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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Love stories / Romance
- Subject: Death / Heartbreak / Loss
- Published: 05/22/2013
Walter Alone
Born 1949, F, from Zurich, Switzerland.jpg)
Walter opened the door to the shower cabin. His glance fell on her unused bath towel, which was hanging neatly folded on the bar at the opposite wall. He felt a pain in his stomach area, grabbed his towel and turned away. He turned away from her unused towel and started to carefully and slowly dry his body.
Of course her towel was unused. She was no longer there. He dried toe after toe of his left leg and rested his foot on the bath stool. Then he changed the leg und repeated the same procedure. She always had said it was important to thoroughly dry the toes and the skin between the toes.
His hand automatically reached for the bottle with the special lemon oil, which she used exclusively. He rubbed his body from the feet to shoulders with the lemon oil, and then stood in front of the mirror.
It was Saturday, a cold, wet autumn day. This was another one of those terrible weekends before him. Since she had left him, each bleak weekend followed the other. Weekends, during which he was completely consumed with infinite ignominy and longing for her. Unable to get away from it. He was trapped in the cage of longing for her.
In the exclusive attic apartment with a view over the rooftops of the city, towards the lake, everything remained as if she was still there. Every week he put a new towel ready for her and on the clothes rack hung her jogging suits, including headbands, which he exchanged regularly. In the wardrobe hung her trench coat beside his and in the bedroom he repeatedly took clothes from her closet and hung them on the cupboard or put them on the chair.
His longing actions went so far that he almost every morning poured a second cup of coffee and placed it opposite him at the breakfast table.
Walter looked in the mirror and noticed that he still looked passable for his 49 years. He decided not to shave, looked for a while into his mirror face and then said loudly to his reflection: ‘What an absolute fool!’, turned around and left the bathroom.
In the corridor Qiqi came running towards him, wagging his tail happily and in great anticipation for his breakfast.
Walter went to the bedroom, put on his house jeans and was looking in the closet for a warm sweater, when her evening gown of heavy silk that hung outside of the closet fell down and covered Qiqi, who had followed him, completely. The dog shook himself vigorously trying to free himself from the silken flooding cloth. He romped back and forth getting wilder in front of the closet. Walter snatched the silk dress from the dog’s body and exclaimed angrily: ‘What are you doing with her dress?’. Rather frightened and trembling all over, the dog stared at the angry man and then trotted out of the room.
Walter hung her evening dress back on the hanger on the closet and pulled on his new cashmere sweater. ‘What a fool you are !’, he said again in a sharp voice. He had become accustomed to these dialogues and found nothing unusual. He walked along the hallway to the kitchen. Behind him at a certain distance toddled a rather sad Qiqi.
As always, Walter set the table for two, prepared his Saturday’s fried eggs with bacon, also placed the food ready for the dog and poured two cups of coffee. ‘This is total madness, she will never come back !’ he sad loudly growling at the two cups in front of him.
He put his coffee on the breakfast table, left the other on the sideboard and slowly sank into his chair. He blew air through his teeth, so that it hissed loudly and Qiqi interrupted his nibbling and looked up at him.
Outside it was raining heavily. Walter started, listless and lost in thought, to eat his fried eggs.
Doris had left him 18 months ago. From one day to the next. She had fallen in love with her Qi Gong teacher and after a brief explanation she moved out on a Friday evening with two tightly packed travel bags. Everything else she simply left there. She explained that she would start a new, completely different life and Walter could dispose of all her remaining stuff there.
Walter almost lost his mind. The Qi Gong teacher was originally a former banker, good looking and with a well trained body as well as sporting talent, especially for Asian doctrine of motion and its healing effect. He found with this new trend a market niche and had a large clientele of women who seemed to literally storm his Qi Gong lessons held in an abandoned studio of an artist community. Walter could not and would not understand, how his Doris could fall in love with this man and had completely lost her head. She would come back to him. Of this he was adamant.
Eight and a half years of marriage cannot simply fall into ruins. And after all, the Qi Gong teacher had apart from his great looks, the Qi Gong skills and his two and half room apartment, not much else to offer, whereas he and Doris had set up this great attic apartment in recent years and lived a very comfortable life.
