Almost as soon as my grandmother died, the house took on a new function. Nothing remained, only the house itself. When I stepped inside it for the first time again seven years later, in 1999, I was shocked. To be honest, shocked almost to death. Ever since that day, this house has defined my life. This house, this place, the street, the Wetterau, and above all the room I am writing this in now. And I was a child and ran through the house and fell in love with it, with this hybrid of death and life, a house which, even back then, predominantly consisted of memories of those who had once lived in it. The house in Uhlandstrasse had been there before my parents came, before the house in Mühlweg. It was as though it had been transported from another world into the present. A house of silence, not a house of life. I ran though the house, up the stairs, to the bookcase where I was always reading the travel stories from my grandmother’s Reader’s Digest volumes. I was a day-dreamer when I was a child; my uncle wasn’t the only one. He dreamed of mountain rescue, while I dreamed of the big wide world in the Reader’s Digest volumes. As long as everything was in order and intact, everything was okay. I ran upstairs, selected a volume and settled down with it on the sofa (it was around the time when my grandmother started giving me brandy chocolates and egg liquor, when I was five or six). I lived freely in this house and was happy in this bottomless melancholy (at home, I couldn’t bear to even be in the same room as one of my siblings anymore), but then the door opened upstairs, my uncle came out of his room and everything changed.
But for now, in this day in the life of my uncle J, I’m still only two years old and not even present. As he comes out of his room, Uncle J is in an indecisive mood. Ahead of him lie the errands he will carry out with reluctance, as well as the activities he is looking forward to. In these circumstances he tended to be like a simmering volcano, one that could temporarily cool down then heat up again depending on how things were going. For example, he would come downstairs and solemnly set about the task of driving the Variant out of the garage, for the errand of picking up Ursel. He’s in a good mood. The car, the world, everything is in order. A life. Then his mother reminds him that he hasn’t yet taken a shower. The volcano begins to simmer (his eyes narrow again, barely visible under his eyebrows now, a change which can happen from one second to the next). A dispute arises, one that ends with a compromise: He will shower after he’s driven the Variant out of the garage. In the absence of a uniform, J pulls on his jacket, and he would have liked to ceremoniously take the car key down from his own, specially-made key shelf, but the key was merely on the key chain attached to his trouser pocket, so this particular ceremony had to be omitted. J opens the door, closes it firmly, looks around. The driveway, the garage, the gate to the yard, everything is still in its place. Before opening the garage, he walks over to the gate, because the gate needs to be opened first, for some reason. By the time he opens it, the volcano has been entirely extinguished and only joy remains, but then his mother opens the kitchen window and asks why he opened the gate, because he’s not leaving yet, after all. I know, says J, but I want to drive the car out. Her: But you don’t need to open the gate to do that. J slouches over, starting to grumble now, gesturing with his hands as if he was in the process of beating someone to death, and shuts the gate again. His bad mood lingers until he reaches the garage door. It’s not a particularly big garage, but it is extraordinarily long, with enough room for two cars to be parked one behind the other. There has only ever been one parked in there, though, for Uncle J didn’t get the Variant until after his father’s death. In the moment when J puts the key into the lock of the wooden garage door, he transforms once again. He is opening up his kingdom. Only moments ago, the Variant was standing in a darkness that was alleviated only by the small side windows that face the garden. Alone since yesterday, but now suddenly surrounded by light, it stares, parked backwards in the garage, with its SA coloured bonnet and circular lights, out at the driveway and Uhlandstrasse. My uncle could get in now and start the engine. But instead he prefers to light up a quick cigarette first. And to walk around the Variant and look at the garden tools towards the back of the garage. He sees all of this as his realm, even though it exists only by the grace of others, his sister’s new family. J would never have gotten the car at all if it hadn’t been for his brother-in-law. The car wasn’t bought specifically for him, but rather for my grandmother’s house-keeping errands, making J into the family servant and chauffeur, although as far as I’m aware he never realised that. The garage, the car, he regarded it all as his own, and yet in essence he led a life of service, remunerated not with money but the car. But because he didn’t realise this, it didn’t detract from his happiness. Nor did he realise why he was never allowed to just go straight to the Forsthaus, but instead always had to do this or that first. The real purpose of the Variant was J’s errand-running, not to get him to Forsthaus Winterstein — I believe he would have walked there if he really had to, even though it would have taken him three hours there and back. His father may not have driven him from the masonry to Bad Nauheim all those year ago, but now at least he was able to drive himself to Forsthaus Winterstein, albeit at a price.
