a jeans under it

Written by Cathoel Jorss, published 12 years ago

An elderly couple pedalling uphill on a tandem bike: the Swiss are awesome! Casual bigotry in the marketplace: the Swiss are awful! These thoughts freewheeling through my head: generalizations are stupid! Yes: all of them.

Decades back I was here and asked somebody, a travelled, educated person, what was the population of Switzerland. His lip curled. “Four million. And *one million* foreigners!” He was speaking of Italians. Now you see black faces in the street which then was not the case.

Today I cycled to a nearby town in search of summer garments. Coming back to Berlin for winter I was only planning on three months, it was minus fifteen, I brought thick, fuzzy, woolly stuff and ugg boots. Now it is finally hot. The trees are blooming. In every shop I asked, Is there a second-hand shop in town somewhere? Maybe… the Red Cross? People not only looked blank, they sneered. I kept looking and finally on a back street found a merry collection of shoes, cheap suits, and household tat, with three African women presiding.

They invited me to try stuff on in the kitchen and over their cups of tea offered encouraging remarks: Nice colour that one! If you don’t have a jeans under it, this fits great! A white man in his seventies came in and the conversation instantly dampened. I went foraging among the racks and when I came back, he had sat himself next to the youngest, prettiest one and slung an arm casually round the back of her chair. She was just standing up as I came in. She went and stood in the far corner of the kitchen with her back to the inner door.

But you can’t keep a happy woman down and they kept talking around him, about a local woman who comes in causing trouble and pulling things off the shelves. “Police give me a card,” said the stout lady, reaching under the sink for her handbag to show it. I was pulling my sneakers back on, on the floor. The conversation between them was in a kind of pidgin, English and French with some German words, or is it a creole that people evolve when they are from different language groups and fetch up in the same place together? I think, creole. They were so kind and interesting and the atmosphere so pragmatic and humane, I too I would have liked to put my arms around them. I would have liked to stay on uninvited and bask in their presence all the afternoon long. I could understand his longing. His sleaziness, not so much.