Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

guilt. I extrovert my problems instead of suppressing them."
Dahl sighed. "If only we could all do that as well as you do, Alexandra!"
One night Claudia visited Alexandra in her room asking her to teach her how to cope
with her existential fears.
All through the last few days Alexandra had watched her friend’s very quiet demeanor in
the presence of her father. To retrieve Claudia’s latent emotional strength would be very
difficult as long as she was under the influence of this man. Alexandra was not sure what to do
and had hoped that the request Claudia had made when leaving St. Petersburg would go
away. But here she was.
"I will gladly teach you my meditation techniques—you have heard almost all I have to
offer—but I am not sure how to resolve your emotional bind and free your creative powers.
What do you feel holds you back?"
Claudia folded her hands in her lap and looked down. "I cannot speak about my most
intimate thoughts as easily as you can or externalize my emotional problems as you said one
should."
Alexandra smiled at her encouragingly but kept quiet.
Claudia continued, "I think it is my relationship with Niko. Niko is wonderfully considerate
and tactful with me, but he is not a passionate man. I wish he would sweep me off my feet and
instead he waits for me to do that for him. I am not good at that as yet. Maybe Niko longs for
Georgia and a Georgian woman."
Alexandra could see well enough that Niko was feeling too comfortable in this house.
Did he love Claudia’s mother more than his wife? And his relationship with professor
Sommerfeld was equally complacent.
"What are Niko’s plans for the future?” She asked. “Is he going to stay forever in Munich
at Sommerfeld’s institute? In Georgia he would simply fall asleep like most of the young men
there. That is what happened in St. Petersburg years ago, and it is why I suggested that he go
to Germany. Put the Georgian women out of your mind, that worry is entirely unproductive for
him and for you."
Claudia rested her eyes on Alexandra. "He has had an offer from the university in
Göttingen to ‘habilitate’ himself there, but has not done anything about it. Do you think it would
be good for him to leave Munich?"
Alexandra nodded. "I think it might be good for both of you. It would force him to stand
on his own feet and take you both out of this haven of maternal love and paternal domination.
What would you like to do?"
Claudia described her increasing fascination with psychological questions. She had
seen that only a good psychological understanding on part of a physician made working with
patients effective.
"I don’t think that I would ever become a good healer, maybe because of my fears,
maybe because I am, like my father, more analytical than intuitively gifted. I don’t agree with
you that you don’t need a special gift to become a healer. But is it necessary that every
physician be able to perform healings like you do? Would a good psychological understanding
not be enough to help most people? Besides, I am more interested in the scientific
investigation of the functioning of our brain than in Gocha’s frightening ‘magical’ methods."
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