April 8th, 1974
Staufen im Breisgau, Germany
Grey haze filled the sky that clung closely to the cobblestone-paved street. The street was slick with rainwater, but since the air was so warm, the feeling was more of a friendly spring shower than the aftermath of an icy downpour or of a violent storm. The windows that looked down upon the quaint boulevard were squares of warm, inviting light and if one could peer down from one of them, he could watch the occasional passers-by- often couples dressed for early spring walking arm-in-arm, or perhaps fathers with their daughters, going along with short steps while the little one enjoyed a sweet. The street lamps had only just come on, bathing the area in the ambience of early evening. Laughter from the pubs on the nearby square could be heard as the laborers, just off the clock, were tucking into plates of sausages, pints of lager.
Returning to that quieter little residential street, however, even delighted laughter could be heard from within one of the houses in particular. It was a birthday party for a certain little boy who had just turned all of eight years old. A gap-toothed grin adorned his face- he'd only just lost one of his more prominent baby teeth and it had yet to be replaced by an adult tooth. Despite this small handicap, however, his cake-consumption speed was impressive as he delivered forkful after forkful of fluffy white cake and sumptuous chocolate icing to his lips. The small mouth was rimmed with brown, but he did not seem to notice or care. Bashfully, a very blonde woman knelt and vigorously scrubbed at his face with a cloth napkin. The child looked reluctant. He still did not have many proper friends to call his own, so the long dining table was mostly seated by aunts, uncles, grandparents… There were only three guests who were not family members- the neighbors from two blocks down, one block up, and they were the Hirsch family, consisting of a mousy-haired mother with premature wrinkles, a balding father with a wiry mustache, and their four-year old little girl who had eyes so blue that they looked nearly purple. The little girl's face was also covered with chocolate icing and she looked altogether too happy at this fact, though her mother was pursing her lips and mimicking the blonde woman's scrubbing attempts.
The birthday boy laughed with rosy cheeks and the Hirsches were offered more slices of cake, which they reservedly refused. The two parents looked extremely out of place and uncomfortable to be at such an intimate family gathering, but their little girl was giggling in such an infectious way that they could not help but to let slip sad little smiles.
It had been the third doctor visit that week for little Eliza, out of dozens she'd had so far in her little life. The poor child had a strange disorder by which her blood cells were being killed off by her own body, or so said the doctor. The mother and father were not scientific types, but they could see how frail little Eliza was. In order to preserve enough of her red blood cells for her to function, she had to take a combination of unpleasant drugs that caused her to be prone to getting violently ill. They did not know how long they would have left to spend with her. So it was with sad little smiles that they appreciated her laughter from a mouth smeared with cake. Because of her frailty, they dared not take her outside more than necessary, and because of this, it was rare to see her so bright.
So it was with some reluctance that they'd accepted the good doctor's invitation to come to his son's eighth birthday party. The motivation was that Eliza rarely had the chance to meet other children and the son was apparently the same way. Only eight years old and already invested solely in the spines of books, he hadn't made any friends his age at all. The good doctor had seemed a bit embarrassed to reveal his son's lack of social…ability, so they'd really had no choice.
An hour and couple cups of coffee later, the Hirsches made their polite goodbyes as Eliza wailed and clung to the petrified birthday's boy's shirt. There was still a smudge of cream from inside the cake on the boy's unthinkably thick glasses and as Eliza sniffled, he patted her small shoulder awkwardly, stuttering over some sort of formal thank-you-for-coming speech. Courteously and in an oddly more composed manner, he thanked Mr. and Mrs. Hirsch for the toy train they'd brought him, though he knew he'd not be playing with it. They knew it, too- all of his other presents had been books fat enough to serve as doorstops and he'd looked almost weirdly enthusiastic about most of them. Eliza, having finally resigned to being led home, lowered her eyelashes and kissed her new friend on the cheek in spite of her parents' warnings not to kiss people, or touch them, or hug them, or eat their food, or… do anything with them, really.
"Bye-bye, Johann," she said quietly before being ushered out the door by her mother. And that was that.