Free Therefore Choose by Keith Oatley Page A

I’ve medical school. I can’t see how.”
    â€œDo you really think that it will suit you? To be a doctor? I can’t imagine it. You think it’s something that you ought to do.”
    â€œSomething about me? You think I wouldn’t fit?”
    â€œIt isn’t really what you want at all. I know you think I’m mad. Impulsive.”
    â€œIt isn’t that. To stay, it’s too impractical. Not what I want? It’s what I have to give. I’ve no place here, at university.”
    â€œYou want to be a writer. You’d have me.”
    George had an intuition that what Anna was saying was true. The idea was too strange: to give up his place at medical school, move to Germany, live with her. But what could be more important? He could not grasp it.
    It was one of those bright days of a kind that can happen in the summer in Central Europe, with a cloudless sky and a perfect temperature. They had walked up Unter den Linden to the huge arch of the Brandenburg Gate. They had held hands, wordlessly, as they looked up at the famous statue on the top of the arch: four horses pulling the chariot of the Goddess of Victory. Then they had turned, still hand in hand, and walked back to the corner of the three cafés where Friedrichstrasse crosses Unter den Linden.
    George felt carefree, as if this was how life ought to be. They had decided to stop at one of the three cafés: the Café Bauer.
    The building was solid, five storeys of white stone and large windows, with a steep pitched roof. On the first floor, its name was announced in large letters, CAFÉ BAUER, emphatic but not vulgar. One could imagine the building being constructed. Workmen dug the earth with shovels for the basement, installed foundation stones. They erected scaffolding, climbed up and down ladders, shaped the stones and hauled them up with ropes and pulleys, set them into the facade. Inside, hardwood floors were laid. In window openings, sheets of glass were carefully installed. With the coming of electricity, copper wires were strung behind walls. Many men worked together, orchestrated, to produce this result: reassuring, respectable. Now, waiters awoke each morning, summoned by alarm clocks. They grumbled at their wives, pulled on black trousers, travelled here on the S-Bahn, so that people, in pairs and in groups, could meet and converse and clink spoons in cups as they sat in this grand room, with flowers in great baskets and oil paintings on every wall. Here, matters proceeded with a certain understanding of how to behave. Waiters brought silver coffee pots, placed them politely on marble-topped tables. Customers sipped the coffee and glanced at their companions. Here, with its nerves and sinews intact, a society functioned as it had for decades.
    Now, sitting here, suddenly, Anna was asking George to stay and live with her. He’d had no idea that she’d been thinking any such thing, or that she might make such an impractical suggestion. It was like a proposal of marriage. Should it not have been he who would ask anything of this kind?
    George looked at the woman he had known for just a few weeks, searched her face as she looked into his, felt a wave of affection, thought he might suddenly burst out: Yes, yes!
    How could he waver, when meeting her was the most momentous event of his life?
    He wondered about ordering more coffee. He looked around the large room. A waiter hovered a few yards away.
    â€œYou could write in Berlin,” Anna said. “I can continue as an editor. Perhaps, as well, I can become a publisher.”
    â€œYou’re serious.”
    â€œI’m intelligent, not bad looking. Not rich, I agree. But I’m nice to make love with. Do you think you’ll get a better offer?”
    â€œI’m not comparing you to some imaginary person.”
    â€œYou’re thinking we’ve not known each other very long.”
    â€œIs this the place to live? Some people think there