14
Until the Vietnamese came. She comes normally three times a week. She’s really old, somewhere around sixty, I would say, but when it comes to speaking, she definitely doesn’t match her age. She passed me without a word, went into the kitchen and came out again with a vacuum cleaner. I just looked at her for a while before telling her that she didn’t have to work for the next two weeks. I just wanted to be alone. I told her that my parents were out and it’s enough if she just came at the Tuesday fourteen days later to clean up the house. But it was terribly hard to let her accept it. I thought the vacuum would fall out of her hand immediately out of joy, but that wasn’t the case. She didn’t believe me at first. So I showed her around the house and what my dad bought me and the circled Wednesday on the calender, which was when he would come back, and because she still didn’t believe me, I even showed her the two hundred euros he left. And then it became clear to me why she wouldn’t let go of the vacuum cleaner. Because she thought she wouldn’t get paid anymore. Seriously weird. It wouldn’t make any difference with the money, I said. But she understood it with great difficulty, because she couldn’t speak German, and then she finally got it, when we pointed our fingers at the Tuesday on the calender and looked at each other in the eye and nodded together, and then that was it. I still don’t know how I’m supposed to communicate with these people. We also used to have an Indian for the garden, who’s now fired because of cost issues, but he was the exact same. Weird. I want to handle them like normal people, but they take themselves as workers who work their ass off for money, and they are exactly that, but I’m only fourteen. My parents don’t mind it. And when my parents are there, I don’t have any trouble with it too. But I felt like Hitler when I was alone with the Vietnamese in a room. I really wanted to take the vacuum from her and do the cleaning myself.
I accompanied her out, and I would like to give her something as a figt, but I didn’t know what, so I just winked at her like a total dumbass and was really happy when I was alone. I put the tools, which were still lying all over the place, away, and then I stood in the warm evening air and breathed in and out.
The Dyckerhoffs were grilling on the other side of the street. The oldest son winked at me with the grilling tongs in his hand, and because he is an asshole like all of our neighbours, I quickly looked to the other side, and there came a bike down the street. It was two different wheels and a rotten piece of leather on a frame for a women’s bicycle. There was a brake for an accessory, which was bent like an antenna. There was a small basket in the back and Tschichatschow was on it. That was the last person I wanted to see after my dad. Except for Tatjana, anyone was basically the last person I wanted to meet. But the look on the Mongolian face made it immediately clear that the feeling was not mutual. “Kawock!” said Tschick, beaming, and headed for the sidewalk next to us. “Do you think what happens: I drive over there - it goes kawock. Do you live here? Hey, is that repair kit? How cool is that, give it to me.” I didn’t feel like arguing. So I gave him all the tools and said he should just put them back there afterwards. I didn’t have time, I had to go. Then I went straight into the house and listened for a while through the closed door to see if anything was happening outside, if he was perhaps running off with the tools, and finally I lay down in my room again and tried to think about something else. But that wasn’t so easy. Downstairs, you could hear the clatter of tools the whole time, a lawn was being mowed, and someone was singing in Russian. Singing badly in Russian. And when it finally got quiet around the house, it worried me even more. I looked out the window and saw someone walking through our garden. Tschick walked all the way around the swimming pool, stopped at the aluminum ladder, shaking his head, and scratched his back with a wrench. I opened the window. “Great pool!” Tschick shouted, beaming up at me. “Yeah, great pool. Great jacket, great pool. And now?” He just stood there. So I went downstairs and we chatted a bit. Tschick was absolutely thrilled about the pool, he wanted to know how my father earned his money, and I explained it to him, and then I wanted to know how he pulled the plug on that Ford guy in three jumps, and he shrugged his shoulders. “Russian mafia.” He grinned, and at that point I knew that it had nothing to do with the mafia. But I couldn’t figure out what it had to do with either, although I kept trying for a while. We just talked and in the end it happened as it had to and we ended up in front of the PlayStation playing GTA. Tschick hadn’t heard of that yet and we weren’t very successful, but I thought: Still better than lying in the corner screaming. “And you really didn’t repeat a year?” he asked at some point. “I mean, have you looked in now? I don’t understand. You’re on vacation, man, you’re probably going on vacation, you can go to this party and you have a wonderful -“ “What party?” “Aren’t you going to Tatjana’s?” “No, I don’t feel like it.” “Seriously?” “I have other plans tomorrow,” I said, frantically pressing the triangle.
“Besides, I’m not invited.”
“You’re not invited? That’s crazy. I thought I was the only one.”
“It’s boring anyway,” I said, and drove over a few people with the tanker truck.
“Yes, for gays maybe. But for people like me who are still in their prime, this party is a must. Simla is here. And Natalie. And Laura and Corinna and Sarah. Not forgetting Tatjana. And
Mia. And Fadile and Cathy and Kimberley. And the super-sweet Jennifer. And the blonde from 8a.
And her sister. And Melanie.”
“Ah,” I said, looking dejectedly at the TV. Tschick also looked dejectedly at the TV.
“Let me have the helicopter,” he said, and I gave him the controller, and then we didn’t talk about it any more. When Tschick finally went home, it was almost midnight. I heard the bike squeaking away towards Weidengasse, and then I stood alone in front of our house in the night for a while, the stars above me. And that was the best thing about that day: that it was finally over.