The whole stadium sings. Forty thousand people. A little more maybe. My lips whisper words I don’t understand. Well not all of them. I am mesmerized by the scene. His voice lulls me. Inexplicably, his voice has always reassured me. My neighbor, like so many others, waves her phone and thousands of lights ripple across the stadium. It’s raining on the pit and the fans are soaked. They hold on and from the bleachers I admire their fervor.
Le Poilu had noted “surprise weekend: finish early” on my agenda for months. I had thought that we were going to cross the border and bury ourselves two days to hike in the Black Forest. As usual. The idea appealed to me but I didn’t quite see why there were so many mysteries.
When I got in the car, the GPS was already on, the bags lined up in the trunk, he said, a little nervous, “well, we’ve got a few hours and I hope there won’t be too many corks”. There was the windshield wipers stopping unexpectedly in the rain. And corks, a lot. When he made me run through an Olympic Park with my sandals burning my feet, I giggled that nothing might be so urgent. He said yes, and raised his finger to explain to me that we had a reservation on top of “that”. I looked up at the. I smiled. We eventually found the entrance. The dinner was excellent, as were the wines, to be enjoyed while watching the lights of the BMW museum in the night. By discovering in the gift package a CD with the DVD of the concert, I thought that he knew me really well. And when the concert tickets fell out of the sleeve, he added “it’s for him that we came here”. A small shiver ran down my spine.
The sun shone all day. A whole day to drink mass beer in the English Garden among guys in Bavarian clothes. To admire the Cathedral. To get on the wrong bus. To listen to music at the Hofbräu. To simply enjoy the sun.
Tonight it’s raining. Waterspouts. Ever since Xavier got on stage. And it doesn’t stop. Sometimes we receive a little water which crosses the canopy which covers the bleachers. It’s hot, though. My neighbor grabs my arm, whispers a “so schön” to me.
I’m so good, so far, carried by the stadium singing, forgetting that the shots will have to start tomorrow, at seven o’clock sharp. For now, it’s dark, it’s raining, Xavier is singing. LePoilu grabs my hand, he has tears in his eyes and he says to me “do you hear? What we cannot do alone, we can do together. Was wir alleine nicht schaffen, Das schaffen wir dann zusammen “.
Tomorrow I will start injections. Tomorrow.