The White Dominican (9 page)

I am the last branch and, to cap it all, I live up here under the eaves. I don’t know what it was, but I just felt there was something urging me to move to the top of the house. My ancestors never spent more than two generations on the same storey.

Much as I love him, the boy is not my son, of course. That’s where the prophecy breaks down. It often makes me feel sad, for I would have liked the crown of the tree to be a shoot from my blood and that of my ancestors. And who can tell how far he will be our spiritual heir? But what is the matter, Chaplain? Why are you staring at me like that?”

From the sound of a chair falling over, I guessed that the Chaplain had jumped up. I was gripped with a burning fever that intensified with every word the Chaplain uttered.

“Baron Jöcher! Hear me out!” he exclaimed. “I was going to tell you the moment I came in, but then I kept putting it off until the conversation took a suitable turn. But once you started your story, I forgot, for the while, my purpose in coming here. I am afraid I am going to open an old wound in your heart …”

“Go on, go on”, the Baron encouraged him.

“Your wife who disappeared …”

“No, no, she didn’t disappear, she ran away. Don’t be afraid to say what really happened.”

“Well, your wife and the unknown woman whose body was found in the river about fifteen years ago and who is buried in the cemetery, in the grave with the white roses but no name, were one and the same person. But – and here you have true cause for rejoicing, my friend – her child can only be – there is no possible doubt – the foundling, Christopher! You said yourself that your wife was pregnant when she left you. No! No! Do not ask me how I know. I would not tell you, even if I were permitted. Assume someone told me in confession. Someone you do not know –”

That was all that I heard. I was going hot and cold. That midnight talk gave me back both father and mother, as well as sadness at knowing I had stolen three white roses from the grave of the one who had given birth to me.

The children still trot along behind me as I make my way through the streets, head held high and proud of the honorary office of the Jöchers, especially since I now know that their forefather is also mine. But the mocking chant of “Doo’cot, doo’cot, diddle diddle doo’cot” is getting more and more ragged. Most of the children merely clap their hands to the rhythm or just sing “diddle diddle”.

And the grown-ups! They doff their hats in response to my greeting, where before they only used to nod; and when people see me coming from my mother’s grave, where I go every day, heads nod and tongues wag behind my back. Word has got around the little town that I am the natural son of Baron Jöcher, and not just an adopted child.

Whenever I meet Frau Aglaia, she curtseys, as if a religious procession were passing, and takes every opportunity of speaking to me and asking me how I am. When she is with Ophelia, I slip out of the way before we meet, to save the pair of us from blushing at the old woman’s obsequious manner.

Mutschelknaus, the carpenter, literally freezes whenever he sees me; if he thinks he can get away without being seen, he shoots back into his den like a frightened mouse. I can feel his embarrassment at the fact that it is I, whom he now regards as belonging to another world, who share his midnight secret.

I went to see him in his workshop, just once. I wanted to tell him that he had no reason to be ashamed in front of me. I intended to say how much I respected him for the way he sacrificed himself for his family. I was going to use my father’s words, that ‘every profession was noble that the soul considered worthy of carrying on after death’, and was looking forward to the liberating effect they would have on him. I did not get the chance to deliver my speech, and the very thought of a further visit is more than I can bear.

He tore a curtain from the window and threw it over the coffin, so that I should not see the rabbits, threw his arms wide, bowed until his trunk was parallel to the ground and remained in this Chinese posture, without looking at me, repeating, over and over again, like a litany, “Your Serene and Honourable Baron Lordship has deigned —”

Eventually I turned tail and ran. The few words I stammered were all wrong. Whatever I tried, it sounded like arrogance, whatever word I managed to bring out, I was ‘deigning’. The simplest, plainest language bounced back off his aura of servility, and wounded me, like an arrow whose head had been smeared with the poison of condescension.

Even my silent departure burdened me with the feeling that my behaviour had seemed haughty.

