Getting Back on the Bicycle

Snow has been falling steadily since early yesterday morning, and the roofs along Katzenstraße lie beneath thick white cushions. Seen through the gap between the houses across the street, the fishing pond spreads blue-white and still. The tangle of brown branches in the wood is thick with snow; shaggy green arms of the conifers droop under its weight. Up and down the street, front gardens are heaped high, and still it falls.

The fraternity of neighbours at our end of the street greet each other as we shovel, struggling with the packed snow left by car tracks in the early morning. Three times yesterday did I clear the street in front of this house and another time this morning. The house has a long frontage, and since November we are the only tenants. The street is a private one, so each householder is responsible for clearing the road. It is a point of honour, as well as neighbourliness, to do one’s part.

It’s work, of course, but I find pleasure too in the communal effort. It’s good to spend a half hour in strenuous effort, good to feel the power in my arms as I lift the heavy shovelful and send it over the wall into the yard. Up and down the street the shovels scrape against the tarmac and clumps of snow fly upwards then cascade, white against the silver light. The shovel sticks against the stubborn imprint of car tracks, and I push bluntly against it, softly breathing out the frustration before loosening the icy patch. Up and over the wall the snow flies, one shovelful after another. Then I stamp into the house, boots crusted white and, changing into house shoes, make coffee, my face pink with cold.

This is the first significant snow we’ve had since Christmas. Milder temperatures and some rain had melted what snow had remained. It was mild enough, in fact, that Himself and I cycled from Katzenstraße to the Altstadt, joining the parade of other Salzburgers in the paths along the river. It had been many weeks since we had cycled, and my anxiety threatened to immobilise me. There were still icy patches along the path. Would I be able to negotiate them without falling? We could but try.

In fact, I am too often prone to paralysis, too often overwhelmed by events or other people. That which must be done for familial or social reasons overpowers the personal. Emotional turmoil, illness and injury intrude. Soon I slip into avoidance, passivity and silence.

Living in Austria and being largely unable to speak German can also feel isolating. I put off making appointments, for instance, because of my insecurity in communicating. It’s embarrassing, frankly, to stammer in broken German and then, burst out, child-like, ‘Can you help me in English?’ Usually they can, but I feel a fool afterward. But, like so many experiences, all I can do it do it anyway. I have to keep trying.

So here I am again, getting back on the bicycle after weeks of silence. It’s also a bit embarrassing, having faltered and then disappeared, to reappear with little to say for myself. However, it’s time to lift my head and begin moving again.

I can but try.

Snow Days

Last week, Salzburg shivered in below-freezing temperatures all week. Snow covers the mountains and fields, buildings and monuments and, here on Katzenstraße, despite repeated shovelling, the street. The six-hundred metre walk to the bus stop is icy in places, deep in snow in others, and, on the main street that the city keeps salted, slushy. On Thursday, cold and tired, I stayed home rather than take my packages to the post office.

Still, it is beautiful. The towering trees in the wood next to the house are layered white on brown. There is a six-inch cushion of white covering the weathered timbers of the car port next to the house. The birds I feed – mainly blue tits and blackbirds – flit in under the high wide eaves over the veranda and perch briefly and then fit back to the snow-laden branches, which then bob and dislodge clumps of snow that fall to the white carpet underneath. Sometimes squabbles arise between the birds, and they squawk and swoop toward the thick beams supporting the eaves. Wednesday, a female blackbird and a blue tit got into it. The blackbird flew off toward the wood, the tit flew into the window pane with a great bang. It remained, nearly motionless, on the tiles for a long time, occasionally tipping its head as if to reassure itself – or me, anxious watcher – that it had survived and was just regaining its full senses.

Despite the cold, I did go to the Altstadt that morning to run a few errands and, mainly, to wander the city, taking in the sight of its buildings and monuments under the stark contrast of snow and dull sky, on the one hand, and the bright lights and brilliant Christmas decorations, on the other. On Wednesday morning, the Advent markets were not as crowded as they are on the weekends. The small wooden huts, brightened with colourful merchandise, signs and lights, fill the Domplatz and the Residenzplatz. Along the long stretch of Altermarkt stand a row of back-to-back stalls selling food and – everywhere – glühwein, each stall representing one of many social or service organisations. My favourite sells bosna, long thin spicy sausages heated in an electric frying pan and served on a long narrow bun with onions, mustard and a sprinkle of curry powder. I wolfed one down, eating rapidly, bare hands chapped and red, stamping my feet in the snow, as I tried to keep blood flowing. It was barely lunchtime, a bit early, but the glühwein, hot and spicy, went down well too.