The garden tools at the back of the garage, the scythe, the garden shears, everything polished to perfection by an expert shear polisher, the best shear polisher far and wide. And the lawnmower was the newest model on the market. Everything of the best quality. Even the Variant was almost new, or so they had told him (after all, they knew what he was like). He hadn’t chosen the colour himself, but no one could have picked a better one for him. It was as if they had been made for each other, two kindred spirits. Uncle J and his Variant VW Type 3. The Variant model was even used by firemen. Not by the police though, unfortunately. But it was still a vehicle used for official purposes. Whenever a fire service Variant drove past my uncle in his Variant, he would get this serious and official expression on his face, an expression of official duty. He, too, was on duty. That made him and his car almost the same as the fire service Variant with the fireman in it. Swiftly on the scene! After admiring the garden tools as if it were the first time he had ever seen them, running his finger over this or that blade (which, as someone who couldn’t feel pain, he had been strictly forbidden from doing by his mother; but he only ever ran his fingers over them lightly — he couldn’t feel a thing, including how sharp they were, so he obeyed the law and just touched them gently), he opens the car door and gets in. Like others get into a space rocket or a Messerschmidt. And now he’s inside. Time to check all the instruments! All the instruments are still there. The speedometer is there. The tachometer is there. The gear stick, everything in its place. Don’t touch the steering wheel just yet! Check the rear-view mirror. Are the doors properly closed? Doors are closed! Check the clock too, synchronize with the time on his wristwatch. Time all fine, synchronisation complete. Everything in order and faultless and ready to start, all the safety precautions completed and verified and passed. Gearstick in neutral, engage the clutch, ignition. IGNITION! It’s almost like a countdown. The Variant clears its throat, emitting a rhythmic noise which sounds like a phlegm-filled cough, then starts to vibrate, chokes, oscillates and begins to cough once more, huskily this time, then splutters into a state of readiness and runs at last. Ignition successful. Uncle J grabs the steering wheel of his VW Variant. A pilot. After glancing at each of the mirrors, he rolls the Variant forward over the threshold of the garage, in preparation for the rest of the day, the front of the bonnet outside now, my uncle passing the doorframe, level with the steps, another two metres, then he stops, releases the clutch and pulls up the handbrake. The Variant is now in the driveway. It has travelled a distance of five metres. There’s nothing J enjoys more than the sound of the engine, the sound of his life (later, at the end of his life, his cough sounded just like the car engine). My uncle now presumably does what I so often saw him do later, something avid motorcyclists or people with cabriolets do. In other words, he gets out and lets the engine run for a while. He paces around the car, gazing at it, then walks behind it and closes the garage door in a ponderous and official manner. The car door, meanwhile, is still open. There he stands, connected in a mysterious, almost mythical way with the Variant, J here at the garage door, and over there, five metres away, the car with the engine running. It’s running because of him. Waiting for him. It belongs to him. His engine. And oh — how she runs! Waiting to see what will happen next. She will wait there for him until he gets back in. His engine, practically a living thing. And he stands a short distance away, feeling… no, much more than an avid motorist, he was an absolutely smitten one. They belong together, completely, despite being momentarily separated, him here and the Variant there. The engine running just for him, until he turns it off. Which he will do, in just a moment. But not just yet. First, for example, he lifts up the windscreen wipers and inspects them closely. And the hubcaps: Are they positioned correctly and securely? He circles the car one more time. Then he gets back in, sits up straight, adjusts the neck of his polo shirt, looks over at the neighbour who is looking over at him, and turns the engine off. It’s in the driveway now, fully prepared for everything that is to come, and from now until the time when he actually sets off, he can rest assured that she is outside, ready and waiting, everything in order and perfect, everything as it should be.