Читать книгу In the Name of I - Bea Eschen - Страница 6

She didn’t like dogs. This had nothing to do with dogs. Rather, her dislike existed because her father had beaten their small shepherd dog to get rid of his rage. She couldn’t understand his outbreaks, so she pushed these experiences into the furthest corners of her consciousness. Alannah’s father was born in Tanzania at Lake Tanganyika where he had spent the first four years of his life.

During colonial times, Germans were in East Africa under the pretext of fighting the slave trade. They contributed to the education system by building schools. They also constructed a railway line between Dar’s Salaam and Kigoma allowing for the transport of goods. Furthermore, they organized the planting of two million coffee trees, rubber trees and vast cotton plantations.

In 1930, Alannah’s grandparents emigrated from Germany to Tanzania to cultivate a coffee farm. They had imagined a better life in Tanzania, but soon realized that their coffee trees produced bad quality beans. Two of their children died of Yellow Fever. Before World War II, the welcome-back-to-home call from Adolf Hitler came. As the family arrived back in Germany, the war had begun. After the war, the family continued to live in the Siegerland.

Alannah’s father was a social man and open-minded towards foreign cultures. At his boiler construction company he treated his workers with respect, always making sure that no one discriminated against foreigners. The 1960s and 70s saw an influx of Turkish immigrants to West Germany. Suffering from an acute labor shortage resulting from an economic boom (Das Wirtschaftswunder), the West German Government negotiated a trade of labor with their Turkish counterparts. Turkish workers were invited to move to West Germany to fill in this void. They were to work in the factories to do simple tasks. Alannah’s father’s business enjoyed this immigration policy as he used many Turkish men for this purpose.

There was no close relationship between Alannah and her father. He showed a different face within the family. His violent temper often brought the family into despair. Alannah’s brother suffered the most as his father beat him often for no reason. Because their father traveled a lot he had little time for his children. When he was home, all he wanted was peace and quiet. His sacred afternoon naps on the sofa forced the children to creep through the house conversing in a whisper. After one and a half hours, he went back to work. Relief!

Alannah’s mother was the place of peace in the family. Her children were attached to her. With her flexible ways and sense of humor she made difficult situations tolerable. At the same time she held the family together. In her spare time she told her children of her childhood. During times of war, she and her family had suffered constant hunger, and they had to seek shelter in the basement during bombing. The nagging fight for food in her early life had marked her. In Alannah’s home nothing ever got thrown away. Everything was recycled, and if food leftovers had gone off they were put on the compost in the garden.

Overall, Alannah enjoyed a quiet childhood. Together with her family she lived in a house with large windows that stood old and somewhat neglected against the grey sky at an intersection. For passersby this sight triggered a feeling of loneliness. While the forest contributed to the heaviness of the landscape, it also enchanted her with a touch of purity.

Alannah preferred to be left alone. She was dreamy and contemplative. In her world she fantasized about fairy-tale characters and imaginary heroes and heroines, in which she raised herself above all others. Her vivid imagination relieved her from the overpowering impulses of her siblings. They had little understanding for her calm personality.

The constant noise of the passing cars shaped Alannah’s sense of monotony. Comparing it to the sound of breaking waves in the ocean, she perceived the noise as pleasant. She wondered where all those people were going. Were they running away from something they didn't know? Were they hunted, and if so, by whom? One day she counted the passing cars. One, two, three, four. Standing on one of the large windows with her chin resting on her small fists, she was staring into the distance in a play of dreams and reality.

A part of Alannah’s daily routine was to help her mother hang the laundry. There were strict rules: each item had to match the other. This would help easy sorting and folding after it was taken off the washing line. Pants next to pants, blouse next to blouse, underwear separated from the rest of the laundry with underpants sorted by owner, size and color. Socks were hung always in pairs and attached with pegs at the leg-ends with the big toe-tips pointing to the left. She didn't know it then, but the strictly categorized laundry on the clothesline gave Alannah the pattern of planning her actions in her later life.

