Читать книгу Solstices - Crisalis . - Страница 2

The door opened slowly, as if moved by an invisible hand, gliding softly and silently on its hinges until it was half open. Eight men and three women turned simultaneously, each taken by surprise, nobody saying a word. Apparently they were wondering whether the open door might bring the ongoing meeting to an end.

The meeting had by now reached its lowest energy level. The dominant men were trying to prove their point by endlessly repeating their opinions, like an endless rhetoric loop, thereby pushing differing opinions off the table. An experienced chair would have been able to summarise the outcome, and the meeting could have ended half an hour ago. However, that was not to be, evidently. They could not reach a consensus that would satisfy the company’s management; therefore everyone seemed caught in a kind of paralysis.

Charlotte had been experiencing this slowly rising paralysis inside her for some time. Before this numbness reached her heart, she decided to visualise a brightly pulsing yellow-orange light in her body. She knew that she had to act before the endless talking in circles made her lose so much energy and vitality as to make it impossible for her to have the important points manifested in the protocol. Just as she had managed to stabilise the light inside her to a warm and steady pulsing, the door had suddenly opened, silently and softly.

A shudder went through Charlotte. Tension crackled in the air and she noticed some of the men were getting nervous. They had been discussing a 15% staff reduction, even though the company was doing well, which was causing uneasy feelings in some of the participants. Charlotte sensed thoughts like 'sabotage', 'revenge' and 'spying' coursing around the room while everyone looked through the open door into the empty foyer. Suddenly there was a strong presence in the room, quite in contrast to the destructive, down-to-earth atmosphere of the meeting so far.

Before the tension could become unbearable, Muehlin interrupted the silence by snorting softly. In his function as general manager, he was not only in charge of this meeting but this was clearly his territory. He even lived one floor up in the penthouse. He gave another supercilious snort, laughing disparagingly and said, 'Don’t worry, it isn’t a vengeful ghost, but the cat belonging to my wife. I should say, to my ex-wife. She preferred to leave the cat with me. I have no idea how the beast managed to get in here.'

Ah, Charlotte thought, that’s why he’s in such an icy mood.

Muehlin jumped to his feet, pointed towards the open door with the air of someone used to having his orders followed, and barked, 'Cleo, get out! You don’t belong in here.' Cleo completely ignored Muehlin. Mewing softly, she jumped elegantly onto the table and slowly – head and tail held proudly high – marched the length of it until she reached Charlotte. Her raven black coat and white paws were reflected in the shimmering dark cherry wood of the table. Everyone’s eyes were on the cat. Muehlin gestured angrily but seemed helpless. It was quite obvious that he did not want to touch the cat, nor did he want to be made fun of. He turned abruptly and left the room, shouting for his secretary.

Meanwhile, Cleo had reached Charlotte and sat down with dignity on the table in front of her. Charlotte chuckled. She slowly lifted her hand and softly massaged the cat’s neck. At once the tension in the room disappeared. Some smiled and others started talking about their own cats and dogs or children. When Muehlin stormed back into the room, his secretary in tow, Cleo was in Charlotte’s lap, purring softly. Muehlin stopped in front of Charlotte, the secretary standing behind him with a cage in one hand. Astonished, Charlotte looked at Muehlin then his secretary, the cage and back at Muehlin, while she continued to stroke Cleo. Impatiently, Muehlin said, 'Give me the cat now, so we can continue our meeting.'

'But she doesn’t bother me at all. Why don’t you just leave her with me?'

For a moment Muehlin looked really angry and his secretary flinched slightly, but suddenly his whole face lit up. 'Okay then, why don’t you take the cat home with you? It seems to be a woman’s cat anyway.' Gruffly he took the cage and put it on the floor beside Charlotte’s chair, dismissed his secretary with a flick of his hand, and with a satisfied snort once again took his seat. 'At least I don’t have to see that cat any more. I would have had someone take it to the shelter otherwise.'

