On a Knife's Edge (part 1)

Short novel by Anette Pieper

Photo by Eric Weber on Unsplash

On a Knife’s Edge

Short novel by Anette Pieper

Part 1: Wednesday

Sarah
For a moment, she stands frozen, staring blankly at the crowd swirling around her between all the festively decorated stalls with their red rooftops. The young man at the standing table beside her, his arm wrapped around a girl in a teddy coat, mulled-wine cup in the other, glances over at her with what looks like pity. Or is she just imagining it? No, they must have overheard her conversation with Leon.

Sarah feels a tear slipping down her cheek. Impatiently, she wipes it away with the suede of her glove. What on earth was Leon thinking, ending a nearly two-year relationship here, in the middle of the Christmas market chaos on the Cathedral Square?

She gives herself a little shake and throws her head back. She won’t cry here, not in front of all these people. She needs a place to pull herself together. The WDR Café? Or Café Reichard, where elderly ladies sit around waiting for older gentlemen to chat them up? No, she can’t handle a café right now. Her head is starting to ache. She needs peace. Silence. The Cathedral—of course.

She threads her way through the crowd, past the artisan stands surrounded mostly by women. She hears French, Dutch, English—they're shipped in from half of Europe now, these tourists flocking to Cologne’s Christmas markets. They block her way, panic rises in her chest. She elbows through the crowd, murmuring apologies and earning scowls. The whole market suddenly feels like a zone of foreignness and suffocation. Was it really just half an hour ago that she stepped off the subway, light-footed, bounding up the broad steps to the square?

Finally, she reaches the entrance gate, framed by rows of glittering Christmas trees, glowing with festive light, where more visitors stream in. Outside, she takes a deep breath. Just breathe. In and out. Slowly. It'll pass.

She tightens the strap of her bag slung across her shoulder and walks, unsteady, toward the cathedral’s entrance. And there —suddenly— is Anne, as if she’d sprung from the ground. Clearly she’s here on a school outing; Sarah spots a group of students, eighteen or twenty teenagers, most of them in hoodies and sweatpants, surrounding her friend. Anne seems to be caught in a heated argument with two of them. Two boys. One is waving his finger in Anne’s face, and Anne shakes her head firmly.

Sarah tries to slip past the group unnoticed, but Anne spots her, pauses, gives a brief nod, and immediately turns back to the students.

Thank God! Sarah has absolutely no desire to deal with Anne right now. She reaches the portal, where a cathedral usher in a red robe and black sash is managing the flow of visitors. He nods to her. She passes through the gate and pauses for a moment, letting the scent of candles and incense in the cathedral’s eternal half-light wash over her. Then she walks inside.

---