The calm fishpond leading to a drumming waterfall gave the small village a special character. In this idyll shaped by the contrasts of nature, the village people gathered to fish for trout and discuss current events. The older citizens recalled that earlier the lake had carried lots of large trout. Over the years it had silted up, so the trout had been getting smaller and smaller. This problem didn't matter to the children. Only the waterfall caught their attention. The danger and risk involved falling into it sparked heroic statements. Alannah felt excited when she stood on the opposite bank watching and listening to the powerful sound of the falling water. She became more and more aware of her wish to get to know the world outside her home. This wish grew into a hot and deep longing for the unknown that became a constant companion of her existence.

The first television set caused much excitement in the family. Now, the atrocities of the world filled the family’s cozy living room. Although the siblings had strict instructions to watch children's program only, they took every opportunity to peek at the program for adults, of which Alannah understood nothing. Question after question formed in her mind. The outside world she craved to see differed greatly from her small world at home. The world was alien and untouchable.

During the cold and rainy winter and autumn months the siblings had to stay indoors. In the nearby woods, the trees were heavy with the weight of the snow and unsuitable for climbing. The long and pointy icicles hanging off the roof edges provided a constant danger. The slippery roads and trails were impassable. Alannah’s favorite activity was building snowmen and sledging in the family’s back garden. The children rolled up two big snowballs for the snowman’s torso and head until the weight stopped them from rolling any further. With a joint force and much grunting and groaning they lifted the head onto the lower body. A carrot found in the kitchen veggie cupboard served as the nose, two black stones became eyes and the mouth was drawn with tiny pebbles collected from the driveway.

Nineteen seventy-five was the year of events. Alannah looked forward to moving to the nearby small town. She was eleven years old and looked at the world with different eyes. Childhood reveries that had consumed her life until now changed to a more realistic perception of events around her. She acted more on reason and new knowledge than on dreams. Her body developed the first signs of femininity; small breasts developed and one morning she woke up with bloodstains on her sheets. Her mother had prepared her for the physical changes, but it still took time until she felt comfortable with her maturing body. At school, Alannah felt sad as her peers teased her for her prematurity. So she drew back from her social life and hid in her room from the cruel outside world. Drenched in a deep melancholy she doubted herself.

Preparations for the move came as a welcome distraction. The old house with the large windows had to be vacated. The cellar required a lot of work as it had been a laundry and storage for years. Jars containing preserved fruit and jams, potatoes, apples, wine bottles, bicycles, tools, garden equipment, and collectibles, forgotten and covered with cobwebs − every piece had had its place on shelving, cabinets and walls over the past decades. For a while the isolated cellar became Alannah’s escape. In this cool, dark and quiet place she watched the world of insects, mice and rats. Cowering in the dark corner, she peered up to the single small window. After months of inner turmoil she saw the light again.

The new modern house stood beautifully within fields, meadows and forests. The scent of the flowering plants and woods filled the interiors with a crisp freshness. Alannah went for long walks in the forest immersed in deep thought. She felt free and dreamy in the woods, whilst her family and friends brought her back into reality. Her interest centered on nature, people and world events. On rainy and cold days in the fall and winter she loved to lie on her bed reading books about the origin of the earth and of humanity. She rarely played with her siblings. Her five year older twin sisters had their own circle of friends. She was never invited. The friends of her younger brother sometimes crossed with Alannah’s friends. Alannah’s brother and the brother of her best friend Sabine were friends too. Sabine and her family comprising her mother and brother lived not far away from Alannah’s home. Their father had died years ago. Financial necessity had their mother work full-time in the nearest town. At High School, the two girls were in the same year, sitting next to each other every term. Sometimes after school, Alannah joined Sabine at her home. They had the house to themselves. Her mother returned home only later in the afternoon. The two teenage girls cooked up lunch including mountains of spaghetti with tomato sauce. Sabine's brother was also there, but only contributed to their conversation with bullshit. He was rude, lazy, always bored and seemed to lack the guidance of his deceased father. His mother was too tired to engage with him at the end of her working day. As he had no interest and found everything goofy, Alannah and Sabine didn’t know how to include him into their world of chatter. So they ignored him as much as they could. Much later, Alannah realized Sabine's brother must have suffered from depression — a condition nobody took seriously then.

