For several weeks there’s been a color photo stuck to the fridge. Ulli’s granddaughter Rike is going through a phase. The picture shows Rike and her grandpa in a little rectangle, which is the garage. When Ulli put up that picture he took the naked Polish girls down. As a result the men called Ulli Gramps for a few days, but then they forgot about it and called him Ulli again.
Everyone can drink at Ulli’s, even drink more than he can take on board. But when a guest can’t lie down without holding on to something, Ulli gives Lada a nod, and Lada escorts or carries that guy out.
Everyone can talk at Ulli’s and say more than anywhere else. But if he goes on talking and saying more, and Ulli has had enough of it, Ulli gives Lada the nod.
You pay less at Ulli’s than anywhere else. But if anyone hasn’t paid in full after a month, then Ulli gives Lada the nod.
Everyone can weep at Ulli’s, out loud at that. But no one does weep at Ulli’s.
Everyone can tell a joke at Ulli’s that we don’t all think is funny. But when a guy means something seriously that we don’t all think is funny, Ulli gives Lada the nod.
Everyone can tell a story about the old days at Ulli’s, and usually the others listen.
Old Imboden came back from having a piss, and Imboden told his story.
THE VIXEN LIES QUIETLY ON DAMP LEAVES, UNDER a beech tree on the outskirts of the old forest. From where the forest meets the fields — fields of wheat, barley, rapeseed — she looks at the little group of human houses, standing on such a narrow strip of land between two lakes that you might think human beings, in their unbridled wish to grab the most comfortable possible place as their own, had cut one lake into two, making room right between them for themselves and their young, in a fertile, practical place on two banks at once. Room for the paved roads that they seldom leave, room for the places where they hide their food, their stones and metals, and all the huge quantities of other things that they hoard.
The vixen senses the time when the lakes did not yet exist, and no humans had their game preserves here. She senses ice that the earth had to carry all the way along the horizon. Ice that pushed land on ahead of it, brought stones with it, hollowed out the earth, raised it to form hills that still undulate today, tens of thousands of fox years later. The two lakes rock in the lap of the land, in the breast of the land grow the roots of the ancient forest where the vixen has her earth, a tunnel, not very deep but safe from the badger, with the vixen’s two cubs in it now — or so she hopes — not waiting accusingly outside like last time, when all she brought home was beetles again. The hawk was already circling.
She would smell the earthy honey on the pelts of her cubs among a thousand other aromas, even now, in spite of the false wind, she is sure of its sweetness in the depths of the forest. She is sure of their hunger, too, their stern and constant hunger. One of the cubs came into the world ailing and has already died. The other two are playing skillfully with the beetles and vermin. But rising almost vertically in the air from a stationary position and coming down on a mouse is still too much like play. Their games often make them forget about the prey.
The vixen raises her head. She is scenting the air for humankind. There are none of them close. A warmth that reminds her of wood rises from their buildings. The vixen tastes dead plants there, too; well-nourished dogs and cats; birds gone wrong, and a lot of other things that she can’t easily classify. She is afraid of much of what she senses. She is indifferent to most of it. Then there’s dung, clods of earth, then there’s fermentation and chicken and death.
Chicken!
Behind twisted metal wires in wooden sheds: chicken! The vixen is going to get into those chickens tonight.
Her cubs are staying away from the earth longer and longer. The vixen guesses that tonight’s hunt will be her last for her hungry young. Soon they will be striking out and finding preserves of their own. She would like to bring them something good, something really special when she and they part. Not beetles or worms, not the remains of fruit half-eaten by humans — she will bring them eggs! Nothing has a better aroma than the thin, delicate eggshells, because nothing tastes as good as the gooey, sweet yolks inside those shells.
It is never easy to get inside a henhouse. Even if no dog is guarding it, and the humans are asleep. She isn’t afraid of the fowls’ claws. But carrying eggs is all but impossible. Her previous attempts were failures, if delicious failures. This time she will close her mouth as carefully as she closes it on the cubs in play. This time she won’t take two eggs at once but come back for the second.
A female badger slips out of the wood. The vixen picks up the scents of bracken and fear on her. What is she afraid of? Bats fly past overhead. Taciturn creatures, moving too fast for any joking, fluttering nervously away. On the outskirts of the forest a herd of wild pigs is holding a council of war. They are unpredictable neighbors, easily provoked but considerate. Their scent is good, they smell of swampiness, sulfur, grass and obstinacy. Just now they are deep in discussion, uttering shrill grunts in their edgy language, butting one another, scraping the ground with their hooves.
Their restlessness gets the vixen going. She trots off so as to leave those tricky creatures behind quickly.
The Up Above, roaring, brings thunder. It doesn’t like to see the vixen out and about. It is threatening her. Warning her.
AND HERR SCHRAMM, FORMER LIEUTENANT-Colonel in the National People’s Army, then a forester, now a pensioner and also, because the pension doesn’t go far enough, moonlighting for Von Blankenburg Agricultural Machinery, is watching the sports clips on the Sport 1 channel. Martina (aged nineteen, Czech Republic) is playing billiards. Herr Schramm is a critical man. He has objections to the program, he doesn’t think Martina plays billiards properly. She sends her shots all over the place. They never go into the pockets, and that bothers Herr Schramm. Martina dances round her cue, and that’s not right: it’s not right for her to dance, it’s not right for her to sit on the table and wiggle the billiard balls with her bottom, it’s not right for her to be playing by herself. Because if you are playing by yourself it should be with the clear intention of sinking the balls in the pockets. The opponent you best like to beat, so Herr Schramm firmly believes, is yourself.
Of course, after every shot Martina has to remove an item of clothing, nothing wrong with that. But she could have done it somewhere else. Sport 1 shouldn’t have made a billiard table available to her, it should have been somewhere Martina knows her way around. Herr Schramm believes that everyone is good at something, and he tries to guess what that something might be in Martina’s case. Clues are thin on the ground: she has full breasts, short fingers, shiny fingernails. Herr Schramm believes in talent, and Herr Schramm likes talent. He likes to watch people exercising their talents: he’s an upright military man with poor posture and an empty pack of nicotine chewing gum.
He doesn’t like to watch Martina. Martina still has her knickers on; they are black with a number 8 in a white circle at the front. Herr Schramm thinks that is witty. But it’s not about her knickers now, it’s about the fact that Martina plays so badly, as if she didn’t even know the rules. And rules are the first thing you teach someone who doesn’t really belong in a place.
Herr Schramm is a man who avoids conversations with strangers, and even with acquaintances prefers to talk about anti-aircraft missiles, bats and the former ski jumper Jens Weissflog, the most talented ski jumper of all time.
He thinks Martina has good calves when she bends low over the table. But when she takes off her knickers, drapes them over her cue, misses the white at her next shot and has to laugh at that into the bargain, Herr Schramm has had enough.