Visitation

THE ILLEGITIMATE OWNER

CLAIM: SURRENDER AND CLEARANCE of the land and house in exchange for compensatory payment to be rendered. Counter-claim. Whether acquisition was in good faith and in rem right of use and enjoyment exists is not relevant to the matter under dispute. Civil code of the Federal Republic of Germany, paragraph 985, plaintiff ’s basis for claim. Undisputed. Actual possession. Actual possession means: Something is under a person’s control. Civil code, paragraph 17. As additionally the court may choose not to rule on whether you are entitled to payment as a result of third parties in full knowledge of the claim for restitution having undertaken utilizations of the property, and given the exclusion of a right of retention due to the nature of the creditor claim. Entitlement of counterclaimant on the basis of action under law of unjust enrichment may exist in the amount of the difference between the current market value of the real property and the value without the additional investments. The point of time at which these utilizations were undertaken. Conciliation proceedings. Reference to the registry of deeds will be required to determine with sufficient certainty. Registry of a first priority property lien. In the present settlement. Further: Upon fulfillment of the present settlement all claims with regard to the object of dispute are hereby. Further: All claims with regard to the object of dispute are hereby satisfied and further litigation is hereby. Is hereby excluded.

And now she wants to go into the house one more time. With the key still hanging on her keychain, the key with which all the doors in the house and also the woodshed can be opened and closed, this worn-out patent key, Zeiss Ikon brand, which she should have turned in officially two days ago now, with this key she wants to unlock, one last time, the door whose lock always sticks after the first half-turn of the key. The door’s glass panes make a faint clinking sound, brittle splinters of red and black paint fall to the ground from the iron tendrils protecting the glass. First she lifts the door a little the way she always does so that the key will continue to turn, then opens the door wide until it hits the wall of the house, pushes the stone in front of it that is still sitting there ready for use, and goes inside.

The painted door to the broom closet has been removed from its hinges, so the first thing she sees when she walks into the house is not, as before, the Garden of Eden in twelve square chapters but rather an old broom, a hand brush, a shovel and a few rags. The door to the living room is off its hinges as well, and so she doesn’t have to press down the brass handle to go in, and no metallic sigh is heard when she enters the room. Nine years before, everything made of wood on or adjacent to the two walls affected by dry rot had to be taken down or torn out, and so the long bench seat from along the wall is missing. Workers carried the matching table and the two doors out to the bathing house. The bathing house was too small for the table, so they set it on end, which is how it is still standing today, she glimpsed it through the crack in the shutters as she came in. The key to the bathing house is still hanging in its usual spot on the key board beside the key to the workshop, and the workshop key still has the golden spoon lure dangling from it as usual, and the key board is hanging, as usual, around the corner next to the heating stove, except that now the stove is gone, and the wall it stood against is rotting. The dry rot spread all the way upstairs while she was abroad for work, and her father spent an entire autumn, winter and spring negotiating with the gentleman whom he had offered the right to speculate on the house, which still officially belonged to them, in exchange for carrying out the urgently needed repairs. They weren’t allowed to sell it as long as the official decision regarding the restitution claim was still pending, but after all the East German bank accounts were cut in half, they no longer possessed the means to keep up the house themselves. Present exigency: The property that is the object of the proceedings. Pending determination of ownership. Registration number 654.

Her father had never much cared for nature, even in earlier years he’d only ever pronounced the word “nature” with a certain contempt, and he always said he hated mowing the lawn, was bored by flowers, and found swimming utterly uninteresting, only on rare occasions would he dive among the reeds to hunt pike with his harpoon. And so it hadn’t surprised her when, after the death of her father’s mother, he immediately added her as co-owner to the title of the house — deletions are marked by placing vertical lines above the first and beneath the last line to be deleted and connecting the two lines on the diagonal from upper left to lower right. It hadn’t even surprised her that he didn’t make even a single trip out to the property after the heirs to the wife of the architect, all of them living in the West, had filed to have the ownership of the land restored to them, nor did it surprise her that he didn’t participate in clearing out the house after he had finally reached an agreement with the speculator. Her childhood friend, who helped her clear it out, had been the one to notice the dry rot. One single time during all the many years when the house then stood empty, while she and her father were waiting for the official ruling, he said something to her that she had never before heard from him, namely that every time he found himself having to look at a landscape like this somewhere, a landscape full of hills and lakes, he felt much the same way he felt whenever he heard someone speaking Russian, the language of the country in which he was born. What exactly he meant by this was never explained. She knew only that by the time he got out of the children’s home his parents had sent him to because they believed in collective education, he was old enough to mow the lawn. Nature.