Of course Doris would return, that was just as clear.
As the owner of an architects firm that prospered, there was throughout the week enough distraction at work, so that his life on weekdays was almost identical to before. His agenda was full. The responsibility for the business and his employees demanded his whole attention and there were many new projects waiting.
But his private life was completely disrupted. The longing for what was once was so big, deep and permanent as that he organized no more invitations. Indeed his closest friends and colleagues tried to cheer and distract him, but unfortunately without much success. He still played tennis regularly and also went off to the gym from time to time, but he declined all invitations to parties or dinners. On weekends and most evenings he withdrew completely into his solitude.
Two of his friends had tried several times to make it dramatically clear that Walter should forget Doris and make new acquaintances. All without success. Of course, one also tried a kind of matchmaking. At the few invitations that he accepted at the beginning, there appeared single women who then tried to get into conversation with him. Each time the naked horror. And back home he straightened out quickly her clothes and belongings, so she would feel at home when she came back.
‘Forget finally this woman, you will make yourself crazy !’, again and again he heard this comment. But he could not forget Doris.
Outwardly, he was completely focused. He was never loud and never had a tantrum. Not a single tear had he ever shed. He quietly suffered the dreadful ignominy. He often sat motionless on the bed and stared at her silk evening dress hanging on the closet. He stared and stared, stood up, tugged at the silk dress, sat down again and let his inner wounds run free. This great longing for the woman who had left him just like that, was infinite.
‘For God’s sake again, there are still so many other women in this world !’, a colleague had said to him the other day, rather enervated.
Walter pushed his plate aside and put his elbows on the table. For a long time he stared at a point in the middle of the table. Doris had brought home the dog just days before her escapades with the Qi Gong teacher. It was actually her dog. She left him behind in her unexpected and hectic moving out, because there was no place for a dog in the Qi Gong studio of her lover who also did not like dog hair on the pillows at all.
Walter had become used to the four-legged friend. He took him along to his office and the two got along splendidly.
‘Does the dog also miss Doris ?’, Walter asked himself often and mused further: ‘Do dogs ever have feelings like longing for a person who just walked away abruptly, without any regard for the dog ? Or does the dog forget such a loveless person who simply leaves and never comes back ? Maybe the dog is much more thorough and reasonable in his thinking and has already long forgotten the faithless woman ? Maybe the dog is much smarter and does not make life more difficult ! ‘. Walter looked over at Qiqi, who balanced on his back and stretched all four paws in the air. ‘No, the dog in fact does not look at all as if he has terrible longing for his departed owner. He seemed to have it put away much better and faster than me’, Walter stated somewhat indignantly and jealously.
Walter looked out the window. Outside, the rain poured and poured, as if it were the great flood.
‘Can one actually be longing for a person who one does not really know ?’, he asked himself. That would change the situation, because he would no longer be fixed on Doris, he thought.
‘Or is it all an act of defiance because ones ego is injured ? Or because one does not want to understand what caused it to happen ? Because one cannot understand it ? Why does one want a person who has left with another lover ? A person who clearly has shown, not to want you, but the other person ? Why does one hang on to such a heartless person who puts aside the once married partner as a dirty washing ? Am I going crazy ? Then I would soon have to see a psychiatrist ?’, mused Walter out into the rain. He looked again at Qiqi, who peacefully nudged with his front legs into the air, but he kept his eyes closed, he seemed to doze.
By now it was almost 11 o’clock. Walter drank the last sip of coffee, retained the cup in his hand and went to the kitchen. He opened the door of the dishwasher, put his empty cup on the rack in the machine. The door of the dishwasher still in his hand, he turned his head and looked a long, intensive while at the full coffee cup of Doris. Then he looked at Qiqi, then back at the coffee cup. Slowly, very slowly he reached out his hand, took the cup and emptied it carefully into the sink. Then he also placed the emptied cup of Doris on the rack in the dishwasher and closed the door. He turned on the tap fully and washed away the traces of coffee in the sink. He watched until the last dreg was gone. He went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a triple whisky. With the glass in his hand he went to the terrace door, opened it and took a deep swig of whisky. He remained standing in the doorway. Heavy rain poured down. Qiqi was suddenly standing beside him. Both looked pensively into the wall of water and listened to the incessant noise of the rain.
