So my uncle drives up to the railway embankment and from there into the town, to Kaiserstrasse. The traffic becomes heavier by the time they reach the church, it’s the end of the working day and people are flocking to Kaiserstrasse, there’s time now, the work having been done, and the errands need to be run by six, for after that everything will be closed. It seems like the whole of Friedberg is heading to Kaiserstrasse in their automobiles, or at least that’s how it seems to the Friedbergers who are currently driving to Kaiserstrasse in their automobiles. J has to stop by the time he reaches the church — the cars are queuing thirty metres from the crossing, something which is unheard of, there are eight or ten cars ahead of him! He’s never experienced this before. Where have they all come from, are they all Friedbergers? His sister, who is in a hurry, is probably asking herself the same thing. My uncle has been wanting to go to Forsthaus Winterstein for hours, but his sister is peeved too and sees it as a form of personal insult that, at this very moment, all of Friedberg wants to go to Kaiserstrasse for whatever reason, and yet all she wants to do is pick up the bedding she dropped off the day before yesterday. Please ensure they really are ready for the day after tomorrow, she had said in the launderette, and the woman replied, The day after tomorrow for sure. The former Miss Boll, now the manager of a company, has perfected the art of asserting herself. You have to, after all. Otherwise you perish. Even in the launderette, or perhaps specifically in the launderette. By the day after tomorrow, even though my mother didn’t need the bedding until the following week. The launderette woman, for her part, had the bedding ready an hour after it was dropped off.
They’re by the church, the Church of Our Dear Lady, but they can’t go any further; ahead of them are automobiles from 1969 and behind them the church with its rust-red, partly blackened weathered bricks, Gothic arches, pinnacles and crockets from the Middle Ages. They sit there in the traffic and can’t go any further, but why? This is completely new to them. To my mother, being held up at the church for even thirty seconds while trying to reach Kaiserstrasse by car is unheard of. Ahead of them, perhaps, is Herr Berger. Herr Berger works for the company, so why is he already away from work and in town? Next to Herr Berger (who is driving) is Frau Berger. Ursel, the manager, sees Herr Berger, but why does he have to have a car, why is he driving on Kaiserstrasse now, of all times? For that matter, why does everyone always seem to be on their way to somewhere recently and always in your way? And everyone gives each other these aggressive, almost hateful, looks. From one car to the next they glare at each other with hatred, as if the other person didn’t belong here, and why can’t they just stay at home? After an almost unbearable thirty seconds, the traffic starts to move again, and all the people in all the cars are asking themselves how things are supposed to go on from here, now that they can’t even drive to Kaiserstrasse anymore because suddenly everyone is driving to Kaiserstrasse. It clearly isn’t even possible to drive into town anymore.
And now they finally turn into Kaiserstrasse, and cars from all kinds of places are driving all around them, for whoever wants to drive from Usingen to Frankfurt drives through Friedberg, whoever wants to drive from Bad Nauheim to Wöllstadt drives through Friedberg, whoever wants to drive from Rödgen to Dorheim drives through Friedberg — unless, that is, they drive through Schwalheim — and whoever wants to drive from Butzbach to Bad Vilbel drives through Friedberg, whoever wants to drive from Ober-Mörlen to Jagdhaus Ossenheim drives through Friedberg, whoever wants to drive from Florstadt to Forsthaus Winterstein drives through Friedberg, and all the sugar cane transporters drive through Friedberg. In short, the whole of the Wetterau has been driving through Friedberg of late, and when they do, they always drive along Kaiserstrasse. It’s impossible to drive along Kaiserstrasse now, they all say, the people who are driving along it right at this moment, and they have no clue that this is only the beginning, for it’s only 1969. My uncle is just passing the Bindernagel bookshop now. Old Herr Doktor Herrmann, the owner of the Bindernagel bookshop, is standing in front of the door beneath the building’s slated facade, looking at the traffic and wondering what will become of it all. As my uncle drives past in his Variant, Herr Usinger comes out of the Bindernagel bookshop too, and my mother says, There’s Herr Usinger, but J doesn’t know Herr Usinger, nor anything about him. Friedberg’s poet. Widely