The drainage pipe is choked with roots. Six trees have to have their branches removed. The legal right of use has shared the fate of the contract of sale for the property: Neither has gone into effect. Conferred. Nullified. Defunct. The enforcement authority is unable to determine the appropriate settlement amount on the basis of approved methods of investigation. The amount along with the interest accruing during pendency of the proceedings. Effective both retroactively and in the future.

The speculator had gotten rid of the dry rot, installed a new roof, torn out the old bathrooms with the intention of renovating them from the ground up, walled off the gardener’s room that had become extremely damp, and broken through the wall to the garage to gain an additional room — but then, when his hopes of coming to an agreement with the heirs and therefore of being able to acquire the house proved illusory, he had the electrical cable severed and left the house as it was. It has been a long time since she last spoke with her father about the property. Leg. Sect. III, No. 1, encumbrance of the land, plot, parcel, property line. Property subject to dispute. Without possibility of appeal.

The stairs leading to the upper floor are covered with dust, bits of plaster from the vaulted ceiling have fallen on the steps and broken apart, and even upstairs the once gleaming cork floor is now covered with a uniform layer of dust. Existing structures in ramshackle condition, actionable. All that remains of the bathroom is the window with its brightly colored squares, the sink, shower, toilet and tiles are gone, now she can look right through the beams supporting the floor down into the hall at the approximate location where her grandmother used to sit on television evenings in the most comfortable of the garden chairs in consequence of her exalted personal status. In the Little Bird Room where she had slept during all the summer vacations of her childhood — petition after petition opposing clearance of the property under dispute — she now opens the heavy door of the hidden closet — unlawful trespass — the secret door of her childhood whose little wheels draw a semicircle in the dust, on the clothes rod are the bare hangers she herself left behind when she vacated the house. She can now walk through the interior of the large closet directly into the cupboard-lined room used by her grandparents, the wall that once separated these spaces now being absent — lacking the qualifications to acquire this permit, this ruling will remain in effect regardless of future changes in ownership, breach of jurisdiction. The closet through which she enters the cupboard room still smells, just like during her grandmother’s lifetime, of peppermint and camphor. In her grandmother’s study the ceiling has been eaten away by the feces and urine of the martens, on the desk lie reeds from the thatch roof, and through a hole in the ceiling you can look up into the darkness. The curtains in the windows are secured in their tracks only in a few last spots, the rest of the fabric hangs down askew, trailing loosely in the dust. The window frames are so warped they can no longer be opened. Existing permeabilities. Future permeabilities. Secondary motion is hereby rejected because it contains non-executable and therefore inadmissible provisions. Objection. As opposed to a bona fide. Provided the underlying assumptions have been dismissed. Burden of proof.

Without even having to stop and think, she begins to sweep the reeds from the desk, then goes downstairs again to fetch broom, dustpan, hand brush and rags. In her grandmother’s study, in the cupboard room, in the hallway and the Little Bird Room she first sweeps the spider webs from the corners and then from the windowpanes, then wipes the dust from the moldings of the wainscoting, then sweeps the floor, one room after the other, filling the old bucket she found in the kitchen with the dust, debris, reeds and marten feces scattered here and there. Still sweeping the stairs, she descends step by step and dumps out the contents of the overflowing bucket under the bushes. Then she walks, swinging the empty bucket in her hand, between the two meadows and past the big oak tree, taking the path down to the water. Half a year ago she’d had to give the subtenants notice after the bit of shoreline in question had been reassigned to the Jewish parcel to which apparently it once belonged. The dock, therefore, is still standing disassembled in the area before the workshop — but since the fence has not yet been rectified, she nonetheless goes to the old spot, where the path that used to lead to the dock now has only its torso remaining, and squats down there to scoop water from the lake. With one hand she steadies herself against the willow tree, with the other she drags the bucket over the bottom, then she returns to the house and begins to mop the floor upstairs. Five times she has to go down to the lake for fresh water before all the rooms are clean, and with a certain amount of effort she now succeeds in at least opening the balcony door in the Little Bird Room so that the floor will dry more quickly. Through the open window, warm summer air enters the house, and when she steps out onto the balcony, everything is just as she always knew it. Sunlight is falling on the pine tree closest to the house, announcing a beautiful day.