And then Walter raised his voice and said loudly over the terrace into the rain:
‘So now it’s over with this ghost ride. Eighteen months packed with endless longing are enough !’. He drank up his whisky, turned around and shut the terrace door.
With long steps Walter rushed to the storeroom, took five huge garbage bags, intended for industrial waste, opened them, rolled down the ends of each and placed them ready in the hallway in a row. He put a CD with music by Philip Glass in the player. This endless and same-sounding, to some extent almost nervous whirring electric music, giving the impression the CD could be stuck, seemed to be perfect for his project. He chose ‘endless repetition’ and turned fully on.
Walter grabbed the first garbage bag and went to the bathroom. In a virtually destructive action he cleared away all the bottles, cans, towels and utensils of Doris and threw everything with spiteful gestures into the garbage bag. Qiqi stood on the doorstep and panted astonished, so that it looked as if the dog smiled again and again nodding his head approvingly.
Finally, Walter rearranged his own things, so that the space was used and there were no gaps where previously there were the things of Doris.
The first garbage bag was not yet full, so Walter also disposed of numerous items from the kitchen and the dining room. He also tore several small pictures off the wall and threw them into the garbage bag.
Then he took a new garbage bag and walked with giant strides into the bedroom.
Qiqi ran alongside him to the wardrobe, jumped up and grabbed for the silk evening dress – as he wanted to help clean up – and again the silk robe fell on the dog and enveloped him completely. The dog ran through the bedroom in panic and tried to strip the silk flood from his body. He got caught in the silk belt and finally dragged the robe behind him.
Walter had already cleared half the closet and stuffed the remaining sweaters, blouses, skirts and pants of Doris in a nearly degenerate and wild orgy with both hands into the garbage bag. He freed the dancing dog from its silken load, threw various objects from the bedside table into the bag and left the bedroom. Walter quickly went on with his disposal project and after his targeted action all traces of Doris were finally eliminated.
Five bulging industrial waste bags stood in rank and file in the hallway. Walter went to his study, wrote an email message to the head of building and maintenance of his company, and organized that the bags would be picked up first thing Monday morning.
He walked along the hallway, ripped three more pictures off the wall and placed them to the waste bags.
At the front, where the hallway led into the entrance area, in a niche stood the great harp that he had bought for Doris as she planned to take harp lessons. It never came to that.
Walter liked harp music very much. He stood a long while in front of the beautiful instrument and pursed his lips. The instrument was not to blame and was much too beautiful, in addition it had a wonderful sound. It looked great as decorative object and perhaps – who knows – he himself might take harp lessons or he could still sell the instrument. He ran his hands over the strings and the great sound reconciled him and confirmed his intention. Again and again he stroked the strings, so that a pearly firework of sounds filled the hallway.
He winced, pressed his lips together, held his fists against his temples and ran to the CD player. He pounded the button to switch off. The electronic cascade of music stopped abruptly. A glassy silence fell over the room.
Walter sank into a chair at the dining table. He put his arms on the table, leaned forward and buried his head in the crock of the arm, sobbing loudly. He felt how the tears were running in rivulets down his cheeks and in large drops wetting the sleeves of his cashmere sweater.
It was as if a dam had broken. The tears flowed incessantly in thick streams. He sobbed heartbreakingly. A twitch ran through his back and his shoulders were shaking. His heart seemed to be torn apart and in the opened wounds burrowed the pain. Infinite pain.
Long, long Walter sobbed into his arms. A redemptive eternity. After a while the sobbing eased, but then again he burst into tears. The breaks became longer. But the sobbing came back again and again.
Eighteen months of pent-up grief, helplessness, horror, shame and huge desire burst in torrential lacrimation out of him.
