Life in Germany - Goutweed: Part II
The problem continued. Frau Schmidt picked up the telephone and dialed the Öglicus number. It rang and rang and rang, and the inordinate noise overhead also ceased, but no one answered. A few days later, Frau Schmidt met Frau Öglicu in the entrance walk to the house. Frau Schmidt commented that she had tried to call them to tell them to rein their child in but that no one had answered the phone. Frau Öglicu answered that Frau Schmidt should call her cell number, since, if she were asleep with her door closed, she would not have heard the telephone. Incongruously, Frau Öglicu also opined that Frau Schmidt went to bed too early and informed her that according to German tenants’ law, one could only expect peace and quiet beginning at 22 hours. Frau Schmidt countered that, tenants’ law here or there, the house belonged to her, and it was never acceptable to run or play soccer in the house. Furthermore, Frau Schmidt declared that she wanted peace and quiet by 21 hours, at the latest.
During the next disturbance, Frau Schmidt did call Frau Öglicu on her cell phone. From Frau Öglicus disoriented tone, Frau Schmidt presumed she had awakened her and most probably Herr Öglicu also. „Please get your stomping son under control“ Frau Schmidt said, and hung up. The next day Frau Öglicu explained that they allowed the son to play in the daughter’s room while they went to bed. Frau Schmidt did not reply either that, if anyone was to lose sleep because of their son it should be the Öglicus and not the Schmidts or that she found this a very unwise method of parenting but she did say that she would not hesitate to ring Frau Öglicu immediately and every time the son disturbed her sleep and her peace with his stomping, jumping and racing.
The morning after a further cell phone awakening, Frau Öglicu stopped while passing Frau Schmidt on the hallway stairs and said that her daughter had made the commotion the night before, not her son. Frau Schmidt looked at the 3-year old toddler standing quietly next to her mother and said that she did not believe it would be possible for the girl to make that much noise by just walking in her room. In fact, given her tiny size, the child must have jumped from a very high perch to have made such an extremely loud and heavy fall. Frau Schmidt inquired whether they were going to the doctor for her injuries? Frau Öglicu asked whether Frau Schmidt believed her? Frau Schmidt avoided telling her that she did not believe a word Frau Ölgicu was saying but found it amazing that Frau Öglicu would place the blame for her son’s quite simple misbehavior on the girl.
At some point Frau Öglicu’s father arrived from Ankara for an extended stay which appeared to have a positive effect on the son. On one day during this period, Frau Schmidt was cooking and baking for guests nearly the whole day. She heard the dribbling soccer ball repeatedly throughout the day accompanied by the familiar heavy-footed running throughout the house, even though it was a school day. When Frau Öglicu returned home late in the afternoon, Frau Schmidt intercepted her and asked her to take the soccer ball away from her son because he had been playing again in the flat. Frau Öglicu nodded briefly and disappeared upstairs only to return five minutes later and report that her son had not been playing soccer in the apartment because he is not allowed to do that. The noise Frau Schmidt had heard was the sound of her father stomping the meat flat for dinner. Anyway, her son was ill and had been in bed all day. Frau Schmidt replied that the dribbling soccer ball had been heard all day, beginning in the morning, not just in the past half hour, and that Herr Schmidt could also testify to hearing it as he was trying to have his mid-morning tea in the kitchen. Once again, Frau Öglicu was first at a loss for words and then returned with the question of whether Frau Schmidt believed her or not? Frau Schmidt ignored the question and closed her door.
Eventually, after further serious discussions between Herr Schmidt and Herr Öglicu on the subject, the Öglicus seemed to have gotten their son under control. Frau Schmidt had also discovered that she could communicate her dissatisfaction with the level of yelling, stomping and heavy-footed racing through the apartment by sitting down at her Bechstein baby grand, opening it up and playing either the opening piece of Mussorski’s Pictures at an Exhibition or the closing piece of Schumann’s Carnaval, Davidsbündler, which she preferred. Six lines of either of these pieces at fortissimo was usually enough to get them to freeze. After she employed this method at 10;30 pm one evening, the nighttime disturbances all but ceased.
