done? Perhaps Gottfried is right. Perhaps all we can do now is try to survive.
Almost immediately, she rebelled against her own reflections. No, she thought as she picked the largely unused breakfast dishes up from the table and placed them in the sink. No, he isnât right. We can take the risk of disobedience; we can at least not pretend that we think that what is happening is right. At the very least, at the very, very least, we could leave the country, we could at least try to leave the countryâ¦
The telephone rang, and she went to answer it. Not everyone had a telephone in their house, but the Weyrauchs did. It was deemed necessary for a minister to be able to easily to contact his superiors, his church building, the governmentâs Ministry of Cults...Lord, how that name bothered her!...the hospitals, and other places where his services might be needed; and, of course, it made it easier for all these agencies to contact him as well.
Louisa picked up the phone and said, "Hello? Weyrauch residence."
"Hello, dear," her motherâs voice said from the other end of the line. "Is everything all right?"
Louisa sighed, not wishing to discuss her marital problems with her mother. "Yes, fine, Mother, just fine. Everything is just fine."
"Are you getting along well with Gottfried?"
She sighed again. "Wonderfully, Mother. Splendidly."
"Good, Iâm glad to hear it. You know, Louisa, I just canât stop thinking about the argument you and Gottfried had last weekend when I was there for dinner. You really must be supportive of your husband, and not be so critical."
"Yes, Mother."
"I certainly hope you donât behave that way when people from the parish are in your home. You have a responsibility as a ministerâs wife, Louisa, and whatever else may be happening, you must keep any domestic problems to yourself."
People are dying by the millions , she thought glumly, and Mother is worried about my committing a social faux pas . "Yes, Mother," was all she said. She had learned years before that arguing with her stubborn parent was an exercise in futility and frustration.
Louisa muttered an occasional word of agreement and paid very little attention to what her mother was saying. She glanced out the front window of the parsonage and saw that her husband was standing outside on the pavement, looking down the street. Louisa watched him for a moment and then sighed. Why are we still here, Gottfried? she thought miserably. Why in Godâs name have we stayed in Germany ?
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Weyrauch had intended to eat breakfast and then take a nap, but he now found himself standing on the street with nowhere to go. Having made a rather dramatic exit, he would have felt foolish walking right back into the house, and he stood motionless for a few moments as he wondered what he should do next. Then he remembered that he had a pastoral obligation to offer words of comfort to poor Frau Neumann, so he turned and began to walk toward the Neumann home.
"Dietrich Bonhöffer," he muttered aloud as he strolled along the narrow cobblestone streets of the little Silesian village of Kappelburg . "I am so sick to death of hearing about Dietrich Bonhöffer." He knew that Louisa and the now rather well-known dissident minister had been friends since childhood, and it grated on him that she so obviously admired the man, admired him with the same intensity with which she despised her husband. "Why didnât you marry him, then?" he muttered, addressing his absent wife, answering his own question in his mind.
He remembered those days over a decade ago, when he as finishing his doctorate in Theology at the seminary at Erfurt . He had met Bonhöffer, then a young seminarian, after a lecture they had both attended, and it was through Bonhöffer that he had met Louisa Keimes. Bonhöffer was five years and Louisa a full decade younger than Weyrauch, and he found their youthful, enthusiastic idealism infectious, inspiring,