… I know dear Sue, this story has been already told very, very often, but it was the first that came into my mind when I saw the picture of the footprints on the beach…
… At the end of my earthly existence I stood with the Creator of the Universe by my side. We where looking at the allegory of my life – a broad and white sandy beach with two lines of footprints, that where interrupted here and there. I pondered over this image a long time, then I turned to the Creator of the Universe: „May I ask You one question?“
It nodded softly smiling. „Sure.“
„Once You‘ve promised me to be always on my side.“
„Yes. And I kept my promise. I always do.“
„Would You then please tell me, why there is only one line of footprints during the darkest hours of my life?“
„Because I did carry you then, my beloved child.“…
Lara and Stu spent their honeymoon cruising through the Scottish Highlands. After one wonderful week filled with beautiful and inspiring impressions they reached a lonely and dark green Loch amidst high rising, wooded hills. The young couple came towards a small village with an adorable hotel in an old, enchanting Victorian Villa situated on a big flat rock above the lakes level.
The Landlord, dressed in Scottish Highland costume, greeted Lara and Stu heartily and showed them to their room – it was a little gloomy and furnished oldfashioned, but warming flames licked in the huge fireplace.
There where about a dozen more guests in the hotel, all much older than Lara and Stu, friendly and good humoured, and after enjoying an extensive dinner they gathered in the little bar room where McPhearse, the Landlord, invited them to a degustation of various local Whiskeys.
The evening turned into a wonderful night, full of laughter, jokes, weird stories, singing and McPhearse playing the bagpipes and zealously filling the glasses again and again and again. So it was rather late and nobody could be called sober when the party finally ended and the guests where staggering to their rooms.
Stu fell asleep immediately and began to snore unbearable loud. Lara tried to wake him and stop the disharmonius concert, but without any success. She sighed, got out of the bed, slipped into her leisure suit and sneakers and left the room.
Slowly she strolled down to the stony shore of the Loch. Dark clouds where hunting over the sky and a fresh wind from the hills made her shiver.
Suddenly the silver rays of the full moon broke through the cloudage and fell down to the softly rippled surface of the lake like a bright shining ladder to heaven. A strange sound rose, it was similar to the singing and babbling of a little baby child, sweet and innocent. Lara gave a short thrilled laugh and clapped her hands.
But the next moment she was frozen in fear. Directly under the gigantic fan of moon beams something enormously big rose from the water – a snake like head, a very long neck, a hulky curved body…
„Oh, no!“, Lara yelled. She tried to run away, but she was unable to move any limb. The monster swam straight in her direction. It came nearer – and nearer – and nearer – the ground shivered under its stamping feet when it moved up to the shore – it snorted – it fixed the young woman with its little glowing fishy eyes – and then it started to – sing again – with that high and childlike voice – it softly bowed its head – and within seconds Lara had lost all her fear – she reached out and touched the cheek of that – strange being. The skin was rough but warm and she felt the strong breathing of – Nessy? Could this be the legendary Nessy? – softly striking her face.
The hunting clouds closed the gap in heaven, the moonlight ladder vanished, the strange creature turned around and went back into the Loch. A last singing sound – then it vanished, and the little waves where crumpling the surface of the lake as if nothing ever had happened…
… Stu buttered his fifth slice of toast, he always had an enormous hunger at morning.
„Honey, you don‘t seem to have any appetite.“, he mentioned with a frowne looking at his young wife pushing back and forth with her fork the scrambled eggs on her plate.
„Well, I could not sleep at night, so I got up and took a little walk down to the Loch. And there I have seen something very strange.“
Stu seemed to be only little interested. „And what did you see?“
Lara took a deep breath and looked him straight into the eyes.
