ASPIRATION: 8 Love Hurts

Don't think I will shoot myself,

My heart be ever so sore!
All this, you know, sweet elf,
Has happened to me before.

Heinrich Hein

I do not recall too well the journey I made to meet Suzanne, possibly because travelling was new to me then and I was not yet very relaxed about it, for travelling four hundred miles in Europe - especially at that time - was a much more arduous task than travelling that distance in Canada. But I recall that I had to travel up to London first, before taking a train to Dover, where I boarded a ferry as a foot passenger. My old Canadian passport attests that I landed at Ostend in Holland on 15th May, 1964.

Ostend, Belgium

At Ostend, I boarded another train and I recall the coming of night when my coach was shunted about a dark yard in a glare of misty lights, in part obscured by the spiked colossus of Cologne Cathedral.

Cologne Cathedral

I changed trains at Düsseldorf for Iserlohn, where I sat in the station café for half the night waiting for a train to convey me to Heimer, where Suzanne lived with her parents.

Hemer, Germany

I arrived at the town early on a sunny morning when the place was as still and as quiet as a country churchyard. Finding Suzanne's house proved easy enough, but it was still too early to knock, about half past seven, so I took a walk to idle away some time. As I trudged the neighbourhood, I mused upon our impending reunion. What was it she'd said in that last letter to me?

‘I just can’t believe we’ll be together in just 13 days,’ she'd written, and ‘All my love, as much as an 18 year old female is capable of.’

And then there were those twenty-three written kisses! But now, after moving heaven and earth to get here, I was about to collect them in person! The long-awaited moment had come at last. I returned to the house slowly and calmly, keeping my eagerness in check, and then I rang the doorbell. In just an instant the door swayed open. And then she was there before my very eyes, dressed in a pretty housecoat and looking spectacularly lovely.

We embraced.

But...

Was she holding back? Something certainly seemed amiss. From that moment the events of that day and the next took on a dream-like quality. We must have had breakfast then, but I don't recall it, and there must have been other meals too, but they escape recollection. I slept somewhere in the house that night too – but I don't remember where. During my entire time with Suzanne, I was aware only of a growing suspicion that something was seriously wrong and taxing her again and again with that suspicion, until at last she blurted out that she no longer felt the same about me...

And then a storm broke. From me: frustration of desire, rage at what I saw as her deceit, and maybe shame, too, for the foolishness that had driven me to cross an ocean and go clattering along the rails of three different countries in quest of a silly girl. From her: guilt that she'd misled me, maybe, and an access of pity for my plight. There were sharp words and entreaties on my part, tears on hers. I wanted to know WHY! She didn't know.

Rather I think she didn't want to tell me. The likely explanation is that in the last 13 days she'd found someone else.

In the end, she became hysterical, and that sobered me. Her father was away on an army exercise somewhere, but her mother came into the room concerned, told us to stop this silliness. I was ashamed then for having crumbled under the weight of my own feelings. And now I tried to soothe her, calm her, hearten her, told her it didn't matter, that it was not worth worrying about. At that her tears began to ebb and slowly she sank into a pensive quietude. I promised to leave next morning.

On the journey back to England I slept on the train all the way from Düsseldorf to Ostend. I slept on the ferry from Ostend to Dover and I slept again from Dover to London. Every time my eyes edged wide, I applied myself to seeking sleep once more. I didn't want to be awake. Waking life was just too painful.

For many months my heart was a wasteland. I had no words for what I felt, but many years later, I found a few. Surprisingly they came from a German poet born in Düsseldorf!

I despaired at first, declaring

It could not be borne; and now –

Now I bear it, still despairing.

Only never ask me how!

Heinrick Hein