WITH THE GRANDFATHER

Grown up in the same family, yes, that’s what we were. But quite a different childhood we had.

When my brother was five, he was a victim of an accident. Our father used to take us to bicycle trips, where we, the two youngest sons, were carried on his bike. I was sitting on the frontside, on a seat that was put on the handlebars of the bike, and my brother sat on the carrier that was on the back of the bike. We were driving on the street, far away from home. Suddenly,for some reason, my brother put for his foot between the spokes of the back wheel. The bicycle crashed and we all fell to the ground.

The ankle of my brother was broken. Fortunately, a childrens’ hospital was quite close, and we went there. The doctors examined my brothers foot. We got instructions that he should stay in the hospital for several days, until the broken bones would be mended.

My brother was too young to understand the reason why he had to stay in the hospital overnight, and many nights. He thought that mother didn’t want to have him anymore, she had abandoned him and he probably has to stay in the hospital forever. He couldn’t understand that after a couple of days he would be back at home again.

After this incident, my brother’s behaviour changed remarkably. He started acting quite aggressively at home, crying, shouting and bullying me, his younger brother. My parents were quite confused and helpless about his reactions. Some times they called a doctor, after my brother had been shouting without any pause for several hours. The doctor couldn’t help, but my brother ceased slowly when he got tired. One method for calming him was to promise him a small allowance when he had been without quarrelling one whole day. Some times the only way for my parents to get along my brother’s bad moods was to ask the grandparents nurse him for one evening.

I also visited my grandparents, now and then. But my visits had a totally different air than my brothers. I enjoyed staying in their small, old-fashioned aparment, with only two rooms. There was not much furniture. One room was kitchen, and the other room a combined living room and bedroom. Their eldest son, my uncle, also lived with int the apartment, in these two rooms, because he never had the capacity to acquire a home for himself. He was 40.

I remember sitting on the large windowsill of the grandparents’ apartment, admiring the abundant traffic on the busy street just below the window. The street had four lanes, biggest street I ever had seen. My family lived in an area of narrow streets and two-story detached houses, more than hundred of them, next to each other. There was nearly no traffic in the neighbourhood. The grandparents lived more towards the center of the city, in a quite urbanized part, where there were lots of cars.

I remember sitting on the windowsill playing a game with my brother. We competed against each other with car brands driving past the house down on the busy street. The rules were simple. Both players chose their own brand and started to count how many cars of that brand he could see. You could be sure of your victory, if you chose Volkswagen. Therefore, if either of us chose Volkswagen, the other could take two brands. Still it was an unfair game.

The apartment was located on the third floor. There were street lamps hanging over the street suspended by a wire quite near the window. You had almost a feeling on being able to touch the lamps. Tirelessly, the lamps were just swinging from one side to the other. When it was windy, the swinging was even stronger. The light the lamps projected on the street was swaying at the same pace.

My grandfather was already 80. He was walkin stiff and hunchbacked. There was somehow unpleasant smell around him. But I loved him. In the closet he had some secret tools that I admired. There were several shoemakers trees and a stand, where a shoe could be put in order to fasten a new sole to it. It smelled shoe polish, shoe leather, grease and turpentine in the closet.

The toilet was small and a little scary at the same time. The toilet tank was up, near the ceiling, and there was a long chain which you should draw after you have been peeing. The chain was connected to a lever, which opened a valve on the water tank letting the water run freely down the pipe in the toilet seat. The mechanism made a big noise, starting from the metallic slam, when you pull the wire. You have to pull heavily, otherwise the process doesn’t at all. If you managed to draw the wire determined enough, the water started to flush down the pipe, which made an enormous and frightening sound.