Drunk!

Getting drunk for the first and last time: Jean, Mama’s first cousin and an itinerant barber, was a bitter man. A hunchback, he peddled his bicycle out from Heyerhof to customers far and wide, including stops in Marnheim. Since one of these was Onkel Heinrich in the shop downstairs, I got to see Jean often. It was his habit to make my uncle’s haircut the last one of the day, as he worked his way home. Since the two were friends as well as relatives, the arrangement allowed for a bit of relaxing with a glass or two of wine. On one of these evenings, I made the mistake of going downstairs when they were sitting at a work table drinking wine. Jean acted much friendlier, almost jolly. My uncle was his usual happy self, inviting me to visit. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked what they were drinking. When I was told wine, I must have thought it strange. They were filling big water glasses, and I knew that you drank wine from wine glasses. Poor as we were Mama and Papa used fancy wine glasses, and I told the two so. Being all of six years old, I was beginning to exert my opinions more freely.

“Here,” Onkel Heinrich said. “Take a drink and see for yourself!”

I did — a big swallow. It was my first really good sampling of the famous liquid of the Rheinland-Pfalz, and I liked it. Pestering for more, even the normally dour Jean decided to share until my initial good feeling turned to sour dizziness. It was time to leave and I started back up the stairs to Mama. From this point in the story I must rely on my brother’s details of the aftermath. He was there to witness it, and I have no personal memory of events. No doubt he may have improved on the tale with much retelling over the years, but knowing Mama, it sounds mostly true. Hearing a noise on the stairs, Mama opened the door and saw me trying to negotiate the steps on my hands and knees, whimpering. Quickly helping me up the stairs, she immediately recognized my state and sat me down in the kitchen. As there was always barley coffee on the stove, she made me drink some — probably hoping it would sober me. Putting me in Erich’s care, she headed for her brother’s workshop below. My brother said he had never seen Mama in such a rage. The laughter in the shop ended abruptly as she ripped into both brother and cousin for making her daughter drunk. Erich said he could hear both of them pleading with Mama not to do anything reckless, and promising never to give Annchen any more wine. He didn’t know what the ‘reckless’ thing was that had Heinrich and Jean pleading, but it sure made him curious. Finally, my brother couldn’t resist tiptoeing down the steps to see what Mama was doing to scare the two men. Peeking around the corner he saw that she had picked up a leather strap that Onkel had been working on, and was slamming it repeatedly down on the work table like a whip.

Both Onkel Heinrich and cousin Jean were up against the wall, cowering like two trapped rats. It was all too unreal, Erich would say, with each retelling of the story. Onkel Heinrich was much taller and stronger than our mother, yet he crouched as low as Jean in the face of her fury.