„I am pretty sure that I had an encounter with Nessy last night.“
Stu burst into laughter. „Nessy? Huh? – I tell you what, my dear, you have been as drunk as an owl last night! – Nessy! It‘s only a humbug, a tale to lure tourists to the Highlands! It does not exist! It never had existed!“…
Tess informed her mother that recently she had sold for a very good price a painting she had made of the little nuns cloister on the small island amidst the lake, on which shores her family lived since three generations in an old, wind whipped Art Nouveau Villa. The little corpulent woman nodded without showing any passion or recognition and said: „Well… Nice… Barbara, the niece of our neighbour Tom, can paint so wonderful! Oh, what beautiful pictures she creates! She could earn a real fortune with them!“
Tess tried to swallow a harsh reply. This was so familiar to her since her early childhood days. She could not remember one single sign of love, of motherly pride, not one word of praise. Every time she tried to tell about her successes mother countered in that damned emotionless way: „Well… Nice… But … does all those things – painting, travelling, writing, driving, teaching, etc. – in a much better way than you…“
It was late afternoon, and the sun slowly slid towards the horizon line of the lake and turned the color of the softly playing waves into gold. Tess overlooked the beautiful scenery without realising it, full of frustration she clenchend her fists. „I cannot bear it any longer!“, she murmured between her teeth.
Mother called: „It‘s time for a cocktail, Tess. Would you make me a Mimosa?“
„Sure!“
The slim and tall middle-aged woman went into the garage. She always had loved to help her father fixing electric devices, or bicycles, or the aged family car. She had been Daddies girl, but he had died some years ago after a heavy stroke. Tess still knew by heart what was properly stuffed in all the drawers of the large wooden closet on the left side of the garage, and had not to search long before she found what she was looking for…
… Her mother took a small sip of the mild sparkling Cocktail. „Well… Nice… But a little bitter… Your cousin Mathilda can mix cocktails! Wow! The finest Mimosas I ever drank in my life!“
Tess smiled mildly. „The little bitter taste will fade away soon, Mum. I bet that this finally will be the absolutely best drink you ever had.“
She went out on the terrace watching the sun touching the far horizon, the veil of filigrane clouds above it were exploding in a firework of gold, red and violet. Dusk laid its soft and summer warm cloak over the lake and the sandy shore.
Tess heard her mother croak: „Darling! Help me, please! I feel so bad…“ A strangeled gargling followed. And then the sound of a corpulent old body flopping liveless to the floor.
Carry has been nine years old when her beloved twin sister has died within only a few months because of blood cancer. After that horrible day, when she had helplessly witnessed how the last life spark went out of Anny, and her delicate facial features did seem to freeze and turned pale, life has changed. Nothing could cheer Carry up, even three years of intensive psychological therapy didn‘t help. Day after day she spent motionless sitting or laying on her bed staring at the ceiling of her friendly and bright room. It seemed to her parents that her daughter had become a prisoner, captured in a gloomy, bitterly cold, iron cage, filled with agony and deep despair, without any courage, will and power to get free…
One day her father went in and tried to show her the photograph of a daintily built young mare with a coat that was shining like a fresh pressed copper coin.
„Just take a short look, Carry. This is Bay Lady, three years old, friendly, lovely and calm. I bought it for you. You remember, you always did want a horse of your own.“
With an annoyed sigh the girl pushed the picture to the floor and turned away her pale face.
The days went by. One very early morning a strange sound came to Carries ears. It was a loud neigh, no, rather a fanfare, bursting with joy of life and high spirits. Unconsciously Carry crawled out of her bed and went to the window. The Bay Lady ran caprioling over the green paddock in front of the farmhouse. For the first time since Annie‘s dead Carry did feel her heart beat, a strange yearning. She got dressed and left the house, for the first time after three years.
Full of curiosity, with pointed ears and flaring nostrils the little mare trotted towards her. The large dark amber eyes where gently glowing. With a quiet snorting Bay Ladies‘ velvety nose touched Carries‘ pale cheek. Still unconsciously the girl took a bridle that was hanging on a fence post and slipped it over the mare‘s head. She opened the fence gate and swung on the back of the playfully prancing horse.
