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.Too bad we can't ask Mother.”“Is she no longer with us?”“She's been dead for three months.I moved in two weeks ago and haven't been able to take care of things after work.Fortunately Margarete took all the stuff that was worth anything; all I have to do is get rid of what's left.”I told her about my still-empty flat.“An empty flat instead of one filled with things you don't like—that's better, isn't it?”“I think it's terrific.And for the time being I don't feel like traipsing through furniture showrooms and junk shops.”She asked me if I'd be willing to help her with the clearing operation.She was a teacher, had just come back from six years in Kenya, and all her old friends were gone.“How about Saturday? I'll rent the van and cook a dinner.I'm a good cook.Trust me.”14ON SATURDAY WE EMPTIED the apartment of her mother's belongings and transported them to the dump.Barbara cooked an African meal.We ate on the floor: the only things Barbara had kept were the refrigerator and stove, dishes and cutlery, and sheets, towels, and blankets.She slept on the floor too.I asked what she'd done with the furniture she'd had in Kenya.She said she had tired of it and left it behind.She was living out of three wardrobe trunks equipped with large drawers and rods for hanging clothes.She'd bought them in Kenya secondhand.“I'm not the domestic type.”But finding the right furniture was important enough to her to send us poking through antique shops each Friday for the next few weeks.At first we limited ourselves to local establishments; then we branched out into the neighboring regions of Spessart, Hunsrück, and Eifel.During the preceding week Barbara would look them up in the local phone books and make the necessary calls, and by the weekend she knew where to go.The best places were the biggest: they had the biggest selection and the biggest mess, which meant you could pick up for a song what in a small shop would be the showpiece in the display window.She had her eye on art nouveau, and the dining room set and the desk with matching chair and the bookcase that she put together piece by piece over the weeks turned out to be perfect for her place.She had taste.As for me, I was not looking for a specific style.I found a tall narrow wardrobe with a large oval mirror in the door and a wide bed, both of cherrywood, and a set of bookshelves with glass doors that went well with Grandfather's desk and chair.“If we lived together,” she said with a laugh, “we'd have everything we needed.”At first we would set off at two and be back by evening; later we would stay overnight somewhere, taking a double room: “You don't mind, do you? We need our money for other things.” To tell the truth, I did mind: I have always had problems with being close to people at night when I am not intimate with them—on overnight school excursions, in mountain chalets, with friends, with my mother, even with my grandparents, when they let me sleep in their room because painters were taking care of some water damage in mine.But I said nothing.Besides, I was amazed at how easy—and pleasant—it was to spend the nights with her: Barbara's need to go on reading or suddenly turn out the light, her occasional awakenings in the middle of the night, her noises and smells, my waiting to use the bathroom and at times our mutual use of same, her face as she fell asleep, when she got up, in front of the mirror, and her body with its heavy breasts, thick thighs, cellulite, often displayed in worn, baggy underwear—none of it put me off, went too far, invaded my privacy.She was so nonchalant about everything that I, despite my weeks in paradise still rather timid in matters of the body, found myself following suit.Not only that, she was so cheerful and witty that at first I thought it was put on, but in time I was infected by it.She would pose as a baroque angel, as the Reich eagle and its Federal Republic equivalent, as a bewildered beaver and dying swan
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