Bishop Bob by Mary Jo Rabe
Bob loves his job as bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, but will soon be forced to retire; he visits an old friend for advice, and reflects on how he first became a priest.
Bishop Bob bounded down the stairs from his living quarters to his office in the chancery office in Rottenburg. The building wasn't cheap, and in the twenty-first century, it was hard to justify the Church's spending money on architecture, but it made him happy to see that it fit in well with the medieval buildings in the downtown, pedestrian zone of Rottenburg.
The architects managed to connect a building modern in style and substance to an older building and make the whole construction look aesthetically pleasing, a white-on-white that worked well.
It was one of Bob's genuine successes, along with maintaining his health and staying in shape. With his thin, white hair, he probably looked his age, but he felt as energetic and young as he had been when he became bishop.
All things considered, the past twenty years of being the Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart had been pleasant for him. There were times of stress and confrontation, but many more occasions of joy and expressions of appreciation. Somewhat to his surprise, and without making that his goal, he was a popular bishop.
Unfortunately, Bishop Bob was getting close to the seventy-five-year-old age limit, when he would be forced to ask the pope to let him retire. Since he was only a bishop and not a cardinal, it was certain that the pope would say yes. Bob didn't want to retire, not at all.
A problem he could mull over as he walked to the train station today. He always looked forward to the pleasant fifteen-minute stroll through the old-town section of Rottenburg, down the hill, and over the shady Neckar River. He looked forward to seeing Lisa and Horst in Stuttgart even more, a kind of mini-vacation that he allowed himself every now and then.
"Herr Bishop," his trim, middle-aged secretary, Frau Mangold, said as she trotted to the door to meet him. "Will you be in your office today?"
"I was hoping to take the afternoon off," he admitted. "Is there anything that would require my presence?"
Frau Mangold, efficient as always, brushed her straight, gray-streaked, brown hair out of her eyes, pulled out her phone, and began to call up messages. She was in her mid-fifties, but what the information technology people called a first adopter. Whatever new technology was available, she was the first to demand and use it.
"Well, no," she said, staring at her phone. "However, Friday afternoon is when people like to stop by spontaneously, hoping to see you."
"And every now and then I like to take a Friday afternoon off," Bishop Bob said as he reluctantly entered her office. "As far as I remember, I have a fairly strenuous week coming up."
"Yes," Frau Mangold said. "Next week is the German bishops' conference in Fulda, from Monday to Thursday. You are chairman of the church music study group, and will be expected to give a talk. You get back Thursday night, and all day Friday you will present the information from the bishops' conference to your conference of diocesan parish priests."
Bishop Bob groaned. Spending a whole week in meetings was close to how he imagined hell. He always preferred talking to real people, visiting factories, hospitals, and nursing homes, holding religious services, interacting with youth groups, anything other than arguing with other priests or bishops about bureaucratic nonsense.
He had never been a theological bureaucrat and had no patience with quibbling over linguistics. Helping people with their religious needs was what interested him.
That settled it; he would definitely take the noon train to Stuttgart, visit Lisa and Horst, and recharge his batteries for a day or two so that he survived the next week without running screaming for the hills around Fulda. If his memory served him correctly, there was a nonstop train to Stuttgart at 12:46 that took less than an hour.
"I won't be here this afternoon," Bishop Bob said to Frau Mangold. "Feel free to take the afternoon off yourself. I know that you have more than enough overtime already this month."
Frau Mangold stared at him sternly. "I'll see if I can justify that," she said. "It will depend on how many people want to talk to you after you leave. The papal nuncio called again from Berlin. He definitely wants to talk to you."
Bishop Bob knew what that was about. He was already late with his retirement request for the pope.
"When he calls, please tell the nuncio I'll call him the week after next; explain that I'll be busy with the bishops' conference next week." With that, Bishop Bob fled into his sleek and, thanks to the never-ending efforts of Frau Mangold, uncluttered office.
He worked best in a minimalist environment. His largish office was painted a neutral light blue and had pictures of the cathedrals of Rottenburg and Stuttgart on the walls. His working area included a large, white metal desk, a padded office chair that gave the correct support to muscles and bones, the wretched laptop that Frau Mangold insisted he always take with him so he could work away from the office, and a little round steel table with four steel chairs.
Bishop Bob sat down, looked out the large window and saw the predicted good weather, blue sky, sunshine, and unusually warm fall temperatures of fifteen degrees Celsius.
He picked up his phone. He didn't need to wonder which of the buttons gave him his rapid dial, something Frau Mangold kept trying to teach him. His fingers dialed Lisa's number automatically.
"Lisa," he said when she answered. "Can I come and visit you and Horst today and tomorrow?"
"That would be wonderful, Robert," her warm and, he thought, loving voice answered. "It's been much too long since your last visit. Should I pick you up at the train station?"
"No need," he answered quickly. "I always enjoy the scenic walk from the streetcar stop to your house. Besides, I need to get my steps in today."
Lisa's warm laughter let him feel that all indeed was right with the world. The older he got, the more grateful he was to have people in his life who genuinely cared about him. For him the undeniable and yet completely unlikely fact that there were such people was the most credible proof of the existence of God.
This was the main disadvantage of demanding celibacy from priests and bishops. Too many of them ended up lonely and alone. He had accepted the requirement as being the rule he had to abide by if he wanted to join the exclusive club of priests, but, more and more, he thought, mandatory imposed celibacy was a mistake.
"I'll show up around the middle of the afternoon," he said. "Thanks for putting up with me."
In the twenty years he had been bishop, people at the chancery office got used to his quirks, like always taking public transportation and paying his own way for non-work activities. Some people said his insisting on saving the diocese money was overly politically correct. Others said it was unnecessarily dangerous, that he should always have a chauffeur with him for protection since there were so many nutcases running around, and he was so easily recognizable.
Bishop Bob realized early on that the only way he could grant himself a little privacy, a little time out from his professional responsibilities, which he took seriously but sometimes needed a break from, was to travel anonymously. When he wore a beret and sunglasses, no one recognized him.
"Herr Bishop," Frau Mangold said as she walked into his office. She frowned. "Here are the letters you have to sign, and the vicar general would like to talk to you this morning if you have time."
Bishop Bob sighed. "Tell Dr. Kohl I have time for him now." And so the morning continued with one person after another insisting on speaking with the bishop so that he could solve their problems for them.
A young priest had said a Mass dressed in a pink tutu, for some reason or other, and some parishioners complained.
An old priest loudly refused a woman communion because he knew that she was divorced and had remarried in a civil ceremony, and her children complained.
A middle-aged priest wanted to take an indefinite length of time off to "find himself", naturally while continuing to receive his full salary.
The five newly ordained priests all came together in a group and said they wanted specific geographic placements as vicars so that they would all be within half an hour's drive of each other.
Bishop Bob managed to control his temper each time and was able to flee precisely at 12 noon, after wishing Frau Mangold a good weekend and "forgetting" the wretched laptop on his desk.
He ran back to his apartment, stuffed a few clothes in a backpack, walked briskly to the train station, picking up a sandwich and bottle of mineral water at a bakery along the way, and bought a ticket to Stuttgart at the ticket machine. The train arrived on time at platform two, and Bishop Bob found a seat in the last second-class car.
It had been a long morning. He wolfed down the sandwich and drank the bottle of water, then stretched out, pulled his beret over his eyes, and let himself fall into a less than deep sleep.
It was deep enough for him to dream, or be tortured by the nightmare he had had over and over again since 1946. He was back in the concentration camp in Serbia, not far from the village where his ancestors from Germany had settled some seven hundred years before. This German community had maintained its German identity and its German language.
That lack of assimilation turned out to be their fatal error. After World War II was over, the Yugoslavian Communists insisted that all people of German descent were Nazis and made open season on them. The people of Bishop Bob's village were rounded up and imprisoned in the makeshift concentration camp.
Bob was a skinny, scared seven-year-old everyone pretty much ignored. One afternoon, some drunk Yugoslavian tank drivers drove through the camp and shot people at will, among them Bob's beloved older brother Oskar, who later died from his injuries.
That night Bob's grandmother, his beloved Oma, gathered the family together and said that they had to sneak out of the camp and make their way out of Yugoslavia. If they stayed, it was only a matter of time before they would all be killed.
Bob's parents disagreed, saying it was a harebrained scheme that would only get them killed sooner rather than later. No one could get out of the camp, and how would they survive, and where would they even go?
Bob had held his dying brother's hand, and even though he was scared at the thought of trying to escape, he decided to do what Oma said. A skinny seven-year-old kid could scout around the camp without being noticed, and it didn't take him long to find a hole in the fence that they could crawl through.
Oma was a short, thin woman with long, white hair. When he was a child, Bob thought she was older than time itself. When they fled, she was probably in her early sixties, malnourished but feisty.
He and Oma left the same night, taking only the clothes on their backs and the food they could squirrel away. Oma bound her hair up in a huge knot on her head.
Bishop Bob woke up with a start and looked around, relieved to see that he was on a train and no longer in the concentration camp. Fortunately, the other passengers didn't notice his reaction to his nightmare.
