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Gesindl!
Martini a year ago now,
The saints day,
Martinsmass,
Not the drink.
The children,
Happy playing with brightly coloured lanterns.
Eat milk bread shaped like a man.
After the long procession through the town.
We take shelter, briefly, from the intense cold.
The old half-timbered pub next to the church.
The land-lord and his wife, old friends, join us at the table.
Another old friend and colleague, a Scotsman, joins us.
My neighbour comes in with his daughter.
Uncomfortable in a public house, he is a Russian German.
Raised in Khasakhstan,
After Stalin deported Russia’s Germans speaking minorities from the Volga.
A strict Baptist, out of his territory, he is pleased to see a face he knows.
His daughter needs to use the toilet.
I beckon him to the table and introduce him to the others.
Two elderly fur clad German ladies occupy the table next to us.
They order coffee.
The Land-lady wipes their table down.
I know one of the ladies.
A regular church goer.
She owns a good deal of property in the town.
Left to her by her lawyer husband of one year.
He took poison in 1968.
We once rented a flat from her, for two years.
Before we were married.
It ended in accrimony and a court case which she brought,
And lost.
She recognises me and takes in the rest with a disparaging look.
And with a sweeping gesture of the hand.
Asks the land lady.
"Was ist das für ein Gesindl?"
Gesindl – Rabble, - Riff Raff, the class which serves.
Un word, missing from modern dictionaries.
It was used too much by a previous generation.
To mean.
Underclass,
Un-people,
Inferior breeds,
Non humans.
I detest this woman.
And now my blood boils.
Not so fast however as that of the land lady.
In meinem Kneipe kennen wir kein Gesindl!
Und NAZIs wollen wir nicht kennen!
Sie haben hier Hausverbot!
“In my pub we know of no Gesindl
And we don’t want to know any Nazis!
Your are banned from this pub!”
They leave in a huff,
Without coffee,
While we laugh!
But the laughter is hollow.
Seventy meters away stands a monument.
On the site of the old Synagogue.
The congregation there once laughed,
At the ridiculous posturing and the uniforms,
Of a new party.
I did not think I would care for this poem; imagine my surprise that I do really like it. I am floored by my surprise at this.
Starward becoming J-Called