Wolfgang didn’t actually know how to commit suicide. Everything, poison, hanging, slitting wrists, seemed painful and fraught with problems. He wouldn’t be able to bring himself to hurt himself in one of those fashions.
If he felt better, he could hike into the mountains and throw himself off a cliff. As long as the cliff was high enough, it should guarantee a quick death. But what would he think about as he fell. What if he changed his mind?
His thoughts grew darker. He had been taught that to kill oneself was a sin, but many sacrificed themselves for others and it was considered heroic. Food would run out and his worthless mouth would be one less to feed. His would be an act of heroism.
And it didn’t matter anyway. Life was useless. In pain, no family, far from home, a home destroyed by the idiocy of man and alien and probably forever radioactive, life had no point.
He prayed for God to take him that instant. He no longer wished to live. Everything would be easiest if he could just will God to take him, to reunite him with his wife and child. There would be no mess. Leah would be upset but would know he had succumbed to his injury. She would mourn a while but not think less of him.
He begged. He pleaded.
But God did not take him.
He would have to do it himself.
Pain overcame him several times, not even allowing him to think. He felt it would never end. It would be his constant companion for the remainder of his days, which he ardently desired to be short.
In the darkest moment of depression, a bright light of an idea appeared. The quickest, simplest, most irrevocable way to solve his problem.
His MP23 hidden in the basement.
He started to struggle to get out of bed. He didn’t even know how to fire the weapon; the Americans had trained Leah before they left, but he had been too ill. But how hard could it be? You put a bullet into it and you pulled the trigger.
He’d have to go outside if he could. He didn’t want to get blood everywhere, and the weapon was so powerful the shell might go through walls and hurt someone else. He didn’t want that on his conscience.
Pain overwhelmed him and he lay back, taking deep breaths. If he was going to do this, it had to be now.
The door opened.
A figure rushed in, rushed to his side.
“Are you okay?” Leah asked.
He couldn’t speak. He started to cry.
She ran around the bed and crawled into the empty space next to him, putting her arm over him and carefully cradling his head next to hers.
“Are you okay?”
He wept and she wept, her tears touching his skin.
“I had a terrible dream. I thought you were dead. I thought you...” Her voice trailed off. “I’m so glad it was just a dream and you’re okay.”
Wolfgang began to sob. Every ounce of pain he felt came out in his tears. He shook and Leah held him, caressed his head gently, whispered to him.
When she said, “I love you,” he sobbed even harder.
Wolfgang insisted on getting out of the room, out of the house, and walking outside. He told Leah he needed sun, although clouds covered the sky and no one had seen the sun or moon since meteors had fallen from heaven. She always accompanied him on his walks, holding his arm tightly in hers and steadying him when he grew weak. She often made him sit on a small bench her mother had placed in her garden.
When he grew stronger, he wanted to help with the garden, so they taught him to get down on his hands and knees and pick weeds. This way, Leah said, if he passed out, he wouldn’t have quite so far to fall.
He laughed until it hurt.
Weeds were few. Nothing, not even weeds, grew well with no sun. Some had built makeshift hothouses, and Leah’s father began gathering materials to do the same. But he was late in making his decision, and prices had become exorbitant.
Food was even more expensive.
They never spoke of the night Leah came into the bedroom and saved his life. Wolfgang never even knew if she knew what she had done, or just how timely her entrance had been, but she never left him alone at night, crawling into the small bed with him and holding him. He insisted they keep a sheet between them and she giggled and called him old-fashioned.
Sometimes he awoke in the mornings and she was gone, but often she still lay there, asleep. Occasionally he kissed the top of her head. She never repeated her words, that she loved him, but he knew from her every action that she did. The better he felt, the more his head healed, the more conflicted he felt. He prayed to know what to do. He asked his wife in his head what he should do. He pictured her laughing face, her sweet voice as she sang lullabies, her strong body as they jogged together.
What should he do?
No answers came.
He recovered slowly, food stocks dwindled, and nothing of consequence except zucchini grew in the garden. Leah’s father finished the small hot house and they moved tomato plants into it. Could a man live off tomatoes and zucchini? What would they do in the winter?
One morning Wolfgang lay in bed on his side, Leah snuggled into him more than usual, still asleep, and thoughts of what they might do in the winter nagged him. He pushed them aside and tried to live in the moment, to enjoy the here and now. He remembered a scripture from the early morning seminary class he had taken during high school.
“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
There were enough problems to be solved in the present that he didn’t need to concern himself with the future.
In the present, the room was warm, the bed comfortable, Leah’s form next to his nice. He thought of his wife. She never wore a bra to bed, saying it was uncomfortable, and he knew Leah didn’t either. He started to think of Leah’s body under her pajamas and thoughts of her and his wife intermingled and confused him.
“You’re feeling better,” Leah whispered and rolled over, slightly away from him and up on her arm. She started to pull her shirt up over her head.
Wolfgang’s mind reeled. Part of him ached with desire and longing, part of him screamed that this was wrong.
He caught Leah’s hands, gently pulling them so her shirt came back down. He had caught no more than a peek, but the peek haunted him.
“I can’t,” he said.
Tears welled up in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No, it’s okay.”
She started to get up to leave, but he held her hands, pulled her closer to him, and kissed her mouth. She kissed him back, then pulled away.
“It’s your wife,” she said, but there was a question behind her statement.
“Yes. No.”
He switched to German. They always spoke English, even watching videos in English when the power came on, which was seldom more than an hour or two a day. It often took three or four days to get through a movie. Leah had English grammar books and workbooks and they practiced together. Wolfgang thought his English was improving, but what he had to say now was important, and he had to make sure he said it right. So he said it in German, hoping she would understand.
“When my wife and I were married, we made covenants with each other. I hold those covenants sacred. One of the things I promised her was that I would always be faithful to her. I would never do certain things outside the bonds of marriage.”
Confusion played about on Leah’s face. She didn’t understand some of the German words Wolfgang used. Language made everything difficult.
He switched back to English.
“I cannot make love to you, or to anyone, if I am not married to that person.” His words sounded blunt, but he didn’t know how else to say it. Leah said nothing.
He stared at her. He didn’t understand the look on her face.
“Leah,” he said softly. “Will you marry me?”
“You want to marry me jus
t so you can have sex with me?”
She pulled away from him and stormed out of the room. He didn’t see her again for the rest of the day or that night. He cursed not being able to speak English better.
The next morning at breakfast she eyed him coldly, silently. Her parents could feel the tension between them and thankfully said nothing either. He decided it would be best to leave, to thank Leah and her parents for nursing him back to health, but he had to be on his way. He didn’t know where to go, but he probably should make his way back to Germany, back to his homeland, where he could speak and be understood.
He never made it out of the village.
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