Even though I walk through the valley of Death I fear no evil, for my name is Laura. I was born in 1927.
Right now I am in a teashop on Pebble Street. I have chosen a table for two from which I can see anyone who enters but I cannot immediately be seen myself and I have hung my coat over the opposite chair, as if my companion has just left it there and will soon be back.
It is a bright May afternoon, but I cannot find myself enjoying the weather. The teashop is rapidly filling with customers or people who have nowhere in particular to go. We are all lost. If someone had told me, I would have not believed it. A week without strafes and a sunny afternoon has made these people forget all the things we have passed through. Or maybe they are just trying to ignore this undoing, to live their day. Their last day, perhaps.
Cigarette smokes and faded words drift across the nearby tables. In this phony state of peace, few people seem to be realizing the state we are in. You know, it did not used to be like this.
There was a time when we were all pure, when we did not know what war meant. Now all I see is ruins, dust and broil. The teashop is now a mixture of past splendour and wartime shabbiness. Scratched parquet, faded wallpaper and a white paint that has aged to a lusterless cream. Once the epitome of gracious middle-class breakfasting, it was now noisy and crowded.
Looking back on those years, years of childhood, years of first coquetries and first-lovers, I have the impression that they were just the product of my imagination, that none of those blissful moments has ever happened.
How could I have guessed that today, the 31st of May I will be sitting on this rusty chair, writing probably my last pages into the crumpled notebook that I keep for a diary? But I leave these words as a testimony that I, Laura, 18 years old, am not afraid of what is to come and I am content with all the trials LIFE has had for me.
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