I took a few minutes to wander through the old cemetery behind Stiftkirche St Peter. The icy path and cold didn’t encourage me to linger. The graves, usually bright with greenery and flowers, lay covered in snow. Snow clung settled into the crevices of the upright iron grave markers. Still, the dead were not forgotten. A wreath of tightly woven red berries was dusted with snow as it lay on one grave. In front of another, a couple in their late sixties had stopped; the man solemnly crossed himself and took off his hat as the woman waited at his side. Behind the grill of one of the family tombs stood a Christmas tree decorated with red tinsel and bulbs.

Inside the dim porch of the church itself, an old beggar sat by the door, his hat extended. It is his place; I’ve seen him there before. Past the second set of door, pale light shone through the windows at the top of the vaulted nave and illuminated the white ceiling with its green rococo mouldings. I sat for a while, letting the peace of the pure light wrap me as it descended on the dark paintings and gaudy life-sized statues of saints. It barely penetrated the dim recesses behind the piers and the dark wood of the confessionals, pews and kneelers.

Before leaving the Altstadt, I visited the Advent market in the Sternplatz. The smallest of the several markets, it is my favourite with its selection of wooden ornaments, hand painted sculptures, woollen hats, sheepskin gloves and pure wool socks, pashminas and more. I got chatting with the woman at the stall selling glühwein. It turns out she is the manager of this market and she sells some of the handmade hats. It also turns out she lived in the same area of Los Angeles 25 years ago when Himself and I lived there too. (She recognised me by the Trader Joe’s bag I  had on my arm.) I bought one of her hats but passed on the glühwein; one was enough.

Standing in the crowd at the bus stop I was tired and cold, wanting to get home and warm again. The pavement at our feet was not just slushy. In places there was brown nearly freezing water an inch or so deep. I was careful to stand back from the kerb because as the buses approached, they splashed dirty water up over the footpath, calling to mind Ezra Pound’s bitter parody of the Medieval song. Behind us, the Salzburg flowed sluggishly northward as white gulls swooped and shrieked, sounding like quarrelling and crying children. Even the beauty of the pastel coloured fin d’siecle buildings on the opposite bank, like jewels swathed in elegant white, were not compensation for the cold.

Looking at the dirty water under feet, I saw a pair of feet that were remarkable for not being booted like the rest. A woman’s, they wore only a pair of thin patent leather flat shoes, quite pointed at the toe, and no socks or stockings. The bare flesh flushed red. Why? I wondered, would someone go out like that in freezing temperature.

The bus arrived; I stamped my ticket and found a seat by a window. As I made to sit down, a tall thin woman, in her late seventies if not older, approached it too. I hesitated; she hung back. Then I sat down in the window seat and she in the one next to me. As I settled in and adjusted the packages on my lap, I looked down. She wore black patent pointed leather shoes and no socks.

Looking at her hands, I realised she wore no gloves either. She had on a light-weight quilted rust-coloured coat and a hat made of fur. But she wore no scarf and the sweater at the open neck of her coat was thin.

Why? Again I wondered. I studied her thick-knuckled fingers, chafed looking as she held them in front of her. Looking sidelong at her face, I worried. She stared steadily ahead, erect, self-contained and seeming independent but also, somehow, frail, bird-like, vulnerable.

I wanted to tell her she mustn’t be out in the weather without proper shoes, warm stockings and gloves. She needed a scarf. Impulsively, I wanted to speak to her. In fact, it may have been only my inability to speak German that stopped me. What would I have said, anyway? In what world does a stranger admonish an adult about dressing warmly, however kindly meant. No more than rushing to the aid of the stunned bird earlier would my interference have accomplished anything.

As we approached my stop, I made to stand, and she turned her thin legs sideways to let me out. With my back to the door I watched her, noting the protective way she held her cheap handbag to her side, still gazing steadily ahead. Then the bus shuddered to a stop, the doors opened, and I stepped carefully onto the crusted, snowy kerb.

