Chapter One Thousand Six Hundred Sixty
27th September 1964
Tempelhof, Berlin
The sun was coming up and Kiki was sleeping peacefully which was a mercy after the week she’d had. She had stayed in Ben’s apartment the night before, she said that after everything that had gone on, she just wasn’t ready to face her family yet. She looked far better than she had the night before with her eyes swollen from crying and snot bubbling from her nose. Ben’s father had warned him that loving someone meant being present for their darkest moments and Kiki had gone through one the night before.
As always Kiki was true to herself and that wasn’t always a good thing. For years she had said that she wanted to make the world a better place, criticism had been levelled against her that she wanted everyone to love her. All of that was true to an extent. Then she had been in the same room as the infamous Mithras, the man who had terrorized Germany in general and her in particular for the better part of two years. He absolutely hated her. Not because of who she was or anything that she might have done, but simply because she had been born into the wrong family. A large amount of material had been introduced as evidence in the trial, it had revealed that Mithras had grown obsessed with Kiki and what he actually thought of her. Mithras had depicted Louis Ferdinand as a bloated parasite sucking blood from the State, Prince Freidrich as the exemplar of those who were selling Germany to the foreign other for a pittance. Most of all though, he had seemed to have had a particular hatred for Kiki, who he regarded as the worst sort of hypocrite because she tried to pretend that she was something else. Extended screeds about how she was the scion of wealth that had largely been purloined, gaining advancement and achievements simply by the weight of her name and not by any actual merit.
Ben knew that was garbage and had told Kiki that, but the issue was that those words had ripped the bandage off a whole host of wounds that she had. All her insecurities were wrapped around the notion that she wasn’t quite good enough and that she didn’t really earn anything. It was all just handed to her because of her family connections and she elbowed more deserving people out of the way in the process. Ben saw the truth, that she had earned her current place in the world a dozen times over and he wished she could see that.
The real tragedy of Kiki von Preussen seemed to be that her considerable efforts to be a better person had led her to this.
In the dim light, Ben could see the thin seam of the scar on Kiki’s head where the skin had split open. That had largely healed, but the real damage hadn’t been done there. She talked about possible brain injury as something that was still being investigated. Ben had his doubts about that though. From his perspective, it had been the injury mixed with something less tangible. The way that everything had played out had made Kiki doubt herself, her abilities and worst of all gave her an excuse for giving up her ambitions as things grew difficult.
The question that Ben was asking himself was if he should keep pushing her forward like Vicky was asking of him. Was that even the right thing to do?
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The smell of the cut grass on the park’s athletic field was a thing that Manfred loved. The best moments of his life were associated with that. It being a brisk autumn morning, Manfred had involved himself with a pickup game with a few friends. No one was keeping score or worrying about who was on which side of the imaginary lines that cut across the field they happened to be on. It was playing the game just for the fun of it, something that had been happening less often as Manfred grew older. As he had progressed from the youth leagues into the clubs, things had grown ever more serious.
When Manfred had explored his options besides University and Football, he had discovered that his parents had very skillfully and subtly seen to it that most other avenues had been blocked. It could be said that that they had abused their respective professional positions to that end, but Manfred wasn’t inclined to make that argument.
As he ran up the field, the ball was passed to him and it took a bit of footwork to get it under control. The entire time he could hear the others bearing down on him. While everyone knew that Manfred excelled at the physical aspects of the game, that had never caused anyone to hesitate to plow into him if it got the ball away from his side. He turned and passed the ball away to a teammate and continued the advance. Seconds later the teammate passed the ball back across the field to Manfred, leaving the opposing Goal Tender on the wrong foot as he rocketed to ball into the goal. That resulted in a storm of protests from the other team who were arguing that they needed to shuffle everyone around to even things out.
Manfred didn’t really care which of the teams he was on. He was just out here playing for the fun of it. Walking over to the sideline, he grabbed the old canteen that his namesake Opa had given him and was drinking his fill. The same problems rushed back to the forefront of his mind. What to do about the obstacles that had been put in his path? In this case the obstacles were academic in nature, particularly mathematics.
Looking up he saw that the usual audience that these pickup games had was only partially present. His little sister Katherine and Suse Rosa were chatting with each other and not paying attention to what was happening on the field. Josefine was missing, probably just was well since she tended to distract the players. There had been something that Ina had said about Suse a few weeks earlier. Apparently, his sister’s best friend got extremely high marks in school. How many times had his parents told him that he needed to ask for help when he needed it? Countless times, especially when academics were involved.
“You’re smart Suse?” Manfred asked, “Right?”
Suse just stared at him like if he had grown a second head while Ina laughed.