My uncle opens the gate to the cemetery and walks officiously along the outside wall to the place where we lie to rest. He puts the flowers down, goes to the water tap, takes a watering can, fills it, comes back to the grave and waters the plants, mumbling it’s always me all the while. There are flowers and hedges all around him; roses, lavender or tulips depending on the time of year. Lilies on the more luxuriant graves, predominantly the graves along the wall of the cemetery, the graves of dignitaries, which are tended to with more financial outlay than the others. Miniature temples, stelae, female statues of mourning with laurel wreaths in their hands, letting them hang downwards, one arm resting on the grave in a grief-stricken pose. These figures are, as my uncle notices, young and pretty, but unfortunately made from metal, so you can’t really… But perhaps just the once? Has he never touched them? They can’t be grabbed by the crotch, as the dress is made of metal, but it should be possible to place a hand on the bottom, because the iron garment falls softly there, clinging — it’s from the era of the dress reform movement, after all. Everything is there, and just as rounded as in real life, you can feel it. My uncle and Art Nouveau in the cemetery in Friedberg in the Wetterau. You can hear a chiffchaff in the trees, and a finch too, and pigeons. Nature and death all around him. Sometimes there will be a tree full of kinglets. My uncle once stood there, and now I sometimes stand there today, as his revenant. The kinglets from back then are dead too, but they’re still there, just like us. The kinglets are still there in the trees, albeit different ones, and below there is still a Boll, even if it’s just me and no longer the uncle. Everything is there, but no longer there. And now I’m laying it to rest with my words. Roses and lilies on the gravestone once more. And irises, depending on the time of year. Can my uncle smell them, the roses, the lilies and the irises? Will he run into Kallheinz (So, back home again already?)? He stands before the gravestone and reads the names. Melchior Boll, Ida Boll, August Boll, Karl Boll, Wilhelm Boll. There is only room for one more name on the gravestone, J notices now. Perhaps he notices it every time but forgets it again immediately afterwards; because assuming that the proper order is kept to, the last place belongs to his mother. Then it will say: Auguste Boll. His sister now has her own family and a completely different grave. His younger brother will soon have a family too. And he, J, where will he go? With his mother and the others? But his name won’t fit on the gravestone. Somewhere completely different, in the corner with the individual graves, the ones that are always so small, perhaps just with a wooden cross? And so Uncle J waters his family’s grave. He stands there grumbling, thinking bad thoughts or none at all, walks over to the tap another two times; it doesn’t occur to him to arrange the flowers or to take away the bunch of carnations that is now two weeks old. After all, he wasn’t instructed to do that. And the plastic vase, fallen over on the left hand side of the grave, prompts no reaction from him. He doesn’t notice it, for his task is to water the flowers. Silence. All around him, at an appropriate distance, the old Wetterau residents tend to the graves of their relatives, always turning up in pairs and struggling to lean down towards the Earth and the graves. Most moving slowly, some arguing as they go. Grave-tending is as much a part of being a pensioner as housekeeping, and both can lead to minor disagreements.
He: Where’s the watering can now?
She: By the stream.
He: But we were just by the stream.
She: So why didn’t you bring it?
He: I was carrying the flowers.
She: Fine, so why didn’t you say something!
Et cetera.
You can’t actually hear their words, but you can see them gesticulating. It’s almost as though the cemetery is transforming, on the quiet, into a living room from the Kernstadt or Barbara neighbourhoods (the cemetery lies between the two). They are dressed for housework, too. Today’s task: Tend to the grave. The women usually wear their aprons. As the men bend over, the seats of their trousers always look so vast, their knees angled away from one another, will they ever make it back up? The women keep their knees together and stretch their behinds up towards the sky, almost as though, right at the very end, they are once again the flowers they may have been fifty years ago. A flower that wants to see the sky. Growing up towards the sky once more. And, at that very moment, they are cultivating their dead. Every day, the Friedberg Cemetery Association gathers in the Friedberg cemetery to cultivate the Friedberg graves, both privately and in pairs, and immediately after they will sit in their allotments by the Usa with a bottle of beer. That’s the afternoon outing: first to the cemetery, then to the allotment, and in the evening perhaps a trip to the Mann in die Dunkel or the Schillerlinde or the Hanauer Hof or the Goldenen Fass or the Licher Eck on Kaiserstrasse. That’s how almost every life drew to its end back then, as I remember, and today they still stand around in pairs in the cemetery (while I am always alone), except now it’s the descendants of the ones who used to come. My uncle doesn’t notice them; he has his errand to attend to. He’s just emptying the third watering can. Everything is quiet and still, the only sound coming from the birds and the trickling water. Herr Boll, someone says. J looks around and sees Rudi Weber and his sister approaching. The sister was the one who spoke.
Hello there, Rudi, says J. Good afternoon, he says to the sister.
Rudi Weber: So, are you tending your family’s grave?
I am, yes, says J.
Aye, says Rudi, we’ve neglected ours for the last two weeks. And if you don’t tend to it for two weeks, everything looks so bad you might as well start from scratch.
Well, yes, says J matter-of-factly.
So how are you, Herr Boll? asks the sister.
Yes, good, says J.
And your mother?
Good, thank you, says J.
And your sister?
Well, yes, good, says J.
I admire your sister, the way she’s managed everything so well. Just imagine, Rudi, she’s heading up the business now, the masonry.