Suddenly he heard barking and looked up. He dragged himself to the corridor and saw Qiqi a few meters behind the apartment door vigorously barking.
Walter opened his apartment door and heard someone crying. He hurried into the stairwell and found a strange woman with semi-long, dark blond hair sitting on the stairs bent over. She held her hands over her face and wept heartbreakingly. ‘What happened, why are you crying, who are you ?’, he asked, half stammering. She turned to him and said, sobbing, without looking up, but pointing with one hand to the opposite apartment door: ‘I’m Julia Sennhauser, I wanted to visit my ex-boyfriend but he does not live here anymore. I always thought he would come back to me. I waited all these months. Now he’s gone, gone away with some of my things, and without informing me.’ She sniffed and covered again her face with her hands.
Walter felt his male protective instinct rise up in him. He straightened up, took a deep breath and said strongly and convincingly: ‘Your ex-boyfriend has recently moved out here, after having brought home a new companion about every two weeks. So this wretched gigolo is not worth a single tear !’
She slowly turned her head and looked at him. She jerked back and said somewhat appalled: ‘What happened to you, have you been crying too, you look absolutely terrible, as if you had been through a battle !’. She handed him her hand mirror. Walter bent down slightly and looked into the small mirror. He was shocked. In fact he looked like emerged from hell. He sat down on the stairs beside her and sighed. Then he said: ‘Yes, I was on a kind of hike through hell, I have also been abruptly abandoned many months ago and today all the feelings so long jammed inside erupted. You know what, we will now go to my flat and wash and freshen our faces and polish our noses. Then we will organise a cheese banquet and open a bottle of red wine. We will tell each other our tragedies and then we will see !’.
Walter rose. Julia stood up slowly, stayed for a while in front of him and looked at him a long time. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck. He raised his hands and gently touched her shoulders. They stood there for a while.
Harp music sounded, joyful harp cascades.
Amazed the two turned around and walked into the hallway of Walter’s apartment. There in front of the harp stood Qiqi happily wagging and with every wag he stroked the harp, which did not seem to bother him.
The two burst out in laughing and accompanied by Qiqi’s harp play they embraced each other tenderly.
Walter Alone(Dill McLain)
Walter opened the door to the shower cabin. His glance fell on her unused bath towel, which was hanging neatly folded on the bar at the opposite wall. He felt a pain in his stomach area, grabbed his towel and turned away. He turned away from her unused towel and started to carefully and slowly dry his body.
Of course her towel was unused. She was no longer there. He dried toe after toe of his left leg and rested his foot on the bath stool. Then he changed the leg und repeated the same procedure. She always had said it was important to thoroughly dry the toes and the skin between the toes.
His hand automatically reached for the bottle with the special lemon oil, which she used exclusively. He rubbed his body from the feet to shoulders with the lemon oil, and then stood in front of the mirror.
It was Saturday, a cold, wet autumn day. This was another one of those terrible weekends before him. Since she had left him, each bleak weekend followed the other. Weekends, during which he was completely consumed with infinite ignominy and longing for her. Unable to get away from it. He was trapped in the cage of longing for her.
In the exclusive attic apartment with a view over the rooftops of the city, towards the lake, everything remained as if she was still there. Every week he put a new towel ready for her and on the clothes rack hung her jogging suits, including headbands, which he exchanged regularly. In the wardrobe hung her trench coat beside his and in the bedroom he repeatedly took clothes from her closet and hung them on the cupboard or put them on the chair.
His longing actions went so far that he almost every morning poured a second cup of coffee and placed it opposite him at the breakfast table.
Walter looked in the mirror and noticed that he still looked passable for his 49 years. He decided not to shave, looked for a while into his mirror face and then said loudly to his reflection: ‘What an absolute fool!’, turned around and left the bathroom.
In the corridor Qiqi came running towards him, wagging his tail happily and in great anticipation for his breakfast.
