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It all started with me claiming that my father was a Swedish astronaut and that he was in space observing a satellite that he had named after me.
A real space expert, who was traveling somewhere between Mars and the Moon and saw things that we other people could only dream of.
Nice story, sold well. The truth, however, was just sobering. There was no stupid satellite called Gyps, nor was there a Swedish astronaut who was my father. Actually, there wasn't even a Gyps father, nor was there a Gyps at all.
Of course, I existed and my name really was Gyps, but since a person is made of atoms, there wasn't one Gyps, but a Gyps that was randomly composed of millions of small Gyps atoms.
Complicated, I know. That was probably why I had to go to a remedial class and was a hopeless case. I never understood my existence.
It was a bit like math. If you didn't know your basic arithmetic, there was no point in starting with geometry, algebra or fractions...
“Do you think the guy will cut our throats at the border and steal my shoes?” Aligraleph emerged from the bushes where he had disappeared to pee.
I briefly grimaced, then looked up at the sky again. Full of stars, but poor in Swedish dad astronauts.
“Why does he steal your shoes, of all things?” I finally asked, snorting. ”He might as well steal mine...”
“Why?” Aligraleph asked, raising his eyebrows arrogantly as soon as he climbed onto the hood of the old Mercedes next to me. ”Why would the guy steal my shoes? Gyps, please! Just look at your old Aldi kicks, then at my noble footwear, and then think hard about your question, Dr. Watson...”
I laughed, even though I didn't find the saying funny at all and the guy was a really nice man who looked a bit like one of the Klitschko brothers. His funny jacket and his good taste in music had allowed us to get into his car in the first place.
He was a really nice man. Of course, it could have gone really wrong, but the Russian guy was not a weird guy. He hadn't looked at us strangely, nor had he demanded that one of us sit next to him in the passenger seat.
He had chatted with us over the rearview mirror the whole way and proudly told us about his daughter, who was studying medicine in St. Petersburg. She was a really smart girl. A lady who knew what she wanted.
“The sky!” Aligraleph suddenly shouted loudly and punched me hard in the upper arm. ”Look at this sky, man! Is that cool or what?”
Although I had only been friends with Aligraleph for six days, two of them on a really crazy trip, I could already say that this was typical of Aligraleph. He shouted the most obvious things out into the world, as if mere mortals would NEVER come up with them without his shouting.
The facts were obvious. Even a slow thinker like me got it. But what could you do about it? That was Aligraleph of Mochenstein for you.
He stomped through the world with his expensive clothes, his mafia face and the unshakable belief that six billion people would have to die unsuspectingly if he didn't regularly shout out his comments.
“All right, boys?” The Russian came out of the gas station, legs apart, looking like a real cowboy with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. Like a real and communist cowboy with sweatpants and a funny fur jacket.
“Sure,” Aligraleph said, and it sounded like he wasn't afraid at all. Not afraid of the long drive back. Not afraid of the trouble we would surely get into. Not afraid of being expelled from school, which was waiting for him in our hometown, and not afraid of the snotty boarding school that his idiot parents would guarantee to put him in when he returned.
The Russian climbed groaning between me and Aligraleph and stared up at the sky as well. He smoked his stinky cigarette for a while, then asked seriously:
“Are you really not in trouble? I mean, how old are you? Fifteen? What you're doing here is pretty dangerous. Do you know that?”
I nodded seriously as well, but Aligraleph just laughed and stretched out his hand towards the main road near the gas station.
“It's all good, man. Just give us a ride into town.”
The Russian just nodded and watched the passing cars for a while. Bright spots that disappeared again into the dark distance.
“Okay, I understand,” he said. ”It's your business. But I'll take you into town.”
I think if I ever wrote a book about my life, my journey, Aligraleph and the thing with my father, I would choose a different ending. I wouldn't have us driven back home in a rickety car, but rather ride horses into the sunset with a Johnny Cash song playing in the background.