There’s more to be done downstairs, because here the stove was torn out, the wall to the garage was broken through to provide direct access, and the gardener’s room was walled off. For this reason, washing all the windows is more than she can manage today. In the evening she cranks down the black shutters on the ground floor using the mechanism concealed inside the wall, locks the door from the inside and lies down to sleep upstairs in the closet of the Little Bird Room. The next day she washes the windows, the day after that she carries the doors up from the bathing house and hangs them back on their hinges, she even drags the table, which is very heavy, across the meadow and terrace into the house and puts it back in the hall where it always used to stand. She finds the chairs with the carved initials in the garage, but the leather cushions that go with them are moldy. She starts making it a habit to park her car up at the edge of the main road, and from there she walks down the slope of the Schäferberg, winding her way between underbrush and raspberry bushes, and crosses the sandy road when no one is in sight. She never encounters any neighbors — either their houses have already been torn down or they are standing empty just like hers. Once, on a rainy day, she watches from the Little Bird Room as her childhood friend crosses the big meadow and goes down the hill, returning shortly afterward with the long ladder that still hangs on the back wall of the workshop and props it against the roof of the bathing house. He climbs the ladder, adjusts the tarpaulin that was stretched across the rotting thatch of the roof but has gotten tangled in the wind, and ties it fast at the corners.

On the morning when the real estate agent brings clients to the house for the first time, she has fortunately not gotten up yet and is still asleep in the closet, where she has also been storing her provisions and a few spare pieces of clothing to change into. She doesn’t wake up until the real estate agent reaches for the brass knob of the shallow outer door in which the mirror is set, opens the shallow door for her clients and says: And here is a mirror. She hears the clients running their hands over the bird’s eye maple veneer, saying: Too bad it’s gotten warped. You could have it repaired, the real estate agent says, and now, apparently with some effort, she tugs open the door to the balcony and says: And look what a view you have from here. The clients say: A bit overgrown. The real estate agent says: This here is definitely the better side of the lake — after all, sunsets are always in the West, she laughs, her clients don’t laugh, and besides, says the real estate agent, the properties on the other side are separated from the lake by the promenade. They don’t have direct access to the water? No, the real estate agent says, at least most of them don’t. She says: Just look at the bird here on the railing. Hm, the clients say. It’s a loving touch, the real estate agent says. The clients don’t respond. The architect, says the real estate agent, worked with Albert Speer on the Germania project. Really, the clients say, now that’s interesting.

Then the real estate agent and her clients walk across the hall to the cupboard room, and there too she can hear everything that is said, as there is only a thin door separating her from the people. The real estate agent says: They don’t make built-ins like this anymore. That’s true, the clients say, but something smells funny, it smells of cats or martens. I’ve never seen a marten in this house, the real estate agent says with a laugh and then walks on ahead into the study, the milk glass panes inset in the door make a faint clinking sound, and the clients apparently follow, since things now quiet down, some time later the little group returns, the real estate agent is still laughing or again laughing, is this house actually protected as a historic landmark? No, unfortunately not, says the real estate agent, the clients cough, then all of them go back downstairs, and only after absolute quiet has been restored does the former mistress of the house emerge from the closet and look out the window of the Little Bird Room to where the real estate agent and her clients are now walking through the garden, sometimes they stop short, pointing in one or the other direction, for example at the big oak tree that has recently lost one of its largest limbs, or at the roof of the bathing house, they walk slowly as they continue their conversation with a nod or shake of a head until they stop short again here or there to discuss something or other in greater detail.

Following this first visit by the real estate agent and her clients, a wrinkly waterproof cloth now flutters before the kitchen window, bearing the words: For Sale. Along with a telephone number, white against dark blue. Sometimes when it’s windy the cloth tugs at its ropes so forcefully you can hear it inside the house. Later one of the cords supporting the sign comes loose, and then the illegitimate owner sometimes sees the cloth being blown inside out as she is trudging down the slope of Shepherd’s Mountain, it slaps itself in its white-lettered face and then sinks back down again.

The house is now so empty that it wouldn’t weigh much if she were to order it to rise up in the air and float away. The light coming in through the colored windows would accompany the house on this journey, as would the gleam of the floor that has finally been waxed again and the creaking of the stairs at the second, fifteenth and second-to-last steps. Now she thinks of how her grandmother had the bathing house moved that time, she and her childhood friend had followed the workers all the way up the slope: Complete with its thatch roof, windows and shutters, with its awning and the two wooden columns, it had been pulled slowly uphill between the alders, oaks and pines, and when it then stood in its new location at the top of the hill, the view of the lake you now had from its covered entryway was almost more beautiful than before. But now she no longer knows what direction to float off in.

