In My Dreams

Warning: If intimacy between two males disturbs you; or if you find this subject matter unappealing you will want to skip this FF.

This story line is purely a work of fiction. No part is based in reality. The content matter, details and all, came from the author’s imagination.

No harm or disparagement is intended towards any Divo, especially not to my favorite.




Thank you Carolyn. Your patience, intelligence, encouragement and support kept me going.


IN MY DREAMS

CHAPTER 1 (Paris, 2010)

Paris at dawn was like a lady of the night who had just fallen asleep. She’d doze knowing that soon she must awaken to face the day but not just yet. She’d doze on, just for a moment more.

The sun rose and tried to set a cheery mood but there were few around to see it or to feel its rays. The only sounds that were heard were the workers, those early birds who clean the streets of debris, who deliver the staples so that the newly closed businesses can make ready for another night of revelry. For them it was just another day.

At least one person was up though. Urs Buhler had been awake for hours. He was always an early riser. He had finished his second shower of the day, the first he took when he got out of bed, and then another after his workout at the hotel gym. Now he was free to do what he chose until the afternoon sound check and later still he’d do the gig that brought him to town.

Urs was not particularly fond of Paris. Too many memories made in days gone by but he could tolerate being here as long as he could get in a good walk and get some fresh air before the crowds filled the streets and the sidewalks.

He walked out of the hotel; it was on a narrow street near the American Embassy and because of that Embassy, very little vehicular traffic was allowed and guards were posted at both ends of the short street leading past the Embassy and on to the hotel. This was a precaution that had been taken seriously since 9/11 in the states and 3/11 in Europe.

He left the Sofitel Hotel Le Fabourg, his home for three nights while he performed a two night concert. He turned left on the rue Boissy D’anglas towards the Jardin des Touileries where he walked for about hour before he sat on a park bench and watched the birds as they flitted about seemingly without a care. On closer inspection, he noted that they spent most of their time hunting for food. They were driven. Life is not always what it seems he mused, eyeing the birds with faint sorrow.

After a while he turned back. He had no interest in continuing on towards the Louvre or visiting it nor did he want to go to d’Orsay. No museums for him today. Memorabilia of days gone by did not appeal to him in his present state of mind.

He was beginning to feel the pangs of hunger so he headed back to the hotel, which had a wonderful buffet breakfast in a small semi-private enclosed area that was for guests only. He made his way in, grabbed a newspaper and he looked around for a seat that would give him a view of the area but was relatively concealed.

He chose a seat near the window that housed the central garden and proceeded to help himself to a selection of breakfast meats; bacon, ham, sausages then potatoes, eggs, and finally fruits and a variety of breads. Between the gym and his walk he had managed to work up a healthy appetite. By the time he got back to his seat the waiter was there to take his beverage order.

“Would you like juice and coffee as usual Mr. Buhler?” Urs had only eaten here one other day, yesterday morning but he supposed with the rapid hotel turnover, a day was long enough to establish a ‘usual’.
“Yes, please.”
The waiter returned quickly with his drinks and asked “Will there be anything else Mr. Buhler?” to which Urs shook his head. He was willing the man to disappear so that he could read his paper in peace.

He and David, Sebastien and Carlos were each occupying one of the ostentatiously labeled ‘Opera Suites’. He thought it a totally unnecessary expense. Why did he, a man alone, have need of a lounge, a dining room, and kitchen in addition to his well appointed bedroom? But that was Il Divo for you; always the biggest and most expensive for them. Didn’t they realize that suites such as this took money from their pockets?

He’d much rather have kept the money to spend as he liked on something that he valued instead of useless frivolities that he neither needed nor wanted. Had administration thought that any of them would be cooking a meal before the show? ‘Come on. Have an idea folk’.

He drew in a calming breath; enough Buhler, this is a nice hotel.

True he was a methodical man. He liked his routine which included his shower in the morning, another after gym, perhaps a third before the sound check and certainly a fourth after a performance. But he just liked to be clean. There was nothing wrong with that.

He worked out because he believed that a man’s body needed to be strong. The guys had accused him of being addicted to his showers and the gym but there was nothing wrong with cleanliness and strength was there?

And speaking of liking routine, he had even managed to adjust to the constant travel by seeing the commonalities involved in it all. Instead of looking at it as hotel after hotel, he was able to treat a hotel, no matter how many or where, as home. It was just that - a hotel. A plane ride was just that. No matter where they were headed, the commonality was that it was just a plane ride.

Food, sleep, showers, gym and performing had become his life.

He had almost finished his breakfast when the young woman walked in. At first he didn’t notice her for more than the time it took to glance. She was just not his type. She was certainly not flashy at all. Her mussed mousy brown hair fell limply and untidily around her oval face. Her breasts were small, almost nonexistent. She was of average height, young, possibly thirty he guessed. She was still too young and immature for him; she was singularly not his type. Although David and the guys didn’t understand it, he liked his women older than he. Why he couldn’t say.

You the reader, in an internal narrative, might wonder if she was just not his type why he went to such lengths to describe her. There was nothing uncommon about that. Men had been perfecting the one-second look size-up for centuries. To write down what he thought took considerably longer than to think it.

Yes, he was completely uninterested in this woman he affirmed right before something made him think again. Ah, it was her eyes. That was what he had thought before he noticed her eyes. Those eyes caused him to reconsider his previous assessment.

This time he looked at her openly. Well relatively openly for him. Using the paper as a shield he noticed that they were large and blue, a piercing blue that caused him to look away when she caught him looking and made brief eye contact. Even though he looked away he knew that he could certainly not ignore her. The sight of her made the hair stand up on the back of his neck and he felt a small frisson of excitement run the length of his back.

‘Cool it Urs’ he cautioned himself. ‘Get up from the table and exit this place before you say something to her.’

As was his habit, he followed his logical internal voice, got up and walked past her table. She had filled her plate and was just preparing to sit. For once he couldn’t help but ignore his inner voice as his body took on a will of its own. He dipped his head as he passed and although he only had her in his sights for a moment, he saw her cheeks turn apple red in a ferocious blush.

She had slipped from his mind before he reached his room.

He had been distracted by the small shopping window that was across from the elevator. There lay a silver belt buckle that looked appealing. He vowed that tomorrow, before he went on his walk he’d decide if he wanted it or not.

**
The second half of the day was routine as had been the first half. He showed up for sound check a little early. Soon the other members filed out from where ever they had been. ‘Another waste,' he thought.
Sebastien, when in Paris, stayed somewhere other than at the hotel; why then pay exorbitant fees for a room that he probably wouldn’t even enter? Invariably he took Carlos with him on his midnight wanderings. Those two were menaces to society he thought with a smile. At least they were to the hearts of the female half of society. Carlos especially loved to flirt and seemed to receive energy from the smiles he got from his many admirers.

Sound check over, he drank some juice and prepared to travel to the venue with the guys. They’d be early but what the heck. They had nothing better to do, at least nothing better to do before the concert. After would take care of itself.

Before long, dressed to the nines, they walked out on stage to the sound of applause, a sound that always brought a smile to his face and to the others too as he looked over at Seb and Carlos and Davie. He realized that he had come to love these guys. They spent so much time together; they had come to know most of the quirks and to accept each other as they were. It had not always been so. But that was in the past. They were performing now and that was what each of them loved to do.
It was amazing how far one’s mind could wander and still have the songs come out perfectly. They had performed together so often until it took very little conscious thought to know when to come in and when to be silent. It was during those silent periods that Urs, the spotlight off him, surveyed the audience.

He was not at all surprised to see the woman from the breakfast room sitting there. Her hair looked much better. She had placed product on it and it shined up quite nicely. It was no longer mussed but lay in a smooth fall past her shoulders, dark and lovely.

He had surmised this morning that she had recognized him when she blushed in response to his nod. Now he knew that she had known him and he fancied that she was blushing even now as he looked at her directly, unsmiling, almost sure that she would not be able to see him until the spotlight returned.

Still, even though the lights were low, he could see her eyes. Those striking eyes that made him feel as if he had met her before. Surely he would have remembered her.
Although she was not his type exactly, he could be persuaded to make her his type if she would but give him some encouragement other than the shy looks and the quick head turn as if to say ‘I’m not looking at you. I’m not!’

He smiled at her games. Surely she was old enough to be a bit more courageous. He had fans that would carry him off the stage and away if he would allow it to happen. Surely she could force herself to make eye contact with him.

He was not going to initiate contact. Perhaps he was as arrogant as he had been accused of being. He had always been so and he wasn’t about to change that. Not just because of a cute little piece of fluff with large blue eyes.

He turned his attention away from her. No use wasting his time on her. He much preferred his women bolder and with a spine.

When the show ended he high tailed it out of there, turned down an invitation from Seb and Carlos to go clubbing and made it back to the hotel where he took a shower and sat listening to music to unwind a bit so that he could sleep.

He knew that she was somewhere in this very hotel. Of course there was no way that he could find her even if he wanted to, which he didn’t think he did. One more performance here in Paris and they’d be headed someplace else. He didn’t even bother to consult his calendar. What did it matter? It would be more of the same routine but then, he liked routine.
**

(Berlin 1945)
The four storied brick building was like a man who had been blinded. The windows stared out at the world in a display of vacant dereliction. It was clear that it should have been demolished some time ago.

At one time the structure had represented strength, prosperity, but most of all humanity but now all that was in the past. It had stood through bombings, lootings and finally occupancy by rats. Still, if one had to put a positive face on everything, it was still standing.

Of course there was not that much difference between this building and the other buildings on the ruined street. Here and there a small business tried to thrive, the bakery shop on the north corner near this building. The meat seller down the street a bit with its array of sausages, both fresh and cured and don’t forget its wonderful cheeses.

The vegetable seller who came daily and took his wares home but sometimes dropped an offering that was too happily received by those who found it a full time job just to survive.

Evening was falling and it was time for the rats to come out. Ulrich Baer roused his sturdy body from his basement lair in the building and began making his way towards the street. It was his job, along with the other boys to insure that their small group ate tonight. Each night they set off on these important duties, each night they risked their lives by easing into the street and finding enough food to provide a good meal for today and enough to sustain them through breakfast until it was time to crawl out in search of food again.

Each day the struggle renewed itself. He had no plans for the future, no aspirations, he was no longer even aware that there was such a thing as anticipation. He had long ago given up the hope that lay in thinking that his parents and siblings would return.

Three years ago, when he was ten, he had watched, scared and dismayed when he rounded the corner of this very same street only to see that his family was being loaded into a van. No one had to tell him that the vehicle belonged to the SS and that his family was being mysteriously taken away to an unknown place.

His mother had seen him. He could see the distress on her face as she secretively motioned him down and back. Still it had taken all of the restraint that he had in his young body to hold and not run to his father for reassurance that they would come back for him.

In his heart he knew that it was the end. He knew intellectually that they were being taken away as ‘Jewish sympathizers’ all because his mother had provided soup to the family that was holed up below them and his father had provided medical care.

Even though he knew that his family would not be coming back, he had watched for them. Surely that same van would pull up one day and out would climb his little sister Lizzie and his older brother Odo. Surely they weren’t gone too.

That was why he had to stay here. He had to be near just in case they looked for him. Now three years later, the Americans, Russians and the British were here as their rescuers.

Their American, British and Russian ‘rescuers’ they considered not quite as dangerous as the Nazis because you could depend upon them not to shoot on sight. But over time, the boys had learned that just because the rescuers wouldn’t kill you, that didn’t mean that they weren’t dangerous. They brought other problems with them like theft and they could be awfully condescending and abusive.

A smaller minority of them were just not quite right in a completely different way. They preferred young boys over women. At the outset, these protected lads had not even that known such a thing existed. Life on the street and taught them a lot.

Ulrich began his trek towards the bakery, tying to stay out of sight of the soldiers garrisoned nearby. On his way to the outside he had passed by one of the young women who had also been left behind, a casualty of war, who instead of theft, had resorted to selling herself to the soldiers for survival. This particular girl, she was no more than eighteen, was striking a bargain with her soldier procurer. Ulrich heard her say “ok ‘two’ it is then”.

He didn’t know if it was two dollars, two marks, it could have even been two pounds. Money came through his hands very seldom and very far between. All he knew was that they reached their bargain, the soldier dropped his pants and the girl dropped to her knees.

Such a sight was so common that the boy didn’t even move to go around them. He eased by the soldier who now was no longer aware of things like a harmless thirteen your old boy passing by. Ulrich headed up to the sidewalk on towards the now closed bakery.

Ulrich had learned that there was a trick to thieving as there was to most everything else. There was a right way to do it and a wrong way. The right way, and he was careful to be correct, was to take only what you absolutely needed. Never let greed take over, steal too much, thus calling attention to what has gone on. Never dry up your source unless it just couldn’t be helped.

There were roughly eight or nine boys holed up in the basement with him. The youngest was around ten, the oldest fourteen. They watched each other’s backs and provided a bit of protection in numbers against the gangs of older boys, those who were around sixteen to twenty who instead of hiding out as the younger boys did, found it more profitable to roam the streets.

It was a constant source of worry that they’d catch a lone boy off by himself, induct him into their gang and make him thieve for them while they took all of the goods.

Another worry was that some of the bad soldiers would get you. There were soldiers that liked boys in a certain way. Traveling and hanging out in numbers provided a small bit of protection; they could literally watch each other’s backs.

Tonight he took two loaves of fresh bread, slipping them in to the waistband at the back of his dirt slicked pants. And then on a whim, he also grabbed a good number of chocolate cookies. He and the boys would have a bit of a treat tonight.

Ulrich knew quite a lot about taking care of himself. His father had been a doctor and had taught his son the basics of first aid, and the importance of nutrition. So he always told the boys who had the scavenger detail, those who had no specific store to raid but picked up pieces of discarded food from the garbage bins and the streets, that they should get vegetables too. Most of them would have eaten only meat, bread and cheese if it hadn’t been for Ulrich. Instead they followed his advice and included a goodly amount of vegetables and fruit. As a result, they were all in pretty good shape physically.

Now keeping clean was a different matter. They had a water source in the building but no soap. Everyone knows that water without soap is almost useless. Still, every chance that Ulrich got to bathe, he did, even if he had to put the same old rags back on his newly partially clean body.

Tonight he could smell himself. At thirteen, he was growing up. His muscles were developing and he was doing all that he could to grow stronger still. Physical strength was a form of protection on the street.

With a quick look around to insure that no one saw him, he eased himself back into his basement home. He was the first one back, and he sat dawn to wait for the others to return. He knew from having repeated this hundreds of times that the other boys would slowly filter in, all bringing something to add to the metaphorical table since their real table was the floor. They had used most of the furniture for fuel.

He was anticipating one of those fat sausages from the meat store so he took their cooking pot, a three pound tin coffee can that they had torn the paper off and added a wire handle, filled it with water and placed it in the burned out fireplace that was perpetually banked so that he’d have less time to wait before eating. The bread he took and carefully placed on the mantle above the fireplace. His mouth watered but he would not take a bite until the others returned and they could all share. He had learned the code of honor at the same time his fellows had, through trial and error. No one could get full if there was one greedy gut in the group.

Suddenly Ulrich tensed. He was not alone. With his heart racing he willed his body to be still and not reveal that he knew. Then he listened, taking in the sounds trying to determine just what had alerted him to danger.

The source was hiding under one of the old army blankets that someone had pilfered. He grabbed a leg from what had formerly been a chair and approached cautiously. He raised the stick at the same time he jerked the blanket off the culprit. The young woman screamed just before he stayed his arm keeping it from descending on her head in what could have been a killing blow. He was young but he was strong.

CHAPTER 2

(Johanna Nickles)


“Christ lady, you scared the **** out of me. What are you doing here?” He knew that he spoke German. Until this moment he had not known that he also spoke French. But she answered in that language and he switched to her language and didn’t question how he recognized it as French, he just did.

“Please, let me stay here tonight. I can’t let him catch me. Do you speak English?”

Yes he did. He quickly put his mind to work.

So the girl was trouble. If someone was looking for her, they’d be searching out all of the hidey holes. He and his companions would also be in jeopardy.

“What have you done? Are you one of the prostitutes?” He motioned towards the rooms that were directly across the hall from them. He meant no disrespect to her, in his world that was just something that a woman did to survive.

She was older than he, he’d guess nineteen, maybe twenty, she had a few years on him but she didn’t look like she’d been on the streets. For one thing she was clean. She was in a bright blue dress whose color one didn’t see on the street. It called too much attention and with no adequate way to clean it, that color would soon be grey. For now it was a welcome sight in that it was almost exactly matched her striking blue eyes. He thought she was pretty.

“Oh no.” She sounded horrified that he’d think she was a prostitute. “I got lost from my father, he’s a part of the American delegation that’s meeting at Potsdam to decide what to do with Germany, and I haven’t been able to find him anywhere. Knowing that I had gotten myself lost, I went up to this soldier to ask for help but instead of helping he took me to a basement and tied me to a bed. He said that he’d be back later but I got away before he made it back.”

Ulrich knew what that meant. The soldier had gone to round up his buddies so that he could sell the girl to them one **** at a time. He suspected that she had no clue. She probably thought that the soldier would rape her and then let her go. Ulrich knew that if she got out alive, and that was a big if, it would only be after months of servicing soldiers. She would do better if she went across the hall and joined those women there. There was some protection in numbers.

Even though she had seven or so years on him in age, she still had innocence about her. On second thought she’d not do well with those women either. In a world where the strong preyed upon the weak, one of the strong ones would make herself her madam, make the girl work and then take all of her money.

Ulrich fell silent. He pretended he was oblivious to her pleas. This was not a decision that he could make alone. He waited until the other boys had returned, one by one they came in; he then asked them what they should do. They decided that she could stay there, in their bombed out basement until the immediate danger passed and her would-be captor got tired of looking, then, they’d try to help her get back to where she had started. That was all that they could do for her.

For a week they kept her safe. They shared their food with the girl/woman and she in turn tried to do a bit of cleaning in that old ruin. Ulrich thought she was wasting her time but nevertheless, she insisted that their living conditions could be made better.

During that time Ulrich began to feel quite protective of her. He would not call it love. He was a boy and she was almost a woman full grown. But he did not have brotherly feelings towards her. He desired her. He had never been with a woman but he knew how it was done. He’d been on the street too long not to have been made privy to what sex was all about.

He thought she’d be appalled if he told her how he felt. She thought of him, and the others as babies almost and she their mother. And in a sense she was, but the sexual development between ten year old Karl and fourteen year old Fritz was a world of difference. Only the fact that most of them had had good upbringings before the war saved her from the same kind of treatment that she was running away from.

Johanna Nickles, as she identified herself, was not made for life on the run. Soon she developed a hacking cough and a fever followed quickly. The boys made a cot for her in the corner of the room near the fire. They took turns heating water and having her drink it in hopes of breaking the congestion that had come so swiftly and was moving so fast. But she was not improving and they knew of no safe way to get through to the authorities.

It was just about dusk when disaster struck. The others had left on a food run and Ulrich had just looked at his patient, who was sleeping, before he too eased out of the basement room into the hallway on his way up to sidewalk level.

A stranger was standing there blocking the exit. He had had intentions of going a bit further to the crib of the prostitutes but the sight of Ulrich gave him pause.

“Boy, have you seen a woman, about so high with brown hair and blue eyes?”

Ulrich shook his head no, suspecting by his demeanor and his tone that this man was Johanna’s tormenter and not a rescuer.

Ulrich hoped that he could throw him off the track and he would leave but the intruder was too crafty for that.

“What about back there where you just came from? What’s in there?” His voice was rough while still managing to be oily.

Ulrich knew that to protest that there was nothing there would be as good as flagging the girl for him.

He tried nonchalance but that didn’t work either. He wasn’t strong enough to keep this – man from taking her away and he could not allow that to happen. Even well she wasn’t strong enough. Now ill, she’d never survive. So Ulrich, his heart pounding, did the only thing that he could think of that would distract this rogue soldier from his quest. He came on to him.

Ulrich had learned a lot in his three years on the streets. He had never done this before. He knew that not all men liked boys but he was aware that a fair amount of them, especially when there was a scarcity of women, could be tempted. The trick was to get him stirred up first and then he’d do almost anything.

Ulrich’s goal was to occupy the man until his buddies returned. He could not defeat him alone but eight boys, all quite strong could stomp him to hell.

Given a different world, Ulrich Baer, a singularly beautiful boy would have grown into a handsome German man and married an equally beautiful German woman, raised a few kids, lived his life out as perhaps a physician or engineer and died at a ripe old age. But fate had intervened. Due to a kindness rendered to equally innocent victims, Ulrich and his siblings along with his parents all suffered.

But the unfairness of it all was not on Ulrich’s mind as he attempted to distract this predatory man to keep him from destroying the life of the woman whom he had come to love.

He was young but he was brave. And so Ulrich forced his face into what he hoped expressed interest perhaps even lust. He didn’t know exactly how that looked but he tried his best and he spoke to the man for the first time. He spoke in English.

“I don’t know anything about a girl but you don’t need her. You have me.” And Ulrich smoothed his longish hair back behind his ear and allowed his dimple to show. He thought he saw the kindling of the light of interest in the man’s eyes.

Emboldened, Ulrich stepped closer and touched him gingerly at first and when the man didn’t react, with more certainty. He allowed his hand to descend slowly from the man’s chest to his waist and lower. Yes, the awakening of interest had already begun.

Ulrich prayed, {although he wouldn’t have called it prayer}, that his buddies would come home but there was no sign of their return. He also wanted to get it over with before Johanna awakened and called out to him.

The soldier motioned for Ulrich to turn his back to him but Ulrich had determined that he’d never be the recipient of that so he refused. He shook his head and asked the soldier very politely he thought, just as he had seen the prostitute do it the week before.

“Drop your pants.”

The soldier still was hesitant, he looked left and right. Still he hesitated.

Ulrich suddenly realized that he had failed to negotiate a price. Why else would he do this if not for money? The soldier recognized, perhaps subliminally that something was off.

“That’ll cost you ‘two’.” Ulrich had also failed to get which currency had been used the week before by the girl and the soldier in the hall but that seemed to be what the predator needed. He nodded and reached in his pocket.

Ulrich didn’t want his money. He wanted him to leave. But he suspected that they could use the two dollar bill. He took it and shoved it into his pocket. Moments later he had the man in the throes of ecstasy using just his quick hands and his mouth. Actually, Ulrich found it quite easy. His conscience didn’t bother him. Neither did his libido because in that sense this was not appealing at all. But he was a practical boy, he’d do what had to be done and not regret it.

He had just about finished him off when the first three of his companions came in. Thinking that they were home safe they had dropped their stealthy walk and were striding towards their hovel. All three stooped and stared while the man howled in sexual ecstasy and Ulrich released him in triumph.

Still weak but rapidly becoming lucid again the man realized that he was trapped here between the exit and several child thieves. He still did not consider Ulrich a threat and at that moment he wasn’t. He was on his knees retching, an unanticipated outcome of the nasty business that he’d just done.

The three boys were more than capable of kicking the soldier’s ass; they also robbed him for good measure and threw him out onto the street. They returned moments later their adrenaline flowing as a good fight is always bound to do.

“What the hell were you doing Ulrich? Are you going into the business?”

Ulrich had tried to calm them down but the others were arriving and needed to be told what had happened. Finally they all settled down, realizing that this was the man who wanted Johanna. To a one they praised Ulrich but they also had to bring it up. Was this prostitution thing something that they wanted to embark upon?

After checking on Johanna and finding her condition about the same Ulrich woke her and fed her some soup one of them had managed to get. They waited patiently until she was asleep again and talked about it while they ate their sausages, cheese and bread.

Most of them were surprisingly happy. The fire provided a warm cozy ambience, they were full; they had money from the robbery. Life had been worse.

“What if he comes back? What if he goes and gets his friends and comes back for us?” Ten year old Karl had asked.

Most of them thought that he would not come back, that he’d take his licking and let it go. But still, to be sure, they looked around for any weapons that they could find, and there were quite a few things that could be used from chair legs to bricks. They set up booby traps with wire so that they would have some advance warning and most importantly they made sure that the back way out was uncluttered so retreat would be possible if they had to resort to that.

“What about her?” One of them, twelve year old Otto had asked. She can’t run. She can’t even walk. She’s getting sicker every day.”

It was a truth that Ulrich hated to admit but he didn’t think Johanna was going to make it.

“If he comes and you have to leave, leave me here with her.” He whispered. “I won’t let her fall into his hands even if I have to bash her head in with a stick.”

That sobering pronunciation got their attention. Fritz changed the subject.

“Maybe we’ve been going about this the wrong way. Stealing and all and hiding out. Maybe it’s time we faced the world, got out of here, take on a few Johns and make us some real money. If Ulrich can do it we can too.”

Ulrich was silent. He didn’t recommend that road to anybody but that was something that they had to decide for themselves. But then Roderick who was the most cunning of them all came up with a solution that sounded perfect.

“Hey, why don’t we find a John, let one of us approach him and act like we are working out a deal then all of us jump on him, take his money and run away. He’ll be too embarrassed to tell and we get to keep all of the money.”

Each boy let that idea roll around in his head for a while before approving of it one by one. They knew that they’d have to leave their hidey hole but they were bigger and stronger now. Maybe it was time that they began to earn some real money.

When they prepared to go out Ulrich didn’t go with them. Johanna had taken a turn for the worse and he couldn’t leave her to die alone. He gave one of the boys money for soap. His plan was to wash her body, straighten her pretty blue dress so that she didn’t die uncared for.
Aldo brought the soap back before rushing to catch up with the others. Ulrich hadn’t known that it would be the last time he’d see those guys. He never knew what happened to them, they just didn’t come back.

Meanwhile, he washed Johanna’s face and neck, just a bit of her chest before going to her feet and legs. He felt that it would not be respectful of her to do more than that.

Still, the feel of the warm water caused her to stir and he couldn’t help himself. He pressed his lips to hers and his tears fell on her face and caused her to open her eyes, startled that he was so close. He soothed her and gathered her close and settled down to wait their return, not yet knowing that the wait was fruitless.

Before dawn he knew that he had caught her sickness and it was moving through his body at a rate much faster than it had overtaken her. His fever was raging and he drank the now cool water from one of the cans and managed to get a bit past her lips. She did not respond.
He crawled around until he found the wrapper from the soap that he’d discarded. He took a piece of char from the fireplace and let it cool. On the paper he wrote:

Johanna Nickles, 20, American

Ulrich Baer, 13, German

He tore the paper in half. Put the piece with his name in his pocket and pressed Johanna’s piece into her bra taking care not to touch her in any way that was disrespectful.

After that things became a bit fuzzy. He thought that they found them. Johanna was gone, he almost, but he could not be sure. He remembered being in a hospital bed out of his head. He heard himself calling her but didn’t know if he had been calling aloud or not. The last things that he saw were her eyes. Those eyes had burned their way into his soul.

**
Paris 2010

The Opera suite # 23 in the Sofitel Hotel, La Faborg is quiet. The man on the bed was still, the only sign that he might be disturbed was the movement of his eyes behind his lids and an occasional jerking movement from a muscular leg or a well developed arm.

Suddenly he jerked awake with a cry. He made an attempt to dislodge the covers that bound him and he jumped from the bed gasping for air.

‘What in hell had that dream been about?’ He couldn’t remember it but as it sometimes happens, it lay there right beyond his reach, tantalizing him.

People who knew about dreams said that one should keep a pad near the bed so that a clue, perhaps just a word, could be written down so that the dream could be remembered. But that would not have helped Urs. It was already gone. Still it lurked just underneath his consciousness. Somehow it was related to … ah he just couldn’t remember.

He rose from the bed and got some cool water out of the mini-bar. The bedside clock read one-thirty. Across the street the Buddha bar was in high gear. He could hear the high girlish squeal of a woman, and the answering lower rumble as the male responded. The place would be closing in just about half hour. He flicked on the TV, and watched idly waiting for the need to sleep to return. Eventually he fell asleep again and that morning he didn’t remember having any more dreams.

Still, throughout the day as he went about this routine, he was puzzled. The dream had been deep and profound. It niggled at him like a sore tooth or a splinter under a fingernail but it lay just beyond his awareness. Oh well, perhaps one day it would surface.

That night as he performed the last Paris concert he was on stage, singing his heart out when he spotted the blue eyed woman again and it all came flooding back.

Johanna! Johanna Nickles had been her name. He knew that he was Ulrich Baer!
**

CHAPTER 3

(Are we related?)

It had not been a dream. It had been a memory. He knew that he was Ulrich Baer as surely as he knew he was Urs Buhler. He remembered thirteen year old Ulrich better than he remembered himself, at thirteen. It was as if he had lived it yesterday. Not yesterday as in some time ago but literally, the day before today. He had been Ulrich and the woman in the audience had been Johanna.

Yet there were some differences. Ulrich’s Johanna had been younger and even though the woman in the audience wasn’t hard, at thirty she had experienced life to a greater degree than had Johanna. She didn’t look exactly like Johanna, she was perhaps as much alike as a sister would be but the eyes, those expressive eyes were the same.

Urs turned his mind to Ulrich. Did he look like Ulrich? Again they were similar but not identical. Both were dark haired, with high foreheads, and yes, Ulrich also had a dimple. ‘Again, I am much older than he so, it is hard to say. Perhaps I am now what he would have become had he lived. But wait, if he had lived, he would be seventy-five or even eighty.’

He realized that he had to meet the woman who he had seen at breakfast and in the audience. He wondered if she remembered anything of their life together.

What was happening to him? Was he losing his mind?

At intermission Urs asked Ralph, the person to keep everything directed properly, to go to the woman and ask her to come back stage after the event. He also charged Ralph to send someone to escort her back so that there would be no confusion.
Ralph had smiled. He thought it was a romantic assignation, unusual but not unheard of. As far as he knew Urs had no family currently in Paris so his assumptions were perfectly understandable.

“No. No. Don’t even think it Ralph. This is business pure and simple. In fact, if she is not alone but with friends, have them escorted back too. She seems a little shy; she’s more likely to come if she has friends with her.”

“What do you mean ‘seems’? You don’t know her? What do I say to get her back there? That you want to sell her a set of encyclopedias?”

“You can say that I think we have a common relative, but find out where she is from if you can so that you can at least get the country right. I don’t know why but I think she might be American. “

Urs looked from his place out of sight behind the curtain while Ralph headed that way. At first Urs thought he was approaching the wrong woman but at the last minute he redirected his search, Urs having given him a very specific and detailed description of the woman.

At first she started when Ralph beckoned her and did the ‘me?’ thing with her hands. Before she rose from her seat she looked at two other women and shrugged. It was plain that they urged her on and she got up reluctantly it seemed and walked to the aisle where she and Ralph engaged in conversation for several minutes. He’d have to remember that he owed Ralph one. He was making an earnest credible plea.

Intermission ended and Ralph walked away but not before he saw her nod. Urs closed the curtain and prepared to go back for the second half of the show.

Urs was in his dressing room when the tap came alerting him that one of the crew had her in tow. Ralph had already reported to him that her name was Jerusa Nichols and she was indeed from the states. She lived in Arkansas, in the capital, Little Rock.

Urs had his story prepared but much of it went out the window when he saw her again even closer than he had at breakfast. She was his Johanna. He was not prepared for the overwhelming tenderness that he felt for her. The love was still there. So were her two companions, both curious, pleased to meet him, the entertainer of course but they couldn’t figure out why they had been singled out to come back stage.

“Miss Nichols, please introduce me to your friends. “ Urs said in his most professional and impersonal voice. He must remember that this life had nothing to do with that dream. He didn’t understand it but he must not get too caught up in it until he had a better grip on what was happening.
She dutifully introduced them, he promptly forgot their names.

He showed the ladies to a seat on the small sofa that was located in this particular room and offered them a juice from the tiny refrigerator. All three declined.

“I noticed you yesterday at breakfast you know. I can’t tell you how much you remind me of my sister” – he improvised. He had just that quickly changed his story. He wanted to get her alone; he wanted her to investigate this thing with him. He wanted her in Europe not in Arkansas. Their saga started here and he thought it must be unraveled here.

One of her friends snorted as if to say ‘that’s a new one’. He ignored her.

“Do you by any chance have Nickles in your family, perhaps ones that served in the army in the second world war?”

She opened her mouth to reply, she looked surprised. “Yes I do. Our name was Nickles, before it was changed to Nichols years ago. How did you know?”

“You look so much like a picture of a relative of mine who traveled to Germany during the war.”

“What was her name?”

He decided to put it out there. She did not recognize him; that was clear. Perhaps she was a relative of Johanna’s. “The picture was taken when she was around twenty I would guess. Her name was Johanna Nickles . All of her reserve dropped. “Yes. That would be my grandmother’s sister. She never returned. She just disappeared one day and Grandfather Joseph never did find her. You say she is your relative too? Then she must have lived.”

He looked at his watch. “I don’t have much time tonight, I’m afraid, we will be traveling but I would like your address and possibly be able to e-mail you so that perhaps in the future, when I have time, we can talk.”

“Oh yes. I do want to talk to you. Imagine that, I am related to Urs Buhler. “

She took a paper and pen out of her purse and wrote quickly, then handed it to him. He looked closely to make sure that her handwriting was legible to him, sometimes the writing of those from the states could be a bit difficult to read. Yes, she had given him an address, a phone number and most importantly an email address.

“I will be in touch. When are traveling back to your home?”

“We’re going on to London from here and then in a week back home.”

“I will be in the UK too for a few days. Perhaps we can get together. Miss Nichols, do I look familiar to you? Do you recognize my looks at all?”

“No Urs”. They were not on a first name basis but she used his first name anyway. “You don’t look like the Nickles, but then neither do I. Everybody wonders where these eyes that I possess came from. Nobody in the family has them.”

“They are from your great aunt. Her eyes were so unusual that I remember them from the picture. I do hope that I can find it. It is back in Switzerland somewhere.”

“Oh do look for it Urs. I am dying to see it.”

He felt distinctly uncomfortable for lying to her and vowed to straighten it out as quickly as he could. They left after that and he and the rest of Il Divo headed to London where they had two gigs before they could take a short respite.
**

The next morning he changed his routine a bit. He made an appointment with the resident psychiatrist.

Perhaps the fans don’t need to know this but anytime there are as many people away from home for such a time, depression, anxiety and other symptoms of unease can set in. The psychiatrist is there for everyone; the crew, the musicians and the singers.

Dr. Mildred Riley made room for him on the same morning that he called. This was important. If one of the singers was in trouble it was more serious than had it been a musician. In spite of an attempt at confidentiality, news spread that Urs Buhler was in with her.

“Urs, what is going on with you? I admit that I was surprised to hear your voice.”

“I’m fine Mildred. Two nights ago I had this terrible but very real dream. It has disturbed me since and then I saw one of the participants in the dream at a concert.”

“Hmmm. Did you only see her after the dream? Maybe you glimpsed her before the dream and if she was in your subconscious mind, it is only natural that she would show up in your dreams. There’s nothing unnatural about that. I wouldn’t be concerned if I were you.”

Urs went on to tell her the full extent of the dream, explaining carefully that to him is was not a dream but was him living Ulrich’s life. Being a psychiatrist she picked out a few points that she wanted to examine more.

“You say that in the dream you had us sex with a soldier, a male soldier? Could it be that you are gay and don’t want to admit it and it is manifesting itself in your dreams.”

“Nonsense, I am not gay.”

“Then why do you answer so quickly? It seems to me that you should at least explore the idea, sometimes when feelings are suppressed, they come out in strange ways. There is a phenomenon called ‘reaction formation’ that can occur when your deepest fears are unacceptable to you and you turn them around and act with hatred towards the thing that you fear in yourself. Do you hate gays Urs?”

“No, I don’t hate anybody. I do know that I am not gay.”

“Ok let’s presume that what you say is true, as far as you know. Now I want you to think about each of your band mates. Are you in any way attracted to either of them in a sexual way?”

‘Mein Gott! I should have left that story about the soldier out. Can’t she see this is about the woman?’ Nevertheless, being Swiss, he followed the instructions. He took them one by one. Carlos first since he epitomized machismo. Frankly he had a hard time concentrating on Carlos. They were so different. He saw him as a polar opposite of himself. Loud, prideful, but a good guy if one could put up with the bull ****.

He looked at the woman. “I just ruled Carlos out. I’m moving on to Sebastien now.” What about Seb? Seb was a wounded soul, as Urs saw him. He had not had a happy childhood, his mother had injured him emotionally at a relatively young age and now Seb was just beginning to recover. Urs remembered that he had admired Seb’s courage when they first began. With the other three of them having operatic back grounds, as well as a better affinity for languages than he, Seb could have been intimidated, especially once Carlos had blown everyone away with his singularly powerful voice. But Seb had hung in there and they had established, after much discussion that they were not in competition with each other. Each of them had been included for some unique feature that was just as valuable as any of the others. But the two of them, Carlos and Seb were a menace to the ladies. He remembered –

“Why do you smile Urs? Have you run across some hidden impulse, something that you hadn’t known before?” Mildred leaned forward in anticipation of what Urs had to say.

“No I know this very well. I was thinking about the night, very early in our career before we knew each other well at all. We were all four out at a club and Carlos and Sebastien, who are night owls at heart, were really shocked when I became sleepy and sat there almost drifting off by eleven o’clock. They were just getting started and because of our language barriers, a few words were exchanged. Carlos called me a name that is quite harmless in Spanish but it sounded like something that in Swiss-German is quite derogatory. We almost came to blows. It is quite funny when I remember that night.

“Oh. Then what bout David? Do you wish that David loved you?”

“He does. All of them love me as I love them. But we don’t want to," and he moderated his language out of respect for the therapist, "we don’t want to have those kinds of relations with each other.”

Having run into a dead in with the sex thing she moved on to the mother aspect. “In the dream you said that the girl thought that she was a mother for you boys. How is your relationship with your mother? Could this be some type of oedipal complex? ”

Again Urs thought it was preposterous but he had learned not to answer too quickly. She was sure to think he was covering something up.

“Actually, I only see my mother a couple of times a year. I had moved out of the house by the time I was twenty, you know with school and all. Isn’t the oedipal complex about the son wanting to replace the father?”

“Yes. There is an unconscious sexual desire of the child for the parent of the opposite sex along with hostility towards the parent of the same sex.
Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus bring disaster on his city and family. This legend was used by Sigmund Freud to explain the complex relationship between parents and their opposite sex children.”

