Five Dials

Number 26 Berlin. London. And More.

Featuring

Jan Brandt 13 Berlin Is Truly The Worst Peter Stamm 15 New Fiction Judith Schalansky 29 No More Children Tilman Rammstedt 52 I Like To Party; I Like, I Like To Party

. . . Plus three essays on W.G. Sebald, Will Wiles’s gambling habits, Paul Maliszewski in Washington, short cuts through London, and the biggest palindrome you’ve seen, care of Demetri Martin. Plus more . . . Anthea Bell is a freelance translator from Laurence Howarth is a comedy writer who Clemens J. Setz was born in 1982 and lives in German and French, specializing in modern and has worked extensively in radio and television. Graz, Austria. He is a novelist, short-story writer classic fiction. She has won a number of transla- He wrote the sitcoms Safety Catch and Rigor Mortis and translator, and has received numerous prizes tion awards in the UK and the USA. for BBC Radio 4 and has created four radio series for his work. He has been shortlisted twice for Ross Benjamin is a prize-winning translator and toured the UK regularly with his double-act, the German Book Prize. of German-language literature. His translations Laurence and Gus. Arabella Spencer studied German & Phi- include works by Friedrich Hölderlin, Joseph Pedro Lenz is a Swiss slam poet, columnist and losophy at King’s College London and Literary Roth, Kevin Vennemann and Thomas Pletz- novelist. His novel The Goalie’s Me was originally Translation at UEA. She has lived in London, inger. He lives in Nyack, New York. written in Swiss dialect and has been translated Munich and Seville and has worked in the fashion Tom Bingham is an illustrator currently based into Standard German. It invites comparison with and banking industries, and as a freelance transla- in the north of England. He graduated from the oral tradition in the work of Irvine Welsh and tor. Manchester Metropolitan University in 2010. Roddy Doyle. Sally-Ann Spencer is a literary translator from Ulrich Blumenbach has translated authors Paul Maliszewski is the author of the fiction German into English and lives in Wellington, including Arthur Miller, Stephen Fry and Will collection Prayer and Parable. His collection of New Zealand. Self into German. His translation of David Fos- essays, Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, Peter Stamm was born in 1963 and now lives ter Wallace’s Infinite Jest won the Leipzig Book and Other Great Pretenders appeared in 2009. in Winterthur, Switzerland. His prize-winning Prize in 2010. Sophia Martineck, born 1981, is a Berlin- books have been translated into thirty-six lan- Jan Brandt was born in 1974 and has studied based illustrator, designer and comics artist. She guages. Seven Years was published by Granta in in Berlin, Cologne and London. His first novel, has worked for clients such as the New York Times 2012. Against the World, was shortlisted for the German and the Guardian. In June 2012 her first book Simon Urban studied German literature in Book Prize and will be published in English by Chicken, Porn, Brawls – Tales From A German Vil- Münster and creative writing at the prestigious Seagull books in 2014. lage was published by the Berlin-based publishing Deutsches Literaturinstitut in Leipzig. His short house Avant-Verlag. Based in Berlin since 1996, Katy Derbyshire is stories have won numerous prizes. His novel a London-born literary translator. She translates Demetri Martin has appeared on The Daily Plan D will be published in English by Harvill various contemporary German and Swiss authors Show and was the lead in the 2009 Ang Lee Film Secker. and blogs about German-language literature at Taking Woodstock. His book, This Is A Book, was Shaun Whiteside is a former chair of the love german books. published in 2011. Translator’s Association and translates from Ger- Paul Ewen is a New Zealander now living in Born in Derry in 1961, but resident in Scotland man, French, Italian and Dutch. London. He is the author of London Pub Reviews, since 1970, Donal McLaughlin is a freelance Juli Zeh is a German writer based in Branden- "a cross between Bladerunner and Coronation translator from German and also writes fiction. burg. Her novels published in English include Street". He features as both an author and a translator in Eagles and Angels, Dark Matter and The Method. Best European Fiction 2012 (Dalkey Archive). Sophie Elmhirst is a writer and editor at the Special guest editor and Germanic Liaison: New Statesman magazine. Thomas Pletzinger is the author a novel, Anna Kelly Funeral for a Dog, and a non-fiction book about Michael Hofmann is a poet and translator of Editor: Craig Taylor basketball, Gentlemen, We Are Living on the Edge. numerous authors including Joseph Roth, Hans Funeral for a Dog was published in English by Publisher: Simon Prosser Fallada, and Franz Kafka. W.W. Norton. Five Dials staffers:C hris Croissant, Noel Iain Galbraith is a widely published transla- Marion Poschmann has written various col- O’Regan, Marissa Chen, Sam Buchan- tor of German and Austrian poetry. lections of poetry and three novels. She has been Watts, Jamie Fewery, Ellie Smith, Marjana Gaponenko grew up in the Ukraine. awarded numerous prizes. Caroline Pretty, Jakob von Baeyer and When she was fourteen she wrote a poem in Ger- Emma Easy Tilman Rammstedt is a prize-winning author man as an exercise to learn vocabulary. Since then of short stories and novels. He lives in Berlin. Thanks to: Katy Derbyshire, Sharmaine she has since written numerous books of poetry Lovegrove, Nerys Hudson, Charlotte Ulrike Almut Sandig is a German writer of and two novels in German. Ryland, Elisabeth Pyroth, Gerhard short stories and poetry. She lives in Leipzig and Paul Greenleaf is an award winning fine-art Auinger, Kathrin Scheel, Petra Hardt, Berlin. photographer, a post-graduate of Central Saint Julia Ketterer, Doris Plöschberger, Martins College of Art & Design, currently Judith Schalansky is the author of An Atlas Judith Habermas, Anna Ridley, Molly working as part-time lecturer at the University of of Remote Islands. Her novel The Giraffe’s Neck will Murray be published in English by Bloomsbury in 2014. East London. He continues to work on the series Designed by Dean Allen ‘Correspondence’ and has just published two new Raoul Schrott is an Austrian poet, writer, Illustrations by Sophia Martineck artist books available from his website: paulgreen- literary critic and translator. This issue was made possible thanks to the leaf.co.uk Uwe Schütte studied German and English generous support of the Goethe-Institut Lon- Amanda Hopkinson is Visiting Professor in literature at Munich University before doing his don and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Literary Translation at Manchester University MA and PhD in German literature with W.G. Education, the Arts and Culture. and City University, London. She translates from Sebald at UEA. He is now Reader at Aston Uni- Spanish, Portuguese and French and writes books versity in Birmingham. on Latin American and European photography. Contents

5 Our Town (Will Wiles on gambling; Sophie Elmhirst on short cuts)

9 A List (Demetri Martin’s palindromes)

10 Our Washington Correspondent (Paul Maliszewski on memorials)

12 Five Dials Bureaucracy (Please answer these questions about your reading life)

13 In Berlin (Brandt, Stamm, Lenz, Sandig, Blumenbach, Urban, Poschmann, Schalansky, Bell, Hopkinson, Schütte, Schrott, Zeh, Gaponenko, Pletzinger and Rammstedt – on many things, including Berlin)

54 The Back Section (Paul Ewen on food; Laurence Howarth at midnight)

60 Bonus Track (A short story by Clemens J. Setz)

Letters from…

dubbing her mother of one of the Our Glorious Readers openings. Zsuzsi is living off-line at the moment, so she won’t have seen and other sources the tweet. We will relay the news to her verbally. (Zsuzsi’s orphans will also ‘More bears, please,’ writes Emmelia a recommendation and from the outset be excerpted in the January issue of Jackson of Calgary, Alberta, in response you’re like: Why are you even telling me Harper’s.) to our recent ‘B’ Issue. ‘Some magazines about Eat, Pray, Love? I’m all for sup- have yearly special issues. I think Five porting independent stores, but I need ‘I can usually print up Five Dials on a Dials should have a yearly bear issue, just some good recommendations next time work computer,’ writes Brad Hayden in to keep up with what’s happening in the I’m in one. Somebody tells a guy like New York, ‘but I used the colour printer world of bears.’ She was a fan, naturally, me to read Eat, Pray, Love and at first for the Cork issue and got busted, so of Amy Leach’s essay on pandas, as was I’m like the problem must be the god- thanks for that. The black and white Will Turner of London, who wrote: damn book store employee. But then I printer is about five feet away, so when I ‘Why would I ever in a million years care start thinking: what kind of signals am print up the issues I usually wander over about pandas? But it was a good essay in I sending out? What is it about me that right away and get them. Messing with that it was about pandas even though it makes people think Eat, Pray, Love?’ the colour printer wasn’t such a good was about more than pandas.’ He signed idea.’ off his email with: ‘Sorry, I’ve had a few. Our first short-story adoption initia- I’m typing this on my iPhone.’ tive has been going well. Contributor ‘Hi dude,’ read the friendly piece of Zsuzsi Gartner has received postcards spam we received in mid-October from I’m getting tired of bad book recom- from around the world offering up someone supposedly named Conrad Jef- mendations,’ writes Five Dials reader homes to her orphaned short-story feries. ‘How are your boobs?’ Jefferies Aaron MacDonald of Tucson, Arizona. openings. Writer Janina Matthewson will never know. It is Five Dials editorial ‘You know that feeling when you’re in excitedly tweeted on 1 November that policy to refrain from answering spam a book store and someone’s giving you she’d received in the post a certificate email. ◊

