The Truth About Lou. Angela Von der Lippe
custody of my father—a military officer no less. But Jutta was not one to let fear get the better of her. Just as she back in their childhood had saved her sister and brother from harm’s way, years later she would become once again a guardian angel, this time negotiating my safe passage through the second coming of the flood, having nothing to do with the tides of the Neva but the moods of my headstrong adolescence. And while Jutta would become the navigator, commanding the vessel that delivered me to the safe port of my independence, the pastor Hendrik Gillot would become my very own savior, redeeming me from my loneliness—heaven and earth in one—my man-God. Or so I thought.
INTERLUDE
She lost her father too early. I lost mine so late, lived most of my adult life with him so indomitably there. Never get used to him being a memory. But to have lived so much of life with only a memory of a father—indomitably not there—as Lou did, well, that seems hardly imaginable. Did she look for him everywhere, every step of the way—that man who in his prime fell from his horse—her real toy soldier? Did she think she could find him, resurrect him again, all those years searching for the spirit of a memory no mortal man could embody? Like a prayer to an idol.
There’s that old cardinal at the feeder again—dad’s favorite bird. ... Huh, blood red, tufted rust crown, a real loner always surveying his landscape, sends the tits and goldfinches aflutter, stranger to these parts though, regal, commanding, expanding into space.
2
First Love
Dear Honorable Pastor Gillot,
This letter to you is a first and last appeal. (For you do not know me.) The person who writes this letter is a sixteen-year-old girl who is in the throes of a crisis of identity, which threatens to sever all ties to family, church and community. I have lost my faith, dear Reverend, and I fear I am losing myself as well, falling into an ever-deepening cavern of isolation and despair.
I am a congregant of the German Evangelical Church here in St. Petersburg and it is there that my questions have been unfairly singled out for their heretical content. This perilous and painful state of affairs will, I fear, result in my failure to be confirmed in my family church. The truth is, Reverend, among my peers I am courteous but not at all sincere and how could I be, without betraying the questioning authentic person I know myself to be. You cannot imagine what it is like for me to be constantly holding back, unable to join in the laughter and social gatherings of the other girls, unable to voice my mind’s spirit for fear it will be broken. Pastor, I hunger for knowledge and learning, for the courage to uncover the God I know to be in my heart. But if my questioning be blasphemy, then I am truly damned forever and you need not read one more word.
I have heard you speak from the pulpit: “True faith renews and makes the whole man alive in Christ.” I wish so much to know more and to be made whole, to be led into the light. And I am willing now to live without answers. But I need someone to take me into his tutelage, so that my heart can be quieted in knowing my questions have at least been heard. So I appeal to you to be that person, and if you will only have me, I promise to respond with a determined mind and every fiber of my being.
Yours sincerely,
Louise Salomé
I know there is love at first sight. But at second sight there is always time to reconsider and love is more of a gamble. As I stood there in the anteroom of the modest gabled house that Pastor Gillot called home, I held in my mind the image of the flaxen-haired pastor in peasant shirt and sash, up there behind the roster, with an inextinguishable almost eerie light emanating from his eyes, speaking words that floated out over the congregation drawing them in with the tidal force of an undertow. As I stoically waited for reality to dash my dreams, the rote words of my letter catapulted me into a panic. I trembled and I bit my lip in anticipation. Crumpled in my gloved hand was the only real evidence of his answer—the slight hope of his intentions penned in a perfunctory reply to my letter: “Miss Salomé, come to my home next Tuesday at four o’clock and we shall discuss your dilemma.”
A maid emerged and with downcast eyes led me up three flights of stairs to Pastor Gillot’s garret study. Opening the door she motioned me in and just as quickly disappeared. I stepped into this small room and the first thing I noticed was my letter with its hastily scrawled signature, scattered amongst a stack of other papers on a small desk, an open inkwell and a breviary. The attic room was itself spartan—desk and chair, a simple cot by the wall to my left, a hearth to the right, a few pen and ink drawings (a couple of Dürers), Lucas Cranach’s Luther above the desk, and a small telescope by the dormer window.
Pastor Gillot was seated on a high stool with his back to me looking out the window as if anticipating some other arrival. He turned, and with a penetrating gaze that looked as if it originated in the most faraway recesses of mind, he gestured to me and said in a soft but matter-of-fact tone: “So Miss Salomé, be seated and tell me your trouble.”
I sat in the desk chair, and without so much as removing my crocheted gloves, I began to rattle off my transgressions as if to a confessor and I added the admission that both my parents but some teachers too were disturbed by my unchecked habit of making up stories from the whole cloth of my imagination and then trying them out as truth on my unsuspecting family and classmates. I questioned my faith in God by invoking the world of lived experience and I questioned reality by conjuring a made-up world. I couldn’t find my peace in either world and that was my problem, I couldn’t win.
Oh yes, that world-weary sixteen-year-old was me all right, always so ahead of myself, thinking I could edit my story, preempt the surprises, write my life, as what I wanted to believe, wanted others to believe too. Running so fast from all I knew, oblivious to the fact that I was moving at all.
Pastor Gillot moved toward me from his perch at the window and laying a hand on my shoulder said: “My child, you are not alone in your questions. Are you prepared now to learn the story of man’s attempt to fathom the mystery of God’s creation? That is the history of science and philosophy, seeking knowledge, and I can tell you that story. Are you also prepared to learn the history of the world’s great religions? Because that is the story of our quest for spirit. History and story. Story and history. This is all simply the struggle between body and soul, between what we know and what we desire to know. If you, child, are willing to learn, you will become truly wise and ‘educated’ in the original sense of the word. You will be led out of this darkness that surrounds you.”
He fell silent, and then holding my gloved hands in his large grasp, he went on: “But you, young lady, must do your part to make yourself ready. You must promise me that each time we meet, you will let go of all of the foolish fantasies that possess you—and tell me everything that clutters your troubled mind and spirit, sparing nothing. And your mind will soon be cleared to let a tree of knowledge take root ... your heart will be open to receive the wisdom of the spirit that you so desire.” With this, he let go instantly and I felt faint and at sea. It sounded pontifical, more suited to the echo chamber of a chapel than this dank attic room.
Of course, I said yes. What it meant for sure, I could not know. But what I felt at that moment was the hold on my shoulder. A physical trust. And I thought of my father. I didn’t know I would soon lose him. But I believed beyond a doubt I’d met his worthy successor and I was blessed. I was suddenly filled with a blissful expectation mixed with a hint of impending betrayal. A betrayal I had willed, indeed wanted.
At first blush you don’t see first love for what it is, you don’t even question. Because it’s the only love, everything. You’ve lost control. Your whole life depends on it being true, and there it is, your life delivered into someone else’s hands. For me what could be safer, more blessed? That someone was a pastor. To make it all right. And loyal to the last, first love stayed with me, long after it was over, never really letting go, holding me