TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Kathrin Schmidt

himself to go to the toilet. The previous fifteen years of recession were forgotten. Instead the women were reliving the forty years before that, competing with each other to launch off on a tale, cackling with laughter about the days when Berit was eternally embarrassed about her fat thighs; going to the picture-house in themarket square; themassive numbers of grilled sausages they’d get through at the carnival in the city hall. Those long, skinny Turkey bratwursts with that good mustard from Born & Co in Erfurt. Till Berit suddenly said, We didn’t suffer back then, did we. Not really. And in that instant, an awkwardness descended like a shroud, chasing the smiles from their lips, making them concentrate on their ice-cream tubs. And it was not to be shifted. The awkwardness continued when they got back into the car and drove the last fifty kilometres to Johanngeorgenstadt. The stubborn silence now gripping them had seen off their former high spirits as swiftly as they’d seen off those turkey bratwursts. Pia Geissler was giving the contents of her handbag a thorough sort-out as if no-one else were there. Berit fiddled obsessively with one of the strings of her hooded anorak, winding it round her finger, unwinding, winding it round again, while staring hard out of the carwindow. For Silvia this sudden uneasiness reminded her of her mother’s customary outspokenness. Her mother had thought it entirely necessary to have a State Security Service of some sort to keep an eye on anti-social weirdos. And nowadays she went round saying she’d been able to go on better holidays under the former regime than she could now - so what, if it had only been in the east? At least she’d been able to afford it, whereas today ordinary working folk such as herself had to scrimpand save and watch every penny, and even then would be left wondering where it had all gone… The three women were sighing again, but this time it was not over Tadeusz, who had noticed from his place 168