3 A Letter From The Editors beyond undergraduate reading-list ter- ritory and been introduced to plenty of contemporary German-language writers On Ewen and German playing with ideas, writing dark, brutal stories and using language like it’s poetry. But falling in love with a foreign lan- guage and its books is only half the story don’t have much to say to preface this ‘Some time soon afterwards, my oldest if you want to share those books and I issue, mostly because the heavy lifting sister started secondary school and would authors in your mother tongue too. was done by one of my co-editors, Anna come home every day full of new myster- ‘So this issue of Five Dials is a way of Kelly, who will take over this letter from ies. One of these was German. I stared at doing that, of sharing some German-lan- the editor in a few moments to explain her homework until she explained to me guage writers with our readers. As well as just why and how we got to Berlin. I that a ‘j’ was pronounced like a ‘y’ and the usual Five Dials standard fare, it fea- should add there will be an addendum that in German all things – tables, chairs, tures writing by thirteen German voices, to this already lengthy issue, which will houses – were either a ‘girl’, a ‘boy’ or translated into English to give readers a feature photos from our event in Berlin, a mysterious ‘other’, which she didn’t taste of some German-language writers as well as some of the pieces that couldn’t really explain. To my eight-year-old self, working today. We’ve wanted to do this fit into what looks to be the longestFive unversed in gender theory, this seemed issue for a while, just for fun, because Dials ever. You’ll notice we have a proper like the height of exoticism, its strange- Five Dials means that we can. Some issues back section and, following the lead of ness so exciting I couldn’t wait to make it are short and snappy; some are all about every single magazine in the UK, we my own. bears; others come out at 50 pages and have a column dedicated to food writing, ‘Later, much later, when I’d finally got proudly flaunt some of the best German- though Paul Ewen’s contribution perhaps enough German down me to get into uni- language voices you should be reading in does not fit the usual stereotype. (I doubt versity, I sat at a desk and felt something this young century. he’ll be asked to write about food ever strange happening when I read Rilke’s ‘But if part of its role is to flag up again, by anyone, anywhere, which is Duino Elegies for the very first time. It some writers working in German who I probably what makes the piece so good.) felt like I was flying, like I was getting feel might excite the average Five Dials I will also point out the firstFive Dials high. I read Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina reader, then it’s also important to point questionnaire. Find it, print it, fill it in, three times in a row, fascinated, disturbed, out that this is only a selection, a smat- and return to us at the 5D HQ on the reading in it something I couldn’t quite tering. If Anglophone readers are guilty Strand in London. We’ll give you a free understand but was instinctively drawn of fencing ourselves in from literature in book in return. That’s the deal. Now, to. I realized that there’s something about other languages then this issue is more here’s the story behind the issue. German poetry which is beautiful in a a couple of holes drilled in the fence way I can’t describe in English, something than it is an attempt to knock anything Anna writes: about its isches and swisches and klisches down. The issue can’t even nod towards ‘I always wanted to know the and klasches that makes it an ideal play- any sort of exhaustiveness, and there are secrets contained in other languages, but ground for onomatopoeia, but something hundreds of brilliant writers who would I think my motives were originally self- more, too, in the wide, bleak expanses of be included if the issue hadn’t already ish, megalomaniacal and excluding rather its vowel-sounds. I read The Confusions of reached the length of a substantial novel- than intellectually inspired. When I was Young Toerless and felt that Robert Musil la. Also, most of the authors in the issue at primary school, I was delighted when could see into my soul. I gorged on Kaf- happen to be German, with a couple of someone taught me Pig Latin (ichwhay ka, Schnitzler, Mann, Jelinek. notable exceptions from Switzerland orksway ikelay isthay, for the uninitiated). ‘It’s impossible to draw together all the and Austria, and there’s no doubt that In the playground at school that week I literature written together in one lan- there’s an argument that this is unrepre- incited my two loyal friends to share my guage and try to ascribe to it some sort of sentative of German-language literature excitement. From now on, I decreed, we unity, to say that German-language lit- as a whole. So in a way this issue feels would speak only Pig Latin to each other. erature is one thing or another. But some- more like a beginning than it does a fait We would share secrets and discuss boys thing about writing in German always accompli, and putting it together has without anyone having any idea! What’s excites me. I love the sentences, which reminded me of how much more there is more, we would fill in exercises in the somehow always seem like flat-pack out there. But then that just leaves more new-found ‘language’ in order to become boxes which you can unfold and build opportunities for the future.’ more proficient. I doled out notebooks and upwards, not like English and French proscribed sentences we would ‘translate’. sentences which are carpets rolling down In the meantime, enjoy the issue. You’ll ‘My two friends sensibly revolted and a staircase, always in one direction. I also find inside a dispatch from our Wash- informed me that this new game was deep- love the sounds, the rhythm, the subtle ington correspondent and one of the ly boring. I was forced to abandon my brief changes to the ends of words, which longest palindrome I’ve seen in years. It’s and brilliant career as a bilingual Pig Latin change entire meanings. in English, not German. speaker and go back to English full time. ‘Since leaving university I’ve ventured —Craig Taylor

4 Our Town

‘You think I don’t know London? I been here ten years now, and it ain’t have a part that I don’t know. When them English people tell strangers they don’t know where so and so is, I always know. From Pentonvilla right up to Musket Hill, all about by Claphand Common. I bet you can’t call a name in London that I don’t know where it is.’ Spoken by the character ‘Big City’ From The Lonely Londoners By Sam Selvon

Place: Brick Lane Date: November 2, 2012 Time: 10:44 pm

This issue’s itinerary: Sweet, sweet action; London’s Super Casino; rituals and codes; serious lone men; the Adelphi theatre; a web of barely visible pencil lines; Oliver Cromwell’s daughters

5 STRATFORD, E20 Will Wiles tries his luck at the Asper’s Casino in Westfield

ondon’s Super Casino’ say the ads on the bus stops nothing beyond, nothing below, and above the crystalline lumi- ‘Lthroughout the Olympic boroughs. A group frozen in joy naires only the dozens of small black domes that conceal security at a gaming table, mid-success, an ecstatic moment of enrich- cameras. ment, instantaneous, effortless. This is presumably how the Light also spurts from the gambling machines, along with local landlords feel right now, what with their mutually agreed an aggressive, discordant medley of their massed whistles and entitlement to sharp rent increases in honour of the XXXth catcalls, a sound as unwelcome as hey-baby street harassment to Olympiad. Sudden, unearned accumulation: how very tempting. some, a Pavlovian dinner bell to others. One or two of the latter But most of us can’t afford the £250-grand ante to be seated at sort were hunched over the machines, locked in solitary gratifi- the green baize table of the east London property market, and cation. But not many – all over, the casino was sparsely populat- can less afford entry to London’s Ultra Casino a mile to the west, ed. At some of the tables croupiers stood neat and idle, waiting. I sprouting its new spires in the haze. How else to get a taste of intended to play, to get the full experience, but this felt too soon, that sweet, sweet action? London’s Super Casino, say the ads – far too soon, so I headed to one of the two drinkeries at Asper’s, Asper’s – which occupies the top level of the Westfield Stratford the Sky Bar – so called, I assume, because it’s the only place you shopping centre. A slice of Las Vegas just a short bus ride away can see the actual sky, Sky Sports being common to both bars. in Newham. At Westfield, the discreet threshold of Asper’s – a The bar, perhaps thanks to the daylight, is extremely pleasant, glass-fronted lift lobby – is curiously tantalizing. There’s the with brown leather chairs and sofas and a terrace overlooking the slender chance of a workless payday, yes, but also a delicious Westfield, filled with the boxy wicker furniture associated with frisson of risk; the possibility that the realm beyond might some- expensive resort hotels. And it’s cheap, by London standards; how divest me of all self-control and efficiently pauperize me. another incentive to stay in the casino and stay gambling. Eng- Such a place would have to be exotic. I was tempted, then, by lish breakfast £5.25, Olympic breakfast £7.95, announces a the prospect of being tempted. promotional slideshow on one of the multiple flatscreens, along The expedition took place on Saturday afternoon. I was with plugs for the casino’s loyalty programme and the comfort- apprehensive. Was there a dress code? Would I have to sign up ing message that anyone with a gambling problem will find for some sort of membership? What if there was a cover charge help throughout the casino. Make up your mind, Asper’s, either or I had to buy a minimum quantity of chips or drinks to be repeat business is encouraged or it isn’t. The loyalty programme allowed to enter? Fearful of a humiliating encounter on the door, is called Aspire (geddit?), an appropriately New Labour touch. I dressed smartly – black jacket and trousers, shirt, wedding While I was drinking my inexpensive OJ, the gambling hall shoes, even a tie rolled up in the jacket pocket, just in case. A red had mysteriously filled up. I had decided to play blackjack, shirt, though, to project a mildly louche air. My preparations which struck me as an entertaining way of burning through seem ridiculous in retrospect. This was a super casino, a product my lavish £20 gambling budget. It had the right mix of tactics of curdled New Labour egalitarianism. Why should casino gam- and dumb chance. But the blackjack tables were full, as were bling be the preserve of the rich? It should be available to every- the poker tables, so roulette it was – the realm of purest dumb one! The then secretary of state for culture, media and sport (and chance. Still, a busier casino meant more opportunities for gambling) went as far as to say that she detected a ‘hint of snob- people-watching, which was immediately, splendidly reward- bery’ in the objections. Why, the super casinos were practically ing. The predominant style of dress was jeans and short-sleeved Bevanite! Let no man be turned away, tie or no tie. shirts, worn well – several groups of men seemed ready for a I was through without a glance, past the red rope, into the night out. Adding to the sense of a new pre-club ritual were a curious penumbra of the gambling hall. The light in casinos is couple of groups of glamorous young women. These younger carefully controlled. There’s no daylight, something learned groups all burned with energy, but in an interestingly mannered, from Las Vegas. Being aware of the passing of time, the shift- self-conscious way, as if on best behaviour. My jacket and shirt ing of the sun in the sky, day turning into night or night into put me in a minority, but a well-represented one; at the next dawn, can shake a gambler’s focus, and must therefore be avoided table was a man who could have been a partner in a small-town if at all possible. But there is no actual gloom in Asper’s. Its law firm, and beside him an intense man in a white football shirt colour scheme is more muted opulence than murk: chocolatey who appeared to steadily widen from the top of the neck down. hardwood browns and dirty bronzes and golds. Giant rings of But what particularly stood out was a remarkable racial diversity. chandelier crystal in the ceiling light the tables themselves, in the It’s rare to feel east London’s incredible, unique palimpsest of middle of an open-plan space with artfully hidden edges. The cultures in one place, but I could feel it at Asper’s. lifts you arrived in are concealed behind a partition. To work at Rituals and codes surround the obtaining and disposal of its best, the casino must become the gambler’s world. There is chips, and these ornate interactions must be part of the appeal of

