It had just been twelve o'clock when Marianne knocked again on the door of Johan's office. Johan got up and opened the door for her, "Come in Marianne! Did you bring something to drink or shall I get you some coffee?"

Marianne struggled not to look at him with wide eyes. She had always been the one who took care of the coffee; it was part of her job. What on earth was the matter with this judge?

She replied, "I have something to drink with me myself. What about you, Judge Simons?"

Johan looked her straight in the eye, "From today on, for you I am no longer Judge Simons, but Johan. It has always made me feel uncomfortable, as if I were above you. I don't have a drink with me myself, I'm going to see if I remember how that coffee machine works."

"Just let me do that, it's my job," Marianne protested.

"Yes, that's how it says in the unwritten law, but you've already walked more today than I have, so I'll take over from you for a while." With a nod, he led her to a comfortable chair and walked out of his room to get coffee.

.

"So," he began, when he was back and seated himself in his other comfortable chair. "What's going through your mind?"

Marianne shot into laughter, "Mostly I'm wondering what happened to you. You've always been more approachable than the other judges, but now?"

"Now I've come back to earth and become a normal person? Something like that?"

Marianne laughed out loud! "I wouldn't describe it that way, but it probably comes down to the same thing. How come you're so different today?"

Johan grinned, took a bite of his sandwich, chewed and swallowed.

"As a kid, I was a loner. I didn't really have any friends, didn't feel at home among all those other kids. I loved learning, but found school a misery. After high school I went to university to study law. There I met two female students, Marieke and Ellen. They were like me in a way, different from our peers. We really got along very well. We spent evenings discussing topics around law and all kinds of other possible and impossible topics. We took long walks. Ha, that was so great! Then I would often walk between them, with my arms around their shoulders and call them "my wives. It was just friendship-like, but... with Marieke I felt a very special click, just magnetic. I just knew that she was my wife, my soulmate, but because of all the rejection in my childhood I didn't have the guts to let her feel anything from my heart. After the first year of study, both Marieke and Ellen went in a different direction. Ellen did continue to study law, but chose the direction of attorney."

Johan saw Marianne nod and stopped for a moment because it seemed she wanted to ask him something. "Is that Ellen Hendriks? That nice lawyer, so totally different from all those other reputable lawyers?"

Johan laughed, "Exactly, that one yes, great description! And Marieke... she went in the direction of security. And that's why we lost sight of each other. Now we're some years down the road, and all these years it has felt like an amputation, that I had lost Marieke. But I still didn't have the guts to approach her. The other day Ellen called me about that Lisa case, you know..."

He saw that Marianne nodded, and continued, "Ellen told me about Lisa and that she needed a judge who felt her. She said, that Marieke was going to help Lisa with security, and that Marieke had suggested that I would be just fine for it. She knew that I lived, or rather had lived, from my heart. I got pretty stuck in my work, was hardly able to feel, to probe what my clients really needed, what was going on and what was right... I couldn't really do it from the heart anymore. But, I'll cut a long story short, the three of us spent the evening yesterday, Marieke, Ellen and I. And it was so good!"

He told Marianne about the flowers and the butterfly, about Marieke's confession about her falling in love during their year of college together. He shared openly what it had done to him, and that finally, after Ellen's departure, they had decided to move on together.

"We've wasted too many years already, we don't want to continue without each other, so I'm moving out," he said. She lives in a nice detached house with a beautiful garden full of flowers, because she loves butterflies so much. And last night I noticed that my deepest desire was for her to be again fully that butterfly she essentially is. She had also experienced our breakup as terrible, felt like a butterfly with cracks in her wings. That sweetheart destroyed all the walls around my soul yesterday, and as a result I am now much freer, I can feel again.

That attack of anger and pain this morning was the result of that. I had looked at everything Lisa had given along with the report, and I felt so much pain and sorrow, but especially anger for those bastards. I mean those suspects, as we call them nicely here. Well sorry, they are just unbelievable scumbags, who abused that poor woman in a terrible way. I can't tell you anything else about it, professional secrecy and privacy, you know, but the way I reacted shows, on the one hand, how serious this case is, and on the other hand, how real it is that those walls around my soul have crumbled. Well, that was about it!"

