The Thinker, 1986
Marching Orders
(German comedy)
When the knocks came and the lock started turning, then the buzzer, loud, sounded and shattered the day (with me, luckily, inside - I could’ve been locked out!)… I was thrown.
Outside, on the street in an hour.
I didn’t have time to fold my shirts! Unceremoniously rude awakened…
I realized, as they stormed the apartment, I’d be allowed to keep my shirts… but this would be the final straw. I’d lose for good now, my lovely, estranged long(ish)-suffering wife.
Had we still lived together, I’d still have Berilyn to have my back. They wouldn’t have stormed our apartment then, no! No, not on Berilyn’s wakeful watch!
But I only had shirts now, to love and protect me… a few sad notebooks with small ideas… a corn muffin and some General Tso’s chicken, and a dozen or so pair of pants in the closet.
I should’ve been on the street in less than an hour. But I “dilly dallied” as one of them put it… as I hunted my socks and soiled t-shirts, my unmatched shoes and a single glove… Took a shit and a shower, shaved. Watched some news… Had a quick bowl of cereal.
“Come on!” this guy yells. “You’re dilly dallying! Let’s get this wrapped up!
“Macht schnell,” he adds… to the surprise of us both. We start speaking about languages, and how his wife had gone to school in Deutschland, so he likes to think he knows a little!
We start a little vocabulary battle…
“Ja, ist gut!” he offers proudly.
“Nicht so gut,” say I, taking my pants down.
Wait. Taking my pants down off hangers, that is! “Wo ist meine Hose?” I bark rhetorically.
“Das ist ein… Klemmer!” he answers (I think).
Then I go, “Ich bin das Walross, stimmt?”
“Ja, ja, sicher. Ganau!” says he, and sips the cup of tea I‘d poured him.
… So I guess it was about an hour, by the time he got back to evicting me. We march out of the apartment, he demands the keys… and I realize my wife’s things are still inside.
“Scheiße!” we both swear, in unison.
He lets me inside and I finish my tea. Then I angrily rip Berilyn’s pants down (… off hangers) and shove them into a paper bag.
“Let’s go,” I say finally, resigned to the day… as they carry my boxes, bags, notebooks and shirts, and wife’s pants, to the elevator, down and out.