Er kommt!

The other night Himself and I stood with a small crowd that began to gather at 5 pm at the top of Linzergaße. Having strolled up the gently rising street, past its shops glittering with clothing and shoes, past the small markets with trays of candied fruit coloured like shining marbles, past its small cafes and Konditoreis with their pastries and gühlwein, we shivered in the cold and waited anxiously. From a tiny courtyard at the end of a narrow alley near where we stood we heard the occasional deep knell of several iron bells, about the timber of a large cow bell.

‘Er kommt.’

‘Who comes?’

‘Der Krampus kommt.’

The sound of the bells grew more frequent and more insistent; the excitement of the crowd swelled as more people crowded in; my tension rose. I had heard the Krampus is truly frightening.

‘I don’t see why people take their children,’ someone had said. ‘It’s too terrifying.’

She was right, of course. Which is precisely the point, at least traditionally. The Krampus is St Nikolaus’ counterpart, a threat, the awful consequence of what may happen if child or adult is not good. In this part of the world the passive threat – a lump of coal, the absence of gifts, the punishment of void – does not suffice. The Krampus is an active presence, come to scourge with chains and punish with birch rods.

The clamour from the bells suddenly increased over a tumult of voices as a red figure appeared in the entrance of the alley. It was St Nikolaus dressed – appropriately enough for a saint – in a red cassock with a bishop’s mitre. In Austria, St Nikolaus is still a church man.

On either side of the saint were two ghouls covered in pale-grey fur. Small in stature, they didn’t grab my attention because I was riveted by the other figures rushing out of the narrow gap. Tall – no giant – figures covered in shaggy dark fur like Chewbacca, they had his slump-shouldered massiveness. But these were monsters with enormous heads over which rose horns in high, wide arcs, thick and spear-like. From the shadows they poured into the street, the clanging of their iron bells raucous and insistent. They rushed toward those of us watching, brandishing thick switches, pushing their way into the crowd. One of them came straight at me, extended a claw at me, grabbed my head, then forced my face into his hairy chest. My hat askew, my glasses shoved into my face, I shrieked with genuine alarm. Others of the creatures loomed, arms thrust forward, threatening, as they stormed the waiting crowd.

One of their troop, however, taller and even more fierce, emerged from the shadows riding a wickerwork chariot pulled by two smaller beasts. Its face was illuminated by an open fire burning in a bucket suspended from the curved rim of the chariot, a horned skull hung from the front. The other ten or fifteen Krampuses weaved and bobbed around the chariot, darting into the crowd then back again, bells jarring, stamping their feet, jumping and lunging at those of us watching. Hurling themselves at the crowd, occasionally one would skid in the icy slush-covered pavement and, almost gracefully, on huge feet, ski along the street for a metre or so. But always they kept moving, jostling and shoving, their rictus-like faces glaring like the demons of nightmares.

St Nikolaus and his escorts had moved away down the street and the band of Krampuses surrounding the chariot-mounted leader followed in rag-tag fashion. Behind them, another escort of red-jacketed security volunteers and uniformed Polizei formed a line, the security volunteers linking hands to form a cordon to keep the watchers from engulfing the Krampus troop. Slowly we all moved down the narrow street, lit by dangling Christmas lights. The baroque steeple of St Sebastian’s church gleamed serenely against the black sky; below, accompanied by their strident bells, the fiend-like creatures circled the chariot in a frenzy, faces in fixed grimaces, claws pointed into the crowd. The crowd, held back by the security patrol, gathered and heaved behind them.

Despite the press at my back, despite my alarm at both the creatures and the crowd, I was fascinated, drawn forward. Linking hands, Himself and I shouldered our way forward, not wanting to lose sight of the spectacle. I stared at the intricate masks, each one distinctive in its artfulness. Open mouths with permanent leers revealed fangs. Snout-like noses were squashed with gaping nostrils. Ears were pointed or wing like or torn and shredded. A tongue protruded from a lurid grin; bulging obscenely, it skewed sideways. Some masks were dark or dun; others had complexions of lurid colours – red, green, yellow and orange. The large, globe-like bells, strapped so they hung on the creatures’ backs just above the buttocks, appeared obscene at times, like protruding bulbous baboon bottoms.

