1. Bad News

The storm raged outside. The driving rain raced through the air and fat droplets pattered against the window. On the street below, a delivery van drove through a deep puddle at a snail’s pace with his windscreen wipers on the highest setting; a young man flitted across the pavement, desperately trying to control his umbrella. Dark clouds swallowed up most of the daylight and loud thunder regularly drowned out the wind’s lashes.

Frida sat next to the round kitchen table in her small flat, nursing a cup of tea and staring out of the window lost in thought. Frida was 82 years old, had no pets and didn’t own a car or a bicycle.

She used to work as an English teacher at a grammar school. She had liked her job and saw it as a privilege and a special challenge to teach young people the beauty and power of language. If it had been up to her, she would have carried on working for a number of years but the law spoke against it. Very strange, these laws that prohibited a passionate teacher from working.

Her life as a pensioner was quite unspectacular. She spent most of her time alone in her one-bedroom apartment on the third floor. Her age was starting to take its toll – her back was often tired and ached, her knee pinched and even the slightest of colds had her bedridden for days on end. She had always spent a lot of time in town, in cafes, with friends or at the theatre, but over the course of the years she had become more and more withdrawn. Thanks to her fancy tablet and supermarkets offering an easy online delivery service, she didn’t even have to leave the house to go shopping. She had made herself comfortable at home.

A few big twigs flew across the street and a flash of lightning lit up the sky in the distance. Frida sipped at her tea and sighed. She would have loved to go outside and dance in the rain. She wasn’t in the mood for a cold, though, nor did she want to run the risk of possibly slipping and falling. And, besides, she had never seen an old lady dancing in the rain before. Perhaps it just wasn’t appropriate. If only she were young again, just for a few moments.

At least her eyesight hadn’t abandoned her yet, for which she was very grateful. This allowed her to continue nurturing her love for language by reading books. And Frida read a lot of books, she was a real bookworm. It didn’t matter to her whether it was a sad or a happy story, a crime novel, a classic or even a children’s book – she just loved gliding along with the sentences, seeing the words dance and getting lost in another’s world of thoughts. She had already started devouring books when she was a little girl, and her mother had always joked that she fed on letters more than she did on food. At her age especially, reading was a marvellous gift because her books kept her spirits moving, even though she got out a lot less these days. Each printed page set her off on a journey of thoughts and gave her the chance to discover new things and to forget her loneliness and pain for a while. Let alone the catastrophic state of the world.

Loud thunder made her windows shake. It was immediately followed by a second thunderclap. The storm tore at branches and the torrential rain pelted against the window panes. Frida set her half-empty cup down on the table and turned on the radio. She liked listening to the radio and would have done so more often if it weren’t for the constant stream of bad news.

“As has been the case in recent years, this late summer sees enormous areas of the Amazon burning,” the radio presenter announced soberly. “The Brazilian government has promised to increase firefighting efforts.” This devastating report was promptly followed by, “Football: on the fourth matchday of the…”

Frida turned the radio off again and fell back into her chair, shaking her head. She was stunned by how common these horrific news events had become. The lungs of the Earth were burning and, yet, the topic of football was discussed with the next breath. Shouldn’t people just drop everything right there on the spot upon hearing that the Earth’s lungs were on fire? Frida just couldn’t understand, or maybe she didn’t want to understand.

And after all, the burning rainforest wasn’t the only serious problem the Earth faced. The Arctic was burning too. The Arctic! Too much coal and oil was still being burnt on a daily basis, with horrific consequences for the air we all breathe and the climate we all live in. The consumerist and packaging craze had led to containers full of rubbish shipping around the world only to pollute land and water elsewhere. Rivers were being poisoned, forests killed and mountains violated; innocent people were drowning, polar bears were starving and children were dying of thirst. Add to that numerous bloody conflicts, the rise of racism, life-threatening epidemics, increasing poverty and growing fear. What was happening to the world?

Of course there had been wars and natural catastrophes in the past, too, Frida was aware of that; but the scale of destruction seemed to increase with each passing year. In the meantime, humans were no longer just a threat to their immediate neighbours, but to the living beings of the entire planet!

For Frida, the news channels reporting on global horrors 24 hours a day were the worst. The world’s drama had taken on the format of a never-ending entertainment programme. Fortunately Frida didn’t watch a lot of television, especially those kinds of channels. Nevertheless, she was well aware of the sad reality. A reality that was becoming clearer with every year, with every day, by the hour: the world was broken.

As the next thunder rumbled, Frida got up to get some ointment for her pinching knee. Back in the kitchen, she filled her teacup and sank back into her chair. She rolled up her trouser leg and began massaging the soothing cream into her knee.

If only there were a healing salve for the ailing world, she thought. She would gently massage it into our Earth, as much as needed, any time of day or night. But there was no such miracle balm, not that she knew of, anyway. It left her feeling completely helpless against the destruction of the environment. She found herself increasingly worried – about that little bit of future still awaiting her, and more so about the livelihood of those who still had a lot of time left on this Earth. She would love nothing more than to help turn things around or at least make them better. But how was that supposed to work? What was one single, old lady going to change? Nothing.

When she had finished treating her knee, Frida rested the teacup in her hand and let her eyes wander to the scenes outside her window.

The storm raged on.

2. Looking Away

The next morning, the wind had dropped and it had stopped raining. Here and there, a few rays of sunlight even managed to find small gaps to shine through a blanket of clouds. Frida decided to have breakfast on the balcony. It wasn’t all that big, but there was enough space for a foldaway table and two wooden chairs. One chair would have been enough as she rarely had visitors, but Frida enjoyed the empty chair’s company. Sometimes she’d imagine her husband sitting next to her and looking up at the sky with her. He had passed away a long time ago, but she would have loved to have spent a little time on the balcony with him.

