Hedda visited again and invited him to join her in Bad Homburg for the weekend, which would distract Walter from his misery. The next day, he walked to the train station and took a train to Bad Homburg and then a bus close to the area where Hedda and her roommate, Margaretha, lived. The two-bedroom apartment had been leased by Margaretha’s mother. When she moved out with her new fiancé, the daughter had kept it.
When Walter arrived, Hedda stood at the stove, preparing dinner. He noticed that she seemed very happy to see him and tried her best with the food. They sat down at the kitchen table and had their dinner by candlelight with a bottle of wine. During their conversation about work, future, and life, Walter realized that she liked him a lot and waited for his approval whenever she introduced an opinion. His slightest indecision would immediately trigger a storm of questions from her. He sensed that this could turn into a drama quickly. Since he did not really feel physical attraction, but liked her as a friend, he knew their relationship would not last long.
The winter showed its full strength and dumped a lot of snow on the city. Gaspar mentioned to Walter that now they needed additional snowplow drivers. One night during heavy snowfall, Walter joined him to drive to the depot. He had only prepared by reading the instruction manual, but never attended the training. It backfired during his first night. When the snowplow malfunctioned, and he could not see through the windshield where he drove anymore, Walter dropped it off and never returned. Being at home in the warm apartment felt better than on the seat of a snowplow that did not work.
The Westendstrasse boys received an invitation via Klara to come to Margaretha’s birthday party in Bad Homburg. They arrived in Gaspar’s Volkswagen Variant at the apartment where Walter had been before. Margaretha was celebrating her twentieth birthday and had invited her entire high school class, as well as some other friends. Walter was excited because he had not been to a party for some time, especially with people significantly younger. When they entered the apartment, the event appeared to be in full swing, and most of the guests seemed intoxicated. Walter found a chair he could sit on and watch the scene while nibbling on a bottle of beer. Occasionally Hedda or Klara came by to exchange a few words with faces red from excitement and booze.
A wonderful sight in the kitchen attracted his attention. Packed as it was with many people for various reasons of food and drink, he noticed a tall, blond woman with long legs in blue jeans. She stood in the entrance of the kitchen, talking to someone. What drew Walter’s complete alertness was contained in her jeans while she had her back to him: the most beautiful, perfectly shaped bottom he had ever seen. At some point, Hedda introduced her roommate Margaretha. Walter took the opportunity to congratulate her and realized that he was looking at the woman with blond hair who had her back turned to him. A miracle was about to happen, but Walter had no premonition.
Occasionally he reviewed newspapers’ help-wanted listings but never spotted any fitting opportunity for him. Time passed; the season affected people, longing for a glimpse of sunshine on their skin and a dip in an ocean with palm trees lining the beachfront. Everybody knew they still had months of freezing temperatures in front of them. The carnival period increased activities with organized parties, costume balls, and parades in the street. Many liked to drink a lot of alcohol during this time, to escape for a moment from the harsh conditions and have some fun.
The Bad Homburg high school class that Klara, Hedda, and Margaretha went to organized a party in a popular pub of their town. Walter had been invited as well. He enjoyed watching the people. When he had had enough of it and the idea of spending a night with intoxicated Hedda did not appeal to him, he slowly walked toward the exit. For some reason, he took one more look toward the crowd, lingering a moment between exit and street. He knew he had to walk to the train station, wait for the next train, ride thirty minutes to Frankfurt, and then be alone in the empty Westendstrasse apartment.
As he was about to step outside, he noticed Margaretha approaching with a smile, all dressed up in her green military parka and, it appeared, ready to leave also. Walter had never said more than five words to her before when he met her once or twice while visiting Hedda in their shared apartment.
Margaretha stopped in front of him, looked him in his eyes, and quietly asked, “Would you like to walk home with me?”
He looked back into her light-blue eyes and smiled while nodding his head. Walter almost replied no to Margaretha’s question, before realizing that he had already nodded yes with his head. His concern was about walking through the cold with someone he did not know and then having to walk all the way back to the train station after receiving a “thank you for your company.”
In the dark, the couple marched next to each other, trying to avoid hidden puddles of water beneath the snow, which created hazardous ice spots next to curbs. Margaretha occasionally held on to Walter’s shoulder or quickly grabbed his hand. At one point, they began to hold each other’s hand continuously. They talked little on their way to the small housing project.
At the entrance to the building, Margaretha asked, “Would you like to come in?”
Walter nodded again without saying anything. He tried to stay in the moment, which seemed to be the best he could do. When the two entered the dark apartment, he realized he did not even need to try. The moment continued without him. The flat had one issue during the cold season: each room and the kitchen needed to be heated separately by ovens or the stove, and all of them had to be maintained manually. When they went into Margaretha’s ice-cold room, she immediately began to collect kindling in the kitchen, cubes of fire-lighting material, and matches. They looked at each other after the large pieces of firewood caught fire from the kindling and began burning in a strong blaze.
She asked him, “Would you like to stay with me tonight?”
