The aunt [1]
Peter Bichsel [2]
It seemed to her already too much if she hit a key on the piano, a sound from the box answered.
Her mother however had been able to play. She had promised to teach her at that time. Then the first lesson had been postponed from the one day to the next, and she had more and more admired the black piano. The dust had reflected itself in its shine, a breath of air was enough to blow it away.
Now the piano seemed already sticky. Its shine went away with the mother, the dust had become malicious and you had to fight against it with cloths. You had to cover it with the white cloths or to dust it off with the yellow cloths. Its keys were yellow and its sounds were out of tune and were more beautiful.
It was now an old piano, which grew from day to day and did not want to find anywhere in the room any more. And it made its surrounding, tables, chairs and carpets ridiculous. Now finally it was mother’s piano, at that time she had not called it yet. She would not have given it away, she would not have sold it, she would not have let it be played.
When the notary had assigned her the piano, she was so good as being engaged. That had made many things easier for mother. She had not noticed, that the brother had not made any claim on the piano, even though he was married and had children.
She had now the piano and the memory of the piano. She wiped the dust off with cloths. Mainly she added lot of cleaning work to her apartment, to the shine of floors, to the stability of the furniture, to the position of carpet fringes.
Also soon she began to resemble her mother, became heavier and became sweet face, as they found in church benches, the face that her nephew soon hated.
The brother never visited her.
In January she received some thank-you letter from the nephew for Christmas gifts, “which we like”, written with reluctance. She had an aversion to men and she had admiration for her mother, who had had so much patience for the father. She complained to the neighbors about the noise of the children of the other neighbors. And she loved children.
Years ago she helped out in the day-nursery, but her nerves could not take it. In the mother club no one took offence at her being single. She looked forward to the mother club’s outing, to the car ride, to the sweets.
At the caretaker’s she often complained about the inadequate heating and when people talked about her, they said: “You should have known your mother.”
In her trash bin there were well-thumbed illustrated magazines. People knew her, that she went to bed early, that she got up early, that she paid her taxes on time.
She was not lonely, she filled her life with activities, magazines and gossip with punctuality and love, and she knitted caps and sweaters, which no one wanted to wear. She bought so many raffle tickets on the charity events of the mother club, that she was almost sure that she had already won the great doll with the real hair and the sleeping eyes and the name of Marilyn. Now Marilyn sat on the sofa and had also a loving face.
She entered the sweepstakes, bought a bar of so-and-so brand cooking fat, looked up for the name of the Greek goddess of peace, guessed the number of the possible participants and dreamed of the promised trip to Palma de Mallorca [3].
And she found the things nice, preferable and charming.
And her brother never visited her.
And her nephew wrote to her with reluctance, she more and more resembled her mother.
She was thinking of the cleanliness of her apartment. She was also 56 years old, she sat in her apartment and you never heard her, not walking around, not humming a tune, not drawing the curtains. If she wound have sung, you knew, she would have had a very high soprano voice, childlike and old at the same time.
She belonged to those people, whom one should make happy, especially in winter and especially in Advent [4] time; to the people, to whom you read stories, sing a song and give a candle, or to the people, for whom you split wood and beat the carpet.
And you never heard her humming a melody.
And when she stuck a tone on her mother’s piano, then it happened by chance, then it happened for example, when she wiped the keys with the yellow cloths.
[1]. p. 59. Die Tante. Eigentlich möchte Frau Blum den Milchmann kennenlernen. Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main, Walter-Verlag AG, Germany. 1996.
[2]. Peter Bichsel. 3/24/1935 - . Swiss writer and journalist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bichsel
[3]. Palma de Mallorca. A city in Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palma_de_Mallorca
[4]. Advent. The period including four Sundays immediately before Christmas.