On we pushed, the tribe of Krampuses keeping a frenetic beat, the clamour of the bells and primordial dance, round and round. Every few paces the vortex of swirling bodies, bells, chariot and fire stopped while the monsters turned outward to the watching crowd. We filled the narrow way, surging and swelling as we went. On either side of the street rose five-story and six-story faded pastel buildings from the 18^th century. From upper stories, windows opened out as people leaned out into the chill, watching. We inched along, moving about 500 metres over a half hour, the press of the crowd becoming stronger. Himself and I had managed to keep, for the most part, immediately behind the security cordon; behind us, a handful of young men in their late teens shouted and pushed. I stiffened my body and locked my knees to avoid being shoved into the back of one of the police.

At last we came to a curve in the street. The Krampus troop bore to the right down an darker street; Himself and I went left where the street opened onto a platz by the river. My feet by this time were numb; I tried stomping them to get the blood flowing. We joined another crowd, much smaller, gathered around a stall selling gühlwein, the spiced hot wine ubiquitous in the Christmas markets.

Back home, safe and warm again, we considered the seething crowd and flailing, bobbing monsters in the eerie, sulphurous half light of the narrow street. It was genuinely alarming. From a child’s perspective, it must be terrifying. But the procession was led not just by the chariot-mounted Krampus but also by the gentle and benign St Nikolaus as well. Maybe, Himself observed, there’s something in facing out your demons – as in writing, for instance – and then coming home to a warm, well-lighted room, that makes some things come out okay. 

Winter Arrives

Snow has come to Katzenstraße. There was a light dusting last weekend, the day before we shared with friends a scaled-back Thanksgiving dinner. There wasn't enough snow to shovel though. Sunday night it began snowing lightly, and by morning there was a good blanket of it up and down the street. So I had a ‘shovel experience’ for the first time since I left Salt Lake City over thirty years ago.

It wasn't too bad. We got most of it, save the icy tracks left by the cars that had already driven past the house. I showed our guests, over from Ireland, how to get to the river from the house, walking up the still snowy street, around the end of the fishing lake — really a man-made pond — and through the park to the riverside walk. The water on the pond had begun to go slushy with ice, freezing from one end toward the centre. That left a small contingent of ducks huddled at the still-liquid quadrant, dark against the snow, muttering softly among themselves as they nuzzled the snow with their bills. I don't know how they make it through the winter, but I expect they know what they're doing at this point.

The next day was a clear day with a pale blue-washed sky. I set out to walk along the riverside path myself, first taking a trail that runs alongside a wood on one side and horse pastures on the other. When I got to the beginning of the path, which is paved with tarmac, I found it hadn't been shovelled or gritted. It was treacherous with ice. First I tried keeping to the packed snow in the centre, then I tried walking along the edge of the path in the thicker snow. Still, I found that rather than stepping out boldly, stretching my legs in a good walk, I was having to place my feet carefully. When I felt my steps begin go out from under me, I gave it up and turned around, settling for a walk around the pond. It was not as entertaining — I dislike walking in circles — but at least my feet could find purchase on the dirt track.

It snowed again overnight, and I was up early shovelling it. Now it has begun snowing again, and there's at least twice as much on the ground as I removed this morning. I'm wondering if I should go out and start again. The pond too has now disappeared into whiteness. Only a slender margin of dark steel blue remains. Winter is closing in on the ducks.

Still, for all the shovelling and trouble walking, it is beautiful. The wood next to the house is a study in line, white on brown. The trees in the middle distance make a thick pattern of line against the blank sky that can be said neither to glow or to have colour. It's just a pale void. Seen from my window, the world in its stillness has a certain passivity, a kind of eternal earth-bound white gravity.

It's not entirely lifeless though. The snow capping the tree branches collapses and falls in rapid streams. Blackbirds and blue tits flit past the windows and fly up under the tall eaves of the veranda next to my office, where I've put out crumbs and nuts. The tits, tiny bright things, investigate the porous stone facings of the house, looking for seed or perhaps the husks of insects. A bird takes off from a branch, leaving the shell of a leaf vibrating in its wake.

