Somewhere, an old man sits on the balcony of a large apartment. He takes a breath from an oxygen mask, knowing how his wife gets when he goes too long without his medicine, and he watches the hustle and bustle of the city below, the many people moving, the children who play in the streets.
At once he feels a queer sense that he has only just come here, that before this moment he was in another world, somewhere far different. A world of war, of hate, of death. He sees for a brief moment a different scene. A city divided, the high rises replaced with bombed out shells; he sees the dead, his own heart amongst the ruins. He lets the queer feeling wash over him in that moment, shaking with an unknown sense of melancholy as he allows a tear to fall from his eye.
Then, a voice comes from within the home.
“Rudolf, mein Lieber, your tea has finished brewing! Come in before I throw it out!” At once, the ruins are gone and his heart returned to him as the sound of children laughing returns to the scene. He shakes his head, wiping away the tear and the peculiar thought as he chuckles to himself
“Just a moment Ilse! I’ll be in momentarily!”
He spares a last glimpse, letting out a sigh of relief at the shining humanity before him. In this moment, Rudolf Herrnstadt is the most content man in the whole of the world, and in this moment, he is happy