Part 13

The escape

On the next morning the rain clouds were finally flown and the sun tried, with all strength it has, to illuminate the day. There were some very calm days in the gallery, so that I could enjoy most of the time after the work on my small terrace. I felt, how I absorbed each sunbeam in me. Like at a gas station, at with which the tank of the car almost seemed to have dried out already. Yes, that was me, dried out, unable to feel, unable to see. I thought, if I just closed myself up enough, it would be the right punishment that I deserved for what I had done to my family. If I only closed myself up enough, I would only feel the pain and my guilt. Humans, who had hurt humans, to whom they loved so much, don’t deserve it to feel something else than guilt. Jesus, what a lie to myself, of course, as long as I felt guilt, I did not have to argue with all the other feelings and least of all with me. ‚And you didn’t want that, Bette, did you? You didn’t want to analyze yourself, didn’t want to go further, and did not want to recognize that you were only hiding yourself. Jazzy alibi!’ and it worked nevertheless over the last years. How could I just believe one instant that ignorance and self–abandonment were an appropriate punishment. Had I really been after that, to vanish, to disappear from time and space, from the past and, finally, from the future? The meeting with Marina made it more than clear to me that I had not disappeared, and above all that it would also never work.

Now it was time to take my life into my own hands. But do I want to go? What is the goal? Which way do I want and can I go?

I met with Marina on the Saturday evening at „The Pink Door “, a small, very cosy restaurant in Pike Place Market. It was famous for its outstanding European kitchen, its nice waiters and the unimpaired, calm atmosphere. Most importantly however was that „The Pink Door” had an expanded outdoor area, because I would have wanted nothing less than to sit in a small, half-lighted corner of a restaurant suffocating of the smoked ambience and the noise of murmuring guests. No, „The Pink Door” was generously, airy and nearly already a little intimate, exactly the right thing, it was the perfect place, in order to talk about our new lives and… and to work up old lives.