Short Stories in German by Ernst Zillekens

Author:Ernst Zillekens
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141966533
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chicago/Shanty Town

It was my wife’s art that brought me to Chicago and it was her daring that led me to these black-beamed slums. If you ever find yourself, whether on holiday or due to the vagaries of your business, in the American Great Lakes it’s up to you whether you poke your precious head into the dark behind this particular door. I am not suggesting that you should. All I am saying is that the Sears tower, one of the highest buildings in the world, has a viewing platform. The twenty dollars which you pay to go up there is a fair price.

And if at the top you have failed to discern a definite horizon on the lakeside and if the glistening water and the sky above the invisible Canadian shoreline are beginning to merge into a bluey grey in your fixed gaze, then it is time to follow the stream of circulating tourists to the side of the viewing platform which faces inland. There, with your forehead pressed against the glass, let your gaze drop down to the loop, the centre of Chicago, which is clearly encircled by an elevated railway. The slums I am referring to are a small but nevertheless clearly discernible black dot behind the railway lines.

Travelling through the States merely as the husband of a famous musician has its own attraction, its own exquisite embarrassment. The culture fund of the Deutsche Bank, which organized my wife’s concerts, had given her a tour manager. From early in the morning until late at night the young man, who was born in Nuremberg and had a doctorate in American Studies, was on hand to offer sightseeing tours or security advice. But from day one my wife torpedoed his suggestions and objections with two crisp sentences, saying either ‘My husband has already thought of something different,’ or ‘My dear husband will look after me.’ That both statements were lies was something the Franconian in exile could not know. And when on our second day in Chicago my wife told him over coffee and cream cakes where we had been and what had happened to us, his mouth hung open in amazement for so long that we feared his palate might dry out.

My wife is a drummer or, to use the accurate term, a solo percussionist. The piece which she was performing in the United States had almost literally been custom-made for her by a well-known contemporary female composer from Leipzig. Should you wander into a performance and, like me, find modern music fairly inaccessible, the two-hour suite will strike you as little more than some infernal row punctuated only by brief respites. But by just watching her play you would understand what physical stamina such solo pieces require. Then it would be obvious to you why the idea of dragging her husband on excessively long hikes all over the cities of the Old and the New World should suggest itself to such a fit performer.

In Chicago the Deutsche Bank had put us up in an apartment in the Sheffield Historical District.

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