At first it was very unfamiliar to me, but over time I quickly grew into my role as a mother, especially as I seamlessly fit into the cityscape with my old, three-wheeled stroller, which I had been able to get hold of thanks to my good negotiating skills on the market.
At some point I decided to leave the city and move out into the country. A good friend told me about an old novel and wanted to accompany me. Books were very, very rare, and only those who had survived the fires of disaster were offered on the markets. In her tattered book, the author was probably a certain Thomas Mann and the title is no longer decipherable, she read from a place called Pfeiffering south of Munich, which was described in the most beautiful colors. Inside the name ‘Dr. Faustus’ appeared. Someone in the old rororo paperback edition of my girlfriend with a blue ballpoint pen on the edge remarked:
Pfeiffering = Polling? and Waldshut = Weilheim?
written. We saw this as a hopeful sign and decided to get to the bottom of it and take a look at this area, where the places had both a real and a literary name. We marched in a beautiful summer week always along the ruined tracks of the old railway line to Garmisch along towards the Alps and actually got there. It was dangerous, but we were young, unreasonable, and exposed ourselves to radiation. In the evening we slept in cellars. The lake we reached in Starnberg attracted us very much to a swim, but we did not want to take that radiation risk, and so we enjoyed the view of the water with the mountains in the background and marched a long the bank. My friend had underlined all the places that were important for our touristic trip and abused the novel about an avant-garde composer as a guide à la Baedecker.
Finally we arrived in Weilheim and saw, to our disappointment, what we knew from everywhere: ruins, burned culture and few people who lived there like scared rats and scurried from one hole to the next. It was so bleak that we quickly marched south along a small river, then left it and followed a small stream to get further and further towards the mountains. Soon after, we arrived at a huge complex of ruins, which must have been the old monastery. An outstanding, higher pile of rubbish, which we had seen from afar the whole time, must have been the old tower. Surprisingly, the old Baroque facade with the round rosette window, was still preserved. It looked like the eye of Polyphemus in the landscape from a certain distance.
Towards the former nave, a tent roof was held with beams. Did not someone play an organ? Should this still be intact? We stood rooted, as it were, and the little Golie, whom I had worn over the long distance on my back, made a strange dance there, as if the music in him kindled something very special. I could not hold him anymore and let him slide to the floor. Immediately he crawled on his back to the narrow, exposed entrance from which the music rang out. He could not walk yet. My girlfriend and I did not understand anything anymore. Inside, under the makeshift tent roof, he lay frozen, listening and unable to move from us until the music broke off and the organist, a man of about forty with a few blond hair and a balding head, cut off a wooden ladder from the rest the organ loft climbed. Behind him followed a boy, who immediately ran free. The blond spoke to us kindly, after all strangers rarely got lost here. His nice words pleased us and together with the beautiful music, cheered us up again lifting our mood. Yes, Golie was freaking out, waving his baby arms like a droll little dancing bear so that the blond fell into laughter with us. Golie was in a good mood here. I had never experienced him like this before. Despite his tender age, he used all the means at his disposal to show me, that he was fine here and that he wanted to stay.
We then looked around the village, found few people and many well-preserved and empty living rooms, which I liked much better than my accommodation in Munich. In me, the decision was made to stay here. However my girlfriend did not understand. She then returned to her home after a few days. Anyway, I had everything that was really valuable to me, and I quartered myself in the former monastery village. Over the next few days, the organist, who was not at all unsympathetic, helped us both with the few people in the village. Golie's sunny nature helped a lot. They were all very friendly and even recommended a special ruin, which was adjacent to a large field where it would be good to farm for life. I took the advice, and so we had landed here in the former manor ‘Schweigestill’ at ‘Pfeiffering’, as it was called in the old novel of my girlfriend. This was already some time ago.
Did I dream it all? Was I asleep? My limbs were quite stiff, and I lay down in the room next door to Golie in our bed. We lived only in these two rooms. Mostly we were outside when the weather allowed it. It may be dangerous, but we both seemed to have enough resistance to radiation, as we had lived that way for several years and enjoyed great health.
The next morning, I woke up and was dizzy with a dream. It was one of those that was so realistic that I could not distinguish between dream and reality, so it took me some time to sort out my thoughts:
My dad played the lead role in my nightly drama. He told me about a music teacher as a little girl. He had been so obsessed with his favorite composer that he had changed his appearance to be quite similar: he had worn glasses, although he actually did not need any, and had his hair provided with light gray tears and combed straight back, so that his high forehead emphasized his face and that he was very close to one of the few photographs of his idol. Then the story became dramatic, for the teacher and my father as his young pupil would have been favored by the same woman, a classmate of my father's, into which both men had fallen in love. The woman had then fled from the two in a distant desert, where also everywhere signs with the radioactivity symbol had stood. My father had disappointed me and said in tears that he had lost the first love of his life ... At this point tore the dream.
No matter how hard I tried, I could not remember the name of the musician, the imitator or the composer. One thing was clear to me now: The person my father had described reminded me of the strange traveler in the red Paco yesterday. Did I know him?
Golie opened his eyes and slipped under my blanket for our morning cuddle ritual. We spooned and he enthusiastically asked me if he could go to the organist again today. For some time, the five-year-old spent a lot of time with the friendly blond man.
With Steffen, that was his name, we had become friends. I trusted him completely, because he did not dislike me either. However, he had blocked all my timid approach attempts. He just seemed to be in love with the music, or better with his organ, or better, with what was left of it.
Since there was no electricity supply after the disaster, Steffen always needed a helper who could kick the huge organ bellows. He also proudly told me that he painstakingly rebuilt all electrical mechanisms to control the registers into an original mechanics. Only because of this did the royal instrument work again. Years went by, during which I learned to grow ever more beautiful potatoes, which I could offer to Mr. Mayr for bartering. Steffen, on the other hand, had taught Golie to kick the brat, which the little boy initially had a hard time with, but now it seemed to work well, as he blew the air into his pipes almost every day for hours. What the hell was the genetic background of this boy to be so persistent? Or was it Steffen? Did he miss a father? Was it the music? Anyway, that was fine with me, because there were no kindergartens any more, and I had enough time to take care of my land and small housekeeping. This economy was cumbersome enough in the beginning, when I had to get advice and act as well as necessary seeds and utensils from the neighbors. But thanks to Mr. Mayr and our negotiating skills, I now had everything I needed; and the man with the Paco in the village, so to speak the designated village chief, even plowed my field in the spring, which made my life much easier.
In the meantime, we were even ready to have our own goat, our Selma, to feed our milk supply at night in the barn and during the day in the many forests around our village. Golie and I got up and prepared our breakfast, which consisted of home-grown cereal made and cottage cheese from goat's milk. Golie chattered on me and suddenly showed me a staff on which he had scrawled a melody. I was quite surprised, and he explained to me that Steffen played it yesterday on the organ. Although I was able to read the notes, my father had taught me that, but I could not sing perfectly from the sheet, so that I could only recognize in the beginning that this was probably a D minor
