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Chapter 7 - Festival of the Sublime.My meeting with Olive had been arranged by telephone on the very next day after Nicolai's first visit. Olive suggested that we do not meet in Vienna, but in a small resort place in the Austrian Alps near the Wild Kaiser mountains. She had a place reserved for the occasion, for a week. Tony arranged with Puff to get me to Munich. The rest was easy. A short flight to Innsbrook, and a train ride down a beautiful valley, brought me to my destination, right in the middle of the Alps so it seemed. The valley had become rather narrow at the place where I got off the train. Olive met me right at the train station. We embraced each other like two long lost friends. It was a leisurely embrace, without the slightest sense of hurrying anything along, interrupted now and then by a few words of conversation. During our happy embrace, not a word was said about the intervening years. It was the, now, that counted. Nothing else seemed to matter. She had arranged for a porter to take my bags to the chalet in order that we could stroll through the village leisurely, just as we had strolled together that night in Sukhumi, to the ice cream place. Now, it was a bright sunny day. Flower baskets graced the sidewalk. Of course, I invited her to some ice cream again. This time we treated ourselves at a sidewalk cafe. We stopped in shops later on, which were on the way to our 'castle.' We bought cheese there, and wine for a snack and for celebrating whatever we needed to celebrate. Beer and sausage would have been more in the local tradition, but they wouldn't have met the larger requirements. On the entrance road to our chalet, I stopped Olive, took her hands in mine and thanked her for her gift of the beautiful concert, for the Brahms symphony, and for her personal participation on that eventful day, and sealed the gesture of my gratitude with a kiss. "Eh, that was the least I could do for a friend in great need," she answered and grinned, and returned the kiss. She said that her friend Helen had inspired her with a story of love in which someone dear to her had bestowed a precious gift to a pianist in great need, the gift of a violin. "And see what I got out of it by responding to that story, a position at the Vienna Philharmonics. Isn't life wonderful! We both play there now." "You are married, then, I take it," I said to her. "Of course I am," she grinned. "By my putting on the concert for you, and by seeing someone like Nicolai being involved, my boyfriend finally opened his eyes and began to see things he had never imagined to exist. He became a real fighter. He is very active now in supporting us all towards healing the world. He also knows that Love is spelled with a capital L, because of its central role in creating unity. He is a beautiful man, Peter. But what about you?" "I wished there was a way I could repay you for the lovely gesture of arranging that concert for me." "You already have, Pete, a thousand times over. Weren't you instrumental in bringing this cruise missile down before it reached Washington? And weren't you instrumental for the success in Venice at diffusing the hottest situation in history, between the world's greatest super powers? You have been directly involved in the greatest miracles of our time, which may be the reason why we are still alive and able to meet. All I did in comparison, was play in an orchestra and convinced my friends to play for you, too." "You are an angel, nevertheless," I replied, "you came through when it really counted." "We all do that," she said and grinned, "otherwise we are not worthy to be called human beings." || - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||
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