In October before 30 Years ago I was in the potato field with Clara.
The field was on the slope, steeply below the farmhouse, where Clara lived with her parents and four brothers.
Claras Bruder Johann trug einen blauen Overall und ging schon mal mit dem Traktor los. Während wir andern in der Eckbank der nierigen Bauernstube Rosenkohl mit Blutwurst und …. Ate potatoes. I didn't want to eat black pudding, therefore I did not understand, warum mir das Wasser im Mund zusammenlief bei ihrem Anblick. “No, rather no blood sausage! Or maybe: just a little bit!”, I said.
The march here after school had come from the Postbus station 50 Lasted minutes.
Clara wore pigtails and her nose was covered with small black heads. At her home they fired with wood, the room was full of smoke.
Just because of their blue ones, Eyelashes encircled eyes, Clara was still the prettiest in my class. But I didn't think so until later.
Johann, Clear, fourteen year old brother, left me with little ones through his sister for two years, careful messages to be sent:
“It was raining this morning, but in the afternoon the sun came. I was off and listened to Roland Kaiser's new cassette. I think so, by the way, you have a very beautiful figure. Even if you are a little thin. What music do you listen to?” Etc.
These messages were written on decorated children's paper, und ich beantwortete sie immer pünktlich. Meistens auf Rosapapier, but a little bolder. In other words: Johann and I had a long pen friendship with many unspeakable things. This did not break off either, when I was with beautiful Tim for two weeks, Son of the fur trader from the village (a huge factory!), Holding hands– reluctantly.
The students from Emmental were different, than the newcomers and the nouveau riche. I was drawn to them in a strange way. Maybe, because they were more amazed, were rougher and friendlier at the same time, as we. To the teacher too, of course. Unlike us, they couldn't count on their parents, those in doubt (when they screwed up), spanked the teacher for it.
My parents were introverts, who had a simple single-family house built in the 1970s. Her background was different, than the one, the ten, fifteen years later they built their houses and villas. Our quarters turned out to be a strange mixture of these, who had worked their way up and didn't want to show, what they had. And showers.
Outwardly, I was an avid supporter of the early 1990s: roller skates, neon colored clothing, Perms with blonde streaks, Madonna and George Michael tapes … I had all of that. And what are they other than small ones, Outwardly celebrated status symbols?
That Johann heard pop music by Roland Kaiser impressed me powerfully. “Your lips are inaccessible to me. Inaccessible near the delicate scent of you …”
Basically, the German hit was much nicer and more real than the pop from America. In any case, when i was up in the hills, with Clara and Johann, I found the hit as a clear gem, which pearled over forests and meadows with great seriousness, during the pop, that we consumed below, was nothing more than plastic, so, like my gold-speckled earrings or the lacquer belts cut back.
I dipped about five pieces of Brussels sprouts in bechamel sauce and laid a knife and fork over my plate with a growling stomach. Then we went down to the field with Clara's little brother and began to harvest potatoes. The earth was extraordinarily cool and soft.
I reached inside with my left hand, felt a great joy, as soon as I had scanned the circumference and size or fished the potato to the light and then put it in the basket, which Johann emptied from time to time.
He sat upright in his blue overalls in the tractor and didn't pay any attention to me. I thought it was great now. Much better than in his submissive letters. We worked all afternoon, the sun was already going down. Mist rose from everywhere, the breathtaking day sank into it.
It's one of those days, that I keep in mind, for several years.
Maybe, because I felt, how rootless I am, while digging up the potatoes and silently making myself useful. Clara and Johann had these roots.
Later he is said to have driven a snappy sports car through the village, a manta. Clara stayed afloat with underpaid jobs, before she has a child, stood there without a man.
Am I wrong, or can, what we see in our life and therefore in the future, when we are fifteen, burn down like a candle?
1.11.2020