Olga by Bernhard Schlink

Author:Bernhard Schlink
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperVia
Published: 2021-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

11

Since starting to call her Olga, I dared to ask her more direct, personal questions. Her stories about her childhood had accompanied mine, and as I got older she told me stories about the rest of her life. But they usually dealt with external events; there was much about Olga’s inner life that I didn’t learn until I asked her.

I wanted to hear more about her love for Herbert, too. I wanted to know how her love for him was compatible with her rejection of his fantasies, and I learned that love doesn’t keep a tally of the other’s good and bad qualities.

“Isn’t that what determines whether or not they’re a good match for you?”

“Oh, child, it’s not qualities that make two people a match. It’s love that does that.”

Then I wanted to know how long love lasts, how long after death, and what still sustained her mourning for Herbert after fifty years.

“I don’t mourn Herbert. I live with him. Perhaps it’s because I lost my hearing and didn’t get to know many people after that. The people I was close to before I’m still close to: my grandmother, Eik, my friend in the neighboring village, a colleague, a few pupils. I talk to them sometimes. There are others who are still present for me too: the school inspector, the girls from the teacher-training college, Herbert’s parents, the pastors in whose churches I played the organ. But I don’t talk to them. After Herbert’s death, I didn’t want anything to do with him for a long time. But when I couldn’t hear anymore, and he knocked again, I opened the door to him.”

Then I asked her why she hadn’t taken another man after Herbert’s death.

“Taken? What a thing that would be, if one could take men like apples off a tree. And if good men hung around as abundantly as good apples. Who was I supposed to find in my village? I could have gone to Tilsit and sung in the choral society or joined the committee for the Ännchen von Tharau festival and hoped to find someone. But there were so many who didn’t come back from the war, and other women were already courting the few who had returned. If an apple had fallen into my lap . . .” She laughed quietly. Then she nodded. “That’s how it is, child. You can’t make the best of what you’re given unless you accept it.”

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