The Residents of Old Life

Yesterday I visisted my grandparents.

They were telling me stories of people who lived in their building in POB. Some of them I've heard many times before but I never tire of hearing about POBian life before the 21st century.

The building my grandparents lived in was populated with artists. Musicians, actors, composers, painters, you name it. Before my grandma and grandpa got their apartment, they had to be interviewed to make sure they were the right calibre of people. My grandma said they had to show references from their managers. When they saw that both of my grandparents were engineers, they let them in.

I lived in that apartment until my brother was born and I visited many times after that. I still remember the pianist above us who would play late into the night, not letting me sleep. My grandparents said this pianist wasn't the only one who disturbed the quiet. In a different part of the building, there was a theatre actor who hosted parties after the plays, which would always run late into the night. People complained. The landlady was quite strict so usually people who didn't consider the comfort of others were dealt with.

I never liked this lady because she told off me and Ivan for building a cubby house in the bushes at the back of the house. She also told us off for annoying a group of girls who also played in front of the house. We never bothered those girls but they felt that we were using 'their space' (which was why we decided to move our play area to the bushes behind the house in the first place).

When my grandma said that there never was much trouble, my grandpa reminded her of the orgy that some girls had in their apartment with police evicting them and blood stains left on the walls.

I also remember when a very rich family moved in on the first floor. The girl was driven to school (5 minutes away) in a black limousine and guards never left her side. I saw the father from my grandparents' fifth floor kitchen window but don't remember the mother. I think the father was a diplomat.

These were just some of the people who coloured the landscape of that building's life in the late 80s. There was also a doctor who gave us check-ups when we were little and with whose kids we played, the ordinary piano teacher who introduced me to the conservatism of a music school, the old friendly high school Art teacher who got sick and died and a myriad of other people that will always be fragments in my memory.