Yes, that would be a successful exit. It would have style and be a bit like a movie or something.
But where on earth should I start with my book? With my fear of bacteria? With the broken window of our caravan? With the invention of everything, or was it actually just about the invention of my life?
I was still dizzy when the Russian pushed an ice-cold bottle of beer into my hands. I was only fifteen years old, but who cared? Certainly not the fur-jacket Russian.
“What are your names, anyway?” the Russian finally asked. ”First your names, then the deal with the train station will be done.”
“I'm John Kibbur and this here guy,” Aligraleph said quickly, pointing at me, ”is my faithful friend Gypsy Rodrick. I'm Jewish and he's a Gypsy. You know, a wandering people. It's totally normal for us, boys our age, to be on the road alone.”
I really was a 'gypsy boy', but how Aligraleph came up with this nonsense about John Kibbur and Jew was a real mystery to me.
“Sure,” the Russian laughed and tapped his crooked nose. ”And I'm the Federal President, you morons. But I don't care. Get in already. So to the municipal train station?”
Aligraleph nodded and climbed down from the car. “Correct. What do you think, Gypsy Rodrick?”
I shrugged my shoulders and stared at the bottle in my hands.
I didn't know what I wanted. Did I want to go back to my crazy mom who thought she was a fortune teller? Did I want to go back to school? Did I want to go back to my rickety bike? Back to the bright red trailer?
“I don't care,” I said. ”I don't even know how to start my story.”
And it was the truth. Nothing but the pure and crazy truth. Where the hell should I start my story again?
I was a lazy beneficiary of the state school system and a dyslexic by conviction when Aligraleph von Mochenstein came to my class.
He was already sixteen, suffered from a severe case of rebelliousness and had not only been given a lot of money up his ass by his parents, but also a really weird upbringing.
Aligraleph of Mochenstein was already an outsider as soon as he entered the classroom.
With his expensive clothes, upturned shirt collar and mobster-like face, he just didn't fit into our class.
I wouldn't say I was unpopular. I just didn't matter to my classmates, teachers, or myself. I dozed off at school, stared purposefully at the ground during breaks, and chewed so slowly during meals that you fell asleep from boredom just watching me.
But Aligraleph – oh man. He had a really weird name, which the teachers and my classmates found completely suspicious. I mean, if you weren't called Tom, Tim, Jan, Anna or Lisa in my class, you were immediately considered an oddball.
We had what felt like four Tims, three Lauras, two Annas and ten Jans or something. Even the teachers' first names were somehow all the same, although it was weird enough that teachers had first names at all.
I had always been the weird kid with my name Gyps, but now a brand-name guy with an “von” in his name came along and challenged my place as the struggling outsider.
Even in gym class, I was no longer the most hopeless student, because this Aligraleph was constantly handing in self-written excuses to the teacher. Sometimes he was sick, as if he had disappeared off the face of the earth, or smelled so strongly of cigarette smoke that our always-yelling gym teacher, Mr. Falke, sent him home with a nasty note.
I was quite good at art, but I got worse as soon as this Aligraleph sat next to me. He kept staring at my easel and tried to copy me completely obviously. I mean, how pathetic was that? Copying someone was okay, not everyone could be as motivated as our three nerdy Lauras, who really wanted to get out of the remedial class and into the normal education class. But copying one person?
It was sad, really sad. No matter what I slapped on the paper, this Aligraleph squinted his eyes as if he had to concentrate terribly, swayed slightly in his chair and had incredibly shaky fingers while painting exactly the same picture as me.
My art teacher didn't even notice this nonsense because she lived in her own world and you could even sleep in her class without her saying anything.
No teacher said anything about Aligraleph. He collected blue letters like a fanatic, occasionally fell asleep or simply didn't show up for an entire school day.
When he was there, he never had a school bag with him, and when he did participate in class, he spoke in a strangely high-brow manner. He apparently had a penchant for swearing.
