A few seconds later my uncle drives on, and the curious build-up of traffic that was hitherto unknown dissipates again, all the cars jolting forwards and streaming north and south and into smaller side streets too, and after just a few seconds there’s nothing left of what there was moments before. Instead, like there always used to be, there is just one automobile on the Kaiserstrasse, or even two here and there, But what happened just now? they ask themselves on the Kaiserstrasse in bewilderment. Hmm, mumbles the Dunkel landlord, giving the Kaiserstrasse one last thoughtful glance before going back in to pull pints. As he does so, he wonders whether he should tell the Dunkel guests on the other side of the bar about what he just experienced, but at the same moment realises that he lacks the words to do so, and that in any case it can’t be told, because he himself can’t even grasp what just happened, and what’s more, he doesn’t even know for sure if anything did, in fact, happen. Old Herr Doktor Herrmann bids farewell to Usinger the poet, propping his hands against his sides, a little more hunched now and with two new wrinkles next to his nose that he didn’t have before, then goes back into his bookshop at exactly the same time as Herr Lenhardt steps into his shop fifty metres away. The two Rausch men go back into the Linde, where three schnitzels are waiting in the dumbwaiter — to be brought to the table by old Herr Rausch, while Erwin, the son, folds serviettes. Herr Schifbenger goes off to drink a coffee in his competitor’s establishment. Gradually, all the Friedbergers disappear back into their houses and behind their windows, and my uncle is already on his way back to Bad Nauheim with my mother and the Variant, the Kaiserstrasse is quiet again, undisturbed and peaceful like it always used to be. The only one left is Usinger the poet, who can be seen disappearing through the gate of the great castle in his old tail coat with the stack of books under his arm, as if he came from a completely different era and had just been painted into the scene by Carl Spitzweg under the title: The Cosmological Poet Disappears into his Castle.
8
J heads straight for Bad Nauheim, dropping my mother off at her then-apartment. After that, he drives directly to Uhlandstrasse, hurriedly eats the early dinner that is waiting there for him, and takes his mother to the hairdresser’s. Then he drives quickly to Schade & Füllgrabe and buys a vast quantity of preserving sugar which he brings back to Uhlandstrasse, where, or so it seems to him, there’s a veritable warehouse of fruit waiting to be preserved in the cellar. The more his mother preserves, the more fruit there seems to be. The majority of it comes from the company grounds. Pears, plums, squash, and above all apples. And now all of a sudden it’s six in the evening and everything has been done, and my uncle, having almost given up all hope (and having unleashed a thousand blood baths in his mind) sets off at last from Uhlandstrasse to Forsthaus Winterstein.
First he drives through the town, and after just a few metres he sees the sign for an inn, perhaps one that he, the Boll-heir, hasn’t shown himself in for a while. He could pop in, parking the car in a prestigious manner first, then appear in the doorway so that everyone will look up, recognise him at once and be pleased. A guest of his standing! But then he sees the sign for another inn, and then a third, for there are inns and bars everywhere in Bad Nauheim because of the numerous spa guests. So my uncle decides to drive up to the forest after all; he wants to be amongst the robins, which start to sing shortly before dusk. As dusk falls, the wild animals begin to venture out of their dens. He can walk along the forest path in sturdy shoes with a forest-appropriate jacket, almost like the hunters. This makes J feel orderly and proper. So it turns out he does have a uniform after all, a forest uniform. He always has the cumbersome old binoculars with him when he comes here. There in the forest it’s as though his eyes were protruding for sheer joy, and then the old binoculars protruding in turn. My uncle was one of those people who manage to effortlessly lure squirrels to eat from their bare hands; he must have had some kind of special technique. To start with I was astounded, because never in a million years would I have thought that he could manage such a feat, instead believing that the only result of him laying a nut in his flat, outstretched palm would be that all the squirrels flee from him in shock and create a no-go zone, so to speak, of at least fifty metres around him, all the squirrels in the Bad Nauheim forest and the spa parklands, and all the wildlife in Wetterau for that matter. But they came to my uncle willingly, despite the fact that he looked so awful, with his lower jaw jutting out and, as the years passed, increasingly hunch-backed as he stood there waiting for the squirrels.