It happened on an ordinary evening as the solitary visitor was trudging along the road to town, his hands cupped behind his back and his head slumped forward, his usual evening hiking posture. For some reason this evening his mind was replaying some old “tapes” from his years in Germany with Einstein. And when it wandered off into other matters, it continued its internal monologue in the German language.
By now he was familiar enough with the course of his evening walk that he scarcely needed to look where he was going. Thus absorbed in his thoughts, he was crossing in front of the double row of ancient maples bordering the schoolyard when he was startled by the sound of a rapid movement, then a jolting thump and a shower of papers flying in the air.
“Entschuldigen Sie mich!” (“Excuse me!”) he cried out in shock as the pretty teacher with whom he had just collided landed back down on the turf with a thud.
“Einem, der so tief in seinen Gedanken verloren ist, ist viel erlaubt,” (“A person has to make plenty of allowance for someone so deeply lost in his thoughts.”) she replied almost coyly, brushing herself off.
“Bitte, lassen Sie mich diese Schularbeiten fuer Sie sammeln,” (“Please let me gather up all these pieces of homework for you.”) he insisted, darting from one escaping sheet of paper to the next.
“Ach, mein guter Herr! Seien Sie bitte nicht so verlegt. Es ist nichts. Regen Sie sich nicht auf. Niemand ist verletzt, und die Aufgaben werden nicht weithin fliegen.” (“O my good man! Please don’t be so embarrassed. It’s nothing. Don’t get so excited. No one is hurt, and the lessons won’t fly far.”)
“Nicht verlegt! Ich waere ein ganz tierischer Mensch, wenn ich nicht verlegt waere, eine so huebsche und schuldlose Dame niederzuschlagen.” (“Not embarrassed! I’d be a brute if I weren’t embarrassed after knocking over such a pretty and innocent lady.”)
Scrambling after the sheets of paper, he began putting together in his head how it had happened. She must have been sitting on the ground hidden by this massive trunk and sprung up in surprise when he almost stepped on her. Himmel! This was unfortunate!
“Himmel?”
Why was he talking to her in German? And why was she answering him in German? What was going on here?
He gathered up the last of the errant papers and brought them to the teacher who was still brushing the leaves off her skirt.
“I … I don’t know how to…,” he fumbled around.
“So you speak English, too,” she broke in playfully. “That’s too bad. I was looking forward to practicing my German on you.”
She sounded so disappointed by this latter misfortune that she made the poor man forget all about the former one.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he tried again.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she softened. “Are you a native of Germany, or did you have to learn the language?”
“No,” he replied ambiguously. “I’m a renegade Norwegian-American who lived in Berlin many years ago.”
A strange vagabond, this, thought the young teacher to herself. He can’t be a seasonal laborer, though he’s dressed like one…. I wonder from what he has fallen….
Whether it was female intuition that aroused her sympathy for this apparent drifter or scholarly instinct that detected something deeper beneath his effective camouflage, she found herself filled with a lively curiosity to learn more about him.
“I was with the Red Cross in Bremen and Hamburg after the war until this fall,” she offered. “That taught me a few idioms you won’t find in grammar books.”
The older man lowered his head and gazed a hole through the leaves on the ground.
“They tell me the destruction of those two cities was nearly total.”
“It was,” she affirmed. “There wasn’t much left. Just a lot of lost waifs standing in a state of shock on heaps of rubble. The rebuilding has already started, but it will take years.”
“It must have made you feel good to pitch in and help.”
“In a way, I suppose. In a very little way. Mostly you felt dejection. I am sure it would have got to me if there hadn’t been so much to do. You felt—you couldn’t avoid feeling—the remorse of those who realized they were getting what they as a nation deserved and the shame of the victors who had doled out such terrible destruction on so many innocent people.”
She hesitated. Clearly, the memories were painful for her.
Then she stood up straight, threw off her heaviness of heart, and announced, “My name is Katherine Kunstler. I teach grades five through eight at the school here.”
“And I’m Dr. Pearson,” echoed the sad little man. For the past six years that’s all he had heard: “Dr. Pearson, would you have a look at this?” “Dr. Pearson, what do you make of that?” “Dr. Pearson, this….” “Dr. Pearson, that….”
Immediately he added, “Stephan Pearson.”
She held out her hand and he shook it a little limply.
“Katherine,” he said. “I do hope we can meet again under more … more propitious circumstances.”
“I would like that.”
They smiled at each other. Dr. Pearson arched his back, cupped his hands, and resumed his evening stroll. Miss Kunstler sat back down under the tree to think. Her eyes peered through the treetops. She was mentally going back over her chance encounter with this most unusual little man to see if she could glean from it a few more scraps of information about him.