With that, old Joe found his feet again. He stood again. And finally the midwife called to him from the next room, teasing: “Joey, you’ve got a granddaughter.” And the meaning of these words seemed to make this life a place to live again. The table in the middle of the room held the light, the tiny lamp, bearing it up in a touching gesture, offering it to all the objects in the room. The small beam that fell on the bench lit its clean cloth cover. Two pictures could be distinguished on the wall, illustrations from books. And a Jesus on the wall, only silver now, spread through the room like a holy spider web. You could have sunk to your knees. There are moments when we need not be ashamed of anyone, when it is Christmas in the soul. But with birth we have the crucifixion and the resurrection, and we can only be thankful; we can no longer say if it was someone else’s anguish or our own that we have suffered. Old Joe didn’t trust himself to look over to his maid’s bed right away. Although of course he knew: she was lying there with her child.
Oh, what a redemption that was. After all of that distress and fear, there was no choice but to love this child. It would cry for you, and by comforting it, you comforted yourself. Only slowly did he follow her voice, and he gently stroked her while still standing, as if from afar. He lifted the head of the fiery red little creature and dangled some of his own white hair in front of her. That was meant as a joke, or a sort of greeting. He marveled at the powerful little hand that blindly held fast to whatever it was given to grab, and he felt that he could hardly free himself again. And soon a new bond was formed, between an ancient man and a newborn child. And finally the midwife and the farmer’s wife could go in peace, because the old man was joyfully prepared to perform all the necessary tasks. He kept vigil at night, you could say. As he sat there on his careful watch, he almost resembled one of the three kings. For certainly he knew, too, that this child brought his household into being. Earlier he had wondered at times how long his young housekeeper would last. But now he knew that she would work for the child’s sake. And this was a different sort of work. And only this work could become what work should be: the two chain links of life. So he listened to be sure that both were breathing, mother and child. And if a stranger had reproached him, claiming that this was a calculating, loveless love, that would only have proven that the stranger understood nothing of life, for life consists of nothing but these relationships. They are its nature, its own life. The more noble a man is, the more strongly they are usually expressed in him. And it was like being woken from the dead when these relationships, which had died, were renewed. And life pulled the old man along in his new role. And the work that he had done by himself all those years, that he had half neglected, came to the fore again, and he worked for hours, hardly taking time to catch his breath. Even the spoons made his acquaintance again, and so, clumsily, did the bowls and plates. Guided by Julia’s weak voice, he pulled out things that had long since dropped from his sight. What he had first undertaken as an act of charity, life now compelled him to continue. Indeed, he took a small child in his arms for the first time in his life, this small child. And that amazed him above all. This creature slept and slept. She slept from the exhaustion of being born, or perhaps because there, in the blanketing warmth of the farmer’s house, she felt as if she were in her mother’s womb again, she slept almost without interruption, day and night. And because she didn’t eat for thirty-six hours, she remained pure, almost a symbol of holy poverty. The little white handkerchiefs that passed for her clothes hung over the stove: drops of sweat beaded on the little windowpanes and ran down one after another. The clock struck. A hen, unaccustomed to silence, flew in through one of the adjacent rooms. Fourteen days passed in this way.
A real love unfolded between mother and child. The child’s love for the mother was still invisible, as if blind. But the mother’s love for the child was so much like love itself that it appeared to embody it. But this, too, was a mistake. And therein lay the seed of her insubstantial being; that may be what sealed her fate. Nevertheless, she had made a covenant with a person for life, and that is the essential thing about the relationship between a mother and child. They both know, each time they see each other again: what we say and do to each other, it is forever. It will never fade. This is true even for parents and children who are strangers to each other due to certain turns of fate. This covenant simply cannot be destroyed, under any circumstances.
The farmer woman came for three weeks to work in the stall and in the house. For she saw at once that Julia couldn’t be expected to get up on the third day and wash the diapers herself, the way a country woman would. And Julia slept, too, almost as much as the child. On the first day when she was well enough to stand, she was shocked to find that she had to learn to walk again.
The short walk to the bench by the stove felt like drowning. She didn’t trust herself to lift the child for several days. The good old man kept taking care of everything. And so she owed him greater thanks than she had ever owed anyone in her life. Now this gratitude became her actual source of strength. It was also her only sort of happiness, she had no other. Life must have dealt her a brutal blow. Her childish nature could have been a sort of happiness. But it was always expressed in timidity, in her fear of every single unknown, unfamiliar movement. Even if one word was kind, if one action seemed clear and affirming, the next one, for reasons unknown, might be just the opposite. Oh life! How terrifying it was. It always seemed as if she herself had no mother, no husband, no brothers or sisters. As if life had just cast her out the door the day before. She still looked like that. Now she could do something, though, now she could do her work! And she had found a home for herself, too. And not just for herself. Her child was growing up alongside her. The child’s name was Maria. And there was something temple-like about her, that offered instruction in life. From the beginning of her second year, she was strictly obedient, and uncompromising in her love of order. Her few building blocks were always kept together, and when she was called from her play, she never failed to come. It seemed that she unconsciously aspired to grasp those circumstances of life that her mother had never managed to reach for out of her own darkness. For even if Julia was well-meaning to a fault, still you couldn’t deny that she was the sort of person others commonly refer to as “dumb.” Oh, God knows what she was. But one thing was clear: she was lacking something.
And, what wonder, the old grandfather treated her accordingly. He treated her like a healthy invalid. But the child was his enchanted little bird, his little flower. In time the child replaced his daily walks, for he was growing more hunched over and weary. The destinations of his walks grew closer and closer. Fewer and fewer people entrusted their messages to him. The church in its sweet charity still sent him here and there, for he had always been loyal and reliable. But eventually he stopped taking any jobs. He wandered through his house, hunched to death. It was a wonder that someone could still live bent over like that. But for little Maria, he seemed just right. She never had to reach her arm up higher than it could go, the old man was always bending his head down to her. Indeed, soon he was walking beside her at the very same height, as mothers sometimes do out of love. How wise this old man was. But he was not so unaware of himself as people might think. For often, when he encountered someone while going on his way (but he rarely ventured out anymore, for once, to his great dismay, he had suddenly found himself in an unfamiliar place, that is, he no longer knew where he was, since that seemingly small thing, memory, had let him down), for often, when he encountered someone, he simply stood still, looked up to that person, or to the sky, and gave a speech. And these were always truths that he spoke.