Show description

Then the first drops fell. Karin peered around, looking for the two squabblers, then said to herself that they would find their way to the house without her and went inside. She would have liked to go to bed with her husband, would have liked to lay her head in the crook of his arm and her arm over his chest, open the window and listen to the rustle of the rain. But she couldn’t run away from her mission to pacify and reconcile and heal. Ulrich was right in what he said about my mission, she thought, and she thought of Christiane, who had taken on an even greater one when only a child.

And she answered the telephone only because it was mounted on the wall in such a way that she could pick up the receiver without getting to her feet. ” No one answered. Then she heard the caller breathing, and it was his breath. She knew it very well, and she loved it, loved the pauses in their telephone conversations, when he was wordlessly close to her with his breath. “Jan,” she said. ” again, he hung up. She sat there as if anesthetized. She was sure she hadn’t been mistaken. She was sure that she must have been mistaken.

He needs to be among people, she thought. And more than that, he needs help. Who will he get that from, if not his old friends? Finally she decided that the ones who were pleased she had called, the ones who wanted to come, were also the right ones. In some of those who made excuses she sensed honest regret; they would have liked to be there if they’d known about it earlier, if they hadn’t already made other plans. But what was she to do? His release had come as a surprise. “Henner, Ilse, Ulrich with his second wife and their daughter, Karin with her husband, Andreas, of course.