Part 4
Part 3
Part 2
It was a bright, warm morning after a long,
icy winter. Looking out the window like every morning, Pawny
examined across the wall, the empty streets and a military vehicle
in slow transit like a watchdog on alert for any possible change.
The sun was stubbornly creeping into the spaces between two buildings trying to convince the dense blanket of haze lying on the ground to dissolve.
There was nothing different, much less dangerous, to attract her attention. The days from her balcony were all the same despite the profound contrast between the frenzy of West Berlin and the apparent calm of the other side of the wall.
The girl sighed long before closing the window and sitting at the table where breakfast was already set. The radio was broadcasting songs from overseas with cheerful advertising inserts to entice her to tune in each time when she felt a feeling of sadness.
Living in an apartment on top of a building, facing a wall dividing two diametrically opposed worlds, was not a difficult decision to accept. Hans, her boss had convinced her that, despite her anonymity, it was a very important mission and he would not have entrusted it to her if she had not been able to fulfill it.
When she arrived in Berlin, a frontier city in that one thousand and nineteen hundred sixties, she had felt she had finally become a true agent with an important task. Only later, she realized the truth: there was no vital mission being confined alone in a room to check and register on a tape recorder, in the form of a huge mouse with big ears, those stupid and irrelevant images of the wall and surroundings.
She should have interpreted differently the smiles and nods of agreement of her bosses during the assignment of the task to her reserved. It had not been a mission but an unpleasant way to get rid of her uncomfortable presence. Pawny, the name chosen for her, was adequate to represent her little influence role: the last, uncomfortable, the least decisive in the great game of chess.
The sun was stubbornly creeping into the spaces between two buildings trying to convince the dense blanket of haze lying on the ground to dissolve.
There was nothing different, much less dangerous, to attract her attention. The days from her balcony were all the same despite the profound contrast between the frenzy of West Berlin and the apparent calm of the other side of the wall.
The girl sighed long before closing the window and sitting at the table where breakfast was already set. The radio was broadcasting songs from overseas with cheerful advertising inserts to entice her to tune in each time when she felt a feeling of sadness.
Living in an apartment on top of a building, facing a wall dividing two diametrically opposed worlds, was not a difficult decision to accept. Hans, her boss had convinced her that, despite her anonymity, it was a very important mission and he would not have entrusted it to her if she had not been able to fulfill it.
When she arrived in Berlin, a frontier city in that one thousand and nineteen hundred sixties, she had felt she had finally become a true agent with an important task. Only later, she realized the truth: there was no vital mission being confined alone in a room to check and register on a tape recorder, in the form of a huge mouse with big ears, those stupid and irrelevant images of the wall and surroundings.
She should have interpreted differently the smiles and nods of agreement of her bosses during the assignment of the task to her reserved. It had not been a mission but an unpleasant way to get rid of her uncomfortable presence. Pawny, the name chosen for her, was adequate to represent her little influence role: the last, uncomfortable, the least decisive in the great game of chess.
Pawny - Incipit
Part 1
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Fairy Tales
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Pawny
