Trial

Today: how ordinary, how plain! The dawn brought in the newspaper, the alarm clock rang in sense, and the decree of doomsday was ruled when my coffee cup ran dry. The sky looked like a hermetic milk bottle―uniform and uninteresting, but mysteriously, perfectly cut.

I miss the magic of being alone. My solitary enjoyment of a long country road, curling around the rocky waist of a hill. My ascetic admiration for the wild bloom of sunflowers under the autumn sky. My sequestered joy as my thoughts echoed off the walls in my quiet hotel room. My uninterrupted indulgence in a book. No calls, no worries, no emotions to account for, no lover to complicate time, no nagging sense of obligation for this or that to get done.

'I am a hedonist,' I told CH. We were sitting out in the balcony of my hotel room. The sleepy little German town of Ingolstadt was bathed with the milkglow of the moon, presently and pleasantly strung like a Christmas ornament behind the dome-roof of the old church.

He jabbed me gently, smiling. 'You tease. You know I would not know this word.'

'It means―pleasure-seeker. Bon vivant, some say.' I found his easy companionship a perfect way to round off my week-long jaunt overseas. The balmy autumn air, spiced with his cologne and my sleepy contentment, was an epicure for my overwrought senses.

'The French has a word for everything,' he said, with disingenuity, a boy suddenly, that ageless youth bright with candor in his eyes.

'Especially for pleasure,' I replied, grinning.

He caught my grin and gave me that slow, sweet smile―an accidental Adonis, always. I liked that he did not attempt intimacy―not physically anyway. We sat and nursed our weissbier, indulging in the stillness of the night, and indulging, still, in our unhurried conversations.

'We don't say goodbye,' he said, hours later. The dawn was diagraming our separation.

'We don't say goodbye,' I agreed.

The sun surged with fierceness after he left, and I got dressed quickly, absent-mindedly, for work. I was early for my guest―the elderly journalist would not join me for breakfast. So I returned to the magic of being alone; I sat out in the windy courtyard, with the table laid out for one. The butter yielded to the warmth of the freshly baked breads, and the coffee aroma gathered around me like tiny angels, chattering. I relished everything, but most of all―I relished the freedom of being free.

'You look very happy,' remarked a colleague at the headquarters later.

I squinted into the distance, watching the bluebell sky. 'Must be the weather,' I remarked.

The trip ended. I'm leaving for another one tonight, a shorter one, back to China. Another spell of solitude, another interlude, another access to freedom. Selfish as this may seem―I'm already smiling.

Genau, liebe: den Mutigen gehört die Welt.