The Liar’s Bench
Some time after that she married Richard Sommer and thus my mother got a stepfather. When I think of him, I see him in the living room, sitting in his black leather armchair or taking a nap on the porch swing in the courtyard. But what he loved most was sitting with his neighbors on the old wooden bench outside his window. This was the headquarters. Here Otto Lehmann, the old pub owner Müller, and sometimes my best friend Angela’s grandpa discussed life with him. This is where they reviewed the day, heard about who moved new into town, talked about relationship problems and puffed cigars. My grandpa mockingly called this bench “the liar’s bench”. I didn’t last long in the vicinity; not because of the talks, which interested me greatly, but because of the billowing cigar smoke, which enveloped me in a thick fog and caused me to feel nauseous. With a view onto our old chestnut trees and Lisbeth Schmidt’s house, the old men chatted and let the day fade out. When I went to bed, I sometimes kept hearing their familiar low voices, which were a calming good-night greeting for me. Otto Lehmann, Auntie Lehmann’s husband, was never without a cigar in his mouth or his hand. Sometimes I would picture him combing his hair with one hand or drinking coffee that way, or especially how he’d drive the sewage-spreader to fertilize the fields. That had to be tough with just one hand free. The old pub owner, besides the liars’ bench, daily crossed my paths when I got back from school. He was blind and tirelessly walked up and down along the banister outside the pub, all without a rollator. I was stunned when he recognized me by my footfall and wanted to chat with me. A few years later he moved to be near his children. Shortly after, I received a postcard from him with a message in scrawled writing. I safeguarded that card like a treasure for years. It symbolized for me the affection and appreciation of an old man.
My grandpa, Richard Sommer, spoke daily about his impending demise for as long as I can remember. After 10 years of this, as he still sat in his black arm chair napping, I tuned those daily repeated mantras out. My grandpa smoked a lot and developed a pretty strong smoker’s cough. For my birthday he scounged up his spare change and presented it to me unceremoniously in a cigar box. He mostly wore faded corduroy pants, a shirt overlaid by suspenders and a cardigan, since he was always cold. This constant hypothermia resulted in him receiving all manner of heating utensils for birthdays and Christmases and getting equipped for Siberian chill.
In his opinion, personal hygiene was overrated. He dried his used handkerchiefs on top of the tiled stove in the middle of the living room. Now and then he washed himself in a barely visible puddle in the sink and dabbed his face with a towel. He loved his bunnies and watched “Der Blaue Bock” (“The Blue Ram”- a folk music show set in a rustic wine bar) as well as the carnival parades on TV, and all at a volume that was hard to evade.
When something went missing or broke around the house, Opa liked to blame it on a fictitious person he created and whom he called “the old Stöhr from Hundezoone”. One day my sister and I put a postcard in our mailbox right before the mail lady came around on her bike. My curious grandpa ran like a weasel to be first at the mailbox. He grabbed the postcard full of anticipation and read,”Dear Richard! I hope you are well. Greetings from Hundezoone, yours, The Old Stöhr”. Despite his dementia he grinned and gave us a knowing look.
One time Uncle Hermann from Berlin visited us, who had connections to the film industry. At this visit, a black man also got out of the car. My grandpa couldn’t believe it. He took the man’s hands and studied them from all angles. He shook his head in wonder and said,”Now I’ve seen everything!”
In his last days he had to go into the hospital and caused a lot of laughter among my nursing classmates. In one instance the floor nurse of the intensive care unit looked deep in his eyes and said,”Mr Sommer, you have the prettiest grayish-blue eyes!” He replied in his local dialect to her assumed flirtation with, “You could be my type as well!”
Another story took place in the elevator. A nursing student transported grandpa to an appointment. A man rode in the elevator with them whom grandpa didn’t know. He asked the stranger in a white lab coat,”And who are you?” The man in white answered,”I’m the head physician, Dr. S.” For grandpa all people wereequal so he asked, ”And - what are you doing here?”
Living under one roof with grandpa meant never being able to sneak out of the house undetected and that every visitor was bombarded with questions, and that grandpa carried his chamber pot down the hall in the mornings. There were tensions, as they exist everywhere there are several generations under one roof. Sometimes I longed for quiet, a way to retreat, but that seemed unattainable with a bored senior citizen with a deep lack-of-information-syndrome.
On the other hand his presence was part of life. When I entered the living room,my eyes would automatically go to his armchair.
Sometimes I imagine my grandpa in heaven, sitting on his beloved liar’s benchnext to his former neighbors, puffing cigars and looking down on us saying, ”NowI’ve seen everything!”
Translation: Karin Allison