The days go by quickly when one doesn't have time to think. When all days remain the same. When one doesn't do, but is done with. A day that runs according to an electric bell is a mechanised thing, and a person almost mechanises self like the bell. The bell wakes Manuela from her deepest morning sleep. The bell chases her down the stairs to morning prayers. The bell screams: Nine o'clock! School! It calls: twelve P.M., a walk! Eat and school again! Another walk and eating again and bedtime! The bell interrupts trains of thought during school hours, breaks up chats during breaks, separates girl friends in the garden, makes one's heart palpitate before unpleasant lessons at school, snatches one's cup from one's mouth during breakfast. The bell is a command. An impersonal, merciless, eternally unchanging supervisor of an uneventful existence.
W)here each day is the same like the next, the days flow into each other. That's why the girls have calendars on the inside of the locker doors, where each day which has passed is crossed out by black pen. Another one passes, and you count how many are left until the summer holidays, until Christmas, until "home."
Manuela has no calendar. She no longer has a "home". The house in Dünheim has been given up. Who knows whether she'll ever come back there again. She doesn't even dare to think about Fritz, about his mother, whom she loved. The pain is gone; she doesn't even feel homesick for them. Nothing has remained but defiance—defiance and anger at having to be here—and then something else, something incomprehensible, which she could not describe in words and which makes her lie awake many a night with her eyes wide open. Meinhardis is travelling in Italy. Colorful postcards with blue sea, sun, oranges, donkeys, and old churches slowly cover the inner walls of Lela's locker.
Fräulein von Bernburg looked at the first of these cards as she checked Manuela's cupboard.
"And your Mother?"
Manuela had taken out a photograph silently and placed it in Fräulein von Bernburg's hands.
"Mother is dead. I don't have a Mother, otherwise I wouldn't be here."
That sounded bitter. Fräulein von Bernburg had looked at the picture for a long time and then handed it back to her. A hand on Manuela's shoulder, she had looked into her eye seriously.
"But you've already settled in well with us, Manuela. You've made girl friends?"
"Yes, Fräulein von Bernburg, just . . ."
"Well? You know you can rely on me."
"Yes, Fräulein von Bernburg, but if—" and now at last it comes off bursting, ". . . if you weren't here, it would be unbearable."
Fräulein von Bernburg doesn't change her expression, but continues to look at Lela enquiringly and says slowly and empatically,
"You mustn't tell yourself that. Everything that happens here is good and right. Even if you don't know why some things are this way and not different. You will only understand this with time. You are not to criticise, but to obey. The greatest Christian virtue is humility. You've learnt that already, haven't you?"
It comes from Lela's lips shyly,
"Yes, Fräulein von Bernburg."
"If you shut yourself up defiantly, you'll never settle in here. You must have the conviction that we all want and do your best. Then everything will be easy for you."
"Yes, Fräulein von Bernburg."
Elisabeth von Bernburg's hand slides from Manuela's shoulder down her arm. She holds the child tightly as if she wanted to shake her awake.
"Will you try?"
And Lela looks up into the face leaning towards her, into the dark eyes that look poignantly into her innermost being. Then a resistance breaks out in her, and as if an oath, so solemnly, she says, looking into those kind eyes,
"Yes, Fräulein von Bernburg."
Everything has been different since then. Everything made sense. Everything was to serve her, Fräulein von Bernburg. Everything and everybody had a connection with her, and the day no longer ran according to the bell, but according to her call. Her voice was not always nice; it was often harsh and commanding. But Manuela knew that what was ordered was right: get up, get dressed, pray, study, go for a walk, wait, eat, sleep. Fräulein von Bernburg was there, and everything was done for her.