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

‘That’s exactly what I did! I. Didn’t. Think. It. Was. Enough!’

And so on, and so on, until one of us gives in or starts a fist fight.

Frank raised his fists. He saw my story as a declaration of war and threw everything he had at me.

For the record, after my book was published, I was so shocked when I found out who felt humiliated and who felt insulted that I thought I’d have to stop being a writer. I hadn’t meant to hurt anybody, but then it occurred to me that I hadn’t expected Ingmar to stop being a doctor.

No matter what you do, it’s wrong. Power gives you responsibility, and if I stop doing what I do now, it’ll be my fault for not having done anything.

People who want to avoid this dilemma have to die. I mean, withdraw from life. And definitely not have children, even though children are a reason to ignore the dilemma and keep going to the best of your ability and conscience. Somehow. By doing the opposite of what your parents did, or by telling stories to help you understand how the world works. Either because of or despite these stories, I had you all vaccinated. And who did it? Ingmar, of course.

Idea for a TV film: the main character, Resi — a writer who has withdrawn from professional life because she’s afraid of abusing her power, using the wrong words or being narrow-minded (and who now devotes all her time to her family and their best interests) has her toddler vaccinated by Dr Ingmar; the child suffers brain damage and falls into a coma.

The worst part is that Resi was against any kind of vaccination to begin with — Too risky! Just more profits for the pharmaceutical industry! — but let herself by persuaded by Dr Ingmar.

Resi didn’t want to be lumped together with anti-vaxxers who are just stay-at-home mums with nothing better to do than look after sick kids.

She sues Dr Ingmar but loses, because she signed a form listing the possible risks and side effects, and she only has herself to blame.

I’m a writer. I just do what I think is right. (And what was it again? To vaccinate? Or not? Talk? Or shut my mouth? To act or do nothing, reject or endorse, do things the same way or entirely differently?) And anyway, my children have chosen me, and they’ll have to stick with me through thick or thin, because they know me and care for me.

Whoops. No. That’s exactly what I expected of my old friends.

A message to all my old friends: you won’t like this. ‘This is where we part ways,’ as Vera wrote in her break-up email to me. I think it’s sentimental and twee, but on the other hand, I imagine that’s exactly why you all like it. And you’re bound to believe it’s better than anything I have come up with, so please stick it up your arses.

Bea hates it when I swear. She’s my eldest, but still just about young enough to love me anyway. To want to see and somehow understand me, in other words.

She has no choice; she’s still dependent on me.

Is it violent to address my text to her?

Maybe. But I also had her vaccinated. She could have died.

Only yourself to blame

Bea was born on a cold morning in Leipzig, over fourteen years ago. I could grumble and call it ‘one of those winters’ as if I were looking back on the old days.

Back then, the winters were still winters, and people heated with coal brought by rattling diesel trucks, which was lugged down into the damp brick cellars by men with soot-covered faces wearing aprons. Can you imagine that, Bea?

No. Fourteen years is a long time for you — your whole life. For me, it’s short, because I can remember exactly how our cellar smelled, and how I stole a second coal bucket from our neighbour’s cellar towards the end of my pregnancy so I could balance the weight of the coal evenly. I had one half-full bucket in my left hand, another in my right, and you in my belly in the middle. It was minus 15 degrees outside, and the pavements were covered with thick ice.

It wasn’t the old days; it was the Noughties, the start of a new millennium, with mobile phones and cyberspace, geothermal underfloor heating, and cellars made of reinforced concrete. But where we lived, everything still looked like it had done in the past, and that meant low earners like Sven and me could afford to rent a flat there.

I could have given birth to Bea in a modern hospital, but a midwife with an ear trumpet came to our house instead. Because we wanted it that way. You can’t leave matters of life and death to machines, or to people who have turned themselves into extensions of machines. That was crossing a line, Bea, we thought. Bea, are you listening?

The midwife held the ear trumpet to my belly and searched for your heartbeat. With her hands, she felt your position, and said everything was fine — you were lying the right way around and would come out easily — and she was right.

Sven had a decent fire going. Twice as many briquettes in the coal stove as usual.

Sven cut your umbilical cord, Bea, you hear me? That’s important. There were three of us present at your birth: the midwife, Sven, and me. And although you were born using methods from the olden days, the whole thing still cost a whopping 300 euros in surcharges. Whereas if you’d been born in the hospital, using all sorts of hi-tech equipment and with five doctors present, it would have been covered by our health insurance.

You only have yourself to blame, you might say, but that’s not true. Some decisions take you down one path, and others another; I want you to know that. What’s covered and not covered, what’s paid for and isn’t, is