The singer was still sitting on the bench when Gustav found her at the resort. Hey eyes were focused on the wave play, but Gustav immideatly noticed, that she was absorbing in her thoughts. She didn't notice him, she painted with her boot in the sand and smiled. Her smile revealed that she was thinking about something very nice. Gustav didn't know how to behave. Iris looked even prettier than he had imagined her, as a famous super star singer. He thought her way of dreaming was very sweet especially cause her little eyes were somehow telling an enchanting story about her. Indecisively he sat down next to her on a bench. Only then did she notice him, but unlike Gustav guess she didn't even react confused. She didn't look down on him, disgusted him, as if she didn't even notice his hum-like appearance.
"You are Gustav? Right?"
"Yes. Alfred asked me to help you out a bit, with the technique and everything."
"Thats very nice from you. I am sure we will have a wonderful time together!"
"Lets go inside, not that you will get sick in this rain."
He helped her up and handed her her bag.
"You live in Newkies right now?"
"Yes."
"Must be unfamiliar and hard to you. I mean Kies is something very special and I know it's hard to adopt yourself outside of this town."
"Partly, yes. I only live in New Kies. I work here. I help out Barry in his shop. I help him to buy materials and help him in the warehouse. Sometimes I go with him to auctions or if there are to many orders. I than help him out of deliveries."
"Its good that you understand each other better. I'm very happy about that."
"To be honest, we don't understand each other at all. Barry can't take criticism at all. You can't talk to him about his son or about Cadence or about his business or anything. He is still resentful to the whole world and spends most time in his bunker, I mean his workshop."
Iris smiled and stepped through the door, into one of the halls, Gustav had opened for her. It was a big hall, with a big stage. In the middle of the room, on a pillar stood a sml decorated table, above which was framed a very old poster of Iris.
"My poster?"
"Alfred, as he says, wanted to preserve the memory of you."
"Thats all sweet of him, but that's more than superfluous to keep my memory alive if it's a bad memory. You'd feel so much better if you would forget me. That's why I didn't want to come in so long. I wanted you to forget me."
"I hardly knew you, so it's hard to judge, but from everything I've heard about you from May, I have a rather positive picture of you."
"Really?"
"Yes. Max never spoke bad of you. He still loves you very much."
"Oh. That means a lot. There are only few people, who are like him."
"You're right. Knowing Max and being friends with him is a great blessing. He was for a very long time, my best friend. I've never had such a good friend after we had that one argument. Max had all qualities tahta human being values in a friend and what makes a good friend stand out. I don't know how I manged to get into a fight with him. We had a disagreement about Sofia. I shouldn't have told him it was wrong of him to just let her go."
"Max told me, she left him for no reason."
"She had reasons. She didn't get along well with your uncle, Robert. She never told me exactly what was going on, but it was part of one of his deals with someone that forced her to move away. Don't ask me anything about it. She lives three hours away from here in the small town your aunt Charlotte also lives in. I think it has something to do with Charlotte, but I can't say anything for sure."
"That doesn't surprise me. I've spent the last 40 years trying to solve our family secrets and figure everything out. To understand what Kies is all about. It started to confuse me even more. Partly, I no longer knew who was I, who was Robert, who was my father, let alone all this complex network of relations and the criminality and deals of my parents generation. I haven't slept many nights because I tried to find connections and logic between what I knew, what the elders always told me, what I though myself, and reality, if you could call it reality, I mean, in the end, nothing is real. To be honest, now I understand even less than what I understood at the beginning of my research."
"You found your father?"
"Yes. He has moved back to Irland, where his family comes from. He lives about 70 minutes away from Dublin. He's doing great for his high age. Like Robert, he has also his own bar-cafe, has a nice family. I also met my twin sister, Amalia, who I had never heard of before and who I never thoughts she's alive."
"Thats nice. We had a similar situation, after Cadences death, Esther, her sister moved away without saying anything to anyone. We didn't know for a very long time where she lived and if she was still alive. She got married. Coincidentally, with an old friend of Max, with whom Max was doing his job training and with whom he worked a lot later. They moved back to Kies last summer, quite unexpectedly, because Nico, their son, got married to Katrin Schreiber, Thiagos oldest daughter. Well and Tom and Esther decided to move also here, to live closer to their children."
"Max told me about it. Max always kept me up to date on everything."
Gustave noticed one more detail.
"The boots on the posterook very similar to the ones you're wearing today."
Iris laughed, in a slightly mysterious way.
"The boots on the poster are not just alike. They're the same. I kept them in a box the whole time, with other things from Domenique. I never wore them until today. Today is just a very special day and I can put on some special boots. Belive me, I will never throw them away."
"They're beautiful!"
"It's not just because they're beautiful. They're the last Christmas present from Domenique. At least here in Kies. We had one more celebration later, but well the last one we had, before the tragedy. He gave me them in nineteen seventy four.
1974 was a very special year for me, as my mother Hannah had made great advances in her development. She started to respond to me, sometimes she even talked to me. It seemed as if, in a shorter time, she would be living a normal, independent life again. It was also a very special year for Domenique. Carolin had given birth to his onyl son, in September. His name was Johann. Of course, I was happy for them, even if it made our relationship very difficult. At the same time, Hannah and I have never been in such financial troubles. I had spent almost my entire annual income on her treatments, care, medication and we also started to save for the move to America. At Christmas I just had so much money left that it would just be enough for a Christmas dinner or a new pair of boots for me. These boots, here, I saw in a showcase. I liked them very much, but I finally decided to have a Christmas dinner with my mother. It was a very nice moment. She was seldom so happy. I could see that. One day later, on the first day of Christmas, I met Domenique in Sam's Chruch. Together with Domenique, they had decorated and prepared a romm for us, so that we could spend nice evening together. You've got to imagine that. On the floor, on the benches, on the windowsill, we're white fabrics and furs and glitter chains. Feathers, white angle figures, small candles. The whole room was arranged as if it was not a room, but a cloud. Domenique knew how much yi like clouds and how much I like feathers and soft fabrics and glitter and angle figures. He had turned on a record with the the 14. Opus from Samuel Barbers Violin Concerto. It as Robert's favourite composition and favourite record. He heard it every day, all the time. Sometimes he reall got emotional or gasped into thoughts. I only learned many years later that he had given that record to his very first wife. It was the last one he gave her. Before he had to go to war. I learned his wife didn't survive the bombing and the record he gave her was always his last memory of her. She's as valuable to him as these boots are to me. Since I have heard this composition many times, it was also something like a piece of my childhood and youth that's why I also started to love it. Domenique knew about it, too. He gave me white roses, also because he knew I like white roses the most. He knew me so well. We sat together for almost two hours that evening and talked, and before I had to leave, he gave me a beautiful little silver lacquered wooden chest with my name engraved on it and in that chest were these boots. The boots I saw and wanted so much, but Domenique couldn't know anything about them because I didn't tell him. He just knew me very well. He was a quiet observer with a good memory. He was my everything... "