They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

72 Autumn 2011

I stared at Hans-Jürgen for some moments, anger rising inside me, even though I knew I was in the wrong here.

‘Would it?’ I challenged. ‘Would it really make you sad if Bruno and I left? Really? You’re not giving me that impression.’

I realized, although I didn’t really care, that I’d raised my voice and people on either side of us were looking at me.

He waited for some moments, then looked wistful. ‘Sandra, this would make me very sad.’

‘Well, I don’t think I’m going to be able to remain here, anyway.’

He looked surprised. ‘No? What is the reason?’

‘It’s a bit embarrassing — I never realized that I would have to pay to stay here. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come. I can’t afford to pay around one thousand pounds a day.’ I looked down at the table, at my pasta and beetroot salad. ‘Not for more than a very short while.’

Then something touched my hand.

I looked up and he was holding it and squeezing, gently. And looking at me closely. Like a paternal look. ‘Sandra, I have learned that if something is for free then people do not value this. But, if you have not the money, then perhaps we should look for some other way for you to pay.’ He squeezed my hand again and suddenly I felt awkward. What was he insinuating?

He must have seen that thought in my eyes and he laughed and shook his head. ‘No, no, no! You are misunderstanding! Please, you must know that I am now celibate and have been for a while. I do not have sex or seek sex. I channel all these energies into here, this place and my mission.’ He opened his arms expansively.

‘Mission?’ I asked.

Unhurriedly, he cut off another small piece of pork and chewed, then placed his knife and fork down neatly. ‘There is a question I ask myself, Sandra. I’ve been asking it from a very young age; the older I get, the more it concerns me.’ He drank some water.

‘The question is?’

‘It is a very simple one: would the world be any different if I had not existed?’

I reflected on this for some moments before responding. ‘And are you any closer to an answer than when you first asked that question?’

He raised his arms in the air and gestured around at the fifty or so people in the room. ‘I wish so. I hope that at least some of these people will make a difference because of what they learn and practise here, and at the other branches of my Association that I am going to be opening across the world.’

I felt so divided at this moment. Part of me wanted to tell him he had an ego that was out of control. But the other part of me saw such very deep sincerity. A rich man’s vanity or a true visionary who had the ability to live his dream with open eyes?

After our meal he escorted me back up to our suite, but politely declined my invitation to come in for a nightcap. Not that I had anything to offer beyond tea or coffee.

‘Us will see you tomorrow,’ he said, in the charming way I had noticed that some Germans, no matter how well they spoke English, got ‘we’ and ‘us’ slightly wrong. ‘We will make alternative arrangements for your accommodation in my private suite, where I have very nice guest rooms, and there will not be any more charges. I will have everything you have paid so far refunded.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Of course.’

It was 9.15 p.m. and my dinner date was over.

And yet.

Hans-Jürgen was endearing.

At least he did bloody care, unlike Nicos, who was just a vulture, out for whatever pickings he could take from the carcass of human decency.

I checked on Bruno, opening his door quietly, and to my relief he was asleep. I closed it and returned to my thoughts.

God, I could have done with a drink. I reflected on his words.

Would the world be any different if I had not existed?

Suddenly, again, I found myself turning to Roy for the answer. I knew exactly what he would have told Hans-Jürgen. It had become almost a mantra to him. A principle. It was something I had always admired about him and always remembered. Perhaps, I thought with sudden realization, it was Roy’s defining quality. He would have said, ‘No man ever made a greater mistake than the man who did nothing because he could only do a little.’

Tomorrow, I decided, I would find the Hochmeister and tell him that. But perhaps he knew it already?

Then I reined myself in with a reality check. Hey, you left Roy. Now you’re quoting him. Really?

I walked across the lounge to the open window and stared out across the parkland and the lake and the dense trees beyond, and breathed in the sweet scent of dewy, freshly mown grass.

I felt lonely, suddenly. Lonelier than I could remember. Other than Bruno and Hans-Jürgen I didn’t know anyone here — and I realized I didn’t really know Hans-Jürgen at all. There were a couple of dozen books on the shelves in the room, mostly in German, but I’d seen a large English section in the library downstairs and I decided I would have a browse tomorrow.

I missed having a television.

I missed so much else, too.

My thoughts returned to Nicos and his boat and what was happening. I tried, with the signal that seemed particularly feeble, to log back onto the websites of the Jersey papers, but to my frustration that timed out also.

Probably just as well.