Urs just looked at her. Finally she laughed. Let’s move on, psychiatry is an imperfect science Mr. Buhler. I have to explore these issues. Let’s just say that you are not looking to your mother with jealous eyes.”

“Why is psychology so obsessed with sex Mildred? That’s all we’ve talked about since I’ve been here.”

“We rule out sex because it is at the root of so many people’s problems, whether it is through unrequited desires, guilty desires, or repressed desires. I think we can safely conclude that your dream is not especially sexual in nature even though you say that you love the woman. That sounds healthy to me. To love a person and admit it is normal.

“Now Urs, what is your normal day like?”

“My normal day? You know what my day is like. We are either getting ready to sing or we’re actually on stage.”

“Start with when you first wake up in the morning until you go to bed. What is your normal routine?”

Urs repeated the sequencing of his life. The shower, the gym, the repeat shower, the walk, and so forth while Mildred wrote rapidly on a pad. When he finished he looked at her hopefully. Could she help him, or was it all just a farce?

“Urs, I am comparing what you have said about your dream with your life routine now. Ok? I see that you are exhibiting a number of neuroses.

“First of all, in your dream you were concerned with being clean. You said that you didn’t like smelling yourself and you had no soap. I would guess that your obsession with showering today is directly related to that.

“Secondly, you were concerned in your dream about health, you mentioned it several times. You mentioned needing to be strong so that you could protect yourself, and needing to eat a balanced diet so as not to lose your strength, yet in the end Ulrich lost all. Your trips to the gym are most likely a manifestation of that obsession with health.

“Now the girl in your dream was six to seven years older than you? Do you by any chance have an unexplained attraction to women a few years your elder?”

Urs nodded, blown away by this woman’s analysis. For the first time she was making some sense to him.

“I don’t know how much you know about neuroses Urs, they are not disabling but they can be annoying. The neurosis is a term that refers to any mental imbalance that causes distress but, unlike a psychosis or some of the other personality disorders, the neurosis does not prevent or affect rational thought. We can go along for years living with them, and then sometimes something happens like your dream that causes you to seek change.

“That could be the answer. But something all together different could be in play here. This is just a suggestion, have you ever heard of reincarnation?

“As I see it, this dream could have been precipitated from deep within you by a need to make changes in your life, or it could actually have been a past life experience. Stranger things have happened. Whether or not reincarnation exists I cannot answer but many of my patients have experienced strange things that such a phenomenon as reincarnation would provide an answer. But whether you believe in it or not, I would suggest that the answer lies with the girl."

“There are a few additional similarities that I have not mentioned Mildred. In my dream the boy was Ulrich Baer and Baer means bear. My name today Urs also means bear. He spoke German, English and French and I don’t know what else and so do I.”

There was not much to say after that. As Urs rose to leave, she asked him to return when he had determined a course to take and had found an answer to his dilemma.

After leaving the psychiatrist, he went to his room and thought about anything and everything that he knew about reincarnation. At one time he had been interested in metaphysics. He concluded that on this level there was only so much that one could know and that his time was much better spent living this life well.

In the end he didn’t know if he believed in it so much as he believed that yes, it is possible. He thought that if we got here once and didn’t remember where we came from, what was there to prevent it from happening again?

So he concluded ‘so what?’ If lessons were to be learned, he had better get started learning them rather than examining the philosophy of it.

Today he reached far back into his brain and tried to remember what he knew about companions who interact with each other through several lives, perhaps through eternity. He remembered that there was a movie, he’d forgotten its’ name, that talked about agreements being reached by souls before they come to earth by a group of souls who were destined to play out this life’s current act.

One soul might have agreed to be the scorned woman; another will play the victim of a robbery. Another set had agreed that they would fall in love and would try to stay happily married. He thought the point was to teach us that there are no victims.

If the soul is advanced enough to agree, it is all planned out and when the play that we have labeled ‘life’ ends for us, we review it for the purpose of determining how much we learned and how closely we played our agreed upon role.

He had also read that if one pictures life as a stage, certain people have their cue. They come in at a predetermined time in our lives and there are trigger words, words that we no longer consciously remember but our soul did, that let us know that this was the one. This person and he had business to conduct in the drama that we called life.

Since all of the underpinnings of the plans and machinations were hidden, we almost never guessed that what we were experiencing was not true reality.

Except in his case, for some unknown reason, through the actions in the dream, he had been given a look behind the veil. To what purpose he didn’t know. All he knew was that the key lay with Jerusa Nichols/Johanna Nickles and the life that she had lived with Ulrich Baer and perhaps would live with Urs Buhler too.

He rang her up and she answered.

“Jerusa this is Urs. How are you doing?”

“I’m glad that you called. I’ve been thinking about our conversation.”

“That’s good because I want to meet with you before you return to the states. Look, I have to be in Scotland for a couple of nights and then I’ll be back in London on the 5th. Are you free in the afternoon?”

“That’s Tuesday isn’t it? Yes, I’ll make time if we can talk about things.”

They rang off. They agreed to meet in a public café, a bit noisy but he hoped she’d feel secure in meeting there with him alone. He was amazed at how her whole demeanor had changed once she thought that he was a relative, albeit a distant one.

CHAPTER 4

(Jerusa’s story – A gentle hero)

I have always had the dream. I cannot remember the first time it occurred but from the time of my first remembrances it always begins with Ulrich. It starts when he lets me stay in that bombed out building with him and the other boys.

In the dream I am aware of the soldier who would have held me captive, but I do not experience it. The soldier is never in my dream except as he interacts with Ulrich. I am trying to forget about that. Any pain and suffering that I encounter is always experienced as a reflection of foregone knowledge but there are no lived experiences, no added trauma.

Even though the dream seems grim because of the poverty and because I am ill during a great deal of it, I experience it as a time that is one of the best of my life. It is a time when I am cared for, cared about, and able to provide some small comfort to the lost boys.

Up until that time my life had been bleak. My mother died before I knew her. My father, a career military man, was harsh and morose. The soldier had wanted to use me.

Ulrich had loved me and I had loved him.

Lately when I’ve had the dream, I have begun to feel bereft. I have started to long for a boy and that just isn’t right. I don’t understand why, he was just a baby compared to me. This obsessive dreaming about him has to be unhealthy.

When I am in the dream I don’t know how Ulrich feels. In the dream it never occurs to me that what I feel for him might be inappropriate because in that dreamy state it is not improper.

I feel like a big sister perhaps even a mother. I never think about the other kind of love in the dream. It is only when I am awake and remembering the dream that I long for him in a most unsuitable way. Outside the dream, reflecting, my thoughts tell me that he was too young for sexual love but even if he wasn’t, even if he were older say sixteen, it is so wrong for adults to prey on children.

I was in this state of confused longing when I happened to run across Il Divo. I say Il Divo and not Urs, because at first I noticed all four of these handsome men and I was blown away by their singing.

When I was working, before I took the leave of absence I was home one day, I had endured the dream the night before and had hardly gotten any sleep, so I had taken a day off. At the time I was doing nothing special, I must have been walking from the kitchen towards the back door when I heard a melody.

I usually leave my TV playing for company so when I heard the singers singing this arresting song, their voices compelled me back. I retraced my steps and took a look.
I stayed, fascinated by their voices first and then by their looks.

Carlos was unbelievably handsome and that combination of sexy good looks and strong voice bowled me over. I sat down.

And then, there came Sebastien, although I didn’t know their names at the time.

Sebastien was equally attractive but in an entirely different way. I thought that a woman who was strong would be attracted to the maleness that I saw in Carlos, whereas a mothering woman who liked vulnerable men would be attracted to Sebastien.

The tall one I couldn’t tell. My life had been too bleak for me to connect to his jovial, open faced eager look. I thought him handsome in a corn-fed way. He would make a good younger brother although I thought him older than I.

But it was Urs who held me mesmerized. Not for his looks, not for his vulnerability, not even for his eagerness. I thought to some he may have looked innocent but I could see through that. I couldn’t say why but for some reason I was hooked.

But when I became fascinated with Urs, that feeling was so similar to my out-of-dream feelings for Ulrich that there commenced a tenfold increase in the dream. Whereas before Urs it had come about once every three months, it now came every week, sometimes more than that.

I was being tormented but the suffering forced me to investigate; to learn all that I could about Urs and to examine what connection there was, if any between Ulrich and Urs.

I admit that in my investigation, I went into some pretty fanciful thinking.

Ulrich at thirteen had been almost twenty-five years younger than Urs. Urs as an adult was, I thought, fulfilling Ulrich’s potential. He was what Ulrich would have been had he lived and had the opportunity to thrive.

Ulrich had been dirty, in rags but longing to be clean. Urs was not in rags and I would guess being clean was a thing that he valued.

Ulrich was determined to grow strong. Urs was strong and healthy.

Ulrich’s circumstances had driven him to commit theft. Urs was prosperous enough; I didn’t suppose that thieving now entered his mind.

Ulrich’s innate honesty and character I would guess were probably manifested in Urs.
Ulrich had been Johanna’s protector. He had brought her food, provided her with care, he had even kissed her, he sold his body to a man for her, an act that probably brought on his demise.

I now realize that Ulrich thought that he had died of Johanna’s sickness but in my now greater wisdom and distance from the dream, I knew that his had come from a more virulent source. I wondered what would be the fulfillment of Ulrich’s sacrifice on Johanna’s behalf, and would Urs bring about its realization?

I thought that the answer lay in what Ulrich had desired from Johanna. Had he wanted a mother? Had he loved her as a big sister? Or had he desired her as a lover?

It is no accident that this time our age differences are almost exactly reversed. At Ulrich’s thirteen Johanna had been twenty. Now to my thirty-one, Urs is thirty eight.

Are we destined to be connected? If we are, however will it come about? Now that I have met him, will Ulrich as Urs once more come to my rescue?

The troubling thing about the whole of my speculations is I am not at all sure that I want a savior. God knows I need help. I am restricted in a most grievous way but how can that man on the stage help me?

Does he have the kindness and big heartedness of an Ulrich hidden beneath layers of kindly arrogance and aloofness? I doubt it.

CHAPTER 5

(Let’s make a Plan)

Urs arrived at the café early. By now he was functioning on pure intuition. One mind was telling him to tell her the truth of the matter. That there was no picture of a long dead common ancestor and that everything that he needed to talk to her about was a dream. The other mind was saying ‘are you crazy? This woman is skittish enough. She has just gotten up enough courage to talk to you and now you are going to tell her that you’ve been lying? That you got her here under false pretenses? That move, my friend, will have the effect of cutting off all communication with her forever and you’ll never solve the mystery of the dream. Is that what you want?’

Jerusa Nichols came alone. Proof to Urs of how much she trusted his word. He watched her walk in. Oh no! She was devastating in a blue dress. Not the same style, but the very same color of the dress in the dream.

“You look lovely in blue Jerusa, that dress exactly matches your eyes.”

“Thank you. I thought that since we are connected by the original lady with the blue eyes, I would wear it in memory of her.

‘Speak Man! Tell her that there is no relative and that you dreamed it all.’

“Do you care for some food, perhaps a drink? What would you like?”

“Thank you Urs. A sandwich and a cup of tea would be nice. I can get it.”

“Please, you sit right there. Let me get it for you.”

Jerusa watched him; he looked nice in an olive cable knit sweater and slacks. The sweater was pushed up on his arm halfway showing just the beginnings of the muscles in his fore arms.

Even while she watched him, he, in one of his lightening like changes of moods made up his mind to tell the truth. His natural inclination was to be truthful. It cost him energy to suppress it therefore making it harder to be natural when extending a lie. And lies always had to be extended. Besides, he reasoned, she would have to learn the truth sooner or later. He had said that there was a picture and there was no way that he could provide her with an authentic picture. There was no picture to be had of woman of over sixty years ago who looked enough like Jerusa to be her twin.

He returned with the drink and an herbed sandwich made of a beef patty, dates and cheeses. It was the specialty of the café and was served on a thick crusty bun.

“Here try this Jerusa and let me know if you like it. It is one of my favorites.” He talked a bit, killing time, trying to work himself into telling her that he had lied but still not wanting her to get up and leave him with no way of finding the mystery behind the dream and with it her likeness to Johanna.

“Jerusa,” he began slowly, “do you remember the first time that we saw each other? It was that morning last week when we both were in the hotel breakfast room and I nodded towards you? What did you think? Why did you flush so much? Were you even aware that you were blushing? At the time I thought it was because you had recognized me from, you know, somewhere perhaps a picture or something like that.”

Jerusa watched him closely. Should she mention her dreams and his likeness to one of the boys in it? Or would he think that she had a loose screw?
Moments later she answered him. “You are right. I had seen you before. Your DVD you know. And I had tickets for that night. I was astounded that I would run into you before the show and that you would say hello to me! Why did you speak? I am not a stand-out-in-the-crowd type of person.
Had you already noticed the resemblance between me and the picture of your relative? Were you wondering who I could be; if I am your kin?”

She had given him the perfect segue. “Now that you mention it, it was your eyes that I noticed. They are quite lovely. They were so lovely that on the same night, you were in my dreams. – not that kind of dream of course” he hastened to clear up, “but a real dream, with other people and all.”

He thought her gaze sharpened and became more focused; on him.

“Oh I’m so glad that it wasn’t one of ‘those’ dreams that would be really embarrassing since it seems that we are related, no matter how distant.” She colored. “But what was your dream about Urs? I really want to know.”

“Actually, I think you were younger but you had the same eyes. We were in Berlin during the war and –“ he kept talking but she had stopped listening.

It was the same dream. Jerusa’s heart began to pound. “Were you a boy named Ulrich? Do you remember him?”

Urs dropped his fork. This was unbelievable “You had it too? Did it start after you saw me in the restaurant?”

“Oh no, I’ve lived it for most of my life. But, after I saw you for the first time, on the DVD, the dream began to come more frequently. It’s always the same. My name is Johanna and your name is Ulrich and there are other boys around but the story is about us, about you and about me.”

Urs felt a frisson as the hair on his neck stood up. This was really weird and getting more so. “You were in a blue dress?” He watched her nod. Is that why you wore the blue dress today, are you trying to test me, to see if I knew or if I had a clue? You wanted to know if I knew that I have been Ulrich?” There. He’d said it.

“And I have been Johanna. Nobody else would understand. Everyone would say that it’s just a dream but while I’m in the dream, I am really living her life.”

“Yes, I know. We both died you know.” This was said sadly because to both of them it was not just a dream, they had experienced the illness and even though they didn’t remember the moment of death, they came close to it.

“Yes. I know. You thought that you caught it from me but you didn’t. What you had came from the soldier.”

“You know about that? I thought you were asleep.”

“I woke up. I knew that I had to be quiet else he’d come back and look for me. I feel guilty that I didn’t call out to him so he’d leave you alone. But I was a coward.”

“You weren’t a coward, you were sick; sick and alone. I really only did that to protect you, you know. I wasn’t attracted to him.”

She soothed him. Obviously much of that traumatic lifetime was still with both of them today. “I know that Urs. Don’t be ashamed of what you did. You were just a kid trying to make it in an adult world. Little children shouldn’t have to live with filth, and poverty and predatory adults. It’s just not right.” Johanna felt tears come into her eyes. She wanted to put her head on his shoulder and cry.

“Hey, don’t cry. We are both survivors. Do you really think that we were those people or is it some kind of trick that the universe is playing on us?”

“I think if they existed, there will be records of their lives. At least there will be records of their birth and of their deaths.”

“What a good idea! We will be traveling to Berlin in a few days. I can look it up and let you know what I find.”

Jerusa spoke without censoring her thoughts. “I can go with you. It would be an adventure. We could find them together. What if some of the boys are alive, have you ever thought of that?”

“No, but then I haven’t had the experience of having the dream all of my life. This just happened to me a few days ago. I suppose we could look. What harm could it do? As for traveling with the band, what would you tell your friends? Won’t they think you’ve gone off your rocker?”

She came right back at him. “What will you tell your friends? Will they think you’ve lost it too? After all, I could say to my friends that I’m infatuated with you and just want to be around you a bit longer. You can’t say that. You’d have to think up some excuse for me being there.”

“Why can’t I be infatuated with you? Ulrich was. Why can’t I be?”

“Because Urs, I am not your type. Nobody will believe that you’re interested in a skinny little brown-haired woman when you always date big busted curvy women with light hair. I read that in a magazine once. We could keep the relative angle. Say, I could be a cousin, couldn’t I?”

“No. Then we’d get accused of something even worse. No grown man travels around with his female cousin; sister maybe. So maybe you could be my sister?”

“I don’t think so. When you were Ulrich you loved me. I don’t know exactly how you loved me because you never said but that last kiss, you remember it? That made me suspect that you were growing up and wanted more than just that kiss and would have tried something if I hadn’t been sick.”

Urs knew this to be true. Ulrich had not felt brotherly towards Johanna. “Well then, you’ll be my atypical girlfriend. A man can always tire of being too predictable you know. Everyone will think that I’ve made a change that’s all. Besides it’s nobody’s business is it?”

“Do you have a girlfriend somewhere who might mind?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Good then, its settled. I’ll tell Bobbie and Harlene to go on back home without me.”

“Won’t they worry about you? Maybe think that you’ll get into trouble?”

“Nope. I’m an adult. I travel alone all the time. I’ve been married, I’m a war widow and they know that I can take care of myself. I’m more excited about this than I’ve been in a long time. Now, perhaps I can rid myself of that dream. It is past time for it to disappear as far as I’m concerned.”

“Will you make your own accommodations or should I?”

“Oh I will make them. But I will need your itinerary. Should I book the same hotel or would it be safer to get into one that is close by?”

“Why not book the same hotel? Unless you are not as blasé about your reputation as you have said. As you say, you are an adult, you have been married; you are your own agent.”

She reached out and shook his hand to seal the bargain. “Could you get me the same rates that Il Divo gets? That would be helpful.”

“Why didn’t I think if that? Of course, I will add you to the list and when you make the reservation ask for the Il Divo rate."

**

Jerusa stayed with her friends until they left for the states then she prepared to move into Urs’ hotel. Of course before her friends left they had questioned her carefully.

“I know that he is a distant cousin Jer, but are you sure this is not some elaborate scheme that he has to get you to bed with him?”

“Honestly Harlene, why would he need to do that? What would he want with a skinny woman like me when he can have women who could be in movies? I will be fine. And I’ll keep in touch with both of you.”

**

Tomorrow they would be flying to Germany, and, he informed her that he already had a place reserved for her on the plane.

“Now Urs, you’re not spending your money on me are you?” She said it jokingly. She was as impatient to find the history as he but she didn’t want him spending anything on what she considered her quest. She was just glad to have him along.

That evening she checked into her room. It was a small economy one as there had been no need to splurge for this fact-finding mission.
She saw the phone’s light blinking and found that she had a message from Urs. He had called to leave her his cell phone number and there was a message to call him so that he could introduce her to some of the folk that worked with him.

She agreed to meet him in the lobby in fifteen minutes, she then combed her hair, smoothed her hand over her face and headed down.
Even though she was early, he beat her there.

“I thought we’d visit the hospitality room and I’d just introduce you informally to anyone who is there. After all, you’ll be traveling with us for two weeks and they’re bound to wonder who you are. I’m hoping that you can get some enjoyment out of being with us, that it won’t be a complete two weeks of drudgery.”

Jerusa wasn’t looking forward to meeting a bunch of highfalutin’ musical types. She had absolutely no talent – at least not for instruments, and singing either for that matter. Whatever in the world would she find to talk to them about?

The hospitality room was hotel special. That means it was the typical rectangular carpeted room with white walls, a few tables, lots of chairs and a buffet located in the corner of the left side of the room. A few people were eating and others were just sitting, chatting but she noted that they all looked up when they walked in. She couldn’t tell if it was unusual for Urs to be here, or if they were curious about her.

He walked up to a youngish man who was sitting alone and pulled out a chair without asking the guy if he and Jerusa could join him.

Jerusa smiled apologetically but the man didn’t see anything wrong with it. In response, the guy got a big grin on his face.

“Urs, it’s good to see you buddy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in here. What’s up?”

“I want you to meet a friend. Jerusa Nichols, please meet Jonathon Winters. You may have noticed Jonathon in our band. He plays keyboard.”

Jonathon turned his attention to Jerusa. He was quite striking in his own way. He was large with light brown hair. His eyes were grey. Jerusa extended her hand and he took it, there was a certain look of interest in his eyes.

“So Urs are you and Jerusa traveling together then?”

“You could say that. We’re not romantic friends, just friends. We even think we might have relatives in common.”

Jerusa looked at Urs in something akin to amazement. Evidently he’d changed his mind about pretending to change his preferences in women, or someone was around that he wanted and couldn’t afford to feign interest in Jerusa.

“I see. Then welcome Jerusa. It will be nice getting to know you better.” Jonathon smiled a suddenly intense grin.

Jerusa raised an eyebrow but said nothing. It was time to move on and her guide steered her away from the suddenly flirtatious Jonathan on to a couple of young women who were sitting, now seemingly unaware of their approach but even though they weren’t making eye contact, they remembered to sit straighter.

“Hello Calla lily, Hi Cindy. How are you girls doing today?”

“It’s Cali to you Urs Buhler. Been busy huh?”

He and Cindy nodded towards each other while Cali looked Jerusa up and down. Jerusa felt the sudden urge to reassure the woman that she was no threat to whatever she and Urs Buhler had or that the woman wanted to have.

Cindy had long black hair had very pale skin. Jerusa’s quick assessment told her that Cindy was not the leader in their duo, Cali was.

Now Cali was a pretty girl, or could be pretty if she’ undergo one of those plastic jobs on the face where they inserted an implant at the chin to give it a bit more prominence. She could have also used a bit of puffing in the lip area.

“Ladies please meet Jerusa Nichols. Jerusa and I are trying to find out if we have relatives in common. I think I’ve found a long lost cousin.”

Cindy smiled and even Cali warmed a bit. While Jerusa explained further.

“Yes, we are going to look in the hall of records in Berlin. I remind him of his Aunt," she improvised, "and when he saw me and asked a few questions, we do have some of the same names in our families.”

Urs wandered away for a moment to speak to a woman who had just entered, one who was the curvy chesty type. Ah, Jerusa knew instinctively this was the one he was interested in. He confirmed it by plastering a welcoming smile on his face.

That warmed Cali up towards Jerusa even more. “I didn’t think you were his type. She just showed up yesterday and already she’s after him. She’s a singer and is going to open for them for awhile. I don’t think flirting with him is going to work for her. Around the women in the band he’s hot and then he’s cold.”

Jerusa changed the subject. “So, are you ladies in the orchestra?”

“Yes, we both play violin.”

“And how do you like the traveling?”

They talked a bit more about the joys and challenges of being with the Il Divo organization, all the while Cali eyed Urs, now still talking to the woman. Jerusa noticed that he had not sat down but remained standing while the woman sat and talked, looking up at him, smiling prettily all of the while.
When the conversation with the two women began to lag, Jerusa thought that the other two wanted to discuss Urs but couldn’t with her around. She excused herself and went back to Jonathan, perhaps a mistake but she didn’t want to wear out her welcome with these two women.
Jonathan stood when she approached.

“I couldn’t help but notice Jonathan that you pronounce your name as Joe-Nathan not Johnathon. That’s how some folk pronounce it in the south, in the states.”

“You’re from the south? Well, I grew up there. That’s the only place I know where every other person is named Leroy, Dewey or Tyrone or some other dorky name.”

“You never wanted to change the pronunciation? Not that there’s anything wrong with the way you say it.”

“It’s like this Jerusa, by the time I learned there was a different more recognizable way to say it, all of the people were saying it my way. I never bothered to correct them.”

They smiled in perfect understanding.

By this time Urs was headed back for her.

“I’m sorry Jerusa; I didn’t mean to desert you. You keeping Jerusa entertained for me Joe?”

“I am. I’m finding that we have a lot in common. Is it all right with you Urs if we have a cup of coffee together?”

“You mean with Jerusa, or do you mean with me?” Urs joked.

“I wouldn’t waste my money on you dude. I mean Jerusa of course.”

“That’s up to her. She is free to do so if she likes. Come on Jerusa, there is someone special that I want you to meet.”

‘Here we go again; he’s taking me to meet his lady.’

“Jerusa Nichols, I want you to meet Hillarie Browning.”

“Hill, this is Jerusa, my perhaps cousin.” All this was said while Jerusa watched Urs deliver his possum-eating-**** grin. This time he pulled a seat back for her, turned one backwards for himself and straddled it. He then began talking to the blond beauty while he leaned on the chair back.

After a quick ‘hello’ to Jerusa, Hillarie, or Hill as he preferred to call her gave Urs all of her attention. Jerusa could have been a wad of chewed gum stuck on the bottom of one of their chairs for all the attention that they paid her. He was mesmerized by Hillarie and she with him. Jerusa felt like making the suggestion that they just get a room but she wouldn’t be rude. So she sat there and eaves dropped on their conversation.

By the way they were acting and what Cali had said, she came to the conclusion that these two were just in the beginnings of a flirtation. Just starting the ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ phase. Urs was posturing, showing off his manly chest and Hillarie likewise, but in a different way called attention to her chest too. Jerusa wished she had her sketch pad so that she could get them … in caricature. How rude, how self absorbed.

“And so Hillarie, how are you associated with Il Divo?” Jerusa asked, interrupting their self absorption.

“Sorry, we’re ignoring you aren’t we?” Hillarie threw in, no malice in her voice.

Jerusa thought that she didn’t do it intentionally. Hill thought Jerusa too mousy compared to her own brilliance to bother with.

“I’m the opening act. I sing. Not opera like the last one they had but I am more of a pop singer. This is my second week and I’m hoping you’ll catch my act Nellie.”

“It’s Jerusa not Nellie. What songs do you sing?” Jerusa almost added her name as ‘Harriett’ but changed her mind. Why antagonize the woman.

“My repertory includes ‘Cry me a River’ just a lot of torch songs, you’ll really have to see me to appreciate me.” Although she was looking towards Jerusa, she cut her eyes to look at Urs.”

Jerusa believed that the lady could sing. But she also thought that she was delivering an entirely different message to cousin Urs.

“I think I’ll go up to my room now.” Jerusa pronounced not really expecting they would mind.

They didn’t. Oh Urs put up a token protest “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. I want to get a good night’s sleep, since we fly early tomorrow don’t we?”

“Yes, be in the lobby around six. We’ll all ride over on the bus.”

Jerusa had said goodnight to Urs and Hillarie, waved towards Jonathan and gave a small nod and a little smile towards Cali and Cindy. She would have bet her last cent that Urs and Hillarie didn’t linger long in there. In fact, half hour later while she was sitting in the middle of her bed, watching TV, she would have bet that those two were also in the middle of a bed, and doing something more interesting than watching a TV.

CHAPTER 6

(On to Berlin)

That next morning Urs was waiting for Jerusa, excited that they were beginning to wind their way towards Berlin and could search for facts to substantiate their dream. He had not spent the entire night with Hillarie. He’d only stayed a couple of hours, long enough for both of them to get each other out of their systems. Curiosity satisfied, and novelty gone, they had no more use for each other. Oh both of them might go there in the future on a whim but the fever to have each other that had burned so brightly last night had burned itself out in her king sized bed.

He had neglected Jerusa in his fascination with Hillarie. He’d have to apologize and try not to let it happen again. It had been a long time since he had run across a woman as blatantly sexual as Hillarie. But as usual with shallow relationships, they reveal themselves to be superficial only after the fire of desire has been banked.


He had gotten up, showered until he was fastidiously clean as usual, and then donned jeans, t-shirt, leather jacket and his belt with his new silver buckle that he had returned to purchase at the Sofitel before checkout.


Jerusa when she appeared was dressed almost identically to Urs. She too had on jeans, a black t-shirt with black leather jacket. She did not have on a silver belt buckle and her eyes acknowledged the spiffiness of his when they first saw each other in the lobby.

“Did you plan this twin act Jerusa or are we just on the same wave length?”


“Probably a little bit of both Urs Buhler, I usually don’t wear jeans but I find them comfortable to travel in.”


For the first time he took a good look at her in her jeans.

“I don’t know why you don’t like to wear them. You look fabulous.”

And that was true. He had only seen her in loose dresses or pants. These jeans hugged her figure and where before she had seemed skinny… ok… thin would be the word; he realized that she wasn’t thin at all. She was just small. She definitely had a figure. It was a nicely curved hourglass and the word for Jerusa would not be voluptuous but neat and tidy and let’s not forget toned.

The woman should live in jeans. She had the most perfect space between her thighs that he had ever seen. She had that spot that drove men wild and had nothing to do with weight and everything to do with bone structure.

His mind flashed a picture of Jerusa kneeling on a bed, her back to him; her hair falling forward and her glorious bottom towards him. As quick as the vision came he banished it.


They piled onto the bus and before long were deposited at the airport for the short flight over to Germany. Once they were in the air he began his request for forgiveness for centering all of his attention on the female singer last evening.

“Look Urs, you don’t have to apologize. I have been around males enough to recognize when they get that one track mind like a tiger on the hunt with his prey in his sights. I forgive you. Did it pay off for you?”

He wasn’t about to share his private life with a woman. But his smile gave him away. “It went tolerably well.” That’s all he said.

To change the subject he questioned her. “You said that you’ve been married? That you’re a war widow?”

“Not exactly a war widow. My husband was killed in the explosion that took out the pentagon on 9/11. He was just there delivering a package and was killed. We were both just twenty-three and had only been married a few months.”

“And you never remarried? Never had children? You must have loved him very much.”

“We were high school sweethearts. We married during our third year in college. Yes, we loved each other but we were still young, I don’t know if it would have lasted though.”

“Why is that?”

She went all mysterious on him and clammed up like he just did. She was not ready to share her private life with this man. It seemed that they were both very private people.

To his credit Urs didn’t try to pry anymore than he had. Instead he turned a bit in the seat, leaned into the aisle as if to see who was where. Before long he had drawn a group of men, men from the crew, from the orchestra and band to him and they were in the aisle talking about the things that men talk about, cars, in this case motors, and the sights in the various cities. Jerusa suspected that regarding the sights, they used an arcane code that only men understood and that most of their references were to the women of that particular city. They were, however, very good at it and she could not be sure.

Nevertheless, her thoughts caused her cheeks to redden and she knew that Urs noticed it because his eyes, when he looked at her did not center on her eyes they were lower, focused directly on her burning cheeks.

These little pockets of conversations were going on all over the plane.

Each Divo was surrounded by his own group of sycophants, ‘well perhaps that word is a bit harsh’; Jerusa reconsidered, as she toned down her wayward thoughts, perhaps each Divo was more like a prince, a warrior prince who had called a gathering of his knights.

Meanwhile the women sat and watched the men. ‘Are we really that pitiful? I don’t think we help our cause, whatever that is, by having no agenda of our own and merely wait for the men to tell us what to do’.

With this in mind Jerusa excused herself from her window seat, squeezed by Urs and headed back to make further acquaintances among the women.

She said hi to Cali and Cindy who unsurprisingly had chosen to sit together. Both women were quite a bit friendlier today after having seen that Urs was in no way interested in her, nor she in him for that matter.

“So how do you like traveling with us Jerusa?” Cali opened the conversation.

“I needed some fresh conversation, they are so predictable,” she said glancing back towards the guys, “the question is how do you gals stand traveling with them?” She laughed, it was a tiny joke after all but neither woman got it.

Cali changed the subject. She was curious. “He’s not said a word to Miss Hillarie Brown has he? Do you know what’s up?”

“I think they only had a casual curiosity about each other and that question has been answered. Why? Are you interested in him too?”

Cindy answered for Cali. “Only in everything he does. She’s tried to get him to notice her for months now.”

“She’s exaggerating Jerusa; I just think it would be nice to spend some time talking, like he does with Hillarie that’s all.”

Jerusa thought Cali was wasting her time, but who knew? Men could be crazy unpredictable creatures. But one thing Jerusa knew is that they usually have no problem determining if they are interested in a woman or not. She thought that Urs had zero interest in Cali, other than perhaps the interest that one shows the slightest acquaintance.

“Do you think you could put in a word with him for me Jerusa?”
“Umh – I don’t know about that. Any word that comes from me is sure to make him think he is being manipulated. You’d do much better to do as Jonathan did to me, ask him to have coffee with you. It can’t hurt.”

Before long they landed in Berlin, a large metropolis with a population of near four million within its city limits. On the trip to the hotel Jerusa was all eyes.

After getting registered into the hotel most of them seemed to decide to go to their respective rooms and rest a bit, having gotten up so early. Urs and Jerusa were no different. He had parted from her saying that he’d call her a bit later.

She had gotten a quick nap and soon was up on her laptop looking at information about the city of Berlin. After tonight Urs had two days off and city hall was closed on the weekend so she figured that she could talk him into seeing some of the city with her.

The ringing of the phone interrupted her thoughts.

“Urs, what is Zeitgeist?”

“Zeitgeist? What are you doing, reading something? You don’t speak German do you?”

“No. I wish I did. I’m surfing the web looking for sights that we might want to see. What do you think?”

“Ja, that would be fine.” Even though he was speaking English he sounded quite German to her now that they were around a lot of Germans. ‘That didn’t take long’.

“Zeitgeist is a combination of two words, time and spirit. So it means the spirit of the thing. What is the sentence that you’re reading?”

“Well it says that Berlin has evolved into a global focal point for young individuals and artists attracted by a liberal lifestyle and modern zeitgeist.”


“Ja, that is true. Berlin embodies the spirit of this age for Germany. It has it all; the intellectual, the cultural and the political, the ‘feel’ of the era. So what else have you found?”

“I was reading a bit about Ulrich’s and Johanna’s time. In 1933 Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Large parts of Berlin were destroyed in 1943-45. The war ended in Europe in 1945. I think Ulrich must have been born in 1931, considering that the war had just ended when Johanna meets him in 1945.”

“Yes, he was born in 1931. That I remember from the dream. You know how one can know his birth date even though it never comes up in conversation? Well I know that Ulrich was born July 19th 1931. He and I had the same birthday except mine is forty years later.”

“Well it is not the same for Johanna. She was born March 2nd, I was born September 2nd. That’s a six months difference. It’s almost like the circle turned 180 degrees. Anyway, after we died, …”

“We didn’t die. That was Ulrich and Johanna.”

“After Ulrich and Johanna died, the city was divided into four parts. The American, British and French parts went on to become West Berlin and the Soviet sector formed East Berlin. After that came the infamous Berlin wall separating the East from the West.”

“The wall was torn down almost twenty years ago.”

“But there are remnants Urs. It says here that the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrucke over the Spree preserves a portion of the wall.”

“Do you want to see that? If you do, we can find it. What else interests you?”

“The Brandenberg gate of course.”

“Of course. And anything else that we find of interest?”

“Oh yes.” Jerusa was pleased that Urs seemed a willing partner. Her husband had been a couch potato, with zero intellectual curiosity. He never wanted to stir too far away from the TV and his video games. But then he had just been out of his teens.

“I was thinking that for today, I’d rent a motorbike for the ride around here in Berlin are you up for riding pillion?”

“Not sure Urs. I’ve never ridden before, will that make a difference?”

“I’m always careful but I’ll be extra careful with you. Before we take off I’ll tell you what you need to know and all of the stops that we’ll make are only short distances from each other. There will be no opportunity to go fast.”

She agreed to try it. He set out to rent the bike telling her he’d call her down when he returned.

“And Jerusa, do you know what size gloves you wear and I’ll need your shoe size too.”

He explained that he needed to make sure she was protected with a helmet, gloves and ankle boots.

“Well I’ll pay you for them.”

“No problem, I know the guy, he’ll throw them in with the rental for good measure.”

“You know him?”

“I met him when we were here a couple of years ago. Then I came back last year, before my girlfriend and I broke up.”

That was new information, he had had a girlfriend and they had broken up. Perhaps she’d pass on the word for Cali? No she’d pass on nothing. Not even when the guy was lonely did he deserve Cali with her near obsession for him.

After they rang off she went back to her laptop to read about riding as a passenger on a motor bike or motorcycle as she called it.

The things that she remembered most important about being a passenger were to keep her body neutral, try not to lean away from the curve but to keep her body in line with the driver and the bike, and to not put her feet down when he stopped.

She went to the closet and pulled out her black leather jacket and put on her snug leather pants. She had pictured wearing them with a pair of very high heels to a nightclub; never that she’d be wearing them from the back of a bike.

The knock on her door came as a surprise.

It was Urs with her over-the-ankle boots. She slipped them on over her socks and modeled the boots and the pants for him.

He gave her the seal of approval. “You look great Jerusa. You just keep getting better and better. You should always wear pants. They flatter you.”

“Is this one sweater enough or will I need two?” As soon as she said it she knew that he didn’t know. He was dressed in jeans, a sweater and a leather jacket. “They don’t recommend jeans Urs.”

“Are you going to turn into a teacher or worse, my mother? I only wear jeans for short trips. I have leathers too, back in the UK.

“I didn’t ask you but what do you think about taking the train up to Munich tomorrow? It will be a full day because it’s about 500K from here. But you’ll love the train. Each train has a restaurant car with two sections, the traditional restaurant and self-service bistro. They also have state-of-the –art comfort and amenities like in-seat video screens and plugs for a computer and the best part is a magnificent panoramic lounge at each end of the train for a spectacular view of the landscape. It would be a fun trip.”
He effectively steered the conversation away from his jeans because Jerusa said that she’d love to do the train thing.

Once they got downstairs he took about twenty-minutes to prepare her for her first ride.

He tested her helmet by tying it under her chin and then pulling on it to make sure it wasn’t too loose.

He showed her what would get hot, where to hold, where she was to put her feet and also how she was to mount. Her legs were long enough that she could stand on the ground and throw her leg over but he said if she became tired later in the day she could lean on his shoulder and mount. He told her to always wait until he was on before she made an attempt to get on.

He asked her to hold on to him with both arms around his waist and never to use the strap across the seat as it was just a useless style element.


He told her not to grab his shoulders or arms and as she already knew not to put her feet down when they stopped. He showed her how to lean; they even practiced that a bit in the lot.

Finally he taught her how to communicate with him by tapping his shoulder. Right shoulder two taps means stop, it’s urgent, one tap means when you can, one tap on left shoulder means slow down.

“You can place your hand on my thigh if you want to reassure me that all is well with you Jerusa.”

