Pamela was older than me, fourteen maybe. She lived at the top of the hill, there, where the road flattened. Pamela's parents, so was rumored, didn't exactly have a conflict-free marriage, for that Pamela's mother owned, a small, petite woman in at least five hundred pairs of glittering stilettos! That might sound normal by today's standards, but back then in the 1980s in the Pampa it was a sensation. I would have loved to have seen those stilettos, but Pamela always softened it. She didn't let visitors into the house, who knows, perhaps there were other treasures hidden in her parents' house.
On her school days and in the summer, Pamela walked up and down the Panoramastrasse with a beautiful pram. The stroller was black velvet, possessed an adjustable roof and ran on four shiny ones, bobbing big wheels. I was pale with envy, 'Cause my stroller was just a little boogie on bumpy plastic wheels. And my biggest, the life-size Prisca didn't even have room in this car. I went for a walk, I walked with my little stuffed monkey!
Every time, when I met Pamela, I really wanted to peek behind the velvet roof, to see Pamela's doll. But Pamela wouldn't let me. But once I saw, that the doll's pram is beautifully decorated, but was empty, and i asked: “But where is your doll??” – “She's still in my stomach!”, Pamela said, pointing to her abdomen. “I see!”, I did. Pamela grasped the posh handle of the wagon and walked away. She really walked back and forth along the scenic road every day, even when autumn came and it got dark early. In the meantime I had given up going out with my boogie and the stuffed monkey. I preferred to just hang around on the Panoramastrasse, and when Pamela came, I asked: “Is there anything in the car now??” – “The child is still in the womb.” she showed, how apologetic on their midst, and took off.
Then in winter, after Christmas, it was said, Pamela's parents have split up, and Pamela's mother had passed away with her five hundred stilettos. The whole Panoramastrasse knew it, and everyone secretly regretted, that from now on there was nothing more to see, in the Emmental, like these shoes, that nobody had ever seen.
After my parents separated, I didn't see Pamela on Panoramastrasse for a while. She and her stroller seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. It wasn't until spring that I ran into her in front of the garage of her house. She was fat and had pimples on her face, just sat there. The car was missing.
As if she wanted to forestall me, when she felt my eyes on her, she said: “I put it away” I didn't know then, was “take away” meant. Pamela caught on quickly and repeated: “It's not in my stomach anymore.” Then she added: “Mother took the car with her, for her many shoes.”
(29.7.22)