Freiburg

The limes were organic, Demeter even, but naturally not local. Ingrid could already anticipate Gerd’s comment on the carbon footprint of her apricot-lime-rosemary tart, which surely amounted to a considerable number of air miles. The birthday party sat beneath old trees that had filtered the late afternoon light until recently. Now, however, it was dark enough for the dessert with candles, which Gerd had to blow out, carbon footprint or not. She was about to go into the kitchen when the patio door opened. 

Ingrid lived with various flatmates, currently with Joris, a young man from Holland who spoke little, subsisted mainly on bananas, and was not actually supposed to be there, but was now standing behind the house. Joris waved, came down into the garden, greeted everyone as if he had known them forever, especially Gerd, whom he congratulated effusively, and finally accompanied Ingrid into the kitchen because, as he explained, he had a great idea. So Ingrid served, Gerd blew out the candles, and Joris exclaimed: “I’ll make you flambéed bananas to go with it!” 

Gerd had said nothing about the limes, but he could not let this pass: “Where do these come from?” Joris grinned: “From Rewe. They were so cheap.” Joris was half Gerd’s age, so a lecture seemed inevitable. But as Gerd rose to deliver one of his impassioned speeches about climate change and tropical fruits, Joris pulled him towards the camping stove he had set up on the side table and said, “Great that you’re joining in.” Against all expectations, the two proved to be a perfect team, producing meter-high flames within minutes, which were even more impressive than the delicious rum bananas. 

Only when Joris tried to play fire-breather with the rum did Gerd stop him, saying it was dangerous, and they disappeared into the shed, from which they soon emerged with a bottle of lamp oil. Gerd had been a fire-breather at the large anti-nuclear power plant demonstrations in the seventies, and Joris now wanted to learn it from him. When Ingrid and her friends heard this, they distributed buckets of water in the garden and settled down at a safe distance.