But this time he hesitates in the street, until someone smacks him on the shoulder from behind, a work colleague with the remains of an onion sandwich in his hand, a man who’s on his way to somewhere that is home, the sandwich in one hand and a cigarette in the other, the sandwich from his wife at home, the cigarette from Marlboro. A brief exchange of words, a glance back at the clock, and the switch is flipped once more. Uncle J’s nature jumps back to the other side, and J the Wetterau man paces swiftly back to the train station. Everything is good and in order, the world is still in one piece. And so it should be, for nothing has happened. He journeys home cheerful and in good spirits, happy that everything — including him — has its place in the system. A presentable existence at all times — anything to the contrary just isn’t possible, because of his mother… and also because of his reverence for his father, in memoriam. Even the sister, who is managing the stonemasonry business and everything else now, even she deserves a reputable older brother who contributes to the family income, at the postal depot in Frankfurt, practically a civil servant, the position which was arranged for him by the lawyer. Does J realise that he has just been tempted? Or is he already accustomed to temptation, to temptation and fulfillment, like a cigarette that’s within reach and ready at any moment? No one will know; after all, no one was there. Not even me. My uncle in Frankfurt, alone, wandering around. But now he’s safe and rescued and heading back to the station, returning from the working day, clocking off for a well-earned rest, home to greet his mother and then head off into the forest, almost like a fairytale. Or perhaps he didn’t run into his work colleague after all, nor stand in front of the other house, nor in front of the second woman, but instead followed the first and is now her boy, inside now, about to be treated in a business-like way, because as soon as he crosses the threshold to paradise everything immediately becomes functional and formal, like a doctor’s surgery, except with completely different furnishings and completely different colours. Here, red dominates, mixed with a lush green, the colours just as exaggeratedly sensual as they were intentionally sterile at the doctor’s back then; the first doctor’s surgeries I went to were mostly white, like a waiting room for heaven. Uncle J is being handed around now, for even though he is technically a customer who pays and has the say, he’s not the Master of Proceedings anymore, partly because, throughout his entire life, he was always completely incapable of making the kind of impression that demands respect from people. He was incapable of exuding any sense of dominance; instead, it was always the exact opposite. Everyone always did what they wanted with him, even here, even if it may have been what he wanted anyway. It was inevitable, really, that a man who could be destroyed even by my brother and me, even if it was a matter of mountain rescue in the TV room in the Wetterau, would be passed around in that Frankfurt building like in a hospital, shuffled from one pointless examination to the next, the most important thing being that they get money out of him. He must have been entirely deflated by the time he got to the waiting room. For, even here, he suddenly found himself back in the context of authority, like at home, like on the grounds of the stonemasonry business, like in the postal depot at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. He didn’t have a say anywhere. Take a seat in the waiting room, they say at the doctor’s, take a seat over there, they say in Kaiserstrasse, on the chair over there! Because they instantly recognised just how hopeless a human being he was, and knew that they could treat him however they wanted, that he was harmless and unlikely to react in any way. A loser. He will never say,
I want her and her; they’ll show him the last piece of trash they have and he should consider himself lucky that he can even get anything for his money. And pecunia non olet, not even his. In fact, the only thing about him that doesn’t stink is his money. So they sit my uncle down on a bench or chair or at the bar, and maybe they’ll forget about him for a while, because he won’t do anything about it, he’ll just wait. He waits as though he’s standing around again. Anyone (man or woman) who passes by, he stares at fawningly, trying to see if they’re looking at him, if they’ve noticed him. But they haven’t. Maybe it’s winter and he has his chapka in his hand. What would happen if he ran into someone he knew now? I imagine he would be very friendly, acting as if he had simply run into the acquaintance in question on the street in Bad Nauheim. Without any sense of shame, probably. The way I envisage it, this whole process was merely technical for my uncle, in the broadest sense of the word. He probably only felt shame around his mother and his family. If he had run into someone while he was waiting there, hat in hand, he wouldn’t have taken it to be the catalyst for the beginning of a sleazy familiarity. He would have said, Grüß dich, Wolfgang, or Grüß dich, Kallheinz, and promptly told them the latest news from Forsthaus Winterstein, or about his latest walk in the forest, where perhaps he had yet again seen the biggest stag he had ever encountered in his life, presumably the biggest stag in the whole of the Usatal, for that matter. They wouldn’t even have mentioned the women, whom all of this ultimately revolved around (although, did it really?), and of course Wolfgang or Kallheinz would have gotten their turns more quickly than my uncle, who by now has already missed the first train and is still waiting. Now he buys an expensive beer, twelve marks, because that’s what he’s supposed to do. Even when the ladies of the establishment continue to walk past him — nude, business-like and always attending to someone else — he still searches for a crumb of attention, not looking offended, just a little sad, with puppy dog eyes. He doesn’t even look at their breasts and backsides, he doesn’t look them up and down, he’s not dominant enough to do that, not even here. After all, you need a certain degree of confidence to do that. No, he is subordinated here, just like at home. Although at least he can smoke. Then a call resounds out. Hey, you! As I imagine it, my uncle looks up.