The magic of objects

Idols, totems and proof of life

On the shelves where the hifi lived – amplifier with built-in radio, record player with wooden casing and perspex lid, the tape machine for which the tapes were as big as dinner plates – is where the reference works lived. They were mostly yellow or white or brown, except for the parenting books like Mutter und Kind and Dr Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care, whose dust jackets were pink and blue.

There were neat rows of Duden dictionaries and three big reference books that came in an alphabetical set. They were called Der Grosse Knaur.

‘Knaur’ is a harmless German surname, but it sounds a lot like the Afrikaans word ‘knor’, which means growl. The naughtiest boy in our street was eternally amused by Der Grosse Knaur. Among the children of Meara Road, my father had a life-long reputation as the scariest man, and after James saw the books, he rechristened my father Der Grosse Knor.

James is much older now than the Grosse Knor was when he used to go outside shouting and shaking his fist at noisy children. Der Grosse Knor* himself is dead.

Those Dudens though – and the big sea-shells where you could telephone in to hear the ocean thousands of kilometers away – the petrified puffer fish – the Babushka doll that hid several littler versions of herself inside her little wooden body – these objects of my family’s life: they still exist somewhere.

Moldering in landfill.

Vivid in photographs.

Fetishised in memory.

I have a factory-made white ceramic piggy bank. The pig has wings. Someone broke a wing and it was fixed with glue that has turned the colour of nicotine-stained fingers over the years. This injury is cleverly hidden in this photograph. I have such deep affection for this cheap pig. Without my affection, this object is nothing. It’s just another tchotchke that takes up space, that took resources from the earth to make and bring to my home, and which collects dust and old coins. And when I – who have made a treasure of the pig – die, the only meaning the pig ever had, will disappear. PICTURE: Karin Schimke