Blanca's father worked at the Neopac company on the creek, close, where he also lived with his wife and Blanca, in a cottage for foreign employees. The Neopac made tubes and cans, I believe. Early, The old building was at seven in the morning, that was on my way to school, brightly lit. The employees all wore light colored caps and overcoats, minty colors. The bright light reflected off the creek and threw some light on my dark walk to school, lined with a rock on the other side. Was it winter and dark, I always did it very quickly, that I got away from that part of my school journey. There was also a detour, through the village and past the bakery. I liked this way much better, but it just lasted longer.
Blanca, was Spanish, told me, she comes from a sea, that bears her name. I said, that couldn't be. A girl cannot bear the name of a sea, a sea not a girl's name.
As is often the case, the bad students were placed next to the funny ones in school, sometimes the bad ones next to the bad ones, but never an excellent good student next to a bad one. A popular student next to an odd one.
Blanca and I sat at the front desk in the horseshoe. We spoke little to each other, since Blanca still spoke bad German even in the second grade. Apart from that we were, because we were in the front seat, always warned immediately, when we chatted.
Once we had to paint a large map of the world together, she was stretched across the desk, die Namen der Länder standen mit grossen klaren Lettern in den rudimentär gezeichneten Ländern drin. Wir lasen sie nicht, da wir mit Ausmalen einer so riesigen Karte über und über beschäftigt waren. Genaugenommen kritztele Blanca mit einer pinkigen Farbe über alle Ländergrenzen hinweg. So ein Farbstift von Caran d’Ache hat einen sehr feinen Strich, so dass man, wollte man jemals fertig werden, anfing zu schluddern, understandably! Auf alle Fälle Blanca und ich. Trotzdem ging mir Blancas Schludderei ein wenig zu weit, und ich sagte: “Hey, you can't just paint all the countries the same color, you have to pay attention to the lines, behind which another country comes. And for this one you take a different color!” Blanca, which had already bathed the whole of western Europe in pink, put down the colored pencil. I saw, how she picked up an eraser, erased the color in a big way. Then, to my astonishment, she grabbed a pencil and very slowly drew the rudimentary one, but along clearly drawn lines of the countries. “What's the point of that again??!”, I exclaimed. Blanca went over to it, to color in the interior of the countries with a pencil, all these countries, which she had first painted over in a sloppy pink and then erased. “You don't have to color in the countries with a pencil, why are you doing this!?”, I said annoyed. Then she grabbed the eraser again and began to erase again, this time the several neatly set pencil marks. She must be crazy, I thought. And because the teacher saw, that we weren't very far along on our mission, I shouted it out loud: “She must be crazy!”
I do not know, whether Blanca leaned over to me first, or if I wanted to steal the pencil from her hand first. It all happened so quickly and by itself: Der Bleistift traf meinen rechten Mittelfinger, hit and then broke off! A pencil ball sat in the depths of my finger, not even blood flowed! I was flabbergasted. And because the doctor said, a little lead in your finger doesn't hurt anything, I never removed the tip. This although I doubted more than once, Was the doctor really right?.
But now I have many, lived with this leaden finger for many years. It seems to grow deeper and deeper into my flesh. Maybe it will migrate into my bloodstream after all?
When I look at him, think of my way to school with the Neopac at the creek, where Blanca's father would spend hours assembling tubes for little money, an die Art, how Blanca painted the world map, by simply painting over all the borders with sloppy strokes – how right she was – and her name, which bears the name of a coast, where the sand very, very bright, almost white golden shimmers.
I never heard from Blanca again.
(29.7.22)