FOTO-FICTION OF THE DAY

It was in Berlin, in May of '48, when I said goodbye to the woman I had loved with a love I'd never known possible, all through the war years, not knowing how it would end or how we would come through it, how scarred we would be, how torn by unspeakable fears and wounds and emotional betrayals, how capable of resuming a life with the semblance of normalcy.  As it turned out, we were not capable at all, at least not of resuming such a life with each other.  I booked passage on a ship to America and we held each other in the cold morning on the doorstep of her home, of what had been our home, and then without looking back I crossed the Kunz Bunt-Schuh Strasse, a name I was no more likely to forget than the name of my beloved Liesa, and I walked through the park as the tears ran from my eyes.  A man was standing in the cold playing a violin.  The war was reflected in his eyes and in the melody he played, the lover's lament Lili Marlene that everyone had heard sung by Marlene Dietrich.  I set my suitcase down in the snow and stood listening.  The notes from the man's violin, deadened by the previous evening's snowfall and the fog that hung all around us, seemed to reach right into my heart and pierce it, so that my blood spilled red and hot on the snow at my feet.  I nodded to the man and he blinked acknowledgement, then I picked up my bag and walked slowly on.