Time knows all the answers E-Book

Christina Gasser

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 105

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A young man is killed in a robbery. Was it an accident or a murder? Sarah is looking for the man of her life and meets an exciting guy. But her friend warns her about him. What's the story? David grew up without a mother and received no love from his father. His great passion is music, where he finds solace. What does fate hold for him? In her seven short stories, Christina Gasser shows how wonderful and, at the same time, merciless life can be, and in doing so, she addresses topics such as loneliness, fate, friendship and desires.

Leseprobe

Life

Happiness requires first and foremost:

Make peace with yourself.

(CG)

Longings

It was gray and windy outside.

For weeks, the high fog had obscured the sunlight like a shabby curtain as soon as a bright ray dared to cheat its way through a milky gap.

The weather forecast did not promise a quick turnaround. The foggy morning was followed by a cloudy, damp afternoon that turned into a pale evening.

He had given up, did not mourn the sinking November Friday.

He hadn't done anything, hadn't been out in the garden, hadn't gone for a walk, hadn't received any visitors and was particularly glad that he hadn't had to engage in unnecessary and annoying conversation with his talkative relatives. He felt sick every time the sweet perfume of the ladies and the slightly too strong aftershave of the men stung his nose.

Today there was no swarming of shoes, no handshakes, no pats on the back or strained amused smiles, no suit and tie, no arranged plates of cookies and no filled coffee cups.

It had remained quiet.

Since mid-October, and that was fine with him.

"Have you heard from Martin? He's now a grandfather of six!"

"My goodness, his daughter is quite ... fertile."

"What about your daughter, Toni? Not found a man yet?"

"How old is she now? Thirty-two, thirty-four?"

"Thirty-seven. Engaged, I think. I haven't spoken to her for a long time."

"You should be! But engaged? Oh dear, who gets engaged these days?"

"Do people even get married anymore? Is that modern?"

"Does marriage have to be modern?"

"Our Dominik shows zero interest in girls."

"Gay?"

"No. That means ... I don't know exactly. He calls himself non-binary now."

"What?"

"I don't understand either. He just ... doesn't want to commit, I guess."

"Well ..."

"What shall I say ... the young generation, that's not our world anymore, is it, Toni?"

"I guess so."

Small talk stressed him out. It was a pointless string of questions, and hardly anyone was interested in the answers.

The eternal, escalating arguments, the comparisons, the outdoing of each other, the retrieval of interesting things and the polite clearing of the throat when the other person became uncomfortable, the embarrassed shoving of cookies into the mouth so that one didn't have to answer, and the constant stench of thick cigars, the sight of forgotten glasses in which sometimes a small amount of cognac remained because a guest did not appreciate the effort, dedication and time that had gone into maturing the honey yellow to perfection. Cognac had to be offered to exquisite people at exquisite times, and the enjoyment of the honey yellow should be followed by the reverence it deserves.

The world had become too fast, too loud, too violent and, above all, too superficial for him.

He longed for the old days, for order, peace and reliability.

"What happened to time?"

"Past."

"And what does the future hold?"

"Not here yet, so let's not think about it, Toni."

Marianne and he married when she turned twenty-four. He had turned twenty-seven five weeks earlier. Tamara was on the way, their only and eagerly awaited daughter.

It hadn't been an easy time; they didn't have much, except for each other. But that had always been enough for him and Marianne's loving care let him know that this was indeed the case.

"Where are my gray and blue socks, my dear?"

"Where they always are. In the white chest of drawers. First drawer, top right."

"Found them! They were hiding behind the dark blue pair."

"So cheeky!"

"Yes, absolutely true. And do you remember where I left my reading glasses?"

"Certainly, darling. In the bathroom."

"That's right, of course. If I didn't have you!"

"Then you need to start taking better care of your things, Toni! According to statistics, you spend half your life searching."

"How do you know such things, my love?"

"Curiosity."

"I'm nothing without you."

"That's not true, Toni. A person is more than just the sum of mistakes or successes. You're still you, even if I'm no longer here."

Marianne died at the age of seventy-three. Since then, he has lived alone in a three-room apartment on the first floor of a five-family house. And although there always seemed to be someone in the house, he was still alone.

"No, I'm nothing without you."

He adjusted the TV armchair and settled into it. His body sank into the soft cushion and his arms, which stuck out of his short-sleeved shirt like scrawny branches, dangled over the backrest. He reached for the remote control lying on the sofa table and pressed the power button, triggering a crescendoing murmur. The television came to life.

Five thick, long-necked candles were burning in the fireplace instead of logs. Their light was soothing and calming, even if it didn't provide any warmth. Thanks to the new central heating, that wasn't necessary.

The fireplace protruding from the wall had found its purpose as an eye-catcher in the existence of a traditional piece of decoration. He particularly enjoyed the fact that the repurposing of the fireplace had made the tiresome chopping of wood and brushing out the ash pan a thing of the past. Comfortable coziness remained his top priority.

He had tuned into a talk show and picked up words such as eco-tax, forward-looking trends and pragmatic sanctions. He didn't understand any of it and the topic quickly bored him. He let out a sigh, zapped two channels further and got stuck on the movie 'The Cat on the Hot Tin Roof'.

