Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

close!"She had hugged him, tears running down her cheeks. "My head is humming like a beehive, it’s the jojokhetis kari. Iremember it so well, everybody would go crazy in Tiflis on days like this."She had put her head under the cold water and swallowed two aspirins before breakfast. It was the day of Katharina’spilgrimage to Andechs. Katharina had not forgotten her wish to take them all to her beloved church, and with Alexandra’shelp had finally succeeded in persuading the skeptics among them. In the last minute Claudia had brought her olderbrother Friedrich along, to balance the tensions, as she quietly told Alexandra with a smile of complicity.Friedrich was a good looking man, twenty-eight, with dark hair, a conspicuous nose in a haggard face, a strong Adam’sapple, and long eyelashes. To elude his father’s and grandfather’s medical profession he was finishing a doctorate inmathematics. His fast mind and sarcastic comments had made immediate friends of Friedrich and Konrad. Katharina hadsuddenly acquired two admirers.The only one unaffected by the Föhn seemed to be Katharina. Followed by the men she briskly walked towards the hillsabove Herrsching where they had got off the early morning train. Claudia and Alexandra lagged behind.As they walked through the gardens that climb the steep hill behind the village a view over the Ammersee opened up.Sailboats were crossing the blue water and the meadows on the opposite shore were dotted with small villages andfarms crowned by the church of Diessen—behind which the chain of the high mountains rose very close.Alexandra, a trace of her morning nostalgia still clouding her mind, looked wistfully at this countryside. "Claudia, you onceasked me what Georgia is like. In places it is like this. We don’t have such big lakes, but these meadows, villages, andwoods, and of course the mountains remind me so much of Georgia. Even the sun is comparably hot today, and we dohave Föhn!"Everyone was glad when they reached the woods, the moisture of the rains of the past week still hung in the trees andprovided cool relief from the dry wind. The hill had been steep. "How far is it?" asked Friedrich, and Katharina laughed athim. "Another hour, but this is a pilgrimage, you should suffer a little to make it worthwhile."Niko fell behind and joined Claudia and his sister."You seemed very anxious to join Katharina in this semi-religious outing," Claudia asked Alexandra with her cool darkeyes. "Are you religious?"Alexandra laughed about the famous, German question. "’Heinrich, wie hältst Du’s mit der Religion?’ said Konrad when Iasked him that question six years ago. No, not particularly. I was baptized, raised, and married in the Orthodox Church,but as you know I have rather liberal views."After a thoughtful pause she added. "A few weeks ago, in my distress, I walked into the little church of St. Anna-im-Leheland found solace in its unexpected, quiet beauty. I am still trying to find happiness and delivery from the hurts I inflict onmy friends. Maybe Katharina’s church is beautiful too."Pensive, Claudia walked for a while in silence. "You see," she began, "my father is a declared atheist. Mother, whocomes from a good Catholic family, has given up practicing her religion not to embarras him, but I know that shesometimes secretly visits her favorite church, the Asamkirche in the Sendlinger-Strasse. What she does there I don’tknow, she never took any of us children along. I sneaked in there one day, it is a dark place, overburdened with heavilygilded Baroque stucco, not very cheerful. My Gemüt, the dark side of my soul, as you once called it, often longs for someindefinable religious experience, but I don’t know what to do about that longing. I have never visited Andechs. It isfamous, the ‘Holy Mountain of Bavaria’. I am apprehensive about today's encounter with the unknown."Niko, without a word, put his arm around her.Katharina was waiting in a meadow at the edge of the woods. A smell of fresh hay drifted towards them with the windfrom the south. The farmer had just cut the grass, and he and his wife were turning the hay.Katharina, Konrad, and Friedrich seemed to have discussed the same subject. Friedrich, with a guilty glance at his sister,was still teasing Katharina.Katharina, unruffled, declared with finality, "Look Friedrich, let’s bury this subject. I am not a theologian, to me religion ispart of my inheritance. I may be naïve, but I am neither a bigot nor a fanatic. If you need to, consider this excursion a‘pilgrimage’ only for me, enjoy yourself on its other aspects. Leave me alone with your sophistries. This meadow is theplace to have a rest and eat something."She laid out a tablecloth in the shade of a lone oak and everyone shared their provisions.Alexandra stretched out in the grass next to Katharina. "Ah, a day like in Georgia, good company, the smell of fresh hay,a picnic. I have not enjoyed that pleasure for years. Thank you for taking us here."Afterwards Katharina ran barefoot, as she was, into the meadow and humming to herself began to dance. Friedrich wasall eyes."Couldn’t you sing or make some music!" she called to him.Niko pulled a Hohner mouth-organ from his pocket, and played a fast dance melody. His sister, surprised by his facilitywith the harmonica, said something in Georgian, whereupon he changed the tune and played a lilting Georgian dancemelody. Alexandra, using a lunch pail, began drumming the beat. "Let’s all dance," she threw the drum to Friedrich, "youheard me, figure out the rhythm!"89