they took away everything we had possessed of value. We are here half starved and arrived quite demolished in our lovely valley. Although it is close to Jena, but also close to Rothenstein, where this maternity clinic is, which actually exists. So it was not a rumor, but a fact, and I'm glad we came here. The hardships are forgotten now, Hannes can work at a neighbor to food, and I already had an initial investigation in the mountain, as we call the clinic. The doctor there was very nice and said that I could soon receive a child as soon as they had a free place in the mountain. Imagine, I am already on the waiting list on number 49! In the next few months, it would be my turn. I look insane, although it even before I shudder to live for nine months in the mountain, without the sun and with little light. That must be to provide the embryos with enough protection from the radiation. Unfortunately, the thing has a catch: Hannes may not be the father! All men seem to be infertile by now. Only artificially fertilized embryos have a chance to grow up healthy. The doctors say that they have a special radiation resistance. A natural conception has only a tiny chance of giving birth to a healthy child. The doctors refuse to take this risk. They say that would be waste of resources here. Hannes was pissed off when he heard about it. You know that it can be hot-tempered, and I was able to stop him with gentle force them to hold a larger riots in the mountain. Now, as a precaution, I always go there alone and do not tell him. That's the way it works best.
I think of you so often and of what luck you have to find such a healthy and gifted child. This thought gives me strength, because I think that even if I were to give birth to a child now, it is still similar to you and your golie. I've resigned myself to that, and Hannes, too, is behind it. That is probably the tragedy of our time. But it hurts! But I just babble in the day and do not even know if you can ever read my lines, not to mention if you understand everything that goes on inside me. But you are and will remain my best friend, and I know that you are sympathetic to me. I am already feeling better with this knowledge! Try to write to me too. I would like to stay in touch with you, especially if I'm in the mountains for so long!
Greetings and kisses
your
Marietta
The paper at the end curled at some points, as if someone had shed tears on it. But all that was already some time ago. It may be that the letter had been on the road for months. I too had the eyes overflowed while reading. I sat quietly for a long time. Instead of answering, I just hugged my now big 'baby' and hugged Golie tightly. "How nice that I have you," was all that I could say to sobbing.
When I read her letter, I sat down at my table and tried to formulate an adequate answer:
Dear Marietta,
I have no one here to whom I can entrust my LORD. But I can not stand my mixed feelings anymore. You will not believe what is going on in this small Polling. A stranger arrived to play Steffens organ and I am afraid to be completely at the mercy of him! You know me in my old times as a self-determined strong woman. But this is gone! I am his slave now! Impossible to think independently. I am totally torn as a mother and loving woman. Where is my way out?
Imagine he played the organ and I kicked the bubble bar, naked, enchained, blindfolded. He plays Chopin and I was not anymore on earth. I forgot all about the catastrophe and in my mind I only saw him, although I was in the organ box, far away.
Before I teased him and played the disagreeable one. He forced me with his horsewhip, he always carries with him, to undress me. I enjoyed the lashes on my skin.
Then I heard the music and was delighted about the beautiful pain. I know I am crazy!...
I could not go on writing. My description of the most intensive moment in my whole live overwhelmed me.
I crumpled the paper and threw it in my oven.
You have to be an actor
Gerstenmayer felt very uncomfortable and constantly looked around. But no one followed him as he stepped out of Baum's rumpled flat, at least nobody he'd noticed. Nevertheless, he felt watched. Glances met and pierced him from behind; he felt that. To make matters worse, it was also black in the sky, and a downpour announced.
Gerstenmayer considered what he should do now. Go to a public shelter and wait for the rain to stop? Just recently Christiane, his assistant, had told him about a double murder in one of these.
Then it occurred to him that the subway shaft had just been uncovered and that it was possible to walk well down there once you had crossed the Danube. The part of the shaft under the river has been under water since the disaster.
Out of deliberation, he forgot all about the explosive paper he wore in the inside pocket of his jacket.
"Why did not those who looked for something at the Professor hadn’t taken this paper? Did they really know the content? Did they look for something else? ", Gerstenmayer mumbled the sentences to himself.
He liked to do that because he imagined that he would be able to think more focused with acoustic support. He also read the difficult rules loud and clear in the lab, sometimes one, two, even three times before he really understood them.
Christiane liked to laugh at him when she caught him again in his self-explanations.
"Maybe they did not understand the content ever," came an important enlightenment that admittedly came out of his mouth very loudly.
"Why? Do you understand?", He heard clearly a voice next to him.
Where had this man in his black coat with an old-fashioned bowler or a melon on his head and a very British accent in his voice suddenly appeared?
Gerstenmayer was shocked and stopped as if petrified.
"Sir, wha-a-t do you mean? I do not understand your question. Or can you read some thoughts?"
"Not exactly, but I have good ears, and you've just chatted to yourself that 'they did not understand the content’. So I combine razor-sharp that you have strapped it. My clients and I are very interested in the content of writing in your jacket, and you will surely tell me. It should not be to your disadvantage. Otherwise ...", now the stranger's vulgar but still friendly face became rock hard. He grinned meanly and squinted at a hidden object in his pocket.
Gerstenmayer was visibly startled. "Since when do you call me with my first name?" He asked just to gain some time, then added, "How would I trust a stranger to confide in laboratory secrets?" Something better had not occurred to him in the near future.
"So, you work in a lab? Is there something like that anymore? And if so, where? About here in Vienna? You're getting more and more interesting! So I landed a direct hit!" The stranger was suddenly polite and friendly again.
Gerstenmayer realized that he had probably made a big mistake. He had gone to the fickle stranger and could not change it now. Suddenly a thought shot into his head, and he planned to counter the acting of his counterpart with a performance of his own.
Suddenly he dropped and, with painful facial pains and screaming, pretended to have fallen over a steel rod that had slipped over the road and injured himself. In a flash, he moistened his hand with saliva and smeared the reddish-brown rust of the iron down his leg. In the collapsing darkness it really looked something like blood, and the stranger reacted at first dumbfounded, but immediately pulled the gun out of his pocket and threatened his prisoner, that's how Gerstenmayer felt now.
After all, the stranger believed him this film-ready scene without suspicion. He threw his arm behind his back and held his mouth shut with his other hand to suppress the pathetic screaming. By that time they were already on the bank of the Danube, and the Chinese Vasudevas had become aware of their scream and ran to meet them.
The stranger was uncertain for a moment how he should behave now, but evaluated his chances of coming up against such superiority, despite his weapon very bad, let Gerstenmayer go jerky and piled with the annoying hiss between his lips: "Friend "See you again!"
His last look met Gerstenmayer's face, which showed relieved, triumphant features. Barely was the first Chinese at Gerstenmayer, the