National Novel Writing Month Day 3 – First Scene written: Second Encounter
On Friday, 1st of November 2013, I started with no idea about what to write my novel, but soon after sitting down it started to flow out of my head into my fingers into the written text. Here is the first scene I have written, it’s really raw and without a second review. At the moment I call this scene “Second Encounter”.
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Wulf Lambert was walking towards the botanical garden near the Freie Universität Berlin and taking off his long coat, folding it over his arms when he bumped into a large frame of a men about the same size as him.
„Entschuldigung“, the man mumbled with a strange accent and turned to rush his way. Wulf was about to murmur an angry comment, then looked at him baffled having a feeling of Deja Vu turning into sudden recognition.
The man looked like he was in his mid-thirties, average size and weight with short cut brown hair. Like Wulf he also had a long rain coat just right for the chilly, rainy autumn weather of Berlin on a november afternoon of the year 1999. His face was dominated by a prominent aquiline nose quite like the exact copy of a venetian patrician from a sculpture of Donatello. But more disquieting were his eyes with their intensively radiant green.
No doubt – that was the man who saved his life! Only that it was over 50 years ago, in the aftermath of the second world war when Germany was rebuilt and when Wulf was still a kid.
„Edward, wait!“ he shouted out, only to be betrayed by his own voice. A voice which lectured decades of geology students at the Freie Universität Berlin, but after his retirement his voice wasn’t what it had been before. Still the stranger stopped and turned around and looked at him quietly.
After an endless moment of silence Wulf managed to say „I am sorry, I must have mistaken your for someone else. You must apologize me, my mind and my eyes are not that sharp anymore. Do you happen to be a relative of Edward Genthner? You look like him very much, but he must be over 80 years old now. I will never forget his face, when he pulled me out of the river that day. Could it be… that you are his grand-son?“.
The men stood silently, watching Wulf staring at him. Wulf was getting more and more nervous. He stuttered „Es tut mir leid, Sie sprechen kein Englisch? Ich dachte, Sie wären ein alter Freund, daher…“. Wulf’s sentence trailed off and he was looking at the man expectantly. Still the stranger stood there unmovingly, no expression betraying his possible thoughts.
„Wulf, lange nicht mehr gesehen. Your english improved significantly over the the decades.“
Wulf was dumbfounded. His head was spinning and he felt dizzy. Then everything went dark.
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It’s Sunday, 3rd of November now and I currently have only 412 words of the 50000 I needed by the end of the month. I apologize myself again and turn to writing now. Look forward to some more excerpts!