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Mariella Mehr 
Maria Schoenhammer, Translator
Translated from the German by Maria Schoenhammer
On May 4th, 1960, Rosa Zwiebelbuch, still a bit shy, was standing in the studio of the eyemaker Adolf Stauch, a buckskin in her hand and a vat full of water at her feet. Through the open window the noise of Seifertgasse drifted into the room--people hastening by, tripping along, clomping, laughing, chatting, calling, joking and singing, yelling and coughing. Fragments of music came from the house across the street, the animal house, Cosi Fan Tutte, she could understand "Amoooohohohore." At the window, the figure of a man appeared, strangely dressed, a fully-grown man stuffed into a boy´s brown uniform. At the right arm he wore a black band with a swastika which Rosa found ominous. Didn´t Father Zwiebelbuch have an entire box full of this kind of cross in his attic, and didn´t he rummage around in there once in a while, talking about a "betrayed future"; and kneeling in the dust, he would pour tears on it--something he otherwise never did. He must be a traveler, Rosa contemplated, someone who misses his wife. With contempt she scrutinized the faded brown of his attire. She and the master would be spared of his company, someone like that walks the world with empty pockets and passes through Seifertgasse without any spare change.
Rosa Zwiebelbuch had set out early to fulfill her new duties after a night of dreamless sleep at the Blue Angel, a rooming house Master Stauch had recommended warmly because, for the amenities offered, the monthly rent seemed appropriate to him and he actually planned on paying it. Rosa could not yet comprehend what freedom felt like, having hardly tasted it. Without regret she thought about the farewell from her father that hadn´t taken place. He had returned to the cage she had shared with him for eighteen years. Grimly, Rosa Zwiebelbuch wrung out the buckskin over the vat. Freedom--she wanted to take advantage of it, diligently and thoroughly.
The eyes, these artificial eyes. Treasures, adornments, truths, signs of God and beauty. Rosa cast an eye into paradise, and ate of the apple handed to her by Adolf Stauch. She had always known the snake was of another sex. Rosa endured happiness.
She must not take her eyes off Adolf Stauch´s house. She circled around it, again and again, looking for the high narrow gable of the house, inhaling the new air through her nose. She made her rounds without Father Zwiebelbuch. In his socket Adolf Stauch had put in the eye with the leaden sea and the Hundred-Armed One. In silence Father Zwiebelbuch had then taken the basket with the preserves, the cold chicken, and the bread made by the wailing and moaning Anna Zwiebelbuch. He had taken his basket in silence and left the realm of Adolf Stauch. He took the night train. Without having extended his hand to Rosa. Sullenly he sat in the murky compartment. Left the foreign country. At customs he met the man in the dark raincoat and took the train that the man in the dark raincoat had taken before. With a gloomy look on his face he sat down in the murky compartment and went back to the morass that was his home.
On the evening of her arrival Adolf Stauch had thoroughly introduced Rosa to the secrets of his dainty cabinets. There they were, cradled in silvery bowls: the glass eyes, a collection of the finest craftsmanship from which the creator did not want to part. Eye after eye was entrusted to Rosa´s hands, to Rosa´s wide hands, for her to feel the eyes, the flawless glass, with the skillfully shaped iris and the legends in the depths of the pupils.
Moments like these are not suitable for babbling on about ideas of time and space, they are timeless. In moments like these even Rosa had all of life in front of her and all of death. It would change later on, gifts are not made for eternity. Otherwise how could we manage, what with the limited space up there where a visa will no longer admit you to eternal glory and where warranty cards even for the most necessary transfigurations are extremely rare.
In moments like these--Rosa felt it only vaguely--we get an advance on supreme happiness, no matter how much the priest is railing and preaching about price increases as if heaven were a pay-envelope. In Rosa´s hands the eyes came to life gently; not wanting to scare her, they whispered and murmured, lest some cruel sound should disrupt Rosa´s happiness. Her deplorably abused past fell off her and with it her lodger Zwiebelbuch who had left behind her body as a rather blighted garret. That too shall pass, it whispered gently in Rosa´s hands, soon that room will be cleaned up and Zwiebelbuch´s shadow gone. The eyes didn´t say that someone else was already waiting to move into the garret, in short order she should have sheets and a chamber pot ready. No, the eyes in Rosa´s hands were whispering stories as if to provide her with shield and sword but did not give away the coordinates for Rosa´s future. The artificial eye knows neither mathematics nor tea leaves by which to prophesy.
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