“Too g’schtinkerdt to wash their own clothes,” she would say, despite her dependence on them.
“Him,” she accused Herr Vogel from Heide Strasse. “Made all his money from his father. He throws it away on women and drink. And washing and ironing, of course.”
It was like a roll call of scorn.
Herr Vogel, Herr and Frau Pfaffelhürver, Helena Schmidt, the Weingartners. They were all guilty of something.
Apart from his drunkenness and expensive lechery, Ernst Vogel, according to Rosa, was constantly scratching his louse-ridden hair, licking his fingers, and then handing over the money. “I should wash it before I come home,” was her summation.
The Pfaffelhürvers scrutinized the results. “‘Not one crease in these shirts, please,’” Rosa imitated them. “‘Not one wrinkle in this suit.’ And then they stand there and inspect it all, right in front of me. Right under my nose! What a G’sindel—what trash.”
The Weingartners were apparently stupid people with a constantly molting Saumensch of a cat. “Do you know how long it takes me to get rid of all that fur? It’s everywhere!”
Helena Schmidt was a rich widow. “That old cripple—sitting there just wasting away. She’s never had to do a day’s work in all her life.”
Rosa’s greatest disdain, however, was reserved for 8 Grande Strasse. A large house, high on a hill, in the upper part of Molching.
“This one,” she’d pointed out to Liesel the first time they went there, “is the mayor’s house. That crook. His wife sits at home all day, too mean to light a fire—it’s always freezing in there. She’s crazy.” She punctuated the words. “Absolutely. Crazy.” At the gate, she motioned to the girl. “You go.”
Liesel was horrified. A giant brown door with a brass knocker stood atop a small flight of steps. “What?”
Mama shoved her. “Don’t you ‘what’ me, Saumensch. Move it.”
Liesel moved it. She walked the path, climbed the steps, hesitated, and knocked.
A bathrobe answered the door.
Inside it, a woman with startled eyes, hair like fluff, and the posture of defeat stood in front of her. She saw Mama at the gate and handed the girl a bag of washing. “Thank you,” Liesel said, but there was no reply. Only the door. It closed.
“You see?” said Mama when she returned to the gate. “This is what I have to put up with. These rich bastards, these lazy swine …”
Holding the washing as they walked away, Liesel looked back. The brass knocker eyed her from the door.
When she finished berating the people she worked for, Rosa Hubermann would usually move on to her other favorite theme of abuse. Her husband. Looking at the bag of washing and the hunched houses, she would talk, and talk, and talk. “If your papa was any good,” she informed Liesel every time they walked through Molching, “I wouldn’t have to do this.” She sniffed with derision. “A painter! Why marry that Arschloch? That’s what they told me—my family, that is.” Their footsteps crunched along the path. “And here I am, walking the streets and slaving in my kitchen because that Saukerl never has any work. No real work, anyway. Just that pathetic accordion in those dirt holes every night.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say?” Mama’s eyes were like pale blue cutouts, pasted to her face.
They’d walk on.
With Liesel carrying the sack.
At home, it was washed in a boiler next to the stove, hung up by the fireplace in the living room, and then ironed in the kitchen. The kitchen was where the action was.
“Did you hear that?” Mama asked her nearly every night. The iron was in her fist, heated from the stove. Light was dull all through the house, and Liesel, sitting at the kitchen table, would be staring at the gaps of fire in front of her.
“What?” she’d reply. “What is it?”
“That was that Holtzapfel.” Mama was already out of her seat. “That Saumensch just spat on our door again.”
It was a tradition for Frau Holtzapfel, one of their neighbors, to spit on the Hubermanns’ door every time she walked past. The front door was only meters from the gate, and let’s just say that Frau Holtzapfel had the distance—and the accuracy.
The spitting was due to the fact that she and Rosa Hubermann were engaged in some kind of decade-long verbal war. No one knew the origin of this hostility. They’d probably forgotten it themselves.
Frau Holtzapfel was a wiry woman and quite obviously spiteful. She’d never married but had two sons, a few years older than the Hubermann offspring. Both were in the army and both will make cameo appearances by the time we’re finished here, I assure you.
In the spiteful stakes, I should also say that Frau Holtzapfel was thorough with her spitting, too. She never neglected to spuck on the door of number thirty-three and say, “Schweine!” each time she walked past. One thing I’ve noticed about the Germans: