The Safety Net (26 page)

The young officer merely nodded and said: “I’ll have to take up my post now, I’ll report to my superior on the new situation—most likely he’ll send along another man—the responsibility—the vicarage is very large—the garden is enormous.”

“It’s pretty chilly outside,” said Rolf, “looks like rain, anyway fog is dripping. Come along, I’ll show you a good spot,” then qualifying: “in my opinion good. We must let the priest know too.” He took Hendler along the garden path to the cellar overhang of steel and wired glass. “I think you’ll find that from here you can keep an eye on both the garden and the wall, as well as our cottage, and if you—may we bring you something
to eat?”

“Thanks,” Hendler said, and stood against the wall testing his field of vision. “I think this’ll do till the other officer arrives—but, I wonder, would you have an outside light on your cottage?”

“Yes?”

“Would you mind turning it on?”

“Of course not.”

“Thanks, and—I hope you understand—nothing to eat, much as I’d like to.”

At that moment light blazed up in the church, falling from the tall windows into the garden, and for some reason that he would never be able to explain, Rolf was frightened. He ran to the vestry door, rattled the handle, then ran back through the garden, out through the little gate, saw Roickler’s car outside the door, the trunk open, the back shelf propped up, and a young woman whom he had never seen before coming out of the hallway carrying two suitcases, a bag dangling from each shoulder—she nodded, hurried past him, and he turned around to watch: the pale severity of her face, the long, loose brown hair, her movements. As she put down the suitcases, half turning before placing the bags in the trunk, she smiled. He walked toward her and was about to introduce himself, but she shook her head and said: “I know who you are—I’m Anna Plauck—go in and see him, he won’t be coming back, he wanted to leave quietly and write to you—he’s only afraid of one thing—that they’ll kick you out if he’s no longer here. Go in and see him, he’s in the church.…”

It was a long time since he had been in a church, although he lived so close to one and the priest was, one could say, a good friend of his: yet he was afraid as he walked down the hallway, felt the draft, and entered the chill of the neo-Gothic church nave. Involuntarily he looked for the stoup, dipped in his first and middle fingers: it wasn’t really that long, only ten years, ten out of thirty. He even crossed himself and was startled to see Roickler in his surplice standing beside the altar. He
was afraid something blasphemous was about to happen, some stupid sacrilege, and was surprised to see Roickler remove the altar cloth, carefully fold it up, take out the chalice from the tabernacle, kneel down, snuff out the candles, and calmly go into the vestry, from which he shortly emerged in street clothes. Rolf was still standing there rooted to the spot when Roickler touched his arm, saying: “I didn’t want to go just like that, I wanted to leave everything in order, the chalice in the safe, the vestments and altar cloth in the closet, I’ll send the key to the safe to the bishop—and I’m not leaving because I’m tormented by my sexuality but because I love that woman, I love Anna, I don’t want to leave her in loneliness and make myself lonely. I can’t go on, my dear Tolm, I can’t go on doing secretly what I forbid others to do, what I have to chalk up against them as a sin. It won’t affect the people in the village very much, I only hope they’ll soon get a new priest.… Come, I’ve something to settle with you.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Rolf. “How are you going to manage, what are you going to live on …?”

“For the time being I’ll live at Anna’s, she’ll support me, maybe my brother can give me some sort of a job—he’s an electrical contractor. And I can read and write, even do some arithmetic. Don’t look at me so sadly: because of you, your wife, and also your parents, also because of the people here, I’m very sorry to leave. Maybe I can come back secretly some evening, sit by the fire and smoke my cigar—are you shocked?”

“Yes,” said Rolf, “in spite of my own findings, in spite of my systems analysis, I am shocked—I always thought, we always thought … Katharina …”

“That I was a good priest—I know, and actually it’s true: I wasn’t a bad one, only I can’t go on like this, and I’d like to take proper leave of my church.… Come along—”

