Higher Ground by Anke Stelling (ap literature book list .txt) 📕

He hates hymns.

He doesn’t like singing, but he can play the piano: he would have had an answer to Ulf’s grandma’s question. Sven was talented, ambitious, received a scholarship and piano lessons.

But he wouldn’t have told Grandma that he played the piano.

Sven stopped showing his talent very early on; at some point, he kept it to himself instead of peddling it. Tried to avoid using it to open doors at any cost.

‘So, you get your foot in the door, and then what? You smell all the nice smells, and the light’s so inviting, and you hear laughter — but the gap doesn’t get any wider, your foot starts to hurt and goes numb. Eventually your blood circulation is cut off and you faint, and have to be carted off.’

Much earlier than I did, Sven realised that he didn’t fit in.

‘I’m different,’ he thought, looking in the mirror. ‘Totally different from the way people are supposed to be.’

That’s how he described it to me — unwillingly, because I was determined to find out how he managed not to be afraid of the dark, mustiness, and silence on this side of the door.

‘Of course I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Very afraid. But I know it’s normal. You can’t change it. You just have to put up with it — the dark and the mustiness.’

And that’s why I don’t have the guts to tell him how lonely I am. It doesn’t even stop when we’re having sex, and so I stop having sex, and death promptly turns up.

‘Everything okay?’ Sven asks.

I don’t have the heart to answer him. It’s okay, I’m fine, everything’s fine, the dark is fine, and I don’t live alone; I have him and four healthy children. We are a long way from living under a bridge — that’s rubbish, that’s a huge exaggeration. What would real poor or homeless people say? War refugees? AIDS orphans? What we give our children is worth its weight in gold, and anyway, I freely sacrificed all my chances to move up in the world. Who said we deserved to live in the city centre? If I’d wanted it that badly, I should have earned it.

I can’t talk to him about how angry I am at my old friends. Because he just thinks they’re all twats. And he thinks I’m a twat for getting angry.

And I wanted to stop saying ‘twat.’

Why actually?

So that I am correct at all times, and can’t be a target. I only have the right to complain about what’s wrong if I do everything right.

Too late.

Speaking of AIDS orphans.

That’s why I had children: to use them to hide behind and send them on ahead. Not only to send them to open the door when the bailiffs come, but also to go begging when there’s no door left to open. Kids are ten times better at begging than adults because they evoke much more compassion. Kids are normally cut more slack than adults, even when it comes to AIDS — the number one ‘O-U-T spells out’, ‘only yourself to blame’ fate. Because unlike their no-good, promiscuous parents, it’s probably not the kids’ fault.

Speaking of only having yourself to blame for your fate.

Isn’t that a paradox?

Sven says: ‘Good night, then.’

And me? I lie awake and wonder how it was with Werner. Who Werner was. There’s no one to ask. Marianne is dead, and Raimund will squirm his way out of it.

‘Hey, Dad. Who was that Werner guy?’

‘Which Werner?’

‘You know, Werner! The coward who didn’t want to marry Mum.’

‘No idea. The only son of the esteemed Reverend Eidinger.’

‘And what did he look like?’

Raimund looks into the distance. Makes a face that tells me there’s no point in going down this path.

‘Like Jean-Paul Belmondo.’ He grins. ‘No, more like Jean-Louis Trintignant.’

I imagine Werner to have been like Ulf’s father. Trapped in the never-ending expectations of his own father, who didn’t let his son become an actor. An actor? Why not just go straight to being a hairdresser?

Ulf’s father boasted that he didn’t wear a tie. ‘The only tieless lawyer south of the River Main!’ On the carved colonial tray next to his desk, there was always a bottle of whiskey. When he was drunk, he liked to recite Handke.

I know he told Ulf that he should try other girls besides me, and I didn’t hold it against him, seeing as he was trapped and obviously unhappy with his life. No wonder he wanted to ruin what others had. In any case, he needn’t have gone to the trouble. Ulf had already ‘tried’ other girls — we were Jules et Jim, after all, and did all those things that Ulf’s father watched on late-night TV.

Werner took photos of Marianne. They’re stuck at the back of her photo album — her only one — which starts with her parents’ wedding photos and has about twenty pictures from her childhood. Then comes a group photo from her trainee days, then Werner — not him, just his portraits of Marianne. She’s looking over her shoulder, which brings out her jawline, her small ears, and her cropped hair.

Pictures that were taken in the south of France, the landscape in light grey, white houses on dry hills, Marianne in front of a bar on the route nationale in the style of the period with a neck scarf, and a cigarette between her lips. That must have been shortly before it was over — or did they go there more than once? Did Werner give her the photos even though they had split up?

He had a camera and a car: two machines that made him the main character in his own life. Marianne must have been easy prey.

September 1963 (let’s say).

Marianne left school and decided to train as a bookseller. The alternatives were the post office, home economics, or household care, and Marianne thought bookselling was the most glamorous, picturing herself among dark-wood, ceiling-high bookshelves in a shop where all kinds of people would stop by, especially