Actually, Wilhelm Christmann had every reason to be happy because there were so many things in his life which made it worth living for. Firstly, he had a beautiful wife, Hedwig, who was heavily pregnant with her first child. Secondly, he had a well-paid job as a teacher of Latin and Ancient Greek at a prestigious Gymnasium in Berlin. Lastly, Wilhelm was a talented writer. Εven though he hadn't published anything yet, those who had read his short stories and poems were already comparing him to Theodor Fontane and Thomas Mann.

But truth be told, Wilhelm was a man who was deeply unhappy with his life. His wife might have sensed that he was unhappy in the last couple of weeks, but she hadn't said a thing. As a matter of fact, a lot of things remained unspoken in their household because Hedwig wasn't good at speaking about how either of them felt.

Wilhelm hated his job because it distracted him too much from the work which he felt he should be doing: He wanted to be a full-time writer and felt the burden of having to support a family. "It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live," the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius had once written. And at the moment Wilhelm feared that he would never be able to live the kind of life he should be living.

The truth was that he had only been teaching school for a few months now and couldn't imagine going on like this. If he did, he knew he would lose his mind at some point or throw things at his students. No matter how often you told them about things like the Latin consecutio temporum, some of them would continue to get it wrong, and even if he succeeded in teaching one class to get a grasp of it, he would have to start from scratch again with a new class in the following year. Since he was only in his early thirties, that torture would go on for the next thirty years. It would indeed not come as a surprise to him if the rumour was true and the Latin teacher whom he had replaced at the school had really killed himself!

It definitely hadn't been his plan to wander through the streets of Berlin on a cold December night when he had left his apartment in the morning. It had been the last day of school before the Christmas break, and everyone but him had been in a festive mood. The headmaster had set up a giant Christmas tree in the school's great hall and decorated it with candles, baubles and a lot of other ornaments with the help of students from the lower grades. Because his boss loved Christmas, he had gathered the entire school around the tree during the second period after the first had been a Christmas mass at a nearby church. Then, the students had been asked to sing traditional songs like "Silent Night, Holy Night" and "O Christmas Tree." When Wilhelm had taken a swift look around, he had gotten the impression that even those students who had given the school nothing but trouble all year long had been overwhelmed by the Christmas spirit, while he had felt completely numb and out of it. He felt no connection to these people and their happiness. If they wanted to celebrate an originally pagan festival, why couldn't they at least celebrate Saturnalia instead of Christmas and dress up as whatever? He had never felt more alone and more like an outsider in his life. Something was obviously wrong with him, but he couldn't pinpoint what it was.

That was why he had felt too ashamed to return home in the afternoon. He knew his wife had been making preparations for days to bake Christmas cookies on that particular day. Therefore, he had been afraid that she, too, would expect him to be all excited about Christmas and would have been alarmed at his numbness.

His absence from home now would upset her anyway, but he was a writer: He could always make up some kind of an lie about it later.

The one question that had been on his mind since he had decided not to go home was where he should go. Was there anyone in the world who would truly be able to understand him or could even give him a good advice? His parents had never understood their son's reluctance to become a teacher, and they would probably be worried that something was seriously wrong with him if he told him that he wanted to quit his job now. His best friend had moved to Hamburg a few months before, and unfortunately, he didn't have his new address with him. Another good friend had just left Berlin to celebrate Christmas with his wife's family in the Uckermark, and he didn't have his address either. He thought about going to the Old Museum because the sight of the ancient statues always calmed him down as they were breathtakingly beautiful even though they were really old, and some of them had been buried in the ground for centuries before they even got to Berlin.

But in the end, he couldn't come to a decision even though he realised that he had been walking towards the Lehrter Train Station all the time. But the thing was that he hadn't taken a lot of money with him that morning. So even if he had wanted to buy a train ticket, he wouldn't have had enough money on him to do it.

When he realised that, he stopped dead in his tracks. Wilhelm didn't know how much time had passed since he had left school. It had been dark for a while now, and the streets were almost completely deserted. People had gone home, and it was already really cold outside. As a matter of fact, he had a small clock in his pocket and could have checked how late it was, but he didn't feel like doing it because he simply didn't want to know. Hedwig would certainly be worried by now and think that something had happened to him, which was why he should go home at once.

But he didn't want to go home and go on with his life as if today hadn't happened, as if he could be a teacher for the rest of his life and as if he was totally happy with everything when the truth was that he just wasn't and would never be.

He had to get out of the spinning wheel called life.

If he couldn't be a writer and live the life he was born to do, he had to end it.

That was the logical consequence.

He knew he was not strong enough to separate from his wife, stop talking to his family and friends, give up his job, live in poverty and know that all the people he knew would reject him as a "crazy artist."

Therefore, he had to end his life.

It was practical that he stood in the middle of the Moltke Bridge.

He knew what he had to do. It was easy.

He climbed over the railing.

Then he took in a deep breath.

He heard the girl's voice when he was ready to let go from the railing and jump into the Spree. "Stop!" she shouted shrilly.