In the east of the farm there where two large canola fields, touched by late springs‘ morning wind, brimming over with millions of little yellow blossoms, separated by a broad lane. Carry stimulated her horse with her voice, hands and heels. Triumphantly neighing Bay Lady fell into gallop, faster, and faster, and faster. Her filigree legs seemed hardly touching the ground, Carry felt the muscles moving under the groomed, copper red shimmering coat. Horse and girl flew directly into the huge orange ball of the sun, that rose over the far top of a little hill.
At the end of the lane the girl stopped the mare, leaned forward and flung her arms around the warm neck. „Oh, you lovely one! Thank you!“, she whispered, bursting into tears, sobbing violently, „Thank you so much!“ For a long, long time she sat crying, and every hot tear paved the way out of her souls’ dark prison…
… Carry entered the farmhouse kitchen through the backdoor, her parents seemed to be petrified with shock and surprise. The shadow of a smile slid over the girls face. „Good morning! Would you please make me some pancakes, Mum?“…
The King of Southland rose from behind his desk in the lush decorated baroque Conference Chamber and went to the window. With his forehead slightly frowned he looked over the spacious court garden to the little sanctuary on a low and softly curved mound some hundred feet away. Tomorrow the temple-like pavilion would be torn down by construction workers, creating space for the new planned palace, a much larger one, much more glamorous than the old castle in which his dynasty had lived and ruled for more than four hundred years.
He rang for his valet. „I‘m taking a short stroll through the park, Sebastian, and I would like to do that alone. I will be back in time for dinner.“
The lackey made a deep bow and opened eagerly the wing door.
Little later the ruler of Southland had reached the sanctuary that was made completely of smooth and translucent marble. He sat down on the low steps that surrounded the graceful building with its slim columns and perfectly round curved dome.
It was a mild summer day, birds where caroling in the nearby forest, bees humming in the beds of purple red roses that covered the slopes of the mound, butterflies where tumbling through the velvet like, warm air, as if they where drunk.
The King closed his eyes, in his mind he took a long journey back through time, since his childhood days, he saw himself as a little and rather chubby boy, chasing his brothers and sisters, hiding behind the columns and in the cooling shadow of the prayer room. Years passed by, he was fifteen now, sitting on the wintry cold steps, holding hands with his first love, the two years younger daughter of one of his mothers gentlewomen, Laura Wolkenstein, telling her with tears in the eyes that his parents had arranged his marriage with a Princess he had never heard of.
The carousel of years floating by continued, now he saw his own children playing hide and seek round the filigree pavilion. In the mirror of the small fountain situated in the middle of the prayer room he discovered his first grey streak in his dense and dark brown hair. His wife had given him seven children, but no joy, no love, no kindness, she was beautiful, but as stupid as bean straw and cold-hearted.
Once again the years passed by, he watched himself laying on the snow white marble ground crying his heart out after they told him that his mistress, his first young love, had died during giving birth to their baby child…
He sat there under the dome of the little sanctuary, torn apart by his memories, until the sunset did weave a veil of flaming red and soft gold over the old temple…
Back in the conference room, that now was lit by dozens of candles, he ordered the young architect that has developed the plans of the mighty new castle to join him immediately.
The handsome fellow went in and bowed respectfully. The King folded up the large papers. „My dear friend, I‘ve made a decision – there will be no new palace.“
The architect’s eyes widened with disbelieve and surprise. „His Majesty – I – I don‘t understand…“
The King smiled softly. „No need to be shocked. – With a part of the money calculated for the costs of the new castle you will restore this old one. It has been good enough for my family for over four hundred years, and you will going to make it good enough for the next generations of our dynasty. With the money left you will build schools! Schools for every child, for every girl and boy in this country. And this schools ought to be palaces, beautiful temples of education and culture. And from now on, Mr. Wolkenstein, you will be be my court architect, and I will nominate you the title of a Duke.“ So spoke the King, and laid his arm around the slender shoulders of his illegitimate son.
