Velvet Cages

Heat Stroke Sometimes life seems unbearably strange! One moment I want to dance, shake my shoulders and skip from one foot to the other and the next instant life makes me feel so awful that I no longer wish to live. As the tip of my nose turns red and starts to itch and my stomach behaves as if I had swallowed several small stones, I cannot help but think that I have seen it all. At those times I feel that I have sniffed at every flower on three continents. Flowers! I remember vividly standing once on top of Cape Town’s Table Mountain with my brother Helge. Surrounded by a fresh sea wind and brilliant sunshine we were enjoying the splendid landscape that lay at our feet. On one side a large, horseshoe-shaped bay glittered in silver and blue, its narrow entrance protected by enormous coarsely edged rocks. And on the other side of the shore woods climbed in gentle profusion the hills, which huddled close to the sea. Helge and I talked, walked and laughed together. At one point I had bent down and plucked two or three delicate, unknown yellow blossoms that grew by the thousands around us. I didn’t know that I had engaged in an illegal action. But on our way down I was quickly reminded of the criminal offense I had committed. ‘Didn’t you read the sign?’ an elderly, ill tempered, bored and badly paid official accosted me. Unseen by us, he had walked out of a dark, narrow room that was built into the huge flank of the mountain. Wrinkling his low forehead, he scrutinized me from top to toe as Helge and I tried to leave the large, steel elevator cage that had taken us off the mountain. ‘What sign, Officer?’ I asked in utter amazement as I blushed like a schoolgirl. ‘The one that says all plants on the summit of Table Mountain are under ecological protection, Madam,’ the old guard responded icily without blinking an eye. He obviously had experience with trespassers like me. Before we knew what would happen, the annoyed mountain angel pierced my innocent flowers with another severe look, flapped his enormous, invisible wings and then started to give Helge and me a lengthy lecture about the value and exceptional beauty of South Africa. And the necessity of its preservation I had so blatantly disregarded. I was furious but for my brother’s sake kept my mouth shut and pretended to listen carefully. Helge stands more in awe of authority than I do. When the guard had finally finished his stilted, pompous speech, he waved a shaky arm and dismissed us without any further ado. ‘No more flowers from Table Mountain,’ Helge grinned with relief as we walked toward his car. I love my brother’s good-natured humor. He had developed it in a household in which he was outnumbered by several women: his wife, two daughters, two South African maids and three beloved female dogs of different sizes, fur lengths and breed. Not to mention his two sisters who lived at a safe distance in the United States but kept in touch with him on a fairly frequent basis. Flowers were not my only predilection. During my lifetime I had also listened to an wide range of sounds: From heavy gun shots to bombs falling night and day over a defeated Germany, to the faintest chirps of a mocking bird in southern Florida. I have been mesmerized by the art of a noble tenor on an outdoor stage in Italy, capable of holding a note in a powerful crescendo. And I have heard the trills of tongues as they vibrated against gums and white front teeth of young, thin Ethiopian women in smelly rags. The clever musicians were caught in a trance of joy standing barefooted in the midst of a dusty road in Addis Ababa. While I am in the throes of a depression, I feel as if the world had suddenly turned black like the velvet gown that now hangs uselessly and forgotten in a spare closet. And I imagine death as a welcome escape from life’s wheel whose nauseating turnings force me to babble and cry like a child. Sheer misery reduces me to an eight-year-old girl again who has been punished, most probably for a good reason. Or at least what one of my struggling, war-weary parents then considered to be a good reason for a severe spanking, slowly administered with a rubber cudgel. Ignoring my fierce screams, they measured their judgment against the prevailing Zeitgeist, that mysterious entity, which influences our forever changing morals. I refer to those time-honored attitudes of a country and its people, reinforced by a common consensus and often based on religion, that changes the good thing of today into an intolerable and obsolete one tomorrow.