She did a quick run through in her head and they were ready to go.

CHAPTER 7

(A Motorbike Ride)

Urs was a good driver. Before long she was comfortable with him at the wheel. She splayed her fingers across his abdomen so that she could feel his muscles at work as he leaned and swayed to the conditions of the road and the demands of the bike.

It was a nice day, fall was in the air. It was hard to describe exactly but fall in the air to her was that feeling of heaviness that reminded one that wood smoke should be smelled and trees should be turning even though not a hint of wood smoke was to be found… but the trees were coloring nicely. Jerusa took a deep breath and just enjoyed the feeling of the sun beaming down on her and the wind in her face.

He sure could handle the machine. No sudden stops that threatened to make her helmet crash into his. His ‘slow to stop’ maneuver was as smooth as riding with egg shells that one didn’t want to break.

They dismounted when they reached the environs of the remains of the Berlin wall. It was still rather dour to Jerusa but there were indications that renovations were under way.

“See Jerusa all along the wall the west allowed its people to draw colorful murals.”

Through a hole they walked to the east and saw that they had not allowed art of any kind. “Their side was quite bleak back then. Now they are allowing drawings in some places on both sides and they will put something over the surfaces to preserve the art.”

“It looks like a prison wall Urs. The rebar is showing. It’s so dead, so ugly.”

He agreed and they moved further into what had been East Berlin. They saw remnants of a park that still had statues of Marx and Lenin in them.

They then rode deeper and saw the old Soviet apartments, cheered up a little bit but still having the look of some of the things that Jerusa knew as ‘government housing’ in the states. Places where people are almost ware housed.

Having had enough of that they then rode back to the West Berlin side passing through the Brandenburg Gate.

She had read that it was commissioned in the late seventeen hundreds by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a sign of peace. The king could not have known that today, it would be considered one of Europe's most famous landmarks.

They dismounted and Urs, acting as tour guide, told her a bit of the history of the place.

“When the Nazis ascended to power they used the Gate as their symbol. The Gate survived World War II and was one of the few structures standing in 1945.”

He used his arms freely to point to the surrounding sites. “Following Germany's surrender and the end of the war, the governments of East Berlin and West Berlin restored it in a joint effort. Vehicles and pedestrians could again travel freely through the gate, right up until August 1961 when the Berlin Wall was erected.

“Look to the left. The wall and its fortified ‘death strip’ ran just west of the gate, cutting off access from West Berlin and essentially rendering it off limits to East Berliners for almost thirty years until the wall's destruction in 1989."

“Death strip?” Was what Jerusa heard.

“Yes. Guards shot many brave people who risked their lives to be free.

"In 2000, the Brandenburg Gate was privately refurbished at a 6 million dollar cost.”

They continued on and saw a sight that for Urs had a bit of history.

“See this spot here? In 1932 the book burnings were carried out and although Ulrich was too young to be aware of its significance, he surely saw it in his growing up years.”

In order not to become depressed over these memories, they decided to look for sites that were more pleasurable; some of which were sites that he remembered from the dream.

The church he remembered along with another building nearby although he had been too young to know its function.

“It seems surreal Jerusa. I remember some of it but I don’t have words to explain how it makes me feel.”

They were headed back and just about to cross the Spree River when it hit Jerusa out of the blue. Oh No! And she couldn’t remember the signals to get Urs to stop! Was she to tap his left shoulder or his right? Since she couldn’t remember which one, she tapped the left. He immediately slowed down considerably although he had not been going fast.

A bit frantic now she tapped his right shoulder. He pulled over at once. And she, taking no heed of his earlier instructions, jumped off almost before the bike stopped moving nearly causing her to fall flat on her face.

Jerusa managed to stay upright and Urs put his kickstand on and hopped off.

She stood there, in so much pain that she had to cross my legs.

“What’s wrong Jerusa, did you hurt yourself? Are you ill?” He questioned because he could see that she was in a good deal of discomfort.

“I have to go back to the hotel Urs. I must go right now!

He motioned for her to get back on even as he snapped on his helmet.

She stood there. “I can’t get back on the bike. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

She didn’t know what he thought was wrong with her. Probably that her period had come on suddenly and she wasn’t prepared for it. Especially since the crossed legged clinch called attention to that area of her body. Anyway he said ”Give me your helmet and gloves; I have to get the bike back. I’ll get you a cab and I’ll look in on you as soon as I return.”

“No, there’s no need to look in on me. I’ll be fine.” But her voice betrayed her nervousness and he also detected a touch of humiliation.

“Nonsense.” he said as a cab pulled smoothly to the curb. He helped usher her in, the jostling almost caused her to moan. He gave the cab driver money and told him where to take her. “I’ll see you in about twenty minutes Jerusa and keep your cell phone on so you can call me if I need to come back.”

She nodded absently just wanting to get going and with that, she was off towards the hotel and he headed back the way they had come to return the rented bike.

By the time he arrived back at the hotel Jerusa had taken care of herself. She’d showered and had even taken a tranquilizer. Now dressed in a comfortable flannel gown to ward off the chill of the night she answered the hotel door in response to his light knock.

She watched him as he took in her attire in one all inclusive glance. “You look better Jerusa, are you feeling well again, can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine Urs. I just needed to relax a bit.”

They ended up calling down for room service. She ordered a hearty vegetable soup and rough bread with cake for dessert. Urs ordered a steak with baked potato and salad and the cake too. They drank their coffee and talked a bit, then when they’d finished he put their dinner table with its dishes under the white table cloth and left it in the hallway for pickup.

They then went out onto her small balcony to watch the sunset.

Urs had watched Jerusa slip into her robe, a flannel that matched her long gown. She looked like a granny, quite utilitarian, but cute in a way that moved him.

He marveled how he could have ever thought her hair just brown. It was beautiful, sleek, when she kept it brushed just so and laced with delicious colors ranging from red to burnished copper.

“Do you suppose that you’ll be well enough for the trip tomorrow? We don’t have to go you know.”

“Oh I want to go. We need to go. You want to see the car place and I want to see Munich. I might never get this way again and I want to see all that I can.”

“But you must tell me if you need to sit, or if you need - anything.” He didn’t ask her what was wrong because he thought he knew.

The sky was especially beautiful as they sat facing west and watched the sun set. It was spectacular. There was no need for words; they both were enjoying watching it. Urs thought Jerusa peaceful and easy to be around, she thought Urs a good companion, one who put no demands on her. And like Ulrich, he was still trying to take care of her.
**

After a hurried breakfast of coffee and bread and butter, they got a cab to the train the next morning. It was a high speed train and Jerusa was looking forward to riding in it. The states had no such thing. The fastest train there that she knew of would only reach seventy to eighty miles at top speed. She’d read that these were much faster.

They boarded and got comfortable seats and were soon speeding along, the velocity matching their high spirits. Before long they went to the scenic car to watch to beautiful landscape as they sped by.

The ride alone would take about three and one half hours each way and when Urs suggested that they spend the night and come back the next day she agreed. That too was something that she wanted to do.

With such a light breakfast they were soon hungry. After eating a hearty brunch they pulled into Munich and decided to first go the BMW assembly plant and after that the nearby BMW museum.

The plant was accessible by subway and a free three-hour guided tour was offered in English and German. It was set up so that visitors wore radio headsets so that they could hear their guide over the din of the bustling factory floor.

It was all quite organized. The workers seemed really interested in their work, not looking at their watches every few minutes to see when they could leave.

The assembly line was all a product of precision engineering; Urs mentioned in an offhand way that the Porsche Factory was in Stuttgart. Jerusa could tell that if they had more time he would like to see it too. He really got off watching the assembly line. Jerusa, she enjoyed it but it was not the stuff that blew her skirt up.

Later they had a sandwich and tea before going on to the museum.

‘Now that was quite interesting’. Jerusa thought. History always did keep her entertained. Several sleek cars that were old but retained their stylishness and beauty had been cordoned off for their perusal. The older cars had looked more durable than today’s models too. Each car had a placard that gave information about them. Jerusa was interested in the old time amenities, leather seats, padded steering while Urs was interested in the engine and its top speed.

By the time they finished, it was time to find their hotel for the night and have dinner.


Urs recommended Hotel Villa Schlosspark that was situated in western Munich in the quiet Obermenzing district, far from the hustle and bustle of city life. And even though it seemed remote it was only 12 minutes by train on the S-Bahn from Munich center!

He told her that it was also close to the Botanic Gardens and famous Nymphenburg Castle with its beautiful, spacious park, that they could both see before heading back to Berlin tomorrow, if she felt up to it.

It would be tight but they decided that they would still have time to make it to City Hall and search the records before it closed.

So with less than an hour left before sundown they got the train to the hotel and when they reached their exit point, they had about a four minute walk before they could check in.

With darkness closing in, Urs wondered if this was a good idea or not. Truth to tell, it had been a bit much for a one day trip especially with Jerusa not at her best. Moreover, it was never a good idea to wander around after dark in a city that while not exactly strange, was not familiar enough that they knew the spots to avoid.

So it made perfect sense not to push it. Two rooms even though they had no luggage or fresh clothes for the following day; not ideal, but it could be done.
The two rather tired travelers walked up to what was usually a secluded oasis only to find that tonight it was not as secluded as usual, in fact, due to a wedding party, there was only one room to be had in the whole facility.

CHAPTER 8

(One Bed or Two?)

He had stood there with his mouth open, trying to think of some solution, perhaps a cab to another hotel? He heard Jerusa ask about the accommodations in that one room.

“What is the bed situation two beds or one?”

“Only one Miss. But, if this helps any it is a very large bed. King sized in fact."

“We’ll take it. Won’t we Urs?”

When he didn’t object, the desk clerk spoke. “Very well then, you are lucky that this one is available, only a last minute cancellation made it possible.”

Neither Urs nor Jerusa were interested in talking. He gave his credit card and Jerusa took the key and they headed off to their upstairs room.

It was pleasant to walk into the warmly comfortable room. It was quite lovely. All flowered Chintz that imitated an earlier time but everything was new and fresh.

They used the menu to order dinner through room service and they found the food tasty and filling. They were not in the mood to dine tonight; they just wanted to get some relief from all of that walking they had done today.

Once the table was cleared away and before they took on sleeping in that formidable bed together without touching, Urs asked her if she needed anything from downstairs.

“We need everything. We don’t have a thing. No toothbrushes, I don’t even have a brush for my hair. Wait, yes I do, in my purse.”

He had let it go. She should know what she needed better than he. Perhaps she had those other supplies in her bag too. He had replied, “Any good hotel has these conveniences for its guests. There’s robes in the closet I’ll bet and toothbrushes and paste in the bathroom.”

She looked and sure enough there were two crisply white terry robes. “We can sleep in these.”

Urs smiled at this but said nothing. He’d never slept in a heavy robe in his life, he’d smother. He decided that he’s say nothing, wait until she was asleep and ditch the robe. He could always slip back into it before she woke up tomorrow.

Another more troubling aspect was that he never ever showered and put the same shorts back on; a holdover from his days as Ulrich he presumed, now that he knew about Ulrich.

Jerusa went into the bathroom, taking her robe with her. Once in there she disrobed, put the robe on and started to rinse out her panties, the bra could wait.

She remembered that Urs, like Ulrich was fastidious. He would not like to sleep in his undies and wear them the next day. And while Ulrich had not had to means to stay clean, Urs did. She decided that she could wash his too so she cracked the door.

“Urs, if you take off your shorts, I’ll wash them out and we can hang them on this towel warmer so they’ll dry by morning.”

Urs frowned. He could wash his own stuff. Then he smiled again. This was just Jerusa taking on the persona of Johanna of the dream. He remembered how she had gone about in their little hovel, cleaning, washing their clothes even though they had no soap; she had been a regular little mother to them.

“Give me a minute.” He had replied before shucking everything and he slipped into the male version of the terry cloth robe. At least it was a bit more masculine, shorter, only to his calves whereas hers was long, but his was wider at the top to allow for the shoulders, and of course the waist was lower too. Not too bad. Now he only had to keep it closed until he was safely under the sheet.

He had tapped on the door and her hand appeared to receive his shorts. She smiled when she saw they were boxers with red hearts no less.

Twenty minutes later she exited the steamy room, bringing with her the scent of coconut. She had washed her hair and towel dried it and it looked reminiscent of how it had looked that morning when he first saw her in the breakfast room. ‘Ah so it had been damp.’ That’s why he hadn’t noticed the luster of it.

He exchanged places with her, noticed their undies side by side on the towel rack, hers were red, tiny almost vee shaped things. Not thong, good, he didn’t really like them on his women.

He supposed he could be a coconut too, seeing as how they had to use the same products. ‘Poor planning on your part Buhler you should have considered this was too long for a one day trip.’ But… it hadn’t turned out too bad. A bit awkward but they were both adults.
His hair would be all over his head tomorrow and their makeup lady would have a time getting him ready for the stage tomorrow night but that couldn’t be helped. He’d rather have riotous hair than forgo the shampoo.

When he came out of the bathroom Jerusa was wrapped up all nice and tight in her robe, in bed and she seemed all ready to drift off. He wanted to catch the top of the news so he asked her if she minded if he watched TV a bit, which she didn’t.
He looked for about ten minutes; found that the world as they knew it would continue. He flipped off the noise and the light and crawled in.

There was plenty of room he mused as he noticed that she was sound asleep. He removed the bulky robe and lay back. There that was better. He was much more comfortable in the buff.

Jerusa too slept like a log but at one point she awakened and was too warm. She too slipped out of her robe.

Neither awakened to notice that as the night progressed it grew cooler; in fact the first heavy frost of the season descended and left the grass coated with the sparkling quality of wonderland.

Inside, lying snug and warm under the light coverlet neither party was awake. They were in deep sleep but that didn’t stop Jerusa from being subliminally aware of the chill in the air. Everybody knows that the body, even without its rational brain will seek its own comfort.

Jerusa felt the warmth radiating off Urs body and she slid over. It was as simple as that. He didn’t awaken. He didn’t question who this might or might not be. When she snuggled close his arms welcomed her to him as she fit her face to the area between his neck and jaw and slipped her leg over his.

Hours later Jerusa awakened still drowsy to realize that her peach sized breasts were getting the tenderest laving with an insistent tongue. She could not remember her husband being this patient, or this hard either.

That brought her fully awake. Hard? Yes, there it was firm and insistent rising up between them. Was this man asleep? She didn’t know if a man could make love while he was slumbering but she knew that he had all of the necessary equipment to do so while seeming fast asleep. He didn’t have to be awake to have an erection. It was morning so voila. What better time to do something about it?

There was a soft sucking sound when she pulled his mouth off of her breast and his hands away from her body. He sat up, now fully awake and aware.
She didn’t say a word. She left the bed and went into the bathroom to dress, only to find that her clothing and the robe were out in the main room. She slipped on the now dry panties, took a deep breath and padded out to find her clothes. She glanced over at him now sitting up in bed and he was watching her and he didn’t look the least repentant.

Urs almost laughed aloud at the chagrined expression on Jerusa’s face when she glanced back over her shoulder at him. ‘Yes I see you and you look damn fine too’, he thought. He didn’t dare speak his thoughts aloud. ‘But I really wish you hadn’t walked in here like that, now I’ll never get rid of my boner’. He sighed, threw back the cover and walked into the bathroom, boner and all and was in there for a long time.

Jerusa didn’t allow herself to think what he might be doing in there behind closed doors.

She was fully dressed when he came out of the bathroom, now wearing his shorts sans tent. She would not let what happened this morning touch her. She smiled at him, ignored his knowing look and asked,
“Should we have breakfast here or wait until we catch the train?”

“That depends. Do you want to sightsee more or are you ready to get back?”

“I think we should get back and get to the business that brought me here don’t you?” She wished she could call those words back. The words were not bad but the tone was a bit accusatory.

“Look, I’m sorry. But you should have known what would happen. You didn’t have to accept the room. No woman in her right mind will lie down with a man in the same bed if she doesn’t intend to sleep with him. You’ve been married, you should know that.”

“I should have known? What about you? I didn’t know that you’d come out of your robe.”

“And you couldn’t wait to rip yours off either could you?”

“Rip mine off? Why you egotistical snot. You are trying to turn this back on me aren’t you?”

He had never seen her this heated. He schooled his face and made sure that his dimple wasn’t showing. It would never do for her to think he was laughing at her. She might … who knew what she’d do but he knew that he wanted to kiss her until she went limp in his arms and allowed him to have her.

“Look Jerusa, let’s just concede that we wanted each other and that no harm was done and forget about the indignation ok?”

Like lightning had struck she deflated. All traces of her crossness gone. “I’ll concede that you wanted me. But I’ve learned my lesson, I never allow myself to want a man.”

That got his attention. Perhaps he was becoming attracted to a woman who had no interest in men. Now that he thought about it, the only man that she had seen her smile at was Jonathan Winters, and that had been a neutral smile, not one that expressed interest in the man at all. She hadn’t been interested in Joe although he clearly had wanted to check her out.

“You’re attracted to women? Is that what you’re trying to tell me Jerusa?”

“I’m trying to tell you just what I said, I never allow myself to want men. And no, I don’t want women either.”

“Is it because of your husband? You’ve vowed to belong to him forever?”

She had to smile at that as she pictured her husband as he had been when his life was snuffed out, a kid really. All he had cared about was himself, his videogames, his car, {he had owned a vintage mustang}, and his freedom to run around. No. She knew if he had lived they would not have made it. But he had been the catalyst if not the cause of many of the challenges that she faced today; he along with the dreams.

And speaking of dreams, she hadn’t had one since she’d met Urs/Ulrich. Was there a deeper connection than she thought? Were the dreams a vehicle to force her to keep searching for Ulrich? Why had they stopped only when she found him?

“Urs have you had the dream anymore?”

God, they were on the same page in the thought department. “Actually no, it came when I met you and I’ve never had it since.”

“Did you have it on the night before you met me or the night after?”

He gave it some thought. “It was on the night after I saw you at breakfast, because I didn’t recognize you until after the dream and I saw you in the audience. I knew that I had had a dream about something important but I just couldn’t remember. While I was on the stage, the second time you attended our concert, that’s it, the dream, came flooding in. We were singing ‘With You I’m Born Again’. I almost dropped to my knees the feelings were so powerful.”

“I think we were both hounded so that we would meet each other. We have something that we must do together.”
“Other than make fantastic love?”

“I don’t think the Universe gives **** if we get together in that way or not, that is, unless we have been chosen to bring some great soul into the world.”

“I think the Universe is going to be disappointed because I intend never to have children.” Urs said a bit flippantly, and was surprised when she nodded too. In his experience women wanted nothing more than they wanted to marry and have a bunch of kids. ‘Well things are looking up’; was his thought as he turned to conceal his half smile.

**

The sun was shining brightly by now and they decided that they wanted to get back to Berlin and to the courthouse to see what they could find. Was there a record of Ulrich and Johanna or were they figments of both their imaginations?
Just like it was on the trip coming down, they had only to wait for a few minutes for the narrowly scheduled trains and she’d learned in Germany they came right on time. Once on the train they both had a healthy breakfast. Jerusa’s breakfast was healthy in the sense that it was good for her body, Urs in the sense that it was hearty.

After the meal they rode along pleasantly full until Jerusa picked up a magazine that because it was in German, she couldn’t read.

“What’s this about Urs?” The accompanying photos showed three or four different men all standing smiling, having something to say.

Umh.. it says: “Men and Intimacy: Everything you need to know. What men think…. And then the magazine asked these men ‘What is the most memorable thing a woman has ever done to get your attention?’"

“What did she do?” Jerusa pointed to one particularly handsome man.

“This one is Otto, he’s 34. He says ‘There was a woman in my building that I’d encountered in the parking lot a few times. One night she left a note on my car door with her name and number. Yes, I called, and we’re still friends’.”

“So I guess it worked didn’t it.”

“I’d say no.” Mr. Dour added. "He says that they are still friends. I think he means friends in the lightest sense. They are still in touch. It didn’t really go anywhere did it?”

“What’s next?”

“Ok, this one is younger. Karl is only 30. He says ‘A woman was in front of me at the checkout line. When it was my turn to pay, the cashier gave me a note with the woman’s phone number and a request that I cook for her sometime. The following week I invited her to dinner at my apartment.’’’

“Ah Urs I can see between the lines. This one didn’t go anywhere either did it. He invited her to dinner, they had dinner, didn’t hit off and that was it.”

“Ok Jerusa, listen to this one” Urs had gotten into it too. “Wendell here is 31 and he says, ‘A beautiful young lady told me I was ‘thick like bread dough.’ It was corny, but it made me laugh. That was two years ago, and that country girl and I are still together.”

“Why would he want to be thought of as thick?” Jerusa mused.

“I don’t know unless she said “Oh you’re so ‘thick’ as in ‘big’. Any man would like to hear that.”

“Oh get your mind out of the gutter Buhler. There’s one more.” And she pointed at the last one.

“Ok we have Gilbert here. He’s 39…”

“A veritable old man.” She smiled up at him and he smiled back.

“Here’s what he has to say. ‘I was out of town on business, and my lady friend called the hotel’s room service and ordered all my favorite breakfast foods for me – turkey bacon, egg whites, potatoes, toasted wheat bread, orange juice and a small fruit platter.’ “Now that’s my kind of woman.”

“And did you notice that she was already his ‘lady friend’. I would conclude from reading this that men will be gotten if they want to be gotten and not if they don’t.” Jerusa pronounced.

“Except that you didn’t read it. I did.”

“Well I read it vicariously. I watched you read it.”

“You watched me huh, so you’re a peeping tom? Did you like what you saw?”

She remembered him rising from the bed with Thor’s hammer or Zeus’ lightning bolt at his loins, yeah, you bet she liked what she saw but no use rousing sleeping dogs.

“Yes I especially liked the way you looked at that 62 BMW roadster motorbike. I thought I’d have to get a towel to protect me from your drool.” There, that got it back on the right track.

He let her go and allowed her to change the subject. Miss Nichols was as elusive as she had been as Johanna although there was no longer the age factor to keep them apart; with sudden clarity he saw that it had not even been the age difference that stood in the way of them getting together, it had been Ulrich’s youth. Were they reversed, he thirty and she thirty seven, he’d still want her. So if it wasn’t age standing between them, what was it?

CHAPTER 9

(The Records Show …)

They were back at the hotel in Berlin by eleven that morning. Once there, they decided to shower, dress and get on the trail of finding information about Ulrich and Johanna.

When they rejoined each other in the hotel lobby, Jerusa had found an address and directions on the internet and in order to save time, Urs had already called a cab.

It was only a short time later when they exited the cab in front of an old fashioned but imposing building that took up a whole block, if one considered the newer more modern adjoined building.

In what sounded to Jerusa like perfect German, Urs asked where they could find records of deaths that occurred during and immediately after WWII.
They were directed to the basement of the building and although it took a bit of work, they soon found the records labeled 1943-1945.

Urs remembered most of the boys last names, after all, these were the kids that Ulrich had grown up with, gone to church with, went to school with before the devastation of the war broke up their families.

Aldo Hitzig was their first find. The cause of death was gunshot wound, the date September 2nd 1945. Age at death had been 13. That was true; he and Ulrich had been the same age, in the same class. He had left with the other boys so it stood to reason that they might have been caught up in something and have died together.

Using the cross reference of that date in the computer there he found Aldo again, along with other names that he recognized as he carefully scrolled the list. There was Fritz Diefenbaker, but not his younger brother Karl. There was Otto Meier, Gerald Klein and Alan Renke.

“That’s six out of eight accounted for. Let’s see if we can find Ulrich and Johanna. Our dates should be very close together, if not on the same date.”

He had her go to September 3rd and carefully scrolled to the B’s. There was Ulrich Baer, the cause of death was ‘unknown infection’ but that had been crossed out, and although underneath was still readable, the words ‘Norwalk virus’ had been inserted.
Urs thanked God that the German’s were known for being systematic. Now he could at least know what had brought about Ulrich’s death.

Johanna was there too. She had succumbed to pneumonia, just as he had thought.

“Well now we know for sure what we already thought we knew. These two existed we had the ages right, and the dates right. Now what do we do?”

“I think we cross reference Fritz and try to find Karl Diefenbaker. If he didn’t die on that day, when did he die?”

They looked for about an hour using every death notice or cemetery roster that they could reference. Karl wasn’t there. “What if he didn’t die Urs? If he was ten then, in 1945, he’d be elderly but he could still be alive. “

“He’d be 73. Why didn’t I think of that? Just because you and I died and returned in another body doesn’t mean that he had to.”

“Is that what you think happened to us Urs? We died and were reborn? That’s reincarnation and I don’t believe in that.”

“We don’t have to explain it then. Don’t believe in reincarnation. Believe that we remember their lives. Even though we’ve found the records, I’d like to find one living person who could verify that Ulrich was once alive.”

“And what then? If he lived so what?”

“If we can prove that Ulrich and Johanna are a part of us, no matter how they came to be that part, then we can start to ask the Universe why they are in us. What are we supposed to do with the information?”

Jerusa got busy going to a search engine and looking at the records for Karl Diefenbaker. This brought up several men with that name. Three of them had been born in 1935; two in Berlin; one in the states.

“I think we can rule out the New York Karl don’t you? There’s no way that he could be the same kid.”

“Not hardly, I knew Karl’s parents and they weren’t Americans.”

“You mean Ulrich knew them.”

“Check this out Jerusa, one of the two Berlin Karl’s is in a nursing home near here. I have to sing tonight but there’s nothing to keep us from running down there tomorrow morning. That is the last chance we’ll have to see, we move on the day after that.”

“According to the map, Potsdam is about 18 miles from Berlin but Berlin is a big city, it could be as much as 50 miles from where we are.” Jerusa referred to the computer’s driving distance map.

“Even so, fifty miles would be the max, and that’s less than an hour. We could jump on the bike and be there in little or no time.”

No! I can’t ride on a motorbike again. I just can’t.”

“Calm down. I’m not going to make you ride. Get the address and directions and I’ll rent a car tonight and pick it up in the morning. I thought I was being very careful with you when we rode, did I do something to frighten you?”

“No, no I wasn’t frightened. It had nothing to do with you. It’s just me. It was my first ride and I found that I can’t that’s all.”

He remembered that she had been doing fine when all of a sudden she signaled him rather frantically to stop. She had hopped off like she had burned herself.

“Did you burn yourself on the pipes? They can get pretty hot.”

“No! I told you it’s me.”

He had thought at the time that her period had started and she needed to get back to the hotel. Since then, he had figured out that that had not been the case.

He tried again. “Maybe –“

“Leave me the hell alone please!” she blasted him.

She had never been that harsh to him before and it hurt his feelings a bit. He crawled into his Cancer shell for a little while as they made their way back to the surface to call a cab.

His hurt feelings disappeared as suddenly as they had come. “I’m sorry Jerusa. I didn’t mean to pry.”

She too had calmed down. They found a seat to sit and wait for the ride. She sighed. “There’s something wrong with me. I have a disease and…”

She thought he recoiled. She could see his imaginative mind working and she guessed he was quickly allowing his mind to picture an old diseased whore. She smiled at the picture.

“Nothing like that Urs, you didn’t almost break your record for being persnickety when we almost made love last night.”

He had actually blushed a bit. She had hit the nail on the head. Still … “But what is wrong with you?”

Jerusa made up her mind. She was tired of living in shame, tired of feeling different. She made up her mind that she would tell Urs. After all, if he had any of Ulrich in him, he would understand. “But I won’t tell you until we can sit, take our time and I’ll have to have a glass of wine or two to get it out. And what I have, it’s not catching.”

CHAPTER 10

(Woman what Ails You?)


Of course he was intrigued. Who wouldn’t be?

Did she have some rare form of cancer; or perhaps a boil on her butt? Nah there had been no sign of any imperfection in the hotel room yesterday. A bad back was more likely. Perhaps the need to balance her torso was too much for her. Yes, that was probably it, but then why did she need glasses of wine to tell that? He was still trying to figure it out when the cab drove up and they headed back to the hotel.

He didn’t see her anymore to speak to her that day. That night, he knew that she was at the Il Divo performance. He had made sure that she had a ride over. But, afterwards, she was gone. She was making herself scarce. She most likely didn’t want to see the questioning look in his eyes.

She was in the Lobby at the agreed upon time the next day. He waved and went to retrieve the car from the parking garage. She joined him out front as soon as he drove up.

They were off to Potsdam to see this Karl Diefenbaker. With any luck he’d be the one they were looking for. She pulled a map from her purse prepared to act as navigator while he drove. But he pointed out that he had a gotten a car with a GPS system, “I was kind enough to leave it up to you to figure out how to get it going.”

“Thanks for nothing Urs.” She commented drily. But checked it out and soon had it working.

Ten minutes later they here headed down the autobahn towards Potsdam while Jerusa gave him a bit of history that she had picked up on the internet this morning.

“This morning? What time were you up?”

“I must have awakened around five. I forced myself out of bed at six and was ready to go by six thirty. I’m a fast dresser.”

“So what can you tell me about Potsdam?” He could have added ‘that I don’t already know’ but she was excited about telling him and he didn’t remind her that Switzerland was not at all far from Germany. He knew German history like the back of his hand.

But she told it in the context of Ulrich which made it quite interesting.

“About the time that Johanna was coming to Ulrich, near the middle of July 1945, the leaders of the UK, US and USSR came together in Potsdam to decide Germany’s fate. Much of the country had been destroyed by bombs. There had been 363 air raids on Berlin destroying about 500 sq miles. Hitler was dead and Ulrich and the boys were holed up in a bombed out rubble stealing food to stay alive.”

“Yes. I know. Ulrich remembers some of those air raids. He remembers the fear, the blackouts when all the lights had to be doused, and the drawn shades. Of course Ulrich didn’t have to draw shades, being underground and all, but he was afraid of being buried alive there. Berlin was the home of the Gestapo and the SS so you can imagine it made quite a target.”

Jerusa continued. “They, the heads of state I mean, met from about 16 July to the 2nd of August and they came up with the Potsdam Agreement and the Potsdam Declaration I never knew that those were two different documents.

“When Stalin, Churchill and Truman left to return to their respective countries, Ulrich and Johanna and most of the boys had only a month to live. They died around the 2nd and 3rd of September.”

“So, what was the Potsdam Agreement about?”

“It was all about deciding how to reconstruct Germany. But it also put Germany into a territorial trusteeship and they made Germany pay reparations. It created articles about the handling of war criminals and it set up a council of foreign ministers.

“The Potsdam Declaration defined the terms for Japanese surrender.”

Urs added, “Yes, but the three nations never could agree exactly on the handling of Germany and that disagreement eventually led to the Berlin Wall being erected.”

“Before we leave, if we have time, I’d like to drive by Cecilienhof where the Potsdam conference was held, just to say that I’ve seen it. Johanna’s father was a part of that meeting so it is important to me in a small way. Yet, as Jerusa, I know that Johanna never really liked her father.”

“Even though it was famous back then, time makes a difference. Today Potsdam is better known as one of the leading centers of European film. The Film Studio Babelsberg is located here. Folk rarely talk about what happened back then.”

By now they were nearing Potsdam, the Havel River was to the right and the Glienicke Bridge was near. They busied themselves looking for the turn off street to get to the nursing home.

In due time they found the home and saw a few elderly folk sitting outside on a bench getting a little of the fresh crisp air. In the parking lot before they got out of the car Jerusa placed her hand over Urs hand on the seat.

“I hope you are not expecting the same little boy. Seventy three isn’t that old but there is some reason that he is in a nursing home. He won’t know us from Adam and we’ll have to dance around the question of Ulrich and Johanna. He might remember them, he might not. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up and be disappointed.”

“I could say the same to you Jerusa. We don’t even know why we’re here. But if he doesn’t recognize the names, we won’t have lost anything.”

“We’ll only have lost the chance to meet a living person who knew them and who knew them as we experience them in our dreams.”

When they were shown to Karl’s cubicle they were shocked at his appearance. He was sitting in a large chair at the side of his bed, his brown eyes were faded now and his once blond hair was gray. Still, Urs could see remnants of the boy that he had seen in the dream in this tired old man. But he was dull, as if the light in him had been extinguished.

The attendant announced them in German and left. Karl made no movements; it was just as if they weren’t there.

“Karl, how are you sir? We’ve traveled a long way to see how you’re doing.” Jerusa used her most respectful and appealing voice then looked at Urs when there was no response.

“Karl,” Urs persisted. Do you remember Fritz, your brother, and Otto, and Ralph and Ulrich and Gilbert? Do you remember those boys?”

That struck some hidden spark in Karl. He began to speak, not in German but in English. “Ulrich is that you? Johanna it is you too! I have waited so long for both of you. What took you so long?”

They were taken aback not only that the old man remembered Ulrich and Johanna but that he recognized them in the two strangers standing before him. Evidently the age difference and the passing of time made no difference in the world that Karl now lived.

“Why have you waited for us Karl? Why did you want us? Did you want to say something to us?”

Karl laughed a bit, a rusty hinge sound that made Jerusa want to clear her throat. “I didn’t want to say much. Just to see that you two were finally together… you loved each other so much.”

“How do you know that we loved each other Karl? I was only thirteen.”

“You’re a long way from thirteen now. You are just at the age where you can make a difference you know. That’s why you two are together you know, to make a difference in your lives.”

Suddenly Karl’s eyes were bright and youthful. They got the feeling that they were talking to someone much wiser than when they entered the room.

“If you work together, you will be able to accomplish all that you had no time to do when you tried to before.”

“But what are we to get done. What are we to do?”

“There’s so much needed that you two can choose your poison.” And he laughed again. “Rely on each other and it will come to you. My job is to remind you why you are here on earth. My work here is done.”

With that, Karl went back to being Karl. He sank back into the stupor that he had come out of so briefly.

After waiting to see if he would come to life again, Urs and Jerusa made their way back to the car.

“Well that was strange to say the least. He didn’t even know that we aren’t them, you know.” Urs said.

“I think you’re wrong. I think he recognized that we are them. He said that you were a long way from thirteen, how would he know that if he didn’t remember that boy Ulrich? He said that you are just at the age where you can make a difference. I think he was telling us that we have a mission to complete together; something that they would have done together if they had lived, if the times had been different. Perhaps there are millions of people like us but we are just fortunate enough to be given a clue that life is about something other than just having fun.”

Somehow what they had witnessed was just too profound for them to just drive away. They sat in the car for at least another half hour. Finally Urs stirred. “Do you still want to drive by the Potsdam building?”

“What about you; are you up to it or should we head back?”

“When are we going to have our ‘date’? You know your wine date so that you can tell me your deep dark secret? Or would you rather just meet upstairs, either in my room or yours?”

“Let’s go out. Can you find a club with music and dim lights?”

“Of course I can. I have a little place in mind where we can have a nice dinner, then go into the lounge and have drinks. There will be music, not too loud, not too soft. We’ll dress, do you have a dressy dress?” he paused, “If not, we can shop for one.”

“I have something.”

Buoyed by the idea of getting out that evening they decided to drive by the Potsdam building and then get home to prepare for their evening out.

Cecilienhof where the Pottsdam meetings occurred was a beautiful stately building that Jerusa pointed out had windows that looked like eyes. They walked around the grounds for a little under an hour and then headed home.

“Are you sure that we shouldn’t talk about this and then go out?”

“Absolutely not. I need to be around people. Besides, I am looking forward to being with the best looking man in the restaurant tonight.”

Back in her room she wondered what she could possibly be thinking about. She was about to turn off the man that she cared so much about.

She now thought that they were meant to be together, of course she did not believe that nonsense that Karl had talked about. They were destined to do things together, things of a philanthropic nature? Or had he talked about romance, even sex. Now that she could believe.

Her Ulrich was finally her equal. She was free to allow herself to feel romantic love for him not the filial love that Johanna had felt. He too was free to love her and even though the tables had turned, she couldn’t say that he had come anywhere near equaling the ardor as Urs that he as Ulrich had felt for Johanna.

There had been that incident in the bed at the Munich hotel but that was just lust. A nude man and woman in a bed was a formula for a bit of heat.

She adored him. Finally she admitted it. It was overshadowed by the dream but what she felt was so much greater than her memory of the dream. She wanted them to be together in this life, and tonight she was thinking about causing him to flee from her.

But there was no help for it. She had to get past this, get help for herself if they were to move beyond a shared memory of a dream, or friendship or a spirit of adventure. She wanted him physically too. She wanted it all.

With a resoluteness that came from her desire for him she began to lay out tonight’s armor. Her goal was to be very appealing so that later, when he mulled over her story, all that she would reveal tonight, he would look past that and decide in her favor. And that he’d decide that although she might require a bit of patience on his part, even effort, he’d think her worth it.

She only had one dressy dress that he hadn’t seen. She knew that he preferred her in pants, a fact that she wasn’t willing to delve too deeply into just now, but she thought that this figure hugging dress would be just as flattering.

It was made of black wool crepe and it fit her slim figure like a glove. It had been made for her she thought. From wide panels at the shoulder, the front plunged boldly all the way to wide built-in leather belt. The plunge was repeated in back and left bare more than she would have guessed she would but it had looked so tailor made for her figure, she could not turn it down.

She placed bits of two sided tape on her flesh and in each front panel to keep it from gaping at the critical juncture of her breasts. Thankfully her breasts were small enough that while just the beginning curve of them showed, there was no real violation of good taste.

She chose a long delicate gold chain that fell from her neck and hugged the open area and she looked around to find earrings to match.

Her shoes were gold too, a pure gleaming gold, very high heeled pumps but then the piece de résistance was that the pumps were covered from the tips of the spiked heel with bands of gold that reminded one of a Roman sandal. These gladiator shoes had been very expensive, and were a statement in and of themselves.

Her hair she twisted and pinned at the nape of her neck in a smooth refined style and with carefully applied makeup she achieved the look of beauty and sophistication that she intended to portray.

It was time.

CHAPTER 11


(Jerusa You are Lovely)

To honor the more formal nature of their ‘date’ tonight, he came to her room for her instead of having her meet him in the lobby. In tribute of his coming, she had tidied her room until it looked just as it had when she checked in.

Urs had blinked when she opened the door and then stood flummoxed. How could he ever than thought this gorgeous woman was not his type? She was a sight for the eyes, all slender yet full in just the right places. The tantalizing smell of her, the sound of her voice, pleased him. He was afraid that his feelings were no longer a secret either because her returned smile held a hint of irony as if to say, ‘Yes. I’m attracted to you too.’

