Peter Kurzeck

On Saturday morning the flea market with her. It was ice-cold, the coldest day of the year. Even too cold to smoke, but on the other hand a chain-smoker and the ember alive. People stood at the Bockenheim Tower tram stop, hunched up in the cold and said: Eight below zero. Minus eleven. Fifteen on the wall. The barometer an advertising gift. On my kitchen wall, one said, this morning at five, seventeen below zero. Icicles like in the war. The north side. North-north-west. The barometer’s calibrated. My son-in-law an optician. My son is a qualified pharmacist. Like lance tips and knights’ swords the icicles at five in the morning. Now it’s nearly ten, now it’s at least still twelve-fourteen below! Russia. Stalingrad. POW, returned years after the war. Siberia. The coldest day since the Deutschmark was introduced. Cigarettes. The tram didn’t come. The overhead cables, the lines, the frost contracts the lines. The birds like little round lumps of ice on the lines or already fallen off. In the frost the lines become tighter and tighter. Blue sparks. The lines begin to sing out of fear. Especially early in the morning, before the light is really. As if made of tin, of iron, the sky. And then a cable snaps and then it’s snapped and the tram doesn’t come, it can’t. Normally it snaps in a suburb before day. In Ginnheim, in Schwanheim, in Preungesheim, in Oberrad and in Höchst. In Offenbach too. Frost or sabotage. Perhaps the frost also a sabotage. If a cable like that falls on your rifle, on your helmet, on your nut, or you stumble over it, you’re a goner, says the man who was in Stalingrad. My son-in-law is a chemist, says a woman in a sad little hat. If a cable like that snaps in the frost and happens to fall right on the tracks. Enemy influences. The enemy’s terrorist attacks. On one of the two tracks. The whole route will be, the whole route from Bornheim over the Circular and down Friedberger Strasse, all along the Mainz road all the way to Höchst will be, the number 12 in other words, will immediately be live. High voltage! Danger! If at that moment a car and stumble, not knowing, then Watch Out! Especially people! Sizzled to death in your own juices! First an almighty jolt, then burnt through, black! Like toast! Civilians! Says the ex-POW to the man who was in Stalingrad. The two like brothers. I noticed how my daughter listens tensely, trying to picture how the world is, her world. And has to dig her fingernails deep into my hand.