daylight robbery

daylight robbery

curtains moved...
...shadows behind the nets….

…men in a dark suits rang her bell but she would not open the door…and when they came
every day we knew something was wrong…


…and…


…then came the women brought by their men in large vans and black Mercs parked in the wrong places, not where they should but they didn’t care. Their voices were loud, their children loud too and their mothers wore headscarves in black, hiding their hair. They climbed the stairs, no lift, skipped down, never tiring, to put armloads into the van till it was bursting, strapped chairs up un top and then on to the next one, and special things into the cars. Sounds of laughter, frenzied footsteps echoed in the marble hallways…not what the curtained shadows liked, not tolerable, common this sort of thing, offensive to some who checked their geraniums in their window boxes for the tenth time…not wanting to be seen as watching…not nice…


I’ll have nothing to do with her one of them said….not any more…it’s all her own fault said another, and now look at her…


…too clever by halves, knew it all, have you seen all her books? And the paintings? You see the paintings? No clothes on in some…and no telly, no telly to watch, instead she would read…and what good did it do? All that knowledge and all that knowing…no one wanted to know what she knew and it was no good to anyone here. Her curtains were grey, not washed even once and she smoked all day long, drank whisky in bed…she had no friends here, not one, not at all like us…she just did not fit…had it coming she did…all her own fault…


Ulrich and Tanja, a judge in Ohio…
could I find the right one?
There were thousands of them.
Seventy four thousand by that name on the web…


I could be looking forever…


I know she exists but I could not find where she was. They disqualified her from her life, took it from her and sent her to an institution…


…Herta, who’d grown up in the country.


She lives somewhere still, locked up, no one knows where, no longer has her say, no longer exists… they took it all, so nothing was left…dismantled her life, took all that she had, her money and her belongings, all her collections and her photos, her memories and all the muddle of her living.

Herta collected all manner of things and she would part with nothing, not anything would she give away, she kept it all. And if she collated her collections in the beginning, in the end she failed to keep up with all that she collected. It was all too fast for her and time was running out…she could not keep up with herself, age was faster than she was, and in the end her things ruled her and all her life…not much time for reading even, eyes too heavy from the drink. Her flat a Rumpelkammer, her life a Rumpelkammer and worth nothing. They cleared it all away, all that there was, like gleaning the last flesh from old bones, the black scarved women who lived at the far end of town, sharing the spoils of poor Herta’s life.


Drawings of herself and prints of naked beauties they took and they dragged out her car and her silver and jewels, her hats and her dresses and all her shoes.


They disposed of her books, her Shakespeare collection, mein Kampf that Hitler had written and belonged to her Mum and her Dad, her china thrown out, lace cloths torn up – no one would buy that today – small antique tables and Tiffany lamps, her grandfather clock and a hundred baskets of knitting went to the tip. Her life unfurled for all to see like a movie going back in time…


The baskets she’d hung in the flat from hooks in the ceiling and from the back of every door and when there was no more room for hanging she put them wherever she could find a space. She never finished a piece, not finishing what she was making was the guarantee for more living…the baskets, all a glorious array of colours of bits of scarves and sweaters, of gloves and socks for someone one day in red and green and purple and some with sparkles to make them shine. Nothing was finished, nothing was done and the baskets were stacked…and each piece in a basket…


Herta was clever.
Herta was bright.
Herta was lonely.
Born out of her time.
No one believed her…
…no one believed what she said…


Simon, Rudi, Beth and Betty. Robert, Jim and Britta. Mac on Facebook. Alena on Twitter. Karl, the musician and Kevin who lived in New York. Russ and Joe and Kathy.Jami. Marietta in Cape Cod. I googled them all. Herta, the pilot, one of the first…but who believed who she was? She’d got the proof, she had told us and she’d got all the papers to show if we wanted to see but they were now gone, no longer of import, no longer real…


She sat in her chair and she smiled and she dreamed of her Mummy and Daddy and Rosa and Sis, all dead a long time and Opa whom she’d loved the best. And she saw them all, talked to them too and all thought her mad…she swayed back and forth and she smiled as she watched the carpet beneath her grow dark as the warm ran down her legs and spilled over her slippers…time for her tea…


They had all gone and now all was quiet and the curtains were drawn, all was as it was. Lights shone bright in the marbled halls, soaps were playing…everything as it should be….


I looked and I looked,
There were thousands of them.
Bernd, Tammy and Tay, Norbert and Sara, Kristin and Steffen and Laura…

 Could I find the right one?