There are tracks in the snow: those of birds, of course, and those of some small four-legged creature, a cat’s perhaps or some wild thing from the wood. The cat tracks haunt me. I look at the thick unblemished blanket of snow covering the deck over the garage, just beyond the bedroom window, and grief ambushes me again. It should be patterned with Mona’s prints.

I feel the end of the year rushing at me too quickly. I'd like to savour the days. But, truly, I'm glad November, which is a hard month, full of the memory of losses both recent and long past, is over.

Speech Lesson

More and more I am able to function, albeit at an extremely low level, in German. This is not to suggest fluency or anything more than a modicum of comprehension when reading signs or looking at newspaper headlines. And I can make myself understood, after a fashion, in small transactions. The other day, for instance, I was able to make an appointment at the hairdresser even though the receptionist on the other end of the phone spoke no English.

At the grocery market, the servers at the deli counter, where each week I select from a dazzling array of cured meats and sausages, no longer urge me to speak English because ‘It’s easier,’ as one of them used to tell me. They now coach me as I make my choices in halting German, patient, anticipating my choices – they now know my favourites – and naming the meats.

Yesterday I went to the small neighbourhood shop several blocks from the flat. Because of its limited choice and odd opening hours, I don’t often go there, but still the woman at the till recognises me and greets me in a friendly way. Our conversations have been limited to German for she claims to speak no English.

I asked for a baguette and she held one up from the bakery tray.

‘Geschnitten?’ she asked, making chopping motions with her hand.

‘Nein. Ganz, bitte.’ Then, having second thoughts about my grammar, I added, ‘Ganz oder ganze?’ I’m still trying to work out where the gender of the noun governs the adjective.

‘Ganz,’ she replied empathically. Gans ist’ – and here she made animated noises while waving her hands – ‘Squawk, squawk, squawk, squawk.’

I understood immediately. By failing to pronounce the Z properly – it requires a front-loaded T sound, like the Z in pizza – I had sounded an S. Ganz means whole; Gans means goose.

I nodded. ‘Ja, ja. Danke.’ She had spoken with kindness and a bit of humour, and I appreciated that she respected my efforts to learn.

Seeing I hadn’t been offended, she went on.‘Gans ist duck.’

Now I shook my head. ‘Duck ist “Ente”. Gans ist “goose”.’

I left the shop and bicycled home. In spite of the cold rain and gathering dusk, I was content. Across the ragged edges of disjointed language, the woman and I had connected, however briefly. There had been a bond created, however slight.

This is what I spoke of when I told my husband about the encounter later: the buoyancy of spirit that comes with seeing, really seeing, another. There was something accepting, even generous, in her pointing out my mistake.

‘See. You helped each other,’ Himself said. ‘She corrected your German, and you corrected her English.’

Genau.

Autumn Light

I’ve been reading at William Fiennes’ The Snow Geese for several months now, slowly following his journey from Texas to the northern reaches of Canada as he tracks the spring migration of the birds. The book is in part an extended meditation on home and missing home, on homesickness, nostalgia and longing. And on days like today, with the dim light of a low-lying sun never seeming to reveal the sky, longing, homesickness and nostalgia are very present for me.

While I love autumn’s beauty, captivated by its palette of bright colours set against the austere neutrals, a contrast that quickens my pulse, it can be a difficult time. For me, death and other losses litter the autumnal landscape. The fading light of the dying year casts these losses in starker relief. The wood next to our flat is no longer a tall green wall. The bare branches of its tree now weave a dull brown screen that filters the light. Inside the flat, the wooden floors gleam darkly; only when I light the lamps – as early as 4:30 or 5 – is there brightness, and that willed.

That’s not to say we are giving into gloom. Yesterday – Sunday – we climbed Kapuzinerberg, one of the two mountains around which the core of the city is built. It is the taller of the two, 640 metres, and it is mostly green space with trails and a small fortress built during the Thirty Years War, now gasthaus serving snacks and beer, at the top. (The Festung, the city’s signature fortress, sits atop the more heavily developed Mönchsberg, the mountain on the other side of the Salzach.)

