Laws of nature
Essay by Paul Bokowski, author from Berlin
The Gerkens live next door. If we consider the house’s inner workings, though, this is not a true statement. Nobody has lived here for longer than them. If anything, I live next door to the Gerkens. They signed their lease back when Willy Brandt was still in office. The Gerkens don’t want to be a burden to anyone. But they don’t have children, and, consequently, no grandchildren, and they can’t call a professional every week, so they ring my bell. If both of them come together, I already know what’s happening. Do I have a minute? I can tell from their posture that they want something. She looks smaller than usual, he’s clenching his jaw. “Always happy to help,” I say. If there’s one thing that truly annoys me about this, it’s the fact that they still act, after twelve years, like I moved in last week. I can hear them bickering through the door. She wants to ring the bell, he doesn’t. I can’t knock on their door and ask them if they need me for anything. Instead, I go round occasionally and ask for sugar, eggs, or salt. Needless to say, I don’t need any of these things, but putting myself in their debt makes it easier for them to ring when they need something.
He’s standing on his ladder, I’m standing next to him. I’m looking at life’s legs from the bottom. Pity that idiom doesn’t really work in German. He’s breathing heavily. “Take your time,” I say. He doesn’t want to be a burden, but wearing long trousers wasn’t an option either. So here I am, staring at his varicose veins. Panke, Dahme, Havel, Spree. Just from holding the ladder, I am not sure what it is, but something’s off. Not sure, whether it’s the ladder, the floor, or him. But whether it’s his wonkiness, that of the ladder, or the floor, my arms are hurting. “Should we swap places?” I ask. “Never mind,” she says. “It’s not so bad for him!” – “Not so bad?” I ask. “If something happens,” she says. She doesn’t say it jokingly, nor with the bitterness of sixty years of marriage, she says it like someone uttering a basic truth. Like a law of nature. He threads the curtain on the rail at a snail’s pace. “That’s good,” I think. I’ve got time. I count along in my head. “Are those new?” I ask, thinking I should just stick to the topic. “Just washed,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve ever washed my curtains,” I confess. “We won’t be washing them again,” he says. Again, there’s that pragmatism, like a law of nature.
We’re rewarded with meatballs in cream and caper sauce. “There you go, lads,” she says. She’s cooked for us. The boiled potatoes have arthritis. The round thing turns into the square thing. “Haven’t had this in ages,” I say, letting her ladle me another helping. “She makes it once a decade,” he says. “We won’t be eating it again.” Laws of nature again. In the end, he tries to slip money into my pocket. It almost turns into a scuffle, but I win. He should’ve gripped the ladder as hard as he gripped my wrist. “We ring far too often,” she says. “Please ring whenever you need something.” It annoys me that they always close by stressing how much trouble they are. A verbal scuffle, but this time I don’t win. “We won’t ring again,” he says. “I’ve only been over five times” – “No! It was more times,” she insists. I count the times for them: the router, the lamp, the bat, router again, now the curtain. “All right then,” he says, ushering me toward the door. “You count less, we count more.” Another one of those phrases. Another law of nature. Harder than his grip on my wrist. In the morning, there’s a banknote on the floor in the hall. An arthritic pencil wrote:
“For your time.”
Paul Bokowski lives and works in Berlin. His novel Schlesenburg is now in its third paperback edition with btb Verlag.