I´ve read only bits and pieces of Ralf Rothmar´s novel Milch und Kohle, Milk and Coal. It´s because my German hadn´t allowed me to read more, though perhaps now I can try again. I would like to, because just the small parts of it that I read took my breath away with its beauty, its power, its quality. It´s about a family in the Ruhrgebiet, a coal mining region in West Germany, and the boy who grows up in that family, under constant money pressure, his parents´ marriage pressure, and the physical danger that hung over the fathers in the mines below.
Another of his novels that I´d like to read is Feuer brennt nicht, Fire Doesn´t Burn. Because it´s by him, so I know it will be great, and because it is set on the Müggelsee, in the little Berlin town of Friedrichshagen, where the author once lived. I love going to Friedrichshagen, to lake Müggelsee. It has the nicest street, Bölschestraße, with the nicest bookstore, the nicest perfume shop, the nicest beer and wine emporium. I love to look in the windows, at the dresses that change from summer to fall, at the specialty oil and vinegar place, at the delicatessens German and Greek. It feels funny now, to write delicatessens, because the “-en” ending is already plural. The singular would be “Delikatesse” with an “-e” ending. So delicatessens is like writing delis-s. But I don´t mind. I like funny feelings. And I think when it comes to delis, the pluraler the better, so delicious are they.
So in Friedrichshagen, where I love to go, often I looked forward to getting a couple bottles of (what I could carry in my red backpack) non-alcoholic beer. Every grocery store carries non-alcoholic beer, but oh, this beer and wine emporium on Bölschestraße carried specialty ones, with malty tastes, and light hops, and non-alcoholic wines and spirits, so much choice an exploratorium of liver-light fast living!
I didn´t go to Friedrichshagen so often as I wished, and when I did, I sometimes didn´t get the beers, because they were a good deal more expensive than the grocery store brands, and because I was trying to not drink my carbohydrates. But I loved it, whenever I did go, and peruse the bottles, and choose something delicious less than 0.5% alcohol and feel giddy and light-headed despite it (I´m sorry for the breweries, but I seem able to get drunk with the percentages in alcohol-free beer).
And then, I noticed, there was an uncustomary special sale — a really good one — but I was already across the street, and, and… so I didn´t go. The next time, in Friedrichshagen, I noticed, the store was closed. It hadn´t been there long, and it was such a special place, and it was closed. And I was sad, and I thought about how many small businesses close, how many were opened with the hopes, the energies, the savings, the borrowings, the love and blood and the sweat and tears of its peoples, its families. And just how hard it was, to birth a son, to birth a store, to have an idea to rent a place to lay out the plans and to all the one-thousand-and-one strains and pains, troubles and bothers to open something from the very ground up, to raise a child, to see him grow, to be in the store every day trying your very best, and have it not work out.
When I saw that, I couldn´t get the non-alcholic beers from there, I just had to get it from elsewhere, somewhere, so I got it from the grocery store. And here´s a toast, to those who try to make something from nothing, who build with only their hands and the ether. Who open a shop, who start a store, who begin a song, who draft a picture, who conceive a life, who support one too, who — God-like — from the void and the darkness try to make something of their own. Prost! Bottoms up.
Genesis:
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.