6 the experience. Money has to be placed on the table, not passed side the inexpensive bar and the relaxed door policy, everything directly to the croupier, presumably so it remains under the Asper’s is extremely convenient and welcoming. It’s a world gaze of the panopticon ceiling. The note disappears into a slot, away from the shadowy West End citadels that have hitherto pushed down with a Perspex wedge. Unlucky chips are swept been London’s only option for casino gambling, with their bar- into another aperture, a circular metal-edged hole suggesting a riers to entry, of which their secretive mystique was the first and Tim Burton/Heath Robinson netherworld of chutes and pipes most formidable. The imagination conjures swarthy, laconic where chips are sorted and organized by specially bred chip- men in gold-rimmed sunglasses and debauched contessas with chimps. Then there’s the spin of the great wheel, ‘no more bets’, intelligence agencies on speed dial. Nothing so sinister here at the clatter and scatter of the small white ball, the whole famil- Westfield. Asper’s is sinister in a whole other fashion, in that it iar business. I bet modestly, positioning my smart grey chips takes the same mechanism for efficiently Dysoning up custom- randomly at first, then focusing on the number thirty-four, my ers’ money and makes it as accessible and matter-of-fact as a trip age. They all go down the memory hole – the little glass marker to John Lewis. I can’t help but feel the experience should be a bit indicating the winning number only once makes its way to my more terrifying. end of the table, let alone anywhere near my solitary chip. Next My senseless moment of wishing to continue gambling passes to me, two Bengali men about my age are betting heavily on the as quickly as it arrived. My final sense of the gambling hall is one number twenty, and the numbers around it, with heavy losses, of déjà vu. Serious lone men, barely talking, leaning over tables though they never seem disheartened. On the other side of me is positioning brightly coloured pieces . . . I’m fifteen again, war- an older man in a wrinkled suit and glasses. He does not bet, but gaming at Games Workshop on a Saturday afternoon. God only keeps up a running commentary: ‘Twenty is a hard number to knows how long that addiction had me in its grasp, sucking the come by in this casino. I don’t know why that is, but it is.’ money from my pockets, or how I finally beat it – but I’m not And then my chips are gone. I didn’t win once. Briefly, I’m going back. After a reasonably priced cup of coffee in that too- gripped by an urge to buy more chips. This is, of course, very pleasant bar, I flee, back into the Westfield crowds. ◊ easy to do, and ATMs are provided for my convenience. Along-

The Strand, WC2 Sophie Elmhirst takes the road less travelled

ou know you know London when you can nose your way, at the back of the Savoy entrance. So if you ever get stuck – say Yno-hands, mapless. You can trace its alleys; skirt the high Trafalgar Square’s rammed and you’ve committed yourself – streets; slice through a slow surge of pedestrians. You know you then you can bang down to the Embankment rather than sitting know London when you know its short cuts. with all that from Trafalgar Square. And you come out back of Here’s one, from a cabbie: the Savoy at the river entrance where the traffic lights are just under Waterloo Bridge and then you can go right or left. You Him: Say you’re going from east to west on the Strand and wouldn’t think to look at it: you wouldn’t have a clue. That’s you’re stuck at the Adelphi Theatre. There’s one left turn you got to be the one. I don’t usually tell people. If I’m going to use can come off, at John Adam Street . . . it, and they’re not paying attention, I never tell them, so I do it quickly, and all of a sudden they look around and they’re like . . . Me: Yeah. (elaborate expression of wonder)

Him: Right. You can’t get through, or people think you can’t get Me: It’s like Narnia! through, because that comes out at Villiers Street which is a one- way street, so if you tuck a left on to York Buildings . . . Him: Yeah! Exactly. They don’t realize how they got in there! They’re thinking: where are we? Me: Yeah? (mystified) ‘Follow the cabbie!’ my mother says when driving in London. If Him: . . . there’s a left turn before Buckingham Street, then imme- you’re stuck in a jam or they’ve closed a road, the cabbie in front diately left there’s a ramp goes down which looks closed, got a will swing down a side street, like a mugger on the run, till he headroom sign and everything and it’s a goods entrance, it’s not comes out just ahead of the clogged cars. a road even! My mother, a walker, a woman who knows the way round Wren city churches like they’re supermarket aisles, has her own Me: But you’re allowed to go through it? favourite short cut. You start from somewhere north of Bond Street, say the Wallace Collection on Manchester Square, and Him: Yeah, up until 11 o’clock. And it comes up under the Savoy you walk east, following a thread of passages and the odd cob-

7 bled mews, one never quite leading directly to another, all the Her: Guides are the worst people to talk to about short cuts way across, until you reach Tottenham Court Road. The route because we don’t take them (!!!). Because when you’re taking is parallel to Oxford Street, but is its antithesis, a tangle of alley- a tour you go up the most interesting little streets and down ways. Somehow, it’s almost impossible to plot the same course the alleys and down the back streets and so you end up taking a twice, as though the route resets after each journey, the city route that might not be the quickest one (!!!). So what I give you re-mapping its paths. ‘I can never find it again,’ my mother says, might not necessarily be the quickest way to walk but it would annoyed, but enchanted, like Lucy when the wardrobe goes back be the most interesting way to walk. (New rule of short cuts: don’t to being a wardrobe. trust the name.)

Who says you can’t do short cuts underground? Not me. Diane tells me a route from Russell Square to Temple which Quickest way from Camden Town to Piccadilly Circus? takes in the Foundling Museum, a plaque for the poet Hilda The innocent (the tourist) says, Northern Line to King’s Cross, Doolittle, an eighteenth-century burial ground in which one then change to the Piccadilly Line. of Oliver Cromwell’s daughters is buried, the house of Charles The short-cutter says, Northern Line to Euston (Bank branch Dickens, the black-and-white timbered Staple Inn, the Royal only) then whip across the platform through a small arch and on Courts of Justice and the church from The Da Vinci Code. to the Victoria Line southbound to Oxford Circus, then another shimmy across the platform through another small arch and Me: What got you walking? you’re on the Bakerloo Line southbound to Piccadilly Circus. It’s one to make the commuter’s heart swell, her feet tappy Her: It was in the early nineties, I was stuck in a rut, in a job I Imagine a map of didn’t enjoy. I thought London on which maybe being a guide every route that has was something that ever been walked was going to suit me. I is plotted. A thick haven’t really stopped stripe along Oxford discovering London Street, painted in since. I’m always adding gloopy oil to denote walks to my repertoire. the uncountable I’ve got about ninety dif- number of steps ferent walks now. trodden; a fat line tracing the Porto- Me: Wow. bello Road; another across the wobbly Her: London is very bridge, and along the surprising. You can be South Bank. But in on a busy road in what the midst of all these appears to be a rundown thoroughfares, there area surrounded by fried would be a web of chicken shops and then barely visible pencil you walk round the cor- lines, faint to indicate ner and you’re in a street rare patronage: the short cuts. The ones we use from day to day of Victorian villas or a lovely square. And also there’s the attrac- that map our lives in their quotidian particularity – from home tion that it changes a lot – in other cities I think there would to the station through the churchyard, from your sister’s to the come a point where I felt I knew everything there was to know. bus stop through the park. But London is forever changing, moving on. I like to think that no one knows my favourite short cut – One of those days, in the winter of 2010, when the snow had that it is one of those shadowy pencil lines – but I can’t believe fallen overnight and was thick on the ground by morning. We it’s true. Anyway, I exposed it last summer, showed it off like walked to Hampstead Heath on the gritted roads and came back a beaming parent, scampering excitedly one foot ahead of my by the short cut – a passage that steals from Woodsome Road companion the whole way (it goes through a passage called Star down through a tunnel, skirting some old cottages, all the way to Yard and a secret garden). But then sharing a short cut is a sweet Kentish Town. It’s a gentle slope, which had, on a freezing after- pleasure in itself: an invitation to someone to know a city the noon, morphed into an elongated, curving ice ramp. We slid our way you do, so that the faint line on the map of all our walks way home, a journey punctuated by those arse-lurching moments thickens and redraws. when your newborn legs give way beneath you, and your wheel- ing arms desperately reach for invisible handles, and you stare so Who would know the best short cuts? hard at your feet in tunnelled concentration that when you even- A guide, surely. A guide to secret walks in London. tually emerge on to Lady Somerset Road, you blink with surprise, This, from Diane, of secretlondonwalks.co.uk. like a mole who’s just burrowed its way into the light. ◊