They each crossed themselves, almost simultaneously, Roickler smiled as he did so, Rolf did not. Quite obviously Roickler hadn’t even taken his books, the shelves were still full, the smell of cigars still hung in the room. “Here’s a document
I’ve prepared, but I don’t know whether it’s valid or whether its validity will be accepted. What it does is extend the lease we signed—you’ll have to put in the date—by five years. Today’s date, Ferdinand Roickler, priest—I’m still that, I still have that ecclesiastical status—and you sign here: Rolf Tolm. The local church council won’t, or I should say: shouldn’t raise any objections, the people here like you, and Hermes is reliable. But I don’t know what pressure will be exerted from above, and I don’t know either how much authority they have up there. Probably it’s a matter of interpretation, might mean a court case, but it won’t be so easy to throw you out—I wanted to be sure you understood this.… Still sad, Rolf? Still sad: we’ll meet again, here or in Cologne when you come to see me at Anna’s. By the way, I’ll give you the vicarage key, and you can use the bishop’s room as a guest room in case your parents might like to stay overnight.… You know about the record cabinet, the stereo set, and where the wine’s kept—and it would please me to think of someone having a bath in the bishop’s bathroom, where no one, let alone a bishop, has ever taken a bath. Don’t be sad, my friend, and remember me to Katharina and the boy. I took the precaution of sending my aunt off on a holiday, she’ll survive.…”

Rolf managed to stammer out his thanks for the wonderful time they had had here. “I don’t know what would have become of us, where we would have ended up—and without you the people here certainly wouldn’t have—come around to accepting us, to being so nice to us—I mean.…”

Out in the car Anna Plauck was already sitting at the wheel, smiling, nodding. And then they did embrace, shed a few tears, waved, a car driving off, he turned and went back into the church again and looked at the bare altar, noticing for the first time that the Perpetual Light had gone out too. Fear of this change, fear of the new priest, fear of the fear that seized him at the thought of being driven out; he locked the vicarage door and put the key in his pocket.

Kit was already playing with Holger when he returned, suggesting suitable spots for the accommodation of the lion and Holger’s beloved wooden dachshund, a frightful Disney-type creature. Sabine was sitting on the bench beside the stove, smoking a cigarette—he hadn’t often seen her smoking lately; was she flushed from the stove or from embarrassment? She had always retained something childlike, not naïve but childlike, and he had never been able to understand why she had to pick Fischer. Not only were there nicer men in that category but there were really nice ones—Pliefger’s grandson, for instance, whom he had once met at Father’s, and also—like it or not, one must be fair—young Zummerling, who didn’t seem terribly intelligent but was genuinely thoughtful, considerate, the kind one might call a “caring” person—and she could certainly have had him: he was a first-rate horseman, and that, of course, would have been a fantastic match: the little paper and Zummerling. And why not, come to think of it? Since it made no difference anyway which paper one read. And now as he watched Sabine with a smile he felt a pang and would have wished her more happiness than she seemed to have had with Fischer. But then Fischer used not to be as obnoxious as he was now—always a reactionary, of course, and obsessed with profits, so what, perhaps they were all like that, had to be like that—but at one time he had been more moderate, less ruthless; he had used up his charm very quickly—had sometimes even had a wistful look in his eyes. But the nicest of the lot was certainly Zummerling.

“What are you smiling at?” asked Sabine; she was having trouble with her cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.

“I’m smiling because I have much better quarters for you than that little room of ours. I have a genuine bishop’s room with a bishop’s bathroom”—and he took the key from his pocket and toyed with it. “The priest has suddenly gone off on a trip, he had to leave in a hurry, sends his regards to you, Katharina, and to Holger too. He’s offered me the use of his house—in case we have guests.… Incidentally, I’m delighted to see you, you’re
looking extremely well, almost as if you were in love, even your pregnancy suits you—it’s becoming quite obvious.…”

She blushed. Perhaps his answer had been too flip. “Don’t mind me. I take it you’re staying for a while?”

“For a few days anyway, I’ve already explained to Katharina—Erwin is off again on one of his long trips, and I’m sick of always being alone in that big house. So, if it’s all the same to you two, I’d rather not have either the bishop’s room or the bishop’s bath—I’d just be alone in a big house again, surrounded by police.… Please, if you don’t mind, not the bishop’s room.”

She smiled, was oddly embarrassed, helped set the table, even remembered where they kept the bowls for the stew, the spoons and the paper napkins. Meanwhile he cored some apples, filled them with jam, and put them in the oven, gave another stir to the bowl in which he had mixed vanilla and eggs, milk and sugar, for the custard sauce.

