It was nearly noon when I arose from the bed the next day.
I was dreading the inevitable hours to be spent consoling a dear friend for the loss of his love.
What is there really to say?
It happens to everyone. It was bound to happen. She's the lucky one. We'll all be seeing her soon.
No.
One does not say such things.
Time is the pale reckoner, and it eventually greets us all.
I sat at the window and smoked a cigarette.
The sunshine that had adorned the morning was reluctantly relenting to the gathering clouds.
There was an exaltation of larks lingering at the lantern post just beyond the pane of my window.
They sang in the awkward, toneless way in which one sings when one knows the time for morning songs is passed.
Time passes, and then catches us up again just as we come to believe that we have managed it or that we have in some way...
Saved it.
Time.
In a slavish manifestation of such delusion, I showered quickly because I wanted to make the most of it.
As I dressed I saw a rainbow in the sky.
Sigh...
I decided to to walk into the city.
It was a long walk.
I lost a couple of hours...
Again.
When I'd begun the sun was still clinging to its place in the sky despite the whisper of winds and the insipid darkness looming at horizon.
It was humid.
I'd begun to sweat.
The humidity was oppressive.
It was a miserable feeling, but then I thought of Anton and his loss...
Of feeling...
Of the one for whom he felt...
Everything.
It had begun to drizzle.
Nevertheless, I took the long way around Stuttgart West and eventually came to a small lake on which swans and ducks splashed playfully in the rain.
Beyond the lake there was a church to which I sometimes came in order to discern some thread among my thoughts.
And then almost on queue, the drizzle became a storm.
It was a surreal metamorphosis.
It was splendid.
It was healing.
It was needed.
I lifted my head and breathed her in...
Deeply...
The gale.
I breathed her in...
And then I exhaled.
I did this several times...
Until I became calm and was able once again to look around and process that which I beheld.
Stuttgart is a favourite place of mine for many reasons, but one of them is the Feuersee.
There is a sculpture there which depicts a woman in some state of existential distress...
Or...
Perhaps she is the sprit of the Stadt and like the Stadt itself...
She has endured...
Overcome...
And risen anew.
The Johanneskirche was built in the Gothic Revival style from 1864 to 1876 at the Feuersee in Stuttgart-West.
It was said that after being nearly destroyed in the Second World War, the main church building was reconstructed, but the Gothic vaults were replaced with modern ones and the tower was intentionally left incomplete to serve as a sort of war memorial.
Lovers who had come to the idyllic scene to kiss and to speak in soft whispers moved hurriedly up from stone steps at the side of the water, seeking some calmer, less tempestuous place at which to render their adorations...
For a spell...
Until the next storm.
In any case those people and their connection was...
Is...
Alien to me.
I moved away from them.
The winds and the gale now nipped at my bones and I scurried unto some vague, relative reprieve.
Finally, I sat down beneath a tree beside the steps and pulled my cloak close to my throat.
I smiled mischievously to myself at the thought that perhaps lightning would find me and put a swift end to the narrative...
The eternal struggle between beginnings and endings...
Conflict and peace...
Life and death.
I would need to speak with Anton about everything...
His mental and emotional state...
The world...
The war...
Our intentions for our journal.
One of us, or both, would soon need to go to back to Ukraine, or at least to one of the other border States...
To further chronicle the misery.
We'd both been there, and in other combat zones...
Too many times.
Images from my previous forays into the dragon's teeth of war raced across my mind.
Chaos.
Suffering.
And then an old feeling came over me.
There it was again.
Something or someone was following me.
Reaching out to me from shadow...
A woman I once thought I knew, and whom I had tried to help...
Nadja...
Urging me to make a choice between truth and veneer.
It occurred to me from some corner of my mind in which there was a trusted voice with whom I had always been able to discuss the folds of darkness and its myriad manifestations.
My own history of suffering-self-imposed, or otherwise.
That was an ongoing dialogue, I knew.
And yet I was committed to being better...
More...
And the burden was...
Sickening.
I stood and began walking...
Again.
It was still raining hard.
The wind swirled around me and whipped me...
Forth.
I continued on.
In recent months, the past seemed intent upon colliding with the present so as to effect some new abstraction.
Something had been set into motion or simply reanimated within the paradigm of this waking world with Anja's passing, I thought.
Everywhere in the world there was...
Tumult...
Ukraine...
The question of borders...
Refugees...
False start visits and discussions of peace or at least a sustained cease fire, followed by...
The very next day...
Discussions of the development and still more advanced weaponry...
And of a third world war.
At the very least, something that was set into motion long before was now circling back around for us all.
I had a favourite pub nearby at which it was likely I would encounter Anton.
Indeed, I had hoped that I would, as it had been far too long since I had heard anything whatever from my old friend...
Other than the news of the passing of his beloved...