8 A List Ah, we met a rebel god as animals. I won’t nod. I’ll act. Eyes open, I fall. Palindromes for Specific Occasions It’s we few, dim, all ill. I’m in a man-made reverie, babe. By Demetri Martin Now on one pole: Stella! Ever I wonder, Miss, as I tip (also ten, if stiff). Gently informing a DJ that there is a A poem about a lonely man in a strip club, It’s o so still. A creep’s eyes peer. problem with the sound system: who contemplates the age-old battle of the Call it so. No music is, um, on. sexes when he becomes infatuated with two So stiff, it’s fine to slap. It is ass. of the club’s dancers, Tina and Stella. As he A German bouncer at a gay S&M bar tell- watches the strippers, the bouncers watch I’m red now. ing an underage customer, who is stand- him. Soon he begins to lose control of him- I reveal, ‘Let’s elope!’ ing in line, that he cannot let him enter self, proposing marriage to Stella and fon- ‘No.’ the bar: dling two other dancers. At the same time, Now one babe I revere. Ya, get an ID, robust, subordinate gay. he starts to develop a gnawing sense of Damn! A man. self-awareness, discovering that he, like the I’m ill, ill amid we few still. A father trying to connect with his other men in the club, is as much a spectacle A fine pose yet call I don’t. estranged son by offering him some pizza: as the very strippers they are watching. Still, Now I slam in a sad ogle. Son, I’m odd. Domino’s? he cannot escape his own nature. And when ‘Berate me!’ he finally gets too intimate with one of ‘What?’ O, hoot. Ere? What for? The head baker at a bakery instructing a the ladies, she wallops him with her boobs, new employee about how to deal with turning his thoughts about the battle of the ‘It’s all,’ asserts madam, ‘ho tit.’ customers and then suddenly noticing sexes into physical reality. I hiss, ‘I’m no wolf in a chase.’ what the new baker has made: Yes, I rise. Yep. Snub no man. Nice cinnamon buns! Sexes. Eh, the sexes. O, no. Grey baby’s so basal. Never even. Still, it’s DNA. Ah, silk city baby, my, my. O boy, a sign! An American tourist angrily correcting Never awed, I spot a boob. I ride it, nuts open. On or off, I rip it. I peek. his cab driver after landing in Italy and O, wow! O, now two. Wow! OK. Ired, no? Yes, I’m a creep. discovering that the driver is taking him A still animal sits afoot: one vamp, a lap maven. I won’t. I pull up a tit. to the wrong city: O, timid loser, I sedate ye. ‘O God,’ I say, as I won’t. No. Rome, moron. Yes, live devil, as I tip it, it is. I slam, in all, a mist. I tip it. I peep it. A dialogue between a man and his young ‘Send a man a gross orgasm! I got an item, a totem. son. The man is trying to teach the boy I am, Ms, a crass, base dud.’ One model got a sign in raw ass. the name of a piece of fruit and the differ- Armpit. Ass. O, tits. A flap! Me! ence between singular and plural: Ah, supple holes made me dire. Ha, ho, hum. Mmm. O, so base. – Son, say a papaya. Lame fate got old, a most ogled omen. It’s a pro’s boob. – Papayas. O, did I tap a tit? A pat? I did. Did I tap a tit? A pat? I did. – No ‘s’. Boobs or pasties, a bosom . . . Mmm – One model got so mad. Uh oh – Lo, to get a female. A butler politely asking the young son of ‘Ahem, pal!’ ‘Ride me, damsel. his rich employer to go to the bathroom Fast, I toss a tip. O, help push a dude’s abs.’ as he gets him ready for bed: ‘Mr, ass?’: a warning. Emit debris, sir. Bedtime. I sat ogled. Sarcasm maims a gross organ, a mad nest. O, men! O, me, to tame Tina! I peep. I tip it. I sit. I tip. A comment said to a friend about the size of It is a live devil’s eye. his old jeans, after he’s lost a lot of weight. To gits I’m all animal. Yet a desire’s old. I’m it: one vamp, a lap Massive Levis, Sam. ‘Sit now,’ I say, as I do. maven. ‘Got it!’ A pull . . . up it now I peer . . . camise O, too fast I slam. A scientist’s reaction to what he finds in a yonder I keep. In all, it’s a K.O. Petri dish. I tip, I riff, or on one post untied, I ring. Wow! Ow. Two now. Ow. P.U.! Organisms in a group. I say, ‘O boy! My, my, baby. Ticklish?’ O, boob, a topside war. Alas, a bossy baby. Ergo, nope. Even and still it’s never even. A guy explaining to his friend how he Yes, I rise. Yes. Sexes. Eh, the sexes. feels about operas as he accidentally runs ‘Ah, can I flow on, Miss?’ I hit it. into a beehive. ‘Oh, madam!’ Stress all astir oft. See, bro, operas are poor – Bees! ‘Ah, we’re too hot.’

9 Our Washington Correspondent asked, ‘is Thomas Jefferson dead?’ The room was dark, and we were lying beside him, my wife on one side, me on Memorial the other. ‘Because,’ Hadley said, ‘he lived a long Paul Maliszewski finds answers to the big questions time ago.’ ‘But I miss him,’ Elliot said. lliot had questions about death. ‘But how come I never met her?’ ‘You can read about him,’ I said. It E‘Mommy,’ he said, ‘are ooo going to ‘Because she died before you were seemed insufficient, I knew. ‘He left a lot die?’ Elliot said ooo instead of you. He was born.’ of letters,’ I said. ‘You could read his let- three. Elliot thought about this. Time before ters, if you want, when you’re older.’ Hadley said she was going to die, even- he existed – that vast age which contained ‘Where’s Thomas Jefferson buried?’ tually, yes. ‘We all will,’ she said. Buster Keaton, dinosaurs and early loco- Elliot said. ‘Is Daddy going to die?’ motives, as well as a spotty assortment of My wife told him Monticello. ‘Yes,’ she said. historical figures – was difficult to grasp. ‘What’s Monticello?’ Elliot said. We tried, my wife and I, to present Elliot looked at pictures from our wed- ‘His house,’ she said. ‘In Virginia, Elliot with the truth. There was no point ding and asked where he was. ‘But I miss where he lived. He designed it.’ in being dishonest, or soft. The sideways Gran-gran,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to be lovely,’ I said. answers were the ones that haunted. ‘I know, sweetie. I miss her, too.’ ‘It is,’ Hadley said. ‘It is lovely. We can ‘Elliot,’ I said, ‘listen.’ He was making ‘But where can we get another one?’ go there some day, if you want.’ shapes with his fingers. Maybe he was ‘Another Gran-gran?’ Elliot said okay, and for a while he was listening, maybe he wasn’t. He liked to ‘Yeah.’ quiet. We tucked the blanket around him do the opposite of what we said. ‘We’re ‘We can’t get another one.’ and arranged his animals, his dog and his not going to die any time soon,’ I said. ‘Why can’t we buy a new one,’ he said, creature and his giraffe. ‘Okay? You don’t have to worry about ‘at the store?’ ‘But, Mommy,’ he said, ‘how did they that.’ ‘You just can’t,’ Hadley said. ‘You can’t bury Thomas Jefferson?’ He nodded and looked past me, over buy people at stores.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘they dug a hole first, my shoulder. and they put his body in a box, and then ‘All right,’ I said, like anything was set- One afternoon, after Elliot took a nap, we they put the box in the ground.’ tled. The talk of dying unnerved me, and drove to the Jefferson Memorial. Naps ‘But how did they fit him in a box?’ I felt my eyes tighten. were getting rare, and he had been want- Elliot said. ‘Did they cut him into little ing to go. We walked around the statue, pieces?’ Hadley and Elliot had been talking about looking at the words cut into the rock. ‘No,’ my wife said. ‘This was a big box, death for a while. It started one Sunday. Elliot knew his letters and a few words honey.’ They were on their way to the grocery to see them, words like his name and exit, ‘A wooden box,’ I said. ‘Big enough to store and passed by Arlington Cemetery. which he had learned from the signs. fit him.’ ‘Mommy,’ he asked, ‘what are those white ‘I want to see more,’ he said. Elliot thought about this. ‘But, Mom- things?’ ‘This is all there is,’ I told him. my,’ he said, ‘how did they get Thomas ‘Graves,’ she said. ‘But I want to see …’ He paused, think- Jefferson down into the hole?’ He pointed ‘What are graves?’ ing. ‘Inside,’ he said at last. Like there was at himself, at his blankets, as if he were She told him they were markers for some treasure being kept from him. the earth, the ground, the hole they had people who had died. ‘This is it,’ I said. ‘It’s just, you know, dug. He didn’t understand, but he kept architecture. And this big statue.’ I ‘There’s men, sweetie, several men. pressing, and she kept answering. Pretty pointed. They carried the box, and then they much every Sunday was like that. The Elliot turned away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’ lowered it into the hole. They worked questions became just another part of his ‘It’s a memorial, sweetie.’ Hadley held together.’ routine, like brushing teeth. her hand out to him. Elliot wasn’t through. He was a ques- I asked Hadley, ‘Are you sure this is ‘Where’s Thomas Jefferson?’ he said. tion machine, especially right before what we should be doing? I mean, is he ‘Thomas Jefferson,’ she said, ‘lived a bed. ‘Is Nixon alive?’ he asked. He knew ready or whatever?’ long, long time ago.’ Nixon from a time, a year or so before, ‘It’s only a matter of time,’ she said, ‘He’s dead?’ when he had wondered if there were any ‘before somebody he knows dies.’ ‘Yes.’ bad presidents. Nixon, we had told him, ‘I want to go home,’ he said. was pretty bad. My wife was telling Elliot a story about ‘Hey, Elliot,’ I said. ‘Airplanes fly by Hadley said Nixon was dead, too. Gran-gran. here. Would you like to sit and watch ‘What about George Washington?’ Elli- ‘Who’s Gran-gran?’ he asked. some airplanes?’ ot said. ‘Is George Washington alive still?’ ‘Gran-gran was my grandmother,’ she ‘No,’ she said. ‘Washington was the said. Elliot, in bed, before sleep. ‘Why,’ he first president. He lived a long time ago.’

