Authority

Where does one feel drawn to when standing out here? Mentally, of course. Physically, it would - as always - be downward, if one dared to climb over the railing. Gravity, after all. Sixth floor. Though

technically it's the fifth floor—people never get that right with the floors, whether the ground floor is counted or not.

The block across the way has only five or four floors, at any rate one less than this one, and I can look down onto it. When I was a teenager, I used to throw things onto it. Once, one of those tiny bottles of schnapps, after I had emptied it, of course. The wind caught it mid-air and carried it off somewhere, and after

that, I never threw anything off the balcony again. Except maybe the stub of a secretly smoked cigarette. As

kids, we used to tell each other stories about people or pets that had fallen from the SIXTH! floor and

survived with barely a scratch.

Once, in another block about a ten-minute leisurely walk from here, I saw a man standing at a

window, announcing that he was going to jump. In a friendly, soulful sort of way, from the fourth floor. I

didn’t stay long enough to see how it ended, but I assume it turned out fine. No one ever fell from windows

or balconies.

Was it even a memory I lived through, or just one I was told? Why did the man say he was Jesus and

could fly, like in all those other stories people tell about crazy folks who wanted to jump?

I’m not standing on the sixth, looking at the fifth floor of the house across the way. The sixth and

fifth floors were removed years ago to make the residential area more attractive. Only the doorbell panel at

the entrance still remembers.

From the fourth or third floor, you can’t see the sixth floor of the house at two o’clock. From the

sixth floor of this building, you can’t see the roof of the house across the way either, but at least this sixth

floor still exists, and the balcony has been painted a dark, warm yellow for 33 years.

6:42 a.m. or something like that when leaving the house. I only know the number wasn’t a round

one. The door with a wooden frame holding glass panels, a wobbly handle. Two more steps, then onto the

path made of square slabs, a shallow staircase with a few steps down, turn right past the concrete ping pong

table, and before that, the sound barrier wall made of round, long, thin tree trunks stacked and fastened

together, which still makes me feel unsteady when I try to climb it. To the left is the playground with its sand

and metal climbing frames, lively in the afternoon, then a right, then a left, then another right, watch out for

the street, here’s a phone booth - or did that come later - then a hundred meters more, and you reach the

schoolyard. It’s still dark.

Where does one feel drawn to when standing on the sixth floor? Out on the balcony, of course, because thoughts can’t be trusted when you don’t feel the wind on your forehead.