He declined to come in for a drink and when he escorted her to the car, he couldn’t stop himself from touching her bare skin at her waist just above the fall of her dress as he guided her through the lobby.

Men looked on with envy and women looked at her with pride. He thought they made an excellent looking couple.

They went to a lovely intimate dinner club that had just the right ambience. It was dark enough for the sharing of intimate secrets but not too dark to see your partner’s face across from you and, of course, not too dark to see the food.

The menu was in German and English – hurray! Jerusa ordered and so did Urs.


Schnittlauchbrot {finely chopped chives on buttered bread }

Bavarian Salad

Zwiebelrostbraten w/schupfnudeln {Pan roasted beef sirloin in red wine sauce, sauerkraut and caramelized onions}

Apfelkϋchle {apple fritters w/ vanilla sauce & vanilla ice cream}


They sat in relative isolation. He reached out and took her hand.

“You look so lovely tonight. I can see that I’m falling for you.”

“I can feel it too. I felt myself becoming attracted to you when we went to East Berlin. That’s why I have to come clean with you before allowing that to happen. I mean before it goes any further than it has.”

He straightened, reminded of why they were here. He tinkered with each of her fingers as if to encourage her to go on.

She felt a spark everywhere he touched her so she eased her hand from his loose grasp and clasped it with the other in her lap.

“It’s a thorny story Urs; by that I mean my situation is complex.” She cleared her throat, a show of nervousness. “It started when I got married to Tim, my husband. It was slow to develop, so slow that I thought at first it was normal. But then it grew to such enormous proportions until I knew that something was seriously wrong. Still, I did nothing to seek medical help until one day, I was home and it started and -“

“Wait, you haven’t told me what ‘it’ is. I’m having a hard time imagining what you’re talking about.”

The server returned with the food, interrupting them and Urs waited with barely the right amount of patience until the man left the table.

“I’m getting there Urs. Let me tell it my way please. Any way my husband came home and caught me and he freaked out, he couldn’t take it so he made me go to the doctor.

“That was the first time I had told anybody. It was too shameful. The truth that I have kept secret for many years is that I have an enormous appetite for sex.”

“And your husband came home and caught you with another man?” Urs said woodenly; she could imagine that he thought she wasn’t to be trusted.

“No not another man. I had a date with Bob.”

“Bob doesn’t sound like a woman to me”

“Bob just stands for battery operated boyfriend.”

She smiled. She could even laugh about it now; the look on Tim’s face.

“A vibrator.” Urs was not nearly so much on his high horse now. “And he freaked because he caught you using a vibrator? What were you doing with it?”

“It wasn’t that I was doing anything unusual with it as the fact that I couldn’t stop. I watched him watching me but I couldn’t have stopped if my life had depended upon it.”

"At first he thought I was just toying with him, and wanted him to … you know, join in - but it only took about ten minutes before he could see that there was nothing normal about this ‘attack’."

“Ah. And he asked you to seek help? And what did your doctor say?”

“He said that my husband was a lucky man! Even though he was a doctor he had no concept of what I suffered. So I walked out and I haven’t been back.”

“I’m no doctor either but it sound to me as if the doctor was right and your husband was lucky. But I take it you didn’t see it that way?”

“Is everything all right here?” The waiter interrupted, to tip off their wine glasses but Urs waved him off not even bothering to make eye contact.

“I’ll try to make you understand. Have you ever had an itch that just won’t stop no matter what you do? It’s sort of like that except it’s not an itch, not exactly; its sexual in nature and no amount of having sex will make it go away. I think it’s like a man who’s taken one of those Viagra pills, or better still Levitra, and you know they warn men if it produces a four hour erection to see their doctor, well picture a four hour thing and no matter what you do it won’t go away and no matter how much you masturbate it stays and your skin is raw and –“

“I get it. He put up a restraining hand and gulped his wine down. "Do you want more wine? Where’s that damn waiter anyway?”

“He just came and you shook him off. "

He waved him back and once poured, took another big gulp. “It started when you married?”

“Yes, making love brought it on.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m serious. It didn’t start until I started making love.”

“Why don’t you abstain?”

“I do. I haven’t been with anyone since he was killed. And I probably wouldn’t be telling you this but after what happened the other night, I’m talking about what happened when you and I were in the same bed in the hotel; I thought you might be working up to asking me to sleep with you so I figured I’d better tell you what a hopeless case I am before our relationship gets that far."

“So what is it with the motorbike? Is riding it connected to this thing?”

“On that day I found out that yes, they are connected. Up until then, I thought only sexual arousal could bring it on but the other day on the bike I was triggered. I felt fine at first but then there’s something about the deep rumble that caused it to start. I had to get off before it became noticeable.”

“What would have happened if it had become noticeable?”

“I don’t know. The worst case scenario would be that I’d have run to the ladies room and not come out for an hour or two.”

“Wow. It takes that long for these impulses to go away, for you to be normal again?”

“Yes, but I don’t think it’s time related. If I could stand it and do nothing but endure it, I don’t know if it’d ever go away. It takes one orgasm after another and that’s only if I’ve been able to take a tranquilizer near the beginning of it.”

“So you carry around tranquilizers?”

“I carry Paxil in my bag, yes. I took one the afternoon after the bike ride. I haven’t needed one since.”

Activity in the restaurant went on as usual. In the kitchen the Chefs were busily arranging their creations into beautiful presentations. The waiters were making dignified walks to and from the patrons then running once out of sight. Wine was being chosen and poured. And throughout there were murmurs of conversations and the tinkle of laughter. While at the table occupied by Urs and Jerusa, her eyes had filled with tears and threatened to flow down her cheeks.

“It sounds like you really suffer.” Urs reached over and touched her cheek and blotted the tear as it brimmed over with his thumb. "Is there a name for this disease?”

“I don’t know.” Her tears were really flowing now.

“Do you want to leave Jerusa? Are you uncomfortable here in the public?”

“No, let’s go into the lounge and sit. It’s darker in there. The music sounds good too.”

Urs left his credit card in the folder that held the bill and signaled the waiter that they were moving. The booth that they chose was high backed and cozy. They both moved to the curved “u’ of the booth and sat side by side.

“You didn’t answer me Jerusa. Is there a name for this thing?”

“I told you, I left the doctor’s office after he made that asinine remark, he made a joke of it. I knew that he knew nothing.”

“Have you ever tried to find it yourself? You’re always going to your laptop to look things up why not this?”

“I never thought about it. I suppose I thought that I am the only person in the world who has that problem. What would I look under?”

“How about looking under ‘oversexed women’? Are we sober enough to do that tonight?”

“I think so.” She giggled. “All I have to do is hit about ten keys. I think I can do that.”

So a couple of hours after leaving the hotel they were back in her room checking out ‘oversexed women’ on her laptop.

As to be expected they got all kinds of feedback.

From:

‘Where can I find an oversexed woman?’

To:

‘It’s a mental illness.


To:

‘Religion helps this. To allow the base desires to control your life, usually sends you to prison. The desire for sex is no higher in the prison population than for the average citizen, only the criminals cannot control that desire either. It takes PARENTS to help children to CONTROL their selfish desires that are not approved by society. The criminal like a child believes that he is the center of the world. That he can do ANYTHING he desires. Like take other peoples’ property, lives, etc. So as a prisoner he can partake in sex as he desires without worrying about what anybody else thinks.’


“Maybe we’re on the wrong track Urs. These people are talking about sin and craziness. What else can we do, let’s try something else.”

“Try nymphomania why don’t you?”

Jerusa was offended. “I am not a nymphomaniac Urs. That’s just silly.”

“If you’re not one, tell me how it’s different.”


“I can’t. I just know it’s not the same.” Still, not knowing where else to look, she typed in the word ‘nymphomania’ and got more information. But it was not definitive information. She just could not accept that diagnosis.


Nymphomania is an insatiable impulse to engage in sexual behavior in a female; the counterpart of satyriasis in a male.

“Doesn’t that describe you?”

She shook her head ‘no’.

“Then let’s keep looking. Look there, there’s an article that talks about how nymphomania disturbs a persons lifestyle. That’s kind of like symptoms isn’t it?”

She opened up the article.

Nymphomania can lead to the problems like:

• Participating in intercourse with more than one partner or extra marital affairs

• Employing excessive masturbations

• Revealing yourself in public places

• Using pornographic materials frequently

• Participating in sex with unknown partners

• Employing sadistic sex

• Staying away from emotional involvement in sexual relationships.

“See Urs, out of all of the seven symptoms, I only have one. I am not a nympho. I have never had or wanted sadistic sex, I don’t reveal myself in public places or do any of that other crazy stuff.”

“Yeah, from what you’ve told me, I agree. I can see that you have something else, but what that something else is we have no way of looking it up because we don’t know what it’s called.”

“Don’t get frustrated. Let’s try one more time.” She was the strong one now.

They looked through the search engine at several articles until they found:

Is there a difference between Nymphomania and Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder (PGAD)?

And lo and behold, there under a Sexual Health Article they found the answer.

Jerusa summarized the article as she read.

“It is a new disorder, only having recently been diagnosed in 2001.

"The many hundreds of women who suffer from it have expressed huge relief at having themselves diagnosed.

"The problem is not sexual so much as it is an issue of unremitting genital sensations that have no particular cause and which extend over long periods of time.

"It says here that the problem is not nymphomania. So-called nymphomaniacs always identify sexual thoughts or fantasies then they experience sexual excitement. This is not the case with PGAD, which is described as an uncomfortable, unwelcome intrusion that starts with physical sexual sensations. Women with PGAD experience no pleasure or enjoyment in their situation and actually feel quite distressed and out of control.

“Oh God Yes! This is it.” Jerusa was in tears again but this time, tears of joy at finding that she was not the only one. That she wasn’t a weirdo.

The article then went on to give some anecdotal accounts of what a few women have described. It seemed that it was particularly distressing and embarrassing to older women.

One 65 year old talks of PGAD as like, "having a bad itch and nothing or no amount of scratching will stop it . . .when your every working hour feels like you are in the middle of sexual intercourse that never comes to a satisfying end it is a terrible feeling."

A 53 year old woman describes how the disorder negatively affects her sexual relationship with her partner.

Another 63 year old talks about PGAD being a, "case of hormonal rape." Yet others describe having "orgasmic fits" that leave them feeling uncomfortable, disturbed, embarrassed and guilty.

“They don’t know how to stop it.” Jerusa was downcast. After the high of finding that it had a name and that it was a real diagnosis, it was especially lowering to find that they were still speculating as to its cause and to what would cure it.

PGAD appears to be a multi-factorial disorder in which neurovascular, neurochemical and psychological distress are influential. There is no generally accepted treatment for PGAD.

“So what do they know? They must have some suggestions.”

“Not many I’m afraid. They know that it’s linked to the brain, so bio feedback can help.

“Listen to this!” Jerusa continued. ”Another woman dreaded long family car trips, Urs, she couldn’t even ride in a car, that’s so like my motorbike thing. So the doctor prescribed Paxil and she found that the urges become less frequent now, she can go up to 10 days but by day 7 the urges are coming back.

"One woman had spontaneous orgasms while brushing her teeth though she did not have orgasms while having intercourse or even while masturbating. The tooth brushing triggered epileptic seizures that, in turn, caused the orgasms.

"One woman had herself voluntarily committed to a psychiatric facility in hopes that they could help her. She also stopped having sex with her husband because she treasured any time she was not feeling aroused. That’s what happened with me and Tim and then he was killed. If he hadn’t died, we would not have made it.

"Oh here’s a Dutch web site, sort of a support site for women like me. The sight originator has PGAD it too.”

“I think that’s enough for us tonight. You’re working yourself up. I know it’s troublesome but you will just have to find a doctor, that’s all. The information on the web is good because it lets you know you’re not alone but soon, we … yes, don’t shake your head, you and I will find a doctor who knows something. I am glad that you trusted me enough to tell me. It doesn’t matter. I’ve already fallen in love with you. We will find something that works for us and the answer won’t be loading yourself up with drugs.”

Urs had left after that saying that they’d meet tomorrow for the trip over to Hamburg. “It’s only about 150 miles so we’ll be traveling there by bus.”

After he left she couldn’t believe that she had told him her secret and he hadn’t run away. She hoped that they could have a future, to find out if they could love each other. It seemed that Ulrich and Johanna deserved to be together after the hard times they had endured. Karl had even said that they had things to do together. Something just had to work in their favor.

**

CHAPTER 12

(“Dr. Waldinger”)

The next morning Jerusa took her time getting ready to join the crew for the short two to three hour drive over to Hamburg. She was looking forward to seeing the lovely fall colors and she had heard that Hamburg was a green city and between the trees and the water, that shipping Mecca offered much beautiful scenery to see. An industrious place, she had heard that up to 75 ships were unloaded and loaded in one twenty-four hour day.

She dallied, knowing that Urs always waited until the last minute to come down. He didn’t like standing around, lollygagging and making himself open to random conversation while they waited. If he waited until the last minute, Jerusa waited until the last second.

When she got off the elevator and joined the folk gathered in the lobby, Urs looked over at her, looked at his watch but then went right back to the conversation that he was having with Cali, Cindy and Evan, another of the band members.

She was struck again what a small insular group they made. No wonder that most of the singers liked to find their own entertainment rather than be with the same people all day and all night too.

Jerusa did not join their little group. Things had changed a bit now. If they were exploring whether or not they could have something in the future that meant that their relationship had completely altered. She did not want to give the impression that she was ‘after’ him. He would have to come to her when he wanted her company.

Instead she walked over to talk with Hillarie. Since her one night stand with Urs, Hilary had slowly moved to the other men in the organization Jerusa surmised. She didn’t know if the woman had been successful in her quest but the pattern was to flirt, get the attention, let things get hot and heavy and then came the cool off phase. That was how it happened in public. What went on behind closed doors nobody could say for sure and none of the participants were talking.

Today Hillarie stood alone but she was giving Phil, the married guitarist the eye. If Hillarie had hoped to be left alone to continue luring Phil to her she didn’t show it by word or by the expression on her face.

“Jerusa, I haven’t seen much of you since we reached Germany. I hear that our Urs has been showing you the sights. Are the sights he is showing you worth seeing?”

“Yes. I think so. Especially since he speaks German like a native. He is able to give me a bit of history too, and also to recommend food that is quite tasty.”

“I would say that Urs knows tasty.” She laughed at her own joke.

“What have you done to keep occupied Hillarie?”

“Oh I’ve done a little of this, a little of that. I much prefer the sights that can be seen from my own bedroom, if you get my drift, but I have been able to keep busy.”

“I understand you perfectly.” Jerusa thought ‘that is the difference between how a nymphomaniac feels and how I feel.’ Jerusa didn’t think that Hillarie was anywhere near being a nymphomaniac but clearly she enjoyed men just for the sake of having sex with them. She didn’t seem to crave a ‘relationship’ or ‘love’ or even any long-term promises.

She would have liked to question Hillarie. To find out if she felt a certain itch and if the itch then went away after she had conquered the particular man that she had in her sites, but she didn’t know her well enough for that.

It was time to board. The front seats were usually left vacant for the singers so when Jerusa boarded, she kept going until she reached the middle of the bus; she chose an empty window seat and sat down and wedged her large bag in front of her so that the seat next to her was free. She hoped that Urs would sit next to her. She had kept working for a bit after he left and had found a couple of articles that she wanted to share with him. One of them actually offered a small ray of hope.

She hid her disappointment well when Cindy took up the seat next to her, leaving Cali to sit alone. It was becoming a regular Desperate Housewives kind of situation here with the women vying for the men’s attention. Cali had had the same hopes that Jerusa had had. She had wanted to leave her seat vacant just in case Urs decided to continue the conversation that had been going on in the lobby once they were on the bus.

Both women were disappointed when he got on and sat right up front across from the driver. Carlos, David and Sebastien also took up lone seats. Jerusa guessed that was how it was when one was the star of the show. She knew that they could have ridden ahead alone and probably would have except that a couple of them were more thrift conscious than the other two and their will had prevailed regarding this one additional expense; perhaps next time the other two would succeed in getting their way. That was just how it was when four strong personalities came together.

The bus had only gone a few K’s when Urs came back to get her. She had wedged her large purse in so securely that it took a bit of tugging to get it free but she did and he even allowed her to have the window seat; of course the front seat allowed a panoramic view of the sights.

“And how are you today Jerusa? I was thinking. You said something about a woman in one of the articles who couldn’t even go on a long drive in an automobile with her family. Does this bus ride bother you?”

“Not yet, but I wanted you to see this. There is a website that was created just for support, and to squelch rumors. I mentioned that to you last night but after you left, I went to the site and there is a doctor that has done research into this syndrome. In fact, the Netherlands is the only country where serious scientific research is being conducted. “

“That’s great. We’re not too far from the Netherlands. Did you get this Doctor’s name and direction? You’d better call and make your appointment and see what he says.”

“I was hoping that you could go with me.. It’s quite embarrassing to tell my story to a stranger.”

“Even if it is your doctor? I can be free for four days in a couple of weeks. The question is, can you wait that long?”

“I’ve waited for over eight years. I suppose a couple of weeks won’t matter.”

“You said that the site exists to put down rumors, what kinds of rumors?”

“You’d be surprised at the number of folk who think we’re lying; or that we actually enjoy this. Some have even exaggerated to make us into some kind of freaks, saying we have 600 or 800 orgasms a day.”

Jerusa was passionate about her subject but when she said the word orgasm, at least two of the men, who were near, the driver and David turned towards her as wondering if they had hear correctly and if they had, what was she and Urs talking about.

Urs ignored them. “We have a plan, I think. In two weeks, you and I will fly to The Netherlands to meet with your doctor – “

“Dr. Waldinger”.

“Yes Dr. Waldinger and see what he has to say. But you must promise me that if he requires that you stay behind for a while, you will do so.”

She really didn’t want to be in a completely foreign country all alone for an indeterminate amount of time but she could do it if it meant that she could have a normal life, she’d do it to have something even approaching a normal life.

It would be heavenly to have no worries that she’d be triggered, to be free to date men even if she and Urs didn’t hit it off. She’d missed just the normal interaction that a woman of her years had with the opposite sex. Yes! She wanted her body back. She wanted to be free once more. So she was able to reassure him that this time she wouldn’t let her shame make her run. She would stay and get whatever treatment recommended no matter the humiliation.

For the next two weeks as they waited for a break in Urs' schedule she didn’t have to do a thing towards furthering their relationship. He was at her hotel room several times a day. First he started by talking her into exercising with him each morning.

Working out just for the sake of getting exercise had never been her thing. She had always been active and since she was a slender person that seemed to be enough. Now lifting weights with him was giving her muscles that she had never had before and she liked the feeling of strength that it gave her. Her biceps and triceps caused her slender arms to look ripped, and her buns, already firm, grew firmer still, meaning that she began to look good in anything that she wore.

She began to like working out for the sake of working out.

They’d finish at the gym, get breakfast and sometimes depending on the weather, go for a walk. If it was convenient and near a shopping center, they’d go window shopping.
Every now and then she’d buy something small such as a blue scarf or a pair of gloves but mostly, she restrained herself because little things add up when one is packing and unpacking every few days.

Because they were in Germany and it was convenient, they went to a spa. One in which they both entered a large imposing building, walked up stairs where the men and women were separated. Jerusa’s treatment consisted of a shower first, followed by going nude into a sauna. Once that ended she was treated to a massage that ended with what the masseuse called a heavy Teutonic slap on her rear. After that, a cold water dunk, and a wrap in warm towels. Then, the strangest of all the men and women rejoined each other for a nude swim in a large pool. It was amazingly invigorating. Not that anyone could see what lay beneath the water but still, she couldn’t help but peer in Urs direction and then look off with a smile.

Later they went to a beer garden and sat on benches under the chestnut trees and drank beer from liter mugs, ate giant pretzels and swayed to the music of a horn band.

Sometimes they’d go to a beer hall in which the beer drinking and eating was held inside. Then they watched costumed waitresses bring up to six mugs at a time, smiling all the while. And those waitresses never missing a step or slipped in spite of copious amounts of beer suds that was spilled on the counter and floor. On these evening Urs and Jerusa would dance a kind of jig that grew wilder and wilder as the evening progress and the beer flowed faster.

It was at one such night, filled with beer clouded abandon that Urs kissed her on the lips and she kissed him back. She was surprised and pleased that it was pleasant and didn’t remind her in the least of the dangerous waters she was treading in.. By that she meant waters that could bring on a full blooded attack of PGAD.

Not that the kiss didn’t feel good and put her in the mind of doing more; not that it didn’t make her tingle. It just did that and that only. There was no sick heat that threatened to turn into the itch of a desire that could not be satisfied.

He had looked at her, a question in his eyes and she had looked back at him with a smile right before she pulled his head close for another tender kiss.

He was affected by the kiss too. He felt himself heating up so he turned away wondering idly how a certain heavyset lady across the way would look in a tutu. If that didn’t make the thought of having Jerusa go away, nothing would.

Later, when he took her home, at her door he kissed her again this time a little more lingeringly, a little deeper. He tasted divine in spite of the beer they had consumed. He left and she closed the door and went to the bathroom to look at her lips.

Before she fell asleep he called her on the house phone to see if she was all right.

“I am fine Urs, a little drunk still but other than that I am 100%.”

“No fireworks went off when I kissed you?”
“No none.”

“Well that’s disappointing. A girl should feel something.”

“I did feel something. I thought you were talking about ‘The Fireworks’. None of those, just good healthy tingling that’s all.”

“Do you think it’s the beer that kept it at bay?”

“I hope not. I might have to become an alcoholic if it means that we can kiss each other.”

“Kiss each other. I like the sound of that. We’ll have to try it again, see what we can do. We wouldn’t want to set you off though.”

“God no, but… I’m fine tonight perhaps if two tiny kisses didn’t break the bank next time we could share three.”

And so they talked nonsense for about another hour or so.

Tomorrow was another move day, by bus again.

That night was a performance night but Jerusa didn’t go. She sat and wrote letters to her family and friends back home. She let them know that she was fine, and because they didn’t know that anything was untoward about her health, that was a whole area of conversation that she couldn’t mention. She was so relieved that Urs knew. Telling him had been like letting the steam off the pressure cooker.

He came by after the concert. It looked like he had removed his makeup hurriedly because bits of it were still behind his ears. She slathered him with face cream and used tissues to wipe the remnants away, loving the way his hair curled at his nape.

“Do you mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Of course you may." Evidently he had been in a hurry to get away from the venue tonight. “What was the rush?”

“You were the rush. Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t coming? I looked for you for the whole first half of the show.”

Well that was good to know. Sometimes she felt like a burden. She’d been with the group for almost a month now, had long ago stopped paying her for own room, not that she had stopped trying to pay but it had become tiresome going down to check out and finding that he had already taken care of it.

“Urs, I have money. You don‘t have to use yours.” She had said.

He had been adamant. And he had not stopped taking care of it.

When he went into her bathroom she was surprised to hear the shower running. When he exited the shower he had a bright idea. “Why don’t we move in together? Book one room instead of two?”

“I have told you over and over again my friend I have money for my own room.”

“It’s not about money. I want you close to me. I want to be able to look after you. Say yes.”

“What if being close to a man, to you, makes these attacks come on more often? You know I’d go without sex for the rest of my life to keep those things away. What if being around you, even seeing you in your umh unclothed, and I know seeing me running around almost nude will turn you on. Why invite torture for both of us?”

“Maybe by being closer, you will get better too? Did you ever think of that?”

“I was close when I was married. It was not better.”

“Then let’s see what happens. See what we can do. We know that we can kiss each other. Perhaps that’s not all that we can do.”

“I’m afraid. I dread awakening the dragon. I can’t help it. It is horrible. Why not just wait until I see the physician in The Hague and then….”

“We can, but why was I able to kiss you last night and why were you able to kiss me and you said that if was good.”

“It was good. I would like to love you. I wish I were strong.” But even while the words came from her mouth, she decided it was time to face her problems and not to embrace them and use them as a crutch.

“If you would like to love me, then come here to me.” This he said with confidence and she wanted to obey.

Jerusa had looked at him for a long time. He was wearing jeans and nothing else, his still damp hair curling now. His hand outstretched to her. She made a mental note of where her Bob was located so that she could get to it, she was sure to need it before the night was over but so be it. Perhaps the pleasure would make the pain worthwhile.

She rose from her seat and stood waiting to go into his arms.
**

CHAPTER 13

(Where’s Bob?)

He waited to receive her. She slowly walked the distance that though only a few steps seemed a chasm. She clasped him and they stood looking into each other’s eyes for long moments. She saw all that she had hoped for in his; acceptance, tenderness, and hope for them. In response she raised her lips to his and kissed him softly on his lips. They were as soft as they looked. Soft but firm, yielding yet sure. Long minutes passed while they kissed, each kiss growing deeper and more passionate.

He didn’t have to say a word. Her hand at his nape tempted him back to her lips when he might have called a halt. He busied himself removing her clothes with her help even as they kissed. Just as he could now see all of her, she wanted to see him. So emboldened by success so far, she touched the front placket of his jeans, just to make sure that he wasn’t zipped before urging them down his hips. He finished the job and slipped them off.

Not at all shy she stood back to look at him.

She was not disappointed.

He of course, had no idea what she was thinking about as he captured her mouth again and all subjective thoughts disappeared and her awareness narrowed to her immediate surroundings and the man before her.

She managed to turn off the lamp putting the room into darkness just as they collapsed onto the bed, his hands on her ribs and his lips on hers in a series of drugging kisses that made her forget her fears and long only for the man in her arms.

“How are you doing?” he asked his voice now raspy.

“I love you. I’m fine.”


“You’re not just saying that are you? Is it a go? We can continue?”

“I don’t feel a thing. Keep going.”

“I hope that you feel something. “ He could laugh at her words but he knew what she meant.

They made wonderful love. She was enthusiastic and frisky; he was energetic and full of fun. On a purely physical level it was all that either of them could have hoped for, more even. And because Jerusa had no untoward symptoms, she was overjoyed and she even mentioned more than once that she was cured.

Neither knew that every act that happens on the physical plane has its equivalent in the unseen world. Things can seem dark and dour but in that world it can be all light and joy. And so on that level, the plane that really counts, two souls who were born to be together began the search to find each other, to learn an important lesson together; and for that reason, and that reason alone the aftermath of their having made love was more than just a period of physical satisfaction, it was a time for deep peace and an affirmation of eternal love.

Neither bothered to examine why there was so much laughter, such giddy and keyed up animation. They indulged their bodies twice more before settling in to sleep.

That morning Urs left her room early while Jerusa slept on. He returned a couple of hours later, showered, dressed and bearing a gift.

He carried two perfect fresh peaches.

“Are these our breakfast Urs? I think after last night we’ll need more than this don’t you?”

“Not breakfast. Not yet. These are reminders of the pledge that I am about to make to you. I will love you and protect you. And if we argue, I will try to make it right. I want our love to last forever.”

It was astounding to him that at the moment he said those words a picture of Ulrich flashed before his inner eye. Ulrich had stood before Johanna. He had brought her peaches that he had scavenged on one of his forays for food. He had brought them to her and they had eaten them together.

There was nothing unusual in this act itself but he knew that Ulrich would never eat food without sharing with his brothers, the seven other boys who shared the building. But yet he knew that he had pledged himself to Johanna, not verbally but in his heart in just the same way that he had just done.

It had not seemed strange to either of them that they sat and each ate his peach.


After that, there was no question. Thereafter when the band moved, they got one room. A larger room but that move alerted the others that they had become a couple.

A few eyebrows were raised; after all, they had put themselves out there as almost relatives, kissing cousins so to speak. And neither of them was of a temperament that cared what people thought about them.

Some would have pegged them as arrogant and perhaps they were. They would have said that this intimacy that was created among the people of the organization was in truth a false intimacy. In fact, it just a work place. And, just as one didn’t spill one's deepest thoughts at work, there was no need to do it in this gossip pit either.

They learned that they got along really well together. Theirs was not to be a relationship in which most of the lessons to be learned in life came from within. And since both of them believed that the primary reason they were on earth was to learn lessons, they presumed that their knowledge would come from outside the relationship, and when they thought about it, so had Ulrich’s and Johanna’s.

Not knowing how long they would have to be separated while Jerusa got the treatment that she needed weighted on them. They had had such a short time together neither wanted the other away for any appreciable amount of time. In truth, it might take months for Jerusa to get well. Since it was categorized as neurochemical, neurovascular and psychological, they thought that each of those systems would have to be examined then tested for a dysfunction and even then, they might never find its source.

By now they were in Ljubljana the capitol of Slovenia and since this area has been a crossroad for trade for centuries, they found that a variety of languages were spoken here. It seemed that the young were all fluent in English while the older spoke either German or Russian as a second language. This meant that it was easy to travel around and get a feel for the town in their spare time.

They went to the quietly flowing Ljubljana River and just sat, watching the water. They stopped at a little coffee shop. No one had told them that the coffee was STRONG! The waitress brought a coffee pot right to the small table and Jerusa poured Urs a cup and then one for herself. She had only left a small space at the top for cream, and then added sugar and took her first sip. Speak of growing hair on one’s chest! After that they both had to take tiny sips and revisit the cream and sugar after each taste.

They had ordered a steak, and while the waitress understood medium and well done, she had no concept of rare. To her that was ‘English’.

The next day they got a train and went north to Pula. The ride was about four and a half hours so they were limited in how long they could stay. They hired a guide to take them to some of the sites and they found that Pula, unlike some of the other cities, had a flourishing life outside the tourist business.




It was an important shipbuilding center, an industry that dated back to the days when it was an important naval port under the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

They also looked at more of the Roman ruins that are all over Europe. Jerusa was amazed at the sight of the Amphitheater how well preserved it was and how long it had stood.
**

A day or two before Urs was to have four whole days off and they were to go to the Netherlands for the specific purpose of seeing Doctor Waldinger, Jerusa decided that she had been cured. All along they had made love regularly; everything was copacetic with no signs of the infamous PGAD.

Urs was more skeptical. “I think you should go Jerusa. At least while you are in this part of the world. Why wait until you return to the States where they seem to have done no research on this and then find that it comes back?”

‘Return to the States’. She understood that they would part one day but she knew that she would be very unhappy when that day came. That he could say that so casually let her know that he loved her in his way but he wasn’t nearly ready to settle down. But then neither was she for that matter.

Before she could even think about a future with him, or with any other man she had to find herself. Perhaps go back to school, perhaps open a business. But to hear him state it just like that, it was sobering. She certainly couldn’t just travel around with the band until she wore out her welcome.

But she didn’t see why she should rush that day by going to spend perhaps weeks, or months even with the neuropsychiatrist. She had looked him up on the internet and found that he was associate professor in Sexual Psychopharmacology at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. But that wasn’t all. He was head of the Department of ‘Consultative Psychiatry and the outpatient Department of Neurosexology at Leyenburg Hospital in The Hague which meant that he was probably a stuffy know-it-all who might even sit in judgment of her.


All of these excuses of why she shouldn’t see the doctor she tried with Urs. She tried to tell Urs that the Doctor would be stodgy. To which he had replied “You don’t have to be entertained, just listen and do what he says.

“But he might judge me.”

“Why do you care? You aren’t bothered by what most people think of you why care about a man you don’t know and after you see him might not see him again?”

She had no answer to that one.

Finally he said, “If you are sure, then come with me on a motorbike ride tomorrow. We’ll leave early and get back by sound check time. If you can ride on a nice long ride in the countryside and back, then perhaps you are cured. And if you are, then I’ll gladly take all of the credit for it.”

She accepted the challenge and while he went downstairs to hang out with the fellows, she made sure that she had all of the things that she needed for a ride.

She knew that he would get her real leathers and boots when he got his. She did not want to ruin her expensive leather slacks. She made sure that she had a warm scarf, sweater and socks. Autumn was cooler in Europe than in the states and she was sensitive to the cold. She had purchased gloves just because she liked to wear them when they walked around. All of these things she laid out on the chair knowing that they’d start out early.

She called down to the hotel restaurant and arranged a light lunch just sandwiches, hot chocolate, fruit and cheese. They’d pick it up on their way out in the morning.

As a last minute thing she decided that she’d better include her Bob, just in case. I wasn’t that she wasn’t confident that the worst was behind her as far as the PGAD but, it was better to be prepared than not.

The next morning they started out early watching their breath become visible when exposed to the crisp autumn air. They had drunk hot coffee and ate a sweet roll, picked up their lunch and stowed it in the saddle bag along with extra clothing and raingear.

It might have been wiser to plan a much shorter trip, say of only five miles or less. As it was, they had barely gotten underway when Jerusa began to feel bare hints of an attack coming on. She tried to convince herself that it was her imagination. This was something that she dreaded so it was only natural to anticipate disaster wasn’t it?

They rode for a few more miles and her mind drifted away, what if it was, what would they do? Could they make it back to the hotel, could she stand to - her squirming on the seat was causing Urs to have difficulty controlling the bike.


She finally tapped him on the shoulder conceding that she was not cured. He pulled over as soon as he could what with competing with the ‘going to work’ crowd.

He pulled off his helmet as did she. He didn’t have to say a word to know.

“Do I need to call a cab?” He kicked himself mentally for not having worked all of this out in advance. She had been so sure, and he had hoped that ‘yeah maybe’.

She sounded so defeated. “A cab won’t help now. It’s started. Take me back please. I’ll be as still as I can.”

On the way back he could feel her tension in the way she tried to relax the hand that she kept resting on his thigh. She’d barely relax it and then she’d clench her hand. She seemed determined to keep it away from her body.

He imagined that it was like an itch that gnawed away but if you scratched it, you’d not be able to stop until it became painful.

He parked the bike in the hotel garage and locked it, knowing that he’d take it back later. He looked at Jerusa, and she tried to smile, clearly she was embarrassed. He reached into the saddlebag and found her small purse.

“Where are your pills; the tranquilizers?”

She could barely get out a coherent sentence. “It’s a small white bottle. It’s the only medication in there.”

“No don’t hop around, that’ll make it worse.” He handed her a capsule and some of the left over hot chocolate from the thermos to drink it down with. She didn’t argue, all of her energy was going into just keeping up the façade that had to be kept up in public.


He picked her up in his arms and carried her swiftly towards their room. By now she was moaning, soft sounds that she couldn’t hold back and tears were beginning to show as they seeped from her closed eyes.

“Mr. Buhler, is everything all right? The desk clerk called as he strode through the lobby.

“I’m fine.” Jerusa lied. “I twisted my ankle slightly.”

By now they were out of earshot and they waited for an elevator to arrive. She buried her face in his neck.

“Hold on sweetheart. We’re almost there.”

The elevator arrived and they made it up quickly thank goodness it was still morning and most of the foot traffic was still abed.


When they entered the room he set her on her feet and she stood there wringing her hands.

“What?”

“I need you to go. I don’t want you to see me like this.”

He was undecided. He tried to tell himself that it was not some kind of tasteless or morbid curiosity and it wasn’t but there was a part of him that was curious and he wanted to help too if he could.

But he felt that he should also respect her privacy.
“Let me help you out of these tight pants. They can’t be comfortable.” She was out of them in seconds and he decided to leave her be. But before he could get out of the door he heard her call.

“Where’s my Bob, Urs I think it’s still in your saddlebags.”

That was good; it set him on a mission. He hurried out the door headed to the parking lot, relieved in a way but another part of him wanted to help her.

He ran into Carlos on his way out but he had to put him off, saying that he’d see him at sound check. He looked at his watch but it was only around ten. He had about six hours free time.

He retrieved the saddle bags and jogged back to the hotel room only to find Jerusa writhing on the bed and of course she was touching herself.

If he had heard someone telling this story, on a superficial level he might have thought it mildly titillating. After all standing and watching a woman make herself have orgasm after orgasm was something that men generally liked to see.

In this situation, that was not the case. It reminded him of old Mr. Aldo, a long ago neighbor who used to have seizures. He was probably long gone and in heaven by now, or at least no longer walking the earth but Urs remembered him as only a young person can remember something that they have never seen before. He would drop to the ground and flail, sometimes biting his tongue. It had been an altogether unpleasant sight.

What Jerusa was enduring now wasn’t any better. He was repulsed and fascinated at the same time.

Now he understood why she had said that her husband couldn’t take it. The husband had been only twenty something, still a boy, not yet a man. He could not have developed the empathy for another that he needed to hang in there and try to help his woman.

Urs watched her until she was orgasmic for perhaps the fifth time; after that she had a few minutes relief. He went to her and attempted to take her in his arms. But she turned away, tears pushed their way through her tightly closed eyes.

“Please, if you love me, just go away.”

Silence. And he didn’t leave. He stayed and when the next arousal came he held the vibrator for her. Finally, when they slowed a bit he asked her if she had ever used ice. It stood to reason that if it was a neurovascular problem, perhaps ice would help.

He didn’t wait for her to direct him he went into the hallway and placed ice in the bucket and using the plastic liner, fashioned an icepack, wrapped it in a towel and placed it low on her abdomen. She promptly placed it lower and sighed.

Between the tranquilizer, the vibrator and the ice in another half hour her body was exhausted and she fell asleep in his arms.

It had been a singularly sobering experience for him. It was a solitary humbling experience for her.


That night marked the end of their relationship although it took a while for them to realize it.

She had seen the emotion in his eyes.

After that, no matter how much she wanted to believe that he still loved her, she could not accept that he could love her; she suspected that what he felt was a form of pity.

**

CHAPTER 14

(Bad Luck Comes in Threes )

The next week and a half before the trip to the Netherlands and Dr Waldinger passed slowly. Autumn took a backseat as winter settled in the driving seat. Now when Urs and Jerusa went walking, always near whatever hotel they were in, Urs noticed the lovers doing what lovers do: Walking along, their bodies touching, not able to be completely separated. He saw lovers that looked deeply in each other’s eyes. Lovers that hung on to each other’s every word and kissed and laughed as cool outer lips touched warm inner lips and even colder noses rubbed.

He was bewildered. What had happened to him and Jerusa? Those lovers were what they used to be but were no more. If he took her hand, she wouldn’t remove it, not right away, but before long he would notice that she had taken it back and pushed it deeply into the pocket of her coat.

She still talked to him. But the joy and magic had gone out of it. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that there was no anticipation, no hidden naughty pleasures that they would share once they were back home.