10 ‘Is Obama alive?’ Elliot said. red stars or green stars, depending. The ‘But how did they lower it?’ Elliot ‘Yes,’ Hadley said, ‘Obama’s alive. stars that night were blue. asked. Obama’s the president right now.’ ‘How old is Daddy?’ I said. ‘Do you ‘Well,’ I said, ‘they probably had straps ‘Are any other presidents alive?’ know?’ under the box.’ I thought about con- She ticked them off, and I thought ‘Ten,’ Elliot said, as if he were certain. structing a model there, on his bed, to about each one, as if they were stepping ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘Daddy is forty-two.’ demonstrate the lowering. Before we had forward in a procession, Carter and then Elliot looked at me. Elliot, my great fear was that I wouldn’t Bush and then Clinton and Bush. Was ‘Do you know how old Great-grandad- be able to answer his questions. What are that really all there were anymore? For a dy is?’ I said. clouds, Daddy? How do you make glass? I had moment, I wasn’t sure. It felt like some- ‘I do,’ he said. my grasp on things, a foggy sense of the one was missing, lost to memory. My ‘How old?’ basics, but I didn’t want to pass that off power of recollection was on the fritz and He said he didn’t know. as even shabby truth. I looked around had been, I hated to say it, since Elliot had ‘Great-grandaddy is ninety,’ I said. I let his room, seeing what we had handy, come along. I often couldn’t remember that sink in, like the number could speak what might work. Stuffed animals were whether I’d written to a friend or just for itself. ‘That’s more than double how wedged together on a bookshelf like com- thought about writing. I’d run upstairs old Daddy is,’ I added. muters in a subway car. His Ringo Starr to get something – my slippers, a glass of No answer. action figure, a prized possession, stood water, this book I had been reading for ‘You remember double, right? Remem- before them, arms upraised. Beside him months – only to come back a few min- ber when we were talking about that? was the Blue Meanie, grinning and bul- utes later, empty-handed. Two times two is four, yes? Well, Daddy boid. Ringo, I thought, could be Jefferson, ‘Are all the presidents going to die?’ times two,’ I said, ‘is not as old as …’ I and the Meanie and all the stuffed animals Elliot said. was, I knew, wandering, getting lost in could attend his funeral. Then I thought ‘Yes,’ Hadley said. my logic. ‘Daddy’s not going to die,’ I better. No need to colour the kid’s toys ‘But what’s going to happen when we said, ‘for a long, long time, that’s my with death. I would stick to words. run out of presidents?’ point.’ ‘Straps,’ I told him, ‘are like ropes.’ The ‘We’re not going to run out,’ she said. Elliot was quiet, mulling, pulling at his ropes went under the box, and men were ‘We have elections. Every four years, we sheets. holding on to the ropes, and the box was choose another president.’ ‘We just have to eat right,’ I said, ‘and over the hole, held there, and then the ‘You know, when we go vote?’ I said. get enough sleep and exercise our bod- men each let out some rope, just a little, ‘Remember, they had doughnuts for us?’ ies, and we’ll live a long time.’ I almost so the box was lowered like that, down believed that. But I couldn’t shake my into the hole, very slowly. At the funeral A few nights later, Elliot asked if some worries: car wrecks, aggravated assaults, of my wife’s grandfather, a machine people bury dead flies. I was putting him missing persons. I knew a guy in school lowered his casket into the ground. The to bed by myself. Hadley was at school whose father got shot and was killed in casket rested on a platform – the bier? – information night, the one evening every a hold-up. He’d gone out to Safeway and then someone turned the machine on year when all the parental anxiety on the one night, to get whatever, and he was and the casket was conveyed away, off the Hill is focused in one location, concen- standing in line, waiting to pay, when the bier and into the grave. The machine, its trated into a two-hour crush of questions, robbers entered, and that was it, he never motor thumping, was kept covered – I answers, pamphlets and applications. came back. remember this – with a large square of ‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘Maybe some people ‘Daddy,’ Elliot said, ‘how did they get artificial grass. At my grandmother’s do.’ Thomas Jefferson under the ground?’ funeral, they fastened the lid of her casket ‘So they dig a hole,’ he said, ‘and put It was late – it had got to be almost with screws. I say they, but I mean my the flies down into the hole?’ nine, somehow – but I started from the family: my father and brother and my ‘They’d do something like that,’ I said. beginning. ‘When Jefferson died,’ I said, uncle and cousins. We took turns. The ‘Sure.’ I could see where the questions ‘they put him in a box.’ The box was funeral-home people had provided screw- were leading: come spring, we’d be stag- made for him, so he fitted inside. Every- drivers, one at either end of the casket. ing fly funerals in the backyard. one came who wanted to remember him The holes were pre-drilled and threaded. I ‘Daddy,’ Elliot said, ‘we’re not ever and talk about him and reflect on his life. say we, but I just stood by, watching. I’m going to die, right?’ ‘People came from all over,’ I said. I had not sure why. It seemed, I guess, utilitar- ‘No, we are,’ I said. ‘But not for a long no idea if that was true, but it seemed ian, like we were putting the finishing time.’ likely. When they were done talking touches on some home-improvement ‘Mommy is going to die?’ about Jefferson, they took his body to the project. ‘Yes.’ cemetery. Several men carried the box, ‘Eventually,’ I said, ‘the box gets to the ‘And Daddy is going to die?’ because it was quite heavy. Other men bottom of the hole.’ Then the men pulled ‘Yes, but, again, not for a long time, dug a hole in the ground. This was a deep the ropes out and shovelled dirt back into okay?’ We were lying in the dark. A hole, six feet down or more, and when the hole. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘they cover nightlight disguised as an oversized lady- they were done with that work, they low- the box with dirt.’ bug cast stars on the ceiling, blue stars or ered the box into the hole. Elliot said he knew. ◊

11 Five Dials Bureaucracy Your Reading Life A questionnaire for you, the reader, to complete

How many books do you read every year? Facial expressions, which help with Please tick relevant boxes. my ability to express empathy One How old are you? Palms for a living 10–20 Under 2 Palms on the side; it’s not my only job A book a day. More short books This many please! Palms when my mother is providing psychic services on the phone and the Totally old enough to go to India for a All the books in the history of the person in the front room is like: ‘I’ve month with that guy world in publication order. Currently got half an hour, seriously.’ hacking through Langland. Writing my memoir Paperbacks only 35–35 books a year. I read 35 books a 35-35. I’m 35 basically year basically. Leather bound books only. None of your business More than 50 Each situation differently. Eg. how Still got it going on many exits? Three in this restaurant. The Booker shortlist Don’t have it going on anymore, really, My teenage diary in a spiteful, unfor- The Booker shortlist excepting the at all giving manner, laughing ruefully at winner what’s to come, unable to warn myself Exactly 43, even if I finish the forty- Anything by Terry Pratchett What is your gender? third in mid-November Come on, Five Dials, don’t be so reduc- Novels in their original language as the Less than one tive and essentialist standard of translation in this country is atrocious, simply abominable Male Where do you generally read? Mostly tweets from writers who used Bed to write novels What do you do for a living? Bed during sex Garbage Student Toilet The Guardian online for free Academic Toilet while using the toilet Her subtle signs, the way she laughs Novelist and strokes her hair after we’ve fin- Shower ished our entrees at Zizzi, just a great Editor Library, while pretending to check place to get a good meal Proofreader Facebook The first draft of my screenplay, Choc- Cultural Critic Furtively in dark corners of pubs olate Times, which would be a wonder- ful Tobey Maguire /Rene Russo vehi- Journalist Atop craggy peaks cle Poet Queues Poetry, or at least poems Epic poet Nightclubs Facebook Lyricist Traffic jams Screenwriter The free book I’d like most from Hamish In a comfortable chair by the fire with Hamilton is: Dyspeptic Essayist a cup of chamomile tea Historian What do you generally read? Pundit (No promises; no guarantees. Post fin- Comic books Other ished questionnaire to Hamish Hamilton, Classics I’ve downloaded on the old 80 The Strand, London, WC2R 0RL.) tablet (great retina display)