The last time we climbed Kapuzinerberg, it was a warm late May afternoon, and we panted under a tall canopy of green until we reached the top. Yesterday we climbed by a different route, and the dim light reflected off a thick carpet of copper-coloured beech leaves. We were warmed with exertion, but stopping at a precipice and looking north, we soon became chilled. However, we stood long enough to see that part of the city spread below us, and I was surprised at how many landmarks, strange to me not many months ago, seem familiar to me now.

At the top we stopped to look southeast, but here the landscape was less familiar. Some Sunday afternoon, we agreed, we should explore those street just to see what’s there. Then we descended, keeping to our left the city wall built on the steep flank at the same period as the small fortress above. Wall and fortress were so effective a deterrent they were never tested.

We didn’t stop for beer and wurstl in the gasthaus because we were going directly to Schloss Leopoldskron. Commissioned in 1736 by one of Salzburg’s prince-archbishops, Schloss Leopoldskron is an elaborate rococo palace that sits on the edge of a large pond in an expanse of green space.

In the early 20^th century, it was bought by theatre and film director Max Reinhardt, famous locally as one of the founders of the Salzburg Festival. During the war it was confiscated by the Nazis as ‘Jewish property’. After the war it was bought by the American foundation, the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, and is now used as a conference site. Fans of The Sound of Music recognise its lake as the location for some of the film’s outdoor shots and its grounds and one of its façades as models for the sound stage set of the Von Trapp villa.

However, it is closed to the public every day except one day a year, which was yesterday, when it was open for tours. By the lake, its small formal garden open for an Adventmarkt.

Along with other residents of Salzburg, we waited on line for nearly an hour to view this national treasure, with its stucco ceilings and chandeliers, its faded Chinoiserie room, the gilt and mirrored games room, and the elaborate neo-rococo library, with plaster cherubs and beautifully carved wood, the latter interior commissioned by Reinhart.

The tour was conducted, of course, in German. I was pleased to realise that though I could not follow word for word, description by description, the guide’s commentary, I was able to at least follow the general outline of her remarks. Even though Himself, better at German than I am, filled in some gaps, it is reassuring to find I’ve made even a little progress in German.

It was late and the dun-coloured light rapidly fading when we left the tour to wander the stalls of the small Adventmarkt. We inaugurated the Weihnachtsmarkt season with our first cup of Glühwein, mulled wine popular at the street markets that will soon be open all over Salzburg, as well as throughout most of this part of Europe.

Then, just as we were about to leave, a children’s chorus began singing, and we stopped to listen. They stood in a narrow gravelled path at the edge of the lake. Torches were burning around the grounds, and the lights on the far side of the lake as well as from the garden reflected in its dark waters. The faces of the chorus –  young children and older boys, their voices already deepened, along with a few adult women – were illuminated by a couple of lamps. We listeners were in near darkness, the flickering light occasionally catching a face in the crowd. The chorus sang what must be traditional German and Austrian Christmas music, of which I understood a word here and there.

Then came a familiar song, odd to me in the circumstance, knowing its commercial roots. But, as it happens, ‘I’d Like to Teach the World To Sing’, which began life as a Coco-Cola jingle in the seventies, became a popular Christmas song in Europe, as I learned while living in Ireland. Yesterday, the children sang it with enthusiasm.

Driving home in near darkness, through a part of Salzburg that seems remote from my daily life, I was pleased to realise how familiar have become the mysterious, winding streets of even this part of the city, tucked into the curve of Mönchsberg, where not many months ago I got lost. Last night I knew, almost without knowing, the way. Shops and street corners have become landmarks, if only subliminally. I felt as though, had we turned off Mavis, our Mistress of the GPS, I could have guided us home.

Which reminds me of William Fiennes and his reflection on homesickness and nostalgia. He writes of turning his longing for the home he loved in the past into ‘a desire to find that sense of belonging, that security and happiness, in some other place. . . . The yearning had to be forward-looking. You had to be homesick for somewhere you had not yet seen, nostalgic for things that had not yet happened.’

I am not sure who I am these days or what my job is, not sure what nationality I represent or where my home is. But every small bit of progress I make – in learning German, in knowing my way around Salzburg, in writing something new – makes me feel more grounded in where I am now and gives me more hope that I will be able to manage where I will be tomorrow.

