MORNING SERIAL

‘MY grandparents came from here,’ said Wolfi. ‘Now it’s the doorway to the east. There’s a bridge over there,’ he gestured to some invisible point beyond the old town, ‘the Wakenitz Bridge, it leads nowhere, it’s just cut off on the eastern side. Do you hate the Russians, Issie?’

‘I don’t know any. I don’t really ever hate people, except people who hate people. Wolfi, this is magical.’

It took forever for them to get to the Marienkirche, not only because of the press of people, meagre, ill-clad, striving along the narrow alleys, but because it seemed necessary to stop and kiss each other every few steps.

‘Refugees,’ said Wolfi, ‘from the east.’

When you looked at architecture, your heart soared. When you looked at people, it sank. Isolde, running from Rachel, hunted by Rachel, gazed up at the sublime spires.

She dodged the proud old pauper sailor, with his beggar’s tin, singing shanties to his accordion, a blanket covering his legs like an apron.

They were in the Marienkirche. Its Gothic height and beauty stunned her, the delicate flower painting across the ceiling, Christ Jesus hanging in harrowing pain. But mostly the bells.

She had just lit a candle for Rachel. It burned coldly over there among other ephemeral flames. She had closed her eyes and tried to pray but no prayer came.

There was no prayer. Just the bells.

The remains of two great bells lay like buckled hearts where they had fallen when British planes had bombed the church that Palm Sunday, sixteen years ago. The ground beneath had crumpled.

They would remain as a monument, with a cross of nails from Coventry. She stood holding the iron bars of the chapel, listening to the testament of the silenced bells. Tears stung her eyes.

A man in late middle age standing beside her said, as if in hectic riposte to some unanswerable accusation or reproof, ‘Dresden.’

‘Pardon me?’

> The Element of Water by Stevie Davies is published by Parthian in the Library of Wales series www.parthianbooks.com