056 Vin
18-20

After all it is the not the number of steps that matter. The important thing to remember is that there were not many, and that I have remembered. Even for the child there were not many, compared to other steps he knew, from seeing them every day, from going up and coming down, and from playing on them at knuckle-bones and other games the very names of which he has forgotten. What must it have been like then for the man I had overgrown into? ²

For Fuz

004 Burgweg
18-19

I went to the grocery store to buy some soap. I stood for a long time before the soaps in their attractive boxes, RUB and FAB and TUB and suchlike, I couldn’t decide so I closed my eyes and reached out blindly and when I opened my eyes I found her hand in mine. ⁹

For Marie

018 The Robber’s Daughter
18-20

The bird, a pigeon was it? Or a dove (she’d found there were doves here) flew though the air, its colour lost in what light remained. It might have been the wad of rag shed taken it for at first glance, flung at the smallest of the boys out there wiping mud from his cheek where it hit him, catching it up by a wing to fling it back where one of them now with a broken branch for a bat hit it high over a bough caught and flung back and hit again into a swirl of leaves, into a puddle from rain the night before, a kind of bettered shuttlecock moulting in a flurry at each blow, hit into the yellow dead end sign on the corner opposite the house where they’d end up that time of day.¹¹

For Ronja

013 Red Thread
18-19

There was a woman named Ivy who seemed to hold in her mouth all of the sounds of Pauline’s soul. Standing a little apart from the choir, Ivy sang the dark sweetness that Pauline could not name; she sang the death-defying death that Pauline yearned for; she sang of the Stranger who knew... Precious Lord take my hand Lead me on, let me stand I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storms, through the night Lead me on to the light Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me on. When my way grows drear Precious Lord linger near, When my life is almost gone Hear my cry hear my call Hold my hand lest I fall Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me on.¹

For Jeannette

019 Florastrasse
18-20

Charles was to follow in the autumn. He had told her. She wrote him every few days. The heat mounted, the fleas and lice multiplied. She tried to appear cheerful to the Cavaliere, who lavished gifts upon her, chief among them his own presence. ⁴

For Ed