examples – 32 – lost childhood

Lost Childhood –

In the early winter of 2012, I traveled to the countryside to stay with J. for a few days and ask her about her childhood in France during the 1930s and 40s. She put me up in the attic, which had been unoccupied for a long time. She rarely had visitors anymore. It snowed during the night. It was cold. I wasn’t allowed to turn on the heat. She told me she slept cold too and that it didn’t matter. She was angry with me, but I didn’t know why.

View from the Muellerhouse

When I sat in her kitchen and listened to her, the blunted peaks of the archipelago emerged, like at the break of dawn in the South Seas, her childhood memories appearing shadowy, erratic, and isolated. But before them lay the beautiful myths like clouds of ink, the remnants of the night. A lost childhood, the legendary Vineta. She downright hated me for my family research. But it was she who tossed the prison letters of  Schneider into a cheap red ring binder on the table, while making other letters disappear. She always sent mixed messages.

At the minors garden

J. had stored her feelings and memories precisely within herself. I sensed that very clearly, and yet she almost never revealed them to me. A mouth like a zipper.