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As I left the office, an older man came rushing after me. He took me aside, quietly. "I know how you can locate her, if you're up to it." He spoke in broken English, but excitedly. He told me that on the outskirts of the city a large man-made lake has been created, with sandy beaches. "One of its beaches is reserved for people who want to swim without bathing suits. She often goes there on her days off." The man spoke with a smile. He described her as though he had seen her there himself.
I shook my head. This had all the appearance of a trap, perhaps to embarrass the West.
"Trust me," the man said.
I smiled at him. This was fast becoming a comical situation. Still, I trusted him. There we stood in the middle of a dimly lit corridor in an ancient castle, the air reeking of floor wax mixed with kerosene that kept the aging linoleum from drying out, and he speaks of trust. Worst of all, I responded. What inspired this trust? Was it this foreign place? Trust and diplomacy were opposites on the same scale. Still, the man's eyes sparkled. His face was bright. He was smiling at the idea, as though he would love to trade places. He promised something exciting, something beyond diplomacy. Perhaps that, all by itself, inspired the trust.
I thanked the kind man and told him that I wasn't sure I could follow his advice. I also wasn't sure whether I might yet do it, regardless. Something didn't add up. This was a different kind of diplomacy, with a human touch. I knew one thing for certain, that waiting for a month wasn't my style, nor would Washington be satisfied with this lack of results.
I parked the Micra on a dirt road at the edge of a field of wheat, far away from the entrance of the nudist beach. I pretended that I set out from there for a hike across the country. If someone were to connect my diplomatic mission with the nudist beach the consequences could be unimaginable. They could spell the end of a career that had barely begun. Naturally the camp was legal, and certainly the public accepted it. The police had assured me of that. But how would it be regarded at the home office if a scandal developed?
The approach I took appeared to be save enough. No one had followed me. No one was anywhere near to be seen. I was quite alone as I walked back along the dirt road between the wire fence on one side and a field on the other, bathed in the brilliance of the morning sunshine. I stole past the entrance gate like a bank robber preparing a heist. Still, no one took notice. I quickly undressed to merge with the crowd. Now what?
There I sat, stark naked in the sand at the beach, and no one took the least notice of me. Actually, it was rather nice to feel the wind and the sand. Also, there was a certain sense of honesty connected with being totally naked, an honesty with others and myself. There was nothing covered up! And surprisingly, no one stared. Maybe the world should have stared. Ages of tradition had been broken. The clock had been turned back to those ancient times before the tree of knowledge was invented. The tradition of seeing categorical differences in people is the result of false education, but it comes to a halt when the last vestige of artificial identities is shed. There is nothing left to veil, embellish, twist the imagination, or invite hypocrisy! People seemed content to let humanity be as it is: men, women, children, old people, some delicate and slender, some robust, some fat, all together in one group. And they were all beautiful in their way, though not always according to common perception.
Most people were darkly tanned, with a few among them as white as snow, and some as pink, as I feared I would soon be. Unquestionably I belonged to the pink category. Suddenly, I had to laugh. What a hypocrite I was! There I was at it again, dividing people into categories. The idea was oddly invalid there.
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