The night Steve and Cecilia returned to St. Mark was blustery and stormy. By morning snow lay a foot-and-a-half deep on the ground, held in place for a time by the glassy gelidity that results in the early winter from a heavy wet snowfall followed by plunging temperatures. Overnight, life on the campus of Christiania College was fundamentally altered. Thick sheepskin coats appeared, and red noses and cheeks, and frozen fingers. The cold wind needed no more that the distance between two buildings to nip your ears good and proper. Folks hunkered down into their wraps and scurried as fast as they could between refuges of warmth. Work was accomplished mostly indoors; nature was admired mostly through the window.
A week later the severe cold relented and temperatures rose during the day to just below the freezing point. Steve and Cecilia resumed their evening strolls after her practice time. Not many couples dared to brave the elements after sundown, but they did.
It was consoling to me to observe their happiness from a respectful distance. As it happened, my own “romantic life” was going through some turmoil at the time, and they gave me hope for a brighter future in that department.
One evening when Steve was supposed to meet Cecilia in front of the women’s dormitory and walk her over to the music hall, she failed to show up on time. This had never happened before. He waited outside for a few minutes and then went in and requested the receptionist to call her. But she was not in her room. What could have become of her? Anxiety gnawed at him, but he tried to reason it away with the thought that something important must have detained her somewhere. Confused and uncertain as to what to do, he instinctively headed over to the music hall and mounted the stairs to her organ chamber.
But it was empty! There was no sign of her anywhere. The whole thing was growing more worrying by the moment. More confused than ever, he started down the stairs. As he rounded the third landing, something on the ground down below in the trees just around the corner from the entrance caught his attention, barely visible in the moonlight. He stopped and peered out through the window into the night. Surely this wasn’t…. Look again! Could it be?… It was!
He flew down the stairs to the entrance. It was cold and dark, but Cecilia, oblivious to all else, was sitting on the ground, breathing heavily and caressing an object lying in the snow. He ran over to her, but she did not look up. Cautiously touching her shoulder, he pleaded, “Cecilia, my love, what’s the matter?”
She turned her head slowly up towards him. Her eyes were moist. Steve stared at her in astonishment. Then she sprang up and flung herself into his arms, burying her face in his shoulder and surrendering to her sobs. Opening his heavy sheepskin, he enfolded her trembling body into its depths and hung on to her.
Her sobbing eventually subsided to jerky little whimpers. She rolled her head weakly from side to side on his shoulder and whispered, “I am so silly, so very silly.”
The whole thing took Steve right back to the first nocturnal visit from his Specter Maiden and her grief-laden tears for him and the ants and the world.
Steve looked down at the object in the snow. It was a perfect cardinal, very beautiful but very dead.
“No,” Steve objected. “You are not silly. You are wonderful. You are an angel.”
Steve took a deep breath.
Then he nibbled her ear.
“You are my angel.”
She melted into his arms. They stood there in warm embrace. Both of them were panting.
“Let’s go upstairs,” he urged at length.
On the way up the staircase, Steve was doing a little calculating. Being the son of Julia whose menstrual periods were severe and inescapably noticeable, Steve was well aware of how fragile a woman’s emotions can become once a month. “It has to be her time now,” he told himself. “It’s just the way of women.”
When they reached the organ chamber, they sat down next to each other on the bench. Steve had not felt so desolate for over a month. Leaning into his shivering treasure, he lightly caressed her cheek and said, “Do you want to tell me about it?”
Without looking up, she moved in closer to him and began haltingly.
“It’s nothing, really…. But then again…. No, it really is silly…. Still, I’ll tell you about it because … because you’re my Steve and you won’t think I’m crazy.”
Steve nodded.
Reaching into the pocket of her coat, she pulled out a sheet of paper and opened it deliberately.
“This afternoon in the library, Paul gave me the German part of what’s on this paper. He was feeling kind of down in the dumps and just wanted someone to share it with, I guess. It’s a little poem by Goethe called Wanderers Nachtlied II. He wrote it on a mountaintop in the evening when he was an old man. Something in it spoke to Paul’s sadness, I guess. After he gave it to me, I think he felt better…. Well, then for some reason I began to get silly over it, too. It’s been going through my head all afternoon, as if I were the old man! I even made a translation of it for you so you could see it too. I knew you wouldn’t get silly…. Then I came across that poor little cardinal lying in the snow and oh, I don’t what came over me….”
She handed him the paper and repeated the poem softly in German as he read it silently in English.
“Ueber allen Gipfeln |
“Over every mountain crest |
Ist Ruh’; |
Is peace; |
In allen Wipfeln |
In all the crowns of trees at rest |
Spuerest du |
Thou seest |
Kaum einen Hauch; |
Scarcely a sigh; |
Die Voegelein schweigen in Walde; |
The little birds are hushed now; |
Warte nur, balde |
Only wait, soon thou, |
Ruhest du auch.” |
Thou too shalt die.” |
“Only he doesn’t say ‘die’ in the last line. He just says ‘rest,’ but you know he means ‘die.’ It isn’t supposed to be sad, just accepting of the inevitable, almost embracing it. Still, when I saw that beautiful cardinal lying dead in the snow and thought of the words ‘Die Voegelein schweigen im Walde,’ something just snapped inside me. I can’t even tell you what it was! I broke out in tears and sat down next to the bird and ran my fingers over its soft feathers and just cried and cried and cried. I lost all track of time. It felt like I was crying for the whole world, Steve—all because of that little cardinal and that poem…. Now you know what I mean by ‘silly.’”
Far from being put off by this bizarre account, Steve’s heart nearly burst for love of his precious Cecilia. He laid his hand on hers. It was warmer now and she was shivering less. He kissed her on the temple and slid off the bench and onto a chair.
“Won’t you play something soft and peaceful, my angel?” he whispered.
She nodded. Selecting just the right stops, she began playing from memory.
The serene harmonies and poignant melody of Bach’s “Komm, suesser Tod” settled over the chamber and tenderly enfolded the two young lovers. Steve leaned back in his chair and inhaled deeply. His lungs felt sore and heavy. Gazing into his angel’s tear-stained face now absorbed into the remote world of her music, he knew he was bound in love to this amazing woman forever, not to cramp her or in any way to tame her spirit, but to treasure her and to keep an eternal vigil over her.
Getting out of his chair, he approached Cecilia from behind without interrupting her playing. Placing his hands lightly around her waist, he whispered into her ear, “What would life be worth to me without you, my treasure?”
Later that night I passed Steve in the corridor. He scowled almost fiercely at me, but did not say a word. I knew why.