12 Essay enduring German debates of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Up to the end of the First World War, a All Chic and Elegance Are Over kind of verbal ceasefire was upheld on the matter, with very few exceptions. The Ger- By Jan Brandt, translated by Katy Derbyshire mans were busy with their external enemies. Yet the battles were barely over before the n Germany’s kitchens and living rooms, swamps of a glacial valley – has a long tradi- tradition of Berlin-bashing was rekindled, Ibars and cafés, at the country’s stations, tion. And its roots go back to the nineteenth achieving a severity in the course of the airports and motorway service stations, on century; to what was called the German 1920s that makes the current attacks look national television and newspaper opinion Question and was eventually answered with mild in comparison. The Greater Berlin Act pages, there’s a gruelling discussion that’s great violence: Lesser or Greater Germany? incorporated more rural communities, with been going on for ever. It’s all about which With or without Austria? Vienna or Berlin? the grandiloquent Greater Berliners pre- German city is the best place to live in and Germany’s belated nation-building went sumably terribly annoyed that this era went why so many clever people persist, against hand in hand with a belated capital-building. down in history as the Weimar Republic their better judgement, in staying in the Before the German Reich was founded in rather than the Berlin Republic – as the country’s worst, most uninhabitable city, as 1871, every provincial prince had his own next civil war raging in Berlin meant the if it were paradise on earth, and defying all residential seat, and every one of them constitutional convention had to relocate to the arguments against it – from unemploy- found it tough to relinquish centuries of the birthplace of German Classicism. ment and air pollution to record debts and privileges to Protestant Prussia and accept The left, the right, the upper crust and Mayor Klaus Wowereit. the Hohenzollerns’ dominant role. With the lower classes treated Berlin to regular It’s an ideological issue, a fateful issue, an centralization, the establishment of compul- beatings from then on. The city was ridi- issue that ends relationships, splits up mar- sory institutions, the incorporation of near- culed, rejected, reviled by inhabitants and riages and destroys friendships, tears families by towns and villages, with the economic visitors alike. Built upon, spat upon, written hundreds of kilometres apart and terminates upturn manifested in the capital city’s archi- upon in a never-ending stream of graffiti. long-held jobs. Berlin or not Berlin is a life- tecture and its concentration of industry It was not only politically motivated agita- and-death issue. and culture, Berlin attracted haters. tion that was expressed in the morning and On 16 May 1898, Rosa Luxemburg Above and beyond these intrigues, the evening newspapers and on the walls of the arrived in Berlin by train from Zurich, via old aristocracy and the new opinion-leaders city’s buildings. And it was not only authors Munich. Her arrival in the German capital – the middle class – established a discourse from the south, north, east and west who marked the beginning of a lifelong feud. with a passion, severity and determination brought along their resentments and saw She wrote in a letter, ‘Berlin makes the unknown to other European countries them confirmed. It was also the Berliners most unfavourable impression on me in such as England and France, simply because themselves who were constantly abusing general: cold, tasteless, stolid. […] I already the latter were already nations at a time their birthplace. First and foremost the jour- hate Berlin and the Germans so much that I when the German-speaking territories still nalist and writer Kurt Tucholsky, who in could kill them.’ consisted of more than 300 states, because all of his writing – polemical texts, observa- The Germans, or the Berliners to be London and Paris were already capital cities tions, chansons, poems, short stories, criti- precise, beat her to it. On 15 January 1919, by the twelfth century, when Berlin was cism or essays – deals with his hometown in the turmoil of the revolution that fol- barely on the map – and because their size and dissects the common or garden Berliner. lowed shortly after she had co-founded the and importance have never been contested ‘His atrocious bad temper and his permanent German Communist Party, members of a by either journalists or politicians. glut of nervousness let no sound reach its local vigilante group shot Rosa Luxemburg Theodor Fontane, a participant in Ber- end – with trembling nerves he waits for and dumped her body in the Landwehr lin’s 1848 Barricade Uprising, who first his first impression, and once he’s got it he Canal. She was not the first intellectual who came to public attention with his sedate won’t budge from it,’ Tucholsky wrote couldn’t stand the city from the outset, but rambling guides by the name of Wanderings under the pseudonym Peter Panter on 19 she was one of its most famous victims. Through the March of Brandenburg, made a January 1926 in the magazine Die Weltbühne. Others survived, despite having publicly show of horror in 1894 at the city’s devel- He divided the Berliners into two types: expressed their dislike. The French author opment: ‘All there is in Berlin is imitation, the ‘“Aven’t you got a bigger one?” Berliner’ Honoré de Balzac predicted as early as 1843, decent ordinariness, respectable mediocrity, and the ‘“Just greaaat” Berliner’. Both types, ‘It may one day become the German capital, and all Berliners feel so as soon as they get he wrote, were equally unbearable. The but it will always be the capital of boredom,’ out of Berlin. Human life outside the city is complaining Berliner had an inherent lack an assessment that his Russian counterpart freer, more natural, less self-conscious, and of enthusiasm and was ‘far too nervous to Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky confirmed in 1874 therefore the non-Berlin world seems more let anything unfamiliar take effect on him after a visit to the city, in the meantime attractive.’ And shortly before Fontane died in peace’. And the praising Berliner, wrote declared capital of the German Reich. Ber- in 1898 he gave the place another kicking: Tucholsky, distinguished himself by the fact lin-bashing –the act of eloquently batter- ‘The moment one enters Berlin all chic and that his recognition always came across as ing the poor city on the wrong side of the elegance are over.’ His devastating aesthetic ‘reproach twisted into the realms of friendli- Elbe which rose almost unnoticed from the dictum set the tone for one of the most ness, a rebuke not applicable on this occa-

