Peter Kurzeck

And then, afterwards, a few days later. You set off again in the afternoon. Still early. It’s March. Light for ages yet. On the way a telephone box with a view. First Sibylle and Carina, then Jürgen, but nobody picks up. And on through the Westend district, over the campus and then in the Gräf Strasse on the pavement under trees that have already had a good wait for spring. Into Bastos. Jürgen? Not here. The evening in the mirror. You drink an espresso, standing. Then down the Leipziger Strasse just before the shops close. Sibylle and Carina are still not home. I wish they’d come walking towards me now! For a long time tired and empty in the dusk, empty side streets. Ludolfus Strasse, Weingarten, Falk Strasse. You come to Hessen Platz. Lived here when we first came to Frankfurt, Sibylle and I. A room in a shared flat for six weeks. And now you have to look at the windows. Large roof windows. An old yellow-brick tenement house with an entry for cars, where evening’s already waiting. The playground empty now. All the children have gone home. Around the square the street lamps and the silence of the old houses. A Persian mechanic, an Indian greengrocer, a drinks shop, a wool shop, jumpers and wool, a clothes shop with incense sticks and beside it a row of four tailors who do alterations. Italian, Greek, Turkish, Armenian, and the lights on in all four. And at least every other house a bar. Under the chestnut trees on Hessen Platz and deciding to walk here again, when the trees are in flower, and then a long summer. A summer that will stay. Chestnut trees as tall as the townhouses. […]

And you feel the night and the wind on your face and above you the trees rustle. At the next corner, in front of a drinks stand that’s closed, three tramps. Their sleeping bags, holdalls and carrier bags against the wall of a house. And they stand there arguing, because the stand isn’t open. Closed. All three absolutely right. Now a fourth one joins them, places his stuff next to theirs and already he’s putting them right. Haven’t you seen the tramps often? And keep on seeing them? You see them talk and gesture, as if they were waving at you. As if they’d been calling you over for a long time, that’s how they stand there. Then through Mulansky Strasse and again it feels like walking on the edge, right on the edge. Not only on the edge of the city and of Bockenheim, where the street leads to the railway embankment and the allotments, but on the edge of this life. On the edge of the inhabited world. And where to? Feeling the wind on you as you walk and then you realize that none of it matters to you. Not now, or never? From now on, forever? At least as long as you’re walking! As long as you’re so tired and walking and feeling the wind on you. Mulansky Strasse, Konrad Broßwitz Strasse. Blocks of flats. It smells of night and coal and cellars, and of March and heavy smoke. And the light in the windows so quiet. A cyclist. A woman with two children. With their shadows from street lamp to street lamp. Are on the way home. You hear their voices and would like to know what they’re saying, and your heart aches. Are on the way home, are late and soon they’ll be there. Schoolchildren, says Carina in my memory. The street lighting murky, the parked cars, and front doors firmly silent. Like one more winter’s evening. A winter’s evening you’ve often had already. The street and you float away, like in a quiet cloud. Quiet and dark. Like in a cave, under the ground, that kind of evening. You hear the wind, hear the trains at the embankment. And one ring from a clock tower. In the night and silence a single toll of a bell. St. Jacobs Church? Must – what could the time be? You enter the church square, that lies empty in the lamplight under a dome of mist, empty and facing the night. Another telephone box and now Sibylle’s line’s engaged and Edelgard’s rings and rings. Then the ice-cream café in the Friesen Gasse and Edelgard isn’t there. The café just in passing, then the night-lit window of the See Strasse branch of the city library, and quickly on. The fountain at Kurfürsten Platz has been turned off. On Schloss Strasse, a brightly lit tram and the wind whooshes past. Another telephone box, but it doesn’t work. Out of order. Just coming, you say in your thoughts to Sibylle and Carina, I’m just coming! And you hurry along the last stretch and up the stairs, faster and faster.