Hanna’s departure from Heidelberg ends her relationship with Michael without explanation or farewell. She leaves her apartment and her job, registers a move to Hamburg without supplying an address, and makes herself impossible for him to follow. For Michael, the loss is not only the sudden absence of a lover: it becomes the consequence he assigns to his own earlier failure to acknowledge her, and it reshapes how he remembers the months that came before.

The Disappearance

The day after Michael’s last sighting of Hanna, he comes to her apartment at the usual time and rings the bell. Nothing in the rooms seems changed; he can hear the clock ticking. The stillness offers no sign that she is gone, and he sits on the stairs where he had waited before. Only then does he recognize how little he has known about her daily life. In the first months of their relationship, he had known which line she was working, even though he never repeated his attempt to accompany or collect her. Later, he stopped asking and stopped wondering. Her disappearance makes that gradual withdrawal from her life newly visible.

Michael tries to find her through the ordinary records and workplaces that might still connect her to the city. From a telephone booth at Wilhelmsplatz, he calls the streetcar company, is passed from one person to another, and learns that Hanna has not come to work. He then asks at the carpenter’s shop in the yard for the building owner’s name and address and rides to Kirchheim. A woman tells him that Hanna moved out that morning. When Michael asks about the furniture, the woman answers, “What’s it to you?” and slams the window in the door. The small exchange gives him no information about Hanna’s destination or possessions; instead, it closes off the one lead he has managed to follow.

Leaving Work and the City

At the streetcar company’s administration building, Michael reaches the personnel department. The man in charge tells him Hanna called early enough that the company could arrange a substitute and said she would not be coming back, period. The manager recalls that two weeks earlier he had offered to train her as a driver while she was sitting in Michael’s chair. Her departure therefore ends not only her current work but also the possibility of the new role the company had just offered her. The account gives Michael evidence that Hanna’s decision was deliberate, while leaving its reason undisclosed.

It takes Michael several days to think of checking the citizens’ registration office. There he learns that Hanna has declared that she is moving to Hamburg but has given no address. The entry confirms that she has left Heidelberg and identifies her stated destination, but it offers no means of reaching her. Her departure is thus recorded in the city’s paperwork and withheld from Michael at the same time: he can establish where she says she is going, but not where she can be found.

Michael’s Guilt and Recognition

In the days after Hanna vanishes, Michael feels ill and carefully conceals his distress from his parents and siblings. He joins the family conversation a little, eats a little, attends school and goes to the swimming pool, where he spends afternoons in a place where no one will look for him. He longs for Hanna, but he describes his guilt as worse than his physical desire. He believes he should have run to her immediately when she stood before him. In his retrospective account, that missed response gathers up what he calls his earlier halfheartedness: the denial of Hanna and his betrayal of her. He interprets her leaving as punishment for that failure.

Michael tries to unsettle his certainty by questioning whether the person he saw was really Hanna. He had not made out her face, so he reasons that perhaps he could not know; perhaps he had not seen her at all. But the argument does not persuade him. He concludes that it was Hanna, and that by the time he understood what the encounter meant, it was too late. The departure consequently carries two related losses: Hanna is gone from the city, and Michael believes he has already failed at the moment when he might have responded to her.

The Long Aftermath

After Hanna leaves, Michael continues watching for her everywhere. He must get used to afternoons that no longer have the structure they had acquired around her, and to opening books without first wondering whether they would be suitable for reading aloud. The possibility of reading to her had become part of how he approached books; in her absence, that habit remains as a reminder of the relationship. He also remembers sleeping gestures directed toward her and calling her name at night, which his brother reports at the family table, as well as school classes spent dreaming of and thinking about her.

The guilt that torments Michael in the first weeks gradually fades, but fading does not mean that he forgets Hanna or resolves what happened. He avoids her building and takes different routes. Six months later, his family moves to another part of town. His memory offers an image for the diminishing immediacy of her presence: Hanna remains behind like a city receding as a train leaves its station, still somewhere in the past, yet no longer accompanying him everywhere.

Michael remembers his final school years and first years at university as happy, effortless, and light. He passes his school examinations without difficulty and chooses legal studies because he cannot think of anything else he really wants to do. In retrospect, however, he questions whether this memory of happiness is accurate: painful and embarrassing situations return when he examines it, and he recognizes that he has not overcome Hanna. The disappearance marks the beginning of an interval in which life seems easy partly because its memories remain sparse and because the loss has receded from daily view. Its decisive consequence persists beneath that apparent ease: Michael’s later recollection connects his failure to respond to Hanna with his attempts to avoid humiliation, guilt, and renewed emotional exposure.