Wonderful movie. So much passion!

He nestled deeper into the armchair and gazed feverishly at the screen.

He had already seen the film umpteen times, but was happy to immerse himself in the story once again, to be sucked in anew.

He loved American films from the 1940s and 1950s, especially 'Gone with the wind'. But nobody knew that, especially not his gossipy relatives and not even his daughter. This movie was something that belonged only to him.

He loved the strength of the protagonists and the attitudes of the Hollywood ladies he adored. He owned video cassettes, hundreds of which were already piled up in the living room wall. He had acquired the films, carefully arranged them in alphabetical order, knew every year of production, directors, main and supporting actors. They were all in his memory, the stories, faces, names, numbers and sentences. Enchanted, obsessive and remote-controlled, he spoke the lines of his movie heroes in sync and wore an invisible smile when he slipped into Humphrey Bogart's Casablanca role and gazed lovingly into Ilsa's eyes.

The images captured on celluloid evoked longings that nourished, delighted and saddened him at the same time. He watched his films at any time of day or night. The only real thing, real life, had to be in these films! There was no doubt about it. The stories were real because they were true, an authentic reflection of a time he missed so much.

Sometimes it was cruel, sometimes the films were tragic, sad, sometimes poetic, refreshing. All facets of life were reflected in them.

Just like in real life, only clearer.

For some time now, his only pleasure had been watching television. He had come to terms with the fact that he had put on some weight, was less handsome, less agile, had grown old and that his wishes had not been fulfilled. He had accepted that he had lost the woman of his life, that he had never received a pay rise during his working life, that the money had always been enough, but that there was never anything left over for vacations. He had learned to be content with dreams and satisfied his longings with those of his movie heroes. He only felt comfortable and alive in their realities, their emotions and worlds of thought. Real life, his life, lay veiled, hidden under a pile of memories in his brain and had become unimportant. The movie world was now his world.

He had not realized how deceptive and insidious his addiction to losing himself in a fantasy was. He hadn't noticed how the bittersweet loneliness had gradually crept into his bones and into his innermost being, hadn't seen through the fact that he himself had become part of a utopia - unapproachable, incomprehensible, floating.

In his lethargy, he already resembled those waxy figures that you look at suspiciously in shop windows, undecided as to whether they actually have life in them or not, because the frozen features seem unreal and even a little eerie.

There was little life energy left in his chest. His limbs had become weak, his soul exhausted. He had shut himself off, unwittingly and unintentionally choosing to ignore time and what was to come.

The rain raged outside, occasionally slapping against the windows as if to bring him back to the here and now, as if to say: Come on, get up, look outside, life is raging out here!

But the drawn white curtains bathed the room in twilight. Only the flickering and flickering candles that radiated into the room from the television broke the gloom. That's how every evening ended.

For him, it didn't matter what time it was or what day of the week or month it was. The living room was the center of his life. It had become a room where everything happened: this was where he ate his meals, where he thought, where he rested, where he laughed, where he mourned, where he fell asleep and where he woke up in the morning.

His eyes never left the screen for a moment. His gaze was glued to the device that held the whole world within it and played out truths that were united in all the beauty, all the goodness and purity that he thought he knew and recognized. He barely uttered a sound, only the short, hoarse cough ten could be heard from time to time as his chest rose and fell rapidly with a hint of laughter.

The movie had long since ended and there were commercials on TV.

He hadn't noticed. His gaze was glued to the screen as if hypnotized. He saw lights and colors, saw landscapes that rose, curved, stretched and divided, overflowed into forests, flowed into streets, ended in villages and towns, came alive with people talking, meeting, hugging, kissing, arguing and leaving each other again.

His cinematic obsession had taken on a life of its own, continued in his imagination and he unconsciously took part in it. At that moment he was in the midst of these landscapes, meadows, forests, streets, villages and towns, floating over lakes, seas, hills and mountains, meeting wonderful and malicious people whom he accompanied, observed and whose fates were in his hands. He was able to direct and guide events, was creator, participant and spectator all at the same time.

Immersed and enveloped in a colorful world of images, smells and feelings, he remained in his armchair, motionless, daydreaming. Slipping into his world was more than just a source of satisfaction: It was something sacred and the immersion inescapable. He loved it. You had all the power, you were God and devil.

And then, in a moment of awakening, he felt the sudden pain.

He came quickly, insidiously, without mercy.

It scared him, made his heart race, and then his chest spasmed.

The pain spread like a fire. And the fire of pain blazed, flickered, burned, bit and left him breathless, his eyes wide open.

When his daughter finally found him after a few weeks because he hadn't responded to her calls, it looked like a scene from a sad, tragic movie.

That was the story.

He would have liked that if he had known that he himself would one day become the center of a drama that others would talk about for a long time to come. It would have amused him that it would be in the newspaper and that it would be reported on local television: about the old man who had died quietly at home during a gloomy November weekend, accompanied only by his favorite film that had been found in the video recorder:

Gone with the wind.

The love

He who loves, lives.

Not the other way around.

(CG)

Sweetened lemon