Johnny shakes his head; "How can I make you understand?"

     "You obviously can't," I say, and simply walk out.



     I felt uneasy afterwards for not having healed anything with this exchange of words.



     "What I find hardest to take, is his damn politeness while in fact he means to kill one," commented Natalia the next day after she had her own 'interview' with him. "How can this bastard smile and talk so smoothly, and politely, while he rams his sword deep into your soul that he seeks to destroy? He is attacking my integrity, denying my intelligence, blocking my right to acknowledge what I honestly feel, even to grow up as a human being who aims to understand its existence."

     She stoped for a moment. She obviously had to. She was getting angrier by the minute. Eventually she sys in a laughing tone of voice that she had never seen dishonesty more 'voluptuously' displayed, and more eloquently voiced than by him, "by our sweet little Johnny."



     Three times the captain had tried to get Natalia removed from her post at the bio-plant, and had failed. Since I was more accessible to him as part of the structural maintenance crew, I received the brunt of his silent rage. I was recommended for the worst jobs that could be found. I even wondered if my selection to the work crew in the pit was inspired by the same motive. If it was, this was criminal, for I was by no means the most experienced metallurgist on board. There should have been a team formed, consisting of the very best.

     Naturally, his vendetta against us became public knowledge. For some reasons, he lashed out against us most often in public, apparently to embarrass us.



     Once he cornered us in the restaurant. One can't just leave when the captain comes and sits at ones table. As usually, within minutes, he utters one of his snide remarks. "Why must you always be so 'coohtchy coohtchy' together?" he practically scolds us, right at the supper table.

     "Could you please translate this?" says one of the engineers who seemed more embarrassed by his captain's manners than we should have been by his remarks.

     "Well... You know..." He makes some gestures with his hands.

     He looks at us, sets his glasses in order, and then lets his hands drop. Instead of answering the engineer's question, he speaks to Natalia and to me. "I hope you two are aware that your behavior has been recorded and has been made reference to in your service log."

     "Oh, and in the captain's log too?" Natalia says to him calmly.

     "Underlined in red," he says, pretending he joked.

     "Did you also explain in the log the cause for which you have disregarded the constitution?" Natalia asks in a calm manner. Anyone could see that she found it hard to suppress a smile. "And captain, did you also explain in your log why you have appointed only one single person to the task of creating the new metal for the generator bearings on which all of our lives depend every day? You may get the Golden Medal of Honor for this wise decision when we get home."

     Poor Johnny! He put his spoon down and left the table. Had he ever misjudged Natalia! She had handled the Communists in Russia, who had been renowned for their brute power and relentless persistence. Poor little Johnny, did he not realize that he was like a baby compared to them?



     Actually, I had misjudged Natalia myself. I would never have dreamed that she would get herself half undressed for my sake, in a public place as the pool area was, regardless of the fact that we were the only ones there with the exception of the security cameras.

Next Page

|| - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||

Stories about  Healing from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche