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The clangour of Hamburg’s Sunday morning church bells is like a summons to the service at the end of the world. Behind their accelerating cacophony, in the ululating counterpoint in the background, is the ever-distant wail of an ambulance siren. These bells lament; are never uplifting. They fill me with dread. It is the rocking of the earth, the clanging of the universe pulling itself apart. I rise and leave. On days like these there is only one place to be in Hamburg. The rhododendron leaves in the cemetery are rolled together like miniature Christmas tree angels; wrapped up in their wings, to protect themselves. Lazy drivers are out in force, misusing the cemetery as a bypass, driving as recklessly as owners of high-performance cars can afford. We live too fast. We want to cram as much life into this short span of years as is humanly possible and so do not live out our few moments. The present becomes lost in the flickering of days, months, years. Decades pass and we realise that we have not lived them. Our angels remain rolled up, wrapped in their winter wings, heedless of the passing seasons. An icy rain is falling relentlessly now. At the West Ring, Fate has resumed her customary lookout point at the roadside. With bosom bared and gown flowing, she drags boy and girl brutally behind her, prone bodies grating over the pedestal’s shells and limestone, leaving a trail of coarse sand. The boy, pain distorting his face, claws the ground; the girl, eyes closed, has succumbed to the struggle. She has the same long hair, of course, this skinny girl, and reveals her handfuls of half-spherical breast; the same full, sensuous calves and — although her expression is exquisitely pained — her beautiful face. Because the girl being dragged across the biggest cemetery in the world is Opal Hush and she is a prisoner both of Hugo Lederer’s sculpture, Das Schicksal, and of Fate. “Wisdom, Intuition and Understanding,” I say, and Opal Hush’s sallow cheeks are pearled with raindrops as I hang my Star of Solomon talisman around her stone-cold neck. As the thaw extends itself to me, Hamburg’s evening windows are burnished copper in the setting sun; an alloy of nostalgia and anticipation. The colossal wonder of every living day takes on the form of a gentle prayer around my heart. In that coppering of windows lie my memories of Opal Hush. Everything can be reduced to its essence; the essence of her is coppered glass against the verdigris on Hamburg’s rooftops. Well-being never gets closer than just out of reach. I do my best to leave it there; Fate always comes when least expected. —0O0—
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