Orphaned furniture

I think it’s time for a short digression from my novel. Although it’s not really a digression, because I think the story I’m going to tell you in this post ties in with one of the questions that will come up in the novel - what happens to things that get left behind?

On Friday it was my birthday and for various reasons, I received an old wooden sideboard as a present from Frau T***, somebody I had never met, who died recently aged 102. In 1910 when she was born, Germany still had an Emperor and when I went to collect the sideboard, I found her flat was littered with objects from throughout those years, left behind like flotsam and jetsam.

It’s an enormous flat and it felt melancholy with nobody living there to take care of it. At the moment it’s chaotic as it has to be made ready for new tenants. There are removal boxes everywhere and large rubbish bins waiting to be filled with the paper contents from rows of ancient files. The old wardrobes only have empty clothes hangers inside which fall down when you open the doors. The pictures have been removed and stacked in the corner, leaving dark squares behind them on the wall where the sun wasn’t able to bleach the wallpaper over the years. And I kept asking myself questions about the things that I saw: why was there a bed made up in the kitchen? What was special about this postcard on the floor from 1970? Who were these people in the photos? Did she ever use the little 50s slide projector which looked like a tiny television and what did she look at? But of course, I’ll never know the answers.

Each room had various bits of furniture standing around, looking uncomfortable and forlorn like guests at a party which isn’t going very well. The battered old rubbishy bits that nobody would want looked resigned to being taken to the rubbish dump while the more respectable pieces that might find a home just seemed depressed. I felt guilty about rejecting a huge orange painted wardrobe that I had previously discussed taking. But I could see it was just too large to get down the stairs in one piece. I had to leave it to its fate.

Finally I found the wooden sideboard itself. It’s a beautiful thing, with a two-door cupboard, two drawers and a glass case that goes on top. It’s probably at least 80 years old, and I’m sure Frau T*** loved it dearly. It could have been part of a wedding present because there was a table and a wardrobe to match. It was dusty, but you could see it had been well polished over many years and in the glass case she probably kept her best china tea service. It stood in the dining room and one of the drawers had a green baize lining for her silver knives and forks while the other drawer had odd things that you might expect in a dining room, like a wine bottle stopper and a single paper napkin with Christmas decorations.

I read once of a scientist who believed that the ancient vases made by the Greeks might have picked up the voices and sounds made by the potters as they were being spun on the wheel, just like a vinyl record. He wanted to design a machine to see if he could recover these sounds. I never heard if he succeeded but I guess not because that would have been a sensational news story. I also think that if he had succeeded, the conversations would probably have been along the lines of “Archios, haven’t you finished that pot yet? We’re supposed to have them ready for Friday!” “Look just get off my back, man! I’m spinning as fast as I can!”

But wouldn’t it be amazing if somehow you could find out what this sideboard had seen and heard through all those meals, all those years, all those family parties, all those Christmases? I would love to be able to watch and hear those ordinary people from those extraordinary years. What did they say about the big things going on around them, like the World Wars, the Wall Street crash and so on? Probably nothing more exciting than “Edeltraud, have you finished polishing the silver yet? I want some dinner!” “Look just help yourself to a herring, there’s one in the kitchen!”, but I would settle for that.



Sideboard with accessorizing pug



Anyway, I fell in love with this poor orphaned sideboard immediately. As gently as possible I carried it away with my helpers to its new home, saying a sad goodbye to all the other orphaned pieces we left behind. And this is what happens when somebody dies. There is a small reshuffle of the universe and all the things that surrounded the individual that has gone, fall into the void that is suddenly created and land somewhere completely different.

So, although she never knew me, I want to thank Frau T*** for her birthday present. And I promise her, we shall love her sideboard as much as she could possibly wish it to be loved.