Christopher Kloeble - Almost Everything Very Fast

Even ten months after Alfonsa had lost her child, no one was able to convince her to step out into the open. The growing worry and helplessness among the nuns led to the decision to transfer Alfonsa to Saint Helena. Since the end of the war, the alpine cloister had become famous for its success in treating and curing all sorts of illnesses.

Alfonsa expressed her disappointment that they were sending her away by not saying “Sister” even once. During the drive to Saint Helena she hid herself under a wool blanket on the backseat, took one sleeping pill after another, and ignored every offer by the nuns to pause at a rest stop so she could stretch her legs or use the bathroom.

Two days after her arrival, Alfonsa appeared in my room. I turned my wheelchair away from the window to inspect her: a redheaded twenty-year-old with an expressionless face, stepping silently over to my bed.

“We haven’t been introduced,” I said, friendly, and extended my hand. “Ludwig Wickenhäuser.”

She ignored the hand and said, “Sister Alfonsa,” while quickly and efficiently replacing the bedsheets.

I made another attempt: “Alfonsa means ‘Ready for battle,’ no?”

She paused for a moment, then resumed beating the pillow even harder.

“How do you like Helena so far?”

“A dream.”

“You’ll settle in soon. Where do you come from?”

“From out there.”

“Did you always want to be a nun?”

“Yes. You, too?”

“I guess you’ve decided not to make any friends, hmm?”

“Not with a cripple, anyway.”

I rolled over and planted myself in her path. “I’m not one of your sisters. Get ahold of yourself, and don’t make this unnecessarily difficult. I mean to live for a few more years — so let’s try to get along. Because as far as I know, Sister Alfonsa, you couldn’t leave this place even if you felt like it.”

She pressed the dirty sheets to her chest, stepped around the wheelchair, and slammed the door behind her.

Our next encounters passed without a word. She thought I wouldn’t be able to tell, but I was familiar with women like her from way back. They didn’t spare so much as a look for the people, especially the men, whom they liked, or the women they compared themselves to, and simply turned away from them, thereby making it all the more obvious how much they longed to be spoken to and embraced. After so many quiet years I was excited to see if I could make this lady with her thin lips smile.

One evening after sunset I asked Alfonsa to come with me into the orchard to pick apples.

“It’s dark,” she said.

“I know,” I said, rolling outside and beckoning her to follow.

She remained standing at the door, watching me.

“Come on,” I called.

Even back then my eyes were well past their prime, but unless I was very much mistaken she hesitated slightly at the threshold, before disappearing.

From then on I invited her each evening to come into the orchard with me. And each evening she turned me down — but stood there looking after me a little longer every time.

Almost two months passed before, one night when the crescent moon was especially thin, she took a first step outside.

“One more,” I encouraged her. “Just a little one.”

So we edged our way forward, night after night. The other nuns trusted me, and gave me a free hand. In my thirty-six years there I’d never once tried to approach one of them, and they had no idea what I’d been like before. After so much time, I barely knew myself.

Winter had long since arrived, and there were no more apples to pick, when Alfonsa finally stepped all the way out to my wheelchair.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“How did you know I could do it?”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “But I figured, when the air is black, it swallows up space, the whole sky, and makes the outdoors feel much smaller.”

She looked around. “It’s as if I were in a room. A very, very big room.”

“What you decide to believe is always the truth.”

“Thank you, Ludwig.” Even now, there was no emotion visible in her face. “I owe you one.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “You’re doing better. That’s reward enough.”

“I owe you one,” she repeated seriously.

“What could a young woman like you do for a sixty-eight-year-old?”

Alfonsa suppressed a comment. “Don’t you want anything? Anything at all? There must be something.”

I replied: “Uhh-ehh.”

I should have simply asked her for a smile. Instead I suggested she accompany me on my nightly rides. Around the convent. Counterclockwise.

We kept our conversations superficial, out of fear of giving too much importance to this relationship of ours. We were bound by our common experience of how dangerous it was to let someone get too close to you. That experience had brought us both to this place. We were outsiders at Saint Helena, we felt we’d been cheated out of a better life, but had come to terms with it. In another world, we would have been happier. In this one, we were learning to treasure the greatest possible happiness available to the unhappy: contentedness.

For my sixty-ninth birthday, in May 1982, Alfonsa gave me a cassette with her favorite songs by Frank Sinatra, and I had to confess to her that I didn’t own a tape player, whereupon she brought me her own after our walk that night, and plugged it in beside my bed and pressed “play.” And guess who sighs his lullabies through nights that never end, my fickle friend, the summer wind.

We sat facing each other, I on the wheelchair, she on the stool she always used when I gave her chess lessons, and listened to the music. Alfonsa’s upper body was leaning a bit to the side, her hands were folded in her lap, her gaze fixed on the turning cogs in the cassette player. Even when she was more or less relaxed, she lived up to her name. I suddenly felt that she felt I was watching her, and I shut my eyes so that our gazes wouldn’t meet, and made as if I were concentrating on the music. Now I could feel that she was watching me, and didn’t dare open my eyes until the last track on side A ended with a heavy click. Alfonsa stood, flipped the tape to side B, pressed “play,” and asked, before Frank Sinatra started in again, if she could lie down next to me on the bed, just lie there next to me. I smiled for the both of us and said that wouldn’t work, and she nodded immediately, as if she’d expected that answer, and we went on listening. Take (get a piece of) my (these) arms, I’ll never use them.

The next day when she came to make my bed, Alfonsa found my door locked. She knocked and called my name, but I simply stared at the shadow moving in the gap between the door and the floorboards, and said nothing. After a while she gave up and moved away, and I found the Mother Superior and asked her to assign me a different nun. It wasn’t Alfonsa’s fault, I explained, she simply reminded me of someone I didn’t want to be reminded of. I didn’t say that that someone was myself. The Mother Superior seemed to understand, and I left her feeling I’d done the right thing.

But that same evening, after dinner, Alfonsa followed me back to my room. “Why are you doing this?”

I acted surprised. “What have I done?”

“From tomorrow on I’m assigned to the kitchen.”

“Well?”