When Ms. Gergel asked him to repeat the content of the last history topic, the weird weirdo launched into a ten-minute lecture that contained a damn lot of technical terms, but also a whole parade of the worst swearwords.
Ms. Gergel was actually a calm woman, but as soon as Aligraleph had closed his mouth again, she had become completely hysterical. She had screamed at him for the remaining twenty minutes of the lesson.
Man, my eardrums almost burst even in the back row. Everyone was terribly intimidated, except for this Aligraleph. He had lounged in his chair with his legs apart, kept running his fingers through his short, black hair and yawning bored.
Nobody wanted to talk to Aligraleph, nobody wanted the guy anywhere near them, and pretty much everyone agreed that the weirdo should leave. Nobody knew where he came from or why he ended up with us “learning disabled” people. He wasn't stupid, in fact he was surprisingly quick and clever when speaking.
I don't think I would ever have exchanged a single word with this weird guy, never have gotten involved in this mindless hunt, if Aligraleph hadn't suddenly written me a message during art class.
He just wrote it on the blank paper we were supposed to draw an oriental city on. His letters were huge and somehow... squiggly.
I think my mother would kiss my feet and give me more pocket money if I could write as neatly as Aligraleph. Provided she would even notice that I was there, through the veil of her fortune telling.
Aligraleph's writing was actually kind of nice. Nice in the sense of legible and pretty, even though the words he wrote on the paper were kind of ugly and quite direct.
Your fly is open, man. Or why do you think that stupid cunt next to you is giggling all the time?
At first I didn't understand anything, then I looked at one of the Annas sitting next to me and realized that she was actually giggling. Slowly, really very slowly, I looked down and saw that the idiot was absolutely right.
My pants were open and since I had already gone to pee two hours ago, pretty much everyone must have seen it. Except me, of course. Damn, it's a classic.
I quickly zipped up my pants, but the milk had already boiled over. The blonde Anna next to me burst out laughing. No joke, but I just wanted to cry.
After school, I had grabbed my jacket as quickly as possible, pulled my cap down low over my forehead and set off. A few of the class called stupid things after me, the girls were still giggling and I actually cried as I pushed my bike past the large shopping center.
The sight of this huge building just broke me. Where the ugly and much too expensive thing now stood, there had been many small shops before. Really pretty shops, where I, as a small child, had always gotten something for free. Above all, I missed the small bookstore. The owner hadn't been that old, had red hair and looked like a goblin because she always wore green clothes.
In my mind, the demolition men had simply torn down the goblin woman along with her bookshop. Poof! Gone. No more children's books, but expensive shoe shops and pharmacies where you had to take a number before you were served.
I was sure that things had only got really bad when the small shops were demolished. Since the glass case was there, the apartment blocks were newly renovated and “more expensive,” as my mother always put it.
Besides, more and more people were moving to our trailer park on the outskirts of town. Silver cars were always parked nearby and men with shoes and trousers that were much too elegant stomped over the dirt paths, carrying measuring devices.
I cried really hard and it was kind of embarrassing, but I felt like my head would burst otherwise.
Suddenly, something behind me rang. It sounded like the bell of a bicycle and I instinctively moved to the side without turning around.
I pulled my cap down over my eyes, hoping that they wouldn't see my tear-stained eyes.
However, the bicycle didn't overtake, but rode alongside me for a while.
“There's no reason to be ashamed, man. I cry sometimes, too. And take off that stupid cap, you've got really beautiful hair, man. Seriously, those curls are awesome.”
I knew the voice, even though I'd rather not have known it. Of all people, it was Aligraleph von Mochenstein riding next to me on his brand-new mountain bike.
If you believed the rumors that were circulating in the schoolyard, Aligraleph even had four different bikes and two mopeds. Besides, one of the Tims also claimed that he had once seen Aligraleph being driven to school on a Monday morning by a really expensive car with tinted windows.