Herr Paris, the ‘celebrated’ theatre director, is the only one of the grown-ups who has not changed his behaviour towards me. My secret fear of him has increased. He has a paralysing influence, which I am powerless to oppose. I have the feeling that it resides in his bass voice and the loud imperiousness of his manner of speaking. I try to persuade myself that it is a silly idea, and that I don’t have to start with fright whenever he shouts at me; and even if I do, what does it matter?

But every time I hear him across the alley, declaiming in Ophelia’s room, the deep note of his voice makes me tremble, and I am gripped with a mysterious fear. I feel so small and weak and am ashamed of my high, boy’s voice.

I keep telling myself that he has no idea, cannot possibly have any idea, that we are in love, Ophelia and I; I tell myself that he is a stupid play-actor and that the piercing looks he gives me when we meet in the street are nothing more than probes, sounding out the ground; but it is all to no effect, I can repeat it as much as I like, but I cannot free myself from the humiliating feeling that I am under his spell, and that it is nothing but a sham when I occasionally find the courage to look him straight in the eye. It is a coward’s fear of himself, and nothing more.

I often wish he would clear his throat in that insolent and challenging manner again, as he did when he saw me coming from the cemetery, so that I would have an excuse to start an argument with him, but he has stopped doing it; he is lying in wait. I assume he is keeping his bass voice in reserve, until the right moment comes, and inside I am all aquiver that, when it comes, I may be unprepared.

Ophelia, too, is in his power, defenceless. I know, although we never talk of it. When we meet at night by the river, in the little garden outside our house, in rapturous embrace, whispering words of love to each other, we start with sudden fright each time we hear the slightest sound near us; and we each know that it is the constant fear of that man that makes the other’s hearing so unnaturally keen.

We cannot even bring ourselves to speak his name. Timidly, we skirt round any topic that might lead to it.

There seems to be a curse on me that makes me run into him every evening, whatever time I choose to leave the house. I feel like a bird trapped by a snake that is circling closer and closer round it.

But he appears to sense in our meetings a portent of success; he savours the feeling that every day he is coming closer to his goal, I can tell by the malicious gleam in his tiny, spiteful eyes. But what can that goal be? I do not think he has any clear idea of that, any more than I have. That is his problem, and my comfort. Otherwise, why should he stop and ponder, gnawing at his lower lip, whenever I hurry past?

He no longer fixes me with his gaze. He knows it is not necessary any more. His soul has mine in its power anyway.

He cannot spy on us at night, but still I have thought up a plan to stop us having to live in constant fear of him. At the foot of the wooden bridge is an old boat, half pulled up onto the bank. I went to fetch it today and moored it near our garden. When the moon disappears behind the clouds I will row Ophelia over to the other side, and then we will float downstream, right round the town. The river is too wide for anyone to see, let alone recognise us.

I have slipped into the room separating my father’s bedroom from mine and am counting my heartbeats, hoping that the strokes will soon come from the tower of St. Mary’s, ten resounding blows, and then the eleventh, the one that cries in jubilation, ‘Now, now Ophelia is coming down to the garden!’

Time seems to stand still, and in my impatience I start to play a curious game with my heart, so that my mind gradually becomes confused, as if in a dream. I try to persuade it to beat faster, so that the clock in the church tower will also go more quickly. It seems quite natural to me that the one should follow the other. Is my heart not a clock as well? asks a questioning thought. And if so, why should it not be more powerful than the one up in the tower, which is only made of lifeless metal and not of living flesh and blood like mine.

Why should it not have the power to make time hurry along?

And as if in confirmation, two lines from a poem my father once read to me suddenly come to mind, “Heart-born and heart-joined, / All things proceed from the heart.” Now I can understand the dreadful meaning that resides in those words, that were mere sound to my ears when I first heard them. Now I comprehend them with a meaning that shocks me to the core: the heart within me, my own heart, does not obey when I call to it, ‘Beat faster’. Living within me must be one who is stronger than I, one who dictates time and destiny to me.

That is where things must proceed from.

I feel a shock of horror at myself, for suddenly the sense is clear to me, ‘I would be a magician and would have mastery over each and every happening, if I only knew myself, if I only had power over my own heart.’

