Miracles do happen

by Alan Maley

“Billings, Cooper and Parks. How can I help you? ”

It was 5 p.m. on a Friday and Tracy was just about to leave.

“Yes. Could I please speak to Mr. Michael Johnson? It is a personal call. But it is, ja, very urgent.”

Tracy was in a hurry to get away. She had a date with Vince at 5.30. Why did they always call at closing time on a Friday? But the man sounded upset, and he was obviously calling long-distance, from abroad. He spoke very correct English, but he was ‘foreign’; he sounded very German in fact.

“Mike, ” she called across the office, “there’s a German on the line. Says he needs to talk to you urgently.

“It’s probably Schmitz from Frankfurt, ” he replied, “put him on the line.”

Michael Johnson was now a senior partner in the respectable (and respected) stockbroking company of Billings, Cooper and Parks. He had worked for them for thirty years. He worked hard. He rarely took a holiday. He was married with two children, both at university. He lived in Esher, Surrey, in a nice house, in a nice area, with his comfortable, nice, but unexciting wife, Marjorie. He was ‘settled’. His life was a routine. He had nothing to look forward to.

But it was not Schmitz. “I am so sorry to disturb you, ” the man spoke in a very formal way, “but I do not know what to do. I am the husband of Else, Else Kolb, from Schleisum. I think you can remember who Else is? ”

“Of course I remember Else. I did not know she had married again.”

“Yes, we married ten years ago. But that is not the reason for my call. Else is dying. The doctors say she has three months at the most. She has been asking to see you before she …” the voice broke down, “I beg you to come at once. I will send you our address by fax. Please come. She needs you.”

There was a click. A few minutes later a fax came through with an address, telephone and fax number in Hagersrup, just outside Schleisum.

Mike called across to Tracy, “Please cancel all my appointments for the next week. And call the travel agents. I need a seat on a flight to Hamburg tomorrow morning.”

He sat back in his chair. Why was he doing this? He was a careful man. He never acted carelessly. Yet he could not refuse Else’s request. It would cause him a lot of trouble but … He began to remember Else as he had known her – thirty-five years earlier – she had been his first love … In fact his only real love.

He left the office and took the usual train home from Waterloo. He thought about how he would explain all this to Marjorie.

He arrived at Hamburg airport at eleven the following morning. Half an hour later he had hired a car and was driving north into Schleswig-Holstein. Schleisum is a small, provincial town. It stands at the end of a long inlet from the Baltic Sea. Nothing much happens there. Michael had been posted to the small airbase just outside Schleisum as part of his military service in 1956. He was eighteen years old. Life had been boring. He often worked at night at the radar station, checking air traffic over East Germany, Poland and the Baltic. Days were spent sleeping. Then, one Sunday afternoon he had gone with his mates to a dance at the ‘Hot Club’ down in town. It was there that he had met Else. And his life had suddenly changed.

He checked in to the small hotel, ‘Zum Deutschen Eiche’, in the Stadtweg, the main street of the town. He remembered drinking beer there. It was small and modest but clean. He called Hermann Doll, Else’s husband. Half an hour later, Hermann came to pick him up. He was driving a new BMW. They drove out of town towards Breckenheid, where the airbase had been. Michael remembered the many times when he had walked back to camp after leaving Else. It was five kilometres, but, with the thought of Else fresh in his mind, the distance had meant nothing to him.

Hermann was a small man with thin sandy hair and a wet, nervous mouth. He tried to make conversation on the way, “You will be shocked when you see Else. Please do not let her see it. She has been living for this moment.” They passed the airbase. It was deserted. The buildings were empty. “They closed it down two years ago, after the Berlin Wall came down, ” Hermann explained. In spite of what Hermann had told him about Else, Michael was shocked when he saw her. She lay back in the large double bed in the bedroom of their suburban villa. Her hair was grey, almost white. Her skin was transparent, like an egg without a shell. The bones in her face stuck out and her dark eyes were sunk deep into it. But she was still beautiful. He sat on the bed beside her. He took her hand. Hermann had left discreetly. “You came, ” she said, “I never believed you would come.”

