How We Suffered, How We Loved

When we still sent each other letters, in German "you" was capitalized and "I" was lowercase. Now the bulging drawer is being tidied up.

There's this drawer that's been threatening to burst for a long time. Today it was due: sort out, throw away the letters and cards from at least four decades. Keep the best and screw the ... no, it doesn't work that way. Even the bad ones tell me something about my life, even they might make sense for the first time one day when I read them again. So how to sort them? Into the bin the routines: Xmas, birthdays, vacation greetings. The names I've forgotten: Who was Markus? Who was Ines? And why did we write long letters to each other? The invitations, the directions: only one direction now, away. Likewise the births, the marriages - but not the deaths. Those who passed away, those we lost, shall remain. How we suffered, how we loved, all that shall remain.

We didn't know then how vast our world of words was, how witty we were. We boarded the mail train with an imaginary travel card and rode away, the wind from the open compartment window in our hair. Booked a thought flight, arrived, took the rickety cab or the bus without windshield all the way to the backpacker hostel. Sent letters to general delivery, poste restante. Received telegrams in case of emergency, each word charged individually. Sat at home waiting for mail, that is, for the sound of a postman rattling the mailboxes. Also there are airmail letters in the drawer, par avion, on gossamer paper so that mechanical typewriters or ballpoint pen strokes punched and shredded holes in the vowels.

"Heidelberg, 4.4.88"

"Bad Hersfeld, 7/19/97"

"Somewhere in the Atacama Desert, December 12, 1998"

Tiny handwriting, narrow lines almost without spacing; then, arriving at the end of the allotted space on the paper, one more line defiantly and breathlessly wrapped around the whole, but still only half-completed, text; finally, at the dead end with no way out, only an initial instead of a name after the regards. Maximum exploitation of the freedom to address a message to a person. As if we had guessed that the coming times of multimedia omnipresence would leave us not limitless, but speechless. The voices before the silencing, the stream of speech before the petering out, the lake of words before the drying up.

What drove us apart? The slow plate tectonics of time, punctuated by individual quakes. And only at the end of the timeline, within the last centimeters before today, the always-on vibrating sifter which crosses out every expression, counteracts all clarity, no longer gives us a rest. It's like writing on parchment aboard a moving train as it screeches and stomps its way over switches and through curves. The tip of the felt-tip pen strikes out like a seismograph registering the coming end of the world. Frustrated, I put the cap on the pen, unable to write even one more line in heart-ink. After all these decades, my fingers have forgotten what elementary school taught me. The handwriting now that of a child again, long before the trembling of senility sets in.

But back then we could write. Of the thousand pains of love and the one of not loving. Of closeness, of distance, and the back and forth through the night. Of being together, of being apart. Of the world that lay so open, as if that were normal. Of setting off without luggage, of being there without money, of returning without a heart. In German „you“ was capitalized, „I“ was lowercase. And how many Yous I knew! How easy it was for me, even for me, to connect. And how often I read what a good listener I was. While I wanted to read many things about me, just not that very phrase. Nevertheless, I was exactly that. And so they told me stories.

"No sooner does one arrive than one has to move on again."

"Oh dear, I wanted to write you a card long ago."

"It's going to be an exciting few weeks for you."

"How are your Bombay stories going?"

"On July 16, we get the keys to our new house."

„Wenn Du diese Karte erhältst, müsste Dein Geburtstag schon vergangen sein.“

"I was very disturbed by your letter, to be honest."

"I met Simone and Theo and Sydney is one of the most beautiful cities I have seen."

"For three days and nights I was in the intensive care unit."

"After the many bad things that have happened to me and that I have already told you about ..."

"Your pretty card was sitting on my desk for quite some time."

"She told me to tell you she misses you very much."

Each character was uniquely placed, no word was ever used twice in the exact same way. One of a kind, each and every letter. I learned to decipher the multitude of handwriting styles. In my mind I made the inconsistencies consistent. Filled gaps in my head where letters blurred and flowed into each other. We were faster at writing than at thinking, so what could one expect? Each scribble a message, no, a dozen. All that meaning between the lines. What didn't need to be said. What would better have never been said. Each letter a bomb.

Where are you now, the lot of you? You letter-ghosts of my life. You swarm of satellites that moved with me through the vacuum, on different orbits, but still visible, beacons flashing. Now there is radio silence. One signal after the other dropped out, some of them flamed up again briefly, then disappeared for good. Yet the writing didn’t decrease: it’s an incessant clickclick now of plastic computer keys, a soft tapping of fingertips on backlit glass, emojis where emotions used to be. The last letters: all bills.

And aren't we secretly relieved about that? What, after all, would remain for us to answer now, by return mail.

"I hug you and kiss you!"

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This text was originally published (in German) in TWASBO Magazine, December 2021.