“This’ll remind you of Eickelhof,” he said.

“Do you also think so often about Eickelhof? I thought you never wanted to hear of it again.…”

“No, not that often, but I know you do, and I want you to feel at home here. Maybe what we have here is a bit of Eickelhof—though only a thirtieth as big. All right, everybody, supper’s ready!”

“Yes, it does remind me of it. It must be the wall—and your warm welcome.”

She sighed with contentment during the meal—stew, braised vegetables with mushrooms, and salad—put the kettle on for tea without being asked, kept touching Katharina’s arm, smiling, almost in tears, at any rate with moist eyes, and although he told her that the officer had declined any food she insisted on taking out “his bowlful.” “And later on a baked apple, when they’re ready—I know he’ll accept that from me, we’ve known each other for quite a while.” By this time it was raining hard, she pulled the hood of Rolf’s parka down over her head and carried the bowl of stew under the protection of
the dangling garment; she refused an umbrella and closed the door carefully behind her.

Katharina shook her head as he was about to speak. She had never been able to bring herself to send Holger out of the room when they wanted to discuss something. He said softly: “The priest, Roickler, will be away for a long time—a very long time,” and he placed the lease, the supplement to the lease, in front of her. They were both equally surprised to see Sabine’s blissful smile when she returned, took off the wet parka, shook it out, and sat down again by the stove. Then came the baked apples in Holger’s favorite little dishes, brown pottery with red borders, the custard sauce, and it was all so intimate, so gay, as if Saint Barbara and Saint Nicholas were hovering together above the house, the garden, and the village: still fall, yet already wintry, and again he was scared by all that snug security. Sabine shook her head when Katharina held out a little dish of apple and custard for the officer.

“No,” she said, “he’d rather not, he’s a stickler. I must tell you something—that camper the officers have been living in recently, they’re going to move it away from Blorr and park it here—I’m a disturbing element.…”

“You can stay with us as long as you want—as long as you like.”

“And I won’t have to use the bishop’s room?”

“No.”

Sabine insisted on washing the children and putting them to bed, absolutely insisted. It was lovely to see them together, cuddled up with the scruffy lion and the Disney dog: “really sweet.”

“And now,” said Sabine, “I can tell you: I’ve left Fischer for good, left him for good, and the child I’m expecting is not his, not Fischer’s—I know, you’re staggered, you find it just as hard to believe as Father and Käthe did, but it’s true.”

It was Katharina’s idea to drink a toast to the child. She was always having bright ideas like that, and at the second
glass something resembling “defiant happiness” spread over Sabine’s face as she said with a laugh: “If it’s a boy I’ll call him Holger, if only to annoy him: ‘all clear for the weekend’!”

“One should never name a child merely to annoy someone. That’s not good for the child, and maybe it’ll be a girl,” said Katharina.

“Then I’ll call her Katharina—not Veronica, though that’s a beautiful name too. Father is going to help me, and Käthe already sees me as a great journalist. Is there something special about the priest that you didn’t want to tell me in front of the children?”

“Yes, he’s left for good—he won’t be back, at least not as a priest. He’s gone to a woman, his woman. I wanted to spare you that.…”

“Spare me? Why? D’you think I don’t know what’s going on with Kohlschröder—and anyway, it confirms your analyses.”

“One isn’t always glad to see such analyses confirmed. And by the way, three Holgers in one family—that would simply be too much.”

Once again he had to enter the gray area where discretion and security collide and one or the other could explode. If someone had ever predicted that it would one day be part of his security duties to find out in which month and by whom a woman was pregnant, he would have laughed. But, strictly speaking, it could be of the utmost importance to know with whom this woman had taken up that somewhat intimate connection which led to a condition known as pregnancy. And since for obvious reasons the safety of young Mrs. Fischer—and even of her brother, himself a security risk—had been so graphically impressed upon him, it was clearly his duty to pursue the matter. Behind the most charming, socially acceptable mask, the “impregnator”—as he called him for the time being—could be at least as dubious (not morally but security-wise) as that odd young Schubler, who had, if not impregnated (at least as far as was known), intimately associated with Mrs. Fischer’s neighbor.