He started remembering how he and Oma walked all the way to Hungary, then to Austria, and then finally to Germany. Along the way, they begged for and stole food. They drank from mountain streams. They slept on the ground or in barns or sometimes in the houses of kind people who gave them clothes. Wild animals ignored them, human evildoers also. They survived.
Bob, however, wouldn't have survived the struggles with the German bureaucracies once they got to Germany. He had to smile when he remembered how Oma put her foot down and made demands.
They were given a place to stay in Tauberbischofsheim, and with some pressure from Oma, the bureaucrats came up with scholarships, allowing Bob to go to a private school that had special courses for "returning Germans". Oma was granted a modest pension, enough to live on.
Later they learned that Bob's parents and everyone else in the concentration camp had been murdered by Yugoslavian partisans. Looking out the train window, Bob tried to remember his parents' faces, but the only face from that time he could clearly see was Oma's. Oma took such good care of him as long as she lived.
Bob chuckled when he remembered his own thick Serbian accent. However, once he lost it, he did well enough in school, though he enjoyed practical courses more than languages and natural sciences.
With regular meals, Bob shot up in height and towered over Oma. She gained some weight, but ran around doing so many things, helping so many people, that she stayed scrawny.
Oma insisted on his accompanying her to church every Sunday. He wasn't all that enthusiastic. Even though he would never tell Oma, he often wondered why God had let the Serbs kill his brother. Today as a bishop, he still wondered.
The elderly parish priest in Tauberbischofsheim was very kind. He suggested youth groups that Bob might be interested in. He didn't pressure Bob, but made an occasional off-hand remark that Bob might like being an altar boy. To his genuine surprise, Bob did. He liked the ceremonial part of church services; he liked walking around the altar and helping the priest.
As a bishop today, he could only wish that more of his priests were like the kind priest he had known as a child. The man hadn't played guitar, hadn't had a computer or a smart phone, but had known instinctively how to reach his parishioners.
Almost everything the priest encouraged Bob to try turned out to be right for him, with only one exception. The children's choir was a bust, just as Bob feared. The choir director arranged for him to take instruction from a voice coach who, however, soon gave up.
Bob just had a tin ear for music and could only sing off-key. This never changed, but, as it turned out, most bishops were terrible singers.
The train gradually pulled into Stuttgart. The train station was more crowded than usual. The construction of the new train station was taking longer than predicted, mostly due to the fact that the railway company made promises that it couldn't keep, relying on wishful thinking.
Bob found his way to the subway and took U-Bahn number 6. He didn't even have to think about the right stop. He got out automatically and switched to the streetcar. Fifteen minutes later, he left the streetcar and started walking toward Lisa and Horst's house.
He always enjoyed this walk. It was uphill but with trees on both sides of the quiet street and little traffic. Stuttgart's topology was like a deep bowl with steep sides. Down at the bottom were the train station, the shopping districts, the businesses, all the traffic, and the terrible air quality. Up around the edges, where Lisa and Horst lived, the air was clean and refreshing.
As so often when he took this stroll, he thought about how he and Lisa had met. After he graduated from the private school, he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life.
He did some volunteer work, did his alternative service as an aide in a nursing home to avoid being drafted, then took part-time, dead-end jobs. When he turned twenty-five, Oma put her foot down and told him he had to take advantage of the educational possibilities he had here in Germany, the ones that he never would have had in Yugoslavia.
Bob then thought he might like to study something practical, and chose automotive technology at the University of Stuttgart. He found a small apartment close to the campus in downtown Stuttgart, not far from the train station. This choice of a major turned out to be a five-year mistake as he didn't like cars and never got a driver's license, but it brought him to Stuttgart.
He met Lisa at church, in the St. Eberhard's Cathedral in downtown Stuttgart. He no longer only went to church to please Oma. There was something about church services that calmed him, that he drew strength from.
One Sunday he stayed for the after-services brunch where Lisa was serving the food. They got to talking and discovered that they were soulmates.
Lisa was tall and had long, red hair. She had just started nurses' training and said she loved the work. Bob said he wished he had some kind of work he loved. He had finished his automotive degree and still didn't know what he wanted to do.
Today, Bob found himself at Lisa's door and stopped daydreaming. The house was pleasantly large without being pretentious, built in the 1960s, two-story, brick with the usual outside white-cement covering, and a dark slate roof.
Lisa filled the tiny front yard with flowers, and Bob knew the back yard was a huge grassy area where children and grandchildren could romp to their heart's content.
He rang the bell and Lisa opened the door. She was as tall as he was, or perhaps a little taller, and her bright red hair was now a kind of auburn flecked with white. She would never get her teenager figure back, having shifted from model to matronly, but her infectious smile never changed.
She hugged him and said, "Robert, come in. It's so wonderful that you could find time to visit us."
Bob walked into the hallway, took off his sunglasses, hung up his jacket and beret, deposited his backpack on the floor, and wandered into the comfortable living room.
An aged collie raised his head and wagged his tail as Bishop Bob walked over the clean but permanently stained carpet. As always, he sat down on the worn leather couch and Lisa took her place on the recliner on the other side of the little cherrywood coffee table.
"Would you like some juice as usual?" she asked.
"You know me too well," Bob answered. "A few cookies would be nice, too."
Lisa laughed and disappeared into the kitchen. She returned with a bottle of apple juice and a plate of cookies.
"How are things going for you?" she asked.
Bob washed down the first cookie with a gulp of juice. "I can't complain," he said. "The nuncio is on my back about submitting my request for retirement."
"You don't want to retire," Lisa said. Her sweet face crinkled as she smiled.
"No, I really don't," Bob answered. "I like the job, and I think I can continue to do it well enough for a few more years. However, I work at the pleasure of the pope, and it is fairly certain that he will grant me the retirement I don't even want."
"You know," Lisa began. "You'll have to retire sooner or later. Why not now when you are healthy enough to enjoy it? There are enough other things you could do. You could help out in any parish. Horst and I would love to see more of you, and of course so would Michael and his family."
Tact. One of Lisa's greatest virtues, besides knowing him better than he knew himself. Knowing when to say just enough but never too much. Bob's memories returned.
After he met Lisa those many years ago, he continued to work here and there as an aide in a nursing home while she finished her nurses' training. They spent more and more time together and became lovers.
Lisa did volunteer work at a hospice most weekends. As her nursing skills improved, she was more and more useful there. When she completed her training, they immediately hired her as a nurse.
Bob told her about his beloved Oma and about how he looked forward to having grandchildren, since Oma told him grandchildren were the best part of life. When he said that, Lisa just laughed her sweet laugh.
She got him more involved in the activities at St. Eberhard's, and Bob met the pastor there, a man not much older than he was. Father Bechtold was an excellent listener, and Bob found himself enjoying many lively conversations with him, often about what Bob found wrong with the Church.
Whenever he gave it any thought, Bob thought his life was fine, that he was happy. He had a girlfriend, he earned enough money to live on, what more did he want?
Then Oma died. It must have been very sudden. A neighbor found her collapsed over her tomato plants in the little garden plot she had rented. Bob was devastated and berated himself for not visiting Oma more often, for not noticing her health issues.
Father Bechtold offered to accompany him to Tauberbischofsheim and arrange the funeral service as Bob didn't even know the new parish priest there. Lisa couldn't come because she had already volunteered to spend the next four days working at the hospice. Two of the nurses there were sick, and they really needed her.
The time in Tauberbischofsheim wasn't as bad as Bob had feared. So many of Oma's neighbors and friends came to console him. It was comforting to know that people had appreciated her, had recognized her for the wonderful person she was.
The new priest in Oma's parish was also very kind to Bob, telling him that he wished he had had the opportunity to get to know Bob's grandmother, that she sounded like a kind and loving person.
Bob was genuinely surprised at how the conversations helped him deal with the loss of his beloved Oma. It was comforting to talk about her, to exchange anecdotes. On the train back to Stuttgart, Bob mentioned to Father Bechtold his regret that he hadn't managed to find a profession, a life's work, for himself while Oma still lived, which had been her constant worry.
"Have you ever considered becoming a priest?" Father Bechtold asked. "You know, next month there is an information week in the Wilhelmsstift in Tübingen for men who might be interested in the priesthood. You stay at the dorm with other candidates for the priesthood, attend a few theology lectures, and get an impression of what this life would be like."
Bob had laughed. "No way," he said. "I'm too old for that, and celibacy is definitely not my lifestyle."
Father Bechtold backed down. "Okay," he said. "But think about it."
Strangely enough, Bob couldn't stop thinking about it. The two priests he had had dealings with had impressed him with their dedication and the obvious joy they found in their work.
It turned out that this information week in Tübingen was the same week that Lisa had to work double shifts at the hospice. So Bob, out of curiosity, signed up and went.
It was an amazing week. Bob got very little sleep; he was always arguing with someone or other. The people he argued with were students, professors, the then bishop of Rottenburg, and the vicar general. He disagreed with many of them, but was forced to respect their intelligence, their knowledge, and their good will. He was surprised to see how many different kinds of people became priests.