… The huge castle literally vibrated with strain since late in the morning there has been leaked through that a secondment of court physicians had been escorted to the Emperor Rooms to examine the Princess Henriette Adelaide thoroughly. It seemed as if the marriage of her and the young Prince Ferdinand Maria would be imminent…
… In the evening I went to my dear friend Anna of Sautern, one of the old Elector Widow’s gentlewomen. While one of the elder ladies was reading aloud we bowed concentrated over our embroideries. Only the soft voice of the lecturer and the ticking of a daintily grandfather clock broke through the silence…
… “What will gonna happen to her now?” I whispered to Anna. My friend smiled at me. “She will be guided by the colonel hofmeister, his staff and the brother of our Prince into the court chapel where here fiancee and his mother are already waiting. The confessor, Father Vervaux, is going to remind the couple once again on their promise of marriage, and they will change their rings. And then the Princess will leave the Emperors Rooms and move into the Enfilade of her husband. And then they’re gonna share the bed for the first time.” Suddenly she jumped up, hiding her lips with her hand. “Oh, no! Holy heaven! A letter from your parents came, Adelheid, and I did forget to give it to you!” She scurried to her secretary desk, took a small envelope and gave it to me. I broke the seal and read, and my heart got heavy like a millstone, I felt that all blood was going off my face. Anna got scared. “My dear! What happened?” I rejected my friend softly. “I would like to withdraw, dear Lady of Sautern, if you permit, and pray for my mother. She has been pregnant and recently has lost the unborn child.” – “Of course, my dear! I will include her in my evening prayers, too!”…
… The grief and pain and all the worries about my mother had made me nearly senseless, I unconsciously turned towards the old and weathered votive stele in a hidden corner of the court garden. I knelt down in the dark and began to pray, to plead fervently. I laid all my hopes, all my yearning in these prayers, and I whispered them again and again until I slowly collapsed and fell into a kind of twilight sleep…
… I woke up with a start when the fragile silhouette of a maiden rushed to the stele and fell down on her knees. She was dressed only in a transparent white shirt, decorated with lace, she wrapped her arms around her body, rocking back and forth, wildly sobbing in despair. I forgot my own aching heart, got nearer and bowed down. When I recognized the Princess’ face amidst the mussed flood of dark brown hair I deeply concerned sank into a curtsey. But Henriette Adelaide seemed not to notice me. I laid my right arm around her endlessly shaking shoulders. Her whole body shivered so heavy that her teeth beat each other. Bearing her face in her hands she leaned against me.”Oh, God! it has been so horrible! So disgusting! I never had thought before that something could be so ghastly!” I affected stopped breathing when I realized that she was talking about her first matrimonial intercourse. “What a – barbaric – humiliating – hurtful – act! – How can it be that a man shows so much coarseness, is so foolish, so clumsy! Much more worse than the dumbest yokel!”, she poked out between her fingers. I weighed her gently in my arms and tried ungainly to comfort her in Italian as if she where a small child that did hurt her knees while playing…
… The Savoyan Princess looked at me. Her face now didn’t show that gleaming beauty, eyes and nose where red and the eye lids where swollen. “You can speak my mother language?” I nodded. “Yes, I did learn it some years ago in a nearby cloister.” – “My homeland – oh, I miss it so very much. And my mother…” Her voice failed and she started weeping again. My own mother came into my thoughts again, maybe she was already dead and cold and laid out in state in her bedroom, and I groaned in wild pain…
… “If I would have never talked into the marriage with this backward barbarian, this hamfisted person! If I would have never made this long journey to this disgusting country where nobody makes the effort to understand me!” I felt somewhat like anger rising in me. “Royal Highness, until now you never had tried to learn our language, so I think it is absolutely normal that no one can communicate with you – and you are not able to make a connection between you and your people.”, I spoke as soft as possible. But just at this moment I hated and loathed this highly well-born creature that was howling unrestrainedly and full of self pity. But I also could understand so very well what was going on in her heart, in her soul. I felt again the forlorness, the distraction when I was torn away of the comfort of my family when I have been six years old. I thought about the feverish lambent fingers, the slimy tongue of that court painter Herboltz, the lasciviously obstrusiveness of a treasurer some months ago, my fright, my powerlessness, my deep shame in the face of this humiliations. The perception that also the Prince should be one of those dehumanized, animal like creature filled with randiness was egregious. Contempt on the one side and deep concern on the other tore my heart apart…