Everyone looked at Muehlin in surprise before they turned to Charlotte, slightly embarrassed. For a while there was total silence and only Cleo’s steady purring could be heard. At first Charlotte was too much taken aback to reply. She tried to gauge her feelings and felt how the warm and happy sensations emphasised the orange and yellow light. Therefore she nodded at the questioning looks of her colleagues and replied,

'Okay I’ll take her. But I must ask you to end the meeting now, because I’ll have to go and buy cat food and litter before the shops close.'

Muehlin threw an approving glance in her direction, acknowledging her ability to take charge of the situation, but Charlotte did not wait for his reaction. She carefully put Cleo in the cage, gave a few instructions to the person writing the protocol and made for the door, calling out, 'See you, everyone'.

She stopped by the secretary’s desk, leaving her phone number in case Muehlin’s wife changed her mind and wanted Cleo back.

Walking down the stairs, Charlotte became aware of the sudden happiness filling her since she had decided to keep Cleo. This happiness had defeated any lingering fatigue. Cleo contentedly sat in her cage and watched the world around her. In spite of the fact that they were in the middle of office buildings, Charlotte found a small stall at the next street corner that sold cat food and litter. In no time at all she was at the station waiting for the train to take her home. She felt satisfied and almost happy. The meeting had been very strenuous and tiring at first and she had had the feeling of being superfluous and unsuitably qualified for her job. Cleo’s appearance had completely turned the situation around.

When the train pulled in, she chose a seat by the window, snuggled into her coat against the window, put her hand inside the cage to stroke Cleo softly and closed her eyes.

She thought about her job with Synergia. Her work with one of the world’s largest management consulting firms was a safe job and very well paid. She was in charge of women’s affairs and worked as a mediator. But mediating newly formed teams and the monitoring of projects was becoming more and more difficult. The atmosphere had become increasingly rough and implementing solutions seemed to need more and more energy and time to break through the protective walls her colleagues had put up. Apart from that, the topic of sexual abuse had now made it into the highest level of the company. After it had repeatedly appeared in different media, the company management felt obliged to state an opinion and now Charlotte had been told to plan a series of seminars on the topic. At least the directors had implied that they understood this topic wasn’t to be dealt with in one single presentation. Charlotte sighed. If only she could banish the world from her thoughts for a short time..., fall into the semi-darkness of a doze for a few minutes. She felt herself starting to drift, becoming lighter, gliding into that semi-darkness.

At that moment the train stopped and two men got on, taking the seats in front of her. Their self-assuming discussion began to dominate the train compartment. Business connections, transactions, the DAX index, excellent balancing… Nobody in the train could escape their bragging. Their mobile phones kept ringing, they told their invisible employees what to do and entertained their colleagues with little jokes. Charlotte sighed and tried to bury herself deeper into her coat. All to no avail. It was not possible to drift off even for a moment. She got up to go to the loo.

On her way back she watched the men out of the corner of her eye. One man was relatively small and was balding, the other had very well-trimmed dark wavy hair. Both were wearing perfectly tailored dark suits, ties and held black laptops on their knees. The smaller man was obviously trying to impress his neighbour, perhaps due to his lack in size, by gleefully telling him how he had managed to sack a female employee when she returned to work after maternity leave. Charlotte didn’t understand the story and the dark-haired colleague obviously hadn’t understood it either, but he seemed suddenly very eager and alert. He asked his companion to explain again how they had managed that because usually the lay-off protection in Germany would protect women coming back from maternity leave from getting fired. The balding man now began to explain with enthusiasm that they just closed job contracts that did not define the tasks in detail. As such, they could claim any time that the tasks the employee was supposed to do no longer existed, and this way they were legally allowed to dismiss them.

Charlotte slowly sat down again. Unobtrusively, she put her hand on the back of the man’s seat near his head. She visualised herself invisible, connected with the energy of the fox, filling herself with love and light energy and searching the connection to the universe. When she felt warm and full, she sent the energy through the palm of her hand into the crown chakra of the man in the seat in front of her. She stopped listening to him and concentrated completely on the flow of love and understanding, straight from the universe, through her own crown chakra, her body, the palm of her hand into the man’s top chakra. She sensed his voice suddenly becoming reluctant. 'Well, at the end I almost felt sorry for her. But her husband has a well-paid job.' His colleague glanced at him with surprise.

