In Strange Gardens and Other Stories by Stamm Peter

Author:Stamm, Peter [Stamm, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2010-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

THE WALL OF FIRE

There was only a hiss coming out of the television. Henry turned up the sound as far as it went, and stepped outside. It was still hot. He adjusted the satellite dish, which was mounted on an improvised wooden stand on the asphalt. He knew the rough position of the satellite, southeast. West was where the sun went down. Then the hiss was suddenly gone, and Henry could hear music and voices. He climbed up the metal steps. It was airless in his little cubbyhole behind the driver’s cab that he called home. Bed, chair, TV, fridge, everything a man needed. There was no window, but on the walls were a couple of American flags, a Marlboro poster, and a placard for some Erotica Fair that Henry had pulled off a wall somewhere. He turned off the TV, picked up his deckchair, and sat down in front of the truck in the evening sun. The piled up containers cast long shadows.

The caravans of the others were still in the next village, where they had performed yesterday. It had taken them the whole day to get the cars and all the rest of the stuff over here, and to put up the wooden grandstand. At noon it had rained, but Joe had been in a foul mood even before that. Joe was like that, up and down the whole time. And Charlie had been God knows where, and Oskar had been tooling around with his motorbikes. With the result that once again Henry had done all the work on his own. Henry the daredevil. Actually he was more like the nightwatchman, the maid of all work, the odd job man, the spare prick at the wedding. Only during the shows he was the fire devil, who lay on the roof of the car as Oskar drove through the wall of fire.

The others had nice trailers, Joe’s you could extend every which way, it was like a proper apartment with a lounge unit and a video and all the works. Henry wanted a trailer like that for himself. And he wanted a woman, too, and a kid. He wasn’t far short of forty now and the boss wouldn’t object, so long as it was the right girl. One like Oskar’s Jackie, or Charlie’s Verena, or Joe’s Petra, who cooked for Henry as well, and sometimes washed his clothes. The others had it all, and he had nothing. But then a woman set you back more than a new pair of pants.

Henry couldn’t complain. He had his peace and quiet, and he got to see places. In fact, he could hardly do much better for himself. What did he lack? He was doing fine, better than in the old GDR. Back then, he’d been a milkman. After the Wall came down, he was out of a job. He’d let them make a monkey of him. He had hung around on corners, got into scrapes, and went through his little bit of unemployment benefit in gambling saloons.

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