This time he used his voice and said, “Yes.”
Both quickly undressed. Walter caught a glimpse of her slim body that was breathtaking. With goose bumps on most of their body parts, they laid stiffly next to each other under a piece of duvet. Slowly, the fire created warmth around the bed, and feeling crept into the extremities of the twosome.
When the shivering and chattering of teeth subsided, Margaretha said, “Let’s cuddle up.”
Very gently, they embraced each other by lying on their sides. Walter, being in the moment, could not believe what was happening. He felt peace inside of him that he had forgotten existed. After a while, when warmness took over completely, comfort spread under the duvet. The couple gave each other a quick, very first innocent kiss on the lips, followed by a second and third one. They hugged each other with a little more strength. Walter, very happy, did nothing to encourage any move whatsoever. He stayed completely passive, in a state of bliss. Margaretha asked for permission to caress him, and he nodded into the hollow of her neck. He felt that she had an almost skinny frame with small breasts and very long, beautiful legs. After an initial eruption of passion by both of them, she told him that she had never made love to a man before, that she was very afraid of a pregnancy.
As Walter experienced pure love pouring from his heart, he felt no urgency to do anything and simply went with her moves and suggestions. When she wanted to feel him, he let her stroke it, and she moved her hand along the length of it. He caressed her small, wonderful behind and moved his right hand along her hips to the front, where he found her pubic hair. Slowly, he went to her sacred area as she fondled him. She made a sound and pressed harder.
“Please come into me for just a little bit,” she said.
Without objection, he moved his body up a little to reach her. In slow motion, while rubbing the area with his head, he tenderly tried to insert it into her. Both of them were still lying on their sides. He pushed his pelvis forward and felt that he was inside of her. Margaretha’s body stiffened, she made another sound and then pushed him away from her. Somewhat sweaty now, both of them rested under the comforter and giggled.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked.
“Not at all,” Walter replied.
The unfamiliar lovers did not sleep much during their first night together. Margaretha encouraged the feeling exercise a few more times, and Walter happily complied without wanting or needing anything else.
When they got out of bed the next morning, he did not feel sleepy and did not mind the thirty-minute walk to the train station. Margaretha went off to run errands in Bad Homburg.
Back home in Frankfurt, he wondered if he should call her or wait until she called him. As it happened, some days neither called, but then again the next day was full of excitement and suspense. In the course of their next few encounters in person, trust, an increasing intensity of love, and a germinating relationship established itself. The sweetest of feelings grew stronger as they went along, and the only disturbance occurred one morning in the Bad Homburg apartment.
Hedda, Margaretha, and Walter ran into each other during an awkward moment. Hedda had not been aware of the change until then. Later, she made somewhat of a scene with her roommate, but whatever could be said did not change any facts.
The effect on Walter of getting to know Margaretha showed in many ways. His energy level increased to a higher frequency. He woke up in the mornings, still without a job and not really knowing how to pay the next rent, but it was much easier to accept. Someone else existed who cared for him and perhaps would like to share some time with him. Margaretha’s light and sunny personality included energy of the same quality. Combined with her temperament, intelligence, and a wholesome sense of humor, it gave Walter juice that had been drained from him. When he looked at her, and she returned his gaze, they interconnected like day and night, black and white. He felt that the age difference included complementary assets for both of them. Where she could enlighten him by her sheer youth, he could console and advise her before any hasty decision or redundant turbulence.
Margaretha went to the public College for Social Work with the goal of getting her diploma in two years. She grew up with a brother of almost the same age and did not know her father; her mother separated from him when the children were little. Her mother had provided for them until recently, when she moved to Berlin. It became obvious to Walter that Margaretha suffered from deep emotional wounds incurred in past family dramas. She also had a delicate physical constitution with low immune defenses, which added extra sympathy to his affection for her. He gladly introduced the farmhouse in Hohenhausen to her when they had a chance to drive there with Gaspar and Klara on a weekend. It provided him a lot of satisfaction to take care of her after her stressful week in school and then catching a bad cold. He filled the stove in his old room with its large bed and entertained her with self-cooked food and fluids that, together with the quiet in the house, improved her physical well-being.
Skepticism regarding their relationship came from Gaspar and Klara, who said, “I knew it; I had wished so much for Hedda.”
With time, their qualms softened and then disappeared when they noticed the trust between the two.
The distance between where they lived presented an obstacle, but it posed one that enhanced the uniqueness of their situation and created appreciation of the time they could spent with each other.
As Margaretha continued with her education, Walter resumed examining the newspaper ads for job opportunities and one day saw an announcement from an investment firm. It caught his attention because of the prominent American company name and the job description, which included exactly what he had done before his trip to India. He prepared the required documents for the written application and sent it by mail to the hiring corporation. Within a week, he went to a job interview he had been invited to. A friendly manager conducted the meeting with him in a casual atmosphere inside the wire room, where the actual work place would be. A few days later, he received a phone call from the company, and they offered the wire operator position to him.