the sea witch - part I

Back then I was just a kid of about 17 or 18, how could one ever have expected me to be able to figure out what was going on?
I never felt her changes as the whispers told. In fact, I never mentioned any changes except for her absentees; she was hardly to be found in family reunions the last year. Nickel believed I could not mention the changes because she has always been treating me differently, that there was no dark shadow on her face, when she looked at me.
And her father, well Gerhard has always been so silent that no one mentioned his deep anxiety for his daughter that very last year. Years later we finally figured out the reason why he was so intravagant, the secret he had kept from his family to protect them, the pain he suffered not to share with anyone.
And then suddenly, in an interval of a few months, everything happened. My father had a minor heart attack, so we moved back from Austria to Dresden – in Germany – for a while; so I heard the rumors about her for the first time: that Nina has turned to a mighty, scary witch. The rumor drove my attention to Jacque-Yves who was suddenly so terrified of Nina he even refused to say a word on why.
Nickel got herself in big trouble, I volunteered to help Jacque-Yves get her out alive and in return we made her quit her job for good and Jacque-Yves used the opportunity to make her life his own for good.
Dietrich, Nina's brother in law, passed away in a plane crash leaving Erika and their two sons in grief.
And then Janis, my brother, broke up with his Austrian girlfriend and turned gay, which was ok except for his sudden urge for depression.
As to me, I was suddenly amazed by Nina; I longed to see her, to bump into her, to hear from her or even to get to great her best friend on the street. I was turned – and I can not say it was just my curiosity – by the very fact that there has always been an excuse why she was not there, where I was. All over the 112 days we were staying at Dresden, I had not got the chance to meet her even once. What irritated me the most was that both my parents, Janis and Lidie, my younger sister, had all already met her several time, even Jacque-Yves could not avoid her presence despite his fear and his efforts.
But the she came one night, when everyone else was asleep including me. I suddenly opened my eyes and saw her there to my surprise, she was furious and the same time deeply sad. I could also see her loneliness and the long lasted fatigue in her body. I was amazed thousand times more than before. In silence I witnessed her efforts to do something most probably unpleasant, I saw her struggling with herself and I finally watched her fail. She looked down, with tears in her eyes, obviously disappointed at herself, angry or frightened I could not tell, cursing something or someone.
I never experienced anything like that night, as I felt a part of me leaving me and vice versa, then I felt a part of her getting inside me and vice versa, maybe it was what they call falling in love. I stepped out of my bed and hugged her.
In the morning, she was not gone! She had waited for me to get up. She looked at me and left without saying goodbye.
Later I figured out the reason to Jacque-Yves' fear must have been that I was her one and only failure in what ever she had been up to, when I found her in my room.
It was only two days later that the greater skin diver of Germany at the time, Gerhard Schwarzinger, lost his younger daughter, Nina, she was drowned the corpse was not found, but some friends of her had been filming their excursion on the river Elbe and it was seen with no doubt how she had drowned.
Gerhard himself – despite his habitual silence - seemed to be the only one to have a clue. Everyone remembered his warning to Nina saying she shall never get anywhere near water, and this was the first time Nina had disobeyed him.
We all rushed to their place as soon as we heard the news, but yet too late to make any conversations with Gerhard for his heart decided to retire after making sure the warning had been of no use to his daughter.
I can not claim I was keen enough to follow the signs, it was really for the me in her and for the her in me that I felt like there was much more to this end, that Nina, to whom I belonged, was not gone.
But following the eternal tradition of our family, according to which our youths are famous for their stupidity, I decided I had to believe the logic in the story: Nina was gone, there were no witches in the world, Jacque-Yves was a chicken boy and Gerhard had warned Nina for he disliked her or for he might have thought of her body as too week to handle any swimming.
When we were back in Austria, I thought of everything as already taken care of. I started acting school, I made me plans like any other young boy, I fell in love with a woman, I moved in with her, some time later she gave birth to the loveliest little boy in the world, whom we named Warner.
What I neglected was that, the more I stepped away from Nina and her memories, the more I lost me, the rest of me left me gradually, till I was left only with that little of Nina I had in me.
I left Austria and everything behind; they had all lost sense to me. Yet I refused to realize the source of my problems, I was emptied, I was sucked out.
Exactly this emptiness made me an excellent courier at Hollywood, for there is nothing better than an actor who has been totally emptied and tries to fill himself up with any character the director demands. I was shining at Hollywood while this deep dark hole was growing over me.
One night I dreamt of her, it was the most pleasant and peaceful moment I had experienced after a long long time. As I woke up in the morning, I found her black scarf in my hands.
Next day I was suddenly kind of waken up as I shouted at the co-star in attempt to say my dialogue, they said it was more of a load roar. I myself fainted afterwards.
When I came to, I just wanted to talk to my friend Jacque-Yves who seemed to be surprisingly the only thing I still remembered of me.
I told him I needed to find Nina, no matter how unreasonable or scary this idea might look like. And then it began, the years I was damned to search the world running after her scent, wherever the wind blew it to my face, demonstrating my confusion to my only witnesses, Jacque-Yves and Nickel who have decided to accompany me on a journey which made me eligible for any crime, any evil, and any madness.