"I agree," I interjected. "You may be right that God never saw Adam as anything else than being beautiful, because that is how I always saw you. And you say that Tony caused you to see yourself that way once again?"

      She nodded and began to smile. "That's how I fell in love with you all over again."

      "I really didn't do anything to deserve this wonderful reward," I said perplexed.

      "That's precisely the point, Peter," she said, still smiling. "You didn't do anything. You did the opposite. You stopped something. You had stopped something that kept us apart for twelve years. You stopped denying yourself and pushing me. The vertical pressure that you had exerted on me, was gone. Now we can meet on the lateral platform of love once again. You even helped me to fall in love with myself once more."

      "Me? I have done this? You better explain that one."

      "We had a beautiful thing going, in the beginning, right? But something had happened to you in Moscow that had changed that. You were on a crusade when you came back, against what you called the Byzantine model of love. You said yourself that this model represents a top down control kind of love; a vertical kind of love which can never be love. But even while you were fighting against that model, you became its disciple. You became a devoted disciple to it without realizing that you did. You made demands for love that didn't unfold laterally. You demanded love by policy. You were on a crusade against the 'false civility' in the world, as you called it, and what this started was actually made worse when we couldn't maintain the love that we once had shared. The demands of your crusade killed in the end whatever had remained of our lateral love, which can't exist without generosity. With that gone, the openness between us disappeared. This, in turn, angered you, so you blamed it all on what you called, a false civility, and with it, I became ashamed of myself. You demanded actions to counter it. Do I have to go on?"

      "You should have hit me over the head with something, to wake me up," I replied.

      "I couldn't do that. I didn't know myself what was going on. I only knew that something was wrong, that the flow of our love was cut off. I kept hoping that this wound would mend itself, but it didn't. Nicolai helped me to realize what had happened, and to some degree, you helped him to do that. You also helped me to fall in love with myself again."

      "No Heather, you are too gracious with we. How could I have done that?"

      "You really don't know, do you?"

      I shrugged my shoulders. "You did it in the way you promoted me to Nicolai. The heavens would have flushed had they heard how highly you had rated me. This really impressed the hell out Nicolai. He treated me with a kind of respect that I had always hoped I would have for myself. I also realized that this respect reflected what you really thought of me. That was the beginning of my falling in love with you again, but only the beginning."

      "You mean, there was more happening?"

      "You know Nicolai. You know how he is. What you said about me impressed him. He became curious. Being curious, he made inquiries about you. He asked around, and by what he had been told, I think he fell in love with you, too. Throughout our trip together he spoke of you. It was Peter this, and Peter that. And they were all beautiful comments, like: I wonder how Peter would see this? You became his reference point for comparisons. I had a feeling, that if you were not a man, he would have asked you to marry him," she said and grinned.

      "Me?" I had to laugh now, too.

      "In the way that Nicolai spoke about you, I could sense that the vertical pressure was gone that had kept us apart for so long. With that gone, there was a lateral flow happening also between him and you; a flow of generosity, something that I had treasured; something that I had longed for; and suddenly I could feel it again. Suddenly, I felt once more that we are equals, with a respect for each other of the type that once began with a bang in Elizabeth City. I can still see you standing there that first evening. I came out of the elevator. You stopped me, took a step back, looked at me, and said: Wow! This was so beautifully said, Peter, that I learned to love myself that way. I learned it from your love. But after we drifted apart and came back together, it wasn't happening anymore, until just lately. I really don't know for sure what caused the vertical pressure to vanish. Only you can answer that, Peter. However, I have a hunch that this happened already before Nicolai and I left on our tour, or else Nicolai would have sensed this pressure too, or people would have warned him about it. It probably started in India."

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