"Quick, below deck!" My husband pulls me along. "There's the poisonous bone from diagonally opposite that's been lying here since yesterday. It's coming, it's coming!" Panic is written all over his face. I don't understand anything. "Why poison bones? The man is very nice and has..." "Shut up! I want him to think we're not here."
We crawl into the saloon like two frightened dogs, and there's a knock on the bathing platform. "No-one home?" Willi calls cheerfully. He arrived yesterday with his Twinkieler and then came straight to us. "Hello too. I wonder if you can lend me a hot water boiler? Mine's going crazy, I don't want to get a knock." "Actually, we need it ourselves," I replied politely. "You can cook with gas," he said. "Or use mine for so long," was the reply. And I said "Okay", too.
"That's not true. I don't believe it," said my husband when he came back from the DIY store. "You now have the deadly kettle and he has our intact one!" "It's only for a short time. He was so nice." Yes, that's always my problem.
More from Steffi von Wolff:
They're everywhere, the borrowers, the "Have you got it?". They ask for help, borrow things and then you have to chase after everything or do things you don't want to do. "Whoo-hoo, I see you, you must have been hiding, haha!" shouts Willi. "Can someone give me a lift into town? I don't have a car here and I need provisions." My husband is now embarrassed by the situation. "Of course." He goes upstairs. "No problem."
"Can you learn to say no?"
As soon as the two have left, one of the noisy crew of men stands there. "Hellou," says the man, brushing his hair back with one hand and grinning a bleached smile. "Can I borrow a corkscrew?" Of course I lend him ours and he trolls off, a short time later I want to open a bottle of wine and need a corkscrew.
My husband comes back. "What are you doing?" I'm in the process of prising the cork out of the bottle with a knife and don't dare tell him that the corkscrew is staying with the men's crew for a while. A second later, the cork shoots into the bottle and red wine splashes onto the cushions. I close my eyes while he gasps. My husband, then. "Hellou," it comes back, and Mr Bleaching is standing there. "The corkscrew is unfortunately broken, not good quality if you ask me, you've really cut corners." My husband realises and stares at me like an anaconda at a cornered capybara. My husband is furious and I can understand him.
"Can you learn to say no? Is it that hard? And take a look at the upholstery." "You didn't say no when you were supposed to drive this Willi into town," I justify myself. "That's something completely different. We're talking about a staple food that's difficult for us to consume."
Why are you arguing?" Hanno stands there. "You don't argue in such nice weather." We explain the situation to him. "Oh, I've been there, I'm a bit of a twat myself." He comes on board and sits down. "People want something all the time. Whether it's salted almonds or a 16mm spanner or wine or whatever. Speaking of which, I see the good red I like so much." I get Hanno a glass, and Berti is already standing there, sees us sitting and joins us, which his wife Elsa sees, who also rushes over; you could miss something.
When the EC card floats in the Baltic Sea
I provide the neighbours with red wine and snacks. "Can you still remember that one guy, I think he came from Munich and had chartered a boat, the one with the cap that said 'Ich belle nicht, ich bin ein Seehund'?" asks Berti. "Oh yes, he wanted to borrow your cordless screwdriver." My husband remembers. "He got it too. Then he didn't come back and we wanted to leave the next day. So I went, got the thing, tried it out on the boat, nothing worked."
"Tell me about the woman we were lying next to on jetty C," my husband demands. "Oh, her. She borrowed money from me, allegedly because her debit card was floating somewhere in the Baltic Sea," I tell him readily. "No, no." My husband waves both arms. "You have to tell it differently. The way she was standing there and everything..."
My goodness. "She was just desperate, standing there shouting, 'Please, please give me money, I don't know how I'm going to survive the weekend without cash, and the cards are all gone'."
"She was there alone," my husband explains. "Without her husband." "Of course I gave her money. I even went to the ATM with her. I withdrew 2,000 crowns." I take a sip of wine.
"So?" comes out of everyone's mouth. "We waited two weeks, then I had the audacity to ask: 'Er, hello, I'm still getting money from you. I was red-faced, of course, she was very cool." "And?" "Well, she looked at me and said: 'Money? You want money back?' Then, scornfully: 'You must need it."
You don't get thanked for helping
"Something like that," everyone agrees. "Of course you have to help each other on the jetty," says Elsa. "But too much is too much. Someone once borrowed a winch handle from me because all of his were broken or whatever. Well, it fell into the water." Of course, everyone said: "So?" "'It happens'," he said. 'But it's too cold to dive now, you can do it in the summer."
My husband is beside himself. "I would have given it to him! I'm really pumped! Do you remember that Kurt who was lying here for a week? The one with the parrot?" "Yes, of course." Everyone remembers the chappy who lived off smoking a pipe and sang shanties until our ears fell off. "He pulled me into his mast because he was afraid of heights and I was supposed to repair the clicker and then the bosun's chair broke."
"That was terrible. You could have died," says Elsa breathlessly. "I can still hear you screaming today." "Anyway, he wanted me to buy him a new one," my husband says angrily. "When I told him he could lie down hacked, he set the parrot on me. Anyone who has ever been bitten by a macaw's sharp beak knows what I'm talking about."
"Actually, you shouldn't help at all, you don't get thanked for it," says Hanno. "Ha!" says my husband. "I haven't even told you that yet. The other day we towed a small motorboat belonging to a couple, the engine was broken. We really wanted to be in the harbour in time for the quarter-finals, the European Championship, that's all I have to say. So we set off towards the harbour, the two of them lying in their cockpit and sunbathing. Then we got there and off we went. Yes, they couldn't dock on their own, we should help, oh dear, no, not this place, another one, and the football match had started, I was freaking out. I would have loved to drive away. Then they finally got stuck. Do you think they said thank you? Nothing, nothing. But the next day they saw that we were going into town, so they arrived and asked if we could take their returnable bottles."
Making a no pact
"No!" Hanno almost shouts, "Yes!" My husband is already blushing. This story is still getting to him. "Please tell me you didn't take them." Berti looks at him expectantly. "Yes, we did. We thought the proceeds from the pledge would be some kind of thanks. But when we came back, they wanted the money. He had worked it out exactly." General indignation spreads.
"I'm just glad that it's not just me," says Hanno. "I think we should give it a try. Namely to say no. No matter what. Just say no."
"But if someone is bleeding or drowning?" I want to know. Hanno rolls his eyes. "That's something completely different. No, I mean with everyday things: A cordless screwdriver, an egg, bread, Nutella, a winch handle, sun cream, that sort of thing. What do you think?"
"We'll do it," we agree. "They'll all be surprised," says my husband angrily. "I'm in." We wallow in the new feeling of no longer being taken advantage of and open another bottle of wine with the knife.
"If someone comes and needs help with the lines, nope!" shouts Berti, and everyone hoots and shouts: "No, no, no!"
"Haaaalloooooooo!" we hear a woman's voice. A boat is pulling into the pit opposite. An angelic blonde woman stands in front, her eyes wide with fear, trembling. "I can't do this, can someone help me with the lines?"
It takes three, no, two seconds for all the men to jump from the ship onto the jetty. "Of course!" they shout in chorus. "Help is a matter of course."
I then continued drinking alone with Elsa.