What made him seriously consider joining them were the religious services, whether traditional, alternative, pompous, or minimal in pageantry. The ceremonies, the music, the prayers all touched him at a very basic, almost primitive level. He felt that this was where he belonged.
Now he understood how Oma had known that they had to leave the concentration camp, even though others tried to talk her out of it. She had felt deep down that this was what she had to do, and he knew now that this was what he was meant to do; this was the work he had been searching for.
He signed up for the courses to begin in the fall, and returned to Stuttgart. Lisa met him at the train station, and he spontaneously invited her to supper there. He ordered juice as always, never having developed a taste or desire for alcohol. To his surprise, Lisa also said she would like some apple juice instead of her usual glass of wine.
Then he couldn't stop talking, about how fascinating it had been in Tübingen, how many intelligent men he had argued with, how grateful he was to her for having encouraged him to go to church in Stuttgart years ago. Finally, he admitted that he was thinking about becoming a priest.
Lisa listened patiently without even trying to interrupt. When he finally stopped talking long enough to take a drink of juice, she asked quietly, "What about the grandchildren you wanted to have, the things you were sure were essential for a good life?"
Bob, naturally clueless, especially when he was enthusiastic about something, answered the theoretical question with the glib answers he had picked up on Tübingen. "A priest's life doesn't have to be lonely," he said. "They encourage you to cultivate a group of friends you can depend on. When it works, a celibate lifestyle makes you more available for all the people who need you."
Lisa laughed softly. "That's not what I'm talking about," she said. "I just found out that we, you and I, are going to have a baby. I'm pregnant. You said you wanted grandchildren. Well, the first step toward grandchildren is children."
Bob was thunderstruck. It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that he was a selfish, oblivious oaf. "I don't know what to say," he began as his eyes wandered around the restaurant before returning to Lisa.
"No, I do know what to say," Bob said firmly. "We'll get married, and I'll get a job as an automotive engineer. I'm sure I have chances either with Mercedes or Porsche."
Lisa shook her head. "No," she said. "That's not what we're going to do. You have finally found your life's goal, the work that will give your life meaning. You will go on to become a fantastic priest. I know you have that talent in you."
"What about you and the baby?" he asked.
"It looks like I'll also change my plans," she said. "Sometimes life sends you off in directions other than what you were aiming for. These past few years at the hospice I have gotten to know Horst Vomstein. His wife died of cancer there two years ago, and I took care of her. Ever since then, Horst has volunteered to help at the hospice, and we have become good friends.
"He is a good, decent man," she continued. "Only two things in his life have devastated him, the loss of his wife, and, before that, the knowledge that he can't father children. He and his wife desperately wanted a child, and the medical exams showed that the infertility was his problem.
"I know that he would jump at the chance for a wife and a family, and I have the feeling that he probably loves me, that that's why he keeps hanging around the hospice. So, Horst and I should get married. This child will be officially his."
Bob shook his head. "No, that's too risky. Things will go wrong. You won't love him; he won't love you. Everyone will notice that the child isn't his."
Lisa shook her head and her beautiful red hair flew around her face. "Trust me," she said. "This is best, and this is the way it's going to be. You and I will remain good friends and will help each other as much as we can. You will come to my wedding and congratulate us. I will come to your ordination and congratulate you. We will be both find happiness keeping our respective vows."
Then she dug into her salad. Bob couldn't eat. After he walked her home, it occurred to him that this was yet another time when a strong woman made the decisions he was too cowardly to make on his own.
Lisa, of course, turned out to be absolutely right. He met Horst, who was indeed a good man who was obviously head-over-heels in love with Lisa. Lisa and Horst were married in St. Eberhard's Cathedral. Later when he was trying to understand Hebrew grammar in Tübingen, he got the birth announcement. Lisa and Horst were overjoyed to welcome a son, Michael, into the world.
Bob got his degree in theology and was ordained a priest. Lisa, Horst, and Michael were at his ordination. Bob became a vicar in Bad Saulgau and Biberach, then a parish priest in Schwäbisch Gmünd, then a member of the bishop's council in the chancery office in Rottenburg and then, to his amazement, Bishop of Rottenburg.
Throughout the years, he was a welcome guest at Lisa and Horst's home, and he was introduced to Michael as Father Bob, later as Bishop Bob. Michael considered him to be some kind of designated uncle, a friend of his parents. Michael inherited his mother's red hair, and, if you looked closely, Bob's eyes and cheekbones.
Breaking away from this daydream, Bob asked Lisa, "How is Michael doing?"
"Don't you read the papers?" she asked. "He was just elected mayor of Stuttgart, and they say that won't be the end of his political career. Horst was always involved in politics, and he took Michael along at every opportunity. Michael is good at politics; he has found his life's work."
"Is he coming over today?" Bob asked.
"Of course," Lisa answered. "Michael and his family will be here in about an hour. Horst should be around later. Ever since he retired ten years ago, he has been busier than ever with his volunteer work."
As always, Lisa kept her promise. Michael, his wife Silke, and their three daughters, all with bright red hair, showed up an hour later. Soon thereafter Horst came home from his parish council meeting.
It was a pleasant evening. Lisa brought one delicious dish after another to the table, Michael's daughters talked about their tennis tournament, Horst and Michael analyzed the current political situation in Stuttgart, and Bob listened and relaxed. Lisa truly had a congenial, happy family, probably mostly due to her hard work, although Horst might also have contributed one good deed or another.
The next day Bob went with Silke to watch Michael's daughters play in their tennis tournament. They weren't that good, but seemed to enjoy playing. Silke kept apologizing for bragging about her daughters, but she was so proud of them. She said they were just as ambitious as their father.
Saturday evening Bob, Lisa, and Horst enjoyed another wonderful, home-cooked meal and talked late into the night about everything on earth and beyond. It was so relaxing for Bob to talk to people who cared about him and didn't want anything from him, the opposite of his usual workday experiences.
Sunday morning, they went to Mass in the St. Eberhard's Cathedral, and Lisa and Horst accompanied Bob through the pedestrian zone to the train station. He reluctantly took the next train to Rottenburg, which involved changing trains in Tübingen. He had to be careful not to fall asleep.
Monday morning Herr Rees, the chancery office chauffeur, picked up Bishop Bob and his auxiliary bishop and drove them to the Bishops' Conference in Fulda. Herr Rees remained true to his reputation and set records for speed on the autobahn. Bishop Bob closed his eyes and prayed.
The conference itself was as mind-numbingly boring, as Bishop Bob had feared. Hour-long arguments and harangues about trivialities. Even the religious services couldn't make up for the boring meetings.
Tuesday morning in the short interval after breakfast and before the first session, Frau Mangold called. "The nuncio really needs your request for retirement," she said. "He called again this morning. You have your laptop with you, and I know the seminary where you are all staying has facilities for you to print a letter. Write the letter, take your laptop to the secretarial station, and ask them print it out for you. Then sign it, and ask the office manager of the seminary to send it to the nuncio for you. I know Frau Zimmermann. She will be happy to help you."
Bishop Bob knew better than to try to give Frau Mangold some excuse as to why her orders were completely impossible. It would be better for him and his peace of mind to just do what she said.
He dug his laptop out from under a pile of papers, opened the file for episcopal correspondence, and pounded out a letter to the pope, asking to be allowed to retire on his seventy-fifth birthday. He followed Frau Mangold's instructions, and his letter to the pope went on its way to the nuncio in Berlin.
Two interminable days later, he and the auxiliary bishop were on their way back to Rottenburg. Herr Rees achieved top speed on the autobahn stretches again and got them back to the chancery office in record time.
Bishop Bob ran up the stairs to his apartment, grateful to still be alive. He got ready for bed, collapsed, and slept through the night. The beds in the seminary in Fulda had been unusually uncomfortable, or maybe he really was getting too old for this.
Friday morning, the priests were waiting in the auditorium on the ground floor long before Bishop Bob felt like giving them his report about the bishops' conference. He didn't know how to package four days of boredom into four entertaining hours, and didn't even want to try.
He went directly into his office before going down to the auditorium. His desk looked uncharacteristically loaded down with piles of papers that he probably had to read. Depressing. He went through the connecting door to see if Frau Mangold needed him, but she was on the phone. He walked toward the door, but she waved at him and hung up.
"You need to call a Michael Vomstein," she said. "He said that his father Horst died suddenly last night. I have his cell phone number."
"No," Bishop Bob interrupted her. "No, that can't be. Horst was in perfect health on Sunday."
"Why don't you call him," Frau Mangold suggested. "I'll send the auxiliary bishop to give the priests the report about the bishops' conference."
Bishop Bob stumbled back into his office and closed the connecting door. He dialed Michael's number. "Michael," he said. "What?"
Michael's voice trembled. "Papa is dead, Bishop Bob. The doctors say it was an aneurysm in his brain. Can you come? Mama is in bad shape. She and Papa were inseparable. I don't know..."
