Toni, this is the memory of a man, who I didn't know. And yet we met on the Hopfenweg for seven years.
I saw him from my window down in the yard of the house next door, I saw him dreamily sitting on a chair in the garden or making a fire, I saw him with his three beautiful ones, half adult girl, with his boyish pretty wife. The woman was just as elfish and blond as two of the girls, the third girl was dark and resembled neither mother nor father.
What is extraordinary about it, to describe a family around the year two thousand?
They were just hippies! Or that, what was left of it then! They were an adorable bunch!
Wenn Toni in seinem langsam wippenden Gang, with chin-length hair and wide-hemmed pants, he stopped in front of me and always made something like a little curtsy. I thought that was great and funny, then stopped short and also made a whole, very small kink.
I often had my face covered with countless rough pimples and suffered unspeakably, when someone looked at me. Aber wenn Toni daher kam und von weit mich erblickte, then I was so happy, that I have a dancing, nice gait, strained my back and stared in front of me with a tragic pout, while my high heels just slapped!
Ob auch Toni immer entweder lachen oder traurig werden wollte bei meinem Anblick, so, wie ich beim Anblick von Toni?
If the already graying Koni hadn't belonged to his four wives; vielleicht hätte ich mich Tonis dann angenommen, a little different.
Sure he would have me, as peaceful as he seemed, not understood, as rebellious and argumentative as I was. And always in these ghastly ones, cropped Miss Sixtys pants dressed, as if I wanted to make a stork out of myself, who stalks between cloud towers with greasy plumage.
Once then, als ich mit dem Nachbar von Toni, the fat architect Louis Quatorze, in the adjoining garden, Suddenly Koni was there, very close, like a quiet, male fairy made of fluffy feathers. He smiled and pointed to a lemon yellow moth, just flew by in bright sunlight. Then he disappeared again, before I could say anything.
Loud and sonorous, Louis Quatorze called after him: “Hey, Toni, Do you come across something for the Playstation?” He was already in his manic phase, where he bumped into everyone and me in front of his wife, the renowned architect, courted.
The whole hop trail, die ganze Tonibande, got it, like Louis Quatorze stood down by my window every day for many weeks, how he sent his cat over to me, to lure me, my milk box overflowed with magazines, drawings, Listen, edibles etc.
It was awful, Louis Quatorze was an asshole, but he was sack-talented and educated, he was full of wit and eloquence. What was dear Koni, on the other hand?, who played the violin in his unheated attic at the weekend, who taught students, to make a boat out of paper?
once, when the girls were already ignoring me and looking away angrily, when we crossed, I went over with a pickle jar and rang the Konis's bell. His little wife opened the door, Tried to open my pickle jar, and said kindly: “If we can't get it open, dann hole ich Toni.”
She had very small hands, but the power in it was enough, to open my pickle jar.
I could have spit into my pickle jar at that moment.
Luckily, the owner of my house then registered personal use, and I had to move away.
I hadn't curtsied to Louis Quatorze. And Louis Quatorze didn't curtsey to me. And yet he had made it without a hitch, finally, to hit me in the pan, and, much more than that: somewhere a feeling suggested me, that with Louis Quatorze has a hell of a lot of quality.
I even got mad, to love him.
——
Aber Toni und seine Familie, for me it was like an unreachable terrain of delicate butterflies, dancing stars, of mermaids bathing in flowers, that was the perfect community for me.
When Koni and his girls were in the garden, I stood for a long time, long at my window and found my life what it is and was:
a funny one, painful error.