21.
they divided the sky 128 21. Rita slept the whole day and the entire next night. The church bells ringing on Sunday morning woke her up. She’d forgotten nothing, but she knew she’d made the right decision in coming. The high, lightly veiled vault of the sky, the most important feature of this landscape, unspoiled by apartment blocks and chimneys, was supported by a painfully familiar line of woods, fields, and a small row of hills, structuring everything around a naturally central point that left no room for over-wrought agitation. Rita revisited the land of her childhood, walking one hour in each direction. She smiled. A little realm! And as it turned out, not at all resistant to the outside world. The people she met were full of news. They all seemed to be more agitated than Rita remembered. Some held their hands over their mouths as they whispered to her, others stopped mid-sentence, listened for something and then walked on, shaking their heads. She had never noticed how many children there were. Gradually she discovered new lines in the face of the countryside: fields whose boundaries ran at different angles to the horizon than those marked by the ancient wrinkles of years earlier. The new traits did not show up as quickly in the faces of the people. But Rita could almost physically feel their anxiety, their fear of loss, and their still uncertain hopes for gain. In the village she met a few other students on holiday. They stopped to say hello and stood there together for a few minutes, a little awkward although they knew each other well. It was clear: they were all aware that they’d finally outgrown childhood. Is this what she had come here to learn? Or had she expected to find some little spot, forever unchanged, as a refuge? Is that even what she wanted? Suddenly she thought how despicable it was to feel so lethargic and discouraged. For the first time, she realized that one day every person must look back on their life, with satisfaction, resignation or the contentment that comes with self-deception. That was eight months ago, and she hasn’t thought about it since. But Christa Wolf 129 today, as she walks along beside Marion, who is oblivious to whether anyone is listening and is rattling on happily, today it is all coming back to her. And she knows why: the same impatience, the same discontent with herself and everything she knows that forced her to return to the city the next day—that same feeling has gripped her today, ever since Marion, a perfectly competent and complete creature, got off the bus and came toward her. “I think I’ll be coming back soon,” she says to Marion. “Of course,” Marion responds, unruffled, “Why ever not?” On her way back to the city from her village, Manfred’s little grey car must have met her train and continued on past. Manfred hadn’t found her at home when he returned, and hearing from Marion what had happened, he drove off to bring her home. When Rita found his note in their little attic room, she ran to the nearest post office to call him. She met Hänschen there. He’d been sick and was bored. He might just as well wait with Rita until the operator located Manfred in Rita’s village. Hänschen whispered that he would soon be moving out of his sister’s place, who’d raised him since their parents died. She wasn’t forcing him but the apartment was too small, two and a half rooms, and with the two children! His brother-in-law preferred to be alone with his family, and he, Hänschen, really had no place there. Rita thought: how hard it must be for him to make a life and find a place where he is absolutely needed … God, she thought, he must have got there by now, or maybe they’ve missed him, and I’ll have to wait another two hours, and I just can’t take that! “The kids,” Hänschen said, “are really attached to me. They really are.” The name of her village was called out. Rita ran to the phone booth and pressed the receiver to her ear that was still warm from someone else’s hand. Manfred’s voice was there immediately, very close. “I guess I drove away from you.” “Yes,” she said...
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