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drops that fell like dew on my outstretched palms. Grandpa
would have continued as a postal worker in his one-man
branch and come home for lunch. He would have given me
a new stamp with a butterfly on it every day. In exchange,
I’d have run down to the kiosk with two coins to buy him a
cigar (plus one or two sticks of liquorice for me and some
herbal sweets for Grandma). I would have been no trouble,
occasioned no expense, and I would have added new
meaning to their lives, a new goal, which they, now in their
mid-forties, might well have needed. My father could have
finished his studies in Aachen and come to us at weekends
to help me practise cycling and walking on stilts every
Saturday afternoon. But Paul had made his decision and
only on my seventh birthday did I understand why. Until
then, I yearned for each visit to Mathildesberg, bursting
into tears at the farewells from Grandma and Grandpa who
spoiled me rotten, much more than Max and Irene and all
the others who came and went ever would have done.
Not that I was unhappy in the Munich flat, quite the
opposite. I was Luisa, Lulu, Lu, a silent, smiling baby, and
after long discussions with my grandparents and a quick
democratic vote by our flatmates I was brought home to
live with Paul, Max and Irene, two weeks after my birth, in
a bright red stroller chosen by Grandma and paid for by
Grandpa.
We lived in a spacious flat in the Nibelungenstrasse. The