The Pumpkin

The lukewarm Indian Summer caresses me, brushes my arms and face as soon as the train door opens. Men in shorts, women in airy dresses, young girls in midriff-baring tops and frayed bell-bottom jeans comb through the station building. I carry the heavy wheeled suitcase down the steps to the street car which arrives just minutes later. 

It has been four years since you exchanged this world for another. Four years, during which life inside your inner circle changed quite a bit. Many of us wanted to become more honest, clear and courageous, and didn't want to put off deep longings to tomorrow or the future, but to live and love in the here and now.

Your sudden departure mercilessly made us aware of our own finitude.

It has been four years since we sat in your living room and you - stretched out on your couch with a sloth under your head, listening - sprayed out your mind and your humor, both sharp as a knife till the end, free of earlier sarcasm.

Frank, the world has changed, especially since Covid robbed us and our children of basic trust, since Russia’s attack on Ukraine. In my mind I can hear you go off about the Russian head of state, certain radical rightwing individuals who would’ve created nothing but fury and disgust in you.

For one moment I look outside the window of the street car bound for Warnemünde and watch school children get on and off. The even rhythm of the stopping and going lets my thoughts drift to Schleswig-Holstein and a small pumpkin that I’ve been meaning to turn into a certain soup for the last two weeks. Secretly I call it “Frank’s pumpkin soup”. On the day of your funeral, your Rostock school kitchen lady made this delicious soup and shared the secret recipe with me, only because you were my brother-in-law. 

To be honest, I have bought a small pumpkin these last four years and never conjured any delicious soup. Instead it lies there, orange and happy in my fruit basket, reminding me of the last meetings with you and exhorts me not to forget you. Maybe I will never make this pumpkin soup, maybe my pumpkins are simply meant to be memorial pumpkins, and maybe that is enough.

Translation: Karin Allison

Image: Alex Sirik