Leaves
in Clay

n the summer of 2021, I set foot on the foundation of my childhood for the first time since my grandmother's death. The red bricks looked warm in the sun, covering the driveway in slightly staggered rows all the way to the spacious garden. To the left of the main entrance, daily newspapers spilled out of the letterbox. The house was located at the end of a street that had become quite lifeless. Most of the original residents were probably now in nursing homes or had also passed away. On my way here through the town centre, I had seen a house for sale across the street in the window of the local bank. Even as a teenager, I had hardly ever seen the old lady who had lived there outside, although she had continued to sweep the street in front of her driveway for a long time, stooped and with a concentrated gaze. Sometimes I had seen her at the window, staring at my grandmother's well-tended front garden with a searching, slightly bewildered look that I later recognised in my grandmother's eyes.  

The stones at the back of the house were darker. Moss grew in the joints, and I remembered the feeling of scraping the moss away with my fingers. Like scabs from a wound that crumble away to reveal young, rosy skin.  

The grass was tall in the garden. On one side, thuja trees had grown thickly over the years, forming an impenetrable wall. On the other side was a field that would also be built on in the coming years, pushing the boundaries of the village further out. Further back in the garden were some fruit trees. Their branches – especially the lowest ones – suddenly seemed inviting to me, even though they would no longer be able to support my weight. Their gnarled bark was covered with white lichen, dry and crumbly and rough. The trunk of a cherry tree disappeared under climbing ivy. Next to it, a cornelian cherry bush grew rampant, almost completely covering the bench on which I now saw my grandfather lying again. Asleep, his face completely calm, his hands folded under his head, his massive body resting as if it had grown together with the bench. It was rotten, eaten away by fungi, dead wood, half decayed, becoming more and more one with the garden. I heard his soft voice, quiet and hoarse, saying my name. I saw him looking at me with moist, alert eyes. He could only speak with difficulty, but he could see me. His hand was warm and squeezed mine tightly. 

He had never spoken much, but with his gaze he seemed to answer the questions he had always remained silent about. Then his eyes fell silent too, and the pressure of his hand weakened.  

Everything lay motionless. I had gone into the house and was standing in the living room. The floor was covered with carpets, not a single piece of floorboard peeking out. It was a pleasant feeling to walk across the layers of carpets, the steps were quiet and soft, it felt like being in a cosy, warm nest. I stood there, soft and still, staring and looking at the photo I was staring at; strong, saturated colours, slightly blurred. It hung on the brightly wallpapered wall along with other pictures of the garden, the house and my grandparents. Untouched, unmoved, for as long as I could remember. Next to a white façade overgrown with greenery, smiling faces, children in trees laden with fruit, digging in the garden, looking for eggs, painting, sleeping in the cosy corner bench behind the kitchen table.  

The bedroom was bathed in white. White walls, white curtains through which the light shimmered onto the light-coloured carpet and the snow-white sheets. Through the window, you could see the front garden. A milky veil lay over the greenery, keeping out prying eyes and shielding the outside world. Encapsulated, frozen.  

All I could hear was her breathing. She drew in air laboriously, each breath a feat of strength. Her eyes had been closed for weeks. Sometimes she spoke, breaking the silence of the room, but never to me. Her mouth was open. Her eyelids were tightly closed, locked shut, and even when gently lifted, her gaze remained dull. I couldn't remember exactly when she had last been awake, when she had last looked at me. When her eyes had last warmed at the sight of me, not driven by a futile search to recognise something in me. In the end, they were just searching; for familiar features, familiar voices, a warm handshake.  

Almost exactly a year before she died, she called me Rosa. I'm not sure who Rosa was, I think she was an aunt, but the name was mentioned too rarely for that, and she hardly ever called me by my name anymore. I was Rosa, or a sister, or a stranger. When she didn't recognise me, she became loud. Her face took on this wild, furrowed expression, angry and fearful. Then I tried to calm her down, to take her hand, to whisper who I was. At some point, I just whispered, ‘It's me, Rosa, everything's fine.’ But she was a stranger to me too, as if I had gone home to the wrong person, as if I was the one who had remembered wrong. For a long time, I couldn't understand how that was possible, how she didn't recognise me playing in the garden, painting and doing crafts in the house, sleeping on the corner sofa. But for her, at some point I was just a stranger who had spoken to her and touched her while she herself was sitting in a wheelchair with a belt, from which she could not get up or escape. Her memories mixed, overlapped and covered each other until everything was eventually overgrown by white nothingness. 

The house was an archive. It was the memory she had lost. I recognised her in it and felt recognised myself. Time stood still here, had stopped before she began to forget. On the walls, we seemed to be laughing forever, lying peacefully on the bench and sleeping forever. But the silence betrayed us, the pickled cucumbers that had already turned white and stood in the kitchen, the open, empty refrigerator, the dark deposits in the toilet. The silence that still gave me the impression that it was always about to be broken by creaking floorboards and clattering dishes.  

Clay discs with leaf imprints hung on the wall. My grandmother had made countless of them, immortalising flowers, shrubs and tree leaves in clay and hanging them in almost every room. As a child, I used to run my fingers over them, believing that the leaves were really enclosed in the clay. But it was only an imprint. 

The bells rang. From outside, the full sounds announced the time, but the chimes formed a melody in my head, lulling me, digging deeper and deeper into my body with each stroke. It could have been the third or thirteenth stroke, but inside me they sprouted and proliferated, having found fertile ground. Images emerged, grew inside me, individual scenes and still images, a mixture of perspectives – my eyes, photos, stories, films playing out in front of me and inside me, confirmed and marked by the timeless state of these rooms. Once she said, ‘I run around the world all day, even though I don't want to. Just because I'm looking for you.’ And she looked past me again. I was no longer there for her, I was no longer even Rosa.  

My teeth clenched as I stepped out the front door. I stood in the courtyard and stood still. Thick, firm roots grew in my jaw, spreading throughout my entire body. Beneath my flesh lay the strands, close together, pressing everything inside me together, keeping my mouth rigid and my body upright. The earth did not loosen. I wondered when they would die, let go. Perhaps I was secretly waiting for that, so I would no longer feel their grip.  

We sold the house in the spring of 2024.