The first guests soon arrive. Some satnav devices show Friedhofsweg and its extension the promenade as a fully negotiable road. There’s supposed to be a large car park about halfway down. That, of course, is often seen as a huge joke. The Sat 1 transmission bus, for one, can’t confirm that the Friedhofsweg is a fully negotiable road. Unless you’re a mountain bike. The Sat 1 transmission bus can’t confirm the existence of the car park either, or that at best the lake might be it. The Friedhofsweg slopes steeply toward it. On the right the graveyard wall, on the left the town wall, straight ahead the water. Nowhere to turn. In rain the ground is saturated, the bus can confirm that all right. The wheels, the reverse warning tone hovering over the monument to the fallen, beep-beep-beep, bats fly up. Britta Hansen in her Norwegian pullover is in the passenger seat. She has warned the driver, let’s call him Jörg, about the road, but only half-heartedly because it’s ages since she was here. Her grandfather is with us for ever, lying next to the road in the soft ground. “I get so damn melancholy when I’m here,” she says. Jörg has other problems. Jörg changes up a gear. Beep-beep-beep.
Not twenty meters away, by the water, the bells watch the large vehicle. The bell-ringer didn’t set his alarm, and that’s a bit of luck, because the bells are not at home — he can sleep his fill for once. Johann has decided to take his bell-ringing exam. Pa will look after Ma that long. But somehow the bells must be hoisted up again. He didn’t want to worry the bell-ringer, so he texted Lada, and Lada answered at once: “Sure what you paying.” And straight afterward: “We do it this way I help you then you come to Eddie’s place and help me for free.” And a few minutes later: “And my golf out of the lake okay.”
Ulli has got hold of the sliced sausage and opened the garage. He has decorated the platters of meat with cocktail umbrellas. They’re practical because of the toothpicks. Now the platters are waiting on two stools, and it’s too early for sausage. However, the drinking has begun. Ulli is discussing the matches of the day with several pensioners from the new buildings. The ritual is the same every Saturday. Ulli acquires the betting slips, lectures his audience on the odds and the most interesting matches in short and poetic terms:
“Hannover away
won’t get very far
against Borussia Dortmund.”
Then they mark up their slips and dream. Today he also gives the pensioners a scratchcard. The sound of coins scraping is in the air.
Ulli has known people to win, and sometime there’ll be another win. Down below here the Feast has begun; it’s the same as usual at Ulli’s. Almost. He is washing yesterday’s glasses. Normally the guests wash their own, sometimes there’s a little queue at the sink. The men give each other tips on the best way to do it (how much dishwashing detergent to use, this is the best technique with the little sponge, how to dry glasses and so on).
Imboden comes in, mildly excited. Has Ulli seen it yet? Seen what yet? Right, then Ulli must come with him, but first they both need a beer to bring along, there’s something to celebrate.
It’s the commemorative stone. A small wooden panel is hanging from it. So now Ulli reads Lada’s wooden panel before Imboden’s happy eyes. The betting pensioners have joined them too, people are already drinking to Ulli. He feels both slightly pleased and slightly embarrassed because of what the panel says and drinking to himself like this, although what the panel says is true:
JUAN STEFFEN OPENED PEACE NEGOTIATIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA
ULLI OPENED THE GARAGE IN FÜRSTENFELDE.
Ulli nods, everyone nods. Now what? Well, nothing, the day goes on.
Imboden goes to Frau Reiff’s. He has a date to meet the bell-ringer, they’re the old guard; in the past Eddie would have joined them. There’s coffee and apple cake and a lecture. They both like lectures; it would be nice if there were lectures here more often, but this is okay.
Imboden tells the bell-ringer about the panel, the bell-ringer tells him about his injury. What they don’t say is more exciting. The bell-ringer doesn’t say that he does not want to be the bell-ringer any more, just Gustav, and Imboden doesn’t say he’s been at the garage again. Both have much the same reason: they’re ashamed. Imboden knows Gustav doesn’t think much of the garage. He’s bothered about the kind of people you get there. In principle, the bell-ringer doesn’t think himself too refined for anyone, but on the other hand he doesn’t think he’s the unrefined sort. But most of all, he notices when Imboden’s been drinking. In principle he has nothing against that either, but he’d prefer it if Imboden drank with him. That has nothing to do with the kind of people they are, it’s just that then he could keep an eye on Imboden better.
After the lecture (a hobby diver showed slides of things lying at the bottom of our lakes, for instance a bazooka and a washing machine), the old men make plans for the rest of the day. Any time now, at twelve, the bell-ringer should be supervising Johann’s bell-ringing exam. He has decided it won’t take place. He would have to ring one of the bells, and he can’t. Nor does he want to. He doesn’t know how he is to teach the boy. The anti-Fascist bicycle ride is to be at twelve too. Imboden must be there; as father of our Deputy Mayor, Frau Zink, he can’t boycott it.
At this point we ought to make it clear, anyway, in case anyone gets the wrong idea, that strictly speaking it is a preventative anti-Fascist bicycle ride, because while racism etc. has been known not so far away, of course, here it hasn’t had any public profile since the war, except maybe at Ulli’s recently, when Özil didn’t sing the national anthem again, and some people thought that meant they can’t be glad when Özil scores for Germany: only a man who sings his country’s anthem can score for his country. And we think they think they really aren’t glad, but that’s not so, because they were definitely glad when things were close and Podolski decided the game.
Anyway, Frau Schwermuth had the idea of the anti-Fascist bicycle ride, and expected twenty participants. At twelve noon there were eighty waiting outside the Homeland House. There was whistling, an IG Heavy Metal banner brought along by a joker, several people who came cycling especially from Prenzlau and Woldegk.
At five past twelve Frau Schwermuth still isn’t there. We don’t expect her to turn up. But then a bicycle bell rings, and Frau Schwermuth has exchanged her spiked helmet for a cycling helmet and zooms down Marx-Strasse, laughing: “No braking, come on, everyone, follow me!”
On the whole we can say that the anti-Fascist bicycle ride was a success, but also not entirely a success, and not because after three rounds of the village it was over, but because Rico and Luise weren’t even awake at twelve.
The Templin Cycling Group joined in the third round. They did a time trial in our honor, Templin — Fürstenfelde — Templin. General ringing of bicycle bells by the anti-Fascist cyclists, general waving by the time-trial cyclists, because they don’t have bells, every gram of weight is one gram too many, Frau Schwermuth briefly got into the slipstream of a sporting cyclist. Everyone was happy.
The event finished at the parsonage. Frau Schober had baked three cherry cakes for the cyclists, which of course was nothing like enough cherry cake to go round. Hirtentäschel made a speech lasting half an hour about the anti-Semitism lurking in the midst of bourgeois society, often in the guise of criticism of Israel. At the end of his talk Hirtentäschel gave three sentences as examples of how to criticize Israel without—intentionally or unintentionally — saying anything anti-Semitic.