… I know I am a little too late this week but I had to deal with two big problems that temporarily kept me away from writing… 😉
… Many years ago, before that deceitful chronic illness took over the rule in my body and destroyed most of the muscles in my legs, I used to undertake long walks through the mountain woods of my homeland. Usually I got up at about four o’clock when it still has been dark outside and left the house very silent, trying not to disturb my sleeping parents. I put on the backpack stuffed with a big Thermos bottle of hot and sweet tea, some sandwiches and a big red cheeked apple, took the walking sticks and marched off, heading towards the mountains…
… After half an hours walk the dense and cold and damp jungle like forest embraced me, the path got rougher, narrow and steep. While slowly and thoughtfully walking upwards I always used to ponder about the problems I had to deal with recently. It was as if my steady rhythm of steps, the deep breathing, the strong heartbeat, combined with the sharp, clear and spicy-tart air and the peaceful, church like surrounding seemed to work like catalysts that strengthened the ability to think logical and impartial, to look in a more neutral way and from different angles at things that some hundred miles away, in the big city I lived, had made my life harder…
… In the meantime it had become rather bright, an uncountable choir of birds rose its pure and sweet voices to greet and worship the new day, deer wandered through the light green and dense undergrowth, following a softly murmuring creek, their furry coats where shimmering like fresh pressed copper coins, and their large black eyes gleamed while they were stopping nearby and curiously watching me, the lonely intruder. I stood still and talked to them in a low and soft voice, they pricked their ears and widened their nostrils – and then they dashed off in giant leaps. Fidgety squirrels tossed around huge fir tree trunks that were rutted with age, clamoring at me loudly. A snake lied curled up on a large stone near the path, patiently waiting for the warm rays of the rising sun…
… The path through my beloved homelike wood lead me to a passage, the dense and deep green wilderness slowly retreated – and there he was, the big and bright shining sun, embracing me with his warm and tender glow. I left the green dome of the forest behind me, with a few more steps I reached the mountains summit. A soft and fresh wind was rooting in my hair, I looked down to the valley I have started my tour some hours ago, and then up to the sky high chain of mountains that surrounded me, and I felt so blissful and detached, freed from every burden that had pressed me down during the last weeks. My soul was full of peace and confidence again. I took a seat on a softly curved boulder, unpacked my snack and started to eat…
She sat in her shabby rocking chair on the porch of the askew old farmhouse, holding an ice pack against her left temple. This time he did hit her harder than usual before he had finished the bottle of cheap whisky, and sank down unconscious on his bed.
Her eyes searched the snow covered mountain chain at the horizon. There, far away, so distant, and so unattainable it must be, the little green valley of peace and freedom. Her mother had often told her about it, sheltering her from the violent father.
Dad had sold her for a barrel of schnaps when she had been twelve years old to her husband, this mean bastard, more than twenty years older than her. That has been about two dozen years ago. She had stopped counting the beats and the rapes long time ago. But she never had stopped dreaming of that little paradise valley somewhere out there in the distant mountain chain.
Day by day she prayed for a chance to get away from here. She didn‘t pray to God, she already has lost all her faith in that phenomenon. She prayed to her mother who had passed away more than four years ago. But her situation seemed to be absolutely hopeless, it was a four hours journey to the next city and she had never learned to drive a car. He locked away the rifle every day, and he was nearly double her size, and strong, he could kill her with one of his giant paws.