Charlotte now put her other hand on the back of the dark-haired man’s seat and concentrated on sending love and light to his heart chakra. For some time both men were silent. Suddenly the curly-haired guy asked the one beside him, 'Isn’t your company able to afford that? I would think that given its size it should be possible to organise a replacement for the duration of the maternity leave.' The words seemed to have escaped him involuntarily. He hadn’t been aware of where they were coming from. His colleague made a startled sound. Both men fell silent, gazing out of the window and avoiding looking at each other.

Charlotte tried to keep her concentration on sending love and sympathy, but a big joyful laugh tickled in her throat. She closed her eyes to concentrate more deeply but was unable to. She stopped and looked up. The curly-haired guy was standing in front of her. 'What in hell’s name...?' He left the question unfinished, his look more baffled than angry. 'What are you doing?'

Charlotte flushed and leaned back in her seat. The laugh rose in her throat and finally broke out of her. To her surprise the curly-headed guy joined in her laughter, shook his head and went back to his seat, looking thoughtful. The two men kept silent now, but Charlotte could see out of the corner of her eye that they kept throwing anxious glances in her direction. She evidently made them uneasy. A few minutes later they agreed that it was time for a pint and they set off in the direction of the train’s dining car.

Charlotte sighed. Perhaps what she had been doing was wrong. Had she really done it in order to bring more love and understanding into the world, or had she just tried to manipulate the two men? But it was okay to manipulate people into feeling love and understanding, wasn’t it? She shook off her doubts. That was nonsense. Love and understanding could not manipulate anyone. They helped people find another piece of their true self. She was calm now and finally fell asleep and only awoke shortly before she reached Basel.

She was still sleepy when she walked along the cold and draughty platform. Suddenly she noticed someone had fallen into step at her side. It was the dark-haired guy from the train. He hesitated and now Charlotte felt embarrassed.

'How…, how did you do that?'

Charlotte smiled hesitantly. 'What did I do?'

'Well, I suddenly felt very warm inside and my heart seemed to open. I haven’t felt that good for ages. But', now he hesitated again, 'also very sad, all of a sudden, almost painfully sad.'

Now it was Charlotte’s turn to be surprised. She hadn’t expected such open directness. And she hadn’t thought that he would be able to feel so much of what had been going on. She asked herself if it wasn’t strange that these businessmen in their strict dark suits could be as sensitive as this guy and still do what they did. How could they live in a world like that and endure it?

They walked along silently. Suddenly the man seemed to force himself to ask, 'Can you do that with everyone?'

Charlotte hesitated. 'Not always. And in most cases I can only do it if the person involved wants me to do it, if they allow me to do it and if they feel a need for it.'

He nodded. He seemed to understand her. 'Because, I mean, my wife..., she’s depressive. It’s very bad. Perhaps it would help her if she could feel a bit of this warmth in her heart for once?' He spoke abruptly, fast and almost as if he was afraid of his own words. The last few words were spoken with hesitation, almost like a question.

Charlotte smiled. 'Yes, I could try', she said. They had reached the exit and came to a stop.

'How would I be able to contact you?' he asked.

'You can’t contact me at all', Charlotte said forcefully. She felt him shrinking back and smiled. 'Your wife has to contact me.'

He looked at her enquiringly. 'Your wife has to take the first step. If she can’t do that, I can’t do anything for her. Then it’s simply something you’ve made her do. That won’t achieve anything.'

He looked as if he had been caught doing something forbidden. But when Charlotte offered him her card, he dared to ask, 'But how do I explain to her…?'

'Well', Charlotte said earnestly, 'just tell her what happened to you. No more and no less.'

He looked very doubtful. She gave him another nod and strode off in the direction of the tram. He stood where she had left him and looked at the card in his hand.

'Charlotte Lesab, Healer Tel. 079-8899661'.

Just a mobile number, no address. He was surprised to realize that he would very much like to know where she lived. He was even more surprised to find that it wasn’t because he found her interesting and attractive. He didn’t want to come onto her. He would like to see her again, but not for the usual reasons. He knew that there was another dimension to this.