Walter went to the bedroom, put on his house jeans and was looking in the closet for a warm sweater, when her evening gown of heavy silk that hung outside of the closet fell down and covered Qiqi, who had followed him, completely. The dog shook himself vigorously trying to free himself from the silken flooding cloth. He romped back and forth getting wilder in front of the closet. Walter snatched the silk dress from the dog’s body and exclaimed angrily: ‘What are you doing with her dress?’. Rather frightened and trembling all over, the dog stared at the angry man and then trotted out of the room.
Walter hung her evening dress back on the hanger on the closet and pulled on his new cashmere sweater. ‘What a fool you are !’, he said again in a sharp voice. He had become accustomed to these dialogues and found nothing unusual. He walked along the hallway to the kitchen. Behind him at a certain distance toddled a rather sad Qiqi.
As always, Walter set the table for two, prepared his Saturday’s fried eggs with bacon, also placed the food ready for the dog and poured two cups of coffee. ‘This is total madness, she will never come back !’ he sad loudly growling at the two cups in front of him.
He put his coffee on the breakfast table, left the other on the sideboard and slowly sank into his chair. He blew air through his teeth, so that it hissed loudly and Qiqi interrupted his nibbling and looked up at him.
Outside it was raining heavily. Walter started, listless and lost in thought, to eat his fried eggs.
Doris had left him 18 months ago. From one day to the next. She had fallen in love with her Qi Gong teacher and after a brief explanation she moved out on a Friday evening with two tightly packed travel bags. Everything else she simply left there. She explained that she would start a new, completely different life and Walter could dispose of all her remaining stuff there.
Walter almost lost his mind. The Qi Gong teacher was originally a former banker, good looking and with a well trained body as well as sporting talent, especially for Asian doctrine of motion and its healing effect. He found with this new trend a market niche and had a large clientele of women who seemed to literally storm his Qi Gong lessons held in an abandoned studio of an artist community. Walter could not and would not understand, how his Doris could fall in love with this man and had completely lost her head. She would come back to him. Of this he was adamant.
Eight and a half years of marriage cannot simply fall into ruins. And after all, the Qi Gong teacher had apart from his great looks, the Qi Gong skills and his two and half room apartment, not much else to offer, whereas he and Doris had set up this great attic apartment in recent years and lived a very comfortable life.
Of course Doris would return, that was just as clear.
As the owner of an architects firm that prospered, there was throughout the week enough distraction at work, so that his life on weekdays was almost identical to before. His agenda was full. The responsibility for the business and his employees demanded his whole attention and there were many new projects waiting.
But his private life was completely disrupted. The longing for what was once was so big, deep and permanent as that he organized no more invitations. Indeed his closest friends and colleagues tried to cheer and distract him, but unfortunately without much success. He still played tennis regularly and also went off to the gym from time to time, but he declined all invitations to parties or dinners. On weekends and most evenings he withdrew completely into his solitude.
Two of his friends had tried several times to make it dramatically clear that Walter should forget Doris and make new acquaintances. All without success. Of course, one also tried a kind of matchmaking. At the few invitations that he accepted at the beginning, there appeared single women who then tried to get into conversation with him. Each time the naked horror. And back home he straightened out quickly her clothes and belongings, so she would feel at home when she came back.
‘Forget finally this woman, you will make yourself crazy !’, again and again he heard this comment. But he could not forget Doris.
Outwardly, he was completely focused. He was never loud and never had a tantrum. Not a single tear had he ever shed. He quietly suffered the dreadful ignominy. He often sat motionless on the bed and stared at her silk evening dress hanging on the closet. He stared and stared, stood up, tugged at the silk dress, sat down again and let his inner wounds run free. This great longing for the woman who had left him just like that, was infinite.
‘For God’s sake again, there are still so many other women in this world !’, a colleague had said to him the other day, rather enervated.
Walter pushed his plate aside and put his elbows on the table. For a long time he stared at a point in the middle of the table. Doris had brought home the dog just days before her escapades with the Qi Gong teacher. It was actually her dog. She left him behind in her unexpected and hectic moving out, because there was no place for a dog in the Qi Gong studio of her lover who also did not like dog hair on the pillows at all.
Walter had become used to the four-legged friend. He took him along to his office and the two got along splendidly.
