Dull Colors

sleeplessness and dealing with the past

Two years after Hajo's crime the vacant shack near the train station was finally demolished. When in these full moon nights, the homeless youth from around the town found their refuge in there, it was the safest place for us. A different world that was hidden behind high grasses and shrubs - which in summer seemed to glow infinitely and in winter it appeared to be supernaturally frozen. Now it belongs to the story; this whole ferocity, which was always beyond any doubt. Sentimental nights, conspiracy whispers - the constant search for cockiness. I suppose I would have become a decent adult. But that was before the crime. 

At least the months go by fast. But eventually I will break my silence. I have set my mind on this, because, it has been going on for way too long.

There is no point, talking to aunt Ella. She turned her back to this world years ago. Sometimes she is still a guest and then she spits out all of her wisdom.

"It's better this way.", she says in her silly geriatric voice. "We do not need this trouble here."

From the plastic table I look over to her, and then away again, listening to the silence that sets in after her chatter is over. It's already dawn and the blackness from the thunderstorm that slowly emerges makes us shiver.

In the living room she cooks tea and peels herself a tangerine. With stale biscuits in my lap I'm sitting on the dented spot of the sofa and watch her while she's peeling.

"I'm really glad that the old shack is finally gone.", she bleats from the rocking chair.

"Yes.", I reply, and another moth dies in her lampshade.

"And say hello to your mother from me, would you?"

"But we don't see each other anymore."

"You don't?"

"No."

"And since when?"

"A while."

"Well whatever, say hello from me anyway, give her a phone call or something, you are such a rude girl."

And just before the big cloud baptizes the horizon for the night, I have left Ella's thatched roof house far behind me. And now I certainly will walk for hours, walk until my feet feel flat, and follow the directions that shines along from the pale street lights. From the first pub penetrates a well-known folk song on my ears, and this pub has been the same for years now. There stands a rusty bicycle in front of the door, and so far it does not seem to belong to anyone. In the light of the pub, all colors are dull and the faces of the people take on the complexion of a deathlike pallor. Up front at the counter leans the old Heribert, who in his youth, was an influential functionary in the SED and now gives beer and cheap wine to his customers.

"It's getting late.", he says as I sit down. "Time to sleep, don't you think?"

"I do not sleep no more."

Then the night begins humming for a while and the thunderstorm whips heavily towards the window glass. The pub is shaking, people are holding onto the tabletops. With the last sip everyone disappears. The seats are empty. Curfew. Heribert shuts down. But he lets me sit here for a few minutes, until a pitch black blanket envelops the outside world completely. And then after midnight, moral is misguided. And on the curb Punks and Junkies interpreting cries from afar. I do not raise my eyes as I pass them. Their tense chatter evaporates into nothingness. The next club is a shed - there is really nothing in here, except the pure mainstream of simple mediocrity, stubborn grimaces, that look so stupid, that I want to be lonely again. And right in the midst of this sits Käthe and I'm pretty sure that she feels the same way. We drink some schnapps and smoke our cigarettes up to the embers. Then a boy with long hair stares in her direction and she shakes herself in disgust.

"I'm telling you, I will not let anyone under fourty on me anymore.", she says, taking another sip and is patting in the cuticle of her thumb.

"I'm serious. Most younger boys are totally pervs. If you have reached fourty, you don't care about all that stuff anymore, unless you're really a perv, then, I guess, it never really goes away."

We stay for a while. Until 5 am. Then Käthe has to go home, she has to work the night shift.

Ever since the MeToo movement, I thought about writing something too. But scrolling through the hashtag and reading all of those experiences, really gave me the feeling that my story doesn't belong there. What would it even matter, there is no absolution for victims anyway. Maybe I should have listened to Ella, when she said, report it to the police, but maybe that would make it even worse, I'm not sure yet. And now it's going to be a headache day, and every thought about it dissolves again and I decide to go back to this place, where the life as I used to know it was taken away from me. Ever since that moment I have been divided into two pieces, cursed with this person that stares right back at me from the mirror glass, but whose insides no longer adapt to certain realities. Let's go.

I see a huge digger on the spot where the shack used to be. The construction workers take notice of me but do not really care. They've been used to nosy bystanders I guess and even as I walk to the end of the fence and cross the barrier, they do not stop me. All that is left from the shack is just the scaffolding. On a large board I read in block letters: HERE EMERGES A NEW INDUSTRIAL PARK. 

A lot has changed since I was here the last time. All the paths are flat from constant trample, the grasses are torn out; the apparent wilderness has become a manufacture. Life goes on, as it always just goes on.

"Hey you!", some construction worker has eventually caught me, “No trespassing here, no trespassing here, or can't you read or what!”

I turn around and do not look back.

A porcelain figurine of virgin Mary, which aunt Ella has gotten from the junk, is standing on her table in the living room. Ella stirs in a yogurt cup and dips speculoos in her glass of milk.

If I like the figure, she asks me for the third time.

"It looks kind of scary.", I say for the third time.

"Scary? No, no, no, no, you cannot say such thing about the holy mother."

Then the both of us are waiting until the sun goes down. Ella always gets tired before. When I want to leave, she grabs my hands firmly into her cartilages.

"Say hello to your mother from me."

"But we don't see each other anymore."

"No?"

"No."

"And since when?"

"A while."

"Say hello anyway, you rude girl."

And when my destiny was in Hajo's, he decided to tear down the tulle with his claws. So I knelt in front of him, with my calves scratched and bloody and he wanted to continue the debate, as if all of this meant nothing to him - as if pain in his veins only existed like an illusion. The truth is out and written on every wall - a face, mutilated from dying, and two years later it still feels the same way.