She bent her head down again. "Yes," she said quietly. "The letter says that a day ago a dear friend of mine had three fingers chopped off, off his right hand."

      "That's barbaric," I muttered. "What kind of a country is this where such a thing can happen?"

      She began to laugh. "You are thinking of Islamic justice. This doesn't happen here. It was an industrial accident in a book binding shop. He was brushing some cuttings away at the edge trimmer, which the vacuum system hadn't picked up. The interlocks must have been disabled. We don't know what tripped the switch."

      "No wonder you were shook up. What will happen to him now?"

      Helen explained that he was lucky. He lost three fingertips, but the cuts were clean and were repairable. She said that he would be well cared for by the state and wouldn't loose his job either, as this might happen in the West. She said, she couldn't help crying though, because the man was also a concert pianist. Music is his life. She said that he would probably never be able to play the piano again as a concert pianist.

      "But something happened tonight," she added. "The idea came that he would likely be able to play the violin. He had talked about playing the violin some day, except he had never been able to get enough money together to buy a good-enough violin for concert work. I don't have enough money myself to buy him one, but I have a little that I can spare. It won't amount to anything more than just a gesture. Still, that gesture will mean a great deal to him. I cried when I realized that I am able to do that for him. Can you see how one idea can change a person's life?"

      "We can change the world that way," I added some moments later. "You are right, the professor's predictions don't have to come true."



      She took the letter back to the kitchen. I heard her filling the kettle. When she returned I handed her three thousand East German marks in cash, all in five hundred mark notes. "This will help a bit," I added.

      "I can't accept that," she said and handed the money back.

      I didn't take the money back. I told her that I really didn't need it. I explained that all foreign agents were required by her state to exchange a fixed amount of money each day. The rate is roughly equivalent to what one would spend on a five star hotel accommodation in New York, meals included. I assured her that I wouldn't mind living in a low cost motel by the highway for the duration of my stay, and put the money to use where it can really make a difference for someone in a crisis like that. I also told her that I remembered a rule that I had loved as a child. I had almost forgotten it. It is based on the fact that we all live in this world together. We can do beautiful things and make our world beautiful, or we can do terrible things and make our world intolerable. I used to love when I was able to say to myself before going to bed at night that I made a difference in making the world a lovelier place to be in. "That's lateral loving, isn't it?" I added.

      I explained again that I didn't really need to stay in a five-star-hotel, as I urged her to keep the money for her friend that I thereby would save. "I would rather stay in a cheap place and eat with ordinary people in an ordinary restaurant," I said to her, "and live like ordinary people do, and take the money that I won't have to spend then to help someone in need. I've been brought up that way. It's not a sacrifice for me. It's a nice thing to do that I will always cherish."

      Helen looked at the money, then looked at me, and began to cry again. "Thank you," she said, still in tears. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart." She took the money and placed it in an envelope together with a note that said something about a violin. She added a check of her own and sealed the envelope. She wrote the man's name on it and signed it, and asked me to sign it as well. This, I did gladly. I signed my full name, Peter A. VanDerMere. I encircled my first name.

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