Her ground floor apartment was so dark and stale, as if no one had left her for a hundred years.
I don't know her age, she was about forty then. Although she tried all the shops and doors, to keep closed,
the smell of sweet, acrid alcohol penetrated the stairwell together with vomit, climbed up and through my keyhole.
I never eyed her, because i knew, how ashamed she was. You heard it almost every day: the attempt, to vomit, probably, to continue drinking later.
Rhea, the middle floor acupuncturist told me, Evelyn won the lottery ten years ago and lost all the money within a short time. Rhea didn't know any more either. Dorley, on top, was demented and called the police, When I listened to rap too loud. But how it was Evelyn's turn, she didn't get any of that.
You just can't want to hear anything, because you don't want to hear anything, this fact is known.
I much preferred Evelyn to Dorli and Rhea together. When I rang her bell, because the stairwell smelled of gas again, opened only a tiny crack, but her voice was kind and deep. It was a voice, who was no longer used to the exchange with other voices, one automatically listened with interest, definitely me.
Nothing is so dull, like an interlocutor, which is served in abundance with interlocutors, usually.
Evelyn fing an, to open the old shop a crack, when I was sitting outside in the garden with Hopfi. I felt honored, I was a little ashamed. I didn't want to be one of them, who treat Evelyn like air and at the same time think bad things about her behind her back. I didn't want to watch her. That's why I was always a bit too flippant to Evelyn.
Last winter, her consumption became excessive, the gagging endless, the gas smell penetrating.
Evelyn didn't open the door anymore, I countered, multiple times.
She let me in, it was like being in an absinthe cave, ancient dark photocopies of a face hung on the walls everywhere. On my question, who depicted the face, Evelyn didn't answer. Apparently it was a character from seventies television.
The gas stove was on fire. Evelyn lost her balance and fell backwards to the ground.
It's all good, she said, I don't have to worry, the removal will come soon.
I found out over the next few days, that Evelyn was talking confused and was probably delirious.
Now Dorli got wind of the matter and threatened to call the police.
Several times Evelyn ran up to me and rang the bell like crazy, told Rhea. But I wasn't there, or would have slept.
Rhea knew, that I worked so little and was always looking for a complicated job. But I did not know, that I had had the physical illness for a long time. The medical school did not know the disease, she didn't want to (another)know.
That has continued to this day, not changed much despite WHO entry of sixty-nine.
I went to Rhea's acupuncture a few times to no avail because of my problems. Because acupuncture didn't help me, Rhea concluded, I had a mental block somewhere, because of which I could not get well.
I accepted this interpretation, I didn't know any other, although the problems, that limited me were physical.*
In general, I took the matter as lightly as I could at the time, for which I congratulate myself today.
I did not know, whether you could poison yourself with this kitchen gas, but at some point I had Evelyn so far, with me that
Leaving home and seeing a therapist. In fact, we went straight to the psychiatric ward. I was bluffing something with that, how many times I'd been to a psychiatric ward.* Evelyn took her giant gym bag with her, to then return home with new fuel.
Everyone knew the purpose of this bag, only Evelyn thought, the neighborhood is clueless.
—–
I like you, she said, when I met her sober months later.
A lot had happened in the meantime: Evelyn and I had been given notice by the homeowner for personal use, Dorli's condition had deteriorated after cataract surgery. I put the prescribed drops in her eyes twice a day for two weeks.
Had I dripped the left eye and moved on to the right, Dorli said: “Yep, you haven't dripped the left eye yet!? Have you already dribbled my eyes today?!” I was a bit shocked, but pretended, like Dorli had asked a hell of an important question.
One morning Dorli asked me in front of the mailbox: “who are you, do you live here?” I wanted to answer: “I am the, that made you call the police a hundred times before ten o'clock at night, 'Cause I heard a little more Fifty Cent. I lived below you in a tiny one-bedroom apartment for seven years and talked to you about the house rules almost every day in the hallway. You've worked very hard, to carry out educational work on me that I thought was neglected. Also you told me, that you were on the Matterhorn when you were eighty-eight. That was about a year ago?”
I did not say anything. She wouldn't have understood any more of all this. (Of all these beautiful things, damn crazy)
Dorli soon died.
Evelyn told me, she will live in a sheltered institution.
Rhea stayed at home and continued to take acupuncture courses in Bern and San Francisco.
Her apartment smelled of nothing at all. Even their flowers, which I during her
Absence had poured so many times, kamen mir steril vor!
In hindsight it was clear to me, that the homeowner's son, who lived next door, decided quickly,
which parties must stay and which must go.
I would have been fine, if the hut and its contents had blown up, goddamn!?
——
I liked living on the Hopfenweg. Everything, what came after, was only part two, the delay.
I do not know, what became of Evelyn. Was there a first life for them before the eternal autumn??
(Schnoddrig: because I didn't want to show, how she made me tremble inside.)
* the physical symptoms made me disabled, the mental problems, which I also had, never disabled me!!! But nothing was more convenient for physicians and institutions than that, outsiders and relatives, not to present my psychological difference as the cause of any physical misery, and, Long, up to bedridden, this cause was brought forward….claims….and now, at least since Long Covid, where to start guessing, that an immunological “Insult” severe CNS inflammation, there is an oppressed silence.
* I wasn't there often, but twice for total 6 Monate