One day a hurricane tore away the large square piece of corrugated iron that sheltered an old, deep and dried out well behind the house. He cursed and ranted the whole day long, since shortly before sunset, when he already had been rather drunk he grabbed the toolbox and shuffled to the well. As he had reached it he somehow lost his balance, stumbled and fell into the well, instinctively grasping the low stone curb with his fingers. Heavy rainfall has made the bricks very slippery, he increasingly lost his grip. She stood motionless in the back door of the farmhouse, watching, hearing with a heart as cold as ice, as the curses and verbal insults turned into desperate pleading to help him. He would completely change his behavior, he promised her, he would never beat or rape her again, he would let her free, bring her to town, help her building up a new existence…
She turned away and slowly walked into the dark bedroom. While she was packing his saddlebags she heard his last shrill scream. She saddled her little chocolate brown mare and headed slowly to the distant mountains that seemed to glow in the last violet rays of sun, to her and Mama’s dream of the little green valley of peace and freedom, and she did not take one look back…
He sat motionless on the balcony parapet, gazed through the dust covered windows and watched her while she was sitting on her large desk, writing, editing pictures, answering mails, dreaming, reading for hours. A pale beam of winter sunlight made her long and softly curled blonde hair shimmer. She put off the spectacles and rubbed her large sky blue eyes, and the melancholic expression in them cut deep into his heart.
He loved her so much, and he wished so deeply, that he would have treated her better before, when he has been alive as a human being. That he would have handled her with much more care and respect and understanding. He regretted so deeply that he never had enough courage to go in between and stop his wife when she slapped her, even punished her hard with the carpet beater, humbled her, lied to her, tried to smother her tiniest expression of self confidence, declared that she was insane and dumb and foolish. He wished he had recognized how talented she was, and intelligent, that he would have given her the support she had deserved, that he would have protected her, showed her much clearer he had loved her. Wouldn‘t have been this the prior duties of a father? He knew that she still had desperate periods of time in which she suffered brooding over her unhappy childhood days, and he heartfelt wanted to be able to help her, to put things right for her, to comfort her. But it was too late, too late…
An ice cold breeze rose and made him shiver. She stood up and went into the kitchen. It took a long time before she returned, and he waited patiently as he did so many times during the past years. She carried a big cup when she came back. While she was drinking delightfully she looked through the window and saw him. She hit the pane with her fist and shouted: „Oh, you again! You awkward, intrusive, goddamned creature! Get away!“
The big crow made a strange sound – like a deep sigh rising from a heavily mourning soul, shook its shiny black feathers and flew away…
… The days passed by, they melted into the small circles of the seasons, the big ones of the drifting years. The deep red blossoms of the rosebush that nearly covered the lower part of the window opened their buds, showed their breathtaking beauty, spread their wonderful scent, faded away, turned to dust over and over again as time moved on unstoppable…
… Every morning, long before the sun was rising, the young, friendly, quiet and shy nurse helped the old lady out of the narrow bed and into the wheel chair, moved her to the small bathroom, aided during washing, combed the long, silvery shining, still thick hair, and then she moved the patient to the wide opened window…
… For hours the aged woman would sit there, watching on fine weather the morning star fading and sky slowly getting brighter, and how the rugged rocky tops of the mountain chain far away seem to glow from inside – from a dusty, dark violet to red and at least to gleaming gold. When the weather was bad she would listen with closed eyes to the murmuring of the rain on the wooden roof, or following with her looks how thick, softly hoovering snowflakes covered the smooth curves of the fields opposite her little garden, damping nearly every sound…
… It promised to become a stunning beautiful summer day when she saw a lean young man walking towards her window. Her heart began to leap heavily and painfully as she recognized his face with the short cut blond beard and flashing dark blue eyes. He smiled and reached for her, helped her out of the wheelchair and through the wide open window. High spirited she plucked on of the beautiful dark red roses and weaved it in her hair that like a miracle had become chestnut brown again, as it used to be in her youth…
… They moved fast forward to the mountains and aimed the highest summit of all – and this time there was no deadly avalanche that tore them with it, hurling the fresh married couple into the steep abyss of a narrow canyon, killing the beloved man and breaking her nearly every bone…
… This time they made it to the peak without any effort. Standing high above the world, nearly touching the blue and flawless sky they fell into their arms, kissing, so full of love. A nearly unbearable happiness run through the veins of the woman and the sunlight was so bright and warm as it never has been before…
… The young nurse found her sitting dead in the wheelchair with an overwhelming beautiful smile on her face and a red rose woven in her hair…
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