parents insisted on taking this route when we went into town, past that monstrous edifice, somewhere between giant prison and baronial keep. Over that short stretch of road I became completely silent and kept my head down, the distance across the square with its pond and Bismarck statue seemed to me endless, and when we went that way I fixed my eyes on the projecting, square castle tower at the end, a stone box that was always surrounded by scaffolding, just as the castle always seemed to be undergoing building work and renovation and modification, as though it were a medieval structure that had gradually fallen into disrepair through time and war and weather, perhaps in danger of collapse, certainly always under threat, while it in turn seemed to be threatening me: the walls might not be about to fall down, but two sinister bailiffs were going to leap out from the gateway, seize the nearest passerby, and drag him off to their dungeon. A dark, prehistoric fortress, and yet the castle was hardly more than thirty years old.
Everybody knew this was where the local Gauleiter was settling in, for my parents that would have been a reason to avoid this route, I donât know whether it was defiance or some compulsion that made them take me past the castle every time, grim, withdrawn, it had to be done. You didnât have to be a child to be mystified by the immense deliveries of sandstone, marble, and granite to the site. Once, I remember, we were stopped, a workman was blocking the footpath, but my father wouldnât give in, no one was going to prevent him from picking his way, hand in hand with his son, between the massive building blocks. There was almost a row, I think, we stopped, or maybe my father couldnât find a way through the stone blocks: that was when I discovered, in a polished slab of marble, my first embedded sea snail.
What a contrast to the world of the shopping arcades, how differently they greeted me, with their comfortable temperature in summer or winter, the light, the voices, where I couldnât get lost. The space was covered by a glass roof, and pigeons sat up there on the girders. I was in town with my mother, and while she was flitting between shops, soon going back to the first place she had tried, unable to decide in her search for a winter hat between rabbit, otter, and fox, I was allowed to play in the arcade: half in the open, half indoors, the daylight made the pigeonsâ necks shimmer as the birds swooped down from above, just over the heads of the grownups, and then flew noisily with their rather clumsy-looking flight action out onto the street.
I had time to look at everything. For a long time I crouched in front of a young beagle waiting for its mistress to return, after I had established from a safe distance that its lead was firmly tied to the ring and there wasnât too much slack in it. I knew my motherâs shopping wasnât going to be a quick business, she had been at the furrierâs, and now she had disappeared into the haberdasherâs. I wished I could defer for as long as possible the moment when I heard my name being called, right through the arcade, people turning around to look at me, salesladies coming to their doorways to see who was missing, I would thread my way through to the familiar voice, and then as usual we would finally go over to the department store, which supplied the things we really needed.
She had chosen the otter skin. At long last my mother had also found herself a new pair of suede gloves. The climax of the department store afternoon was when we took the escalator up to the fourth floor, from one department to another, every time I looked down I felt butterflies in my stomach. Finally we had selected my warm winter underwear, they were predicting a hard winter. I wanted to go home, at last we were walking down the stairs, the last stretch, the way out, now nothing could pull us back into the showrooms that you could only see as
Everybody knew this was where the local Gauleiter was settling in, for my parents that would have been a reason to avoid this route, I donât know whether it was defiance or some compulsion that made them take me past the castle every time, grim, withdrawn, it had to be done. You didnât have to be a child to be mystified by the immense deliveries of sandstone, marble, and granite to the site. Once, I remember, we were stopped, a workman was blocking the footpath, but my father wouldnât give in, no one was going to prevent him from picking his way, hand in hand with his son, between the massive building blocks. There was almost a row, I think, we stopped, or maybe my father couldnât find a way through the stone blocks: that was when I discovered, in a polished slab of marble, my first embedded sea snail.
What a contrast to the world of the shopping arcades, how differently they greeted me, with their comfortable temperature in summer or winter, the light, the voices, where I couldnât get lost. The space was covered by a glass roof, and pigeons sat up there on the girders. I was in town with my mother, and while she was flitting between shops, soon going back to the first place she had tried, unable to decide in her search for a winter hat between rabbit, otter, and fox, I was allowed to play in the arcade: half in the open, half indoors, the daylight made the pigeonsâ necks shimmer as the birds swooped down from above, just over the heads of the grownups, and then flew noisily with their rather clumsy-looking flight action out onto the street.
I had time to look at everything. For a long time I crouched in front of a young beagle waiting for its mistress to return, after I had established from a safe distance that its lead was firmly tied to the ring and there wasnât too much slack in it. I knew my motherâs shopping wasnât going to be a quick business, she had been at the furrierâs, and now she had disappeared into the haberdasherâs. I wished I could defer for as long as possible the moment when I heard my name being called, right through the arcade, people turning around to look at me, salesladies coming to their doorways to see who was missing, I would thread my way through to the familiar voice, and then as usual we would finally go over to the department store, which supplied the things we really needed.
She had chosen the otter skin. At long last my mother had also found herself a new pair of suede gloves. The climax of the department store afternoon was when we took the escalator up to the fourth floor, from one department to another, every time I looked down I felt butterflies in my stomach. Finally we had selected my warm winter underwear, they were predicting a hard winter. I wanted to go home, at last we were walking down the stairs, the last stretch, the way out, now nothing could pull us back into the showrooms that you could only see as
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