Schrippe

Miss Cassandra has been part of the family ever since I can remember. Actually, her name is not Cassandra. Her name is Cassopeia, and she was the victim of a crime at a young age. She was kidnapped. Uhrenopa Egon simply took her with him when he went to sea more than 60 years ago in the name of the GDR -Volksmarine.
As for his name, it came about because the children of the family always thought that as a great-grandpa he would own countless watches. Egon didn't need a timepiece.
He knew, in any situation, what the hour had struck. One look at the sky, and he was in the picture.
Cassandra's age increased with the number of rings she wore.
I remember that Cassandra, in the shade of the ancient trees in the garden, spent the summer evenings. She was frugal, not needing much to be happy. Now and then a tear dripped from her eye; her thoughts were surely in her Russian homeland. She spent the winter on the back burner in cooler climes.
Grandma used to say that when you went to the refrigerator, Cassandra saw everything. Cassandra was a tortoise and hibernated in the vegetable compartment of the old VEB refrigerator.
In the spring, Grandma would dig out her vinyl lace blanket from some western package and put it on the table in the porch.
Cassandra was fed plenty of food by the grandkids, some vegetables now and then, but by and large she got hay. That was what her digestive system was set up for.
That artificial tablecloth smell got into our noses when we had to give Cassandra "first aid". While eating, a stalk got stuck in her nostril and she was visibly impaired. The dilemma : she kept pulling her head back into her tank when we tried all sorts of tricks to remove the stalk.
So we took her warm, round tank, already showing scratches of her previous trips through life at the bottom, in our hands and put her on the table. She curiously pushed out her wrinkled, leathery legs, then her bald head. The small claws on her feet scratched the vinyl.
To entice her out, we put some lettuce and a cucumber slice on the blanket, along with herbaceous, very dry, home-harvested, well-seasoned hay. Whenever the hands got too close to her field of vision, she retreated them to her little house.
Turtles emit a barely perceptible scent, especially when stressed.
This resulting scent, to me, is Prada Iris. A little herbaceous, a little leathery, but always artificial in addition. We will certainly not be friends.
Cassandra, on the other hand, could not be tricked. Grandpa knew how to deal with ladies ;-) he turned Kassandra without much ado on the back, she stuck in her panic the head out and the stalk could be removed in a flash. Haunting over.
Cassandra was estimated by a vet to be over 70 years old based on the rings on her carapace.
Cassandra is still part of the family. A watchoma turtle.

Again, despite the silken stole, she shivered from a sleep that was not a deep sleep. Again she is caught up with her fears that someone might guess her origins.
The scent of violets on the table wafts through the parlor on this tepid night. During the day she is busy keeping the demons of her past at bay, sometimes with drinks like Pernod.
Anise, she says, nevertheless provides good breath.
Sometimes she gondolas by light rail to the city's hotspots, hoping to run into one of her exes, by chance, in the colonnades and catch a glimpse, albeit tear-veiled, of him. The fact that she has spent her entire budget on the purchase of the brand-name clothes necessary for this on the 6th of the month, she very successfully negates to herself. After all, bagged soups make you full, too.
At night, long after dusk has fallen, when quiet finally returns to the house of the early eighties, she slumbers on her wooden canapé in her two-room apartment.
The house she has lived in for years, where she has seen many neighbors come and also leave through her actions. For herself, moving out is impossible because she lacks the monetary means to do so or simply a suitable apartment that would be affordable. In Hamburg, even for solvent people, an almost hopeless undertaking.
The blue, constantly flickering light of the defective fluorescent tube of the factory building across the street disturbs the plan to lie down again. She nods off again at the table. Merely quickly closing the cold eyes that have seen so much and so little happiness in the process, so as not to have to deal with misery. There it is again. The dream. Actually, it's deja vu. She's wearing, as always, a scent of Jacques. Today, how appropriate, the blue hour. She imagines she knew this Jacques in person.
Blankenese, Elbchaussee.