I sniffed loudly, quickened my pace and tried to wipe the traces of tears from my cheeks with the sleeve of my jacket, but the idiot stayed close beside me.
This stupid idiot rode his damn bike next to me like we were friends. He even rang some melodies in a completely exaggerated way.
“I can even ring a Jewish wedding song. My parents are Jewish, you know? Do you want to hear it? The song is really cool...”
I demonstratively covered my ears and hoped that Aligraleph would soon lose interest in this game and finally turn off.
He definitely didn't live near me. Guys like Aligraleph lived in big houses with a view of the big lake and the adjacent forest, which was really beautiful in the fall. Or in such noble apartments in the banking district of the city center, but certainly not near the outskirts.
Guys like me howled with embarrassment and lived in the trailer park on the outskirts.
Aligraleph rode next to me for a while, then finally got off, pushed the bike nonchalantly and whistled a completely stupid tune.
My bike looked like a damn freak next to his bike.
“You're crying like a total sissy,” he finally said, and I just ignored him. Two more blocks, then along the bumpy road towards the river and I'd be home. I would then take off my shoes, hide in my small room and hope that school would be canceled tomorrow because of the fire.
“Your name is Gyps, isn't it? Gyps Wroskall. Do you really live in a trailer? I once heard that ugly Tim call you a gypsy. What's the matter? Can't you talk or what's going on?”
I walked faster, Aligraleph just got back on his bike and rode next to me.
“Come on, man. Or can't you really talk?”
“Which Tim do you mean?“ I finally asked, pushing my cap out of my eyes.
“What?” Aligraleph got off his bike again.
“Which Tim do you mean?” I asked, still looking tear-stained. ”We have several Tims in class.”
Aligraleph seemed to be thinking hard, because he furrowed his brow and asked annoyed: “How many Tims do we have in this crappy class?”
“A hundred, or so…”
I had no idea why I had let that out of the bag, but it hit like a bomb.
Aligraleph grinned, showing perfect teeth, and I liked him even less. My teeth weren't perfect, they were even a little weird. I think they were even a little crooked.
“You even have a sense of humor, man!” Aligraleph was still grinning. It wasn't a friendly grin, more of a suit-and-tie grin.
Like those guys who always drove up in their silver cars, looked at our trailers, and then disappeared shortly thereafter, only to show up again a few days later with their measuring devices to mark nearby trees and attach sensors.
These guys knew they were making us nervous, but they didn't even say hello, they just ignored us. Only once had a measuring guy noticed me. He had looked at me briefly and then offered me a cigarette when I stood next to him and asked what he was doing here.
Measuring, kid. I'm surveying this place to make it more beautiful. Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Do you want a cigarette? What? Haha, you're only fifteen? I started smoking when I was nine, kid...
I stared at the ground, trying to ignore the annoyance of Aligraleph. I managed quite well until the idiot rode over my right foot with his damn bike.
I started crying a second time from shock, pain and frustration. For the second time, Aligraleph saw everything and instead of apologizing, he just got off his bike and laughed.
“You cry really gay, gypsy. Are you gay? I'm thinking about becoming gay. My mother is a whore, man. I'd rather fuck a guy than a woman again. Have you ever actually fucked?”
I walked faster, bit my lower lip hard and tried to finally stop crying. My foot hurt like hell and Aligraleph laughed again.
“Now you're limping funny. Just get on your bike, man.”
I narrowed my eyes briefly, took a deep breath and finally turned to Aligraleph. That idiot on his stupid bike. The guy who ran over my foot and laughed.
I spat right in his face, right between his blue eyes, which one of the Lisas from class found really beautiful. I didn't care. I didn't care about Aligraleph from Mochenstein at all.
He could tell everyone that he had caught me crying. Everyone in the remedial class could know that the quiet and unfocused gypsy had cried.
