The others looked at her.
In plain language, in just a few hastily uttered sentences—as though she wanted to get it over and done with as quickly as possible—she told them what had happened. She didn’t go into detail, but nor did she conceal anything essential.
“Strobel went mad. There’s no other way I can explain it,” she repeated, plucking hectically at the bedclothes. “So? Why don’t you say anything?” she asked them, almost accusingly.
Ruth flung her arms around her neck, sobbing. “Oh, Johanna, it’s all my fault,” she whimpered. “I’m to blame that you got in late. I’ll never, ever forgive myself . . .”
“What are you talking about?” Peter said, dragging her forcibly away from the bed.
Johanna stared at her sister. “You’re not to blame. Nobody but Strobel is to blame, nobody at all. There’s no explanation for something like this. Is there?” Her gaze drifted over to Peter. “What is it? Why are you looking so angry?”
“Because I could practically burst with rage,” he said harshly.
Marie plucked at his sleeve.
“I’m not angry at you, God forbid,” he added more gently, squeezing Johanna’s hand. Nobody failed to notice that she accepted it. “But I don’t think Strobel’s mad. I think he’s dangerous. He’s a defiler of women. Perhaps more! I think he’s capable of almost anything. The callous look on his face when I . . .”
“You were there?” Johanna sat up straight in bed. “What? When? Why? But you couldn’t have known for sure that it was him!”
“Who else?” Peter retorted. “He didn’t even bother to deny it. He just said that it was his word against yours.”
Johanna clamped her lips shut. They were bloodless and thin.
“Peter,” Marie said in a warning tone, “Johanna’s tired, can’t you see that?”
“Then I’ll say just one more thing: the bastard got what was coming to him.”
“What have you done? Peter, have you committed a sin?” Johanna asked with a touch of hysteria in her voice.
“He tanned Strobel’s hide for him so he won’t be able to sit down for a week,” Ruth answered in his place. Tears shone in her eyes. “If I could, I’d do it to him all over again.”
“And I’d pass you the stick,” Marie said just as forcefully. At that, a sad smile flitted across Johanna’s pale face.
The next few weeks were a time of healing. Their routine never varied: while Marie and Ruth were at work, Johanna spent the day alone at home. Now and then Magnus came by. He seemed to have developed protective feelings for Johanna, which Ruth and Marie found touching but which Johanna found burdensome. Sometimes she went over to visit Peter, sat at his kitchen table, and watched him work. Most of the time though, she did nothing. For the first time in her life, her days were filled not with work but with calm. And it did her good. For it was not just her physical injuries that needed time to heal; so too did the wounds that were not visible to the eye.
“You have only yourself to blame for what happened here!” Strobel had shouted in her face, the spittle flying. But the more Johanna thought about it, the more certain she became that she could not have prevented it. There hadn’t been any sign in the days before Strobel left town that he would undergo such a tremendous change of character. Quite the contrary: he had even made a point of mentioning how pleased he was that she was there so that he could travel. He hadn’t looked at her strangely, or no more strangely than before. Nor was the fact that she had turned up late that morning a real explanation for his brutal attack. There could only be one reason: Strobel had gone mad, irredeemably mad, during his trip. She told herself this again and again. If she were honest—and during this time she was more honest with herself than ever before—deep down she had known right from the start that there was something wrong with him. And she had taken the job all the same. If anything that had been her mistake.
“If we had to go round suspecting every odd fellow of criminal tendencies, there wouldn’t be many people left we would want to have dealings with,” Marie responded when Johanna mentioned her thoughts aloud.
When she looked at it like that, Johanna had to admit that her sister was right. Wilhelm Heimer had his little ways, and people said the most extraordinary things about Griseldis’s son. Even Ruth’s husband raised Johanna’s hackles. But did that mean that all of these men were dangerous? Surely not. Despite that, from then on, there was always a spark of mistrust in Johanna’s eyes when she talked to a man, and she never quite lost it for the rest of her days.