Chapter 3
Without looking back
When I reached the point of the church where I had to go straight to reach the choir and altar, left to the main entrance, right to the door to the cloister, I stopped and listened a moment. I did hear nothing. Demonstratively slowly I turned around, wondering if the boy still hid in the chapel, and how to get him out if he did. But the boy was there, standing at the end of the nave, as if he was afraid to walk through the big hall when he was not alone. I did not urge him, but simply waited for him to move, and move he did at last, he carefully came along the rows. His moves were awesome to watch, as if he was gliding instead of walking, and though he was small and apparently afraid to death, and clad in rags, he had something mystical around him, something that made him fit to the place somehow, some aura that would have fit well to a priest.
He hesitated a few ranks before me. We looked at each other, still silent.
„Where do you want to go?" I finally asked, as he seemed unable to move or speak, but just stood there, one hand clutching around the wooden end piece of a bench.
When I had hoped to take him to an answer, I was disappointed. He did not respond. But he stole a frightened glance towards the main entrance, and I took that for an answer. "Follow me, it is here along, under the gallery." When I unlocked the little door that lead into another small chapel and from there into the cloister, I looked back and found he had really followed me. But when I waited at the door and gestured him to enter, he shied away and did not move closer. "Where are we going? Are we not going into the cloister?" he questioned silently.
"We can only reach the cloister through this chapel" I stated as calm as I could. I could not await that Mrs. von Spaeth kept everybody out of the area forever. "Come on boy, we have to hurry a bit!" He slipped along my side and through the door like a shadow, and squeezed himself in one corner of the room. On my way to the last door that separated us from the cloister, I was astonished to hear him murmur softly, but in awe: "This room must be very old."
I turned towards him and smiled appreciative: "Oh yes, it really is. More than 700 years." With this, I held the door open for him and motioned him to go on. We passed through the cloister, the adjacent corridors and yards swiftly and without further pause. Only when I stopped at the door to my second floor flat, I heard him pant, and even before I turned around to give him an encouraging smile, I could sense the panic that had befallen him again.
"There we are!" I declared happily and went into the little hall of my flat. He did not follow me, and a moment I feared he would turn around, run into the big premises of the monastery and be gone forever. But then he came, slowly, dragging himself up the stairs painfully. When he passed the doorway, I could not hold myself back and patted him on the shoulder in friendly approval.
I could as well have stuck him with a rod. He jumped away from me in blind fright, huddling into a corner and jerking down on his flight the odds and ends that lay on a chest of drawers.
A moment I was frozen from shock, but I pulled myself together and said as soft as I could: "I am sorry, boy, I really did not want to harm you. It will not happen again." And pointing towards the doors, I explained: "This, just right, is the guestroom, it leads into the guests bathroom. The door straight is my study, half to the left is the living room, and to the left is the kitchen. The stairs at the back lead up to my bath and bedroom and to the attic."
Entering the guest room and digging into the linen cupboard I cast a look at him and thought aloud: "I guess you first want to clean up yourself a bit. Here are towels, everything you may need in addition is in the bathroom. In the meanwhile I am going to prepare breakfast. Drop your clothes in front of the bathroom door, I will collect them and try to wash them. In the meantime I will give you some old clothes from my mother." I did misinterpret his terrified look "Don't look at me like this, my mother is a lot smaller than I am, and she always wears jeans and T-shirts!" But then I understood. "You can lock the bathroom from inside." And I went into the kitchen while he was still covering in that corner in the hall he had pressed himself into. I dearly hoped I had not horrified him too much, so that he finally would come out.
