Читать книгу Wanderlust: A Solitary Island in the South Pacific - Nina Hoffmann - Страница 6

Germany. At five thirty, the smartphone rings. SMS from the police. Accident with several fatalities on the motorway.

"I gotta go," I say to Nina, who's still slumbering.

"Oh no, again," she complains.

Sometimes I hate my reporter job. Standing at some accident site and photographing car wrecks - what's that all about? Worse still, it's become routine. Three dead, one seriously injured. Off the road, cause of accident unclear. These are the facts that will later appear in the daily newspaper; the words for the text have long been in my head. Sober sentences. It's actually about people. People just torn out of life, probably on their way to work.

I drag myself to my clothes, pack my camera, put on my hi-vis press vest. There's no time for breakfast or even coffee. While on the way to the scene of the accident I look tiredly at the road, when suddenly pictures shoot into my head. Beautiful pictures, distant pictures. From our vacation on an island in Fiji. It's been a while. I enjoyed getting up there at night ...

After the work is done in the editorial office, my colleagues from the online section tell me that the accident report is already the most viewed item after a short time. In the conference room I get praised for the early morning work; the photo gallery I made with my smartphone is especially well received by the readers. That's why I'm supposed to say a few sentences for the video editors, which they can put over a short clip from the scene of the accident. Business as usual; if it is not a traffic accident, there is a major fire or a robbery/theft/burglary.

I encounter all these situations with professional distance, otherwise I could hardly digest my breakfast. Nevertheless, it always leaves me with a bad feeling when I'm praised for having captured other people's misfortunes. And lately, in situations like this, it keeps flashing in my head. The island.

As I walk past a travel agency with a colleague during my lunch break, I pause for a moment and look at the palm trees that are pictured as advertisements for a trip to the tropics. I would love to go in and book immediately, but the colleague pulls me further.

"We don't have time for this today," he says.

"As if we ever had time for something like this," I answer. "It's a miracle you let yourself be talked into having coffee."

"Don't whine," laughs the colleague.

He doesn't understand that, I think, and I let myself be dragged along; through the crowds back into the editorial building.

In the afternoon I call the police spokesman to find out whether there are still three dead or whether the seriously injured person has also died in the meantime. It stays at three. I update the online message and write that the seriously injured person is, according to the police, out of danger. After that, I go home.

The evening traffic jam is as expected. On the radio is the song I Will Love You Mondays. Actually, a song about the efforts of love. 365 attempts a year to get it right. I interpret it in my own way: 365 days a year "running around and going nowhere". 365 days a year to make the right decision - and get out of here.

When I walk in the front door, I'm frustrated, like always after such a shitty day. Strictly speaking, the day wasn't even shitty - I did my job, got praised for it and now return home to my dear wife. Nevertheless, I am in a bad mood, especially as I am always on call and can be torn out of the evening at any time, even though I already had one appointment after the other during the day. I hardly bring out a greeting, hardly talk a word with Nina. I'll moan at her for little things.

"You didn't buy any butter again, just the nasty margarine," I'm annoyed when I open the fridge.

"Why don't you go buy your own?" Nina gives back. She's right. And actually, I don't even need butter right now. It sounds childish: basically, I just want a beer and get upset about something. Let go of my frustration.

"Well, how was your day?" asks Nina as a peace offering.

"Don't ask," I say.

A little later we sit in the living room and switch on the TV. Zappingly and silently we waste the evening. Actually, I might as well ask Nina how her day in elementary school was - she's a teacher. But somehow I don't have the nerve. Stories of children who misbehave, and of their parents who actually like it too, because of self-development and so on (they are just too lazy to educate their brats - my opinion!) - I don't need such stories today. Even though I know it might help Nina get rid of her ballast. When did we stop talking to each other?

Again I think of the beach. A campfire under the South Seas starry sky. We didn't always talk then either, but it was a good silence. A common one.

While on the screen an ad for a sensational new car runs, showing it drive silently through dreamlike landscapes as if there was nothing more natural than a heap of tin in Mother Nature, my mind goes through the fact that one can fall victim to fate completely senselessly during a banal car journey here. The selection is absolutely arbitrary. The risk of being run over by a tsunami in the South Seas is much lower than in German road traffic.

And suddenly I don't feel like wasting time anymore. Be it in the car or in front of the TV. We all get so much time stolen every day, just like that. And nobody seems to mind. On the contrary, we simply join in because we forget what else we could do. That there are other things we could experience.

"There's no butter or margarine on the island."

I'm looking at her. Just gaze for a moment. "You too?" I ask.

"Yes. All the time; for months."

"But not for a few weeks, you realize that, don't you?"

She sighs. "It would be nice."

"Nina," I reach for the remote control, switch off the device and look into her eyes. It is as if her words had awakened in me a will to make decisions that the daily grind had silenced for a long time. Now it’s reporting back. "I want us not only to have dreams, but to make them come true."

"It's not me," she replies. So it's a done deal, as if we only had to talk about it weeks before. We're going back. We're moving to the island.

In the days and weeks after this evening, I feel exhilarated, standing above things in a way like a superhero who nothing and nobody can touch. Even if doubts keep coming in between.

"Think about what we'd have to organize." Sometimes it's Nina who expresses her shyness, sometimes it's me. There are so many things to keep in mind until you have escaped everyday life in Germany - the apartment must be vacated, the furniture stored, the car sold, the telephone and electricity switched off. It's not comfortable. And these are just the things that await us here.

Once that's done, there are farewell meetings with friends, with neighbours, with colleagues. relatives at the very end. And everyone will ask them, "What are you doing all day? Don't you get bored? Don't you get sick of it?"

Counter question: "What are you doing here in Germany all day? Don't you get bored? Don't you get sick of it?"

On a fateful evening a few useless weeks later, during which I often stared into the window of the travel agency: Nina bangs her way up to me on the sofa, literally throws herself at me and says: "It can't go on like this. We're finally planning this instead of just imagining what needs to be done. My contract's about to expire."

Nina's not employed, not so bad in this case. I, on the other hand, have to quit, which the editor-in-chief probably won't like at all. But what the hell? We do it with our heads together. It's amazing how easy it can be all of a sudden.

I'm excited when I meet my boss to confess in the beer garden. The bewilderment is written all over his face, and he must first take a deep sip of wheat beer before he can say anything.

"You're serious about this, aren't you?" I nod. He nods. "Okay. Lonely island, yeah?" I nod again. "For a whole year?"

"Yep."

My boss still shakes his head, drinks another sip. Then he nods too. “I'll be happy to have you back when you return,” he says.

"Thank you," I reply kindly and rejoice like a honey pie horse. The idea of being eligible for a job again after our year of withdrawal gives me security. Despite our project, which in the eyes of most people is pure adventure, Nina and I attach great importance to security. It is not the desire to take risks that drives us to a deserted island, but the knowledge that we are better off there, that this is what we need right now. Still, it's nice to be able to go back in case it gets too much.

When I get home, I see that Nina has already packed the first moving boxes that we will put under our families' care.

I grin and shout to her: "Free. We are free!"