"Of course I'll come," Bishop Bob said. "Is Lisa at home? Or is she with you?"
"She's at home," he said. "Please come if you can."
Bishop Bob went through the connecting door and said to Frau Mangold, "Please call the chauffeur and have him pick me up here. I need to get to Stuttgart as fast as possible."
She looked up, surprised, but immediately reached for the phone. Bishop Bob rushed back up to his apartment, quickly stuffed some things into his backpack, and ran down to the entrance of the chancery office. Herr Rees was waiting for him and drove him to Stuttgart at an insane speed.
When he stopped in front of Lisa's house, Bishop Bob said to Herr Rees, "You can return to Rottenburg. I don't know how long I'll be here."
"Just let me know when I should pick you up," Herr Rees said quietly. He was a good man, tactful, considerate, and discrete. Bishop Bob didn't have to worry about any gossip coming from him.
Bob walked up to the door, overwhelmed by a combination of feelings, respect and gratitude to Horst for taking such good care of Lisa, feelings of responsibility and guilt with respect to Lisa and Michael, and simple sadness. This was the first death that made him feel as helpless as he had felt when Oma died.
Before he could ring the bell, Lisa opened the door. Without thinking, he hugged her. "I'm so sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."
Lisa led him into the living room and sat down in the recliner. He took his usual spot on the couch. "It all seems so unreal," she said. "Horst was out in the back yard playing badminton with the grandchildren, and then all three girls ran into the house and said Grandpa was lying on the ground. I ran out and saw him there. I know how to perform CPR; I've kept up my nursing skills. I told the oldest girl to call for an ambulance, which she did. But Horst was dead; there was nothing anyone could do. They say it was an aneurysm."
"I'm so sorry," Bob repeated. "What can I do? Can I help you with the funeral arrangements? Should I call Father Striet at St. Eberhard's?"
"Yes," Lisa said. "That would help. I'm sorry. It's just all so overwhelming. I know there are things I need to do, but all I want to do is close my eyes and pretend this is all just a bad dream." She looked out the window.
Bob was glad he could make himself useful. He didn't even have to pull the bishop's card to get things done. Horst had been a very active and very popular member of St. Eberhard's parish. Once people heard of his death, everyone wanted to help with the funeral.
It was a very moving ceremony. The parish choir outdid itself singing the requiem. Father Striet held a very comforting sermon. One person after another said how much they admired and would miss Horst. Lisa looked less devastated, and, as always, she immediately started comforting others when they came to make their condolences.
The neighbors kept coming to Lisa's house and bringing food, most of which she passed on to the local food bank because she just couldn't eat that much. Michael seemed to be sleepwalking the whole time, barely responsive, but after a week his pressing duties as mayor forced him to snap back as far as work was concerned.
A few days after the funeral Lisa started straightening up the house and answering the condolence cards, a mountain of which lay on the coffee table. Bob looked at her and started to talk. "Lisa," he said. "You know I have to retire on my birthday; that's less than six months from now. I was thinking, I could move to Stuttgart and be a part of your life again, and maybe of Michael's."
Lisa took off her reading glasses and looked at him. "You've always been a part of my life, Robert. A lot of things didn't go as we planned or thought, but we've each had a good life, a life where we felt useful and appreciated."
"Yes, yes," Bob said impatiently. "But now I could do more. As a retired bishop, I can pick and choose what responsibilities I take on. We probably shouldn't live together, but we could be together. Michael looks so lost without his father. We could tell him that he still has a father who cares about him."
"No," Lisa said, or rather the word exploded out of her mouth. "Horst is the only father Michael ever knew, and he was a wonderful father to him. I refuse to complicate Michael's memories of Horst, and I won't let you.
"What about your vows?" she asked. "I've been faithful to my marriage vows. Have you been as faithful to yours?"
Bob chose to laugh. "I've always kept the celibacy and poverty ones. The previous bishops would probably say that I never quite managed the obedience thing. I never believed that celibacy was a good idea for priests, though. It was a political decision in church history and should have been thrown out years ago.
"I don't want to put you under pressure," he continued. "But give it some thought. I could be completely here for you, and I can't imagine anything I want to do more."
Lisa smiled, the first time he saw her smile in this sad time. "Thank you, Robert," she said. "Thank you for all your help and for being here for me. For now, I think you should go back to Rottenburg and return to the bishop's work you have left. I need some time to get used to my new situation and make a new life for myself."
"Then you will think about it?" Bishop Bob asked.
"Yes," Lisa laughed softly. "I'll be thinking about all kinds of things, including you. Now, do you want to call your chauffeur or can I take you to the train station?"
Bob stood up. "I guess that will have to be good enough for me. I'll walk to the streetcar. We'll talk about our future more, until I am officially retired, okay?"
Lisa smiled and nodded. Bob went to the guest room, packed his backpack, and went to the door. Lisa hugged him and touched his cheek with her hand, but didn't kiss him goodbye. Bob started out on his accustomed trek back to work.
The next day he got up early and made it to his office even before Frau Mangold started work. He looked at the intimidating stack of papers on his desk and sighed. If Frau Mangold put them there, they were his problem.
Frau Mangold came into her office precisely at seven forty-five. "Herr Bishop," she said.
"I'm back," he said. "I do remember calling you and telling you I was busy because of a death in the family."
"Yes," Frau Mangold said. "My sincere condolences. However, you never said when you would be back."
"Yeah, my bad," Bishop Bob said. "So, where would you suggest that I start?" He pointed to the stack of papers that seemed quite stable despite its height.
"I'll get you some juice from the cafeteria," she said. "At precisely eight o'clock you have to be in your office. The nuncio will try to reach you again. He has been calling every day for the past week."
"Oh, right," Bishop Bob said. "He probably has news from the pope that I will be allowed to retire on my birthday and that the Vatican will start the process of choosing my successor. That's not exactly urgent, but I'll be glad to hear from him."
"Glad?" Frau Mangold stopped dead in her tracks on the way to the door. "I thought you didn't want to retire. You've been complaining about the age limit for bishops for years."
"Things change," Bishop Bob said. "Don't worry about your job security. Any new bishop will be very fortunate if you choose to stay and help him."
"Hmm," Frau Mangold answered and left. Bishop Bob took the top paper off the stack. A group of parishioners in Herrenberg was complaining because the parish priest there didn't have a sufficiently devout look on his face when he handed out the communion wafers. Fortunately, Frau Mangold had already prepared a tactful answer that he only needed to sign.
He reached for the next piece of paper as the phone rang. He could see on the display that it was the nuncio calling from Berlin. "Hello, your Excellency," Bishop Bob said into the phone. The nuncio was a traditionally minded bishop from Brazil who appreciated respectful forms of address.
"Good news," the nuncio said in his heavily accented German. "The Holy Father is refusing your request for retirement. He says he needs good bishops to stay on as long as their health allows."
"What?" Bishop Bob asked. "I thought that was only cardinals."
"Well," the nuncio said. "This pope wants to make changes, and this is one of them. You need to write him and tell him that you will gratefully stay on as long as God gives you the strength."
"If I now want to retire?" Bishop Bob asked.
"Forget it," the nuncio spat out. "That would be a seriously insulting expression of ingratitude, unless, of course, you are truly incapable of carrying out your duties."
Bishop Bob sighed. Damn. "How much time do I have to answer the pope's generous offer?" he asked.
"I expect your letter in precisely one week," the nuncio said. "Ask your very capable secretary to write it for you, then sign it, and get it off to me. God bless you."
Bishop Bob leaned back in his chair and shook his head. He could only think of a variation of the old saying, that the only thing worse than not getting what you want is getting what you want, especially when you no longer want it.
Now what? It wasn't that he was afraid of the consequences of insulting the pope. This pope didn't insult that easily. In fact, Bishop Bob would like to hang around as bishop for a few more years. There were projects he wanted to finish, others that he wanted to start.
Yet, as of the past week, he had also thought that this was the time of his life that he could spend with Lisa, when he could make things up to her. After all, in his selfish enthusiasm, he had abandoned her, even though she assured him that it was all right and that it had worked out very well.
Not knowing what else to do, he called Lisa.
"Robert," she said. "I didn't expect to hear from you so soon. What's new?"
"Bad news, I think," he said. "The pope doesn't want me to retire yet."
"That's wonderful," she said. "You didn't want to retire. You have a thousand things you still want to accomplish as bishop."
"No, that's all unimportant now," he said. "Who knows how much time we have left in this life? I want to be there for you, to make up for all the years when I wasn't."
"You were always there for me, Robert," Lisa said. "I am so grateful to have you in my life. Hasn't our relationship so far been enough for you? Can't you imagine continuing as bishop and, when you have time, visiting an old friend and her son occasionally?"
The trouble was, he could imagine just that, but it felt selfish, not right somehow.
"Robert," Lisa said. "Listen to me and do what I tell you. Write the pope and tell him you will stay on as bishop. Then go back to work. I'll be busy with my family and the house and garden and volunteer work. You will always be welcome here, and we will have all kinds of things to tell each other."