Curly-haired Gyps was a crybaby. He was the kind of guy that only talked to girls when they had no one else to chat with.
I was a nobody and that was a good thing. Nobodies were not allowed to cry. Nobodies were not unpopular, they were just a gray mass that neither itched nor bothered anyone.
The only thing that distinguished me were my poor grades in math and the fact that I had a “transposed digits”.
I just didn't understand why, for example, when you said the number 56, you said the 6 first, and only then the 5.
“Hey, your bike is kind of scrap metal, but it's pretty cool. Do you want to swap?” Aligraleph was standing right in front of me with his luxury bike and kept pushing it into my path so that I couldn't just walk past him.
But I didn't like the game and I just kicked him angrily in the front wheel.
“Listen, you damn asshole!” I shouted angrily and tearfully. ”My dad is a Swedish astronaut and he'll crush you if you don't get lost! He steers a satellite in space and even named it after me!”
I was lying. My father didn't even know I existed. He wasn't even Swedish, but a Greek man who spoke poor German, with whom my mother had worked for a short time in a traveling circus.
She only knew him for three shows, but let him screw her in her trailer and never saw him again after that. Three days after that, he left the circus and signed up somewhere else.
My mother didn't even know his real name. She only knew him as a hero. As the talented acrobat from whom I inherited these damn curls.
I wore my dark hair short, but it was still all sticking up and tangled. When I was twelve, I got so frustrated that I shaved my head with my mother's electric ladies' razor and was horrified to discover that I had an egghead. It was one big damn drama.
Aligraleph suddenly smiled that arrogant grin again and leaned casually against his bike.
“Your dad's an astronaut, man? Then why are you wearing old shoes and shirts that were out of style even in my grandmother's day? You should go to school naked, man. Seriously. Screw those ugly clothes. You'd better come naked, you're pretty enough for that.”
I couldn't think of any insult to throw at him. I found it strange that he spoke so strangely. And he spoke strangely. Definitely.
If only he had worn a suit and taken an interest in the place where we had been parking our caravans for years, then he would have been really as much of a bastard as those Benz guys who wanted to “beautify” the outskirts of the city with their stupid plans.
“You know what?” Aligraleph yawned demonstratively. ”I like you, man. You're a real cool guy.”
I covered my ears again, walked past him and ignored the pain in my foot.
“See you tomorrow, Gypsy!” Aligraleph laughed and it sounded almost like my mother's laugh. Not as bright, but just as hysterical.
I kept quiet, hummed some melodies and cursed him. I cursed everything and everyone.
Someone had brought cake and, judging by the hearts someone had formed with icing, it must have been a birthday cake from one of the Lisas.
All the Lisas in the class loved horses, hearts and Tim Number Six, whose mother was the riding instructor of most of the Lisas.
I squinted my eyes shut, rested my head on the table and only half-listened to Mr. Tolf as he read a passage from a book that some parents had deemed “too difficult” at the last meeting.
All the more reason for Mr. Tolf to push the book through. When someone said something was too difficult for us dummies, he beat it into our stupid heads all the more.
The book was about a boy who was super intelligent and couldn't handle it.
Somehow funny that you read something like that in a remedial class. The guy was really super intelligent and couldn't handle it, I was really stupid and couldn't handle it.
I'd be interested to know which of us two victims really had a problem here...
Mr. Tolf only read the beginning of a chapter, then one of the class had to read. Every time it was a gigantic stammering because we had some in the class who were terribly afraid of having to read something out loud.
At some point, Mr. Tolf chose Aligraleph because he had made paper airplanes out of old cigarette packs while he was supposed to be reading along.
I closed my eyes again, prepared for cursing, but was greatly surprised. Aligraleph was actually a really good reader.
He wasn't reading at a snail's pace, nor was he typing the text down as quickly and hissingly as Mr. Tolf. He sounded a bit like the guy from my children's cassettes that I had listened to over and over again years ago.