A noble residential area, where it glows golden from room-high terrace doors. A place where the entrepreneur's wife fresh out of almond-flavored bath foam, holding her flowing blond hairdo together with ribbon, strolls through her generously laid-out borders of violets and irises. Jacques must have had that in his mind's eye, too. They know each other.
Across the river, the more working-class residential area.
She and her mother were lucky. Lucky, as a single mother, to have found a job as a governess with a well-to-do family near the Elbe. Mother toiled every day in the salons of the lordship, while the little girl had to spend the time as quiet as a mouse in the apartment. Sometimes mother came, served the child a meal of leftovers from the servants' kitchen.
One could say one lived in Blankenese.
When the girl entered school, she believed that a time of freedom was about to begin. The mother inculcated her to be something better and to always refer to the residential address of the gentlemen. In the cast-off clothes of the villa children, white lace socks and red patent-leather shoes, the child set off on the day of starting school. Alone, towards Ostender Strasse, this school was the safest to reach on foot.
Alone, not even that day did the mother get the day off.
I wonder if she had even asked the gentlemen
One could say, one lived in Blankenese.
She skipped out into the courtyard in her iris-blue pleated skirt, her blonde hair tied into monkey swings, up the steps of the back house where the servants' chambers were located.
She was petite for her six years. She looked around. To the left was the coal cellar, it stank of kitchen waste, full nappies and unwashed people. Her mother couldn't be blamed for that, it was taken care of. Always clean laundry, even if it was the discarded / patched clothes of the children of the employers. One lived in Blankenese, after all.In the assembly hall of the school the ceremony began. All the other children accompanied by their parents.She was referred to her teacher and when asked, she was told that she lived at the Elbchaussee and that her parents were busy. That was true-somehow. This construct ran through the girl's life. Always anxious to fulfill the high expectations of her mother. She, probably because of her own shortcomings, built her daughter up to be a grand dame, after all, if she were to have it better one day, if she were to find herself a well-to-do husband, they would both be well provided for.The girl withstood this pressure. Rejected advances of nice young gentlemen, it stood nevertheless to expect that still the prince on the white horse angaloppiert would come.
This prince never came. But, some came....recognized the hunger for attention and love, brought high quality perfumes like "L'Heure Bleue (Eau de Parfum) | Guerlain" , apparent preciousnesses from Doublé, to ensnare the now young woman. That they had long since been bound to another woman, had even married her and made her a mother, they concealed. She gave herself up.... And the gallants disappeared from the sheets towards the family fortress. A family she would never give up and never have. She knew her situation.Too loud, too energetic the mother who still lived within walking distance and also stirred unasked and unannounced, with the key in the door....in those moments she consoled herself with the expensive gifts of the adulterer.
She smelled so worldly, used perfectly the language of those to whom she wanted to belong. She didn't fit into their world.Too strained she tried to be someone she could never be . The shadows of her origins would not fade . No matter how hard she tried . It's sad.One lived in Blankenese.There were many of those toads she kissed , they just never went through the metarmorphosis to prince . Many an admirer took her along on business trips, furnished her and she gave the wealthy lady of the world, as she had so often observed with her alert childish eyes. In the hotel lobbies she saw as the catwalk of the world.
Woman could say one came from the Elbchaussee.
After all these disappointments, she recapitulates the stages of her life, always a different fragrance of Guerlain on her skin, and muses melancholically about the missed opportunities. "L'Heure Bleue (Eau de Parfum) | Guerlain" , the only fragrance that remains her favorite to this day.
Intriguing and vile she has become, she knows which buttons to push. She never fights with her sights open.
She lives in the lower town.
It's a crux. More and more people are realizing that she is not who she says she is.
She invents to those around her an heiress in the fine people's quarter and with whom she attends openings and cultural events.In order to claim the experience for herself, she studies and copies the experience reports of former colleagues and friends. Now she blows her cover. Her box number, under which she advertises in the name of her aunt, is identical to hers to every digit.She stands up, looks out the window.
What if she notices the heiress in the mirror?
She does not live in Blankenese.