So, just as he had done so many times in the past, Bishop Bob acquiesced and obeyed a strong woman in his life. Based on experience, this was the best and right thing to do. He was fairly sure that God would approve, if he bothered to ask her.
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The architects managed to connect a building modern in style and substance to an older building and make the whole construction look aesthetically pleasing, a white-on-white that worked well.
It was one of Bob's genuine successes, along with maintaining his health and staying in shape. With his thin, white hair, he probably looked his age, but he felt as energetic and young as he had been when he became bishop.
All things considered, the past twenty years of being the Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart had been pleasant for him. There were times of stress and confrontation, but many more occasions of joy and expressions of appreciation. Somewhat to his surprise, and without making that his goal, he was a popular bishop.
Unfortunately, Bishop Bob was getting close to the seventy-five-year-old age limit, when he would be forced to ask the pope to let him retire. Since he was only a bishop and not a cardinal, it was certain that the pope would say yes. Bob didn't want to retire, not at all.
A problem he could mull over as he walked to the train station today. He always looked forward to the pleasant fifteen-minute stroll through the old-town section of Rottenburg, down the hill, and over the shady Neckar River. He looked forward to seeing Lisa and Horst in Stuttgart even more, a kind of mini-vacation that he allowed himself every now and then.
"Herr Bishop," his trim, middle-aged secretary, Frau Mangold, said as she trotted to the door to meet him. "Will you be in your office today?"
"I was hoping to take the afternoon off," he admitted. "Is there anything that would require my presence?"
Frau Mangold, efficient as always, brushed her straight, gray-streaked, brown hair out of her eyes, pulled out her phone, and began to call up messages. She was in her mid-fifties, but what the information technology people called a first adopter. Whatever new technology was available, she was the first to demand and use it.
"Well, no," she said, staring at her phone. "However, Friday afternoon is when people like to stop by spontaneously, hoping to see you."
"And every now and then I like to take a Friday afternoon off," Bishop Bob said as he reluctantly entered her office. "As far as I remember, I have a fairly strenuous week coming up."
"Yes," Frau Mangold said. "Next week is the German bishops' conference in Fulda, from Monday to Thursday. You are chairman of the church music study group, and will be expected to give a talk. You get back Thursday night, and all day Friday you will present the information from the bishops' conference to your conference of diocesan parish priests."
Bishop Bob groaned. Spending a whole week in meetings was close to how he imagined hell. He always preferred talking to real people, visiting factories, hospitals, and nursing homes, holding religious services, interacting with youth groups, anything other than arguing with other priests or bishops about bureaucratic nonsense.
He had never been a theological bureaucrat and had no patience with quibbling over linguistics. Helping people with their religious needs was what interested him.
That settled it; he would definitely take the noon train to Stuttgart, visit Lisa and Horst, and recharge his batteries for a day or two so that he survived the next week without running screaming for the hills around Fulda. If his memory served him correctly, there was a nonstop train to Stuttgart at 12:46 that took less than an hour.
"I won't be here this afternoon," Bishop Bob said to Frau Mangold. "Feel free to take the afternoon off yourself. I know that you have more than enough overtime already this month."
Frau Mangold stared at him sternly. "I'll see if I can justify that," she said. "It will depend on how many people want to talk to you after you leave. The papal nuncio called again from Berlin. He definitely wants to talk to you."
Bishop Bob knew what that was about. He was already late with his retirement request for the pope.
"When he calls, please tell the nuncio I'll call him the week after next; explain that I'll be busy with the bishops' conference next week." With that, Bishop Bob fled into his sleek and, thanks to the never-ending efforts of Frau Mangold, uncluttered office.
He worked best in a minimalist environment. His largish office was painted a neutral light blue and had pictures of the cathedrals of Rottenburg and Stuttgart on the walls. His working area included a large, white metal desk, a padded office chair that gave the correct support to muscles and bones, the wretched laptop that Frau Mangold insisted he always take with him so he could work away from the office, and a little round steel table with four steel chairs.
Bishop Bob sat down, looked out the large window and saw the predicted good weather, blue sky, sunshine, and unusually warm fall temperatures of fifteen degrees Celsius.
He picked up his phone. He didn't need to wonder which of the buttons gave him his rapid dial, something Frau Mangold kept trying to teach him. His fingers dialed Lisa's number automatically.
"Lisa," he said when she answered. "Can I come and visit you and Horst today and tomorrow?"
"That would be wonderful, Robert," her warm and, he thought, loving voice answered. "It's been much too long since your last visit. Should I pick you up at the train station?"
"No need," he answered quickly. "I always enjoy the scenic walk from the streetcar stop to your house. Besides, I need to get my steps in today."
Lisa's warm laughter let him feel that all indeed was right with the world. The older he got, the more grateful he was to have people in his life who genuinely cared about him. For him the undeniable and yet completely unlikely fact that there were such people was the most credible proof of the existence of God.
This was the main disadvantage of demanding celibacy from priests and bishops. Too many of them ended up lonely and alone. He had accepted the requirement as being the rule he had to abide by if he wanted to join the exclusive club of priests, but, more and more, he thought, mandatory imposed celibacy was a mistake.
"I'll show up around the middle of the afternoon," he said. "Thanks for putting up with me."
In the twenty years he had been bishop, people at the chancery office got used to his quirks, like always taking public transportation and paying his own way for non-work activities. Some people said his insisting on saving the diocese money was overly politically correct. Others said it was unnecessarily dangerous, that he should always have a chauffeur with him for protection since there were so many nutcases running around, and he was so easily recognizable.
Bishop Bob realized early on that the only way he could grant himself a little privacy, a little time out from his professional responsibilities, which he took seriously but sometimes needed a break from, was to travel anonymously. When he wore a beret and sunglasses, no one recognized him.
"Herr Bishop," Frau Mangold said as she walked into his office. She frowned. "Here are the letters you have to sign, and the vicar general would like to talk to you this morning if you have time."
Bishop Bob sighed. "Tell Dr. Kohl I have time for him now." And so the morning continued with one person after another insisting on speaking with the bishop so that he could solve their problems for them.
A young priest had said a Mass dressed in a pink tutu, for some reason or other, and some parishioners complained.
An old priest loudly refused a woman communion because he knew that she was divorced and had remarried in a civil ceremony, and her children complained.
A middle-aged priest wanted to take an indefinite length of time off to "find himself", naturally while continuing to receive his full salary.
The five newly ordained priests all came together in a group and said they wanted specific geographic placements as vicars so that they would all be within half an hour's drive of each other.
Bishop Bob managed to control his temper each time and was able to flee precisely at 12 noon, after wishing Frau Mangold a good weekend and "forgetting" the wretched laptop on his desk.
He ran back to his apartment, stuffed a few clothes in a backpack, walked briskly to the train station, picking up a sandwich and bottle of mineral water at a bakery along the way, and bought a ticket to Stuttgart at the ticket machine. The train arrived on time at platform two, and Bishop Bob found a seat in the last second-class car.
It had been a long morning. He wolfed down the sandwich and drank the bottle of water, then stretched out, pulled his beret over his eyes, and let himself fall into a less than deep sleep.
It was deep enough for him to dream, or be tortured by the nightmare he had had over and over again since 1946. He was back in the concentration camp in Serbia, not far from the village where his ancestors from Germany had settled some seven hundred years before. This German community had maintained its German identity and its German language.
That lack of assimilation turned out to be their fatal error. After World War II was over, the Yugoslavian Communists insisted that all people of German descent were Nazis and made open season on them. The people of Bishop Bob's village were rounded up and imprisoned in the makeshift concentration camp.
Bob was a skinny, scared seven-year-old everyone pretty much ignored. One afternoon, some drunk Yugoslavian tank drivers drove through the camp and shot people at will, among them Bob's beloved older brother Oskar, who later died from his injuries.
That night Bob's grandmother, his beloved Oma, gathered the family together and said that they had to sneak out of the camp and make their way out of Yugoslavia. If they stayed, it was only a matter of time before they would all be killed.
Bob's parents disagreed, saying it was a harebrained scheme that would only get them killed sooner rather than later. No one could get out of the camp, and how would they survive, and where would they even go?
Bob had held his dying brother's hand, and even though he was scared at the thought of trying to escape, he decided to do what Oma said. A skinny seven-year-old kid could scout around the camp without being noticed, and it didn't take him long to find a hole in the fence that they could crawl through.
Oma was a short, thin woman with long, white hair. When he was a child, Bob thought she was older than time itself. When they fled, she was probably in her early sixties, malnourished but feisty.
He and Oma left the same night, taking only the clothes on their backs and the food they could squirrel away. Oma bound her hair up in a huge knot on her head.
Bishop Bob woke up with a start and looked around, relieved to see that he was on a train and no longer in the concentration camp. Fortunately, the other passengers didn't notice his reaction to his nightmare.
He started remembering how he and Oma walked all the way to Hungary, then to Austria, and then finally to Germany. Along the way, they begged for and stole food. They drank from mountain streams. They slept on the ground or in barns or sometimes in the houses of kind people who gave them clothes. Wild animals ignored them, human evildoers also. They survived.
