T HEN I began to betray her.
Not that I gave away any secrets or exposed Hanna. I didn’t reveal anything that I should have kept to myself. I kept something to myself that I should have revealed. I didn’t acknowledge her. I know that disavowal is an unusual form of betrayal. From the outside it is impossible to tell if you are disowning someone or simply exercising discretion, being considerate, avoiding embarrassments and sources of irritation. But you, who are doing the disowning, you know what you’re doing. And disavowal pulls the underpinnings away from a relationship just as surely as other more flamboyant types of betrayal.
I no longer remember when I first denied Hanna. Friendships coalesced out of the casual ease of those summer afternoons at the swimming pool. Aside from the boy who sat next to me in school, whom I knew from the old class, the person I liked especially in the new class was Holger Schlüter, who like me was interested in history and literature, and with whom I quickly felt at ease. He also got along with Sophie, who lived a few blocks behind our house, which meant that we went to and from the swimming pool together. At first I told myself that I wasn’t yet close enough to my friends to tell them about Hanna. Then I didn’t find the right opportunity, the right moment, the right words. And finally it was too late to tell them about Hanna, to present her along with all my other youthful secrets. I told myself that talking about her so belatedly would misrepresent things, make it seem as if I had kept silent about Hanna for so long because our relationship wasn’t right and I felt guilty about it. But no matter what I pretended to myself, I knew that I was betraying Hanna when I acted as if I was letting my friends in on everything important in my life but said nothing about Hanna.
The fact that they knew I wasn’t being completely open only made things worse. One evening Sophie and I got caught in a thunderstorm on our way home and took shelter under the overhang of a garden shed in Neuenheimer Feld, which had no university buildings on it then, just fields and gardens. It thundered, the lightning crackled, the wind came in gusts, and rain fell in big heavy drops. At the same time the temperature dropped a good ten degrees. We were freezing, and I put my arm around her.
You know . . .” She wasn’t looking at me, but out at the rain.
What
You were sick with hepatitis for a long time. Is that what’s on your mind? Are you afraid you won’t really get well again? Did the doctors say something? And do you have to go to the clinic every day to get tests or transfusions
Hanna as illness. I was ashamed. But I really couldn’t start talking about Hanna at this point. “No, Sophie, I’m not sick anymore. My liver is normal, and in a year I’ll even be able to drink alcohol if I want, but I don’t. What’s . . .” Talking about Hanna, I didn’t want to say “what’s bothering me.” “There’s another reason I arrive later or leave earlier.
Do you not want to talk about it, or is it that you want to but you don’t know how
Did I not want to, or didn’t I know how? I didn’t know the answer. But as we stood there under the lightning, with the explosions of thunder rumbling almost overhead and the pounding of the rain, both freezing, warming each other a little, I had the feeling that I had to tell her, of all people, about Hanna. “Maybe I can tell you some other time.
But there never was another time.