No. Jerusa had become a changed woman. She now dressed in the bathroom leaving no chance of a glimpse of her cute little butt or anything else for that matter.

But most importantly of all, there was no lovemaking. He felt deprived. He was deprived. And when he asked her what was wrong, she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell him.

He knew it had something to do with the episode that she’d had. He agreed that if he had gone through what she had endured he wouldn’t want anyone to touch him, at least for a day. But that had been a full week ago.

He had asked her what was wrong. “I don’t know.” She had answered. That response had not exactly been helpful. He decided to see if he could pinpoint it for her since of late she wasn’t inclined to be the least bit introspective.

He had asked her if she was sore. He imagined that the vibrator could become like a jackhammer as much as she had used it. But no, that wasn’t the case.

Running out of options he asked her “Are you still attracted to me? Huh? Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you nervous because of what happened the other night?”

Silence. Why wouldn’t she open up? Damn it she wasn’t a kid, she was a grown woman.

He answered from his point of view. “I’m a bit nervous Jerusa. My nervousness exists on several levels.” He watched her closely but she continued to look away. “Look, don’t do this to us. Tell me what’s going on with you.”

“I want to go back to the hotel. I’m going back. You can come if you want to.” And she turned and began to trudge back the way they had come.

His first mind was to follow but he didn’t. He’d let her have some privacy in their room. Perhaps she needed more time. He watched until she reached the doorman and then he turned and continued around the park. When he returned he’d find the guys and see what they had been up to. Of late he had abandoned them having become so wrapped up in romancing Jerusa.

She would not cry. She squinted her eyes and hardened her heart and made her way to their room, suddenly it was much too small.

The maid had paid it a visit but that didn’t stop Jerusa from crawling onto the bed, boots and all wondering how was she going to deal with this sudden feeling of vulnerability around Urs. He had seen her at her worst but why should that matter? Why did that bother her so much?”

It was hard to put into words that he would understand but she had never felt on a par with him. From that first morning when he had nodded his head to her in the restaurant in the Paris hotel, and she had felt a flush of recognition of him as somehow the boy of her dreams, on to seeing him perform on stage, all of them beautiful, well dressed, on to when she found that in spite of himself, he was attracted to her.

But was it to her? To Jerusa? How much of it was a strange blending of what Ulrich had felt for Johanna? She had possessed nothing that she could point to that would attract this man who traveled the world. Her looks, while presentable, were not spectacular. She bra size was 34C, not DD or even D.



He most certainly had not been attracted to her finances. She had a job, she kept in touch and knew that it would be hers when she returned, but it was the job of a civil servant. It allowed her to afford a small apartment and a vacation each year.

In that department she had been a drain on him. Before she had moved in here with him, he paid for her room. Now it was his pockets that put out the extra pounds or Euros for them to have a larger room.
And as if marginal finances, indifferent looks were not enough, she now had an incurable awful sexual malady that turned her into a squirming mindless she-goat.

**

They both breathed a sigh of relief when time came for them to travel to the Netherlands to see Dr. W. Urs thought that perhaps if Jerusa achieved a cure, they could go back to how they used to be. Jerusa thought that her feelings of inadequacy would just fade away.

It was not to be. Everyone has heard that death comes in threes, was there also a comparable statement about bad luck? The first piece of bad luck came at a dinner comedic theater that they attended on the night before traveling to The Hague. The second bad luck was that soon after being seen by the doctor; Jerusa found that there was no magical cure, and the third and perhaps most devastating for Jerusa was that Urs ran into the woman that he’d lived with all those years ago in the Netherlands.

But first things first. The bad luck had not presented itself as bad luck. It never does. Since meeting Jerusa, Urs had spent little time with the other Divos, other than the time spent on stage. Therefore when Sebastien invited David, Carlos, as well as Urs and Jerusa, they both were pleased to go. Even though she was to be the only female in the crowd, it was ok. The three other guys were ok and seemed very in love with their respective ladies and behaved admirably when they were out alone. Being with the guys broke up the increasing dullness of their evenings together, and promised to be a fun occasion.

It was a dinner theater but instead of a play, there was a comedian from the US. They sat and ate their dinner, with wine and after dinner drank coffee, received their desserts. It was just about this time that the comedian came on.

Jerusa was having a great time, laughing at most of the jokes, and laughing at the guys when they didn’t exactly ‘get’ the punch line of a few of them.

Then came the one joke that she did not appreciate, and made her feel very self- conscious. It was a joke about a nymphomaniac. It made no matter that she had searched for clarification on this subject and was clear in her mind of just what the difference was between the two; still, for something so close to be an object of ridicule, threatened her comfort level and Urs knew it.

The joke went something like this.

A guy picked up a girl and took her back to his hotel room. She turned out to be a raving nymphomaniac, and after six times, she was still screaming for more. Eventually after the eighth time, he needed to go out for cigarettes.

On his way he stopped at the men’s room. Standing in front of the urinal, he unzipped but couldn't find his penis. After fishing around for a minute he said “Look, It’s OK, you can come out, she’s not here!



The sound of her chair scraping back alerted the laughing men that all was not right with their female guest. She hurried into the ladies room and cried. She was glad that he couldn’t follow her in.

Once she had managed to dry the tears and smooth away the evidence of them she was saddened that he had not even made an attempt to follow her.

When they got back to the hotel it was then that she told him they were through.

He was shocked and then angry that she was unwilling to, as he put it, ‘fight for their love’.

“We’re so close Jerusa. Can’t you even hang in there with me baby we’ll see the doctor and even if he can’t take care of it we owe each other a chance to – “

“A chance to what Urs? It’s hopeless. I’ll be going back to my job; you’ll be touring for another six months.”

“That doesn’t matter. When two people want to work it out they can. I’m going with you to the Netherlands whether you want me to go or not. I won’t leave you hanging. Then, once we find out what he has to say, we can talk about it.”

And that was how they left it. He was unwilling to commit to her and she was unsure of his love or even if she deserved it.

**

The next day, in The Hague, they kept their eleven o’clock appointment.

After a bit of a searching around the large hospital campus they found the outpatient area and then Dr. Waldinger’s office. They walked into the well appointed sunny and modern office and both Urs and Jerusa went to the window to register. When he found that the receptionist could converse in English as he supposed she could, he took a seat and proceeded to look at a mechanic’s magazine.

If they thought that the visit would be a short one they were disappointed. They found that nothing concerning this case would be easy.

They found that Dr. Waldinger’s primary goal was to conduct research into the disorder. And as they had read, he was the only medical specialist who was conducting research into the treatment and cause of PGAD or PSAS (Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome) as Waldinger preferred to call it. No matter what it was called, the symptoms were the same, and that was all that Jerusa cared about.

She was gratified to hear that this doctor, unlike some others, didn’t think that it was caused by psychological problems but that it was a medical condition which had to be treated with medication.

They learned that in recent years the scientific research that he had done had shown that it could be successfully treated with suitable medication but before he decided which medication was appropriate, he would have to do a complex medical examination that consisted of an elaborate intake, followed by scans and taking blood samples. Then, depending on the outcome of these examinations, Dr. Waldinger would then propose the medical treatment. After he commenced with the treatment he would monitor her and include the results of that treatment in his research.

The receptionists explained that Jerusa would have to pay for the exams up to the treatment phase. Then, if she was accepted into the research project, her expenses would be taken care of.

Three to six months was the estimated time that it would take from beginning to end. And then perhaps longer than that, if the treatment was seen to be working. Some had had to stay in the treatment program for up to a year.

Jerusa and Urs had decided to go out for coffee before they let the receptionist know if she was prepared to enter into treatment.

They walked out onto the busy street, knowing that a coffee shop would be nearby.

“Thank you for being here with me Urs. I would never have the nerve to wander around in a strange city alone where I don’t speak the language.”

“I care about you Jerusa, no matter what you think, or why you’ve pushed me away. I love you. And – don’t worry about the fees. I will pay them for you. I want you well.”

There it was again. Jerusa the needy but this was so important that she dared not refuse. “I will pay you back Urs. I have to repay you. I can’t be dependent on you any longer.

“We’ve done what we set out to do, found that Ulrich and Johanna did live the life that we saw in our dream, we found Karl. We didn’t set out for this to turn into an affair but it did. Now it must end so that we both can go on with our lives.”

They had no sooner found a seat in the coffee shop and gotten settled in to talk about the pros and cons of the treatment when they heard,
“Urs Buhler! You are the last person that I would have expected to see here. I recognized your walk and followed to be sure. How are you? You look good.”

Urs stood to welcome the newcomer and to give her a hug and a kiss on each cheek. She was an attractive woman, a bit older than Urs, but he seemed glad to see her.

“Barbera Van Buren meet Jerusa Nichols.” Before he sat he pulled another chair over for Barbera and although he did no explaining to ether woman how he knew the other, he covered Jerusa’s hand with his.

Jerusa watched fascinated as Barbera’s brown eyes watched their hands together on the small table. She took a deep breath and smiled.
“Well. How happy I am for you Urs that Il Divo is doing so well. I have CD’s of all of your work.”

“Yes, we too are pleased. It was a chance that we all took and we are glad that it paid off. Thank you for encouraging me to take the chance.”

“Was it a good idea Urs? Did I do the right thing?”

“Most certainly.” Then he changed the subject aware that they were leaving Jerusa out of the conversation even though they spoke in English.

“When I was vacillating about taking the job I called Barbera here and she was very encouraging.” He explained to Jerusa. “How long has it been Barbera, six years, perhaps more I think.”

“But you haven’t changed much Urs. You haven’t eaten your way into fat I see; you still have your trim waistline.”


Jerusa noticed that he squirmed a bit when she mentioned his waistline. He was getting uncomfortable, Jerusa knew him well enough to tell that. She thought that he secretly wished that Barbera would go on her way.

“What are you doing in The Hague Barbera, are you still living in Amsterdam?”

“Yes. In the same old place”. She paused for a millisecond before continuing. “My number is the same too. You should come by to see me sometime.” Her eyes flicked to Jerusa before dropping and then returning to Urs.

Jerusa remembered that there was an interview on the web and he had spoken in Dutch. He had been asked about a certain woman that he had had a relationship with and he had said that he still had her phone number but that he had moved on. Jerusa was certain that this was the woman.


She was about ten years older than Jerusa. Probably early forties. She still was well built though with brown hair and eyes. She was an attractive woman and quite self assured. She was self assured enough to invite her former lover to start up their relationship right under the nose of his current love.

But that was life. Jerusa knew that if it was to be, it would be. As much as she loved Urs, she had to take care of herself. She had to work on her self confidence too. She wanted to be like this woman. Self assured, a woman who didn’t need external validation for her sense of self worth. That had to be Jerusa’s priority. Her main concern could not be hanging onto Urs Buhler.

Jerusa disengaged her hand from Urs and excused herself asking if either of them wanted anything. “I have an appetite for a roll, or perhaps even a sandwich.” She smiled at both of them and at neither of them for her eyes weren’t focused. She was afraid that one of them would read her pain. But she did it. She went to the counter and dallied around as if choosing. Finally she settled on a sandwich, which the shopkeeper ordered made and then she added two more, one for Barbera and one for Urs. Surely fifteen to twenty minutes were enough for them to decide if they wanted to pick up their relationship where they left off.

Jerusa felt a wave of melancholia; it was bittersweet parting with him. Perhaps she could stay on. Maybe he loved her enough to keep her with him forever sick or well, just as she was. But that was the easy way out. There was no way that she could tie him up, put him in a box so to speak while she got herself together. He might end hating her if she stayed with him. He just might end hating her anyway for leaving him and she did not have the words to make him understand.

She carried the small tray of sandwiches back to the table and sat with a small flourish and a smile.

“There’s enough for you Barbera, if you care to join us.” Jerusa said pleasantly. But Barbera had gotten what she wanted, whatever that had been. She didn’t looked distressed, she looked – contented. Perhaps Urs had told her what she wanted to hear. That he was on the verge of breaking off with Jerusa, or vice versa, it didn’t matter, and that he would follow up on her invitation when he could.

Jerusa thought that his character was strong and that he wouldn’t start a new relationship until the old was completely ended. She planned to free him completely before the three days of his short trip here with her ended.

Once Barbera was gone she began to talk about the pros of the treatment as they had planned. She decided to go for it. And to do that she’d have to find a place to stay that was nearby, and plan to live virtually alone in the city for conceivably a year.

“What about your job Jerusa? Do you have to give notice?”

“Yes, and I have to find some work while I’m here.”

“I told you, I’ll take care of you. You don’t have to worry about money. I will pay for the apartment and send you enough to live on each month while you’re here.”

“I can’t allow it Urs. Get the apartment for me. I will use it until I find work, then I’ll take care of myself and pay you back when I can.”

‘We’ll see” was all he’d say. The he added, “What are you trying to do Jerusa, give me away?”

“I’d never give you away Urs. I have to find myself. You have to live your life. Ulrich and Johanna didn’t end up together and neither will we. But we will always be friends, and you will always be in my heart.”

They returned to the clinic to let them know that Jerusa was ready to enter the program. They left with a series of appointments starting with the physical the next day. The blood work and scans would come later.

After that they found a hotel in which to stay and booked two nights. Then they went in search of a furnished apartment for Jerusa.

They found a cute little one bedroom place at the short stay apartments, called ‘The Strijzer’, near the hospital. It was very modern with shiny new hardwood flooring and leather sofa and chair. The kitchen was stainless steel and granite.

The place was move-in ready so they cancelled the last night at the hotel and moved into the new place. After stocking the refrigerator they decided to eat in and explore the neighborhood the following day.

Jerusa cooked dinner while Urs checked out the apartment to make sure that everything was working properly for her, mainly the fuses, the water heater and the plugs for the TV.

She made poached fish, taking fresh haddock that they’d found at a local marked and using onion, nutmeg, butter along with salt and pepper, turned it into something that was rather tasty. She served it with boiled potatoes and red cabbage that they had purchased at the deli.

“So, how do you like traditional Dutch food? Are you going to become an expert while you’re here?” Urs would eat most anything as long as it was home cooked.

“I just might Urs. I’m not particularly fond of what I’ve found so far and the ‘Soldiers Naked Babies in the Grass’ sounded intriguing until I found it was just a recipe for green beans and navy beans. Be glad that I didn’t decide to cook that.”

“Let me show you how your other appliances work. You have a super but you should know how to light your water heater and turn it off and you need to know where the fuse box is in case you have the lights go out. The super will fix it for you but why wait when you can do it yourself."

After that they found the laundry room, which was on one of the lower floors.

"Can you think of anything else Jerusa? I hate to leave you here alone." He had said that about a hundred times. So she reassured him once more that she wouldn’t be alone. She’d have the people at the clinic and “I’ll make friends. But I’ll keep you posted.”


“Just be careful of what friends you make. And don’t let anyone know that you are alone until you know them really well Jerusa.”

He was still trying to look out for her. Whether it was Urs himself or remnants of Ulrich and Johanna she couldn’t tell. But whatever the case, the love was strong between them but love alone is never enough.

CHAPTER 15

(The Cutting)

His last night with her was cheerless. It rained and they stayed in. Urs kept trying to remember if he’d covered everything that he knew she’d need. She had his numbers pasted on the refrigerator and in her purse. She had his email address too, although she told him she didn’t think it wise for them to try to keep what they had alive and growing. It was just too difficult to do so with the physical distance that kept them apart.

He had paid her rent for six months and he had taken a generous amount from his pocket and given it to her letting her know that he would send more on a regular basis.

He had been such a sweet man to her. It was his very sweetness that was driving her away. She thought his sweetness was pity yet even so, she wanted to lie with him for one last time. She thought that if he asked her on this last night together she’d not turn away from him.

As was now her new norm, she undressed, showered and redressed in the bathroom. He had come to expect it of her and no longer gave her his frowning eyebrows when she did that.

He too showered and came out nude, as was his norm. He had no problem at all walking around bare in front of her when she was clothed. Perhaps it was his way of saying ‘see what you’re missing’.

When he slid into bed and flicked off his lamp she could smell the shampoo, the soap and the hint of cologne that he used. She held her breath waiting to see if he would turn to her as he had so often, only to have her slide from his arms and turn her back.

She heard him take a deep breath before turning to his side, his back to her to position himself for sleep. She waited a moment then she made the decision. She slid forward until she was a hair’s width from him, not touching but surely he could feel her warmth.

“What are you doing?” he asked; his voice weary as if the life had been removed from him.

“Can you just hold me for old time’s sake?” she whispered.

“No. I can’t. You know me better than that.”

“We can make love if you still want to.”

He whipped around to face her. “You’re throwing me a few crumbs huh?”

“Don’t be angry with me. Please understand I do love you.”

But he was angry. He gripped her thigh and slid it over his hip, and without preparing her he entered her, making her moan, not from pain but pleasure but he thought he had caused her discomfort so he moved her to her back kissing her until he felt her respond, perhaps he thought the kisses would make it better.

Then he made love to her. She thought it couldn’t have been any sweeter. He loved her until she screamed his name. He loved her until she decided that she couldn’t live without him and vowed in her mind to let him know this when they were finished and resting in the afterglow where intimacies are shared. But she fell asleep and when she awakened it was early morning and he was dressed to go.

“But you don’t fly until noon Urs. Why are you leaving at six?” She knew that he had planned to spend his last free day with his parent and siblings before the group rejoined.

“My plans have changed a bit Jerusa. I thought I’d drop by and see Barbera, since she invited me.”

His gaze didn’t meet her eyes that had widened in surprise. Well so much for being filled with love for her. He was already off for greener pastures. At one level Jerusa understood what he was doing. He was telling her ‘you might not want me but someone does’. But it hurt. As she felt the pain that gripped her heart, she thanked the anguish and him; for had she not felt the hurt, she would have caved and told him to never leave her and stayed with him until long after she had worn out her welcome.

She got up, slipped into a wrapper and saw him out the door. She was quite proud that she didn’t break down until she could see him getting in to the cab at street level. Then she opened up and cried like a baby. She had never felt so alone and so lonely. But she knew that it had been the right thing to do.

**

The next few weeks were gloomy. Not only was winter making itself felt with gray skies filled with clouds, Jerusa felt that the sky perfectly mimicked what she was feeling in her heart.
Even though Urs didn’t contact her, she was unable to forget him. The press wouldn’t allow it even if she had tried to forget. Where before they had enjoyed the quite life together, dinners out, walks, sightseeing, going for long rides, it seemed that now he was fully in cahoots with his fellow Divos and their goal was to outdo each other. Every town they sang in they painted it red.

David was the most restrained of the group. He still seemed upstanding in her eyes, but the other three, they were strictly no good. So what if he was angry or even hurt? She was hurt too but she didn’t try to date everything that moved did she?

Instead of dwelling on him, she made it a point to concentrate on her health, and on getting well. She started with participating in the very thorough physical that in the end proved perfectly normal. She then went on to more exotic blood tests, hormonal levels, thyroid functioning tests, liver enzymes and such. All of the tests revealed that there was nothing organically wrong with her which in a way was good for that meant that there was nothing to prevent her from taking the medications that her doctor would eventually prescribe for her.

**

Shakespeare compared life to a stage upon which each person acts out the drama of his life sort of like an assumed role. If each of us had a role Jerusa wondered, how when all of our stages are intertwined, could one could tell when a person entered whether or not he is a major player, a minor character or just a passerby?

She had long ago concluded that it behooved one to treat each person as an important character just in case.

It was really not a part of her nature to be inquisitive, or to be particularly interested in the lives of others. Loneliness and the vague feeling that she was now entering an important phase of life caused her to give pause, and to stop and smell the roses as she went along. Not that there were any roses to be smelled in the winter of 2010 in The Hague, The Netherlands.

Still, she found reason to be contented. She met several women, all attendees at the clinic, who, because the apartment was so close and convenient, were also staying at the Strijzer.

It so happened that waiting for one test to be read before the other was done required a bit of time. She had reported at the appointed time and had been led back into the bowels of the clinic, told to undress completely and then to dress in a large gown that double folded on each side so that there was no possibility of any gaping at the back or anything being revealed what one didn’t want revealed.

In this getup, all of the women were equal. It didn’t matter if one was fat, or slender, younger of older, beautiful or barely presentable, it was such an ugly gown that it reduced them all to a look that rivaled the look that women had been forced to take in the communists states where the state was all and all was for the state.

A group of them had ended up in a communal room waiting for most of a day and friendships had begun. In a sex therapy clinic one does not ask ‘why are you here’?

Instead, most of them were from several places in the world and they started by talking about their respective countries. It started with just three women, all from the states, talking about politics.

Joann was from New York, and being from one of the largest cities in the states was a bit condescending especially when she found that Jerusa was from Little Rock. Nancy was from the west, from Denver and she and Jerusa hit it off right away.

They were not the only women in the room, just the most talkative. Jerusa was reminded again how much American’s laughed. She could see why they were stereotyped as being loud.

There were a couple of women, sitting over near the window that were as quiet as mice. They listened to the American women but didn’t comment.

Both of them appeared to be from one or maybe two of the African countries, one was very dark, the other a lighter brown. Having heard about the civil rights movement that had happened in her home state a generation or two ago, Jerusa was sensitive to the fact that certain people would not feel comfortable initiating a conversation, but when approached could turn out to be quite friendly. So it was with this spirit of camaraderie that she excused herself from the two American women and went over to the two women who were sitting alone.

“Hi. My name is Jerusa. Would you care to join us? Since we’re all here together, there’s no need to be strangers.”

The two women had exchanged glances and then nodded. All five women reseated themselves, rearranged their chairs in a semi- circle that was more conducive to conversation.

One of the women introduced herself. “My name is Mariama Mahamadou and I am from Niger.

The other who was quite a bit older also introduced herself quite formally, as had Mariama, “I am Faadumo Laba Sacle from Somali.

“Labasacle is that one name or two?”

“It is two.” Her voice was very soft. “It means ‘the man with only two cows’.

They didn’t know just what to say to that. “That was your father’ name?”

“Well not exactly. It would be what you westerners call a nickname. It is a naanays. You see we don’t have surnames in the Western sense. To know who is being talked about – “

“Identified?” Jerusa clarified.

“Yes to identify a Somali, three names must be used. I was given my father’s name, and then my grandfathers. But the names are not separated into three names as yours would be in the west. When the names are put together as one the results are that many names become very similar. So we resort to nicknames.”

“Ah, we see.” They didn’t see at all. So instead of continuing to direct all of their many questions about Niger and Somali towards these two, they told them a bit about the states.

While conversing, they learned that they were all living in the same building, and over the next few weeks, it became common for them to get together in the evenings and drink tea, talk and even to watch TV.
They learned that even though the two African women had listened politely while the American’s had told them about the US, Mariama (they had shortened her name to Ama) had been there and Faadumo (shortened to Faad) now lived in London. Those two had not known each other before coming to the clinic but since the two of them were both from Africa, even though from different parts with different cultures, they were enough alike that they felt a kinship in the sea of westerners.

It took almost a month before they all got around to talking about why they were being seen at the clinic. It had come about in a really strange way. Faad had asked Jerusa when she was going to have her surgery.”

“Surgery? I think I will get a prescription for medicine. Not a surgery.”

Faad now thought she knew Jerusa well enough to speak her mind. “I just assumed that you were here to get your clitoris shortened.”


Jerusa unconsciously clenched her knees together. “Why would I want to do such a thing? I like it just as it is, thank you very much.” She was not used to speaking so frankly to a group of women.

“We have been told that western women do not get cut when they are children and that is why it grows and grows until it would drag the ground if you didn’t tie it up.”

“You’re kidding aren’t you?”

“No” Ama joined in. “We are not kidding. They say that because you do not get it cut when you are young, then you must do so when you are old, and then it is very very painful. That is why we are so glad that we were cut early, but, it does cause problems, I must admit.”

“What are you talking about? Why must you be cut at all? Doesn’t it hurt and what about when you marry doesn’t it take away your enjoyment of sex?”



“Oh, we are not supposed to enjoy that, but being cut does increase our husband’s pleasure in us. If a girl does not get cut, she does not get a husband.”

“How does he know? Does he ask you this?”

“He doesn’t have to ask. Everybody does it. Anyway if we tried to fool our husbands, they would know right away and throw us out of the house to starve. We would be raped and beaten with sticks, maybe even killed.”

"Can’t you just hide in the dark so that he can’t see that you don’t have one?”

“Oh Jerusa. It is not like that. It is nothing that one can hide. It is everything. The way that it is done in my country everything is taken away. The clitoris, the labia, and then we are sewn up and only a very small hole is left for urine and so that the blood can get out. That’s why I am here. The hole is too small. It is too painful when my husband and I …”

“You have a husband? You can’t be more than sixteen.”

“Oh yes, but not sixteen. I am seventeen. I have been married for ten years.”

This was becoming more and more weird. Was this child-woman pulling their leg?

“And so, they are going to take it all away, the stitches?”

“My husband insists, he loves me very much you see. Instead of throwing me out when I got the fistula, he kept me and now they are going to repair it and open up my vagina.”

The other women, the two American’s were looking on in disbelief.

“You were first married at seven. Seven years old?”

“Yes, but my parents kept me with them until I reached puberty.” She told this story naturally, evidently not seeing anything wrong with it.

“And when was that?”

“Around nine or ten. I think I was two months sort of my tenth birthday. Then I went to live with my husband. I got pregnant right away but I was too small to have it come out and that is how I got the fistula.”

“What is the fistula? Is it some kind of wound or tumor?”

“No, not any more. The doctor just describes it as a tear between the bladder and the vagina. It means that I can’t hold the urine in. I’m lucky it wasn’t between the rectum and the vagina or both. Of course having the baby destroyed my stitches that I got when I was a child. It hurt a lot. But I was sewed back up and after that, my husband helped me keep clean and he made sure that we didn’t have any more babies. He is the best of husbands. Most of the men in our village would have thrown their wives out and gotten new ones if that had happened to them. But Awaale kept quiet about it until we moved to London and then he found someone to help me. The doctor says that after I leave here we can have a child.”

“What about you Ama, do you have this same thing going on with you?”

“No, I never got the fistula. The cutting I have. But now I have six daughters and unless I can get help, my youngest three they will be cut. It is too late for my older married daughters. Since I’ve been away from Niger, I’ve learned and I don’t want this to happen to my babies.”

“And this happens in both Niger and in Somali?”

“Yes. But not only does it happen there but also in many of the African countries, some of the Middle East and in parts of Asia.” Ama provided. She seemed to have taken the time to study up on the subject.

Faad blew them away when she added. “And there were almost 70,000 cases that occurred last year among girls and woman living in Britain. I read this report that came from the Metropolitan Police and the information was gathered by the Department of Health. The British government is beginning to become concerned. Thousands more girls are at risk to have the cutting done because families get together and pool their money to fly professional ‘cutters’ from Africa to Britain.

“You meant there are people trained to do this?”

“Not trained as you would think of it. But they have done so many that they can get it done quickly but even so, it is still bad. They come to the house and grab you, your parents hold you down and there on the kitchen table or the floor, without anesthetic using filthy, blunt knives or razor blades they take everything away. It costs about 40 pounds.

“In Britain they have set up an Organization to try to stamp this out before it can take hold. So far women from all over from London, Cardiff, Sheffield, Birmingham, Liverpool, Reading, Slough, Milton Keynes and Crawley, all of them have been calling for help.

“That’s what I was doing in the states. I was trying to raise consciousness that this is going on right under our noses and it has spread to Norway too. It’s all over. It’s everywhere. Anywhere you have people who have migrated from a country where this practice is carried out they bring it with them when they migrate.

“But the elders are getting smart. They are now flying the girl home and having it done there and if she survives they then bring her back.

“For us who were born in our native lands there is no shame in it because everyone does it but for the girls who migrate, they are ashamed to tell. Instead they are made to believe that it is good for them, if they don‘t do it their female parts will grow too long or big and that they will begin to act like western women, showing themselves off in public and acting like wild girls."

The western women were listening too closely to be indignant that this women had said that they acted ‘wild’.


“And so we suffer the cutting because it is better than having parts that are too large. But we are beginning to wonder, if it is so good for us, why do we get urinary tract infections and abdominal pains? We have backaches. Our periods are extremely painful and back home we don’t have aspirin to take to make it better. And don’t mention having intercourse, it is extremely painful to have intercourse.

“Then, to top it off, most of us must have C sections to deliver our babies. It does not seem like a fair trade off to me. I would rather have my parts just grow and grow like western women’s do. And now you say that yours don’t grow too big or too long? I must confess that what you say sounds a bit false to me. That’s why I asked you Jerusa if you are here to be cut.
“And now you are telling us that there is nothing wrong with your parts? Do you swear it? How can this be?”
The Americans tried not to show how this was affecting them. Jerusa had forgotten her own problem after listening to these women.
That night, after she had returned to her own apartment the dream started once more.
She was Johanna and Ulrich was her rescuer. She supposed that being around Urs had worn off. Knowing that she wouldn’t go back to sleep for a long while Jerusa got out of bed and went to her laptop to verify that what those women had said was true.

She found that if possible, it was even worse than they had said. It was deeply imbedded in the culture of Africa, some of the Middle East and Asia and they were slowing introducing the practice in the western world.

It was accepted by the older women and they helped perpetuate the practice. And when they came to the west they were bringing with them that practice. The authorities were catching on to it but the transplanted natives were fighting back by saying ‘you’re discrimination against our culture’.

Jerusa finally was able to go to sleep but only after she had found the name of two organizations that worked against this practice. One was called the international Waris Dirie Foundation that had been formed by a Somali-born supermodel who suffered genital mutilation as a five-year old child. The second was a bill being put forth in the United States called International Protecting girls by Preventing Child Marriage act of 2008.
**

CHAPTER 16

(Waris Dirie)

The four women became very close during the time that each was waiting for her individual treatment. One day when they were out for a walk, headed towards the same deli that Jerusa had gone to with Urs, Nancy said in what was really an offhand remark, “Ama, and you too Faad, why are we always going to places that Jerusa and I want to visit? We can go to some place that you’d like to go, can’t we Jerusa? Isn’t there something that you like to do?"

Ama thought for a while and then said slowly, “It might be interesting to go to one of the evening presentations that the Waris Dirie Foundation puts on. That way we can get to meet some of the westerners who have taken an interest in the project.”

The American woman from New York had returned home the previous week; her problem, which they’d never learned the nature of, had been taken care of, so that left the four musketeers as they called themselves.

They were able to pick up a flyer in Dr. Waldinger’s office that gave them the direction and the schedule. Many of his patients were women who were seeking help in dealing with the results of the female genital mutilation {FGM} procedure so it was only natural that there was a connection to the WD foundation.

They decided that the next Thursday evening would be good for all four of them. And fortuitously it worked out that on that one evening Waris Dirie herself was in town.

She was a beautiful Somali woman, in her mid forties who they learned had been working for this cause for about ten years.

It was only recently that she had seen some results for her efforts. More and more influential people were beginning to come on board with her cause. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France had presented her with a metal of honor, she was a good will ambassador to the UN, and she had just left Brussels after speaking at an international conference on FGM that had been attended by Condoleeza Rice. They also found that her story, taken from her book ‘Desert Flower’, was under consideration for being made into a movie.

The four women were all very interested in the subject and after the lively meeting Jerusa went up to talk to Waris to ask how she could help.

To make a long story short, the four women began volunteering at the Center sending out solicitation letters that, after giving a brief summary of the story, asked for support. After a six month period, the four women were offered paying jobs working for the Foundation. Jerusa and Ama accepted, the other two, Nancy and Faad had husbands awaiting their return.

It was about this time that Dr. Waldinger concluded that a cure for Jerusa wasn’t possible at this time. He offered her hope by saying that perhaps in the future with continued research, something would turn up. He had tried her on a number of different combinations of drugs and had found one that offered promise, but only time would tell if it would completely suppress her urges.
So she began her second six month stay in The Hague making only periodic visits to the clinic for blood work and to report that she had had no further episodes.
She was now making a salary, and the first thing that she did was write to Urs Buhler thanking him for taking care of her. She also included in that letter half of her first pay. She addressed it to the headquarters of the Il Divo organization.

She had ceased keeping track of his whereabouts. She thought that night life and clubs had ceased to offer solace to him, there were no more pictures of the three or four of them partying until all hours of the night.

She couldn’t stay away from the fan sites even though they provided little real information about his private life. She could see from the pictures taken and posted from the performances that they were taking care of themselves. All four looked clear eyed and actually in good shape. She thought that for a man to take such good care of himself there was usually a woman in the background keeping him grounded.

That spring Jerusa called on all of her courage and travelled with Ama to Niger to get her girls from a relative. That was the ruse that she traveled under. The truth was that the organization wanted Jerusa and Ama to get as much first hand information about the present conditions in Niger. They were trying to assess how much true cultural progress was being made regarding the issues that the foundation was established to address.

They got off the plane in Niamey, the capital city of Niger in West Africa. They were headed to one of the rural villages to the east and to get to it they had to travel another ten hours in an open jeep over a dusty road that was so barren in places that Jerusa felt as if she’d landed on the moon.

For miles there was nothing but rolling hills of sand and here and there the barren ground was pockmarked with a few brown dried bushes. Jerusa entertained herself creating faces based on how those bushes were situated in the ground. Here a fat nose, there, two eyes that were crossed.

For variety, now and then a strong wind would blow whipping the sand up into a fine mist, reducing the landscape to a sheet of white before once more settling into the normal terrain of tan sand and even deeper brown bushes.

There were no signs of industry. No factories, no cities, no billboards, no buildings, just sand. She had been told that Niger was one of the least developed countries in the world; now she believed it.

She and Ama discussed what she could expect to find in the village. Jerusa knew that it would be poor but friendly. Ama told her that she’d be safe for the people were quite moral even though some of their practices seemed strange to a westerner.

Once they reached the village, she could see that everything was covered with sand. The children were covered in it. The toddlers were happily chasing goats; the boys were running around between the mud huts. The young girls were gathered, sweeping the sand aside, together making a small clearing for the dancing and singing that would come later in the day.

They had arrived to find the village getting ready to celebrate. They were preparing for a wedding. Twelve year old Tchima was being wed to fifty year old Abou. Out of all of them, the bride was the happiest.

Her best friend Zanabou, also twelve, was to be married the following week but she was very sad. She was one of the ones who didn’t want to get married but her wants made no difference. Her parents and husband-to-be wanted it and she had no say in the matter. Both girls had been promised to these men at birth.

Using Ama as translator, Jerusa interviewed the two brides-to-be and a few of the adults. Even though the official language of the country was French, the villagers spoke an indigenous language.

Jerusa learned that there was an ongoing debate going in this small village and many of the other villages about the cutting and the young-bride marriages. The International Child Welfare Organization was hard at work trying to change hearts and minds but it was slow going.

The prevailing argument put forth by the elders including the parents seemed to be that life in Niger could be harsh. The threat of starvation was constant. Girls were not sent to school because the family could only afford to send the boys. They wanted the daughters to marry a man who had already accumulated some wealth so that she would be taken care of; hence marriage to an older established man.

The opposing argument that was set forth by the resident representative from the International Child Welfare Organization was that if they marry the girls too young, and they give birth before their bodies are ready, the girls develop fistulas; the husbands kick them out, they are shunned by the village, they suffer physical and emotional pain and often death. Wouldn’t it be better to send the daughter to school so that she can grow a little older before getting married?”

The counterargument stated by the villagers was that “Unless a woman is a wife she is benefiting no one; she is useless to society. A woman has no status but as a wife and unless she has children, she is of no use to her husband.”

She interviewed the aid worker who labored on because as she said, “Today, here in Niger the death rate from childbirth is one in seven. In the US the rate is one in 4,800. How can I abandon these girls? They need me even though some of them don’t know it.”

She went on to tell a story that sounded eerily like Faad’s story. “It concerns a young girl, thirteen years old who went into labor without any qualified help. Then things went wrong and nobody thought to get her to the hospital because it was 500 miles away. Or if they had travelled that far, there might not be any doctors available once they got there. Fewer than 500 doctors serve a population of over thirteen million.

“Anyway, this particular girl was in the ‘mother’s hut’ set aside for giving birth. The midwife who sat with her said that the girl shook with each contraction until finally she lost consciousness. After that the girl was in and out for over five days suffering agony such as the youngster had never known.

“The baby boy had his head wedged in the girl’s pelvis and every time the contractions came it pushed against her pubic bone, damaging the nerves to her feet and legs and pressing her bladder flatter than a penny.

“On the fifth day the baby was born, dead of course. His tiny body decomposed in her womb until his shriveled corpse was small enough to pass.

“There was so much blood until finally the family began to panic. They loaded the semi-conscious girl onto a cow cart and took her to the health clinic but they could only offer minimal care, aspirin for her fever and pain and other such things like useless or questionable home remedies.

“Two weeks later the 13 year old felt herself and knew that something was horribly wrong. Some of her organs had died and now she dripped urine and even feces constantly. She knew that she now had the dreaded obstetric fistula.

“Having the fistula meant that no one wanted to be near her. Her husband kicked her out and married another.

“This society, Miss Nichols, is based on the respect that is conferred on a woman based on her status and a wife and mother. A girl with a fistula can expect nothing but shame and loneliness. That is why I stay here. I try to teach them a better way and I help those girls with a fistula get away to a hospital so that what they have left can be repaired.”

Hearing this American woman tell the story made an impression on Jerusa that hearing it from Faad and Ama had not. Both of them had made it out and were relatively whole. These young girls in the village were living it every day.

She had never been in a culture in which it was natural for men to be so dominant. Almost unfailingly, when she had an opportunity to speak with one of the wives, the answer would be, “The job of a wife is to obey her husband, to take him water in the fields, to pound millet for dinner, to welcome him when he comes home, to give him the best seat and to walk him to bed. ”

Jerusa’s private thoughts were ‘yes, you should walk him to bed and kick his ass into it while you’re at it.’

That night before falling sleeping in the visitors’ mud hut she looked up at the stars and thought about Urs. What was he doing? Where she was and where he was, was like two different worlds. He didn’t need her to pound his millet for dinner or to walk him to bed. He had others for those chores. Did he need her at all?

The next day they packed up Ama's children’s few belongings and left the village. Ama had known that the money she sent home kept the elders from cutting her daughters but she didn’t want to push her luck. She needed to get them out before someone did it anyway and then said ‘oops’.