Bob, however, wouldn't have survived the struggles with the German bureaucracies once they got to Germany. He had to smile when he remembered how Oma put her foot down and made demands.
They were given a place to stay in Tauberbischofsheim, and with some pressure from Oma, the bureaucrats came up with scholarships, allowing Bob to go to a private school that had special courses for "returning Germans". Oma was granted a modest pension, enough to live on.
Later they learned that Bob's parents and everyone else in the concentration camp had been murdered by Yugoslavian partisans. Looking out the train window, Bob tried to remember his parents' faces, but the only face from that time he could clearly see was Oma's. Oma took such good care of him as long as she lived.
Bob chuckled when he remembered his own thick Serbian accent. However, once he lost it, he did well enough in school, though he enjoyed practical courses more than languages and natural sciences.
With regular meals, Bob shot up in height and towered over Oma. She gained some weight, but ran around doing so many things, helping so many people, that she stayed scrawny.
Oma insisted on his accompanying her to church every Sunday. He wasn't all that enthusiastic. Even though he would never tell Oma, he often wondered why God had let the Serbs kill his brother. Today as a bishop, he still wondered.
The elderly parish priest in Tauberbischofsheim was very kind. He suggested youth groups that Bob might be interested in. He didn't pressure Bob, but made an occasional off-hand remark that Bob might like being an altar boy. To his genuine surprise, Bob did. He liked the ceremonial part of church services; he liked walking around the altar and helping the priest.
As a bishop today, he could only wish that more of his priests were like the kind priest he had known as a child. The man hadn't played guitar, hadn't had a computer or a smart phone, but had known instinctively how to reach his parishioners.
Almost everything the priest encouraged Bob to try turned out to be right for him, with only one exception. The children's choir was a bust, just as Bob feared. The choir director arranged for him to take instruction from a voice coach who, however, soon gave up.
Bob just had a tin ear for music and could only sing off-key. This never changed, but, as it turned out, most bishops were terrible singers.
The train gradually pulled into Stuttgart. The train station was more crowded than usual. The construction of the new train station was taking longer than predicted, mostly due to the fact that the railway company made promises that it couldn't keep, relying on wishful thinking.
Bob found his way to the subway and took U-Bahn number 6. He didn't even have to think about the right stop. He got out automatically and switched to the streetcar. Fifteen minutes later, he left the streetcar and started walking toward Lisa and Horst's house.
He always enjoyed this walk. It was uphill but with trees on both sides of the quiet street and little traffic. Stuttgart's topology was like a deep bowl with steep sides. Down at the bottom were the train station, the shopping districts, the businesses, all the traffic, and the terrible air quality. Up around the edges, where Lisa and Horst lived, the air was clean and refreshing.
As so often when he took this stroll, he thought about how he and Lisa had met. After he graduated from the private school, he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life.
He did some volunteer work, did his alternative service as an aide in a nursing home to avoid being drafted, then took part-time, dead-end jobs. When he turned twenty-five, Oma put her foot down and told him he had to take advantage of the educational possibilities he had here in Germany, the ones that he never would have had in Yugoslavia.
Bob then thought he might like to study something practical, and chose automotive technology at the University of Stuttgart. He found a small apartment close to the campus in downtown Stuttgart, not far from the train station. This choice of a major turned out to be a five-year mistake as he didn't like cars and never got a driver's license, but it brought him to Stuttgart.
He met Lisa at church, in the St. Eberhard's Cathedral in downtown Stuttgart. He no longer only went to church to please Oma. There was something about church services that calmed him, that he drew strength from.
One Sunday he stayed for the after-services brunch where Lisa was serving the food. They got to talking and discovered that they were soulmates.
Lisa was tall and had long, red hair. She had just started nurses' training and said she loved the work. Bob said he wished he had some kind of work he loved. He had finished his automotive degree and still didn't know what he wanted to do.
Today, Bob found himself at Lisa's door and stopped daydreaming. The house was pleasantly large without being pretentious, built in the 1960s, two-story, brick with the usual outside white-cement covering, and a dark slate roof.
Lisa filled the tiny front yard with flowers, and Bob knew the back yard was a huge grassy area where children and grandchildren could romp to their heart's content.
He rang the bell and Lisa opened the door. She was as tall as he was, or perhaps a little taller, and her bright red hair was now a kind of auburn flecked with white. She would never get her teenager figure back, having shifted from model to matronly, but her infectious smile never changed.
She hugged him and said, "Robert, come in. It's so wonderful that you could find time to visit us."
Bob walked into the hallway, took off his sunglasses, hung up his jacket and beret, deposited his backpack on the floor, and wandered into the comfortable living room.
An aged collie raised his head and wagged his tail as Bishop Bob walked over the clean but permanently stained carpet. As always, he sat down on the worn leather couch and Lisa took her place on the recliner on the other side of the little cherrywood coffee table.
"Would you like some juice as usual?" she asked.
"You know me too well," Bob answered. "A few cookies would be nice, too."
Lisa laughed and disappeared into the kitchen. She returned with a bottle of apple juice and a plate of cookies.
"How are things going for you?" she asked.
Bob washed down the first cookie with a gulp of juice. "I can't complain," he said. "The nuncio is on my back about submitting my request for retirement."
"You don't want to retire," Lisa said. Her sweet face crinkled as she smiled.
"No, I really don't," Bob answered. "I like the job, and I think I can continue to do it well enough for a few more years. However, I work at the pleasure of the pope, and it is fairly certain that he will grant me the retirement I don't even want."
"You know," Lisa began. "You'll have to retire sooner or later. Why not now when you are healthy enough to enjoy it? There are enough other things you could do. You could help out in any parish. Horst and I would love to see more of you, and of course so would Michael and his family."
Tact. One of Lisa's greatest virtues, besides knowing him better than he knew himself. Knowing when to say just enough but never too much. Bob's memories returned.
After he met Lisa those many years ago, he continued to work here and there as an aide in a nursing home while she finished her nurses' training. They spent more and more time together and became lovers.
Lisa did volunteer work at a hospice most weekends. As her nursing skills improved, she was more and more useful there. When she completed her training, they immediately hired her as a nurse.
Bob told her about his beloved Oma and about how he looked forward to having grandchildren, since Oma told him grandchildren were the best part of life. When he said that, Lisa just laughed her sweet laugh.
She got him more involved in the activities at St. Eberhard's, and Bob met the pastor there, a man not much older than he was. Father Bechtold was an excellent listener, and Bob found himself enjoying many lively conversations with him, often about what Bob found wrong with the Church.
Whenever he gave it any thought, Bob thought his life was fine, that he was happy. He had a girlfriend, he earned enough money to live on, what more did he want?
Then Oma died. It must have been very sudden. A neighbor found her collapsed over her tomato plants in the little garden plot she had rented. Bob was devastated and berated himself for not visiting Oma more often, for not noticing her health issues.
Father Bechtold offered to accompany him to Tauberbischofsheim and arrange the funeral service as Bob didn't even know the new parish priest there. Lisa couldn't come because she had already volunteered to spend the next four days working at the hospice. Two of the nurses there were sick, and they really needed her.
The time in Tauberbischofsheim wasn't as bad as Bob had feared. So many of Oma's neighbors and friends came to console him. It was comforting to know that people had appreciated her, had recognized her for the wonderful person she was.
The new priest in Oma's parish was also very kind to Bob, telling him that he wished he had had the opportunity to get to know Bob's grandmother, that she sounded like a kind and loving person.
Bob was genuinely surprised at how the conversations helped him deal with the loss of his beloved Oma. It was comforting to talk about her, to exchange anecdotes. On the train back to Stuttgart, Bob mentioned to Father Bechtold his regret that he hadn't managed to find a profession, a life's work, for himself while Oma still lived, which had been her constant worry.
"Have you ever considered becoming a priest?" Father Bechtold asked. "You know, next month there is an information week in the Wilhelmsstift in Tübingen for men who might be interested in the priesthood. You stay at the dorm with other candidates for the priesthood, attend a few theology lectures, and get an impression of what this life would be like."
Bob had laughed. "No way," he said. "I'm too old for that, and celibacy is definitely not my lifestyle."
Father Bechtold backed down. "Okay," he said. "But think about it."
Strangely enough, Bob couldn't stop thinking about it. The two priests he had had dealings with had impressed him with their dedication and the obvious joy they found in their work.
It turned out that this information week in Tübingen was the same week that Lisa had to work double shifts at the hospice. So Bob, out of curiosity, signed up and went.
It was an amazing week. Bob got very little sleep; he was always arguing with someone or other. The people he argued with were students, professors, the then bishop of Rottenburg, and the vicar general. He disagreed with many of them, but was forced to respect their intelligence, their knowledge, and their good will. He was surprised to see how many different kinds of people became priests.
What made him seriously consider joining them were the religious services, whether traditional, alternative, pompous, or minimal in pageantry. The ceremonies, the music, the prayers all touched him at a very basic, almost primitive level. He felt that this was where he belonged.
