Just like Steve McQueen
This is part two of this post, click on the link if you haven’t read it or this will make bugger all sense.
Living with Frau Fuka was bad enough for the first three months but in the last six months the seriousness of her crimes went up a notch or two.
I have mentioned that Fuka liked to keep tabs on me and my flatmate Gerty when we came in and out of the flat we rented from her. It would be too generous to assume she did this because she cared about us.
If her need to follow our every move was, indeed, out of a sense of motherly duty, it would not explain her little white head popping round my bedroom door as me and my boyfriend at the time took advantage of an afternoon off work. Maybe she felt the need to offer me some bedroom tips, but really …couldn’t she have waited til afterwards???
The sight of her muppet prototype, craggy, Band-Aided, little face whilst in the throes, has since made me muse upon how remarkable it is that I have gone on to have subsequent relationships and have even managed to procreate. People have been in therapy for less.
Motherly duty would also not explain why Fuka felt the need to examine my pants drawer on a regular basis whilst I was at work. Her supposed concerns about the neatness of my laundry did not expand to letting us using her washing machine or even letting us have a washing machine of our own. So I was stumped as to why my pants were being checked whilst I was out.
One day when I walked in on her rifling through my drawers, she made no attempt to apologise, claiming that it was her responsibility to check the flat was being well looked after. I offered her the chance to check the pants I was wearing since she was being so thorough. She said she felt that would be unnecessary. Germans don’t get sarcasm.
Meanwhile Fraulein Gerty, my flatmate had nothing but sweetness and light directed towards her. Why? Simple reason; Gerty’s boyfriend was a nice young local German boy who drove a nice new BMW. My boyfriend was a foreigner.
From the moment Gerty introduced Frau Fuka to Markus, her life was sweet. Whereas Fuka did not even like Sal, my second generation Italian, being in the building. She made no bones about this.
So it fell to me and Sal to flagrantly flout Fuka’s no foreigner rules on my last ever night at the flat. He stayed over and in the morning I walked him past Fuka’s door on the way out to say goodbye. Looking upwards as I stood on the street, I could see her little white fluffy head poking out the window. We both waved at her.
By the time I returned to my flat Fuka had let herself into my flat and was waiting on me, clutching my cassette radio like it was the Holy Grail.
She wanted money. She wanted me out. She wanted to call the police. She knew people who could stop me from leaving Germany.
She was maybe having a flashback with that last one. As far as I know these days Germany is a democratic society where people can only be held for committing actual crimes- shagging a foreign bloke not being a breach of any known current German law.
She would hold my radio ransom until I paid for her to replace the mattress! The mattress? The mattress! Oh, for pity’s sake!
I told her to phone the police. And that it might be a mistake given that she was the one stealing my radio. I reached over and wrestled the radio from her little white-knuckled hands.
I left an hour later asking a frozen faced Fuka if I could expect to meet any problems at the border. Just like Steve McQueen. She ignored me. Then I said, for a laugh, that if ever I were back in Germany that I would pop round for a cup of tea.
“ I will see to it that you can never return to Germany!”, she shouted down the street at me.
The hex was cast.
Queen of the Lizard People
Stalin misreads his invite to the Potsdam Conference:” I thought it said fancy dress!” laughed the dictator behind the deaths of 60 million
I don’t know whether you’ve noticed but I often mention that I am not allowed to go back to Germany.
I am not making this up.
Truth is I am awaiting news of the death of a 100+ year-old German woman that will make it safe for me to return. For it was this elderly harridan who banned me from returning to the country I spent a year of my University studies in.
Come with me, I’ll explain on the way…
About six weeks into my time in Cologne, my flatmate, Gerty, and I decided that we didn’t like the flat we were in and started to look for a new place. This decision was based in the fact that the last tram to our outskirty location left at 10.15 and we wanted to stay out drinking much later than that. We was students, y’see.
We found city central lodgings with an 83 year old woman who owned a substantial townhouse that I’m sure had belonged to a nice Jewish family at one point. She was letting out the little tartan wallpapered flatlet at the top of her house.
On arriving to view the flat we laughed at the name on the buzzer:
“FUKA”.
And, by God, did this little white haired minion of Satan not live up to her name.
Looking like a nice wee old dear on the outside with a shock of Jim Henson-made white hair, her outward appearance concealed an ugly truth. She was, in fact, a Soul Sucking Evil Lizard from Hell.
There was one clue to this hidden identity. For the entire year I lived there she wore a small flesh-coloured Band-Aid just under her right eye. This Band Aid clearly concealed the zip-fastener that she would unzip at night to regain her natural form, hanging her 4ft-5inch old-lady suit up in the wardrobe ’til morning when she would have to go into hiding once more.
Pleasant at first, she soon began to nurture an intense hatred of me and all I apparently stood for, and it wasn’t long before I made no attempt to stop myself calling the (non-English speaking) woman “Frau Fucker” squarely to her little wizened face.
I swear, and I have my Girl Guide salute aloft as I type this, so you KNOW it is true- I swear she had a photograph of her dead husband in uniform on the side board. No really- yes, THAT uniform. You know- the one Bryan Ferry said he liked.
Not for her the furtive sweeping under the carpet of those dark years. In my lowest points with Fuka, I almost paid for my Gran to fly over and bitch fight her. But given that the talks at the Potsdam Conference between the Allies had called on our nations to strive for the goals of the establishment of post-war order, the issuing of peace treaties, and the countering the effects of war, I felt it prudent to resist. My Gran felt the same, on reflection. So the fight never took place. Sadly.*
Instead, I had to put up with the woman listening for us passing her door EVERY time we came home, day or night. As we passed, she would open her door to check up on what we were doing and crucially who we were with. If we managed to scale the walls and silently sneak past her door like nimble cat burglars, she would spring into action as soon as she heard our key in our front door upstairs. For an 83 year old she had the hearing and reflexes of a young jaguar.
I can feel her shrill voice piercing my every cell even right now, as I remember her shouting up the stairs after me,
“Fraulein Mis-ssy!!!!”
Aside from the sound of “Dignity” by Deacon Blue, this sound will be on a loop in my cell in purgatory if ever I should spend any time in the Underworld.
Fuka would not allow us to get our own telephone installed. We were to receive (never make) calls on her household phone. This meant we couldn’t be openly hostile to her. We needed people to be able to contact us through her. And she wanted to spy on us.
She also had her own key to our flat which she would use pretty much every time we went out. I know because I would catch her at it.
My flatmate Gerty and I hated her. And she us. Until Gerty hit on a masterstroke that would make me the sole target for Fuka’s twisted wrath.
And given that I could write a bloody book on my year with Fuka The Fucker, I will leave that until Part Two.
* Because my Gran would have won.