13 sion’, like ‘a medal awarded to himself’. and vices, writing and loving and smok- writers. Since the early 1990s, however, And so we might have to regard the ing and drinking as much as he can before since the Bundestag declared Berlin the writings of the Stuttgart-born arts editor he is done with Berlin and the Berliners capital of Germany once again and embas- of the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper, Fred and absconds to Italy with his best friend’s sies and ministries began moving from the Hildenbrandt, published in 1928 under the mother. Rhine to the Spree, resistance has been title Big Beautiful Berlin, as cleverly pack- The Berlin-bashing phenomenon growing. Now that Berlin is seen and feared aged self-praise rather than a hymn to the came to a climax with Mendelssohn and as a symbol of Germany’s economic, cultur- city. As he correctly noted, ‘Many South with Heinrich Hauser’s trilogy of Berlin al and political decline, now the threat that Germans who live here love Berlin under reportage in the national-conservative ‘Berlin is Germany’ might come true, the constant protest. But they can’t get away.’ culture magazine Die Tat: ‘Scraps of great- Berlin-bashers are being heard far and wide. Hildebrandt was not a protester, instead ness, undertakings beyond its own ability, On 12 October 2001, the Swiss writer praising the Berliners’ extremely dry sense patchwork, mired down along the way. Christian Kracht was a guest on Harald of humour and their untiring diligence in […] Eternal face of Berlin: a building-site Schmidt’s popular late-night show. Kracht the highest tones, and claiming the city had fence, a torn-open street, the bent arrow of was living in Bangkok at the time, Schmidt the prettiest girls in Europe. Rather than the “diversion”. […] Berlin lives on what in Cologne, and the two of them were losing his temper over the permanent dem- New York throws away as trash.’ Under the united in their hatred for Berlin. onstrations, the public transport system’s headline ‘Berlin is Germany’ – the ultimate ‘Is it pleasant, life in Bangkok?’ asked unpunctuality and unreliability, the noise, impertinence and provocation for all non- Harald Schmidt. the dirt, all the city’s misery, he wrote with Berliners – the cosmopolitan Hauser dealt ‘Very pleasant,’ said Christian Kracht. empathy about weeping bus drivers, shoe- the city a sucker punch. ‘What’s the major advantage compared to lace salesmen with the gift of the gab and For twelve years, the aspirations of life in Germany?’ enthusiastic do-Berlin-gooders carrying Greater Berlin coincided with those of ‘The people are friendlier.’ placards with the word ‘dedication’ around Greater Germany. The Nazis’ world war ‘Do you find people in Germany the streets, coming to the conclusion: ‘It is destroyed the organic urban structures and unfriendly?’ certainly possible that anyone who looks put an end to the writerly discussions, for ‘Mainly, well, in Berlin especially. Berlin upon this city may be enchanted by it.’ the time being. The only attacks came out is really, really awful.’ It goes without saying that words like of exile now, from a man of whom no one ‘Would you say Berlin is terrible as a this could not go unpunished. In his 1930 would have expected them. Alfred Döblin, whole?’ media novel Done with Berlin? the young the author of Berlin Alexanderplatz, fled ‘Yes. Berlin is the most awful city in the Munich-born Peter de Mendelssohn, a jun- from the Nazis to Paris, where he wrote his world.’ ior reporter for the Berliner Tageblatt, made opulent and lengthy novel November 1918 ‘Appalling?’ his boss Hildenbrandt into ‘a partly original, about the collapse of the German empire, ‘Appalling.’ partly monstrous character’: talented but setting it in the Alsace, where he had been ‘Repulsive?’ with odd manners, ‘a terrible sycophant stationed as an army doctor. In the book he ‘Yes.’ and penny-a-liner’ who writes page-long contrasts the ‘sweet old city’ of Strasbourg ‘Disgusting?’ sentimental tracts and prefers to spend the with Berlin: ‘a growth of buildings spread- ‘Yes.’ muggy summer months on the Riviera ing low and dark across the sands of the ‘This is literature. A literary writer is than in the office. At the very beginning of March’, ‘a paltry trickle, the Spree, flowed allowed to say that kind of thing. A news- the novel, Mendelssohn gets his own alter through it’. reader isn’t.’ ego entangled in a heated discussion about Berlin’s loss of significance in post-war ‘That’s right.’ ‘Berlin as the intellectual centre of the new West Germany led to a federalization of ‘But as a literary writer, you can say “I Germany’. ‘Berlin,’ says an elderly gentle- city-bashing. From 1945 on, German writ- have feelings of disgust when I think of man, ‘is a bloated monster, a fearfully fast- ers transferred their disaffection to other Berlin.”’ growing, highly unnatural entity’, which places: Franz Xaver Kroetz complained ‘I don’t want to go there ever again.’ harbours ‘the greatest dangers for the edu- about Bavaria, Hubert Fichte about Ham- ‘I do envy you.’ cation and development of a young writer burg and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann about or journalist who knowingly foregoes a Cologne, Vechta and Hanover. West Berlin In 2003 Claudius Seidl, the editor of the university career’. The young man ignores mutated into a publicly funded prison Berlin-based arts section of the Frank- his warning, moves out of his progressive island in a sea of pragmatic socialism, a ref- furter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, edited boarding school in provincial Heiligenstadt uge for refuseniks of national service, gain- an anthology by the name of Here Speaks to the Prussian ‘hellish city’, and commutes ful employment and rent payments. East Berlin: Stories from a Barbaric City, in which to and fro – always low on cash but rich in Berlin became half a capital, about which five non-native authors provided plenty ideas – between the Romanisches Café, the – along with many other things – the East of good reasons to leave right away. But Kempinski and the Schwanneke Wine Res- Germans were not allowed to say or write Peter Richter also mentioned the one taurant, eavesdropping on arrogant gents in openly what they liked. And Bonn was far reason why it’s worth staying. As always, horn-rimmed glasses, getting high on the too small to get het up about. he said, the dark side is unfortunately also city’s only golden era, on the newspaper It took two generations before Berlin the more entertaining. ◊ city, the advertising city, the city of lusts once again drew the rage of journalists and

14 Fiction The dormitory was up in the attic. It was dark, because there were only two dormer windows and a single weak light The Hurt bulb hanging from the ceiling. I dropped my backpack on one of the narrow mat- By Peter Stamm, translated by Michael Hofmann tresses along the wall on the floor, and Lucia took the one beside it. At the foot t the age of forty, Lucia’s mother and her father was in the shop downstairs. end of the mattresses were piles of brown Ahad gone mad. I think that was the He sold radios and TVs, and he was a nice, woollen blankets. We went down to the thing Lucia was most afraid of for herself. rather shy man. She’s just got a bit of a kitchen, made coffee and ate provisions I asked her what had precipitated it. Just cold, he said, and he sent me upstairs to we’d brought with us, bread and cheese life, Lucia said, shrugging her shoulders. her. and fruit and chocolate. She married this man who loved her Lucia answered the door in pyjamas, The sun dipped over the mountain more than she loved him. I came along, and I followed her up to her room. It was early and it quickly got cold, but the she raised me, and eventually she couldn’t my first time in the house, and I had a sky was still blue. In a little general store take it any more and she cut her wrists. mildly alarming sense I was doing some- we bought a litre of red wine. Then we When I found her she was unconscious. I thing forbidden. It was that afternoon strolled up the valley out of the village. was thirteen. Lucia told me about her mother. It’s We could hear marmots whistle, but we Lucia was two years younger than me. only in summer, she said, she sits upstairs couldn’t see them. After a bit, Lucia said I met her one summer, when I was stay- in her room all day long, doesn’t speak, she was getting cold. I offered her my ing with my grandparents in the moun- doesn’t do anything, and my father keeps jacket, but she declined and we turned tains. I’d finished school in the spring, having to go up and check how she is. back. and I was going to start college in the He’s worried she might try to do it again, The youth hostel was situated next autumn. I had been hoping to go walking said Lucia. Will you make me some tea? to a stream we could hear even with the with my grandfather, but he had fallen ill She wasn’t really sick, but I made her windows closed. It was barely warmer and was slow to recover, so I had a lot of some tea anyway; it was like a game of inside than out. I opened the wine and we time to myself. When it rained, I read to house. Lucia told me where to find eve- got into our sleeping bags, not undress- try and prepare for college, but when the rything. When I opened the cabinets, I ing, and drank wine out of the bottle and sun shone I was outside all day, wander- had a feeling I was under observation. talked. Tell me a story, Lucia said, and I ing around, swimming in the icy lake and Then Lucia walked into the kitchen and told her about things I wanted to do and coming home late. watched me and smiled when I looked at films I’d seen and books I’d read. It was at the lake that I first met Lucia. her. When she coughed, it sounded like Lucia slipped out of her sleeping bag to We hit it off right away and spent all our she was pretending. go to the bathroom. When she came back, time together. We went walking in the Lucia showed me photographs. We lay she sat on my sleeping bag for a minute, mountains, lay in the grass for hours, and on the bed together; she was under the then she stripped to her underwear and when the weather was bad we put on covers, I was on top. Eventually she asked scooted in beside me. waterproofs and went out anyway. The me to kiss her, and I kissed her. About a Autumn came, and Lucia got a job at meadows were springy underfoot, and week later, we slept together; it was the a hotel bar. I went home and enrolled at when the sun came out the sky was blue first time for both of us. university. I had a good record at high like you wouldn’t believe. We thought we would go on a circu- school, but I had trouble making the Often Lucia asked me to tell her stories. lar walk over two mountain passes. We adjustment to college. I found it hard I’d hardly experienced anything in real would spend the night in a youth hostel to meet people, and spent most of my life, but I always came up with something in the next valley. We had been walk- evenings alone in the little attic room my to tell her about. I can’t remember what, ing all day, had climbed up a long way, parents had found me. I just remember we used to laugh a lot. crossed stony landscapes, and only late I wrote regularly to Lucia, who rarely Lucia told me about her dreams, places in the afternoon reached our destination, wrote back. If she did, it was a postcard she wanted to visit, things she wanted to which was a tiny village way up a barren that barely said anything, just that she buy. A car and clothes and a house. She valley. The youth hostel was a small stone was doing fine, that there was nothing had it all planned. She wanted to work house at the edge of the village. On the happening in the village, the weather was in one of the hotel bars and make a lot door was a sign telling you where to pick good or bad or whatever. Sometimes she of money in no time at all, and then she up the key. filled in the space with little drawings, a wanted a husband and two kids and a flower or an Alpine hut, and one time a house on the edge of the village, near the The house was cold and empty. On the heart with a drop of blood squeezed from lake. Then I can sit at home, she said, and ground floor was a kitchen and a little it. The drawings looked like tattoos to me. look out the window and wait for the dining room. There was a guest book on The summer after, my grandfather kids to come home from school. the table. The last entry was a couple of died. I drove out to the funeral in the vil- Once Lucia got sick. She was alone at days ago. Two Australians had written lage with my father. I hoped to see Lucia. home, her mother was away in the clinic, something about the end of the world. She wasn’t there. I left messages for her

