Sovereign Tales

64 He blinked once more in the dazzling light as he took aim. The anger, the disappointment. The fear of having to endure her absence again. He saw her chewing her nails while she stood there, pondering: Honey Loops? Crunchy Nuts? Alpha-Bits? Her hand reached up, fingers stretched as if trying to pluck a stubborn bird from a branch just out of reach. Already at the bus stop, when she hadn't gotten off, he had realized it might be possible that he would never see her again. From now on, he was on his own. He put on his little cowboy boots, strapped on the Colt, and walked determinedly toward her. His opponent was loneliness, even if it meant the end of their togetherness. Light and easy, sticky and careless. With the second blink, the colorful packages in the tall shelf before his teary eyes blurred. A game with time. It passes – it holds still. Long – too fast. Intense – useless promises. Even now, when he thought of back then, his throat felt sticky. But a diver in the ocean hardly notices the rain. "I wouldn’t say that I’m angry at you, but I’m not doing well either." He knew gratitude, understanding, and compassion only as empty words. But at the moment when he brought the spoon to his mouth for the umpteenth time and paused briefly, the friendly but cynical waitress approached and said, “Looks like you got a ‘No-show,’” as she refilled his coffee for the second time. Suddenly, he held the spoon in his hand, and as long as he didn’t move it, everything would remain as it was. (Irma Blumstock) 87 “Why don’t you say anything?” she asked me in a comforting manner. “Who sent him?” she added, turning to me. It was still early in the evening, and the golden-yellow light of the gas lamps in the park had begun its task, marking paths and turning bushes into clumsy hiding places. I left the gravel path, took a narrow trail, and walked into the bush with the largest bulges. From the rustling emerged a moment of complete silence; I left “her” behind, back in her unanswered conversation, which neither she nor I could manage, and which would lead only to carousel-like thoughts, one way or another. At night, I drove over the empty four-lane road, circling the roundabout twice, lost in deep thought and parking memories in my mind, with a cargo trike, back home. I had a moment of inner happiness with every recall of his kiss. What euphoria, in which I lived for three months – such a special expenditure of time, drifting on the cloud parallel to my many activities. Was it all over? (Ahu Dural) 105 “Hovering, an iron beak-shoe with bow-adorned leg-tube rises in majestic verticality over the gently rolling hills of Département XX. Sharp and curved, the construct gives no appearance of wanting to merge with the rocky terrain of nature. One wonders: What do you want here, if not to destroy? With the additional adorned mourning ribbon that turns you into a thorny widow, you tower like a parallel creation into the breathtaking expanse of a horizontal – nature – without the slightest indication of wanting to hide. Are you perhaps a narcissist in your conspicuous, artificial otherness? Or do you stand as a subject of freedom and self-confidence, as an autonomous cogito, in an environment that no longer can express itself as an independent intuition in the same way?” (Peggy Pehl) 127 No one knew for certain who KR really was. Many delightful rumors were circulating about her – that her father was a baron or that her mother was the daughter of a high-ranking diplomat – and K’s increasingly affected appearance and manner of speaking lent themselves splendidly to fueling such rumors. The one thing everyone knew about K was her fabulous wealth. She was the heiress to an industrial fortune – was it chocolate, car supplies, or condensed milk? – the source varied depending on who was telling the story, but the private means was an accepted fact. Everyone knew that KR was rich and did not have to work, because that is what K told them. (Grażyna Roguski) – based on Alicia Drake, The Beautiful Fall, 2006