Aligraleph did it really well, and Herr Tolf looked like someone had told him a dirty joke. Herr Tolf hated dirty jokes, and he always made a face as if he wasn't sure whether to swear or throw up.
“That was good,” my German teacher finally managed to say. ”You're an incredibly good reader. Who can explain what Aligraleph read?”
No one could, because no one understood why the boy in the book was so pissed off about his intelligence.
So Mr. Tolf answered his question himself, and no one listened to him. Not even one of the Lauras, who all looked kind of the same anyway.
I dozed on until something hit me on the neck. It was small and made of paper. It was a stupid message, and I immediately recognized the neat, squiggly writing.
Even if I hadn't recognized the writing, the mean comic strip, drawn in a Star Wars style over Mr. Tolf, would have been a dead giveaway.
Aligraleph had captured our German teacher with his huge nose well. Even the goofy glasses fit the picture, only the laser sword was invented for it.
Mr. Tolf fought against the book we were studying and was blown up shortly thereafter by letters crawling out of the book.
It was somehow creepy how Aligraleph had painted the individual body parts in such detail, and they were scattered to the four winds.
I stared somewhat perplexed at the painting when a hand that definitely belonged to the real and living Mr. Tolf reached for the piece of paper.
“Gyps, are you back in the fjords of your fantasy world?” he asked grimly, and I thought I would throw up when he looked at the note.
His face turned pale, his nose seemed to get even bigger and his teeth pointed. He would eat me, right here and now.
“Outside,” he growled quietly and came very close to my face. ‘Do you hear me, Gyps? Outside now...”
“I...’ It wasn't me, your honor! But I couldn't get my mouth open because I was a coward. Because everyone in my family was a hysterical coward.
I was genetically a born failure. What else could you expect from me but special education? You couldn't expect a good harvest if you worked dry, barren soil with no nutrients.
It just wasn't possible...
“I...” I turned around slowly and saw Aligraleph, who had his arms casually crossed behind his head, looking at me with blue eyes and grinning with perfect teeth.
He was surely bleaching them at his parents' expense.
“It wasn't me...”
Mr. Tolf frowned. ”Then who? The invisible ghost or what?”
I shook my head and pointed at Aligraleph, who let his arms drop in feigned surprise.
“What?” he asked. ‘What was I supposed to be?”
Mr. Tolf took the note and carried it to Aligraleph, and the spoiled bastard laughed terribly hysterically.
“Oh my God! The nose is very well done, Mr. Tolf. The artist must be a real artist!”
“Get out!’ thundered Mr. Tolf. ”Do you hear me, Aligraleph? OUT!”
“Take it easy, Count Nose. I'm going already…” The laughter had stopped, Aligraleph stopped playing his role and grinned incredibly meanly as he slowly walked past my table.
“Gyps has to come with us. In for a penny, in for a pound. You know the saying, Mr. Tolf?”
Mr. Tolf exploded. He banished Aligraleph to the hallway for a whole hour, and when the time was up and Mr. Tolf wanted to bring him back into the classroom, he had disappeared.
All his things were still there: school bag, jackets and scarf. Only Aligraleph was gone.
He only reappeared during the last lesson, smelling of cigarette smoke and vodka. My mother was addicted to alcohol like others are to talk shows, and I recognized the smell of vodka like no one else.
Besides, he sat quite unsteadily on his chair, even started laughing during geography and fell asleep in art.
Since he was sitting next to me, I could smell his brandy even more and didn't know whether I should report him.
I doggedly continued painting my oriental city and just tried not to think about Aligraleph von Mochenstein.
He had a handsome face, honestly. Although one didn't say such a thing aloud as a boy, one was allowed to think it. And I thought about it the whole art lesson. His nose was straight, his mouth was narrow and seemed somehow dogged and stubborn. His eyebrows were dark, just like his short hair.
