Eden Motherlandtrilogy 1

Chapter 12/ Teil6

   12. The Party

The wind ate at the lagoon and the grains of sand it took with it and hurled them at our faces as if to declare war on each and every one of us.

I was back on the dam and Ramon's voice behind me was just the whistling in my ear. He didn't catch up with me for a long time, was just a shadow, like all of us here.

Down on the beach, the water was foaming. It was pushing woolly, Prussian-blue waves and white gout in front of it. I wanted to wallow in it, wanted to throw my smelly trainers in and dig my bare toes into the wet sand. Maybe I should do it!

I was dead, had been buried. Once you were dead, you had other rights here in this world. I imagined that I had left my fears there in that hole and they would never come out. I was no longer a boy, but a man.

Everyone was gone. I did not see them. I did not hear them. Because I didn't hear Ramon screaming any more either, I let my arms drop to my knees and stared at the omnipresent water.

The water was angry. It raged and roared. But it no longer frightened me.

I screamed at it like one would restrain a hungry animal. It hissed and I screamed again.

Then I saw it...I had never noticed it...The sea gave me a gift.

I stumbled down the dunes, took off my trainers and sat down in the sand so that the surf did not reach me. The waves wanted to lick my toes, but I kept pulling them back. I smiled as I pulled one through.

There was hardly any gas left in my lighter. Even if it no longer worked. I would never throw it away. Above me Ramon's shouting loomed in the background: "Run boys, you can make it! The

first five get an extra ration!"

"Of course, keep lying!"

Then the well known words: "What doesn't kill us, only makes us harder!"

How right he was!

Slowly, in the shadow of the wind, I crept back up the dune and closed up the field from behind.

Peter ran in front of me. He was pumping hard and struggled to brace his lanky body against the storm.

"Shhh!", I did, overtaking him and dropping back again.

"I hate you!" he gasped.

"I hate you too!", I laughed. "Happy birthday!"

"Thank you! For thinking of it?"

Here in Eden, no one actually had a real birthday. We did what we did with names and just picked one. Peter chose 13 September because the weather was good and there was something not too soggy to eat.

At that time he said, "Today shall be my birthday, Christo!"

And I said, "Okay!"

This time Peter's birthday fell on a Friday and it was stormy.

We ran and ran, ran over the dunes and Peter stumbled for the first time.

He picked himself up and limped on. Below lay the camp and it was only a stone's throw. But the clouds billowed around it, blurring the houses, and the light of a lantern on a power cable bobbed ghostly up and down as if sending Morse code from beyond.

The problem with running: either you could or you couldn't.

My friend couldn't. He was completely fucked and slid crookedly down the dune, propped his elbows in the sand and stayed down.