jam.
Yesterday I took the train to Mehlauken and picked seven pounds of raspberries in the forest. I could have picked a great deal more if the rain hadn’t set in and refused to stop. A cold autumn rain that pelted down on the shed roof all night and all day today. It’s quiet now. It’s hot in the kitchen; I’ve opened the door to let in the fresh air.
Do you remember? How I dipped the sugar into cold water in the big pot, dissolved it over a low flame, and let it seethe until it went clear? How I added the raspberries and boiled and stirred them until I had thick raspberry juice? You watched, wide-eyed. The jam was terribly sweet last year, so I used less sugar this time. Seven pounds of raspberries and eight pounds of sugar—I filled twenty-two jars! I would have loved to have let you sulfur the jars and lids again. Remember? You held the thread of sulfur with the tongs, turning one glass after another upside down and sulfuring it. I filled them with raspberry juice, poured a teaspoon of rubbing alcohol on top, then we put the sulfured lids on the jars and covered them with greaseproof paper. Without you, I had to be as quick and accurate as a machine. I managed it, but I missed you. I miss you in everything we did together that I am now doing alone. And in everything I do alone that we haven’t yet done together, but I know we could.
The only good thing about our separation is that I can write and tell you how much I miss you. When we’re together and I tell you how much I’ve missed you or am going to miss you, you frown and don’t like to hear it. You think I want to hold you back and forbid you to leave. I’m not holding you back. I know you have to leave. I just miss you.
I’m happy about the jam I made today, though. The jars will sweeten the winter for me. And when I’m spreading the jam from the last of the jars on my bread, you’ll be here again.
Your Olga
Advent Sunday 1913
November was terrible. Eik caught diphtheria, which the doctor didn’t recognize at first. It started with fatigue and a sore throat; then Eik complained of stomachache and threw up. Nothing serious, we thought, even when he developed a slight fever; children just shouldn’t play outside on cold, damp autumn days as if it were still summer. But the fever worsened, and the doctor came. An old man, calm and friendly; lives in Schmalleningken, covers the villages, has brought all the children into the world and closed the eyes of all the dead. He means well. The fact that his hearing and eyesight aren’t good hadn’t bothered anyone before. His sense of smell isn’t good either; he didn’t smell the rotten, sickly sweet odor emanating from Eik’s mouth, and although I could smell it, I didn’t yet know that it indicated diphtheria.
How Eik suffered! He coughed, barking first at night, then during the day as well, couldn’t swallow, could hardly speak, could hardly breathe. His body burning up; the pain; the fear of choking to death—no child should have to suffer like that, and I wished that I could suffer in his place. Every day after school I rushed over there and made compresses for his throat and leg, cooled his face, made him drink egg yolk in red wine, echinacea, and garlic tea, feeling so powerless the whole time, so helpless. It was as if God weren’t hearing my prayers, as if he were a very long way away, as if I had prayed to him to be with you instead of with Eik, to protect the man I love instead of the child. When I wasn’t watching over Eik, I was weeping, and when I fell asleep, I woke again straight away.
I had the feeling the doctor was missing something, and it drove me into Tilsit, to the library. I found a report about diphtheria, and when I pointed out the symptoms to the doctor, he wasn’t offended; he understood. It was very late: Eik should really have been given the antitoxin within three days of the onset of disease. But it wasn’t too late, and since he’s been given it, things have improved. He’s weak, and will remain so for a long time; he’s not allowed to exert himself, or even sit up. But what happiness to be nursing him back to health rather than in the fear that he was getting more and more sick.