He wore a fine silver chain without a pendant and a shirt with a slightly protruding collar. I felt a bit like a peeping Tom as I kept sliding around in my chair until I could read the brand.
Great, he was actually one of those Gucci-guys, as they were always called in the boys' locker room when he wasn't there. And as I said, he hardly ever did sports.
That was damn unfair. Really unfair and mean...
“Stop staring...” Aligraleph's voice sounded hoarse, as if he had shouted terribly much in the hours he had missed at school. He slowly raised his head from the table and furrowed his eyebrows in annoyance. ”Honestly. Take it or leave it...”
I sat up straight again, felt my cheeks getting hot and scolded myself in my mind.
“Today is the deadline for the picture...” I hissed quietly, hoping to distract him from my staring.
Aligraleph yawned demonstratively. ”So what? I have a headache. Shut up.”
“I won't.”
“Oh? Then who was staring at my shirt?”
I ground my teeth violently and colored in the sky a little too energetically with blue watercolors. “I was just... reading the label.”
“The label?” Aligraleph laughed hoarsely, then pulled up his chair. “And? Are you satisfied now, you victim of the clothing drive? Can you now gossip about me with the other victims, yes? Wow, I'm proud of you, closet virgin...”
I just pretended not to hear and at the end of the lesson I drew a reasonably successful picture, while Aligraleph just made a run for it, got a bad grade and clearly didn't give a shit about it.
...
...
...
Mr. Tolf started the new school week with a poem by Goethe. Probably some Tim parents had decided again that poems were much too difficult for us special education students.
Somehow it was clear that Mr. Tolf immediately threw around poems. He even wanted each of us to choose one from his book and recite it by heart in front of the class at the end of the month.
Nobody liked it, but Mr. Tolf would certainly not have been transferred as a teacher if the opinion of other people had bothered him.
Allegedly, Mr. Tolf had taught at a university years ago. So he taught the really smart people, but never stuck to the curriculum.
He still doesn't. Every morning he looked at his education list, frowned, and said we should do something different in class. At the end of each school year, he sweated blood and remorse in front of the school board when his education report was incomplete.
I hadn't really woken up yet when the book of poetry landed on my desk. The Lauras had, of course, chosen the longest poems. Pretty stupid if you ask me. Just showing off, damn it.
For a while, I flipped through the book, trying to find a poem that wasn't too long and didn't contain a hint of kitsch. The spring poems were terrible.
“Mr. Tolf, Gypsy isn't passing the book!” One of the Toms held up his sausage fingers and snapped hysterically. ”He's cheating! That's mean!”
Mr. Tolf had his arms folded and was sitting on the teacher's desk, while I pretended not to have heard Tom's words.
“Gyps, can you please make up your mind?” Mr. Tolf smiled at me nicely, but that didn't make it any better. I hated being put under pressure.
Irritated, I flipped through the book again and just got stuck on a poem that wasn't too long and whose title I liked. Self-deception. Why not?
I wrote my name in pencil above the poem and passed the book on to whiner Tom. The stupid idiot snatched the book as if it were his property and not Mr. Tolf's.
Everyone chose a poem except Aligraleph. He was absent once again, and Mr. Tolf seemed to want to punish him by writing Aligraleph's name above the really long poem Erlkönig. Note to self: Never skip class again.
After the big break, Mr. Tolf handed out each student's poem printed on paper, and I was honestly relieved.
Self-deception
The curtain floats back and forth
At my neighbor's;
Surely she is eavesdropping across the way,
To see if I am at home,
And whether the jealous resentment,
Which I harbored during the day,
Stirs, as it now shall forever,
In the depths of my heart.
But unfortunately the beautiful child
Has not felt anything like that.
I see, it's the evening wind
Playing with the curtain.
It was doable, honestly. Even though I didn't quite understand the text and didn't understand some words, the length was bearable.
Mr. Tolf grinned at me when he handed me the poem.
