“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
from Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The pot is boiling. It has taken 20 minutes to bring water to a bubbling roll
so that I can hard-boil my egg. At last the low-heat hotplate finally does its job. The thunderstorm completely soaked me to the bone during my dash from the Helene-Lange Gymnasium back to the flat to pick up my math book. Now, I have to let the storm pass before returning to class, so why not eat something while I wait? Everything is wet and water is pooling around me on the floor. I have stringy hair and am hungry but will soon have, for the first meal of the day, a hard boiled egg and a crust from the last of the bread we bought last week. I am missing math until I can hop on my black bike and zoom back to class.
Back to school I fly, negotiating the traffic on Grindelallee and barely miss running into a Communist-era grandmother with a carpet bag and sturdy no-nonsense umbrella when I turn on Sedenstraße. I am allowed back into class without a big scene. Herr Külner nods to me as I quietly slip into my seat and begin work on polynomials. Svea, across the aisle and back one, slips me a note with the problem set numbers for me to work on and I bury my head and begin the catch-up slog. I’ve missed 40 minutes of this hour and ten minute class but maybe I can finish this assignment during lunch since I took advantage of my unexpected return to Johnsalle to have that egg. My sticky shirt starts to itch and now sunlight is pouring through the windows following the deluge. The humidity must be 150%!
Class is dismissed but not before I write tonight’s homework in one of my soaked graphing notebooks (it will dry out by this afternoon) and check with Herr Külner about two of the problems. Now my waterlogged shoes are starting to squeak as I walk down the veneered tongue-and-grooved hallways still resistant to this kind of student abuse because of excellent old-style German carpentry.
I suddenly remember that I am supposed to meet Frau Angell for weekly German-language tutoring. I’ve been working on the Dativ, Nominativ, and Infinitive cases with her. I skip lunch so that I can fit this in. I run to her office, under the disapproving glance of several teachers, but Frau Angell is nowhere to be seen since I’m nine minutes late. Darn.
I hurry to the Canteen where I find Svea sitting in our usual corner. Today we have a presentation on China in Geography. I am speaking about Xi’an and she about Shijiazhuang but we really need to coordinate our information and visual aids. She is somewhat unprepared because she had to study for a Chemistry test last night, so our study session is fraught with bumps and frustration. Neither of us is completely ready and my novice German slows us down.
The one minute bell sounds. Uh-oh, if I don’t hurry I’ll be late. “Schade, Wir haben alles getan, wir könnten für den Moment,” Svea mumbles as we scramble to our next class, sprinting up three flights of stairs, and crashing through swinging doors—German emergency fire exit style—before arriving at Raum 15. The door is shut and Geography has already begun. Herr Heinrich always closes the door before the official “you are now late” bell.
Svea and I do a quick round of rock-paper-scissors for the fateful job of knocking on the door for admission. Wiser students than we are already in their places and I must, for the second time this year, be publicly shamed for having arrived late. We respectfully seat ourselves. Svea and I are called to present in the final fifteen minutes of class. We have been preparing alone and not together as much as needed and it shows. Svea fumbles with the map but finally locates the Yangtze River. Herr Heinrich clears his throat and I, with decent—though faltering—German, stumble over both the pronunciation and explanation of das Bewässerungssystem even though I score points on the geopolitical basics regarding der Nebenfluss of the Yangtze and der Industrialisierung of that area. Mercifully, the last bell of the day rings just as I have concluded. Svea, sobered, is glad to have this assignment over. We hug goodbye.
School is out and I mount my bike and pedal to the lake. The thunderstorm has scoured the now non-dusty path to the Alster. I stop at the edge of the path and see “my” tree breaking the green horizon with cascading branches touching the ground with gold and pale green leaves reflecting shards of sunlight. I bump across the ragged lawn, pedaling past mud-holes and worms, then drop my bike, eager to enter the gap between the leaves and step into my secret haven beneath the branches. I feel relief sweep over me. A lazy breeze flirts in, around, through hanging branches which bend gracefully to the ground like the handkerchief hem on one of my dresses, swishing soft tendrils back and forth. Light shimmers and flits through the slender spring green leaves and I sit quietly at the trunk of the tree like a youth at the knees of her grandfather, waiting for a story. No story comes for the impatient. I wait. I learn, after an hour, about the sheer happiness of perfect calm. Here, at last, and for the first time today, I am not late, I have not forgotten anything, nor am I unprepared. I deepen my stillness in that loveliest of scenes and become lucid for the first time today.
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