Some of this was going through her head as Frau Schmidt was working under the lilacs, unable to avoid looking over at the blank space where the rhododendrons had been from time to time, when Frau Öglicu appeared with the two children in the tenants’ garden. The boy, of course, took up his soccer ball and began kicking it about, shouting mirthlessly each time he sent the ball off. Frau Schmidt greeted Frau Öglicu, who was standing on the other side of the lilacs, and asked her what had happened to the rhododendrons? Frau Öglicu looked perplexed. Frau Schmidt asked directly, whether her husband had sawed down the rhododendrons? Frau Öglicu continued looking perplexed. Frau Schmidt dropped her spade and stepped over the little barrier beneath the lilacs, meant to keep their small dog out of the tenants’ garden. She walked over to the remaining rhododendron bush, motioning to Frau Öglicu to follow her, and pointed to the two black stubs. „How did this happen?“ She asked. Frau Öglicu answered that that had been quite a while back. Frau Schmidt asked again, whether her husband had sawed them down? Frau Öglicu answered that her husband did not own a saw, which Frau Schmidt was happy to believe. Herr Öglicu had cut the rhododendrons down but that was some time ago. Frau Schmidt wanted to know why? Frau Öglicu said that the children had had ticks after being out of doors. Ticks are everywhere and not a reason to remove the rhododendrons Frau Schmidt countered and asked again, what the reason was for the removal? Frau Öglicu answered that her son had nearly injured himself on the branches while retrieving his soccer ball. Frau Schmidt only raised one eyebrow at this, remaining wholly unsympathetic, which impelled Frau Öglicu to continue that she saw nothing wrong with Herr Öglicu’s cutting down the rhododendrons. After all, the Schmidts cut down trees whenever they liked. This last explanation led to something like an explosion in Frau Schmidt, at the pitiful stupidity of Frau Öglicu’s argument and the unthinkable presumption of the Öglicus.
Frau Öglicu began talking more quickly now, about how they „loved nature“and had nothing against plants and how she took such good care of the flat, like it was her own. Frau Schmidt was completely out of reach for her, however. She noticed that the boy had approached them, and as Frau Öglicu was making her explanations, he was standing about three feet away from Frau Schmidt, to the side and just out of her direct line of vision. Suddenly, as his mother was squeaking about her love of nature, he kicked the soccer ball right over Frau Schmidt’s head, narrowly missing her skull. She felt her hair raise as the ball flew heavily above, like a bomb. If Frau Öglicu noticed this, she gave no sign of it and continued her banter. Frau Schmidt had, however, taken notice. As Frau Schmidt was answering Frau Öglicu that the Schmidts, as owners of the house, do not have to ask Frau Öglicu permission to remove trees on their own lot but Frau Öglicu is required to ask permission before removing valuable 40-year old shrubs, and that furthermore, it was clear that they had removed the rhododendrons while the Schmidts were in California the prior autumn, she had the boy in her side sights and saw him place the ball on the ground very near her, and step back to kick. The second ball exploded over her, this time from closer range and this time it almost grazed her cheek before vaulting steeply further. Immediately after the second the ball had passed her cheek, Frau Schmidt, sorry that she had not taken her hand spade with her, turned to face the boy as quickly and forcefully as he had fired the ball, yelling “halt” in a low voice and lifting her hand as if to grab him. He escaped easily and ran to the other side of the garden. At this movement of Frau Schmidt’s however, Frau Öglicu let out a high scream that Frau Schmidt must not lay a hand on her son! Frau Schmidt growled back that she would certainly lay a hand upon him before she allowed him to shoot a soccer ball into her head. Frau Öglicu screamed that only she was allowed to discipline her son and that she would not allow Frau Schmidt to do so. Frau Schmidt said that Frau Öglicu had also seen what her son was doing and had not disciplined him and that she would never hesitate to discipline him any time she cared to. Frau Öglicu squeaked that he had not done it on purpose, and that she would call the police. Frau Schmidt laughed back that she should call the police, and Frau Schmidt would report the theft of her rhododendrons. Frau Schmidt said that Frau Öglicu was blind to the reality of her son. Frau Öglicu answered that Frau Schmidt was a child-hater. The boy was now observing them from the far, far corner of the garden. The discussion was over. Frau Öglicu turned away and, walking back to the house, said something sharply to her son in Turkish and gave him a shove to move out of the garden and into the flat.
Frau Schmidt went back to her place under the lilacs. She began digging in the goutweed again, a particularly difficult variety. It spreads silken thread-like roots efficiently throughout, which quickly knot up large areas, tangling and hardening the soil so that it is almost impossible for anything else to grow in the area. Her phlox had been unable to spread or even stand its ground amidst the regular incarnations of goutweed. Gardeners say that goutweed only takes root in very fertile, rich soil. Small consolation.