This perfect condition changed drastically when Walter was drafted after his apprenticeship. He joined the military for the mandatory eighteen months. Madeleine moved to Heidelberg after receiving her high-school diploma to attend a language school. Now they were separated farther than ever before. Walter was stationed in bases far away, and it became more difficult to see each other even on weekends.
Madeleine tried hard to keep the connection going, but it happened anyhow. One day, after she returned from a school field trip to France, she confessed via telephone and with tears to Walter that she had slept with a Frenchman. During the ten days she had been away, they had sent each other letters almost every day and phoned many times.
When Walter heard the news, something snapped in him. He broke off the relationship right then, even though Madeleine’s mother and sister both tried to mediate.
The same night, on weekend leave from the base, he went by bus back to Bad Homburg and got drunk in a disco club where he knew a few of the people present. A familiar-looking girl sat at the table next to him, and having met before, they started talking. A few years back, her family had been the talk of the town because of the two daughters. They were somewhat branded in town, and gossip about them circulated. Walter was happy to meet her because he had heard the rumors about her suicide attempt and was curious to find out more about it. Walter liked her sincerity and directness while they talked and drank. As he and Denise left the bar, Walter asked her for a ride home, and she said OK.
When they arrived at his parents’ apartment, they drank another bottle of alcohol in his room, and then Denise said she had to leave because her work started soon. She worked as a nurse in a hospital about twenty miles north of Frankfurt and lived within the hospital complex.
Walter did not want to be alone and asked, “Can I come with you?”
She said, “Are you sure, it is a long way back to Frankfurt, but why not?”
When he woke up in the morning with a hangover, he was looking into a baby’s face next to him.
Denise and Walter tried to sustain a connection that was different from Walter’s first experiences with love. The new liaison contained weightiness and fear, which were new to him. It also included a heavy dose of realism because of her baby boy, who had come into the world after her previous relationship had ended. Madeleine’s playfulness was replaced by seriousness and skeptical questions from Denise, who feared that her newly found companion would suddenly vanish. She was very eager to please Walter in any way. This became shockingly apparent one day when he found out that Denise had been to the plastic surgeon.
She was on the phone crying. “Please come to me, I am in pain.”
“What happened?” he asked.
Denise answered, “I had nose surgery.”
He found her with bandages across her face. It was extremely swollen and in yellow and blue colors.
Denise told Walter, “You said that I have a hook on my nose—that’s why I did it.”
A speechless Walter remembered that they once talked about her nose and that he mentioned the little hook, but it had never been a concern for him. He told her that, and she cried even more. It took a long time until her face healed completely.