renowned. Laden with prizes. Herr Usinger lives in the castle. Herr Usinger has a veritable stack of books under his arm. Large horn-rimmed spectacles and snow-white hair. At home in his little timber-framed house in the castle, he writes poems about cosmic connections. Jupiter, Saturn, galaxies and energetic, cosmic universal rays. He is also the vice president of a renowned academy. Calculated almost from this very day, he has another thirteen years to live. The poet of cosmic poems stands there, in the year of the moon landing, in the doorway of the Bindernagel bookshop in Friedberg in the Wetterau next to old Doktor Herrmann and looks at the traffic, and perhaps this really is the day when the Friedbergers who are on Kaiserstrasse notice the traffic for the first time. Suddenly it’s there, the traffic, whereas yesterday it wasn’t, previously not having existed in the Friedbergers’ world, lying beneath the threshold of perception, and now suddenly it’s there, and everyone stops and stares silently for a moment, even old Herr Rausch and young Herr Rausch from the Schillerlinde come out to stand in front of the inn door to look at the traffic (while inside they are sitting with their ciders, all having come on foot). At that moment, Herr Schifbenger comes out of Café Schifbenger to join them, present at this historic moment too, and says to the young Rausch: Erwin, what’s going on here, where have all of these automobiles come from? Indeed, all the local tradesmen and shop keepers, and in particular the residents of Kaiserstrasse, come to their front doors or windows and look at the traffic and say to themselves, Now we really have traffic, and yet just a moment ago there was just the empty, centuries-old Kaiserstrasse. Even the Dunkel landlord comes out of his inn and looks at the traffic with an awestruck expression. At that moment, all the people in Friedberg on the Kaiserstrasse are saying to themselves, Something’s there! It’s there now. And it might never go away again. At that moment, Herr Usinger is composing a few lines of poetry in his head about the traffic incident, thinking of words like planetoid and satellites, atomism and protons. Herr Herrmann, on the other hand, is asking himself how the businesses on Kaiserstrasse will manage to survive if everyone who used to be on foot or riding their bicycle or catching the train is suddenly driving instead. Moments ago there was merely a street, and now, suddenly and all at once and from one day to the next, it’s obvious to all concerned that this is no longer just a street frequented by locals, but one with actual traffic. What kind of traffic is this anyway? my mother is asking herself in the Variant, even though she studied political economics and should have known very well that the car would soon be everywhere in our country and thereafter a German export all over the world, like the blessing of the Lord forevermore and to the final amen. But either she didn’t know or didn’t want to know, just like all the others who didn’t know either, gazing in amazement at the Kaiserstrasse as if a moon rocket had just landed in front of them and little men in white spacesuits were about to step out and stare at them, the Wetterauers, through their mirrored visors. And for the first time, due to logical steps which are few in number but very general, a thought begins to establish itself in their minds, collectively and unexpectedly and independently from one another, one which all the inhabitants and all the traders on Kaiserstrasse in Friedberg in the Wetterau have at exactly the same moment. Even old Herr Doktor Herrmann thinks it, as does old Herr Rausch, and Herr Lenhardt thinks it too as he comes out of the second Friedberg book shop, the Scriba bookshop, wrinkling his brow, as do Herr Schifbenger and Dunkelwirt and everyone in their cars, including my mother on the passenger seat of my uncle J’s Variant. All of a sudden, as if they had pre-planned it, they realise that something has to done. There needs to be something like a bypass. And so on this day, for the first time, the word bypass appears in their minds simultaneously. Just like the clouds in the Wetterau blue, they suddenly see the word before them as if it were written in the skies. They all stagger a step backwards and gaze at a specific point in the skies, as if by command, hundreds of them along the whole length of the Kaiserstrasse, perhaps the point where they suppose the dear Lord to be, as if he had just revealed something to them. Perhaps, for just a moment, he has even revealed himself. A moment of truth, and suddenly they can see. At this moment, all the Wetterauers on the Kaiserstrasse stop in their tracks, staring mesmerized at a non-existent point in the Wetterau sky.