At fifteen, Alannah and Sabine could legally ride a Moped with no need for a license. A Moped looked like a motorized bicycle with pedals yet powered by a small engine. Lucky Alannah got a light green Moped by a brand called Mars for her birthday. It was an automatic and reached a top speed of 40 km/hr at full throttle. Sabine got hold of a Hercules M5. Her brother doctored her Moped to make it run faster. With a gearshift and a dull orange paint finish Sabine’s Hercules looked cool. It only took one race and Alannah knew that on her Mars Moped she had no chance against her friend on the Hercules. Also, her parents had bought the Mars as a well-used model and so there was a never-ending need for repairs. Built in 1969, this model had been one of the last models of the Nuremberg Mars manufacturer before the company had ceased production.

On these occasions, Alannah got a ride on Sabine’s Hercules. Being a reckless youth without care or regard for consequences, Alannah positioned herself against the travel direction on top of the panel that covered the two-stroke engine in the middle of the Moped. In this position she leant against the sloping petrol tank behind her. Each leg was positioned sideways around the saddle with her crossed feet supported on the carrier. From the bottom she looked up into the face of her best friend, who always focused on the roadway in front of her. It was a struggle for Sabine to keep her feet on the pedals, as Alannah’s body pushed her legs apart. Double-riding a Moped like this was banned. The risk of getting injured was high. If the police had caught them they would have been in big trouble. Luckily, this never happened. Common sense told them to double-ride only on back roads or through the forest. The forest trails proved ideal for mopeds and bicycles. Had they not been built for forestry vehicles only, they would have been a bonus to the public road network as they joined surrounding village communities via shortcuts. The forbidden use of them gave the young people an adrenaline rush plus it saved them time getting from A to B.

Their clique consisted of five people including three young men and the two girls. As there was always a reason to party they met at the weekends. They drank beer, smoked cigarettes and danced to loud music. AC/DC. Alice Cooper. Guns ‘n Roses. Scorpions. Alannah stayed the night at Sabine’s house as they partied until the early hours in the morning. The next day Alannah went home exhausted and enjoyed her quiet room and the sense of comfort of being alone with herself.

Then, an unexpected change happened. Sabine's mother transferred to Cologne for professional reasons. She was a passionate criminal officer and pleased to work in a new environment. Her new placement in Cologne brought her professional advancement, a higher salary and more interesting cases. The family sold their property within a short time and moved to Cologne. Sabine was sorry to leave her best friend behind, but Alannah followed her soon after. She had enrolled for her university entrance qualification in Bonn that included an internship at the Botanical Garden of Cologne. Alannah moved into a small apartment in Cologne-Ehrenfeld and mastered her school, internship and her life there with the support from her parents and Sabine.

Two years later:

Alannah’s aunt from South Africa helped Alannah enroll at the Cape Technikon in Cape Town to complete a Diploma in Horticulture. The opportunity came handy as Alannah had completed her university entrance qualification in Cologne with a focus on botany and had still no plan about her further studies. Alannah’s parents arranged for her stay in Cape Town. Alannah’s boy-friend was to join her. Egon and Alannah had met through Sabine in a disco in Cologne. Since then they had been inseparable and, indulging in their shared wanderlust, were to explore the world together. Egon was a skilled cabinetmaker and had been working in a small cabinetmaking workshop in Cologne. He was from northern Germany and they laughed about their different slangs. Alannah’s parents were reassured that Alannah was not on her own emigrating. But when the departure date approached, Alannah saw her mother crying.

"I will come back,” she comforted her, “and I will write to you all the time."