Kommunionsgeschenk - Geschichten_en_v3

Communion Gift

When I was a young boy there weren’t many children in our small village, so I often ended up playing with one of the neighborhood girls. Being a year older than me, and more sophisticated, as well as being a girl, she often managed to get things blamed on me which were really of her doing.

One day, while wandering around in the village, we found ourselves at the home of our new neighbors who had just bought the Ostermaier farm. Not having yet settled into the neighborhood, and probably wanting to ingratiate themselves, they asked us if we would deliver a Communion gift to my older brother who, just a few days earlier, had celebrated his First Communion. We agreed, with pleasure.

The walk home took us by our secret hiding place near the pond behind the Meser farm. As we were in no hurry, we started to think about what else we might do that afternoon. Well we might not have, because my companion suggested that the gift we were carrying to my brother might contain something delicious, and urged me to open it. As much as I protested, she pleaded and demanded. As usual, she won and I gave in. The package was opened.

Yes, it did contain something sweet: chocolate, which was immediately, and pleasurably, consumed. But it also contained another small package. Our curiosity got the best of us, and we opened it to find a pair of beautiful cufflinks. So what to do now? My devious playmate suggested that we throw them in the pond and not mention the gift to my brother. I objected, since the new neighbors might well ask my brother if he liked the gift. She finally accepted my argument and I, for a change, came out on top. We carefully rewrapped the cuff links. Later that day, the Communion gift, minus the chocolate, was duly, and somewhat sheepishly, delivered to my brother.
  
We thought we had gotten away with it, but not so. I’m not sure how our secret was discovered; perhaps the package was not rewrapped very well. As usual, I got blamed for the opened gift and the missing chocolate. I tried to explain that I had objected to the whole scheme, that it was I who saved the cuff links, and that if she had had her way they would have ended up in the pond. But no one believed me; she won again, and I’ve had to listen to this story for a very long time.


Written down on Oct. 12, 2012 by Johann Wiesheu (*1965), Munich.
Translation by Johann Wiesheu and Richard Kramer

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