And that through some third party.
In any case, I soon arrived at the pub.
When I entered I discerned four shadowy figures sitting at the back of the warm and candlelit place.
Three of them smoked and seemed to regard me with interest.
The other with some smouldering disdain.
I nevertheless moved purposefully past the long bar stretched at my right, and the booths, tables, and soft corners in which strangers and familiars could hide away and brood over a whiskey in times such as these.
Two men spoke over one another in one of the booths, each insistent upon the adroitness his own point of view.
The candles placed about the space swayed for all the hot air the men spewed.
I wiped rainwater from my brow and strode deeper into the half-light.
The pale face of a man I met there sometimes, a violin player, peered up at me from out of some corridor of nostalgia, or introspection.
I greeted him.
The other offered his long, pale hand to embrace.
I had been fascinated by the man's ideas regarding the tritone chord in music theory, and the devil's influence in the composition of such music.
I walked further, towards the furthest corner booth.
There were two friends seated there...
Struggle and Z.
They'd been laughing about something or other over two pints of Guinness and two glasses of Red Breast.
Just then they noticed me and yelled out at once, "Cross! It's been too long!"
"Yes," I said, greeting them both warmly.
I sat down opposite them, with my back exposed to the shadows behind me.
I settled myself and then stated in a tone that smacked of forced nonchalance, "I need to find Anton.”
"Of course you do," said Z.
"Have you seen him?"
"Seen him?" Struggle asked playfully.
"I should think that we see a bit of you both everyday... out there... in the world."
I dismissed this and persisted.
"I'm serious."
"Indeed," said Z.
He was the older of the two friends and he regarded me with something that might have been pity while longer before taking a sip of his whisky.
O'Reilly, a tall, good looking Irishman appeared from behind the bar as if on cue with three pints of Guinness and three fresh glasses of Red Breast.
We all thanked him and almost in unison submerged our lips into the thick foam heartily.
Finally, Z said "None of us here has seen him in some weeks... since before Anja passed. The last time I saw him he said he needed to get back out there to try to feel something for the world… again? ‘Again,’ yes that’s right. That is, I believe, the last thing that he mentioned to me when I last saw him."
"When was that?"
"As I said, it was some weeks ago."
I considered this for a moment.
"Well, first he'll have to deal with how he's feeling now about Anja," I said.
"So when he's ready, did Anton mention anything about where he was intending to go?"
"Well," Z began. “I think he mentioned something about the effect of war on non-combatants and the stream of refugees coming into Western Europe from both Ukraine and the Middle East, but that hardly narrows the migratory route down for you, does it.”
“Jesus,” I sighed and took a drink.
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Okay, we'll see what he says when he gets here."
Then Struggle smiled and added politely, "It is hardly surprising, you know. All this discussion about refugees... the places from which they come... the places at which they arrive, and the effect their presence has... stories really do abound."
We all took another sip of Red Breast.
"No, I suppose it's not."
Struggle continued.
"It is also not surprising to see the way the discussion divides. I was sitting at the Feuersee the other day having a beer. It was a beautiful, sunny day. It was a good day to be alive, and to simply enjoy that fact. There was a couple seated at the table next to me. A man and a woman. The woman was complaining about the fact that Hungary had moved to close its borders to prevent refugees traveling through. The man, quite rightly, pointed out that Hungary was merely trying to protect its own people from the threat of terror, and the destabilization of its national identity."
"People are talking about that everywhere," I said.
"Yes, they are. But what interests me is the way one can look back at history and quite clearly distinguish times at which refugees... strangers... others were identified and persecuted for similar reasons, and based on similar justifications. Even that maniac in Norway a few years ago... the one who exploded a bomb at parliament and then went on a shooting spree on an island. He said that he'd done so in direct opposition to the threat of multiculturalism and globalism. He said that he'd done what he did to protect Norwegians from the contamination of outside influence... color... religion. Where does one draw the line?"
"That's something that each of us must consider and figure out," I said.
Struggle sighed and added almost reluctantly, "It was also interesting to hear the way the two of them... the man and the woman, seemingly husband and wife, or at least intimate acquaintances, were so divided about what to do about the influx of refugees coming into Europe. The man said that he thought Germany should close its borders too. That the country is already overrun with Muslims and döner kebab stands... that he can't even speak German to the lady at the Bäckerei in their village.
He pointed out the increase in rapes of young German women in the north. Rapes that had allegedly been perpetrated by young refugees who had spilled out of their camps in the night and had actively sought these women out. Hunted them. But is that the only truth, I wonder? Surely, not every refugee who arrives at a new place is intent upon doing evil. Or?"
I took another drink.
"One would certainly like to hope not. So... what did the woman say in response?"
Struggle drank too.
He finished his glass and set it down before him.
"She said that if we close the borders we have already lost everything."
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