Postconsistency

The yard was in fact more like a winding alleyway. I remember it as being insanely narrow. Probably that’s my head, adding growing up to the images in my memory. And letting me grow out of them. At any rate, here too, everything was grey. Even the floor was made of brittle concrete. Grey and narrow and there were doors everywhere. I hardly remember how many doors there were, but they were everywhere. However, behind them was always the same thing: Chaos. Chickens and rabbits must have lived there once, but that would have been a long time ago. There was one door that Onkel Egon used to open for me every time. The one that led to the cellar. In the villages, the cellars were always outside the house – almost like bunkers. Naturally I never dared to go down into the bunker cellar, but there was a swallow’s nest above the stairs. Each time we visited, my first stop was the swallows. Even after the nest had long been abandoned. I can also still remember the next door behind the bunker cellar very well. That was the privy. In very young days, I didn’t mind that Uncle Egon only had a privy. After all, I only knew the camping loo from home. Later on, though, I always refrained from using it, perhaps because Uncle Egon stopped caring about his toilet at some point. Between the cellar door and the privy door a small path led to the garden. It was definitely the nicest part of the fortress and much better kept than Onkel Egon himself. Between the cellar door and the privy door there was a small path leading to the garden. The garden was definitely the nicest part of the fortress and much better kept than Onkel Egon himself. We mostly came for the garden – to pick cherries from the huge cherry tree or to harvest rhubarb or gooseberries. The greenhouse under the cherry tree was my second destination after the swallow’s nest. I found the small hut made entirely of glass very impressive – for me it was a crystal palace. But here, too, my memory is re-rendering the impression from back then: Unlike me, Uncle Egon always had to crouch in there (which is why he later tore it down) and the walls were more likely made of Plexiglas. Onkel Egon always gifted me seedlings from the Plexiglas palace.
    Of the interior of the house, I only have three memories: In the first, my grandfather is still alive and shows me his illustrated walking stick, which took him a long time to dig out from the stacked pantry and which only served to impress his grandchildren. He had used a simpler one for walking. In the second one, I’m watching Uncle Egon stuff his cigarettes at the kitchen table while everyone else is having very serious grown-up conversations. And in the third, we turn up unannounced to clean because my mother can no longer stand the way her brother lives. That must have been shortly after Opa’s death.
    All these memories take place in the kitchen – the room with the dirty window that we used to knock on. Onkel Egon’s living space was limited to this one room. I wonder how he managed that, because the air in the kitchen was so thick that I could hardly breathe. After we were in there, we always reeked like chain smokers. Due to the coating of dirt on the window, there was only filtered daylight. Everything looked like under a veil. The room was not big. There was an improvised kitchenette – a sink with a base unit and a portable stove top. Apart from that, a sofa and coffee table just fitted in. Above the sofa hung a painting of a very proud stag at a forest creek, which I, with my childish grasp of art, thought was very admirable. The rest of the house Egon only entered when it was absolutely necessary. After the cleaning day, I understood why. There had been a lot to do in the kitchen, but we had managed to work our way deeper into the fortress. Onkel Egon, as it happened, was anything but thrilled about the whole thing and didn’t lift a finger himself. It was the first and only time I got a glimpse of the rest of the house and realized that it basically consisted of one and the same room in multiple copies: A bed in the middle, a mirrored wardrobe against the wall, and everything covered in a thick layer of clothes and junk. Cleaning up here was downright impossible. Our work was done when my mother retrieved some things she had left behind from her childhood from the chaos: her old Pioneer scarf, a few badges that seemed totally alien to me, and a collection of stamps. There was probably not much more to be gained.
    There’s one thing I don’t really understand to this day: It might have taken a day’s work to dig free one of the beds, but Onkel Egon preferred to sleep on an old couch in the kitchen.