Ama had a court order barring her ex husband from harming the three youngest girls. It was too late for the older ones, who were already nearly grown, surprising since Jerusa knew Ama just a little over her age. Ama had had her first child at twelve and then one every year after that until now, she could no longer have children. When she was no longer fertile, her husband let her go in order to get a younger, fresher wife.

Ama said that when he released her it had been the best thing that could have happened to her. By now, living in the west, she had gone to night school. She took care of her children by making jewelry in the style of her native Niger and westerners liked what she made and bought it. Now at thirty-four she had a wealth of life experience behind her.

She proved to be a good friend and Jerusa was glad to have her friendship. Ama thought that Jerusa had been unwise when she had run Urs Buhler out of her life.

“Too often Jerusa,” she had said in her still accented voice, “men are totally selfish and they can be quite uncaring, but you found one who didn’t mind taking care of you, in fact from what you say he thrived on looking after you and providing for you. Couldn’t you have searched for yourself and found yourself with him in your life?”

“I don’t know anymore Ama. I just know that I felt like a nobody. He had all of the money, he had the looks, he could speak the languages, I had nothing. And then on top of that I was … am flawed.”

By now Jerusa had told Ama about her PGAD and Ama had even gotten over some of her prejudicial thinking about western women, and more specifically that some of Jerusa’s problems steamed from being too loose with men.

Ama still believed in marriage however. “If you had married him, you could not have walked away from him just like poof!” and she made the hand motion of something just vanishing into the air.

“But you forget Ama that men in the west don’t need wives. They have restaurants and fast foods, so they don’t need one to cook for them, there are dry cleaners and laundries so they don’t need one to keep their clothes in line, and there are housekeepers who can be hired to keep their homes clean. And for the other, there are women who they can pay to come and spend time with them. He never wanted to marry.”

“Aiee, yes. I see. You have all of the freedom that a woman could want but your men don’t want to commit to you. We have no freedom but our men feel they have to keep their feet on our necks. It is too bad that there can’t be some middle ground, a place where a man wants one woman in his life but still respects, trusts and loves her enough allow her to have a life too.”

Jerusa opened her mouth to say that she could have had just that with Urs. He had been respectful, he had trusted her, and she thought he would have been faithful to her too, for the most part, even if she had left him to find herself. He would have waited for her to return provided it wasn’t too long.

Other men did it. In the States, quite often women went into the army and left their men to carry on with work and to take care of the children, and the men were doing it.


The thought of what men would do brought Jerusa’s mind back to the subject of the work that they were doing, i.e. working to stop the hideous practice of cutting women, and keeping them out of marriage until they were at least sixteen.

“You know Ama I think we will lose the battle in the home countries. Or if we don’t lose, change will be awfully slow because the men have no reason to change, everything is to their advantage and so many of the women have bought into the idea. They think that they are doing the right thing when they have their daughters cut. They know that unless they do this, their daughter will never get a husband. And they are right.

“I think we must concentrate our efforts more in the west. Here the girls have a chance to learn that what is being done to them makes them different from other girls. Some of them think it’s normal to have nothing down there but an orifice the size of a matchstick. They think it’s normal to take half hour to pee. To have urine and blood back up until her whole abdomen is infected.


“Here in the west they can learn by seeing western women run and work out, compete in the Olympics and do all of the things that they have been told they shouldn’t do.

“They will see women in bathing suits and wonder why, if everything is so large or long, they can’t see it.”

“Perhaps you are right Jerusa. But unless they are told, they’ll just think those western women have been cut too; like I did when I met you.”

“Ah, you are right. I think we are fighting a hopeless battle Ama. It is very difficult to change people’s minds. Human beings can get one idea in their heads and no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary, they still persist in thinking they are right.”

Jerusa considered the thoughts that she’d had when she was with Urs and knew that Ama was right about persistent thoughts leading one astray. How could she have thought that being away from the man that she loved would be better for either of them?

**

Eventually the two women got a larger apartment and moved in together.

Since they had been to Niger and Ama had gotten her three youngest daughters from the relative who had kept them while she got her repair done, she had new purpose in her step. The girls were almost the same age, being eight, nine and ten. They were old enough to be around yet not to be nuisances. And because they had lived outside Niger part of their lives, they weren’t daunted by their changed circumstances.

The girls, Halima, Alia and Zali were placed together in the largest bedroom, while Ama and Jerusa took the other two bedrooms for themselves.


Jerusa felt that her life was coming together. Spring was coming. She had spent autumn and winter in this land. The trees were beginning to bloom. Yet she found that she couldn’t enjoy watching the city as it came to life. She missed Urs.

“What am I going to do Ama? I love him so much.”

Ama had thought for a minute. “I don’t know him other than what you have shown me in pictures and on the screen but I do know you. You are sensible and honest. You have to give it a try.”

“Perhaps I should call him up and pretend that I have amnesia and that I only had his phone number listed.” Jerusa joked.

“Yes, that’d get him to you but how would you explain that your memory has suddenly returned. He’d be upset if for no more reason that he had to put out a lot of money to find you.”

“He was angry when he left. He said that he was going to visit an old girlfriend.”

“You’ve told me that a hundred times. And I’ve told you a thousand times that that’s a good sign. He wouldn’t have told you if he wasn’t angry, and he wouldn’t be angry if he hadn’t loved you. The question is, does he love you now?”

“I’d die if I called him and he refused to see me.”

“You definitely wouldn’t die. You’d be hurt for a few days and then you’d try something else. I know you. You don’t give up that easily.”

“Yes, you’re right. I gave up on us one time and I’ll not do it again. I’ll think of something Ama.”

She didn’t have to think at all. That same week she was at work at the WD Foundation and a memo came to her. It asked that someone at her office contact the Il Divo organization to find out how much it would cost to engage them as the centerpiece for a fundraiser.

Since key fundraisers for charity not only raise money, they also have the major effect of raising awareness, the foundation thought it was now for the first time prominent enough to sponsor a significant event such as this.

Who better to draw folks’ attention to an international foundation than international entertainers?

CHAPTER 17

(The Meeting in Brussels)

That evening when she got home and was free to talk about it she told Ama what had happened. “They want Il Divo to present several songs and they’ve asked me to interact with their organization to arrange it. That means that I will get to see him in less than four months if we can work out a deal.”

“I would think that with the tour just ending, they might be tired and not want to do any engagement for a while.”

“I thought about that Ama. But, since it’s for a good cause, they might.”

“Have confidence then. Confidence is your best weapon. Or if you like, consider it not so much a weapon but an asset. You are always saying that he has everything, looks, money, and perhaps he does but he doesn’t have you.” She waved Jerusa off when she would have interrupted. “I know, you think you are not beautiful because you want to be spectacular. But even spectacular women’s men leave them. Just look at all of the gorgeous movie stars who are left alone. I think it is because their beauty is so stunning they don’t have to develop other qualities. Your man may look at those beauties but when you are home alone with you he is thinking of you. Even I know that.” Ama laughed.

Jerusa went over and gave her a hug. “Yes. I am now confident and beautiful. Tomorrow when I call their publicity people ‘Live World’ I think it is called, I will get them booked. Then I can worry about what I will say when I see him again.”

Booking Il Divo was not an easy job. First of all, ‘Live World’ had never heard of the Waris Dirie Foundation. Jerusa spent about ten minutes telling the vice chair of Live World just what the organization represented. He kept asking questions and she kept answering them. She thought it good publicity for them. Finally he said that he couldn’t help her but if the opportunity ever arose, he’d keep her in mind. They’d be happy to give the Foundation whatever free publicity they could.

He could not help with the booking that she wanted because they only handled Il Divo’s tour schedule. The tour would be ending soon and it would be up to her to convince the Il Divo Organization to do this additional event.

“Do you think that I should talk to Simon Cowell himself?” She felt comfortable asking this person for his opinion because he was sympathetic to her cause.

“I think you should go to the men themselves. They are not robots who follow Simon’s wishes. Going to them would be more direct. If you ask Simon, he would just go to them to get their approval so you might as well go to them. They are in Hungary now, in Budapest. I will fax you a copy of their schedule from now until the end of the tour if you like. I would advise you to get in touch with them before they scatter when the tour ends. After that it will be hard to locate them and bring them back together.”

Jerusa figured that she could take off to see them at any time they agreed to see her. She called back to London to Il Divo headquarters and said that she wanted to have a meeting with Il Divo themselves. Would they set the meeting up for her?

She had to fax them her credentials as well as information about the WD foundation so they’d know that she was a legitimate vendor. After that they called her back and said that Il Divo would meet with her in Brussels.

She thought it ironic that they’d been all over the world and here she’d get to see him only a few hundred miles from where they had parted.

After Innsbruck, they’d have their last fifteen dates that would officially end the tour. She wanted to book them into the charitable event in London just after they ended their tour.

She packed lightly, bringing one nice lightweight pant suit. She decided to take one additional outfit, just in case she and Urs managed to get together, perhaps for dinner or who knew.

As planned, they were to assemble in the lobby of the hotel. Then they’d to go to a nearby restaurant, have lunch, and talk. She didn’t know how much the guys knew about why she wanted to meet but she did know that they had no idea that she was the person who had called the meeting. In all of her conversation with the others, she had never gone under her own name, always the name of the Foundation.

She arrived well before meeting time and was able to watch them trickle in. She saw Urs step falter a bit when he saw her, still unaware that she was their contact. He probably wondered why in the world she was here.

When they sat in the comfortable chairs on the other side of the lounge she went over to them and let them know that she was there for the meeting.

Urs had stared at her sober faced while she told them why she was here. David, Carlos and Sebastien were all smiles. They seemed pleased to see her after so long.

“Where’ve you been Jerusa? You just disappeared on us.” David asked, with easy open camaraderie.

She had no idea what Urs had told them. Surely they thought they had just had a lover’s quarrel and had broken up. “I had to spend a good amount of time at the medical clinic in The Hague. But that ended and I stayed on and came to work for WD.”

“Well, you look good. I hope that you are all right now” Carlos spoke. Urs hadn’t said a word to her but she knew that he was listening. She could almost see his ears pointing in her direction.

“Yes. It was just a matter of finding the right prescription for me. And it seems to be working too. So that’s enough about me. How are you doing? Are you holding up well or are you worn out from traveling?”

Carlos looked at Urs as if to see if he would speak, when he didn’t Carlos said, “We do ok. We like what we do. After so long, it becomes second nature to wake up and not even know where we are. After this ends, we’ll have a nice long vacation, I mean a really long one so that we can do all of the things that we dream about doing while we are on tour.”

“What do you dream about?” Why wouldn’t he speak? He was acting like the Great Sphinx. She supposed that he was still angry with her.

“I dream about just walking around the streets of Paris and listening to people speaking French. I miss that. I miss the food. I miss knowing where everything is. You know Paris is really not a large city but there is always something going on. Isn’t that the city where you met our friend Urs Jerusa?”

There. Seb had done it. He had acknowledged that she and Urs had a past. The others had danced around it, she had seen the question in their eyes but none had been willing to say it out loud.

She didn’t answer him directly but instead said very softly and with feeling “I think Paris is wonderful. I love it too Seb.”

Urs turned his face away towards the window, very interested in what was going on in the nearly empty street.

“Can we get on with the meeting Jerusa?” He asked with that clipped polite way he has when he is talking publicly or to a stranger. Then he looked at his watch as if he was ready to leave.

“Yes, by all means.” She gathered herself and prepared to deliver her prepared narrative.

“I represent a charitable foundation founded by Waris Dirie a woman from Somalia. The foundation is international in its scope. One of the goals of the foundation is to provide information to the people of specific foreign countries. We target those countries where underage females are cut and married off. We also provide assistance to those girls in the west who have migrated from those countries and who would fall victim of these practices.”

“I am presuming that you want us to perform at an event?” Urs spoke coldly. "Why would we be interested in your foundation? Do you think that just because you and I were once involved that you should be given special favors? If that is what you have in mind know that you mean nothing to me, even less… “

“Urs” … Carlos cautioned him and reached to put a hand on his shoulder.

“I apologize for him Miss Nichols.” Carlos continued. "But our friend here does have a legitimate question. What is there about this specific charity that we should concern ourselves with? Why is it important?”

She noted that Urs was trying to calm himself, but discreetly. He had taken a few deep breaths and seemed to have gained control after directing that ridiculous outburst towards her in such a very personal way. He was not just angry, he was furious.

“Perhaps I should tell you a bit about the practices. I had hoped that you would have heard of both of them as we are trying very hard to get the word out. As to why we need you, Il Divo is known internationally which means that all over the world women will tune in to see you but they will also hear our message.

“Another reason that you are needed is that you are men. Most of the damage that is happening to these young women is due to the attitude that men hold towards women. It would be very gratifying and effective to see men stand up for what is a solely female cause.

“I will tell you about the cutting first. It is also known as female genital mutilation or FGM.”

She gathered herself wanting to impress upon these men the importance. “Little girls, as young as four years old are tied down, everything is cut away from them and they are then sewn up. The orifice that is left is about the size of an old fashioned matchstick.“

Sebastien, the most sensitive of the four was giving her a look of confused horror. “Genital? Are you saying that …”

He could not give voice to what he was thinking so she clarified. “I am saying that they cut away her clitoris and outer labia with a knife or a piece of glass or a razor blade all of which might be rusty or dull. This procedure happened to Waris when she was four. At the same time, it was done to a cousin and two of her sisters. All of them except Waris died from infection.

“But that is not all. Girls are also married off at quite early ages. Some as young as the start of puberty, and they are married to very old men. Some are even as old as yourselves. “She smiled at the little joke.

“Yes I can joke with you about it because it only becomes serious when one considers that the girl is only eleven, twelve or thirteen and the men in these countries are not men in good condition as you are. You have had the best healthcare and dental care. By your ages, some of these men are missing teeth. And suffer from poor hygiene. One eleven year old was married off to a sixty year old.

“Now picture this, an eleven year old, one that has been cut and sewn up since she was four. Has managed to heal in spite of the trauma, and will now go into the wedding night completely unaware of what to expect and be ripped apart. And this is done all in the name of giving him the satisfaction of knowing that he has married a virgin.

“She will become pregnant that same year. She will attempt to give birth before her organs are large enough. The child might make it out alive but there is a one in seven chance that she will die. If she lives, she will be damaged in ways that are too horrible for me to tell you about now and most likely her husband will use her in this way until she can no longer produce children, or the sewing that she must undergo to repair the damage no longer works and he wants a new wife because this one has grown too large for his pleasure.”

She rarely let herself get so worked up about it anymore. She had found that most clients, while they needed to be convinced, preferred to have it said in clinically sanitized terms. She could see by their faces that to a man they were horrified.

The men looked at each other wordlessly. They had grown much closer and didn’t need to voice all of their feelings anymore. They were in agreement.

Urs spoke. “You champion a worthy cause Jerusa. I think we are in agreement when I say that we will support your Foundation. When do you want us?”

“I don’t know if we can afford you. Tell me how much will it cost us? And if we can agree on a price, we can then look at dates.”

“I think we can do this pro bono. After all we’ve made a lot of money this year and most of our clientele are female. But Seb, perhaps you’d like to also be able to mention AMTM.” Urs said his voice now soft.

“Yes,” Seb replied after clearing his throat. “Each year specific missions are chosen. I think the WD Foundation could use the help of medical personnel. It would be a worthy mission and I have a feeling they will want to be involved in some way.”

They never made it to the restaurant. On a professional level Jerusa was so happy. The event was sure to be a success with Il Divo agreeing to come on board. On a private level she knew that although Urs voice had softened hearing the unfortunate story, he had not softened towards her. If anything, seeing her had fueled his anger more.

They had agreed on a date in August. It would be held in London before they scattered and she would be in touch with them through their headquarters.

Before they left Carlos had asked if she had gotten what she came for, was there anything else that they needed to discuss and she had thanked him and said she had gotten just what she came for and she was very happy.

They had then stood to excuse themselves. Urs stood too. And one by one they came by her chair to give her the kiss on each cheek. Urs did not approach her.

When she saw that he too was going to walk out with the others she left her pride by the way side and asked him loudly enough so that he couldn’t act as if he hadn’t heard,

“Urs, may I have a minute of your time?”

CHAPTER 18

(‘Sing until Sunrise’)

In the act of walking away from her he whipped around all the while unbuttoning his jacket in preparation for sitting down. She remembered he always did that. He kept his jackets buttoned, usually; she thought the better to show off his fine physique. He liked his shoulders and so did she. That thought would have bought a smile to her face if she hadn’t been so unused to the new stern Urs.

“What do you want?” He sat down in a chair that was closer to her; in fact they were separated only by a small round table.

Jerusa swallowed. “I want to come back to you.”

“Why? You would come back so that you can leave me again on any pretext that comes up?”

“I would never leave you again, at least not willingly. I love you.”

“Sorry, but I’m not buying that. I will never take you back. I have moved on so please don’t bother me with any more of this repentant attitude, it doesn’t become you.”

“Couldn’t we go somewhere and have a cup of coffee. Talk some more?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” And with that he rose gracefully from the chair and headed back towards the elevator. She wanted to follow him to his room and try to get his attention that way but she knew that would only piss him off more. Before he pressed the button to bring the lift to him he said, “I think what you’re doing is good work. I wish you the best.”

After he left she sat for a few moments. Tears even filled her eyes and the desk clerk came over to see if she needed anything. She thanked her and left. She couldn’t reach him with all of this anger in him. She wondered why it had escalated. At one time he had almost begged her to stay with him, he had been a bit put out with her she knew that but where had this rage towards her come from?

**

Just as Ama and the girls were sitting down to eat dinner, Jerusa walked into their apartment and went straight to her room. Ama didn’t ask how it went, she could see Jerusa’s downcast look, not so much a facial expression but her whole body was drooping. Even her blue eyes looked grey.

Ama left the girls and knocked on Jerusa’s door.

“May I come in?” When she entered she began, “It didn’t go well did it?” Would they not agree to perform, were they too expensive?”

“Not that Ama. They are going to perform, the date, fees, everything is all worked out. It’s Urs. He hates me. He can barely bring himself to look at me.”


Ama didn’t respond to that instead she said that she’d bring Jerusa a plate and some tea so that she could eat in her room and have some privacy.

“Yes it would be best if I stay in here. The girls will want to hear about my trip and I can’t bear to talk about it yet. Tell them I’m tired and I’ll see them tomorrow.”

Ama brought the tray with food and tea and sat it down on Jerusa’s chair. “I’ve been thinking Jerusa. It could be that he’s so angry with you because he still loves you too but has buried it deep down, so deep that he doesn’t even remember that he loves you.”

“What can I do? He gets furious with me when I try to talk to him. He was so loving and caring; I can’t believe that this cold man is the same person.”

“Look at the bright side. In two months you’ll get to see him again. I remember this song by one of your country western singers called “If we’re not back in love by Monday” have you heard of it?.... No? Well I heard it and it struck a chord with me. There’s this married couple who are broken up and one of them is saying to the other let’s go away on a short trip. I think I still have that record, I thought I could stand to live with my husband again but I changed too much. Since the CD didn’t help me, perhaps it could help you."

She brought her mp3 player on and found the track on the CD. “Listen to it Jerusa. Maybe it will give you some ideas.


We can call Mrs. Johnson to keep the kids a day or two.
Take the early flight to Florida, just the way we used to do.
Have room service bring us breakfast; make love all through the day.
If We're Not Back in Love By Monday, we can go our separate way.

If We're Not Back In Love By Monday we can't say we didn't try.
Just before we bury our love let's make sure we've let die.
Sleep a few more nights’ together; say the things we used to say
If We're Not Back in Love By Monday, we can go our separate way.

We could find that little cafe with funny sounding name.
Get the table by the window; I'll say I love you once again.
If the violin player's still there, we'll dance until the break of day.
If We're Not Back in Love By Monday, we can go our separate way.



“So it is saying we should do something that we did when we fell in love. How will I ever convince him to do that?”

“Think on it Jerusa. You’ll come up with something. Have confidence in yourself.”

**

Over the two month interval, Jerusa went about doing her part to organize the ‘Sing until Sunrise’ event. They had changed the date from August to September due to a small glitch and at first thought about calling it ‘Dreamy September Nights’ but that didn’t really fit their purpose. Someone had figured out that by the time the event came to an end, it would be sunrise in some parts of the world. They thought they could play up the international nature of the event with that name.


They had gotten other singers, Leona Lewis, a string group, and several of the classier but popular groups. But Il Divo was the featured star group as well as the showstopper.

Waris would be there. Sarkozy was coming from France. Brown from Great Britain, Obama from the US.

It was to be the major event of the season.

And as time grew near Jerusa became more nervous. She was confident in the success of the event, but she didn’t know if Urs was going to continue being cold and even rude to her. It was entirely possible that he would show up with a beautiful woman on his arm and act as if they had never met before.

She didn’t think he was that cruel but she had never thought he’d lose his composure in public just because she was in his presence.

She wore a beautiful floor length blue gown. He liked her blue eyes so she might as well show them to advantage. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was going about it the right way. Some men were more attracted to women who are hard to get than one who would say that she loves him without him even working to get her to say it. She didn’t feel that she had a choice. How could one play hard to get when the man wouldn’t even take the time to call or write or come by to see her.

On the night of the fundraiser (and consciousness raising event), Jerusa had elected to take care of the entertainers. A buffet had been set up in a room that was immediately behind the performance hall. There light food and water and juice. Her job was to answer any questions that anyone might have about the order of the program, the setup of the sound system, just anything that hadn’t been taken care of at rehearsal.

The program that was ongoing had closed circuit TV piped into this room so that they could all see and hear how it was progressing and be ready for their cue.

The performers were in their private personas, they all understood the strain of being perfect, of smiling when one didn’t really want to, of speaking when they had nothing to say so it was fun to watch them just be themselves.

Of course they were dressed to perform. Most of the entertainers would come and do their one or two numbers and then leave, Il Divo was the only group that was called upon to appear throughout the evening.

They had brought three changes for clothing but still they took care with what they had, they didn’t want to take a chance on having to change because one of them dropped a canapé down a shirtfront, or spilled a drink on his pants. Jerusa privately thought they were the less high maintenance group of the whole bunch.

Before their first number, the four guys stayed to themselves, not talking, probably dealing with the butterflies that Urs said invariably comes before a performance. Most performers used that energy to enhance their performance, there is always a little bit of acting that goes along with it.


After their kickoff song, they were more relaxed and began to chat with each other and with the other performers.

Jerusa decided to bide her time. She had no plan for getting him to speak to her. She couldn’t even think.

She should have relied on fate. Fate had brought them together, had brought her to that long ago Paris breakfast room with such an innate sense of urgency that she hadn’t even bothered to take much time with her hair, had made him nod good morning and notice her.

Fate had later caused him to, out of all the pretty women there, single her out at the Paris concert. Fate had also had arranged for them to travel together on a ‘mission’ for just the right amount of time for them to fall in love. If fate could do that, it could bring him to her tonight.

In due time Il Divo sang their second number. Jerusa didn’t go out to watch them on the main stage. When they finished and came backstage once more, Urs looked at her as if he had just noticed that she was sitting across the room. And then as if she was dreaming, he began slowly walking in her direction.

When he reached her, he did not sit but stood, jacket off, with his hands in both pockets. Her vision when she looked at him face on, and didn’t raise her eyes was just about even with his waist, or lower. She wished he’d remove his hands from his pockets; it only served to tighten his pants on his very fine behind.

She allowed her wayward mind to wonder what he would do if she unzipped his perfectly fitted pants and took him in her hand. She almost laughed aloud at how affronted he would be. She wondered how long he’d stay angry with her then. She’d be willing to bet that he’d let the anger go, at least momentarily. After she finished with him would he then retreat into righteous indignation?

“Urs, I think the benefit is going better than expected. What can I do for you?”
He ignored her flaming cheeks. “I want you to know that a message was left on my mobile phone a bit ago. Karl Diefenbaker died in Munich today. Before he died, he specifically asked that you and I attend his services. I don’t know why he did that but I feel I must honor his wishes. I am wondering if you would travel with me to Munich, just as a friend mind you, because he has requested our presence.”

She felt a genuine wave if sorrow. She remembered Karl from how he had been in her dream, a ten year old bright eyed boy who was growing up too soon, and how he had been when she and Urs visited him in the nursing facility. How he had spoken seemingly with an otherworldly wisdom, saying that she and Urs had work that they had to accomplish together. Well they were doing that tonight but evidently even from the grave Karl was not yet through with them.

Once more fate had intervened in their lives. Urs wouldn’t be able to see her backside quite as easily as he had thought.

“Yes. I can go. I’ll be flying home to The Hague tonight. Things will be pretty slow around work for a week or so. What time will we travel?”
“Either late tomorrow or early the day after. I’ll have Rachel, our administrative assistant see what she can book for us. I’ll call you. Do you have the same mobile number?”

She had really had to hold her lip in her teeth to keep from saying something that might set him off such as “why don’t we get a hotel room near the airport so that we won’t have to get us as early and rush as much?” The idea being that they would then share the hotel room. Later she would thank goodness that she hadn’t pushed. She was also glad that Ama had the girls there. That kept her from inviting him to their apartment.

He had not said another word to her for the rest of the evening. Even when the other guys came over to see how she felt it had gone and to thank her for letting them be a part of something that would help humanity so much, he did not come with them. Oh well. Win a few, lose a few.

She’d been given a short reprieve. Perhaps they would get to talk on the plane or after the memorial service or even in the hotel the night before. At least she’d have him to herself.

The next morning she and Ama had breakfast while the girls slept in as they usually did on the weekend, Jerusa told Ama what her latest plans were.

“I think you should play it cool Jerusa. If I were you I wouldn’t use this trip as an opportunity to tell that guy how much you love him and want to be with him.”

“Why not? It seems he has a right to know.”

“And you’ve made sure that he does know haven’t you? Now you’ve got to back off. He’ll make the decision to take you back or not to and I don’t think it helps to keep begging.”

“I’m not begging. I’m just being honest.”

“Begging, honest, that’s just a point of view. When Sam and I first came to the west, I was very much in love with him. I didn’t want to leave him, but he treated me like dirt.”

“Your husband is named Sam?” Jerusa thought that odd. The man was from Niger.

“It’s short for Samatar, Jerusa. Anyway, he was a product of our culture and he just couldn’t change. He thought we needed to cut the girls and I didn’t. Don’t ask me why I’m different, I just don’t know but I knew that even though I loved him a lot, to protect my girls, I had to leave him.”

“So what does that have to do with Urs and me? I don’t imagine that he is anything like your husband, they come from very different cultures.”

“That’s true. But I was only going to say that when I stopped crying when my husband would go out at night, when I stopped begging him to leave the girls be, when I became indifferent to him, that was when he started to value me. I don’t think your man is all that different in that way.”

“But he’s kind. He really used to love me.”

“And he will love you again if he chooses to. If you don’t keep fueling his fire by letting him think he has to make you pay for what you did to him. Begging him puts him in opposition to your wishes. Don’t give him anything to fight and he’ll have to let his defenses down. Just be this nice girl that he has just met and see how it goes.”

“Be the nice girl? I’m a woman and he deserves to know that.”

“Yes, for sure. You are a woman but for this one trip be the girl that he fell in love with. Don’t keep jumping to the future or going to the past. Live in the now. If you spend too much time speculating and evaluating you’ll get stressed about whether you are going to see him again after this. This will keep you from being … I don’t know the word for it.” Ama shrugged but continued, “I think the word is something like enticing? No the word is alluring. Yes. Draw him to you. He won’t be able to resist you.”

“I will do ‘my gosh darnedest’ Ama.”

Jerusa’s phone rang interrupting their conversation.

“Good morning Mr. Buhler.” ‘Did you have a good night, I love hearing your voice in the morning.’ Following Ama’s advice she restrained herself from babbling on.

“Good morning Jerusa. Do you live in the same place?”

“No, I moved when my friend from Africa and I decided to move in together.”

“African friend?”

“Yes. Her name is Ama and she has three daughters.”

“They haven’t been … you know …”

“No. She’s made sure that they have been protected.”

“What about her children’s father. Is he in the picture? Is he a threat?”

“I don’t think so. Why are you concerned?”

“I’d hate for you to get caught up in some domestic situation, especially if the guy is violent.”

He was still looking out for her even thought she doubted that he recognized it. “The girl’s father is back in the states. Ama has a court order for custody. I don’t think she ever hears from him. He has a new wife.”

“So give me your directions. Will you be ready in a couple of hours? I like to be on time.”

‘Tell me something that I don’t know Urs.’ “Yes, I’ll be ready.”

Jerusa packed her wardrobe in record time. She made sure that she had enough medicine for her PGAD.

“Ama don’t be concerned if I don’t come home right away. I am going to try to get the guy to take a little mini-vacation with me. You know like the song that says ‘do the things that we used to do’? And don’t worry I won’t over do it. I’ll be a fun person. I’ll bring the girls a gift too but don’t tell them. Let it be a surprise.”

With that she was out the door. She hadn’t seen Urs yet but she knew that he’d either be there or pulling up in just a few minutes. On her way down she thought that maybe she should have let him come up for her, meet Ama, not seem so eager. So she backtracked and went back into the apartment. Ama looked up, surprised. “Did you forget something?”

“No. I am following your advice. I’m going to make him work a little bit for me. And it starts with figuring out where I live.”

CHAPTER 19

(Karl’s Last Gift)

As it turned out, he had not expected her to run out when he honked at the curb. He was a gentleman after all and she thought that he was also a bit nosy. He wanted to meet her roommate.

When he rang the doorbell, Jerusa, having gone into the bathroom to make a last minute check of her makeup, left Ama to go the door and Jerusa heard Ama’s soft voice going through the motions of determining that he was who he said he was before ushering him in. She was in the process of introducing herself when Jerusa entered the room.

Urs was smiling, slightly bemused because Ama, in her own way, was just as formal as he. She was very polite, quite hospitable, offering him a coffee or tea and then presenting her daughters to him one by one.

The girls were at an impressionable age and though they smiled quite openly at him, none of them spoke. They then took a seat across the room and watched him throughout his short stay. Jerusa couldn’t tell if they thought Urs was a strange animal or if they were fascinated by his old world manner.

They were only at her place for a few minutes. It was time for them to get going so that they could make their flight.

“You rented this car just for the ride? We could have taken a cab.”

“I rented it yesterday when I got into London. I then got up at six this morning and drove the three and a half hours to you. But since the flight to Munich is only an hour, perhaps a bit more, we can get there, check into our rooms and I’ll get a nap before the memorial.”

On the short fight she was cordial, even friendly and he was too. She thought he’d stay that way as long as she didn’t start talking about love, and her coming back to him.

“Let me read your palm Urs,” she said by way of a diversion.

He looked down at his palm, as if he could also read it then handed it to her. She held his fingers with one hand and gently traced her finger over the lines that crossed his palm. She knew no more about reading palms than the man in the moon but she did know that men liked to be touched. She figured that this was one acceptable way of touching him that he would allow.

At first he thought she might have been serious and really did know a bit. “I see a candelabra, it is providing light.”

“Yes?”

“I see you standing with three other men. One whose name is Carlos. One whose name is David, another –
“Ja, that’s Seb. What else?”

“I see you riding in a plane. You are going to the states.”

“Tell me something that I don’t know why don’t you?” He took his hand back and reached for hers. He flattened her hand in his warm one and ran one finger over it suggestively. She attempted to close it but he held on to it.

“See, two can play this game.”

“Ah but I had you fooled for a bit didn’t I?”

“You did, but now I can see you are playing a childish game.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you ever play? Didn’t you have your male classmate or maybe a boy that liked you in school hold your hand and do this?" He demonstrated and she jerked her hand away because it was sensitive. She blushed. That was not what she had been doing. It was embarrassing that he would think that she was trying to flirt with him in such a childish way.

She was doubly embarrassed when he pointed to her breasts, peaked from the stimulation.

“You got caught up in your own game didn’t you?”

“Oh change the subject you arrogant man. Let’s talk about something else.”

He picked up an international paper, printed in English and the subject matter was:


WHY SWISS DEMOCRACY WORKS AND CALIFORNIA’S DOES NOT

“This sounds interesting don’t you think?”

She didn’t think it sounded interesting at all. Was this his plan? To make her endure being bored to death in order to get him back?

He began to read aloud and it was all about initiatives, referenda’s and recalls.


She decided to go along with him. It sounded as if it could be tolerable provided she had known an initiative from a referendum. The nature of the recall she knew.

“Initiative is when the citizens want to create a new law, they write it up in formal language and get a certain number of signatures to get it on the ballot and then the populace votes yeah or nay.

“The referendum occurs when the citizens want a law repealed, they then have to get a certain number of signatures and it goes on the ballot and is voted on by the populace.”

“And why does it work in Switzerland and not in California?”

“The question is how can they compare Switzerland to California?” he continued, correctly presuming that she didn’t know. “It’s because years ago, California switched to a direct democracy rather than a representative democracy. That made its state government much more like the Swiss and less like their Federal government in the US. Does that make sense?”

“Actually it does. ”

"Well in Switzerland, unlike in the US we vote directly. So, this person is saying that California, having direct vote does not work as well as it does in Switzerland because it takes too many votes for a referendum to pass and relatively few for an initiative to pass, thus lots of new laws are passed and very few old laws can be taken off the book.”

“Why would anyone care? Why not just leave all the laws on the book? Why worry about it?”

“It’s important because not too long ago California passed into law that same sexed couples can marry. Now some people want to repeal that law and make it where same sexed people cannot marry. This article’s author is saying that it was much easier for the populace to get it passed and on the books than it is to get it repealed. That is not spelled out here, but I think that is the purpose of the whole article.”

“What do you think about men marrying men and women marrying women” Being from the Bible belt, Jerusa had her own feelings on that subject and she wanted to see what he thought.

“I don’t know. I think that the people who hold marriage between only a man and a woman as sacred might have a better argument if heterosexuals treated marriage as if it were something truly special. I kind of feel that they have enough work cut out for them to work on perfecting those marriages rather than keeping other people from marrying. Does that make sense? I mean folk marry and then divorce just like the marriage meant nothing to them. So why not let everybody in on the act?”

“Umh, I don’t know. I was taught that it was wrong but now that I’m an adult it seems that to love is better than to hate. If they just want to love each other what’s wrong with that? And then when the ones trying to keep them apart act so hateful it makes me wonder. But I must admit, it is off putting to see two large men, sometimes both with big guts and beards, kissing each other on the mouth.” She thought for a moment and decided that she would ask him. “You remember in the dream, what you did with the soldier in the hall? Have you done that in this life?” She watched him color and wondered what it meant.

“I have not. And I have gay fans that I wish the best. But no, when you’re not attracted to men, you are not attracted to them. Are you attracted to women? No? Then you should understand how gay and lesbian’s feel. I don’t think they can force themselves to be attracted to us either. Maybe in a pinch perhaps.” And he smiled. “But not as first choice.”

“Then what about Ulrich and what he did out in the hall?”

“That wasn’t attraction on either of our parts. My motive was to keep him away from you so I distracted him. His was not because he was attracted to me but I suppose my mouth on him felt too good for him to say no. Given a choice, that is a choice before he became aroused, he would have preferred you. But let’s go back to politics; I am more comfortable talking about laws on the train than I am about sex.

“There is much more involved in why what works for California doesn’t work for Switzerland, for instance their demographic is different than in Switzerland, we are much more .... disciplined where as Californian’s are known to be a wild bunch not by me but by their fellow citizens in the east."

“I have never lived on the west coast but I do know that in the south, in the markets, they say that California is the home of all the fruits, as in crazies and that the fruit that they export like peaches and stuff all taste like water." Thinking that they had exhausted that conversation she asked him, “Do you want to hear a joke?”

“A joke? Something funny huh, sure, I guess so.”

She was working hard to keep him entertained and yet not talk about their relationship. “This one is on men, present company excepted. Why do only ten percent of men go to heaven?”

She waited, knowing that he wouldn’t guess the answer. “Because, if all men went to heaven then it would be hell.

“Here’s another one. ‘What’s a man’s idea of honesty in a relationship?– Telling you his real name.”

“Ouch. That’s so not true and so unfair. I usually tell my age too.” His eyes were twinkling.

“OK Urs, answer this one. ‘Why did the man cross the road?’ ---- You don’t know? He crossed it because he heard the chicken was a slut.”

“Oh you so wrong men. I don’t usually tell jokes, but being around that David has taught me a few. Let me see if I can think of one. I don’t know if this is a woman’s joke or not but here goes.

‘A divorced guy was delighted when his daughter reached her 18th birthday because it would be his final child support payment. Month after month, year after year he had paid, and now at last he would be free of the financial burden.
“So he called his daughter over to his house and said: ‘I want you to take this last check to your mother’s house. You tell her this is the last check she’s ever going to get from me. Then I want you to come back here and tell me the expression she had on her face.

“The girl took the check and returned a couple of hours later. 'Well?' said the father gleefully, rubbing his hands together. ‘What did she have to say?’

The girl replied ’She told me to tell you that you ain’t my dad.”

“Ouch. That’s awful, but funny too.”

“We’re landing in a few minutes. We’ll have to continue this later.”

Jerusa smiled but she kept it to herself. He was loosening up bit by bit. Now if only she could get him to agree to spend another week with her before continuing on to see his family.
**
He registered them into two rooms in a hotel near the funeral home. They rested for an hour, and then met up in the lobby to walk the short distance to the funeral home.

Jerusa went on line to read about funerals in Germany so that she’d know a bit about what to expect. She had learned that funerals in Germany are some of the most expensive in the world. Most chose cremation because it is less expensive to get an urn than a casket and it saved the cost of embalming. But unlike in the states where relatives take the cremated remains and do what they will with them, be it scatter them in some place that meant something to the deceased, or place them in a prominent place on the mantle, in Germany, all cremated remains must be buried. It has only been very recently that a few people have been allowed to take the remains and scatter them in a cemetery or take them three miles out to sea.

The practice of being so stringent with remains dates back to the days when the church had strong reservations about cremation. Even today Orthodox Jews, Muslims and some Fundamentalist Protestants still resist.


She learned that all funerals are handled by the state not by the funeral home and there are no private cemeteries except a bare minimum that are reserved for special groups who have special needs to handle their own such as Muslims who bury without embalming their dead.

It had long been the custom in Germany for family members to tend the graves of departed loved ones. But this practice was breaking down, largely because of the great mobility of modern society. Children may not live close enough to their parents' graves. The deceased also may not have wished to burden his family with this chore. It is possible to pay the cemetery, or some other party such as a florist, to take over this job.