Many more times, as the summer gradually draws to a close, she stands in the Little Bird Room observing the real estate agent out in the garden with this or that client, one client knocks the toe of his shoe against one of the flagstone steps, to check whether the step is wobbly, another one has the real estate agent show him the cesspit, a third jiggles the fence to the next-door property whose posts have rotted, and keeps jiggling it until two of the posts, held together now only by the wire mesh, lean to one side. Since the house and the land are not cheap, she hears a great many more conversations, many more times the shallow closet door is opened, many times the better side of the lake is mentioned, along with Albert Speer, the cats and the martens. Laughter. Is the house protected as a historical landmark? It isn’t. Laughter and coughing. Since the real estate agent is not showing the house exclusively, and it might always happen that one or the other member of the group of heirs to the property might come to check that everything is in order, making the journey from Austria, Switzerland or the Western part of the Federal Republic, or since workers might be sent, or some acquaintance drop by to take a look at things, the real estate agent is not surprised when she doesn’t always find everything exactly as she left it the last time she showed the house.

What is it you want, her husband always said to her when she — now the illegitimate owner — spoke with him about the property: You had your time there. She had been unable to explain to her husband that from the moment it first became apparent that she would not grow old in this house, her past had begun to send out its tendrils everywhere behind her, and that although she had long since become an adult, her beautiful childhood had begun, all these many years later, to outstrip her, growing far taller than she was — it was turning into a beautiful prison that might lock her away forever. As if with ropes, time was tying this place down right where it was, tying the earth down tightly to itself and tying her to this earth, and as for her childhood friend — whom she hadn’t seen in over nine years now and would probably never see again — it was tying the two of them together forever.

She hears the car doors of the new owners slam shut outside on the sandy road, then the car door of the real estate agent, and finally the car door of the architect. The real estate agent has only come along with them in order to take down the waterproof banner she had mounted outside the kitchen window. This time the real estate agent no longer has to walk through the house with her clients, who are now called the new owners, and she no longer has to utter her sentences, for which she, after having had to say them so many times, will now finally receive within the next ten days her commission in the amount of 6 % of the purchase price plus VAT. The new owners and their architect do not enter the house either, instead they walk across the big meadow and from there point first at the lake and then at the bathing house and finally at the place where the house is standing.

Never has the sense of peace inside the house been greater than on the day when, for the last time, she dusts, sweeps, mops and waxes the floors, the day when she opens, one last time, all the windows that can open so as to let fresh air into the house, and then closes the windows one last time, transforming the daylight one last time into light that is green and in parts also dark blue, red and orange, this day on which she draws shut the curtains she has washed in lake water and then hung back up again, closes the door with the milk-colored panes that leads to the study, just as her grandmother had always done when she was writing, and then, withdrawing even further, she also closes the door that leads to the cupboard room. While her grandmother was still on her deathbed and not yet dead, she had picked out her prettiest nightdress, washed it and ironed it so that when the time came she would be ready to give it to her dead grandmother to take with her on her journey. The gentleman from the funeral home had promised to put it on her and to take a photo of her grandmother’s corpse in her pretty nightdress during her laying-out. Surely, then, the funeral director had dressed the deceased in her lacy nightdress before cremating the body, surely he had taken the photo and surely put it for safekeeping in some drawer in his office. In her dreams recently she has often seen her grandmother lying in state before her — strangely with an Indian face. That probably had something to do with the fact that in one of the newspapers she’d used to polish the windows she’d read that among the Aztecs sweeping was considered a sacred act.

Now she closes the door to the Little Bird Room, then closes the door to the bathroom that no longer has a floor, and now she goes down the stairs that creak at the second, the fifteenth and the second-to-last step, closes the black shutters with the crank concealed inside the wall, then closes behind her — still withdrawing — the living room door whose handle gives off a metallic sigh, closes the door to the kitchen, returns bucket, broom, cloth, hand brush, dustpan and scrub-brush to their places and closes the closet door which, she’d always believed as a child, really led to the Garden of Eden, then she steps outside and finally locks the front door of the house, although she doesn’t understand how this can be possible since everything she is now locking away lies so deep within the interior, while the part of the world into which she is withdrawing is so far outside. She locks the door and then walks past the giant rhododendrons to the left of the house, “Mannesmann Air Raid Defense” is written on the bars that cover the cellar windows, she unlocks the gate, locks it again behind her, exits the front garden through the little gate in the fence and puts the worn-out key in her pocket, even though soon the only thing it will be good for is to unlock air. The balance to be paid out to me. Beyond the reach of law. Document bundle B 3. We request acknowledgment.