Читать книгу Wanderlust: New Adventures in the Northern Sea - Katja Just - Страница 5

A very different kind of farewell also took place in 2017. It was clear that it would happen someday, but when it did happen, I was surprised.

“After 15 years I would like to bring the traditional costume back into the family,” so went the wording of the e-mail, which reached me at the end of 2017 one morning completely unexpectedly. In a three-liner this wish was formulated to me. At first I was very scared, couldn’t believe my eyes, read the lines over and over again and asked myself what I had possibly done wrong. Little by little, uncertainty arose in me, and I wondered whether it might be due to a statement I had made on television, with which I had come too close to the family from whom Aunt Magda’s traditional costume came. Or had I written something in my book that had led to that decision? I hoped to get an answer to the question that tortured me, but I couldn’t find out any more. Aunt Magda’s only granddaughter, the sender of the e-mail and heiress of the traditional costume, assured me in brief words that it was simply her personal wish and had private reasons. That’s their right. Magda’s granddaughter doesn’t live on the Hallig, not even close by. We’ve only seen each other two or three times in all. Otherwise we might have been able to meet for coffee or tea and talk about the situation. Not about whether I could have kept the costume in my care for any longer, but about how valuable this garment is for Hooge. Perhaps there would have been the possibility to make a loan for the local cultural association out of it. The chairwoman is looking after some of the garments that were made by Hooge women at that time. She also knows a story or two. Priceless for the chronicle of Hooge. I had this idea in my head, but I didn’t dare speak it out openly. Even though there were only three lines from a woman who was a mystery to me and asked me to separate myself from the costume, they sounded determined and final.

It took a good two weeks to say goodbye to a traditional costume that had become dear to my heart over the years. A traditional Hallig dress of an old Hooge woman, whom I was allowed to get to know still personally. A small, tender woman with snow-white, fine hair and a proportionally huge pair of glasses on her nose. At their time, there were no small, almost invisible reading glasses. Aunt Magda, as she is still affectionately called today by the Hoogers, wore it when she had to read small print. A phone number, an instruction leaflet or the like. She was a humorous woman who liked the people around her. She was radiant when you came into conversation, and she always had something to tell, because she lived with body and soul on and for the Hallig. She and some other women tailored their own costumes according to old models and thus kept alive a tradition that had almost died out. The costume I was allowed to wear must have been from the 1960s or 70s. After Magda’s death the traditional costume passed into the hands of her granddaughter, who was even the only one in this case. But she didn’t want the costume to hang uselessly in her closet at that time, so she made it available to me. I was allowed to wear it and always did so with pride and with the feeling of being accompanied by the little, tender woman who once made this piece of jewellery with her own hands. For example, at the biennial summer costume festival on Hooge. I am sure that Magda would have been enthusiastic about the sight of the many people in the most different costumes from all directions of Germany. Even a group from France was once there. I imagine how Aunt Magda would have been among them without speaking a word of French. She with her cheerful and open nature would have understood herself even without a common language with the guests from the south. I had this suspicion especially when we, the Hooge Traditional Dance Group, stood at the jetty with the guest groups after the official conclusion of the day’s event and waited for the ships with which they were to sail to the mainland again. The French invited all the people around to a last dance together. They explained the procedures, and it wasn’t just me who didn’t understand a word. At that moment Magda occurred to me and I imagined how relaxed she would be with the situation. And already it was easy for me to get carried away. Thank God! This final dance, with all the different people, spread for a short moment a unity and happiness at the jetty of the small Hallig in the middle of the North Sea, which could still be felt days later. As a final dance, we danced it three times in a row. It was really a lasting experience. Just like every moment I experienced with and in Magda’s costume.

It was difficult for me to say goodbye, and the thought of having to give them up made me very sad. Although it was of course clear that it was only a loan and I had no claim to the good piece. At no time did I feel that or expect that. All I ever wanted was to know this costume alive.

The due date, a Monday, already offered very changeable weather in the morning. Quiet rain fell again and again, sometimes the sun came out, then it was grayish and cool again. That’s how my emotional state could be described. I was sad, from time to time tears ran down my face, I did not want to part with the traditional costume. It also took a piece of Aunt Magda out of my house with it. Then my heart was warm again, for I knew that the garment would now come into the rightful hands, into the hands that were Aunt Magda’s flesh and blood. There couldn’t be better hands, because this connection was much more intense than mine. It should be. And the next moment I was shivering, because I was wondering if this costume would ever be worn on Hooge again.

Looking back on this day, I’m still very sad. It’s just incredible how a piece of cloth can grow on you. I had already seriously considered buying my own costume, but to this day I still haven’t got the chance to go searching. And frankly, I don’t really want to. No matter how swinging the skirt, how bright the colorful scarf or lace decorated the apron will be, it will always be an anonymous costume. She won’t be able to tell me a story, nor will she be able to reflect a picture of the previous wearer. This makes it difficult to get involved in a new garment of this kind. I would never have dreamed that such a deep connection could arise with a dress, its wearer and ultimately with their homeland. Probably it’s also because I now feel just as deeply connected to the Hallig as Magda did in her own way.