‘Does the dog also miss Doris ?’, Walter asked himself often and mused further: ‘Do dogs ever have feelings like longing for a person who just walked away abruptly, without any regard for the dog ? Or does the dog forget such a loveless person who simply leaves and never comes back ? Maybe the dog is much more thorough and reasonable in his thinking and has already long forgotten the faithless woman ? Maybe the dog is much smarter and does not make life more difficult ! ‘. Walter looked over at Qiqi, who balanced on his back and stretched all four paws in the air. ‘No, the dog in fact does not look at all as if he has terrible longing for his departed owner. He seemed to have it put away much better and faster than me’, Walter stated somewhat indignantly and jealously.
Walter looked out the window. Outside, the rain poured and poured, as if it were the great flood.
‘Can one actually be longing for a person who one does not really know ?’, he asked himself. That would change the situation, because he would no longer be fixed on Doris, he thought.
‘Or is it all an act of defiance because ones ego is injured ? Or because one does not want to understand what caused it to happen ? Because one cannot understand it ? Why does one want a person who has left with another lover ? A person who clearly has shown, not to want you, but the other person ? Why does one hang on to such a heartless person who puts aside the once married partner as a dirty washing ? Am I going crazy ? Then I would soon have to see a psychiatrist ?’, mused Walter out into the rain. He looked again at Qiqi, who peacefully nudged with his front legs into the air, but he kept his eyes closed, he seemed to doze.
By now it was almost 11 o’clock. Walter drank the last sip of coffee, retained the cup in his hand and went to the kitchen. He opened the door of the dishwasher, put his empty cup on the rack in the machine. The door of the dishwasher still in his hand, he turned his head and looked a long, intensive while at the full coffee cup of Doris. Then he looked at Qiqi, then back at the coffee cup. Slowly, very slowly he reached out his hand, took the cup and emptied it carefully into the sink. Then he also placed the emptied cup of Doris on the rack in the dishwasher and closed the door. He turned on the tap fully and washed away the traces of coffee in the sink. He watched until the last dreg was gone. He went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a triple whisky. With the glass in his hand he went to the terrace door, opened it and took a deep swig of whisky. He remained standing in the doorway. Heavy rain poured down. Qiqi was suddenly standing beside him. Both looked pensively into the wall of water and listened to the incessant noise of the rain.
And then Walter raised his voice and said loudly over the terrace into the rain:
‘So now it’s over with this ghost ride. Eighteen months packed with endless longing are enough !’. He drank up his whisky, turned around and shut the terrace door.
With long steps Walter rushed to the storeroom, took five huge garbage bags, intended for industrial waste, opened them, rolled down the ends of each and placed them ready in the hallway in a row. He put a CD with music by Philip Glass in the player. This endless and same-sounding, to some extent almost nervous whirring electric music, giving the impression the CD could be stuck, seemed to be perfect for his project. He chose ‘endless repetition’ and turned fully on.
Walter grabbed the first garbage bag and went to the bathroom. In a virtually destructive action he cleared away all the bottles, cans, towels and utensils of Doris and threw everything with spiteful gestures into the garbage bag. Qiqi stood on the doorstep and panted astonished, so that it looked as if the dog smiled again and again nodding his head approvingly.
Finally, Walter rearranged his own things, so that the space was used and there were no gaps where previously there were the things of Doris.
The first garbage bag was not yet full, so Walter also disposed of numerous items from the kitchen and the dining room. He also tore several small pictures off the wall and threw them into the garbage bag.
Then he took a new garbage bag and walked with giant strides into the bedroom.
Qiqi ran alongside him to the wardrobe, jumped up and grabbed for the silk evening dress – as he wanted to help clean up – and again the silk robe fell on the dog and enveloped him completely. The dog ran through the bedroom in panic and tried to strip the silk flood from his body. He got caught in the silk belt and finally dragged the robe behind him.
Walter had already cleared half the closet and stuffed the remaining sweaters, blouses, skirts and pants of Doris in a nearly degenerate and wild orgy with both hands into the garbage bag. He freed the dancing dog from its silken load, threw various objects from the bedside table into the bag and left the bedroom. Walter quickly went on with his disposal project and after his targeted action all traces of Doris were finally eliminated.