"Wow wow wow! What a story!" responded Marianne in utter amazement. "I don't really know what to say to it, but I do know that I feel incredibly happy for you! What a change it all makes. And I think it's wonderful for people like Lisa that this has happened to you. And for myself too for that matter, it feels unaccustomed, but very good."

"I'm glad about that," Johan said with a broad smile. "I've always hated grades and positions. And yet I got sucked into it automatically here. It was the way it was supposed to be, it just was. But I'm not happy about that, I can't pat myself on the back about that! So I'm grateful that that has changed now.

I just sent Lisa the invitation to the trials of those five suspects, that invitation you had already made for me. Nice, by the way, that you do such things. You have the overview, and from that overview you distribute to us. There you take something out of my hands, a piece of work I have absolutely nothing to do with. It's just not my thing. I’ve sent your invitation as an attachment to an email to Lisa. Before today, I sent a standard mail, from my high throne," Johan said, pulling a silly face, "but that too is different from today. I’ve sent her a personal mail, in which I also told her roughly what her situation does to me. Oh yes, I have invited her to appear in court at 9 o'clock that day. Will you schedule that for me later and let me know in which room that is possible?"

"That's good, I will. And I can tell you right off the bat, that the room you're using that day for the suspects is available all day, so you can use that room for Lisa at 9:00, too."

"Pretty convenient!"

Lunchtime had flown by. Marianne thanked Johan for his openness and went back to work with a happy feeling, while Johan drafted a letter for the five suspects, a personal letter in which he made clear what they were being charged with. To this he attached the official letter which contained information about when they would be arraigned.

He read the letters over, and was pleased with them in a grateful way as well. Even though these men were suspects of terrible things, they were still human beings. He made a copy of these letters, which he sent to their lawyers. Well, these suspects had had their lawyers on them immediately after their arrest. That's what you could do when you were as rich and powerful as they were....

Shaking it off, he turned his attention back to Lisa. He began to lay out the situation in a roadmap for her lawsuit, lining up everything he thought he would need and saving it to his computer.

He was grateful for this workday, for the total turnaround in his way of working and dealing with his secretary. From now on, the word "secretary" meant nothing more than a certain group of tasks she did. To him she was just Marianne, a friendly woman who did the tasks of a secretary and was also a hostess at the reception desk. He felt how big this change was at its deepest. He hoped that there would come a time, when there would no longer be any difference between all the employees here either. He longed for it, that they would just be a group, a unity. He looked forward to it, that everyone who worked here would begin to realize, that together they wanted to put their shoulders to it to achieve a fair, warm justice system.

They needed each other. All tasks had to be done to reach the goal, all tasks, on all fronts, including Marianne's. And the best thing would be if everyone could do what suited him or her, without looking up to some or down on others.

Johan stood up, closed his computer and locked his room door. At the front desk, he greeted Marianne, "I'm going home a little early, pack up my things and start my move. Thank you for who you are Marianne, you are a wonderful secretary and cordial hostess! I never told you before, but I have heard and seen from several people, that they arrived here tense because they had to appear in court, and that they experienced that their meeting with you had done them good, that you with your warmth had driven away the coldness of the court, so that they could relax a little. That says something about you, but unfortunately also about our court. I hope that the latter is going to change!"

Marianne laughed, "If your way of doing things is going to influence others, this court could change a lot! Let's just do what we can, on the rest I don't think we have much influence."

"More than you think, Marianne, if we are who we are and do what we do from there, it definitely has more influence on others than we think! Living from your heart, from your soul...just that! See you tomorrow!"

"Yes, see you tomorrow, and good luck with the move!"

Johan walked out, to his car, while Marianne looked at him, thinking about what he had just said. She longed for that atmosphere Johan had talked about!

To chapter 203. Huib buys the property

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