C

A friend from long ago visited me last night while I was watching the box. I saw him in the faces of the men on the screen, heard him in their voices, recognised his shy smile in the way one of them turned his head  just a small bit to one side, looking down as if to avoid looking fully into the camera while he spoke of being sexually abused by his teacher. One of at least 18 teachers at this progressive secular co-ed boarding school. He was there, at the time when it happened, these were his schoolmates, I know that. I can imagine him, a shy, beautiful waif-like little boy. I don't want to imagine anything further. But he stayed with me all through the night.

We were close for a while, sharing music (JJ Cale) and poetry (Erich Fried) and films (Visconti's adaptation of Camus' The Stranger), spending more time in the Hohe Strasse cafes and pubs than at the university. Everything was so important, intense. Heidelberg, so beautiful and so many angry young students.

He lives somewhere south now, a sculptor, with a family, a quiet life - I hope.

cherry blossom trees

On my way to work these days I take a small detour down a rather awkward narrow side street where oncoming traffic calls for skilled manouvers. But because this street is lined with cherry trees on both sides which are now in full bloom ranging from frothy white to the deepest pink I inch my way through it as often as possible.

A friend lives here with her husband and their three now almost grown sons. Her and his parents came from Greece during the time of the military junta. 

I remember the days after her second boy was born. She had asked her husband to take pictures of her during labour standing upright and fully naked and together we searched these pictures for any signs of how hard her body was at work. And all we could see was a beautiful strong woman with a touch of urgent madness in her eyes.

Some years ago her husband asked me to translate several German documents and articles into English for a business friend of his in Greece. He insisted that a contract was drawn up. It was a lot of work and there were many calls to and from Greece before all were happy with the outcome. But I was never paid. There followed lengthy explanations of various reasons for the delay, stories about bank drafts gone astray and commissions not approved and so on with promises of delicious Greek dinners, barrels of fresh olives, case loads of wine once the money had come through.

It never came through. It didn't matter, really. Maybe I should have offered to do this for free. So what, no hard feelings, I told them. Come on, I don't need this money. We are friends.

But no. When I meet her now, always by accident, we hug and laugh and quickly exchange the latest news about our children and our health and so on and then she tells me how her husband has just last week spoken to his business friend and that he can now guarantee that the payment will come next week, next month the latest. And I tell her that this is all water under the bridge and let's forget it. And so we laugh again and we promise each other to meet soon for the Greek dinner before we say good bye because we must dash. 

And when I occasionally see her husband in town he quickly changes to the other side or turns his head as he passes me.

the boyscout

We first met when he was a medical student in his final year maybe six, eight years ago. He came to me for help with translating his references for an application to work at an A&E hospital in Israel. A cheerful young man with a long ponytail, freckles and a loud laugh. He showed me snapshots of his first child. 

Over the years I translated several of his reports on disaster medicine and triage for publication in expert journals, he showed me snapshots of more children and one day the ponytail was gone. Still, always the laugh, the jolly voice, so many ideas.

Earlier this year there was a story in the local paper about him working for several months with a medical team in Haiti.

Yesterday he stood there at the back door of the institute, freezing in the snow, smoking.  

How was Haiti?
You have no idea, not even if you try to imagine hell.
(Another cigarette.)
But that was nothing compared to Pakistan.
When did you go there?
Just back. We set up a couple of support networks, tried to anyway.
What next?
Benin, next week. Worst flooding in decades, 600,000 people affected, cholera...
What about your family? Children? Xmas?
I never tell them until 24 hrs beforehand. Otherwise there is too much grief.

(Another cigarette.)
So, what are your plans for the future?
This is the future. I can't stop now. 
Your children? Your wife?
Do you know how many dead and dying children I have seen in the last year? 
But...
It's like a drug. Or worse, maybe.
No laughter this time.

humming

My friend V spent several months with the pygmy people in central Africa. He told us how his long legs would stick out of the hut he slept in, how he would crouch down to as low as he could during meetings and meal times. How his lanky body - almost 2 m tall - set off laughter and merriment and occasionally awe deep in the rainforest.

He told us about the humming. The pygmy people have general meetings to discuss matters. They sit in a circle and it's not so different from any other business meeting. Only when things get a bit out of hand, when voices are raised, when the atmosphere gets cloudy and heated, someone will start humming, a low humming and slowly slowly the others join in until everybody just hums and the sound moves like a wave gently around and through the group and swells and some harmonies develop and then it slows down, dies down and the talking once again continues. Just like that. The air is cleared.

A.

She works in the same building, on my floor. We talked at the staff Xmas party two years ago. She cycles to work along some of my route and so we exchanged our delight with the chestnut trees and the snow and the horses and cycling through a mature forest after work. Occasionally, she brought one or both of her (pre-)teenage daughters to work.

Last week she phoned me. She had been asking about me having not seen me around for a while and was told I had something serious.

She told me that eight years ago she was diagnosed with cancer. That she spent months in the same clinic I was in after Easter. She spoke about isolation wards, face masks, multiple infections after chemotherapy, hoping and waiting for a bone marrow donor, her five years of treatment and her annual check up days back at the clinic. She told me about her fear of big crowds, of infections, her lack of energy that renders her unable to work fulltime and of her joy of being alive.

She told me that I will get better.