Now he understood how Oma had known that they had to leave the concentration camp, even though others tried to talk her out of it. She had felt deep down that this was what she had to do, and he knew now that this was what he was meant to do; this was the work he had been searching for.
He signed up for the courses to begin in the fall, and returned to Stuttgart. Lisa met him at the train station, and he spontaneously invited her to supper there. He ordered juice as always, never having developed a taste or desire for alcohol. To his surprise, Lisa also said she would like some apple juice instead of her usual glass of wine.
Then he couldn't stop talking, about how fascinating it had been in Tübingen, how many intelligent men he had argued with, how grateful he was to her for having encouraged him to go to church in Stuttgart years ago. Finally, he admitted that he was thinking about becoming a priest.
Lisa listened patiently without even trying to interrupt. When he finally stopped talking long enough to take a drink of juice, she asked quietly, "What about the grandchildren you wanted to have, the things you were sure were essential for a good life?"
Bob, naturally clueless, especially when he was enthusiastic about something, answered the theoretical question with the glib answers he had picked up on Tübingen. "A priest's life doesn't have to be lonely," he said. "They encourage you to cultivate a group of friends you can depend on. When it works, a celibate lifestyle makes you more available for all the people who need you."
Lisa laughed softly. "That's not what I'm talking about," she said. "I just found out that we, you and I, are going to have a baby. I'm pregnant. You said you wanted grandchildren. Well, the first step toward grandchildren is children."
Bob was thunderstruck. It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that he was a selfish, oblivious oaf. "I don't know what to say," he began as his eyes wandered around the restaurant before returning to Lisa.
"No, I do know what to say," Bob said firmly. "We'll get married, and I'll get a job as an automotive engineer. I'm sure I have chances either with Mercedes or Porsche."
Lisa shook her head. "No," she said. "That's not what we're going to do. You have finally found your life's goal, the work that will give your life meaning. You will go on to become a fantastic priest. I know you have that talent in you."
"What about you and the baby?" he asked.
"It looks like I'll also change my plans," she said. "Sometimes life sends you off in directions other than what you were aiming for. These past few years at the hospice I have gotten to know Horst Vomstein. His wife died of cancer there two years ago, and I took care of her. Ever since then, Horst has volunteered to help at the hospice, and we have become good friends.
"He is a good, decent man," she continued. "Only two things in his life have devastated him, the loss of his wife, and, before that, the knowledge that he can't father children. He and his wife desperately wanted a child, and the medical exams showed that the infertility was his problem.
"I know that he would jump at the chance for a wife and a family, and I have the feeling that he probably loves me, that that's why he keeps hanging around the hospice. So, Horst and I should get married. This child will be officially his."
Bob shook his head. "No, that's too risky. Things will go wrong. You won't love him; he won't love you. Everyone will notice that the child isn't his."
Lisa shook her head and her beautiful red hair flew around her face. "Trust me," she said. "This is best, and this is the way it's going to be. You and I will remain good friends and will help each other as much as we can. You will come to my wedding and congratulate us. I will come to your ordination and congratulate you. We will be both find happiness keeping our respective vows."
Then she dug into her salad. Bob couldn't eat. After he walked her home, it occurred to him that this was yet another time when a strong woman made the decisions he was too cowardly to make on his own.
Lisa, of course, turned out to be absolutely right. He met Horst, who was indeed a good man who was obviously head-over-heels in love with Lisa. Lisa and Horst were married in St. Eberhard's Cathedral. Later when he was trying to understand Hebrew grammar in Tübingen, he got the birth announcement. Lisa and Horst were overjoyed to welcome a son, Michael, into the world.
Bob got his degree in theology and was ordained a priest. Lisa, Horst, and Michael were at his ordination. Bob became a vicar in Bad Saulgau and Biberach, then a parish priest in Schwäbisch Gmünd, then a member of the bishop's council in the chancery office in Rottenburg and then, to his amazement, Bishop of Rottenburg.
Throughout the years, he was a welcome guest at Lisa and Horst's home, and he was introduced to Michael as Father Bob, later as Bishop Bob. Michael considered him to be some kind of designated uncle, a friend of his parents. Michael inherited his mother's red hair, and, if you looked closely, Bob's eyes and cheekbones.
Breaking away from this daydream, Bob asked Lisa, "How is Michael doing?"
"Don't you read the papers?" she asked. "He was just elected mayor of Stuttgart, and they say that won't be the end of his political career. Horst was always involved in politics, and he took Michael along at every opportunity. Michael is good at politics; he has found his life's work."
"Is he coming over today?" Bob asked.
"Of course," Lisa answered. "Michael and his family will be here in about an hour. Horst should be around later. Ever since he retired ten years ago, he has been busier than ever with his volunteer work."
As always, Lisa kept her promise. Michael, his wife Silke, and their three daughters, all with bright red hair, showed up an hour later. Soon thereafter Horst came home from his parish council meeting.
It was a pleasant evening. Lisa brought one delicious dish after another to the table, Michael's daughters talked about their tennis tournament, Horst and Michael analyzed the current political situation in Stuttgart, and Bob listened and relaxed. Lisa truly had a congenial, happy family, probably mostly due to her hard work, although Horst might also have contributed one good deed or another.
The next day Bob went with Silke to watch Michael's daughters play in their tennis tournament. They weren't that good, but seemed to enjoy playing. Silke kept apologizing for bragging about her daughters, but she was so proud of them. She said they were just as ambitious as their father.
Saturday evening Bob, Lisa, and Horst enjoyed another wonderful, home-cooked meal and talked late into the night about everything on earth and beyond. It was so relaxing for Bob to talk to people who cared about him and didn't want anything from him, the opposite of his usual workday experiences.
Sunday morning, they went to Mass in the St. Eberhard's Cathedral, and Lisa and Horst accompanied Bob through the pedestrian zone to the train station. He reluctantly took the next train to Rottenburg, which involved changing trains in Tübingen. He had to be careful not to fall asleep.
Monday morning Herr Rees, the chancery office chauffeur, picked up Bishop Bob and his auxiliary bishop and drove them to the Bishops' Conference in Fulda. Herr Rees remained true to his reputation and set records for speed on the autobahn. Bishop Bob closed his eyes and prayed.
The conference itself was as mind-numbingly boring, as Bishop Bob had feared. Hour-long arguments and harangues about trivialities. Even the religious services couldn't make up for the boring meetings.
Tuesday morning in the short interval after breakfast and before the first session, Frau Mangold called. "The nuncio really needs your request for retirement," she said. "He called again this morning. You have your laptop with you, and I know the seminary where you are all staying has facilities for you to print a letter. Write the letter, take your laptop to the secretarial station, and ask them print it out for you. Then sign it, and ask the office manager of the seminary to send it to the nuncio for you. I know Frau Zimmermann. She will be happy to help you."
Bishop Bob knew better than to try to give Frau Mangold some excuse as to why her orders were completely impossible. It would be better for him and his peace of mind to just do what she said.
He dug his laptop out from under a pile of papers, opened the file for episcopal correspondence, and pounded out a letter to the pope, asking to be allowed to retire on his seventy-fifth birthday. He followed Frau Mangold's instructions, and his letter to the pope went on its way to the nuncio in Berlin.
Two interminable days later, he and the auxiliary bishop were on their way back to Rottenburg. Herr Rees achieved top speed on the autobahn stretches again and got them back to the chancery office in record time.
Bishop Bob ran up the stairs to his apartment, grateful to still be alive. He got ready for bed, collapsed, and slept through the night. The beds in the seminary in Fulda had been unusually uncomfortable, or maybe he really was getting too old for this.
Friday morning, the priests were waiting in the auditorium on the ground floor long before Bishop Bob felt like giving them his report about the bishops' conference. He didn't know how to package four days of boredom into four entertaining hours, and didn't even want to try.
He went directly into his office before going down to the auditorium. His desk looked uncharacteristically loaded down with piles of papers that he probably had to read. Depressing. He went through the connecting door to see if Frau Mangold needed him, but she was on the phone. He walked toward the door, but she waved at him and hung up.
"You need to call a Michael Vomstein," she said. "He said that his father Horst died suddenly last night. I have his cell phone number."
"No," Bishop Bob interrupted her. "No, that can't be. Horst was in perfect health on Sunday."
"Why don't you call him," Frau Mangold suggested. "I'll send the auxiliary bishop to give the priests the report about the bishops' conference."
Bishop Bob stumbled back into his office and closed the connecting door. He dialed Michael's number. "Michael," he said. "What?"
Michael's voice trembled. "Papa is dead, Bishop Bob. The doctors say it was an aneurysm in his brain. Can you come? Mama is in bad shape. She and Papa were inseparable. I don't know..."
"Of course I'll come," Bishop Bob said. "Is Lisa at home? Or is she with you?"
"She's at home," he said. "Please come if you can."
Bishop Bob went through the connecting door and said to Frau Mangold, "Please call the chauffeur and have him pick me up here. I need to get to Stuttgart as fast as possible."