“A penchant for tragedy, Gyps. Very nice, very nice! Personally, I also prefer this heaviness and bitterness to the highs of secondary Sturm und Drang literature...”
I had just nodded and pretended that I also liked Tower and Drink. Or Storm and Spring, or whatever other words he had let off the leash.
After class, I shuffled out of the school building almost in slow motion. It was funny. In the morning I never got out of bed, in the afternoon I barely got out of school. Something in me had a tendency to linger. Wanted to grow roots to the ground on the spot, or something.
I pretended to be a heavy human being made of lead, who couldn't lift his feet off the ground, and I loved the sound my sneakers made on the stone floor.
At some point I started walking and only stopped running like a madman when I was almost home.
The trailer park was quiet. It was only late afternoon, so there was hardly anything going on here. Most of the people were still lying on the sofa, watching movies or sleeping like my mother.
My mother never got up before six in the evening. Besides, she mainly worked at night.
Our caravan was full of curtains and the damn tarot cards lying on the table were one of the many reasons why I hardly had any friends. Since my mother had placed a newspaper ad as Fortuneteller Zara years ago, I was simply the gypsy boy at school.
My mother often received late-night visits from women who would sit nervously on our sofa, so tear-stained and desperate that they told my mother all kinds of things. My mother wasn't really a fortune teller, but more of a cheap therapist.
Women who confessed, crying, that they were afraid of their husbands were promised a free future as a divorced woman. She didn't even look at their life lines or anything. She didn't have a crystal ball either, as a couple of the Jans from my class always claimed.
She just sat there, listened to the strange women and gave them tips and advice. The women who sought out my mother often came several times a week. They always came at night and when they happened to meet my mother on the street, they didn't even say hello, but quickly crossed to the other side.
During the day, my mother was mocked and laughed at. The drinking gypsy. The crazy witch with her weird boy. At night, however, she became a gathering place for all kinds of despair and fear.
Even in the trailer park, people avoided my mother. To most, she was a whore. After all, she had simply gotten involved with a guy and now had a boy on her hands who was constantly whining.
Of course, there were also people who were okay. Jameiro, for example, who was always tanned and had a guitar. He lived with his dog Charli in the small caravan right next to us.
Or Tula, the somewhat stout woman who screamed at you even when she was just having a nice chat and was practically standing right next to you. She didn't mean any harm, she just had a loud voice.
There was a girl my age, but I wasn't allowed to do anything with her because her parents didn't like me. According to them, my mother was a prime example of why we were called a bunch of gypsies.
And my uncle, yes, that drunken good-for-nothing, was the only reason why the police showed up here every weekend.
We didn't actually do anything. We just lived in houses on wheels, but we were constantly getting into trouble. Whether at the doctor's, at school or just in everyday life, everyone wanted to know about a permanent place of residence.
Apparently, the only things that were permanent for most people were those made of stone, because our caravan had been standing here for over eight years, and yet I kept getting letters from school pressed into my hand, medical bills had to be paid on the spot, and according to my aunt, it was a disaster to borrow something from a library when your address was 'Caravan No. 6. At the Nölnfluss. Near the city limits'.
My uncle never complained, unlike my aunt. My Uncle Scruggs was actually my uncle, my mother's little brother, while my Aunt Emma was not related to me at all.
She lived in the trailer right next to Jameiro's and was with my uncle for two days, then not, then yes again. When they were together, they shouted at each other; when they were apart, they were both in a bad mood and shouted at other people.
I liked Emma. She had blue hair and an incredible number of piercings, but she was actually really nice. That is, when she wasn't threatening my uncle with one of her pointy high-heeled shoes.
It was raining lightly when I opened the door of our caravan, took off my shoes and put them in the shoe cabinet. In my small room with a sliding door, I quickly crawled under my duvet and pressed my face so hard into my pillow that I got a nosebleed.
Then I fell asleep without having done my homework first.