For the next week Michael spent every moment of the day, and sometimes the night too, with Else. Together they re-lived, moment by moment, the passionate love they had shared thirty-five year earlier.

“Do you remember the first night I asked you back to the house? ” she asked him.

“You mean when we went down into the cellar and sat by the boiler and talked till three in the morning? How could I forget that? I had to walk back to camp in the cold! ”

“And what about the night we went walking in the woods behind Schloss Gottorp? Do you remember how everything was covered in frost and how it all sparkled in the moonlight? ”

“What about the evening – it was summer – a very hot evening, when we had our first argument? You walked off and left me. Then we spent the next two hours desperately searching for each other. Do you remember? ”

And so it went on. Hermann came and went, made coffee or tea, brought them food, beer or wine for Michael, gave Else her medicine, then left them alone together again. They never spoke of her illness but sometimes she would clutch Michael’s hand when the pain was too intense. Once or twice she made him leave her when she could not bear it any more. Then she would slip into a drugged sleep. But gradually Else seemed better now she was with Michael. So she was devastated when he told her he would be leaving the next day. He had stayed a full week; he could stay no longer. He promised her he would return before … the end of the month. She turned her head away from him and sobbed into her pillow.

Hermann drove him into town early the next morning. It was the first time they had been alone together since Michael’s arrival. When they stopped outside the hotel, Hermann began to talk, at first slowly and with difficulty, then more and more fluently and passionately.

“Mike – I hope I can call you Mike – I will always be grateful to you for what you have done. I am not a jealous man. I know that you are the only person she has ever really loved – no please listen to me, don’t interrupt. After you left, all those years ago, she was lost. You know she married that fellow from Hamburg. She was never happy. It only lasted a year. Then she drifted in and out of relationships for years. I was lucky. I married her when she was desperate for someone who would care for her. I know that I am nothing to her compared with you, but I am grateful. I am just an insurance agent. I am not especially interesting, I know. But I have tried to make her happy. It was friendship, not love, but it was all we had. We did not have children. Perhaps it was just as well. And now she is leaving both of us.” He began to sob. Michael tried to comfort him, then left, back to Hamburg and London.

They agreed that Hermann would call as soon as the end was near. A week went by, then two, then three. Michael did not dare to call. All he could do was to wait. Two months later a letter arrived, postmarked Schleisum. It was from Else.

“Dearest Mike,

I am so sorry I have not written to you or phoned you but a miracle has happened.

After you left, my health suddenly got worse. They took me to the hospital. I thought it was the end. Then, one morning I woke from the drugs and felt better – much better. Hermann was sitting beside me. Suddenly I realized what a fool I had been. I had never understood how good life has been for me.

First there was our wonderful first love together, all those years ago. I shall never forget a single moment of it, even if it broke my heart. Then you came to me when I needed you most. Without you I would have died, I know it. But when you had left, I came to understand how much I loved Hermann. I had been blind to it for so long. Suddenly, I knew. And now I am getting better! The doctors can’t understand it but it’s true. I have put on weight, and next week Hermann and I are going to Italy for a holiday in the sun. It is a real miracle.

Dearest Mike, I will never see you again but I will never forget you. I wish you the same happiness that I have found. Happiness is there in front of our eyes – but we don’t see it.

Miracles do happen.

Else.”

ENRICH YOUR VOCABULARY

I. Work with a good dictionary to learn the meaning of the following words. Pay attention to their derivatives. Reproduce the situations from the text where the active vocabulary is employed. Give sentences of your own with either these words or their derivatives.

II. Find synonyms for the following words in the text and give your own synonyms if any: a comrade, to beseech, to wail, to cut smb short, hopeless, a rendezvous, to put smb through, a medicine, to venture, confidential, to protrude, to elucidate.

III. Give antonyms for the following words choosing them from the text and your own ones if any: crowded, a hut, emotive, frivolous, to dismiss, arrogant, sighted, impassive, illiterate, frequently, urban, reconciliation.