My Life with Kangaroos: A Deaf Woman's Remarkable Story

4. Thwarted Courtship

40 4 Thwarted Courtship AT SIXTEEN, my intensive reading of work that was written in simple, comprehensible German awakened in me a burning desire to write. Indeed, one could almost speak of a “rage to write.” I was so overwhelmed with this desire that I didn’t really grasp the fact that my ability to express myself was rather inadequate. I could draw upon only a relatively small treasury of words and expressions, so I went off to buy a fat notebook and began with enormous gusto to write my “principal opus,” namely, “My Life with the Kangaroo, 1950–51.” The first chapter began with these words: “I was a happygo -lucky, deaf, young country girl of eleven.” I almost filled this notebook, and yet all the people that read it—my parents, Auntie, the Pfadis, and other friends—hardly knew what to say about it, apart from making jokes. A few years later, when I came to realize what rubbish I had put on paper, I got rid of the notebook, and it almost passed into oblivion. But it turned up again later and quite by accident as I was busy clearing out my library. I felt so embarrassed at finding it once more that I hardly dared turn its pages. I simply couldn’t understand how my experiences and impressions at home, at school, and at the Girl Guides, as well as my experiences with the Jewish religion, my dreams, and my observations at the zoo could all be impossibly mixed up with 9781563685590_My Life with Kangaroos.indd 40 4/8/13 11:04 AM Thwarted Courtship 41 all kinds of weird kangaroo sayings. The “diagnosis” was clear: Here was someone who was suffering severely from kangaroo fever! The Struggle against Pressure ONE day on a walk with my family, my father, who happened to be in especially good spirits that day, asked me just how long this “kangaroo love” was going to last. A little suspicious of his tone, I answered him in the same terms. He then went on to make me fully acquainted with the Chinese belief that such an unalterable relationship would likely outshine death itself and go on into eternity. I felt that he was right. To this day, pictures of kangaroos pursue me day and night. Should I chance to be wandering in the countryside as an artist, I often find myself so engrossed in my own private fantasy world that I am overcome with the desire to let my imagination run away with me after the manner of a Marc Chagall painting, for example; kangaroos and donkeys in heaven, lions in a snow-covered garden, and many other freely envisaged forms float before my inner eye. If I note the aroma of, say, the woods around me or of the meadows beyond, especially if these are combined with leaves of fox red from last autumn, then the smell of the kangaroo rises up in me and into my nose, producing a feeling akin to a current of electricity shooting through my body. I have found that an aromatic mixture of fresh leaves and humus evokes these strange sensations. I ALWAYS found myself in a state of desperation when either my parents or my friends tried to destroy my private feelings for the kangaroo or divert my attention to other topics. How could I go through life without these animals? To discard these feelings would be to remove an important element in me, and I would lose my inner balance . And so it was that I fell into ever more frequent psychological turbulence according to whether my fellow human beings showed understanding for my affection for these animals or opposed it. 9781563685590_My Life with Kangaroos.indd 41 4/8/13 11:04 AM 42 MY LIFE WITH KANGAROOS I needed to strengthen my sense of self-esteem in order to free myself from this all-too-powerful outside influence. Accordingly, and despite all external hindrances, I spoke quite frankly about my needs and about the things that moved me. I could do this best and in the most relaxed way during chats with my mother just before I went to sleep. However, sometimes even these conversations were unsatisfactory. On one of these evenings my mother tried to instill a greater sense of responsibility in me by citing my friends, some of whom were also deaf. She said that they had...