This train of thought is interrupted by another, which appears uncalled, saying, ‘Do you remember that passage in the book you read years ago in the orphanage? Did it not say, ‘Clocks often stop when someone dies’? This is how it comes about: with the nightmare of death weighing down on them, the dying mistake the slower and slower beat of their hearts for the tick of a clock. The fear of the body, which is about to be abandoned by the soul, whispers to them, ‘When that clock stops ticking, I shall be dead’, and, as if by a magic command, the clock stands still with the last heart-beat. If there is a clock in the room of someone the dying person is thinking of, then that will be the one that will blindly follow the words that spring from mortal fear, for the dying are present, like their own doubles, in places they are thinking of at the moment of death.’

So it is fear that my heart obeys! It is more powerful than my heart! If I could banish it, then I would have power over everything that proceeds from the heart, over time and destiny!

I suddenly find myself breathless, fighting against a fear that falls on me, tries to suffocate me, because I am feeling my way towards its lair. I am too weak to master it, for I do not know how or where to grasp it. It attacks my heart instead of me, squeezing it to force it to shape my destiny according to its will and not mine.

I try to calm myself down by telling myself that, as long as I am not with Ophelia, she is in no danger, but I am too weak to follow the dictate of reason and not go down to the garden tonight. No sooner have I accepted the idea, than I reject it.

I can see the snare that my heart is laying for me and yet I walk straight into it. My yearning for Ophelia is stronger than all reason.

I go to the window to collect my thoughts and to find the courage to face up to the danger which I know is inevitable because I can sense my fear of it, but the sight of the inexorable flow of the mute, unfeeling water has such a fearful effect on me that for a moment I miss the thunder of the church clock striking. My mind is numbed by the dim fear that the destiny I can no longer avoid is being borne along by the river

Then I am aroused by the metallic vibrations, wiping away fear and trepidation.

Ophelia!

I can see her white dress shimmering in the garden.

“My dear, my own child, I’ve been so afraid for you all day.”

“And I for you, Ophelia”, I am about to say, but she embraces me and her lips close over mine.

“You know, I think this evening is the last time we will see each other, my poor, dear child?”

“Good God, Ophelia, has something happened? Quick, let’s get into the boat, we’ll be safe there.”

“Yes, let’s go. Perhaps we’ll be safe there, safe from him.”

From him! It is the first time she has mentioned ‘him’! From the way her hand is trembling I can tell how boundless her fear of ‘him’ must be. I set off towards the boat, but for a moment she resists, as if she cannot tear herself from the spot. “Come along, Ophelia”, I urge, “don’t be frightened. We’ll be over by the other side in a moment. The mist will veil –”

“I’m not frightened. I just want to …” she falters.

“What’s the matter, Ophelia?” I put my arms around her. “Don’t you love me any more?”

“You know how much I love you, Christl, my child”, is all she says. There follows a long silence.

“Let’s go to the boat now”, I urge her again in a whisper. “I want you so much.”

Gently, she withdraws from my embrace, takes a step back towards the bench where we always sit, and runs her fingers along it, lost in thought.

“What’s the matter, Ophelia? What are you doing? Is there something troubling you? Have I hurt you?”

“I just want to – I just want to say goodbye to the dear old bench. Do you remember when we first kissed here?”

“You’re going to leave me?

I almost scream. “Ophelia, in God’s name, you can’t. Something’s happened and you won’t tell me! Do you think I could live without you?”

“No, my little child, be still, nothing’s happened yet.” She softly comforts me and tries to smile, but as the moonlight falls bright across her face, I can see that her eyes are full of tears. “Come, my love, come; you’re right, let’s get into the boat.”

With every pull on the oars my heart feels lighter, the wider the stretch of water between us and the dark houses with their glowing, spying eyes, the safer we are from danger. Finally the willows along the other bank appear through the mist; the water is shallow and calm, and we drift along slowly beneath the overhanging branches. I have shipped the oars and am sitting next to Ophelia on the rudder seat, locked in a tender embrace.