The Queen of Katzenstrasse

Saturday night, three families from Katzenstrasse gathered in a kitchen for a evening of warm friendship. Our neighbours across the road, Sigrid and Gerard, who with their eight-year-old daughter had recently returned from a week in Barcelona, cooked a pan of paella and made sangria. Hannes and Edith, their neighbours next door were there, and Himself and I were made to feel very welcome.

With Tom Waits and Bob Dylan playing in the background, conversation around the candlelit table flowed with the wine until late in the evening. In German and in English, as well as my own stammering ‘Germlish’, talk ranged from the merits of analog over digital recordings, the romance of tube-powered electronic amplifiers, Barcelona hotels and cafes, American policy toward Cuba, the Tea Party movement, theatre, pregnancy and birth – I now know the German for a Caesarean Section is Kaiserschnitten – emigration and immigration, languages, lineage and ancestry.

Sigrid and Gerard, Edith and Hannes, were very kind to move so freely between German and English, switching fluently and frequently between the two, so Himself and I could join the conversation. Himself is better at German than me. I recognise some percentage of words in any sentence, but their sense lies just beyond my grasp, tantalising and mocking me. I can tell by the context what's being discussed, but sentence by sentence, I don't understand it.

The German speakers, on the other hand, were interested in the differences between American, Irish and British English. We discussed words that have different meaning in each culture. ‘Bold’, for instance, generally means courageous or audacious in American English. In Ireland, however, a ‘bold’ child is one who ignores or challenges adult authority. Or one might be ‘as bold as a dog’ and behave contrary to community standards. These usages clearly share a common source, but the nuances of their meaning have shifted.

We talked about cats, too. For cats were among the assembled. Jimmy, the ancient cat of Sigrid and Gerard, came in the sliding door, wandered toward his dish, and ate briefly. Then he stood at the door to be let out again and, not long after, stood looking in the glass door to be let back in. Jimmy, at 95 in human terms, limps with arthritis now; he sometimes stands stock still for minutes on end, as if wondering why it is he has come into the room, what it is that has now slipped his mind.

Hannes’ and Edith’s Mona, the queen of Katzenstrasse, was there too, threading her way between our feet and majestically inspecting the room. An established member of the household next door, Mona is famous for making herself at home in Gerard’s and Sigrid’s house as well as in ours. Nearly daily we have found her on our step, pressing herself against the door frame as we fumble with the key. We are used to her presence most mornings at the bedroom window as she waits on the deck over the garage, ready to curl up on the bed at our feet. That very afternoon we had returned from the grocery market to find her on the doorstep. We unlocked the outer door and then, seeing Sigrid in the street, stopped to visit with her.

‘Die Katze wartet,’ she said, greeting us.

Indeed, the cat did wait. When we climbed the stairs with our groceries after chatting briefly, we found Mona, regal and serene, reposing on the chair outside our flat door. She came in with us and settled on the cushioned breakfast bench. She was still there, three hours later, and we had to carry her downstairs to put her out when we left the house to join the dinner party.

At dinner, Edith told of the fish Mona had brought into the house that afternoon, bait stolen from one of the fishermen on the lake behind the house. Hannes recalled finding another fish, still flopping, on the living room floor. He took it to the lake and tossed it in. Moments later, Mona returned and laid the same fish at his feet. There were tales, too, of her gifts of the creeping, fur-covered things from the wood next to house.

Himself and I reminded Edith and Hannes of the week they were in Rome over the summer. Mona, always ready to be held and cuddled, presented herself at the door even more frequently. We left the bedroom window ajar each night; each morning we would find her, a grey lump at the end of the bed. Waking, she would catch at our feet moving under the covers, capturing toes with teeth and claws. At breakfast, she found her place between us on the breakfast bench and, rolling onto her back, graciously presented a wide, white belly to be caressed.

Telling these stories, we joked that Mona must be surprised to find her three families assembled in one room. ‘What are you doing here?’ we imagined her saying. When she went through the sliding door and out into the darkness, we bid her goodnight. ‘See you, Mona!’

Near midnight, the dinner party broke up and, saluting each other with pecks on both cheeks, we said goodnight. The fledgling friendship between us, the foreign recent arrivals, and the long-time friends and neighbours, had strengthened. We parted, promising to meet again soon, the next time at our house. Discussing the evening the morning after, Himself and I remarked on how thoughtfully the others had included us by speaking both English and German. And we recalled with great pleasure the liveliness and intelligence of the conversation.

