Eva and the two keys - The Way of the Farmer

When Eva Meyer turned the street corner to walk up the stone steps that led up to her apartment that summer’s afternoon – she hesitated. Usually she would just walk right up to the door with her keys in hand, insert the key into the lock, turn the barrel, open the door and step right in. But that day as Eva Meyer walked towards the door of her apartment she wasn’t even holding her keys – instead, she reached for the two gold keys that hung around her neck – a necklace that she has always worn and never ever taken off after Africa – she knew the man had followed her all the way home. But that was not the reason why she had hesitated – as that day Eva Meyer found herself standing before a fork road in her mind’s eye. 

To one side was the road that she called ‘her’ life, that she now owned and steered in Munich Germany as a director of a fine arts Museum. It may not be a very exciting life. But nonetheless it was a life that the former nun knew she had chosen to live. Above all it was a life without him.  

The other road was to the great unknown – the road that once began all the way back to a distant life where a nun once met a Cocoa planter somewhere deep in Africa – that day as the woman hesitated somewhere in between the stone steps leading to her apartment – she realized that if she even so much as looked back at the man whose footsteps had now stopped. That would be as good as walking down that great unknown road.

A road that Eva Meyer realized would never be as predictable or for that matter as placid, as the life she had always known. She knew it deep in her heart – the man led a life in darkened caverns filled with intrigues – he was always wheeling and dealing in the preamble of that in between world of light and day – that world of twilight where the line between right and wrong, good and evil along with fear and fascination was so blur that it might not even exist at all. But it wasn’t fear of this man’s world that made Eva Meyer hesitate that afternoon. Neither did it have anything to do with his dark side.

If anything made Eva Meyer hesitate longer than usual that day on the stone steps leading to her apartment – it was the idea that the man who stood behind her had already sensed her deepest yearnings and darkest fears – she knew that he realized that she, Eva Meyer, the woman did not have the courage to choose which of the two fork roads to walk that day. She even realized he had to be the one who had to choose for both of them, this time. 

After all, he has too, she said to herself assuredly,

“I have the keys….”

So that day, the man gently took the well dressed German lady’s hand and led her up to the door and together they stepped into the apartment.

————————————————————-