Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

Berlin
1904
Alexandra had received a sizable sum of money from her father as a graduation present
and had immediately hired a quiet, older German woman as governess for Otto. Elisabeth
came from the Baltics. She would teach Otto German and would be invaluable in München.
The three had a first class sleeper to themselves. At the Russian border they were
subjected to a thorough search. A hapless, young man was taken from the train at gunpoint.
Alexandra thought of Vladimir, imploring him to be careful and not expose himself
unnecessarily to danger. Hopefully his close scrape with death would protect him from any
foolish, misguided sacrifice.
Strange, how these two meetings with Vladimir had subtly changed her. She lay awake
in her berth and followed the lights of unknown towns running counter to the train’s motion
across the polished wood paneling in the compartment. The unsettling rattle of the wheels
across uncounted switches—where did they lead to? Who had set them?
The train was taking her to Konrad, and yet her thoughts, like those lights, flew back to
Vladimir, who had opened the gates to an inner landscape that she began to understand only
now—a territory of which Konrad had no knowledge.
What did Konrad know about death?
Before her meeting with Vladimir it would have never occurred to her that her flying over
Otto’s birth might have been a death experience, a temporary separation of the soul from her
body. And every overwhelming orgasm an euphoric experience of death?
She let their ride after their lovemaking pass before her eyes. In the past weeks she had
not had the time to reexamine their conversation, and as she did so now, she was struck by the
thought that while her experiences at birth and during lovemaking were restricted to women, it
had been Vladimir who had given her the understanding that they were death experiences.
Was the verbalization of a woman’s knowledge the prerogative of the man? The woman knows
but cannot give words to her knowledge, and the man constructs philosophical systems, but
cannot experience the woman’s fundamental insights?
She sat up wide awake, surprised: love making as a way to teach a man understand his
religious speculations? In her opinion all religions were male constructs. She now saw that they
might originally have been female insights, like the idea of rebirth, or that of resurrection. Both
must have originated in the woman’s experience that love, birth, and death are closely related.
Was this insight at the core of the esoteric secrets which in the past had been handed down in
female initiation rites?
Was this part of Deda’s Easter Play too? The origin of the female trinity and Kore’s
resurrection that Konrad had alluded to?
Mother had never mentioned any deeper insights of this kind, but maybe she had never
met a man who had been able to explain it as Vladimir had to her.
She leaned her forehead on the cool window looking out at the passing night. Why do I
think like a man who has to analyze ideas to be satisfied? Why can I not just feel good and
teach Konrad my new-found happiness: Look, I will show you the precious gift I gained from
my encounter with Vladimir.
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