This practice was familiar to Jerusa because for the most part, in country towns in the states it was still done this way. Families got together on Memorial Day and worked on family member graves.



One thing that surprised her was that in Germany, plots were usually rented for a certain period of time, usually 20 to 30 years, with the possibility of an extension. Eventually, though, the plot was used for another burial once the mourners themselves have passed away.

In line with the latest trend, cemeteries now put aside a grassy plot, called something like the "Field of the Unknown," for anonymous burials. The field would usually have one monument, declaring its purpose, but there were no headstones for the individuals.

The article explained that anonymous burials came about partly because they saved on the cost of a headstone, but also because people were less religious nowadays. A full 27 percent of burials in Hamburg were anonymous, compared to only 4 percent in the considerably more devout Munich.

She found that the funeral home acted more as coordinators of a funeral than in the states where they were more like administrators. In Germany the funeral home can come and get the remains and arrange for embalming or cremation whereas in the states they would get the body and embalm it.

The funeral home can make arrangements for burial or shipment of the remains, notify the registrar (Standesamt) of the death, notify the appropriate embassy or consulate if the deceased was an expatriate, supply a coffin or urn, arrange for a funeral, send out death notices and invitations, order a gravestone, order flowers, make arrangements for the collection of insurance, arrange for the probate of a will, comply with the wishes of the deceased for organ donations and notify the deceased's pastor and many other things. The more of these services you order, of course, the more it would cost.

She was glad that the Funeral home could take such an extensive role in the arrangements. That meant that she and Urs didn’t have to do it. She suspected it would be their role to pick up the bill for these services. And if that proved to be the case, she finally had a bit of money to add to his. She was determined that Urs would not have to foot the bill alone.


The services were being held in a small chapel on the cemetery grounds. And in keeping with what most folk did, Karl’s body had been cremated which made for a lighter funeral in that there was no casket or body, there were pictures, most of them of Karl in his elder years.

Jerusa surprised Urs when she produced a couple of drawings that she’d done as she remembered him in her dreams, one as a young kid laughing and joking in spite of the seriousness of life in those days. The other of him scrunching up his face as he tried to understand what some of the older boys had been talking about.

The services were very traditional. There were only about twenty odd folk there. She imagined that most of Karl’s blood relatives had been lost to the war. A few of the people had been bused in by van from the nursing home.

If any of them wondered where the childhood drawings of Karl could have originated, they most likely though they had been made from a picture.


After the funeral ended it was too early to just go home and sit and wait until tomorrow to fly home so Urs asked her if she could think of anything that she’d like to do while they were in the area.

“I haven’t thought of that. I looked up the funeral so that I’d know what to expect but I didn’t get past that. What about Oktoberfest? I know that it isn’t yet October but perhaps they will be getting ready for it. We could go and watch and see how things are coming long.”

“We can and even though its’ called Oktoberfest, it is really held in September and October. Let’s see if I can remember where it is. It’s held in a field called Die Theresienwiese, and it is a really huge space of about 450,000 square meters if I remember correctly. It was named after Princess Theresa. It is located southwest of here but not too far. He went over and spoke briefly to the concierge and returned and said, “It has its own station on the Munich U-Bahn system, on the U4 and U5 lines. From here the nearest station is the Munich Central station. We can hurry and change into something more comfortable and be off then, I think we can find it.”

He seemed to be perking up a bit. He liked to travel and this was just what she had intended, to get him in that mode that they had been in before when they were in Germany. One of adventure and perhaps he’d let his grudge go and fall back in love.

On the ride out he told her what he knew about Oktoberfest. “It may be called "Oktoberfest," but the big event starts in September. It all began with a wedding—in October 1810. On the 12th day of October that year, King Ludwig I of Bavaria, wed Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen and held a big party near Munich. It was so popular, that the party complete with horse racing took place again the following year, prompting the start of a traditional German celebration that has become world famous.

“Other than for interruptions caused by war or disease, Oktoberfest has been celebrated every year since 1811. The massive Bavarian Volksfest begins each year on a Saturday in September and ends 16-18 days later usually on the first Sunday in October. Because October 3 is a national holiday in Germany, Oktoberfest is extended if Unity Day falls after the first Sunday in October, making Oktoberfest vary from 16 to 18 days in length.”

“And what do we do besides drink the beer of course?” She had laughed.

“We get drunk. No, except for the obvious emphasis on beer, Oktoberfest is more like one of your huge American state fairs, there are fun rides, if you like that sort of thing but rides don’t go well with beer I’m afraid. Merry-go-rounds, carnival booths, food, entertainment but, of course, those 14 famous beer halls sponsored by Bavarian brewers are the real draw. In fact, in its early years, Oktoberfest was an agricultural fair. Nowadays, however, the agricultural section called the Zentrallandwirtschaftsfest (ZLF) only takes place every four years.

“Oktoberfest's carnival aspect didn't begin until 1818 and then it only consisted of a single carousel and a few modest rides. The large beer halls didn't appear until 1896. Back in the 1800s Munich was a smaller town than it is today, so Oktoberfest participants had to journey out to the Theresienwiese that now lies within the city.

“The festivities get off to an official start when Munich's Oberbürgermeister who you would call the lord mayor taps the first beer keg and yells the traditional O'zapft is! Or "It's tapped!" at exactly 12 noon on the Saturday that starts the event.”

They arrived and the excitement grew. There were so many people, all having fun and in an extremely friendly mood. There were people speaking American English, and many other languages or speaking English with accents.

After walking around for a while they took a seat in one of the beer halls and ordered spit-roasted chicken, sausage, and the ubiquitous sauerkraut and onions and of course beer for each. They proceeded to join in the singing and foot tapping and just had a good time.

They found out from the Americans also sitting at the table that this Oktoberfest was rivaled by one that is held in Cincinnati Ohio each year.

“I have read that about 750,000 people attend this one here in Munich each year, but the one in Cincinnati called ‘Zinzinnati’ is growing larger every year. We make sure we go to one every year. They are held all over the states. Last year we went to one in Solvang California.”

Before they decided to call it quits and return to their hotel Jerusa asked him what she had been holding back all evening.

“Urs, why don’t we take the rest of the week off from life and see the sights? We could travel from here up to Berlin, and we could do it for old time’s sake with no strings. No romance, but do it just because we used to be friends.”


He had looked at her for a long time, took a long drag of his beer and kept looking at her all the while as if to read her mind. Finally he said, “Sure, but after that we go back to our lives and please Jerusa, no more talk about how much you love me. We both know how much that love meant to you, you left me when the going got rough. If you start that again, we end the trip and both go to our respective homes. Got that?”
Jerusa slowly nodded her head yes. She vowed that if anybody brought up the subject of love, it would be him, not her.

CHAPTER 20

(SYLT)


Jerusa was a quick study. In one day she experienced just what it meant to live in the ‘now’. She didn’t dare mention the future, was loath to remember the past so she kept her comments centered on what they did or would be doing that day.

Early the next morning they met in the lobby and talked about what they would like to do. They decided to go by train to the walled city of Ingolstadt that lay along the river Danube and just like Munich, it too was in the heart of Bavaria.

Originally a fortress city, Ingolstadt was still enclosed by a medieval defensive wall. They spent a few hours walking around just window shopping and then later in the day, went to a gathering.


Ingolstadt was one of the many settings in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. Primarily, Victor Frankenstein attended university in Ingolstadt. So it was entirely appropriate that an actor dress up as Frankenstein and do a walking tour pointing out the sites found in her novel. Later when the tour was at almost end, in a dark and medieval alley, a critter ran out and caused everyone to jump and cling to each other. That was one time when Urs didn’t try to dislodge himself from Jerusa’s embrace. She later accused him of knowing what would happen and deliberately not letting her in on the prank.

That evening they continued on by train to Nuremberg. Jerusa was reminded that the trains were quite different from those in the states. She wasn’t a big fan of trains but when she could travel on them like they were used in Germany, they were quite tolerable. First of all they were high speed, which beat the way plodding Amtrak ambled along at a max speed of about 70 miles/hour. Secondly they had amenities. In first class, there was a TV in the back of the seat just ahead. The doors between trains were made of etched glass and were quite silent.

The seats were large and comfortable. One car even had a built in play pen for the baby so that the mother and father had no need to hold the little one as they rode.

The toilets contained a vacuum flush, just like on an airplane. And the German trademarked tri-recycling bin was present; paper, plastic and aluminum.

Nuremberg had been Hitler’s stronghold city. Most of the evidences of his having been here had been destroyed, although some of the citizens wished more had been left as a reminder so that they never forgot how propaganda can be used to sway a nation. One of the newer buildings had been made into a Hitler museum.

They wandered around a bit there, then looked at the coliseum which was really a party meeting building that was built by Hitler and was to be larger than any built by Rome, it was now a warehouse used to store some theatrical props.

And the once magnificent grandstand, built for Party rallies and designed to hold 50,000 Nazi members, was grand no more. Boys now skateboarded on Hitler’s platform and jumped the steps nimbly in a show of youthful exuberance.

The next day they travelled on to Hamburg. Spent the day eating and sampling goodies, and generally relaxing until night when they went out into the country to spend the night at a hay hotel.

Although it may have seemed unconventional, spending a night in a “hay hotel” away from the glaring lights and noise of the city was a dream come true for an outdoor enthusiast like Urs. Now that he was away from it, he had longed for the charm of simple living in the countryside, for a few days.


It had been something that had caught Urs fancy and he had read the brochure carefully and then declared that they should try it for a night.

Hay hotels offer the traveler a bed of straw rather than the customary linens and most require that you bring your own sleeping bag. Although they didn’t want to carry their own sleeping bag while they traveled, they called around and found one that rented them and included the cleaning fee in the rental.

The brochure had said that visitors could sleep in open lofts full of hay or even in feed stalls surrounded by farm animals and wooden platforms. There were also basic bathroom facilities.

The one that they found had bales of hay lined up covering half of the barn. They had only to roll their sleeping bag out and drift off into dreamland.


She had waited until he was asleep before she moved closer, closer because she was a little bit afraid of the yellow eyes of the goat that looked into the enclosure where they slept. She kept remembering a Steven King book that she had read, she didn’t remember just which one but there had been a goat that figured prominently in it. And the book had been very frightening.

She had listened to Urs even breathing for a long while before she too drifted off, her back resting against his back. She could feel his warmth even through her down sleeping bag, well she might have imagined it too but he was near and that would have to do for now.

They got up the next morning refreshed, the hay had been comfortable, and they ate a large country breakfast that was included in the fee. They could have purchased some of the fresh meats and cheeses that the owners sold but they had no means of keeping them so they bypassed that treat.

After that they showered in the rude accommodations that were all a part of the fantasy. They then washed all of their clothes and dried them before heading off to the next adventure.

Urs had suggested that they go up to the Sylt Island. “I think you’ll like it Jerusa” was all he said and she was happy to be asked to go. So before long they were off again.

With the amount of train riding they were doing they had began to talk freely, oh not about romance, Urs meant it when he said he wasn’t interested in that but they did talk about their thoughts.

“That goat in the hay hotel reminded me of the Sahel, Urs.” Jerusa had said not too long after they had gotten underway going north towards the Sylt Island.

“What Sahel? You don’t mean in Africa do you?”

“Yes. That’s the only Sahel that I know of. When Ama traveled to her home that is a tiny village in Niger, I went with her. On the way there, we traveled many miles in the Sahel.”

“And what was it like?”

“It was dusty. Very arid with a few scrub bushes but mostly sand. They live in mud huts and they manage to eke out their living in the poorest way. Each village has its store of livestock, goats, cows, donkeys and I even saw a camel. They have chickens too. But in spite of being poor they still manage to get together and sing and play instruments and dance of course.”

“Oh they dance? What are their dances like?”

“Well it depends upon whether the particular village is Christian or Muslim. The Christians will have maybe five rows of band members, with seven or eight in each row. This is for big occasions mind you. Then the rhythm keepers who are in the first row use something that looks like bamboo sticks to rub over a large gourd and make a noise that sounds something like one of the instruments in Il Divo’s band, but more crude I suppose. Anyway the men and women dance mostly with their feet.

“It’s the funniest thing. They will all dance in a circle and on the fourth beat they stand on their toes and raise their arms and because they all wear robes, they look like some giant birds.

“Then again, if the dancers and players are Muslim, the women are dressed a bit differently and they sing and do that thing with their tongues from side to side and make the la la la sound. It is quite an experience. I know that I am doing a poor job of telling it but ..”

“No you are doing an excellent job of telling it. One of the things I enjoy most about travel is experiencing all of the different cultures. But – Il Divo has missed some of the things that you are telling me about.”

“That is because these people are really primitive. I guess I would call them country folk. Still they have music, singing and dancing. They seem to really enjoy it."
He opened up a bit of his vulnerabilities to her too, since she was being open with him and not bugging him about love.

“I have a hard time making the breathy sounds that comes so easily to Sebastien.”

“What breathy sounds. You mean when he does this?” And she demonstrated the sexy breathy voice that Sebastien was expert at delivering when he opened a song.

“That’s just about it. He sounds like he’s croaking but whispering too.”

“Urs, you know what you have to do, you have to practice. Forget about operatic technique and just sing. Lower your defenses and pretend that you are whispering into a woman’s ear like you used to do with … like you do when you’re making love. You don’t have any problem being breathy then?”

“That’s because I am out of breath. How else can I sound? But I’ll try.”

They started with some of Seb’s lead-ins and kept on until they had that going pretty good. Then they switched to Urs parts.

“Yeah, I can do it now. But when I get in front of the audience, or when we’re off for a long time, it all goes away.”

“Then you’ll just have to keep singing in the shower and practicing it until you sound just like you want to sound.”

It so happened that just about then they came to the stop for Sylt. When they got off the train, they were able to walk towards the island, but it was not what Jerusa had been expecting. It was ornamented with heather, cliffs, fields and meadows. The wind was high and the houses that she could see near the cliffs were built to cling close to the ground with low roofs that helped beat back the sharp North Sea breeze. They looked like fairy tale cottages with their low thatched roofs. While they walked, Urs told her something about the island.


“To the west is Great Britain, to the east is mainland Germany and to the north is Denmark. In the summer the island has lots of sun and high temperatures, but it never gets too hot here because of the ever-present sea breeze. But Sylt is not just for a summer vacation spot. As you can see autumn is nice too. Some say that the salty air is particularly healthy. The stiff north-west breezes and the frequent storms are very relaxing for asthmatics.

“But no matter when one comes here, the weather does what it wants! At this time of year a harsh Sturmtag is as likely as summer temperatures. And water temperatures of twelve degree can be expected.

“In any season Sylt is beautiful and above all, relaxing. I think that you will find it so Jerusa.”


He pointed out some of the wildflowers and tall grasses “This wide range of nature attracts many recreation seekers on the island.

"Sylt offers more than 200 km of cycling and hiking trails, along beaches, through salt meadows, across dunes and through the countryside. You can rent bikes not motorbikes in all the villages and most hotels offer them to their guests for a minimal charge or for free. The best way to see Sylt is by bicycle and buses run close to the bike routes so if you get tired, you can load your bike on the back of the bus and head back to your hotel. You can ride a bicycle can’t you Jerusa?”

She had nodded yes. But she was enjoying just watching him when he spoke; it made no matter to her what he said. She thought he was using his role as a tour guide as a diversion to avoid talking about anything personal.

“It doesn’t cause your PG disease to come back does it, not like the motorbikes?”

She had smiled ‘no’ but had not commented more. He continued.

“But what you’ll particularly enjoy here is that after a long sunbathing, we’ll run to the North Sea and then the salty water feels so refreshing.

“Just because winter on Sylt is milder than elsewhere in Germany, does not mean that there’s no snow on Sylt. I hear it snows here, but as I have never been here in winter I can’t say for sure. I imagine those houses over there look very beautiful in all of the white snow.”

And so they spent about an hour just looking at the scenery, watching the waves crash into the shore and the spray of saltwater that they sometimes had to dash backwards to avoid.

His hand was back at the small of her back. She liked it but made no mention nor did she note it in any way. He also slipped his hand around to her waist when they were walking a particularly high cliff.

Finally he asked her if she was ready to do a bit of sauna, sea and sunbathing, she said that sounded nice. So they began the walk to a different part of the beach where in the distance she could see sunbathers soaking up the warming rays.

They were nude!

Now she knew that he had been talking so much in order to distract her and to keep her from freaking out.

“Urs, they don’t have any clothes on. You don’t expect for us to take our clothes off do you?”

“You can leave them on if you are uncomfortable. But, you’ll call more attention to yourself dressed among all these people than you will if you just get a towel, take everything off and lie back and relax.”

“Are you taking yours off?”

“I am unless you object.”

“I thought you were too reserved to go nude in public.”

“I am, but this is not public. Everyone is nude here so it’s no big deal. Besides, no one even thinks a thing about it. They will hardly notice us; well they might look a bit at first but only for a few seconds, just as one would look casually at a clothed person. Besides, if you become uncomfortable the towels here are really large. What do you say?”

“What the heck. I’ll do it if you do.”

“Good. We’ll go to the red building over there, and undress, get our towels and then go into the sauna. Now try not to call attention to yourself by covering your privates up, just be natural.”

“What about my eyes. Do I look at the other people in the Sauna or do I just look at their eyes, or how am I going to keep my eyes from drifting south?”

“You’ll get used to it. Do you want me to walk in first?”

“Definitely. I would hate to think of facing people and of you looking at my butt too.”

“Me? I’d never do that.”

She looked back at him and his dimple was showing. “Sure you wouldn’t. You look me over quite thoroughly when I am dressed. I hate to think what you will do when …” It was flirting with dangerous territory so she pointed to the doorway and he stopped to get clear directions from a group sitting on the outside near the door. They were dressed, thank goodness.

They stripped in the dressing room, folded their clothing, got a thick white towels from a stack near the doorway and stood there for a moment taking stock. This was something entirely new for Jerusa but she liked the feel of air all over her body. She felt free in a way that she had never felt before. She was glad that she had shaved her body too before this trip.

He had been right; she thought that this was a place that she’d love to return one day. Perhaps if they went back together as a couple this place would become their special place.

The sauna was a mere short hallway away. Urs led the way into the darkened room that was hot and sultry and she estimated there were about ten to fifteen folk already there, all nude but seemingly no more aware of it than if they had been sitting in a restaurant fully clothed.

The configuration was like stadium seats, so both she and Urs had to cross the front of the room before ascending a middle set of steps that led to the top where seats were available.

She didn’t have it as bad as Urs. She didn’t have a ding-a-ling to bop and bounce around when she walked. He ignored it; after all he had had his attachment since birth.

She on the other hand was very aware of her rounded and full but not over abundant breasts. He had said that no one would notice them. Of course that wasn’t true. The women and men checked both of them out. She was glad that she could sport a neat bikini wax and that she had a nice figure, even more so nude.

What he should have said was that nobody gawked. Nobody stared or caused any discomfort.

Soon they reached their seats, spread their towels and sat down.

“We could have started on the beach but this is a bit more intimate a setting and a little darker, it’s nice to adjust in here. After this we’ll have a run to the sea and take a cold dunking or two and then we’ll warm up in the sun."

They chatted about nothing in particular because in this small room, every word could be overheard.

“Have you ever seen one who has been cut?” He whispered, knowing that no one in the room would have the least idea what he was talking about.
“No, I haven’t had the nerve. That’s not something someone can just go up and ask. Perhaps to a tiny four year old it would be ok. That is something that I’d like to see.”

“If you do then you can describe it to me. Sounds morbid but then humans are a curious lot.”

After just about twenty minutes in there they were wet with sweat, hair dipping and very warm. They decided that a good cooling off was what was needed.

This time as soon as they exited the sauna, they wrapped their towels around their waists and ran to the sea and didn’t stop running until they were up to their shoulders in the icy water and its spray.

“Ohhh this is so cold, but so good.” Jerusa dunked her head under and Urs swam under her legs almost upending her.

She shrieked and held on to his shoulders.
“Didn’t I tell you that it was really something? My family came here a long time ago. All of us did this very same thing.”

“Your family? Even your mother?”

“Yes, mami too and all of the family. I told you it is not viewed as something decadent. We all have a body and all of it is a good thing to have.”

They quickly became chilled and it was time to go to the beach and warm up. Still, even though the sun was out it was chilly. There were little blue and white striped beach chairs that shielded the inhabitants from the wind and were set up facing the sun. They chose one and sat in it together. It was quite cozy.

As they sat, strollers walked by, not at all self conscious. And just as Urs has said, there were quite mature men and women, sagging skin and all just enjoying the day. Jerusa decided that being here was a truly liberating experience.


After a couple more trips to the sauna and sea they were ready to call it quits. They dressed, dragged themselves to the bus that seemed to run every fifteen minutes and soon were in the small town near the beach.

They got rooms for the night and after dinner they both crashed. The outdoors had been quite energy draining.

After she was safely in her room for the night, she showered for the third time that day and since she was in the privacy of her room she decided to sleep nude. She placed some low music on her docked MP3 player and lay back on the bed. She wished that she could call him and ask him to join her, even if no more than for old time’s sake. She was faithfully taking her prescription for the PGAD and it was tightly controlled, still, she was left with the desires that any normal woman has.

She didn’t want just anybody thought, she wanted him. Just as he wanted her but was too stubborn and too busy enjoying his righteous anger to give in. Oh the hell with it. She picked up the phone only to realize that since he had booked the rooms; she had no idea where his room was located. She could always get the desk to call him and ask him to call her but she had a better idea. He knew her room number though. Perhaps she could mentally call him to her.

She closed her eyes and pictured herself lying alone on the bed and longing for him. This went on for quite a while but she was also tired from the sun and the sea. She was just drifting off when there came a tap on her door.

She shook her head to wake up and padded softly to the door. He had answered her call.

CHAPTER 21

(I don’t like Pain)

Before answering she slipped into her blue wrapper. “Urs, what are you doing here?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t send for me?”

“How could I? I don’t know your room number.”

“I don’t think you need my directions. You have a direct connection to me. I heard you, in my head. I saw you lying there on the bed, nothing on, and you were begging me for one last time together. And with no strings even. I heard you Jerusa. Now tell me you weren’t you thinking those very thoughts?”

She took a deep breath. She hadn’t really thought that it would work. Was she becoming some kind of sorceress? “I was thinking of you, but it was only because you won’t allow me to speak freely to you. Don’t tell me that you actually heard my thoughts.”

“Didn’t I just tell you what I heard and saw? You tell me, was I right?”

“Yes. Exactly. But I didn’t do it deliberately. I didn’t know.”

“It seems to me that you have discovered a way to make me listen to you so you might as well speak your mind.”

“I’ve already told you. I love you and I want to come back to you. What else is there for me to say?”

“There’s a lot for you to say. For one thing, one of the lasting scenes I have of you is you writhing on the bed, trying to masturbate your way out of misery. We will be separated perhaps from time to time. How will you deal with that? It opened my eyes. How will I know that you won’t seek out other men?”

“I was widowed for nearly eight years, I did not seek other men then, why would I now if you and I were together. “

“So you say. Then when you went for treatment, you used that very reason to leave me. Why? Wasn’t I standing by you, doing all that I could to help you? What didn’t I do? How did I let you down?”

“I couldn’t stand to be a drag on you Urs. I’m not rich. I definitely am not … spectacular and then I had – have an unusual problem. I had nothing to bring to the table. What did I have to offer you?”

“Yourself. You had yourself to offer. You are all I’ve ever wanted didn’t you know that?” He finally moved away from the door and walked into the room. “I have enough money for us. I can take care of you. I want to take care of you. I want to take care of you. I am not spectacular either, as you call it. Glasses wearing, wild haired, professor type, that’s who I am. A bit of a weird personality that is who I still am. But you loved me anyway. Can’t you understand that I love you as you are, not as some figment of my imagination? I so wanted you to love me too but you let me down. You didn’t even care if I took other women. When I told you that I’d look up one of my old girlfriends you didn’t even blink.”

“Oh I cared. I wanted to beg you to stay. But nothing would have changed.”

“If you had asked me, we’d still be together. By the way, how is your PGAD? Did you say that it is now controlled? And you are telling me that you are no longer triggered? Is that why you are ready to come back? Your confidence in yourself is now restored, is that it? What if it comes back, will you be ready to leave me again?”

All the while he barraged her with his many questions she shook her head “no”. She wanted to cover her ears. She could see that his anger was rising and with it his willingness to be reasonable.

“Urs. I had only loved you for one month. My husband couldn’t stand my sickness and we’d been married for three years. I had no reason to trust you. You were just a boyfriend – a famous boyfriend at that.”


“You had more Jerusa. You believed in our dream – at least you said that you did. But if you believe it as you say, you’ll know that ‘we’ are not new Jerusa. We have longed to be together at least in one other lifetime. We had that opportunity and you threw it away.”

He sat on the foot of the bed and adjusted his white robe. She realized that he was nude beneath it. “How did you get here in that? Weren’t you afraid that you’d get caught with your butt hanging out?”

“This robe is quite thick; besides, my room is just around the corner, on this floor. I’d never get too far from you just in case you need me.

"But I don’t want to talk about that. This was to be our life – our payoff from our suffering. We went to our deaths longing for each other. Didn’t it ever occur to you that as Ulrich, I took care of you but it wasn’t good enough was it? You died. Didn’t you ever suppose that it wasn’t all about you? That it wasn’t all about your feelings either. Just maybe I need to have you rely on me and to let me take care of us Jerusa.”

She could see that he spoke from his heart.

“I know that you have other things to do with your life other than earning money and looking like a beauty queen and becoming – oh I don’t know, whatever women try to do and then reach some fabulous goal. You don’t have to do that in the conventional way. You could still have found yourself with me in your life.”

“We still can Urs.” She was emboldened because this was the first time he had been willing to speak without the anger overcoming him. “It’s not too late. We love each other don’t we?”

“I don’t know. Do we? Love is more than lust. We can **** twenty-four seven but until we can trust each other and work things out, we are not going to get along.”

“I’ll do that.”

“What? Screw 24/7 or work on our problems?”

“Both.”

He finally laughed. “We’ll see. I’ll give it some thought. When we get home.“

“Do you want to call it quits, this vacation I mean, so you can go home and think?”

“No,” he stood up to go. “We only have a couple of days left. We’ll go on to Berlin. I am enjoying spending time with you. I only came tonight to let you know that when you do whatever you did, I can see you and hear you calling and I know that you were thinking about one last f… time together but it’s not going to happen.”

“It’s not? She could hear the disappointment in her voice. “But why not? You’re ready.” And she gestured to his robe and the tented front.

“I don’t want you feeling used and maybe crying after it’s over.” He thought her more emotional and affected by lovemaking than he.
“I won’t cry I promise you. I need you.”

“Nope, no way.” And he turned and headed towards the door.

Jerusa flopped down on the bed. She wasn’t too disappointed, after all, she understood that he was a man and had to save a bit of face. He had agreed that they would continue the discussion after they were both back in their respective homes.

She heard him chuckle with a bit of irony as he turned around before he opened the door. “You don’t know how hard it is for a man to turn down what you are offering do you Jerusa? Move over.”

She scooted over to make room for him while he dropped the white robe. She slid out of her wrapper, thinking how pedestrian this all was. Where was the romance, he had always been romantic before, there had been food, candles, laughter. She thought that this ‘no love’ screwing would be an experience that she’d remember for a long time. She wasn’t opposed to it; she was just surprised that he could be so cold, especially after he had been so hot for her.

And it was different this time. It was all about him. He had pulled her into his arms, warmth and pleasure at being near him flooded her senses but he only gave her enough stimulation to make it easier for him. Then it became as choreographed as a dance, as directed as one would be in a movie she suspected, because she had certainly never been behind the scene involved in movie making. Orders were barked and when she attempted to ignore him he held her down on her stomach while he planted small nips all along her body from her nape to her butt and then assuaged each one by using his lips to suck her skin. “You’re so soft,” she heard him murmur.

She didn’t let him know that she heard him. She thought he was conflicted. He had come back for this when he had vowed he wouldn’t. He had not shown much discipline for one who prided himself on being in control of himself at all times.

She held herself aloof from him emotionally, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to sustain his annoyance and disappointment in himself for long. He didn’t have it in him to treat her unemotionally either. She estimated that in less than five minutes he would have forgone his aloofness and would be back under her spell, if for no more than tonight.

She bided her time, lay there and allowed him to have his way and she wasn’t too far off. It was just about five minutes when he pulled her to lie on him and they smothered each other with kisses. She could not be silent as she writhed and moaned and he joined her with low growls in his throat.

“What would you have me do Jerusa?”

She had never been shy about expressing her needs, as long as it wasn’t in the face of that dreaded PGAD. She crabbed her legs and climbed him until she sat at his chin. She felt his strong hands on her hips and he again puller her to him but this time when his tongue touched her clit, she had to hold onto the headboard to withstand the onslaught of feelings and emotions too if truth was to be told.


He knew just the right touch. She didn’t know how he did it but it felt like the he was exploring her with a figure eight that hit all of the very sensitive places until she exploded and collapsed like a balloon with its air gone. She allowed herself to fall back and he nimbly followed her, holding her tightly while she shook and returned from the world that he had taken her too.

“I didn’t want it to be like this Jerusa. I don’t want you to feel used if we don’t get back baby; I love you but love is not enough but even so, I could do this with you for the rest of my life."

She smoothed his hair and invited him to her body. “I’ll not be hurt. Not any more than I hurt already.” He entered her then and she was sure that whatever remorse he might have felt a moment ago had been overcome by passion. Whatever their problems were, this was not one of them.

Afterwards as they lay facing, smiling now and then and talking in low tones.

“I almost let you forget the rubber Urs. But I couldn’t bring us back together that way.”

“I almost let myself forget it too, but I know we need to have a smooth slate when we come together. A baby straightens nothing out. Children should be wanted because they are loved and not because they are accidents.”

“Why have you never been in love before? What happened?”

“I never told you that I hadn’t been in love before did I? I don’t know if I have been or not. I only know that whenever I have thought myself in love, something happened, usually I brought that happening on all by myself if you want me to be perfectly honest with you. You are the first one that has dumped me.”

“Maybe that’s why you were – are so angry with me. You don’t like the feeling.”


“Probably.” He said drily. “That’s a big part of it I know but I also know that before you, there have been other reasons. First of all, in the early years I always felt like I was going to miss out on something if I hooked up permanently too soon.

“We men have a sense of entitlement you see and we are natural-born one-uppers. If there’s a possibility of upgrading what we already have for something better, usually something that will make our friends drool, we say bring it on! The grass is always greener and no matter how great his current girl is, a guy doesn’t want to feel like he’s missing out.”

“That is horrible.”

“Those are the sentiments of very young men. Up until around twenty-four or five for me.

“Then I fell for a girl in the same opera company. She didn’t want me and I thought my heart was broken, that was when the game soured a bit. That was when I went into my ‘notch in the belt’ period.

“We men give in to our opportunistic tendencies and put as many sexual conquests into our repertoire of experiences as possible. Most men will never commit until they have the feeling that they’ve experienced enough different women. But every guy’s definition of enough is different so when we grow up just depends when we have marked everything off our sexual checklists or our friends convince us that we can’t do better than whomever the current girlfriend is, that we will stay in the relationship.”

“And so at 25, nobody convinced you that what you had was the best?”

“Nope, not then. And then a year later, it was too late. By then, I had new goals. I had other aspects of my life that I had to put into order. I was working on my career and I didn’t want to commit to anything but it right then. That phase of my life lasted all the way through until I found that Il Divo would be a hit.

“I guess the best I can say about the relationships that I had in those ten years was that we were ‘in like’ not in love. “I stayed with one woman for two years because the sex was great and she never pushed the issue, but I knew the minute I met her that she wasn’t ‘The One’.”

“So why did you invest any time in a relationship that you knew would ultimately end?”

“It would have ended sooner if she had pushed me. She would have been better off if she had demanded that I take action earlier. I had no complaints, she was great in the sack. It was good experience for me. I cared for her and I didn’t want to hurt her but I knew that if I stuck around, she’d have been happier at first but miserable later on. After all, she deserved to be with someone who loved her as much as she loved me.”

“You are quite arrogant aren’t you?”

“I don’t think so. Throughout the whole experience I was looking for evidence that she’d change for the worse. Once you move in together and she comes down on you for leaving a wet towel on the bed or tries to tell you what to eat or order you around, we might not say much but we are chalking it up, wherever we file the information about whether we are going to hang onto the relationship.

"Blame our married friends and our relatives who took the plunge before us, we are hyperaware of what could go wrong down the road.

“Even if we’re crazy about a woman now, we panic that you’ll pack on the pounds, want sex once a month and nag us day and night, so we secretly flag certain thing we’re scared might be a harbinger of bad things to come.

“A lot of my friends ***** about how the sex takes a total nosedive after they get serious about a girl.”

“So these are all of the things that you are going to be thinking about while you’re making your mind up about us? I don’t stand a chance do I?”

“Actually, all of those things that I just told you of are in the past else I never would have told you. With you, it is an entirely different judgment that I must make and that is, do I want to be vulnerable? Can I live with the pain that you will cause me if you leave me again?”

“I keep telling you I didn’t leave you, I was just going to get treatment and then I thought it would be best if I didn’t try to hang you up for an indefinite period of time. I didn’t want to force you into leaving me.”

“That’s a new perspective. You were trying to save yourself pain so you pushed me away?”

“Yes. You must have known that I loved you terribly. I couldn’t have stood it if we had promised to be faithful and to stay in love and you had called me from Bulgaria or someplace else saying that we were through. Even as it was, you threatened me with your Holland girlfriend.”

“I’m glad that you admitted that. It gives me something else to think on. You might not know this yet but guys are very protective about their emotions. I am especially so. I’m scared ****less of being hurt. It would be better that I not pick you back up if I’ll be devastated if you dump me. There is such a thing as caring too much. Think about how vulnerable and paranoid you’d feel if you were nuts about a guy who might be fickle.

“And you know Jerusa, guys’ friends are not helpful at all about helping him get over it. We have to cover any hurt up or else we look weak. It would be better for me to act like I’m the winner before you turn me into a loser like you already did once before.”

“Oh get over yourself Urs. I won’t hurt you. You won’t hurt me. It’s as simple as that.”

“We’ll see. I’ll take some time to think it through once I am out from under your influence.” He snorted.

Not truly laughter but more than solemnity too.

CHAPTER 22

(Ostalgia)

As it was, they remained under each other’s influence. Truth to tell, if he was going to give serious consideration to their getting back together, Jerusa would have been overjoyed to end the trip that very moment. Instead they went on to Berlin the next day, arriving in the afternoon. They decided that on this last night before flying back to The Hague and then Urs going on to the UK, they would attend an Ostalgia party.

“Ostalgia is a phenomenon that I want you to see. It proves that you can get used to anything and then long for it even though it’s not good for you.”

She wondered if that was an oblique reference to their romance. Was he saying that they weren’t good for each other? Still, she did not voice her thoughts aloud. She allowed him to continue in his self appointed role as tour guide.

“Ostalgia is a feeling that many of the old timers who were confined in East Berlin feel about the good old days. As many as half of them have forgotten how it really was and now look at those days through rose colored glasses. It is becoming a problem in ways that we can talk about as we ride the train up to Berlin. “

They had gotten seated and were drinking a coffee when she pulled up an article on her laptop. They took the time to read it together.

‘The reunification of Germany which came 11 months after the events of November 9, 1989, has failed to fulfill the expectations of many thousands of former citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The former East Germany may have been seen from the West as a brutal, Stalinist regime run by dictators, but it offered its citizens guaranteed employment for life; generous social programs; cheap public transit; and low-cost housing.’

“Yes, that’s true,” Urs verified. “Since reunification, many have found that freedom is hard work. No longer did they have guaranteed jobs, they had to look for work, many were unemployed and the cost of the more luxurious housing skyrocketed. So it was not at all easy and because of the hardships, they do a number of things to try to bring back the old days.

“Until recently, it was just a play at reenactment. They’d go to parties in their East German plastic cars; some would dress up like soviet officers. And they’d party in boots, just like we did when we were here before.

“But recently things have begun to change and become much more serious. Just a few months ago a famous German artist proposed reconstructing the Berlin Wall very publically. He did it at the World soccer championship.

“According to Blaseus’ concept, that was his name Klaus Blaseus, the new wall should be made out of transparent plastic, and be exact copy of the original wall even down to the length. Its length would be the same length as the original, a total of 47 kilometers.”

“What would be wrong with that? If the people want the wall back, even in plastic form, what harm would it do?” Jerusa asked.

“The German authorities don’t know what it would do but this proposal made them sit up and take a look. They wanted to find out how widespread these sentiments were so they then did a poll of all of the former East Germans. 40 percent said that they were happier under the communist regime. A majority said they were unhappy with the new economic changes."

“Then the government is afraid of a revolution if so many people are unhappy?”

“In a democracy people are always unhappy but that is how freedom works. It is just when it becomes so widespread … One old timer said that under the former regime, people looked out for each other. Living under a dictatorship and standing in long food lines created a feeling of solidarity. You could depend on each other, but now it is money, money, money.


“With these feelings predominating, this meant that when elections are held, the ex-communists took 40 percent of the vote. They were beginning to change the government back to communism.

“Not only were they voting in the former communists, the people were going to specialty shops and buying all the old East German products. They were now buying 15 packs of the infamously rough ‘Cabinet’ cigarettes, ‘Be Ready’ condoms, even cans of Trabi Dust which are manufactured fumes that smell like the exhaust from the one car that they could buy under the old régime. It had a noxious odor because the fuel had to be mixed.

“The overall result is that they were changing the economy. The merchants were willing to supply the customers with what they want. They have forgotten the negatives and only want to remember the positives, for instance they had to wait fourteen yers to get the car that they are now buying fumes of. I wonder if they would want to put up with the wait again?”

Jerusa waited for him to come to a break in his story and added. “This is really causing a problem in the reunification process isn’t it?

“Yes, when it started affecting the political system. When people began democratically voting in all of the old party officers, folk started fighting back by reminding the ostalgists how it really was.

“There was one woman, her name is Edda Schonherz, she is about 62, and was a well-known presenter on East German television. Back in 1974, she made the mistake of believing that détente between East and West Germany would loosen travel restrictions. She promptly applied for a visa to visit West Germany and the US.