She looked up, surprised, but immediately reached for the phone. Bishop Bob rushed back up to his apartment, quickly stuffed some things into his backpack, and ran down to the entrance of the chancery office. Herr Rees was waiting for him and drove him to Stuttgart at an insane speed.
When he stopped in front of Lisa's house, Bishop Bob said to Herr Rees, "You can return to Rottenburg. I don't know how long I'll be here."
"Just let me know when I should pick you up," Herr Rees said quietly. He was a good man, tactful, considerate, and discrete. Bishop Bob didn't have to worry about any gossip coming from him.
Bob walked up to the door, overwhelmed by a combination of feelings, respect and gratitude to Horst for taking such good care of Lisa, feelings of responsibility and guilt with respect to Lisa and Michael, and simple sadness. This was the first death that made him feel as helpless as he had felt when Oma died.
Before he could ring the bell, Lisa opened the door. Without thinking, he hugged her. "I'm so sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."
Lisa led him into the living room and sat down in the recliner. He took his usual spot on the couch. "It all seems so unreal," she said. "Horst was out in the back yard playing badminton with the grandchildren, and then all three girls ran into the house and said Grandpa was lying on the ground. I ran out and saw him there. I know how to perform CPR; I've kept up my nursing skills. I told the oldest girl to call for an ambulance, which she did. But Horst was dead; there was nothing anyone could do. They say it was an aneurysm."
"I'm so sorry," Bob repeated. "What can I do? Can I help you with the funeral arrangements? Should I call Father Striet at St. Eberhard's?"
"Yes," Lisa said. "That would help. I'm sorry. It's just all so overwhelming. I know there are things I need to do, but all I want to do is close my eyes and pretend this is all just a bad dream." She looked out the window.
Bob was glad he could make himself useful. He didn't even have to pull the bishop's card to get things done. Horst had been a very active and very popular member of St. Eberhard's parish. Once people heard of his death, everyone wanted to help with the funeral.
It was a very moving ceremony. The parish choir outdid itself singing the requiem. Father Striet held a very comforting sermon. One person after another said how much they admired and would miss Horst. Lisa looked less devastated, and, as always, she immediately started comforting others when they came to make their condolences.
The neighbors kept coming to Lisa's house and bringing food, most of which she passed on to the local food bank because she just couldn't eat that much. Michael seemed to be sleepwalking the whole time, barely responsive, but after a week his pressing duties as mayor forced him to snap back as far as work was concerned.
A few days after the funeral Lisa started straightening up the house and answering the condolence cards, a mountain of which lay on the coffee table. Bob looked at her and started to talk. "Lisa," he said. "You know I have to retire on my birthday; that's less than six months from now. I was thinking, I could move to Stuttgart and be a part of your life again, and maybe of Michael's."
Lisa took off her reading glasses and looked at him. "You've always been a part of my life, Robert. A lot of things didn't go as we planned or thought, but we've each had a good life, a life where we felt useful and appreciated."
"Yes, yes," Bob said impatiently. "But now I could do more. As a retired bishop, I can pick and choose what responsibilities I take on. We probably shouldn't live together, but we could be together. Michael looks so lost without his father. We could tell him that he still has a father who cares about him."
"No," Lisa said, or rather the word exploded out of her mouth. "Horst is the only father Michael ever knew, and he was a wonderful father to him. I refuse to complicate Michael's memories of Horst, and I won't let you.
"What about your vows?" she asked. "I've been faithful to my marriage vows. Have you been as faithful to yours?"
Bob chose to laugh. "I've always kept the celibacy and poverty ones. The previous bishops would probably say that I never quite managed the obedience thing. I never believed that celibacy was a good idea for priests, though. It was a political decision in church history and should have been thrown out years ago.
"I don't want to put you under pressure," he continued. "But give it some thought. I could be completely here for you, and I can't imagine anything I want to do more."
Lisa smiled, the first time he saw her smile in this sad time. "Thank you, Robert," she said. "Thank you for all your help and for being here for me. For now, I think you should go back to Rottenburg and return to the bishop's work you have left. I need some time to get used to my new situation and make a new life for myself."
"Then you will think about it?" Bishop Bob asked.
"Yes," Lisa laughed softly. "I'll be thinking about all kinds of things, including you. Now, do you want to call your chauffeur or can I take you to the train station?"
Bob stood up. "I guess that will have to be good enough for me. I'll walk to the streetcar. We'll talk about our future more, until I am officially retired, okay?"
Lisa smiled and nodded. Bob went to the guest room, packed his backpack, and went to the door. Lisa hugged him and touched his cheek with her hand, but didn't kiss him goodbye. Bob started out on his accustomed trek back to work.
The next day he got up early and made it to his office even before Frau Mangold started work. He looked at the intimidating stack of papers on his desk and sighed. If Frau Mangold put them there, they were his problem.
Frau Mangold came into her office precisely at seven forty-five. "Herr Bishop," she said.
"I'm back," he said. "I do remember calling you and telling you I was busy because of a death in the family."
"Yes," Frau Mangold said. "My sincere condolences. However, you never said when you would be back."
"Yeah, my bad," Bishop Bob said. "So, where would you suggest that I start?" He pointed to the stack of papers that seemed quite stable despite its height.
"I'll get you some juice from the cafeteria," she said. "At precisely eight o'clock you have to be in your office. The nuncio will try to reach you again. He has been calling every day for the past week."
"Oh, right," Bishop Bob said. "He probably has news from the pope that I will be allowed to retire on my birthday and that the Vatican will start the process of choosing my successor. That's not exactly urgent, but I'll be glad to hear from him."
"Glad?" Frau Mangold stopped dead in her tracks on the way to the door. "I thought you didn't want to retire. You've been complaining about the age limit for bishops for years."
"Things change," Bishop Bob said. "Don't worry about your job security. Any new bishop will be very fortunate if you choose to stay and help him."
"Hmm," Frau Mangold answered and left. Bishop Bob took the top paper off the stack. A group of parishioners in Herrenberg was complaining because the parish priest there didn't have a sufficiently devout look on his face when he handed out the communion wafers. Fortunately, Frau Mangold had already prepared a tactful answer that he only needed to sign.
He reached for the next piece of paper as the phone rang. He could see on the display that it was the nuncio calling from Berlin. "Hello, your Excellency," Bishop Bob said into the phone. The nuncio was a traditionally minded bishop from Brazil who appreciated respectful forms of address.
"Good news," the nuncio said in his heavily accented German. "The Holy Father is refusing your request for retirement. He says he needs good bishops to stay on as long as their health allows."
"What?" Bishop Bob asked. "I thought that was only cardinals."
"Well," the nuncio said. "This pope wants to make changes, and this is one of them. You need to write him and tell him that you will gratefully stay on as long as God gives you the strength."
"If I now want to retire?" Bishop Bob asked.
"Forget it," the nuncio spat out. "That would be a seriously insulting expression of ingratitude, unless, of course, you are truly incapable of carrying out your duties."
Bishop Bob sighed. Damn. "How much time do I have to answer the pope's generous offer?" he asked.
"I expect your letter in precisely one week," the nuncio said. "Ask your very capable secretary to write it for you, then sign it, and get it off to me. God bless you."
Bishop Bob leaned back in his chair and shook his head. He could only think of a variation of the old saying, that the only thing worse than not getting what you want is getting what you want, especially when you no longer want it.
Now what? It wasn't that he was afraid of the consequences of insulting the pope. This pope didn't insult that easily. In fact, Bishop Bob would like to hang around as bishop for a few more years. There were projects he wanted to finish, others that he wanted to start.
Yet, as of the past week, he had also thought that this was the time of his life that he could spend with Lisa, when he could make things up to her. After all, in his selfish enthusiasm, he had abandoned her, even though she assured him that it was all right and that it had worked out very well.
Not knowing what else to do, he called Lisa.
"Robert," she said. "I didn't expect to hear from you so soon. What's new?"
"Bad news, I think," he said. "The pope doesn't want me to retire yet."
"That's wonderful," she said. "You didn't want to retire. You have a thousand things you still want to accomplish as bishop."
"No, that's all unimportant now," he said. "Who knows how much time we have left in this life? I want to be there for you, to make up for all the years when I wasn't."
"You were always there for me, Robert," Lisa said. "I am so grateful to have you in my life. Hasn't our relationship so far been enough for you? Can't you imagine continuing as bishop and, when you have time, visiting an old friend and her son occasionally?"
The trouble was, he could imagine just that, but it felt selfish, not right somehow.
"Robert," Lisa said. "Listen to me and do what I tell you. Write the pope and tell him you will stay on as bishop. Then go back to work. I'll be busy with my family and the house and garden and volunteer work. You will always be welcome here, and we will have all kinds of things to tell each other."
So, just as he had done so many times in the past, Bishop Bob acquiesced and obeyed a strong woman in his life. Based on experience, this was the best and right thing to do. He was fairly sure that God would approve, if he bothered to ask her.
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