A confession

From the white bench next to my house, I have a nice view of my beech hedge, of the main road, of the fruit trees in the neighbour’s garden. It is a quiet place where I like to sit when I have things to think about. And that is actually every day.

This evening the weather station warns for severely harsh weather. Strong gusts of wind, heavy rains. Although the sky is getting darker and there is a strong wind blowing, the temperature is still mild for the time of year and there is enough daylight. I sit relaxed in my favorite place. To my left is a cup of rooibos tea. To my right is War and Peace. I still have one hundred pages to go.

"Not afraid of the approaching storm?" The voice belongs to Linnea. She lives a few houses away. She is a teacher, the bassoon player in the local marching band and mother of Maja, her three-year-old daughter. As usual, she has something earnest about her. But that is her nature. She is the first to assist when something needs to be done in the area. Running errands, watering the plants.

I ask if she would love a cup of tea, but she shakes her stylish head. No. Still, she sits down next to me. She is rubbing her hands. She seems to be pretty tense. Is something bothering her?

“You know Yanis, don't you? The one who moved in next door to me at the end of last year? Yaris, the Syrian refugee?”

I pretend to know him. And to be honest, I have seen him at the annual neighborhood barbecue this spring. And I was definitely going to see Yaris and have a chat. Just to introduce myself, just to get to know him. But then I got into a conversation with some neighbours about the question of how best to chase stone martens out of your garden (an effective means of deterring those animals is by placing mothballs I was told) and I lost track of Yaris .

After her question, Linnea remains silent. I take a sip of my rooibos tea and watch the wind move the branches of the fig tree. When I look at her, she is smiling like a redbird with one broken wing.

“It started a month ago. A terrible noise. From the shed of Yaris. A dreadful hullaballoo. Carpentry, drilling, tearing. At first, I did not pay much attention to it. Maybe he needed to fix something? But after three evenings I started to worry. You know how noisy these houses are and as neighbors we have to take that into account.”

Lianne was now looking very serious and anxious She is a young woman, but now she mostly resembled an older lady who recently went through excruciating and unendurable hardships of life.

“Well, you know me. I believe in the good of people, so I assumed that the noise would stop on its own,” she confesses. She seems lost and defeated. Her voice is soft, fragile like a fresh flower.

“Usually, I am perfectly capable of contacting people when something happens. I mean, I am a schoolteacher. All I do is connecting with parents and fellow teachers. But this noise, this racket? It hit me like a wrecking ball. It made me furious, seething. I did not even recognize myself. What was wrong with me?"

Her eyes start to fill with tears. I leave the rooibos tea untouched.

“All day I thought about the noise. It possessed me, it controlled my life. I kept thinking: how can I stop him? How do I survive this dense hell, this deep nightmare? I went even so far to search on the internet to find out how to kill people, how to liquidate them unnoticed. I ordered a booklet on the effectiveness of natural poisons. Can you imagine! Me, the sweetest woman in the world!”

I look at her startled. What is going on? Is this a confession?

“Last week I put took all my courage. And no, I did not bring any deadly poison with me. But what turned out? He is busy making a life-size wooden dollhouse for Maja. For her birthday, which we celebrate tomorrow afternoon,” she says blissfully.

The first raindrops fall. But we stay put. I feel she has not finished talking. She has something to say, she wants to concede something.

“We had such a nice talk, Yaris and me. Until deep into the night.”

She blushes. I nod, I feel what she’s not saying to me.

“This morning I threw away the booklet on deadly poison.”