Chapter 1

On this Wednesday afternoon in early February, the world, our part of it, was a melancholy place to be: wet and cold and windy, a dull greyish-brown monochrome of sodden earth, dripping trees and shrubs, speckled with dirty patches of leftover snow. On the barren fields surrounding the small village cemetery, crows sifted lethargically through the filth deposited by a manure spreader earlier in the day. They were watched impassively by a few half-starved, half-frozen buzzards on their perches. It had not been a good summer for buzzards. Much too moist, with too few rodents for the plenitude of birds hatched. Most of those birds, almost all of them last year's second brood, would not survive the winter. They seemed to be aware of it – and they didn't seem to care.

The few people huddled around the open grave mirrored their glum mood as they waited for the arrival of the undertaker's hearse, for the preacher to give his unctuous benediction, the two coffins to be lowered into the wide shaft side by side. Then, at last, they would be able to gather in the comfort of the village inn and share all the juicy gossip about why they had to be here on this dismal day. And why were there no relatives at all? And what about those strangers, that group of odd-looking people, who stood well apart from all mourners?

In any professional environment where women are in the majority to the ratio of almost eight to one, male workers have to adapt to that fact of life promptly. That includes general behaviour, language and mannerisms, a multitude of things, to avoid the pitfalls of sexual harassment issues and the limitless aspects of expert bitchiness. And nobody cares a hoot about the fact that those environments had been entirely male domains in times quite recent. It was in this setting that I met Karla. I do believe her story is worth the telling and I keep wondering if things could have been handled differently. By me, amongst others. Better perhaps?

I knew and understood Karla quite well, had learned to accommodate her in a strictly job-related way. She had, for a long time, been my immediate boss after all. I avoided friction as far as humanly possible without becoming a doormat and even found ways of cracking the occasional joke with her. As long as I refrained from voicing anything off-colour or religiously offensive I was okay. Even if her religiosity was strictly passive, she would not suffer any loose talk and could get into massive snits if the occasion warranted it. My oftentimes crude language I curbed a bit when she was around, but I would never submit to the ridiculous demands of political correctness or militant feminism.

When she got herself pregnant after a surprisingly quick courtship and fast wedding I did not really care one way or the other when she went on maternity leave. I felt no urges to become her successor and left the infighting to the remaining women in the department, only rarely commenting on the state of affairs to my single male colleague. With a chuckle mostly, since said infighting took on some often childish forms: jamming keyboards, gumming up mouse-pads. Or it turned downright grotesque with spitting and screaming, vicious hair-pulling matches. Eventually, the head man settled the matter by getting somebody, another woman, from the outside. The seas becalmed once more.

Of course, when Karla returned to work after four years and two children, girls, she could not expect to get her old position back. Instead, she became one of us peons, working half days at first at whatever job needed additional attention, smut work mostly, and bore her rather unpleasant fate stoically, not interacting or socialising in any meaningful way. Occasionally I would see her about the offices, running errands, chasing jobs and such, subbing wherever the need arose. She did not seem to change much as the years went by. She was polite, she was withdrawn, solitary, and even later, when she found her way back into my department for most of the time, never spoke much. I did notice that her previously wonderfully thick and long, lustrous, almost blue-black hair had lost its gleam entirely, her large eyes, her second best feature, had acquired a haunted, almost despondent expression which I could not fathom at all. But we hardly ever talked privately and soon, after my retirement, I forgot about her altogether.

It is a rather strange experience and one which has to be acquired by every man or woman individually, that, while wishing to grow old may be fun, being old is nothing like it, most of the time. One has to accept the new situation, the ever more restrictive limits an increasingly undependable and quirky body sets. To establish some kind of rhythm and ritual in this late phase of life is a priority. The alternative is to become a bloated slob or an intolerable bore to everyone. Even though my Island Cure (see MasterBuilder) had taken care of my body to an unbelievable extent I was forever mindful not to let go and exercised regularly.

Hence, too, my varied regimen of long walks, sometimes across the fields and through the forests surrounding my rural village, sometimes about the nearest town, complete with mediaeval castle and modern monstrosities alike. The weather, warm or cold, wet or dry, could always be relied on to justify a dash into a pub and I often sat reading one of my favourite books in one of my favourite spots, be they in nature or civilisation.

The present time of the year I enjoyed immensely, yet again: mid-spring with hardly a breeze, birds and bees flitting about over the liberated earth, with a huge crop of flowers scenting the air, not a cloud in the sky. The small limestone formation I was sitting on perfectly shaped to support my reading figure, sheltered from view and winds, yet facing into the still rather weak but pleasant sun. Not too far away, a little more than a half hour's leisurely stroll, settled a nice gasthof, where I would feed myself later on. Once the lunch crowds had mostly disappeared and before the cake and coffee troops made their boisterous all-out attack.

However, my pleasant solitude was interrupted when a shadow fell over me and a woman exclaimed: "Oh, sorry ... I didn't ... oh Berthold, is it really you?"

This is how, after all those years, I met up with Karla once more. Of course, I invited her to share my delightful spot in the sun with me and had to answer her polite questions about my wellbeing and such. Since she had never seen me after I left the company, she was quite intrigued by my altered appearance. Of course, fast talking was second nature to me after all I had gone through. I blamed my altered looks on the passing of time and clean, stress-free living.

But what about her? Her once strong face seemed to consist entirely of hollows, her eyes were deeply sunk, her hair even drier and duller than I remembered. There was no reason, really, why I should be interested. We would soon go our separate ways, our chance meeting nothing more than a mildly surprising coincidence. Yet, something in her appearance made me reach out to her.

"All seems to be not well, Karla. What's the problem? If you wish to talk, I promise to listen. Whether I can be of any help at all, we'll have to see."

She knew me as one of the more disrespectful, towards everybody, of her colleagues. To doubt me came naturally. But she leant her head back against the warm rock and, with tears filling her eyes, told me her tale. Monotonous. Dispirited. Hopeless.

"I have been married for 17 years. My daughters, Elvira is fifteen, Charlotte thirteen, are the reason I'm telling you this. I have nobody else to turn to. Nobody is prepared to listen. You don't know my husband, I think. We got married rather fast after we met at a company function he was invited to. But even if this wasn't the greatest of love affairs, we used to like each other enough to get along reasonably well. Until he got promoted the third time, that is. He is now at the top of the ladder, not full partner as he had hoped, but CEO. He had to work extremely hard to get where he is at, still puts in brutally long hours. We have no financial problems whatsoever. I need not work at all, but he insists 'I do my share '.