Georg Hauer, farmer, age 49

Friday March the eighteenth, that’s when I last saw Danner.

I was planning to go over to Einhausen that day.

Had to fetch something from the hardware store there. I’m going to rebuild my barn this year, that’s why I took the cart and drove.

On foot it takes you a good hour, I’d say.

When I’m just past Danner’s property—the road there runs by the farm—the old man waves to me. He was some way off.

Since that business with Barbara, I’ve always tended to avoid Danner. We haven’t talked to each other much since. But I stopped the cart all the same. Reluctantly.

“Hold on a minute there! I want to ask you something,” the old man called.

First he just hemmed and hawed. I was starting to wish I hadn’t stopped at all. Suddenly he asks me if I’d seen anything, if I’d noticed anything.

“What was there to notice? I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary.” I was getting really annoyed with myself for stopping by now.

If he was going on at me like that, it meant he had something or other in mind. A sly fox, old Danner was. You had to watch your step with him. So I was surprised when all he asked was had anyone met me, had I seen anyone?

“Why?” I asked back.

“There was someone tried to break in to our house last night. Nothing stolen, but the lock’s been wrenched off the machinery shed.”

“Better call the police,” I told him.

But he wouldn’t have the police in the house, he told me.

“Don’t want nothing to do with the cops.”

He’d searched the whole place, he said. Went up to the loft, too, took a lamp and shone it in all the corners, but he didn’t find anything.

All the same, he said, all last night he thought he heard someone in the loft. So he went up there first thing in the morning. But he didn’t find anything, and nothing was missing.

I asked him if he’d like me to help him search. Pig-headed like he was, all he said was the fellow would have made off by now. Only he didn’t know how, because all the footprints you could see just led to the house and not away.

Fresh snow had fallen overnight. Not much, just a thin covering. But he’d been able to make out some of the footprints well enough.

“Want me to bring my revolver?” I asked. I still have one at home, left over from the war.

But Danner wouldn’t have that.

“No need. I’ve got a gun myself and a good stout stick. I’ll soon send the fellow packing.”

I offered again to look in at his place on my way home, help him search the farmyard again.

But the stubborn old goat said no.

Then, just as I’m about to leave, the old man turns around again and says, “And the stupid thing is I misplaced the front-door key yesterday. If you find a key on the road, a key that long”—and he showed me the length of the key with his hands—“then it’s mine.”

That was the end of the conversation, and I continued on. I really did mean to look in on Danner again on my way back.

But the weather got worse, it was raining, there was even a bit of snow, so I went straight home.

There was a frost that night too. Spring just didn’t want to come this year.

I noticed none of the Danners were at church on Sunday, but I thought nothing much of that.

Then on Monday I was out in the fields near the woods. My fields there march side by side with Danner’s land. I was plowing. Didn’t see any of the Danners the whole time, though.

But Tuesday, my sister-in-law Anna sent young Hansl up to their farm to take a look around. It wasn’t till then I remembered all that about the break-in and the missing front-door key. And you know the rest of it.

Old Frau Danner is sitting at the kitchen table, praying:

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Thou art our salvation,

Thou alone art our life, our resurrection.

I therefore pray Thee

do not abandon me in my hour of need,

but for the sake of Thy most sacred heart’s struggle with death,

and for the sake of Thy immaculate mother’s pain,

come to the aid of Thy servants,

whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy precious blood.

She holds her old, well-worn prayer book. She is alone, alone with herself and her thoughts.

Barbara is out in the cowshed, taking a last look at the cattle. Her husband is already in bed. Like the children and the new maid.

She treasures this time of the evening as the most precious thing she has. She sits in the kitchen with The Myrtle Wreath in her hands. The prayer book is worn and shabby now. Back then, many years ago, a whole lifetime ago, she was given The Myrtle Wreath: A Spiritual Guide for Brides for her wedding day, according to the custom of the time. A book of devotions for Christian women.

Who knows, could she have lived this life without the grace and comfort of God and the Mother of God? A life full of humiliations, indignities, and blows. Only the comfort she found in her faith kept her going. Kept her going all these years. Who could she have confided in? Her mother died during the First World War. So did her father soon afterward, at the time when her future husband came to the farm to work as a laborer.

When he arrived, it was the first time anyone had ever paid her even a little attention. That attention was a balm to her soul. Her whole life up to now had been ruled by work and her parents’ deep religious faith.

She grew up in cold, sanctimonious surroundings. No tenderness, no loving embraces to warm her soul, not a kind word. The life she led was marked by the rhythm of the seasons and the work on the farm that went with them, and by her parents’ life within the boundaries of their stern faith.

Such spiritual narrowness of mind could be felt almost physically.

Then the man who would be her husband came to the farm as a laborer. She, who had never been particularly pretty, was now desired by this good-looking man. From the first she knew in her heart of hearts that she herself, a nondescript little woman and already fading, was not the true object of his desire. Still unmarried, she was an old maid at thirty-two. He was tall and well built, and not yet twenty-seven. But she closed her eyes to the fact that he wanted the farm not her body.

Against her better judgment she agreed to marry him. He changed soon after the wedding. Showed his true nature. Was uncivil, insulted her, even hit her when she didn’t do as he wanted.

She took it all without complaint. No one could understand it, but she loved her husband, loved him even when he beat her. She was dependent on every word he spoke, everything he did. Never mind how rough and hard-hearted he proved to be.

When she was expecting her child, his brutality was hard to bear. He humiliated her in every possible way. Cheated on her openly, before all eyes, with the maid they had at the farm then. That was the first time she had to move out of the marital bedroom and into a smaller one because another woman had taken her place. She was enslaved by him, subjected, in bondage to him. For the rest of her life.

Her daughter, Barbara, was born in the fields at potato-harvesting time.

He didn’t even allow the heavily pregnant mother the privilege of a confinement in her own bed. On the morning when she felt the first contractions he made her go out into the fields with the others. She was bent double with pain, and when blood was already running down her legs, and the child was fighting its determined way out of her body with all its might, she gave birth to the little creature at the side of the field. Brought her into the world there under the open sky. He forced her to go on working in the days after she gave birth, too. She had no peace.