Mum's birthday. That's what everybody in the the house feels coming. Mum came into this World in May. Lela has been absent-minded for a long time. When Mum asks her something, she always has to think of her secret, of what she is going to give Mum and about what she must not tell her; because it's a surprise. For fear of talking about it, she cannot answer at all. When Mum comes into the nursery, Lela shouts, "Close your eyes!" and she asks until she hides her embroidery. "Ready!", and Mum opens her eyes obediently.
When Mum has gone, the doily reappears. A white doily on which rose garlands are pre-painted in light blue pencil. Lela has green silk—very soft iridescent threads—they are for the leaves. Then light pink and red for the flowers. It's terribly difficult to get a thread like that into the eye of the needle. The eye is small, and the silk threads split, and then one has to lick them a little and twirl them with thumb and forefinger. But then the thread always gets a bit dirty. Lela sighs deeply. She is hot from the effort. But the day is coming. A huge parcel has arrived from Pöchlin with all kinds of delights from Grandma. In the living room, a white tablecloth is laid on the central table. A cake with lights, an awful lot of them. Mum must stay in bed for a long time today. Only when Papa comes from duty, presents are given. Flowers come after flowers. A whole lilac bush in a pot. Colourful tulips and anemones. The whole regiment sends greetings. Dad bought beautiful things—something silver and something very small in little box—a ring with a star made of turquoise. Lela's doily—washed and finely ironed—is right at the front. Ali sawed a box and Berti wrote a beautiful sheet of paper. It's large and double and has flowers and angels on it. And there—in very nice handwriting, as Berti usually never writes—is a lot of good wishes. It looks like a serious document, and underneath it says, "Your faithful and grateful son Bertram."
All of a sudden, soldiers come into the garden. They line up in a circle—the bandmaster is in the middle—and Dad goes into Mum's room with a bouquet of flowers and kisses Mum, Lela in a white dress and a rose sash following behind, and both boys in new sailor suits embarrassed by the ceremony. To the sound of birthday music, Mum is led to her presents. She hugs everybody and her cheeks are all red, and then many, many guests come and wish Mum "happy birthday." And Fräulein Anna doesn't have enough flower vases. Lela gets to cut the cake and carry it down to the music in the garden, and Ali carries glasses and Berti the wine. A Pöchlin goose sizzles in the kitchen. And Dad has dusty fingers; because he got a really old bottle of wine out of the cellar, and one doesn't allowed to wipe it off, so that everybody can see that it's real.
Today, everyone is being nice to Mum. And the whole house smells of roses and lilacs and candles and cake. And one can always come to Mum; because today she's not allowed to do anything. Not mending, not going into the kitchen, not calculating, just sit on the sofa and be beautiful. And Lela crawls onto her lap and closes both arms tightly around her neck.
"Mum, Mum, Mum, I love you so much!"
"Ali, let me rock on your foot!" Manuela begs.
Ali knows very well that this is Lela's great pleasure—he has to cross his legs, and Lela is placed on the hovering foot and rocks up and down.
But Ali is so absent-minded today.
"I'd rather not, Lela. I have a headache," he says, and Lela walks around Ali like a little dog who feels that something is wrong.
Also, Ali doesn't want to eat. He doesn't want to go out, doesn't want to play football. Ali lies down in bed. Three long days of leeches! Lela is terribly disgusted—thick black worms are with Ali's blood inside.
"What's that for, Mum?"
Mum takes Lela by the hand. Ali is lying in bed compley stiff, but his eyes are looking for the door. He asks Lela, who is sitting on her mother's lap,
"Is it the teacher?"
How, doesn't Ali know Mum any more?
Lela hides shyly in bosom of Mum who sobs dryly.
Ali died that same night.
Lela was awakened unusually early the next day. Berti stood topless in the bright sunlight. He cried silently to himself, and Lela saw his tears running down his face one by one. He hardly distorted his face, only forgot to dress, stood, stood and cried.
Fräulein Anna, who was combing Lela's hair, said her that Ali was now in heaven.
"Yes," Manuela merely said, and nothing stirred inside her. Nothing was hurting her. It was just that everything was so different in the house today than usual. The house bell rang more and more often. Ladies in black flitted into the room to mother. It was quiet inside. Some of these visitors put their hands on Lela's head: "Poor little girl, she has to experience this already!"
Lela tried to have the right face; because she was beginning to realise that she was pitied. Everything was very exciting and interesting. Telegrams and flowers came. Relatives also came, carriages with swaying laurels arrived, the whole house smelt like a nursery. The house bell was off. The ringing hurt mother.
"Come to Ali," someone said, and Lela stood by a large box where Ali was sleeping. Everything was not at all like home any more; it was also different Ali. He had flowers in his hand and a cross; candles were burning, and the whole room was full of green plants like a forest. That was beautiful. Maybe it was something like this in the Catholic Church. Everyone was crying. Lela was ashamed; because she wasn't able cry. And only as she heard Mother sobbing, she rushed towards her and clung to her clothes.
"Now we have no Ali," Mother said.
And then, only then a raging grief broke out in the child's heart.
"Mum, Mum!" screamed Lela. "Mum, don't cry!"
The fact that Mum was crying was the really terrible, and so it must have been terrible that Ali had died.
"Come, look at him one last time," Mum said. But Lela was trembling; that wasn't Ali, no, she didn't want to look at that Ali.
Then came the morning when he would be carried away. Lela stood at the window and saw that Ali's schoolmates were standing in the street and in the garden like soldiers. Lela was proud that they were there. Now everyone stood around the coffin, the officers from the regiment—completely motionles—
in their parade uniforms, helmet with plume in their arms, hands folded on the sabre. Like monuments, Lela thought. Mother sat—surrounded by women— behind a black veil, completely invisible. The priest said beautiful words to Mum, which Lela only half understood. But then the music started outside—a very slow, sorrowful melody—and finally, the child began to cry terribly and unstoppably.
Then came the daily visits to the cemetery. The cemetery aroused fear in Lela. It was her task to fetch water from the well to water the flowers at Ali's grave. It was written on the pump that it was forbidden to drink water from there. Water wasn't clean. Lela asked questions, and mother explained that it flown past corpses.
When Lela squeezed her eyes shut, she saw the lying bodies. All under the ground, an immense crowd, stiff as Ali had lain. "And later, only a pair of bones is left," Berti said.
The worst thing was a compost heap that had its site outside the cemetery wall on a low-lying—also walled—terrain. Lela had to carry the withered wreaths there while Mother remained alone praying at the grave. This pile was smoking; it was not dead and not alive for the child. The smell of decay of all the bouquets with bows, the rusty wire, the brown slimy flowers, here and there a scrap of gauze, a tin basket, a broken vase instilled Manuela with even more fear than the well-kept rows of graves under which she knew the bodies lay. She was happy every time she returned from there to Ali's grave, where mother sat on a bench and stared silently or picking yellow ivy leaves from the grave.
At the memorial stone of her brother, little Manuela did the first reading studies. She suffered from not being able to read all the inscriptions on all the gravestones, for she longed for a pastime for the long hours that Mother spent—deeply absorbed—with Ali. And so she learnt to read, and mother—with all her thoughts unpresent—became hardly aware of it.
Mother had changed since the hour of Ali's death. Lela's little heart, in need of love, felt it well and contracted when she saw Mother sitting there, an introverted, mourning woman, far from all the living, and as if at home in a world Manuela was afraid of.
And every evening, when the sun set, and it was time to leave, she heard how Mum said quietly and wistfully, "Good night, my boy," and it was as if she were speaking to the one who heard her.