Annelie Lorbeer

Being the oldest is not an achievement or an advantage. You die at a hundred and five the same as at eighty-­five or thirty-­two, and the price of a life that long is loneliness. Death is the same for everyone. It’s just that the people standing beside the grave don’t know that yet. I’ve often stood beside a grave, and it was never nice. The closest it might come would be in spring, if you don’t know the deceased that well and the trees are blossoming and the birds chirping. Sometimes I imagined the birds in the trees were the souls of the dead. A nice idea, but nonsense, obviously.

On my hundredth birthday the mayor presented me with a certificate and a bunch of flowers. I don’t know what it said on the certificate. During the ceremony in the garden, I was the only one allowed to sit. Sitting elevated me, as it were. I can’t recall the music. In the old days there was always a band. Certificates without a band were pretty much unheard-­of. But at some point music lost its importance. Where I’m from, people didn’t talk, they sang. It was nice. Although actually it got on my nerves, too, this singsong way of speaking. As if they were trying to sing reality away.

It was still nice, though.

No one came to my hundred-­and-­fifth. Even I wasn’t fully there. I was just dreaming everything by then. Dreaming helped relieve the pain, and the weightiness of the soul.

Birthdays had long since ceased to matter to me by then. But I did want to experience death. I always was so curious.

Now I know what it’s like. But I shan’t say anything. It’s forbidden to say anything about death. Death holds the truth, but you’re not allowed to tell it. Lying is permitted, of course, but I don’t want to lie. Anyway: no one came for me. I just fell out of life. We fall into life, and we fall out of it the same way. There’s an opening, and you have to find it. Or you fumble around in the dark until you fall into it. One way or another, it always works.

First I was a child. Then a lady. Then a child again. I don’t remember the bit in between. In any case, I was a beautiful lady. I had a certain elegance. Men would find themselves staring at my behind, and they would run after me. As did some women. I always had more of an eye for the women. They were more interesting, though the men smelled better. Like animals, but I couldn’t now tell you which.

We had a canary. I don’t remember what it was called. I think it was named after a minister. One morning the cage door was open and it was gone. Perhaps it tried to get to the trees. A few days later it was lying behind the curtain, small, stiff, still green. I said to Mama: look, it has claws like an animal! It seems until that moment I hadn’t known that an animal was what it was.