Five bulging industrial waste bags stood in rank and file in the hallway. Walter went to his study, wrote an email message to the head of building and maintenance of his company, and organized that the bags would be picked up first thing Monday morning.
He walked along the hallway, ripped three more pictures off the wall and placed them to the waste bags.
At the front, where the hallway led into the entrance area, in a niche stood the great harp that he had bought for Doris as she planned to take harp lessons. It never came to that.
Walter liked harp music very much. He stood a long while in front of the beautiful instrument and pursed his lips. The instrument was not to blame and was much too beautiful, in addition it had a wonderful sound. It looked great as decorative object and perhaps – who knows – he himself might take harp lessons or he could still sell the instrument. He ran his hands over the strings and the great sound reconciled him and confirmed his intention. Again and again he stroked the strings, so that a pearly firework of sounds filled the hallway.
He winced, pressed his lips together, held his fists against his temples and ran to the CD player. He pounded the button to switch off. The electronic cascade of music stopped abruptly. A glassy silence fell over the room.
Walter sank into a chair at the dining table. He put his arms on the table, leaned forward and buried his head in the crock of the arm, sobbing loudly. He felt how the tears were running in rivulets down his cheeks and in large drops wetting the sleeves of his cashmere sweater.
It was as if a dam had broken. The tears flowed incessantly in thick streams. He sobbed heartbreakingly. A twitch ran through his back and his shoulders were shaking. His heart seemed to be torn apart and in the opened wounds burrowed the pain. Infinite pain.
Long, long Walter sobbed into his arms. A redemptive eternity. After a while the sobbing eased, but then again he burst into tears. The breaks became longer. But the sobbing came back again and again.
Eighteen months of pent-up grief, helplessness, horror, shame and huge desire burst in torrential lacrimation out of him.
Suddenly he heard barking and looked up. He dragged himself to the corridor and saw Qiqi a few meters behind the apartment door vigorously barking.
Walter opened his apartment door and heard someone crying. He hurried into the stairwell and found a strange woman with semi-long, dark blond hair sitting on the stairs bent over. She held her hands over her face and wept heartbreakingly. ‘What happened, why are you crying, who are you ?’, he asked, half stammering. She turned to him and said, sobbing, without looking up, but pointing with one hand to the opposite apartment door: ‘I’m Julia Sennhauser, I wanted to visit my ex-boyfriend but he does not live here anymore. I always thought he would come back to me. I waited all these months. Now he’s gone, gone away with some of my things, and without informing me.’ She sniffed and covered again her face with her hands.
Walter felt his male protective instinct rise up in him. He straightened up, took a deep breath and said strongly and convincingly: ‘Your ex-boyfriend has recently moved out here, after having brought home a new companion about every two weeks. So this wretched gigolo is not worth a single tear !’
She slowly turned her head and looked at him. She jerked back and said somewhat appalled: ‘What happened to you, have you been crying too, you look absolutely terrible, as if you had been through a battle !’. She handed him her hand mirror. Walter bent down slightly and looked into the small mirror. He was shocked. In fact he looked like emerged from hell. He sat down on the stairs beside her and sighed. Then he said: ‘Yes, I was on a kind of hike through hell, I have also been abruptly abandoned many months ago and today all the feelings so long jammed inside erupted. You know what, we will now go to my flat and wash and freshen our faces and polish our noses. Then we will organise a cheese banquet and open a bottle of red wine. We will tell each other our tragedies and then we will see !’.
Walter rose. Julia stood up slowly, stayed for a while in front of him and looked at him a long time. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck. He raised his hands and gently touched her shoulders. They stood there for a while.
Harp music sounded, joyful harp cascades.
Amazed the two turned around and walked into the hallway of Walter’s apartment. There in front of the harp stood Qiqi happily wagging and with every wag he stroked the harp, which did not seem to bother him.
The two burst out in laughing and accompanied by Qiqi’s harp play they embraced each other tenderly.
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