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stronger than the crazy desire which had possessed him
during the first weeks with Aza.
This was something else. This was love.
Looking up from the Orffstrasse, Paul could see from afar
the upper floors of the hospital where he sought the
window at the end of the hallway on the fifth floor. There
was a burning sensation in his chest, which, for the first
time, didn’t feel oppressive but inspiring. Life with Aza
hadn’t been easy in the past few months but now, he
thought, everything would be fine and maybe they’d even
want to get married one day, although Paul wasn’t so sure
about that. Anyway, he wouldn’t tell Max. That he’d ever
wasted a thought on marriage would constitute a betrayal
of their shared principles discussed at least once a week and
late into the night at the kitchen table over a pot of chilli
con carne (marriage as a bourgeois institution, an
instrument of oppression, restriction of freedom, a symbol
of moral subjugation, et cetera, et cetera). Yet my father
was basically a romantic, and exchanging rings or even a
solemn signature was just as much part of that as his dream
of a Tropical Institute, which he and Aza would run one
day, carrying out research in the Amazon while my future
siblings and I would play with children from some nearby
naked Indian tribe, bristling with health under banana
trees.