It was Gerard and eight-year-old Olivia who found Mona, on Monday morning sometime about 8. She had probably darted out from behind a wall just as a car pulled away. The car couldn’t have been going fast, not from the end of the street. The driver, whoever it was, probably doesn’t realise he or she hit the cat.

I saw Gerard from our kitchen window as we were eating breakfast. He was standing at a ground floor window staring uncharacteristically into the street. It turns out he was considering phoning us with the news, but he decided to wait until my husband came out of the house on his way work so he could tell him in person. My husband rinsed clean the site with our garden hose, then came back into the house to tell me.

As with all news of sudden death, there was that instant, lasting seconds or microseconds – who can say – of a kind of dual reality; I was momentarily numb and dumb in that short space during which the apperception of a piece of information I didn’t want to acknowledge as other than fiction gradually became real. Mona would never again jump onto the breakfast bench beside me or stand on the step arching her back into the door jamb or knead my stomach as I petted her or stare into the bedroom window, waiting to be let in.

On the street, I stood with Edith and Gerard staring down at the place in front of our house, now washed clean and terribly empty, where Mona had lain. Behind us, Hannes busied himself with the shovel. Our eyes were raw and our expressions wondering. How could this have happened? Katzenstrasse is a safe street, remote from traffic and, with its wood and nearby lake well stocked with fish, a kind of paradise for cats, as Gerard remarked. How could Mona have been hit?

Mona, the queen of Katzenstrasse, was bold in both the Irish and the American sense of the word. It was as if, more than most cats, she acknowledged no master or authority. She moved between the three families in the three houses with an attitude of entitlement, secure in her welcome in each. She found her way onto the deck beside our window and waited calmly until we let her in. Once inside she headed to her favourite spots. If we sat next to her, she calmly inserted herself onto our laps and nudged her head into the crook of an elbow, her front paws kneading away. I kept a towel for her on the chair in the living room where she liked to watch as I did my morning stretches. Then, when breakfast was over and Himself had left for work, she’d sleep for two hours or more as I worked.

Mona was round and soft, obviously well looked after, so we didn’t feed her. But if she was in the kitchen as I prepared a meal, she would jump down from her favourite perch on the bench and weave her body between my feet, loudly meowing. If I had meat out to thaw and left the kitchen, she would boldly jump onto the worktop and seize it, once wrestling the plastic-wrapped treasure to the floor. She was audacious in going after what she wanted.

Mona was our first guest in the house, and she knew it intimately from the time when the previous tenants, a family with children, had welcomed her. She frequently ran up the stairs to sit at the attic door, waiting to be let in. We’re not sure what attractions it held for her. Jacob, the man who carved the doors and ceilings of walnut and cherry, had his workshop there. Himself often joked that she was drawn there by his ghost. Maybe now, he says, Mona’s ghost is there along side Jacob’s.

Perhaps her ghost will keep us company. This morning, though, we were aware of the empty space between us on the breakfast bench. The sun shone through the window behind me in the office, but Mona did not leap up to sit in its warmth. The chair next to my yoga mat was empty too, the grey towel folded and pointless beside it. And each time I pass the bedroom window, I look away from it, not wanting to see the blankness there.

On Monday morning, as Gerard, Edith and I stood in the street remembering Mona, we recalled with a smile our joke the night of the dinner party, when all three of her families were gathered in the same room.

Edith said, ‘Maybe she decided her work was done. Maybe she thought, “I’ve brought them together now, put them in one room, pointed them toward friendship, and that’s enough.”’

Perhaps she’s right. Mona did draw us together. Sigrid and Edith take care of each other’s cats when they travel; the first real conversation I had with Gerard and Sigrid was about the strange grey-and-white cat who came into our house with such assurance. The friendships grew when I was able to look after the cats when both families were away on the same weekend. By making herself at home in our homes, she wove three households into a community.

Now, with Mona’s death, our shared sadness draws us together even more. As our friendship flowers, the dinner party will be just the first of many evenings of shared conversation and laughter. And when we meet, we’ll remember the queen of Katzenstrasse.

‘To Mona. Prost.’