After breakfast she lingered for a little while longer, sipped a second cup of tea and embraced the warm sun on her skin. She thought back to some of the beautiful moments she had experienced with her husband, a nostalgic smile on her face. Their exciting trip to Nepal – how long ago had it been? Twenty years, a little more perhaps. The many winter nights spent in front of the open fire, telling each other stories. Or the time they had planted an apple tree in a wild garden and promised one another everlasting love – it had been so long ago, and yet it felt like yesterday. She missed him.

The church bells rang in the distance. It was ten o’clock. Frida got up, cleared the table and disappeared into the bathroom to get ready. She planned on finally going to visit her former colleague again. They had taught at the same school and had stayed in touch after retiring. But while Frida was still capable of living independently at her old age, her colleague had been less fortunate.

A quarter of an hour later, Frida closed her apartment door behind her and took the elevator down to the ground floor. She was going to have to hurry a little to reach the bus stop in time. Number 19 arrived two minutes late as usual and stopped directly in front of her. Frida got on, bought her ticket and found a free seat behind the driver’s cabin. She now had eight stops to look out of the window, observe the town passing by, and prepare herself for what was to come.

At first she had gone to see her colleague every week, but her visits had lessened over time. Sometimes she even caught herself wishing she no longer had to visit, but this feeling was always followed by a guilty conscience, and she’d always end up making her way back to see her. It was the least she could do, but often it was frustrating because her old friend had already checked out into another world a while ago.

The bus came to a halt with a quiet squeak and Frida got off. After a short walk she reached her destination: the old people’s home. She entered the two-storey building through a glass sliding door, passed the doorman and paused in the entry hall for a moment. A few residents rode around in their wheelchairs, some stood in small groups chatting away, and two tables were taken up by card games. If it hadn’t been for the white-clad nurses and carers, the scene could have been mistaken for a regular senior’s meet-up at a nice bar. Some of the residents were younger than Frida, so she didn’t attract any attention in this unimposing environment. But unfortunately, it would have been fruitless to look for her former colleague here. She took the elevator to the first floor. Another doorman, then a locked door. Frida pressed the buzzer and moments later a nurse opened it for her.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning, Frida,” the young woman returned her greeting in a friendly tone.

“And, how is she doing?”

“Oh, she’s had better days. You know how it is, the seasonal changes are always hard on her.”

They walked along the hallway side by side. Even though she had been here many times before, Frida still couldn’t get used to the oppressive atmosphere on the first floor. Everything seemed gloomy, the sound of strange people echoed through the halls and the inescapable, appalling scent of decay was in the air. The strategically placed air fresheners stood no chance against it. Lifeless figures sat in front of some of the rooms, as if someone had positioned them there to star in their own cabinet of horrors. Breakfast flakes spilled out of the mouth of an emaciated old man, while his fat neighbour engaged in a lively conversation with a cactus. Compared to this place the cemetery seemed heavenly, in every sense of the word.

“Did you hear about the fires in the Amazon?” the nurse asked her.

“Yes,” Frida replied. “There’s just no end to the bad news.”

“No, unfortunately not.”

“Sometimes it really scares me to see what’s happening to the world.”

“I get that. It scares me too.”

They silently glanced at each other for a moment, then said their goodbyes. Frida knocked on the open door of room 27. She entered without waiting for an answer. No one was going to answer anyway.

Frida’s old friend had been living in the senior centre’s nursing ward for several years. She suffered from severe Parkinson’s, and could neither walk nor sit. Frida couldn’t remember the last time she had seen her anywhere other than in that bed. She smiled at her, and was met with a confused look.

Her former colleague mumbled a few incomprehensive words, then fixed her eyes on the ceiling. Frida sat on a chair next to her bed and started sharing the latest news from her life – knowing full well that her old friend wasn’t going to register much more than the cactus had of the fat woman’s monologue. She told her about the last warm summer evenings, the storm and a nice movie she had recently seen.

While she spoke in a gentle tone, there was a knock at the door and a doctor entered. He greeted them both and went about listening to his patient’s heart and lungs. Frida wasn’t familiar with this doctor. She had heard he was from Spain. Most of the centre’s staff came from different countries. The nurse she had spoken to on arriving was from Ethiopia; other nurses and carers were from Hungary, Greece and Syria. And the lovely cook who had been working there from the beginning was from India. Frida couldn’t understand why so many people would want to see all borders closed, and all foreigners chased out of the country. It was wonderful to have people from different parts of the world gathered here. She couldn’t care less about what someone looked like or where they came from. What mattered were their actions. The staff at the old people’s home were all taking care of her bedridden colleague – why should people like this be kicked out of the country?

The doctor reached for the patient report at the foot of the bed and skimmed it. Frida let her eyes wander around the room and finally rested them on the TV. The sound was muted but the images loudly flickered across the screen. They were the same as on every other channel: refugee boats, floods and wild fires.

“Terrible, isn’t it?” she said to the doctor, pointing at the screen.

The doctor turned for a split second, shook his head and went back to the patient report.

“I try to avoid the news,” he said in an indifferent tone. “I see enough sorrow at work every day, I don’t need more to depress me.”

Frida glanced at the patient, who still lay staring at the ceiling, motionless.

“Yes, I understand,” she said, “but surely you still follow what’s going on in the world. Doesn’t it scare you?”

“Why should I be afraid of something I can’t change anyway?”

“Do you really think there’s nothing you can do?”

After all, he was a doctor, she thought, not just an old lady.

He shook his head once more and put the clipboard with the report back into its place. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Frida.