“Maria pounded on my door last night with her granddaughter, both of them bleeding—”
“That beast—”
“The granddaughter bit his leg when he beat at Maria again. Then he whipped his belt across her face, laid bare the edge of one eyebrow. So much blood across her eye and side of her face…”
“Face wounds can be like that.”
“I’ve offered her my revolver.”
“I’ve offered her my nephews to break his legs.”
“Not your sons?”
“Nephews are enough.”
“She didn’t want our help.”
“And now?”
“Now Maria says we must talk.”
“Finally!”
The Old Women have been young with Maria and grown old with Maria. They set the stage by trusting gossip to make known that Herr Doktor Ullrich is sinking into melancholy. Twice already—so it travels on the stream of gossip—he has walked into the Nordsee.
“His shoes were lined up in the sand,” the Old Women gossip.
“His daughters saved his life.”
“Side by side, his shoes.”
When the priest arrives to counsel him, Herr Doktor Ullrich chases him off.
“He denies his melancholy,” the people of Nordstrand say.
Sister Konstanze arrives with Sister Ida to offer the Herr Doktor a good rest in the infirmary.
“Lies,” he yells at them.
But the Sisters don’t budge.
“My wife wants to kill me!” He advances, one arm raised.
“Don’t you dare,” Sister Ida rasps and steps in front of Sister Konstanze.
During their first years at the St. Margaret Home they had cells at opposite ends of a marble corridor; nights they visited one another, terrified to encounter Sister Hildegunde, ready for lies they were willing to confess.
And one dawn it happened. Sister Hildegunde stepped in the way of Sister Ida.
“I was praying,” Sister Ida said. “Walking and praying—”
“This is not right.” Sister Hildegunde squinted at her, the pale hue of rose petals. “You wake everyone up traipsing back and forth. We must do something about this.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“After Mass I want you to move into the cell next to Sister Konstanze.”
In the cemetery, the people of Nordstrand comfort the Widow Maria Ullrich and her daughters. Nearly everyone is here to see the Herr Doktor buried. Farmers and Sisters and Old Women and Girls and fishermen and toymakers.
“Herr Doktor Ullrich was hallucinating when we visited him,” Sister Konstanze tells them.
“Raving mad,” Sister Ida adds.
“No surprise he succeeded in killing himself,” people say.
“Not by water but by rope.”
“He certainly tried before.”
“Such a troubled man,” says the priest.
“You have done all you can to keep him alive,” the people tell the Widow Ullrich.
“You have done all you can,” the Old Women tell her.
“You know I have!” the Widow Ullrich says fiercely.
“Ssshhhh…” The Old Women pull her inside their circle, arms locked around each others’ shoulders and once again and forever help her drag the Herr Doktor into the barn. Heavy, he was heavy on the ladder to the hayloft, knocked insensible with a shovel after the feather pillow against his face failed to keep him down. In the loft they knotted a rope around his neck, tied the end around a rafter, and shoved him from that rafter.
One death seen through.
They could have killed him a dozen times.
“Ssshhhh…”
The priest blesses the coffin and approaches the Widow Ullrich to offer Herzliches Beileid—heartfelt condolences; but the Old Women are a fortress, a black fortress, solid with their black coats and black hats and black shoes. As the coffin is lowered into the open earth, groundwater fizzes around it, bubbles and swells, and the Widow Ullrich emerges from her black fortress. Even if for some implausible reason her dead husband is not totally dead, water will swallow him in his coffin and rise even after his grave gets filled in with dirt, causing a puddle on the grave, a rectangular indentation. Proof.
“Herzliches Beileid, Frau Ullrich.” The priest shakes her hand, eager to return to his bed with a cup of tea and Lebkuchen. Gluttony—
No, not gluttony. It’s just that he adores eating in bed and drifting into a little nap. The second floor of the carriage house is his apartment now, assigned by Sister Hildegunde, and on the highest shelf in his kitchen he stashes whatever sweet indulgences a parishioner may leave for him in the confessional. To retrieve them, one must get the ladder. A ladder is a fine substitute for willpower.