it said on the book. “Clare Corrigan.” But the name was crossed out, and in somebody else’s handwriting it said: Lohninger, Elfriede. The last composition in the book was on the theme: The Significance of Our Reservoir as a National Symbol. But you almost couldn’t read the composition anymore, because it’d been marked up in red all over the place. And written at the end: “Unsatisfactory!” And now, this was the same handwriting that wrote “Lohninger, Elfriede” on the cover, namely, Engljähringer’s handwriting. “Completely off topic!” Engljähringer scrawled on, but for Brenner it was the complete opposite, for him, of course, the topic was spot-on: “I’d like to write a little bit about a company that’s played an important role in the building of the dam.” That’s how she started off. And the very first word, Engljähringer the schoolteacher had scribbled under it in red—must’ve been because maybe you don’t begin a composition with “I,” like they used to say about letter-writing.