“A few days later, 11 Stasi officers burst into her bedroom: “Get dressed! There is a matter we have to clarify," said one. She told her 11 year-old son ‘mommy will be right back’. It was three years before Schonherz saw her family again, after the West German government had paid the East Germans for her release.

“Edda and others are trying to remind the older ones how it really was and educate the young East German’s as to how things really are. You see, they received no education about Hitler, and were told nothing about what had happened to what the west calls the second dictatorship under communism.

“Without education about these truths, and with the older folk overlooking the bad and longing for the way it used to be, the youth have no guides.

“The ones who remember have begun making movies that tell the truth.

“One very good movie is ‘The lives of Others’. Edda arranged a class trip to see this film and it hit the young people like a bomb. It was really a shock to them to see what impact the Stasi polices’ activities had on people’s lives. The young people knew nothing about the murders, the incarcerations, the spying.”

“I saw that movie Urs. I don’t know why but for some reason I had always thought it came from Hitler’s time in Germany. I did not pay close enough attention to it to determine the time frame. I was more interested in the drama and the thriller aspect. I don’t imagine it would have been nearly as enjoyable to me if I had lived through those times.”

“You are right. And because of this ostalgia, the former East German’s have been reluctant to place any kind of punishment on the former officers. They had been reluctant to open the files which would reveal what was really done to some of the people. Instead the people put the officers in high positions.

“One man did get his files opened and he found that his wife had spied on him for 10 years. She denied it, said the records were wrong but they did turn family member against family member by giving extra privileges. That’s why that movie is so good.”

“We will have to watch it together. I think I will see much more than I saw the first time. And so, what are we going to do this time in Berlin?”

“I thought we’d visit a few more of the places. I’ll show you the East Germany’s crosswalk lamp, known as the Ampelman another ostalgia thing that they fought to keep. They even have a candy version of it.

“There is a bar down the street from huge communist factories that has been decorated with East German memorabilia and various army uniforms and a portrait of former East German leader. Although I doubt we will do this, there is a place where you can have your picture taken with s Soviet soldier look-alike at the former Checkpoint Charlie crossing in Berlin, or rent a room in a sparsely furnished apartment that is a replica of the 1980’s East German accommodation. We can even rent a plastic-body Trabi car that East Germans had to wait years to buy."

“It is a serious matter then. “

“Yes. It threatens the unity. They have been able to bring about reunification of the physical bodies, but the hardest job is yet to be accomplished, reunification minds.”


By then they had reached their destination. They decided that they would try the one night example of the old soviet bedroom apartment and they got the accommodations first so that when they tired, they’d have a home to come to.

The apartment was as austere as Urs had said that it would be. The room was tiny, a two and a half room thing that in totality was the size of one room.

The bed was just about the size of a full bed, which to Jerusa meant that it would mean that they’d have to sleep touching. She didn’t mind that.

A tiny TV sat in the corner with an old fashioned VHS player. There was one chair and that was it. The kitchen was the size of a closet. She supposed if the ostalgia folk could long for this, they could long for anything but she knew that it was not so much this, but what it represented … someone to take care of them.


They got out that day and did all of the things that they had planned. It wasn’t a particularly uplifting day, to see what people were willing to do to recreate a lifestyle that when they had been involved in it they had detested.

Finally she asked him. “Why are we doing this? Are you giving me a message?”

“What kind of message would you think I would be sending you?”

“Let’s see. You could be teaching me a lesson in staying with you. That by staying with you I could have a life of luxury and ease and that lifestyle is valued by more people than I would think. And…” she persisted when he tried to interrupt her, “that if I pass this chance by and go into some kind of ‘fulfilling career’ I might regret it for the rest of my life.”

He became quite serious. “That just goes to show how two people seeing the same thing can misinterpret it. No Jerusa. That is not the message at all. Look, you work for the WD Foundation. You seem to like what you do. I am showing you how ‘propaganda’ can be useful if it is used to change people’s minds to the right way of thinking. I am hoping that you will consider this information and how it is being used here and perhaps apply it to your work at WD. You could still travel with me and maybe write a movie to be shown in the third world, or even in Europe and America. It would not have to be elaborate but just something to start causing women to think, and men too.”

“Oh Urs.” Was he thinking of how they could be together? She hugged him quickly. “I malign you. Of course. That is the perfect answer. But… I don’t know if I can write. I’ve never done it before.”

“You don’t have to perfect it. Just come up with the idea and write it down. You have the heart of the information, you have been to Niger, you have met the girls and you have Ama, she will be your resource.”

“Are you setting me up to be on my own then? Have you decided to not come back?”

“I haven’t decided anything. I thought that for tonight, we’d rent a movie, something like ‘Goodbye Lenin!’ Or there’s one called “The Red ****atoo” that explores the secret-police or even the one that you have seen already, “The Lives of Others”. We could both explore it together with new eyes to see how such movies can be used for good. “

“There’s nothing that I’d rather do more on our last night together.” and she meant it. Besides it might keep them from struggling like two sacks of flour in that little bed.

She needn’t have worried. The floor provided plenty of room.
**
They were back in The Hague by afternoon. He accompanied her to her apartment in a cab. He didn’t linger long, just long enough for a quick kiss on the cheek and he was off again to make his connection to the UK.

She was trying to stay upbeat; after all, he would be in touch with her either way. It was just that she didn’t know how or when. Would he show up on her doorstep one day, or call or perhaps send her an e-mail. No he wouldn’t do that not by email. He’d be more direct than that.

For the rest of the afternoon until Ama returned from work and the girls came home from school Jerusa ran hot and then cold towards Urs. Why should she put up with his craziness? He knew what he wanted to do, why hadn’t he just told her outright – forget it.

Then she’d have a change of heart and decide that he really did love her, but he had formed some connection to another woman in the interval and he had to clear that up before coming back to her.

He could be as transparent as glass in some matters but there was a side of him that could be closed mouthed too. Somehow she couldn’t imagine that he would roll around on the floor with her if he had another woman waiting – he just wasn’t that low.

Finally Ama came home. She had rushed to Jerusa and had given her a big hug.


“I really missed you Jer. It hasn’t been the same around here without you. How is your prescription working?”

“Just great. Dr. W. is good at what he does. How are you? You look radiant.”

“Well, I don’t know about that but I do have a bit of news. Harm Joost and I are getting married.”

“Harm Joost? You mean the Dutchman that works in the auto shop near the Foundation? I didn’t even know that you knew each other.”

“Yes. But then you don’t know everything my girl. Herman and I used to meet and have lunch together. We got to know each other very well. He’s been a widower for about five years now and he has decided that we should marry.”

“I thought you only liked men from your own country; African men at least. Harm is Dutch.

“I know that. And he knows what I am.”

“Does he know about your … ?”

“That my front is as bare as a baby’s bottom. Yes, he knows that too. That was why it didn’t work out for us before.”

“Because you had so little to work with?”

Ama blushed. Talking about sex was not her forte. “Well, I thought I had nothing to work with. Men from my country are not into experimentation. They just do what pleases them. You know, the up and down, and that’s all they know or want to know. But Harm is different.”

Jerusa reflected on some of her experiences with Urs. “Yes. I can imagine.” She said drily. “But you must have known if you have been dating him for a long time.”


“We talked a lot. But you know none of us women from Niger are too keen on doing that with a man before marriage, and now that I know we are different, it is not something that I was willing to show to him. So I always… I never would. But while you were gone, he began coming by the apartment and one night after the girls were sound asleep, well, we tried it.”

“You don’t have to tell me that it worked for you. Your smile says it all.”

“Now that Dr. W. has repaired the rips and tears, it doesn’t look too bad I don’t think. Of course I have no way of knowing except by looking at the girls but they are so young it is difficult to judge. And guess what Jerusa, I have a G spot and it works just fine.”

“You experienced an orgasm?”

“My first.”
“Well aren’t you something. You should write a pamphlet about it for women who are like you and don’t know how it’s done. They could then pass that information on to their men.”

“Their men aren’t interested in that. They are very selfish I think.”

“Even if there are only two, it will be worthwhile. I am going to be gathering material which will make the basis for an educational video. Will you help me? If you marry Harm will he allow you to keep working with the Foundation; some men wouldn’t want the world to know that their wives have had this done to them.”

“But you work for them Jerusa and you haven’t had it done. No one will ask but if they did, if it will help even one girl, I will do it. Just let me know what you want me to do. I can include my small portion in your movie.”

They had talked about Ama’s good news long after dinner and the girls had gone to bed. Jerusa decided that it would be more convenient if she found a new place. Ama said that she and Harm were going to buy a home but that they all could stay in this three bedroom flat until that day came.

Jerusa declined. “There’s no way that newlyweds such as you and Harm will be to have a third wheel, and the children underfoot. It will be easy for me to relocate, and who knows, the relocation might just be temporary.”

“Did Urs say anything?”

“He’s thinking about it.”

“I don’t understand that man. He must have been really hurt when you broke it off and I’d be willing to bet that he hasn’t been hurt often.”

“He says he’s hurt. I don’t know. It might just all be a big excuse to get me off his back.”

“You don’t really believe that Jerusa else you’d have moved on.”
“Anyway, this weekend, I’ll find a new place. We’ll still see each other at work you know.”

“Still, it seems unfair to run you off.”

“Well let’s have some ice cream to make us feel better then.”

That night the dream returned. Jerusa had learned that her dreams, as she experienced them, was called ‘lucid dreaming’ which meant that she was conscious that she was in a dream while she had the dream. She became the watcher, the third person looking at the dream’s action.

It picked up where it had so often left off. She and Ulrich were alone, in the bombed out building. She ill, barely conscious and he washing her down with cool water to bring her fever down. This time she was awake and knew that he carefully washed her face and ears, her neck. Oh the water felt heavenly. She sighed.

At the sound he directed his eyes to her face and saw that she was awake. He smiled a shy smile that showed the dimple in his left cheek.

Seeing that she was conscious of what he was doing he would have stopped but she put her and on his and said ‘please’.

He squeezed the excess water from the rag and continued. He bathed her chest; he touched her breasts and washed under them. It all felt so cooling, so gentle.

She lifted her dress. Up, up, until it cleared her rump. All the while he watched her and his hands began to shake.

Then she felt the chilly air on her abdomen and she shivered. Not so much from the breeze but from excitement. She knew what she did was wrong. This was a kid but she wanted him. She knew that he wanted her.

He followed her lead until he became the leader. He wiped her all over, down her legs, her feet, between her legs until she felt clean and new all over. And then he parted her legs still looking into her eyes for any sign that she had changed her mind. But no, she hadn’t she smiled to encourage him. She even managed to bend her knees and plant her feet while he awkward in his determination not to hurt her, climbed between her tented knees.

She moaned when he entered her. She the watcher moaned too. It was so beautiful. There was no pain, even though she had not been breached before, there was only wonder and then bliss.

He cried. He was young after all. She pushed her conscience to the background. They would be dead soon. She knew the outcome of this dream. But it hadn’t ended that way this time. Even while she the watcher waited for death, the two in the dream recovered, they had healed each other they soon decided to make a run for freedom.

They were young they were strong again and they made it to the safety of the Allies.

They spoke not a word of what they had done together. Ulrich went to the UK, she returned to the states. How could this be? Both were buried in Berlin. Both remembered their deaths. How could they be alive? Perhaps this new version was a prophetic dream.

Still the dream didn’t end. They were dead to each other for the next seventeen years. The dream never filled in the blanks but neither of them missed it.

Then, one day, out of the blue there they were together again. She was no longer in the first blush of youth. At thirty seven she was still petite, still herself but Ulrich had changed. No longer scruffy, nor starved, he had grown up to be a magnificent young man. But she knew him. And he knew her. The future was theirs if they dared to seize it.

Urs awoke from the same strange dream that was so different from the first one that he had had in the hotel in Paris. He was unaware that Jerusa dreamed the same dream at exactly the same time that he did.

Johanna had returned to him in Jerusa. Why had he hesitated? Was it their destiny to never be together on the same page? Had it been fated that they could forever find each other but yet ever manage to hold it together? She had left him in death years ago. In this life she had left him because of fears, insecurities? What? But he couldn’t hesitate any longer. They had to seize their chance.

With deliberation he got up, arranged a flight to The Hague. At the airport he rented a car and headed to her apartment.

CHAPTER 23

(Dr. Ophelia)

The hour was a little after one. The traffic was heavy for a Tuesday but then, it was getting on in the afternoon. Urs made a turn and glided into the parking space in front of Jerusa’s flat. He was excited. He was going to see her again. She would be his. The dream had done its work. Not only had it told him that they were meant to be, it reaffirmed it with the haunting music that he heard throughout what he now knew heralded the update to the dream. He had heard one of Il Divo’s songs as they had recorded it. He didn’t know about the song but he did know that that version had not been around in the forties.

He slid from under the seat and headed towards the stairs that would lead him to her front door. He was just in time to see a tall man, older than he, tap on the door and robed arms reach around his neck and pull him in.


“What the hell was that?” He muttered. Had Jerusa found someone else? Had he waited too long?”

That stopped him in his tracks and he almost turned away thinking he’d find out when he phoned her. But no… it could be anything, but the robed arm around the neck looked suspicious. No… he’d not be a coward. He’d go up and confront them. He must be mistaken, Jerusa loved him. He’d swear that she did.

He reached the top of the stairs and tapped, but he stood back a bit just in case.

It all came clear when Ama, the attractive African woman came to the door.

“Urs. Jerusa didn’t tell me that you were coming today. She’s not in I’m afraid but do come in and wait a bit. She’ll be back shortly I’m sure.”

Urs entered, he remembered Ama but the possibility that the man that he saw and this woman could be involved had not entered his mind. This was looking better and better. In a much improved mind he was able to greet the person introduced as Harm Joost in a friendly manner. He had smiled and nodded oh so graciously after finding out that they were engaged.

Ama brought him up to date on the wedding plans and let him know that Jerusa was even now looking for an apartment not far from where they were located.

Urs was quick to get the direction and said that he’d see if he could find her, perhaps surprise her and they’d go out for a late lunch or early dinner before returning.

“If you don’t see us, you’ll know that we’re fine and will see you when we see you. But if Jerusa returns have her call me.”

“Friendly chap isn’t he?” Harm remarked after Urs left.”
“Yes. I’ve only met him once but I don’t remember that he was quite that talkative before. It must be because he’s happy.”

It was harder to find her than he had thought it would be. After exhausting his options looking around the high-rise, he realized that she could be anywhere most likely taking a look on the inside of one of those offered.

He decided to walk down to the corner deli, the same place where they had eaten so long ago and as he walked in, he was conscious of several women, chatting, laughing, some of the obviously from Africa, but the two particular ones who stood out were not from Niger, he thought perhaps they looked more like Waris Dirie, perhaps from Somalia.

Then he spotted her. Sitting in a corner alone, shuffling through papers and pausing now and then to look out the window, but her mind was not on the sites.

“Looking for me?”
She started a bit and then turned to him, a huge smile on her face. She knew how to make a guy feel welcome.

“Urs. You’re here.”

“In the flesh. I decided to come over. Check up on you. See if you’re still well.” He touched her face and affectionately tugged a bit on her hair. “So, are we going to do this?”

“I’m waiting for you. Have you used your logical mind to think out all the possibilities? Can we make it work? Are you over your pique?”

“Pique! You make me sound like a little girl.”

“You said it not I.”

“I … I want us to go to counseling. Pre- marital counseling if you want to call it that.”
“Pre- marital?”
“Well maybe pre getting back together. Anyway, I think we can benefit from having someone from the outside that we both trust to look in and say what they think. We don’t have to listen.”
She thought about her recent dreams. Each one had been an update that reinforced the idea in her mind that they belonged together. “OK, we’ll do counseling.”

“Good. When can we return to the UK?”

“Why do we have to go back there, you’re not on tour, you have some time off, why can’t we stay here? Look, there are some really good doctors here. Not all of them are sex therapists. I’m sure that we can find someone, or get Dr. W to recommend someone. “

“But counseling takes awhile. I’m sure that I’ll have to be back before long. It’s not just when we’re on tour you know. We are constantly going over songs, looking for possibilities. It will be better if I make my home in the UK right now.”

“How long can you be away?”

He thought for while. “No more than a month.”

“Look, we’re not crazy. We can start with a very good doctor here, we can see what is said and then if we must continue, we’ll get a recommendation from someone here for a good one in the UK. These people all know each other, especially the good ones.”

“Have it your way Jerusa.”

“I can’t just fold and have no say in what we do Urs.”

“You are the one that asked me back. Now that I’m back you want to balk.”

“No. That’s not what I’m doing. I just want to be important too; in this relationship I mean.”

“You are important to me. Isn’t that enough?”
**
They found a small apartment in the same short term high rise that she had been in when she first came to The Hague. It was not a home but it would do.

Urs didn’t even bother to go back for his things. She moved the few things from Ama’s and said they’d keep in touch.

The next day they made an appointment with Dr. Elaine Borcher the head of psychiatry and she said, “I have given you three therapists as possibilities. Neither is recommended over the other it is merely what is best for you as a couple. If you will carefully read over the brochures, and then together write down your one choice, I think you can safely conclude that that is the best for you.

Together they chose Ophelia Sparks.

Dr. Ophelia Sparks was small energetic and youthful for her age which Jerusa guessed was nearing sixty.

She was also all business and she got right down to it.

“I have received your data from Dr. Borcher and I want you to know that this will not be the traditional therapy session where one sits on the couch and examines ones feelings and impressions. The important thing is that we not try to change your feelings but to give you tools with which to live.

“I will do an intake interview with you this evening, recommend a plan of action by Thursday evening and ask you to return a few times in order to fine tune the action or actions and send you on your way.”

She had waited until they nodded in assent then sent Urs out into the waiting room while she asked Jerusa a number of questions only to bring Urs in when she had finished with Jerusa. In about an hour and a half they were out the door and on their way back to their apartment with a return appointment on Thursday.

At first it was a bit strange, never having lived together before except for the few last days in the hotel, then he had been on tour, and with the traveling and performing, there had never been a dull moment. This time, they had time on their hands.

On this day, Monday, Jerusa made dinner for them, she was an ok cook and when they sat down to the small table he teased her about the food, with exaggerated chewing motions, very tough or very doughy; either way she laughed, and took his plate away and wouldn’t bring it back. Clearly the message was eat it or eat nothing. After that he behaved. It was very good.

Later she told him about what she had worked on since she returned to work. The Foundation had been excited about the idea of an infomercial movie. At a meeting they had decided that two separate messages were needed. And further, two different versions of each of the two messages for a total of four.

The same message would not do for the west, among the émigrés, as would be needed for the folk in the native countries. With the folk newly in the west, they used ‘discovery’ as the tool that would work best.

She pulled down her large story book, sheltered in a portfolio that depicted a young girl entering Jr. High School and learning for the first time that she was indeed different from all the other girls, and the shame that she felt.

The second aimed at émigré girls and concentrated on the danger that childbirth brought, both from extreme youth and from the cutting and sewing and how it all had to be undone and redone with childbirth.

“I don’t think many changes will come about in my lifetime Urs, but I do think it will make people stop and think about why they hang so tenaciously to a practice that never had any benefit to it and if it ever did it certainly doesn’t now.”

The storyboard for the ones for the natives concentrated on the hard costs in lives of women and children with the results of early childbirth, brain damage to the children, and fistulas for the women. The cutting she left alone, that would come later. For now, it was crucial that girls be allowed to marry later, at least not before fifteen, and that they be allowed to go to school until they reached that age.

“What was the purpose of this procedure being carried out? Why was it started? “

“It’s called infibulation. I call it cutting because folk know that word. Some of the literature says that it used to be a sort of initiation into adulthood. But that reason has been forgotten because most girls undergo it between four and eight. Others say it is for cultural and gender identity. Jomo Kenyatta, the late president of Kenya argued that FGM was inherent in the initiation which is in itself an essential part of being Kikuyu, to such an extent that "abolition... will destroy the tribal system". A study in Sierra Leone reported a similar feeling about it.

“But most scholars think that the real reason is to control women's sexuality and reproductive functions. They believe that it reduces a woman's desire for sex; thus reducing the chance of sex outside marriage. The men don’t think that women can be faithful of their own free will. Now it has become all tied in with the ‘honor’ of the whole family, especially of the men."

“So just like in the west we once chose to use chastity belts on our wives, they chose a much more dangerous practice didn’t they?”

“I would say so. The sewing up and opening cannot be pleasant. And regarding the belt, was that ever true or just an idea that got floated around? Whatever the case, chastity belts went out in the middle ages didn’t they?”

“Democracy probably had a lot to do with that, some men would have continued the practice if they could get away with it don’t you think?” he said mildly.

“In some cultures, enhancement of the man's sexual pleasure is a reason cited for mutilation yet anecdotal accounts, however, suggest that men prefer un-mutilated women as sexual partners.

“And most often it is done on a whole group of girls in a village, those of about the same age at the same time. Of course the girls are not told what is going to happen to them, but they are told to be brave and then after it is over they are given gifts and they are praised.
“Sometimes a trained midwife will be available to give a local anesthetic. In some cultures, girls will be told to sit beforehand in cold water, to numb the area and reduce the likelihood of bleeding. More commonly, however, no steps are taken to reduce the pain. The girl is immobilized, held, usually by older women, with her legs open.

"Then out comes the broken glass, or a tin lid, even scissors or a razor blade or some other cutting instrument.

"Then when they’re sewn, they may use thorns and after that the legs may be bound together for up to forty days. Antiseptic powder may be applied, or, more usually, pastes - containing herbs, milk, eggs, ashes or dung - which is believed to facilitate healing.”

“Stop! “I’ve heard enough. I don’t need all of the gory details.”


But Jerusa continued. “The girl may be taken to a specially designated place to recover. For the very rich, the mutilation procedure may be performed by a qualified doctor in hospital under local or general anesthetic. So it’s not so bad if you have money.”

Urs was coming to understand how very passionate she was about her chosen subject. He was pleased. He wanted her happy in her own right and not feeling left behind or in his shadow. But he had to lighten the atmosphere. Finally he said, “Come over here and let me check you out, see if you’ve been infibulated while I was asleep.”

Jerusa grinned, realizing that she had gotten carried away and went over and sat on his lap. She so happy that they were a couple again.

Both were sure that they’d never be apart again.

CHAPTER 24

(Surrender)

“It is hard to believe how attached we are to the meaning of words, not to the concept or the word itself, but what the word means literally. “ Dr. Ophelia spoke as she began her consult with the couple on Thursday evening. “We have attachments to all sorts of things, people, places, coping strategies, personal roles, and substances. They are important because they help us stay where we ’want’ to stay. Notice how you react when you are struggling with something or another in your life and someone comes along and tells you – SURRENDER.

Urs and Jerusa looked at each other. What kind of bunk was this? Surrender? Surrender to what?

"I see that you have preconceived ideas, both of you tighten your shoulders, and Urs, your lips curl downwards.”

Both Jerusa and Urs nodded, and looked at each other. So far she was right. She had expressed their feelings exactly.

“Did either of you think of asking me what my meaning of the word is?”

They hadn’t. They had each taken his own measure of the word and applied the recognized meaning. “We didn’t think to do that Doctor. Have we failed the test?”

“There is no test. I only seek to broaden your understanding.

“Now I will tell you my definition of the word ‘surrender’. By you not asking suggests to me that you are giving up and leaving all of your personal responsibility elsewhere. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I think you are saying that when we accept the word without finding out what you mean, we are not taking complete responsibility for our understanding. We are giving you some power that we don’t even know we are giving you.”

Urs was speaking but Jerusa felt like she was in some deep philosophical discussion that she was not at all sure she belonged in.

“Exactly. Now you could have taken another approach. You could have reacted rather than remaining silent.

"REACTING suggests that you are “arguing with the suffering” and engaging in the process so that the engagement can support your stay in the ‘wanted’ place. In other words, you could have argued with me saying something like, ‘we didn’t ask because we didn’t know to ask’ but then you would be reacting to my words, rather than accepting. It is a good sign that you didn’t lash out.”

Urs shrugged, not willing yet to be complimented because he didn’t understand where the doctor was going. Jerusa settled down to listen until she did have a ray of understanding. She too was unwilling to commit herself enough to answer until she was sure where the woman was going with this.


“The surrender of which I speak is about allowing control to fall away, allowing trust to emerge. To do this you must realize that all you have is the present moment. When you surrender in this manner, it becomes control.

“Have I thoroughly confused you? Jerusa, Urs?”

“It sounds like a mind bend to me. Practicing surrender is gaining control? You’ll have to explain more doctor I’m afraid. So far you’ve said that before reacting to a word, find out what the speaker’s intent is in saying that word instead of reacting to the word.”

“Exactly. And what did I say surrender as I have posed it means?”

“I think you said ‘don’t react’ because reacting keeps you where you are, constantly arguing with suffering. By arguing with suffering one keeps on suffering.”

"Precisely. Now the practice of surrender that I recommend that you two follow is based on the premise that all humans have a higher self and a lower self. It is sort of Zen. You want to surrender to your higher self, so that the higher being, the God that is the Universe can come in and run your life and control your lower self.

"As long as you define surrender in the traditional sense of giving up the control that your lower self thinks it has to have to survive, you will not be practicing surrender.”

“The lower self should surrender to the higher self and let it take control?”

"If you have read the ‘Secret” you may recall that conscious creating – have you read the secret?”

Jerusa nodded and Urs shook his head no.

“Well the Secret talks about conscious creation. All of the 12 step programs, for alcohol and drugs for instance teach that you create your life with your thoughts. While this belief is very empowering, it makes you 100% responsible for your life and this belief by itself is unforgiving."

“It means that you alone are responsible for the outcomes of your life. I believe that.” Urs volunteered. She ignored that comment.

“In the realm of conscious creation, of which the 12 step programs are a part, there’s a backlash against ideas like surrender, powerlessness, and letting go. It’s almost as if, in our discovery that we can create our life with our thoughts, we have an excuse to ignore the greater Presence that underscores life.

“Put another day, through our lower selves we have found a way to control our destinies. We cling to it and won’t leave an opening for the flow of life.

“But if our sole belief is of conscious creation, at some point we hit a barrier. We learn that we are not in control. Things happen to us that have no explanation. We then must reformulate our thinking. That is what I am asking you to do today. Reformulate your thinking.

“Go as far as you can on your own but when you hit the barrier, you need to start employing your conscious creation thoughts with a few other beliefs that may seem contradictory to it, like powerlessness and surrender. We must surrender our intentions and affirmations, loosen our grips on exactly how we want the world to look and allow Spirit to unfold and manifest in our lives.”

“Are you talking about religion? Are you trying to convert us to something?”

“No Mr. Buhler not at all. It matters not to me what particular belief system you use to manifest God in your life. But at some point, to find true happiness, we all must cultivate the belief that Spirit/God/Consciousness exists, and is truly all good. If we believe that Energy is all good, all light, we are not afraid to relinquish the reins on our lives and allow that good to come into manifestation through us.

“I have reviewed your interviews separately, and looked at them together. Jerusa is concerned about a number of things; one of them is subjugating her potential so that you can meet the needs of the relationship. She wants to be with you but she wants to be ‘somebody’ in her own right, not just an appendage to your success.

“Urs, you, on the other hand want her with you and you are willing to work with her to help her find herself while she is with you but that means that whatever she does she’ll have to do with your career in mind.

“I am saying that both of your aspirations are entirely possible. But to do so, Jerusa you must surrender and have faith that your higher self will find a way for you to do this.

“Urs, you must surrender and believe that Jerusa loves you and will not leave you. You have indications that let me know that your fears are not based in reality. Perhaps a past life in which she left you is influencing you now.”

They both were remembering the dream and they must have look quite spooked for the Doctor said quickly they thought “It is not necessary that you believe in past lives, if you prefer call them ‘remote memories’ in which you have the ability to pick up thought from others. At any rate no matter where the thought came from, it is the same. You have been influenced to think that you will be abandoned.”

Neither of them had mentioned the dream to Dr. Ophelia. They had agreed not to talk about it thinking that she’d think they were crazy. Now they were sure that she would not think that. She had hit the nail on the head.

“Well Doctor, there is this dream that both of us have had. We were two different people in it different but enough alike that we recognize each other. In that dream we were parted, but we did love each other.



She was not at all surprised. “Then you will believe me when I recommend that you surrender to the power of that dream. Love each other and surrender to each other.

“Here are a couple of practices that you should put into your lives. Make it a practice to kiss each other often. People don’t touch enough these days. I would say kiss for ten minutes, yes, even before you make love. Not only does it get the endorphins flowing which will increase your feelings of love and raise them to a higher plane, women seem to need that prolonged interaction. You will try it and let me know how it feels.

“Also, practice meditation. Three minutes a day is enough. The brain doesn’t recognize duration as much as it recognizes regularity. Sit quietly and go within. Allow all of your concerns drop away. That will lead your higher spirit to make its way into your physical self. Your physical self will then become the hands of your higher self.

“I will have you return in one week. After that, you should be much improved, more at peace and confident that the decisions that you make are not made alone. You will come to recognize that you have the universe on your side.

She stood, releasing them from this strange appointment.

**
The first thing they did when they walked into their apartment was to look at each other for probably the tenth time that evening. “Are we really going to try this? Do you think it will work?” Jerusa had asked. Not at all sure that she wanted it to work. Surrender to what? To him, just do as he asked, leave The Hague and become what, a camp follower?

“Look Jerusa, we promised each other that we would try to work things out. This is a part of doing just that. It feels silly to me too but I have to hope that the psychiatrist knows more than we do about things like this don’t I?”


“I think she’s a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. If she had been a psychiatrist we would have a medication prescription to calm me down so that I’d be too doped up to know that I was resisting you.” She managed to laugh.

She took out the small bag that the receptionist had handed her on the way out. “Look, she’s written down exactly what we are to do.

"At least once per week, we are to engage in ‘loving surrender’ to each other for at least ten minutes. During these ten minutes we are only allowed kisses and caresses above the neck. We are to look into each other’s eyes and concentrate on feeling loving thoughts.”

“Loving thoughts? Not laughter? This is going to be very strrrrange.”

She sat at the table and read some of the printed material that had been included too that outlined the philosophy of their new ‘program’ but they didn’t try it right away. In fact as a show of their skepticism and perhaps rebelliousness and disbelief in the process, they waited until the day before their next appointment. And then not quite able to flaunt it, after all they had asked for help, they gave in and acted like adults instead of rebellious children.

They had been out window shopping, a favorite of theirs since they felt that they were only marking time until they could end these confounded sessions. But, after walking around for three or more hours in the Gazaarm, they had found this marvelous little store that sold food and drinks that were brought to the Netherlands from Iran.
They found sweets, spices, and even food and drinks. And they even learned that if you are in the mood to smoke from a hookay {water pipe} which they were not, they could have done it right there while shopping.

They did, however watch a demonstration and found that the water pipe operated using a water filtration system. While the store keeper stood on a little homemade platform demonstrating how it was used, a second store keeper kept up a running narrative.

“The word hookah was common in English language because the large number of British who came to India when that country was a commonwealth. At that time British men sampled the water pipe. One British man, William Hickey, shortly after arriving in India 1775, wrote in his memoirs:

‘The most highly-dressed and splendid hookah was prepared for me. I tried it, but did not like it. As after several trials I still found it disagreeable. I, with much gravity requested to know whether it was indispensably necessary that I should become a smoker, which was answered with equal gravity, "Undoubtedly it is, for you might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. Here everybody uses a hookah, and it is impossible to get on without it" ‘I have frequently heard men declare they would much rather be deprived of their nightly sex than their hookah.’

They found it interesting, a pipe that is better than sex. On that note it was time to leave that shop.

It was afternoon when they walked into their apartment and Urs suggested that they had better get their ten minute training exercise out of the way so that they’d have something to report to their doctor the next evening.

Feeling a bit awkward she went in to shower, lotion, she wanted to be smooth, added a little sprits of cologne , she wanted to be sweet smelling, and brushed after all, ten minutes of nothing but concentrating on the neck and above had the potential to be nerve-wracking.

“You look like a bride.” Urs responded to her sterile beauty dressed in a white shift like gown while he was in his red shorts.

“I think you’ll have to get out of that getup, or at least put on an undershirt. We can’t carry this off with you half nude you know.”

“I don’t think we can carry it off period. He reached into the nightstand and pulled out – a timer.

“Really Urs, a timer?”

“She said for at least ten minutes, I have a feeling that ten minutes is a long, long time.”

He set the timer, slipped on a wrinkled tee shirt and folded back the covering on the bed. “Time’s running Jerusa. Come on, let’s get going.”

He thought he heard a faint knocking but when he listened again he heard nothing.

She slid in and they collided in a bundle in the middle of the bed.

The first two to three minutes was spent laughing and trying not to touch except above the neck which they found quite hard to do. A little self consciously they settled down, a peck here, a tentative touch of the lips there, a sigh at the softness, a deep breath at the want. Tongues touched and receded only to touch again. Half way through the ten minutes of kisses they were both warm and not at all rosy, they were as cherry red as a fireplace.

They both forgot that this was an exercise. More than once Jerusa had to remove Urs thigh that he wedged between her knees. She had to bring him to his senses and once back on track he retreated into the warmth of her hands, on his neck, in his hair. She was the epitome of lack of restraint. She was boneless. Who knew that prolonged titillation would bring about this abandon? This was surrender! For both of them for just as surely as she was his, he was hers. Enthralled, enraptured, hers.

Sex followed. How could it not? But it was enhanced by the memory of the closeness that they had shared.

Jerusa wondered how long term partners let this important aspect of their love life go. Courtship had brought kisses, early on. The kisses with caresses followed all too soon by sex. The sex was satisfying to be sure but when combined with the sensations of entrusting ones partner just being present, with nothing more demanded, not perfection, not satisfaction, not any performance that could be judged, it was freeing. It was wonderful. Women all over the world should demand this special time from their mates.

Dr. Ophelia’s smile widened when Urs and Jerusa walked into her office that evening. Something in the body language of them told her that they had been a success together, that even though they might not understand what had happened, they had both benefited.

“So what do you feel?”

“I feel happy.” Urs described their experience.

“Yes.” Jerusa confirmed. "It is a happiness that lasted all day. Not just what happened but the memory of how close I felt to him. I still feel that.”

"And did you start the meditation practice too?”

They had not. And they didn’t deny it. They had been too busy putting off practicing the kissing exercise.

“Start soon. I think you will continue to see amazing changes in your lives. Now, that is all I have to offer you. The rest will be up to you. Have you made any firm decisions about your future … your future together?”

This question was one that Jerusa alone could answer. Could she live with Urs as she was now just as an ordinary woman perhaps never to be well known, or important, or powerful? She would be in his shadow for now but perhaps not always. It was a singular dilemma for a woman or a person who ended up with a person who was famous and well known.

But she also knew that if she wanted to be with him, she would have to sacrifice her dreams to his. He was not the kind of man who’d be content to have her located a continent away while she found herself. She had to find herself through and with him.

“I will be moving back to London with Urs. That is if he still wants me. I think that based on what you have said Doctor, I have to learn to believe that whatever the future holds for me … for us … can be worked out by our higher selves and I can relax and allow whatever that is to happen. If it is no more than being with him and enjoying what we have I can do it and not feel that I am a parasite.”
**
A week later they arrived at Urs London flat. He found himself feeling complete but at the same time feeling a sense of urgency.

The tour was starting up soon. He wondered if he should marry Jerusa. Was now the time or should they wait? The update of the dream had given him hope that at last, during this life they could live it out together and he wanted to believe that they could but was that really true?

Jerusa got to work making the place a home. It was fundamentally a bachelor’s pad, black leather couches, stereo, well done but not homey at all.

She traded out the leather sofa for a cloth one that was plush and taupe. She decorated by adding live plants and throw rugs on the hardwood floor. When she finished she was quite pleased. It was a place where they could live together for as long as they liked, until they decided to purchase a home or to have children. It was all working out, finally.

One evening Urs was preparing to meet up with the guys. When he heard the knock at the door he thought they had come by for him but there was no one there. Later he decided that he had misunderstood and not long after that had left the house to join them at a local watering hole to have a few drinks.

He could not contain his joy. He had been closed mouthed for so long about his business he found that he didn’t want to remain silent. The wanted the fellows to know about the joy he had found with Jerusa, his soul mate.

“They have us trying a surrender technique. It is really wonderful guys. I highly recommend it.”

They had been skeptical. “Surrender? To what? Haven’t we surrendered enough? They’ll be leading us through hoops before it’s over with. It’s bad enough all ready.”

Surprisingly, Carlos had been the first to say that he was willing to try. “With me being gone so much I’ll need all the help that I can get. What do you do man?”

“Actually, it works for both because it allows the endorphins to enter the bloodstream, which is the same thing that happens when you run, or exercise, or even have sex. It is the feel good hormone that gives you a natural high.”

“Then why not run or just have sex, why go through the kissing things” David had asked.

Seb knew the answer to that one. “Because, my friend, the kissing is just a prelude that allows the woman to feel even more relaxed and excited. If you run, only one person feels it but kissing, voila you feel it together, and then you make the love.”

After that Urs had explained it in detail and then left them with these cryptic words, “You will never regret taking the time to place your soul mate on a pedestal. You surrender to win. What’s that knocking?” He had looked quizzically at the guys but no one knew what he was talking about.

They were all getting a bit of a buzz by then so it was time that they made their way back to their apartments.

And so with the tour now going, they gradually made their way back to where it all started, in Paris, at the Sofitel Hotel, across the street from the Buddha bar.

That afternoon Urs and Jerusa lay on the bed, both perfectly happy and content. They were listening to some of Il Divo’s music, from their latest CD ‘The Promise’. The tune was ‘With you I’m Born Again.’

“Urs, that’s the very same song that I heard in my dream. Of course, at that time I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t know that you had recorded it. I remember thinking at the time that it was singularly beautiful.”


He had sat up, surprised because the most profound dream that he had had of them together, the one that had given him hope to keep trying to move ahead with her, the one that said that they had a future together had also had this very song, it had grounded him, given him hope and that was why he loved it.

And so they shared their dream with each other only to find that it was a truly shared dream.

Funny he would later muse that they didn’t choose to try to surmise what the dream had meant. They were content just to lie there, close in body, closer in mind and drift off to sleep.

It was the last peaceful moment that Urs would have for a long, long time.