15 but she didn’t get in touch. When we vo standing in it, she could always borrow he said. As if we didn’t have enough snow returned to the flatland, we took Grand- that. That piece of junk? she said, and she here. He took them down one after the mother with us. smirked. other, slowly and without saying a word. A couple of times I tried to phone Work at the school was difficult. I had When he was finished, he put them down Lucia. Usually her father picked up and taken courses in education at college, in front of me and said, You ought to said she had just gone out. Once it was but the kids here were rowdy and badly work on the syllabus instead of cutting her. I said I wanted to visit her, but she behaved and didn’t make it at all easy for fancy paper shapes. didn’t seem interested. When I insisted, me. My colleagues were no help either. He left. I could hear the kids yelling she said I was free to do what I liked, she Most of them were local, and the talk at outside. I went to the window. They couldn’t tell me never to come to the vil- break was about going hunting and vil- were fighting, and then, just like that, lage. After that I wrote to her less often, lage gossip and the weather. Once I rang they all ran out of the yard and disap- but I didn’t forget her either. I had prom- the father of one especially difficult girl. peared down the street. They all ran ised her that summer that I would be back, He was a hotelier, and he treated me like a off together, and I was put in mind of a and when I’d finished at college, I applied schoolboy on the phone. A few days later swarm of scruffy birds I’d seen scavenging for the job of teacher at the village school. the headmaster came into my classroom on the rubbish dump outside the village. The headmaster told me it was only on after lessons and said if I had trouble, I The days were short and getting short- account of my grandpar- er. For a long time that year ents that I got the job. the snow held off; instead it was cold and rainy, and You won’t come back, often I couldn’t see the tops Lucia had said four years of the mountains because ago. Now she said, I never the clouds were so low. It’s thought you’d be back. I worse than in other years, had come up by train at said Lucia, at least when the beginning of the week. the snow comes everything My father promised to gets brighter. She said she bring my stuff up to the sometimes feared she might valley by car that weekend, lose her mind like her my books and the stereo mother. We had gone for a and the little TV. But on walk one afternoon when Friday it snowed and the there was no school, out of pass was shut. My father the village and up the slope. called and said did it mat- It was one of the few fine ter if he came the follow- days that autumn. But soon ing week? I was sitting in enough the sun disappeared my grandparents’ little behind the mountains, and house. I was sleeping in only the upper slopes still the bed my grandfather had light on them. had died in, and presum- If only it would snow, ably my great-grandfather Lucia said, then we could at before him. I lay under least go skiing. I asked her the heavy comforter, my back for supper, but she arms pinned to my sides said she had no time. On like a dead person’s, and Saturday then, I said, and I tried to imagine what it she said, Oh, all right. She would be like if I really said she could smell snow couldn’t move them, just in the air, and that the old to lie there and wait for people said it was going to death. be a cold winter. But that When the rest of my was what they said every stuff comes, I’ll have you year. I tried to kiss her around to dinner, I said to Lucia. I’d gone should talk to him, and not blame the on the mouth, but she turned away and to the bar where she worked. She said parents for my failures. Astrid stays up offered her cheek. Tell me a story, she she was still living with her parents. She half the night watching TV, I said. And said. You must have stories you can tell. was working a lot, she said, in summer then she can’t stay awake during class. All that time you’ve been away. I haven’t she’d totalled the car, and she wanted to The head looked at the cut-paper been away, I said, I’ve been at home. buy another one in the spring. I said my shapes I’d done with the kids and that grandparents’ garage still had the old Vol- we’d hung in the windows. Snowflakes, The next day we went walking again. We

16 went the same way and sat down on the stand around chatting on the doorstep for man woman from Munich. She books pri- same bench as the day before. From there a while. When she got cold, she gave me vate lessons, but let me tell you, we don’t we could see the whole village, and the her hand and went inside. do a lot of skiing. Her husband was some ugly modern hotels on the lake. The sky Finally, early in December, it started bigwig in a bank, and he might show up was cloudy, and soon after we had sat to snow in the village, and this time the in the valley for a weekend. She parked down it started snowing, small flakes the snow stayed with us. For one week it the kids on a baby slope. Then he worked wind blew in our faces and that settled in snowed almost solidly, then it stopped. It out how much he made from private les- the folds of our clothes. The snow melted was very cold now, and the sky was clear. sons. He said he was in it purely for the away as soon as it touched the ground. At night I saw loads of stars; they seemed money. Lucia had got up. I asked her to wait, to be much nearer than they were down I wanted to go, but Lucia told me to but she shook her head and ran down in the flatland. Once, just before Christ- stay. She put her arm through Elio’s and the steep slope, leaping from boulder to mas – we’d watched an American comedy told him to go on. By now he was on to boulder like a little girl. I watched her together – Lucia said I could come in if I mountaineering, relating heroic exploits until she was back in the village. I stayed liked. On the landing she kissed me. about difficult ascents and dangerous res- a while longer, then I walked down the Have you had any more practice since? cue missions. Lucia wasn’t looking at me. road. I got to the school just on time. The she asked me, laughing. And when I She beamed at Elio. In the middle of one headmaster was standing in the doorway, shook my head: Do you even remember story I got up and left. At home I didn’t and watched silently as I walked past him how it’s done? know what to do with myself. I turned and into my classroom. She left me standing in the hallway and on the TV. There was a talk show, in On Saturday Lucia came around. I went into the living room. I could hear which, to the consternation of the audi- had gone shopping that morning and her talking to someone, then she came ence, a man was talking about living with cooked all afternoon. Lucia ate in silence. out again. She opened the door to her two women. The women were present I asked her how she liked the food. She room, and I just caught her father stick- in the studio, and they kept saying what said, Yeah, and went on chewing. When ing his head around the corner of the liv- a good relationship they had. I felt dis- we were finished and sitting on the sofa ing room door to see who it might be. gusted and turned the TV off. drinking coffee, she got up and switched When Lucia was sitting on top of me, I vacuumed the whole house, washed on the TV. I asked if she had to do that. she got a nosebleed. She leaned forward the dishes and took the empty bottles Not really, she said. You can tell me a and cupped her hand under her nose, but to the recycling centre. I felt a bit better story, if you like. She left the TV on, but even so some of the blood splashed on my after that. On my way home I looked in turned the sound down a bit. I’ve been face. She laughed. The blood felt surpris- on the bar again. Lucia was working now, waiting for you, I said. I haven’t kept you ingly cool. Later I heard her father in the and the whole place was full of noisy waiting. I mean since that time . . . since passage outside. I wanted to stay over, but tourists. Elio was sitting at the end of the we . . . you know, since we slept together. Lucia sent me away. She said she didn’t bar. When Lucia spotted me, she went Lucia furrowed her brow. You mean you want anyone to see me. I got home very over to him and took a puff from his ciga- haven’t slept with any other woman? No, late. rette. Then she leaned across the bar and I said, and suddenly I felt stupid. Lucia The following afternoon I went by kissed him on the mouth. She looked at laughed out loud. She said I was crazy. without phoning beforehand. Her father me with an evil smile. That’s just weird. I said I’d often thought was friendly as always and told me just about her. Lucia got up and said it was to go up. I’d spent the whole afternoon The next day I ran into Lucia on the time she went. I switched off the TV and grading papers, and I was feeling drained. street. I had bought her something for put on a CD. I asked if she’d slept with a Lucia said she had to go right away, she Christmas. She took the parcel from lot of guys. She said that was none of my was on shift at six. If I wanted to, I could me without looking at it, shrugged her business, and after hesitating briefly, Of go along with her. She would buy me a shoulders and walked off. course, what else was there to do up here? drink. There was no school until the new year. Then she said she had brought some con- In the bar there were a couple of guys My parents, along with my grandmother, doms, but she didn’t feel like it any more. from the village, and Lucia wanted us to came up to the valley and stayed in the She took the little pack out of her pocket sit with them until it was time for her to house. They went skiing every day; my and tossed it to me. Here, they’re all for start. I didn’t feel like it myself, but she grandmother sat downstairs knitting or you, she said, and she put on her shoes had pulled up a couple of chairs. She was dozing. She had complained because I and jacket. on first-name terms with all of them, had taken down some of her pictures, and and sat next to one she called Elio whom there was a scratch in the slate surface A week later we went to the movies I’d never seen before. Elio worked as a of the dining table. I was relieved when together. From the beginning of winter mountain guide in summer and a skiing Christmas was over and they all went the community centre had one screen- instructor in winter. He talked about his away. ing per week, and we often went to see climbing trips and some ski race that was During the rest of my time off, I stayed them together. But Lucia wouldn’t come taking place in January, and the foreign in bed as long as I could, and once I got back to my house again. I was allowed to girls who all wanted to hop into bed with up I hardly ever left the house. In the walk her home, and sometimes we would him. One came back every year, a Ger- late afternoon I turned on the TV. There

17 was the same talk show I’d seen before, navel and wasn’t as slim as I seemed to I went home. The TV was still out on only the subject was different. After I’d remember her. But that only made her the street, covered with snow. It was watched for a while, I turned off the TV more alluring. I so wanted to touch her cold inside; I’d forgotten to fill the stove and carted it into the garage. I stood there and kiss her, my whole body ached. And before going out. As I was on my way and stared at the thing. Then I took it at the same time I saw myself hunkered to the garage to pick up a few logs, my around to the front of the house, left it in my corner, a pathetic lovelorn figure. eye fell on the stack of blue exam books on the street and taped a piece of paper Eventually Lucia had some time off. on the kitchen table. What I Really on the screen: take me. I waited by the She came out from behind the bar and Want for Christmas. I flicked through window and looked out. From time to got between Elio and me. Elio stood up them. What was it my students wanted, time someone would stop and read the and threw his arm around her shoulder, snowboards, Game Boys, a motor sled? sign and look up at the house. But no then he half bent his knees and gyrated And what had I expected? Justice? Love? one took my TV. with his hips. Then he let go of Lucia Peace on earth? On New Year’s Eve I called Lucia. to go to the toilet, stumbled, almost I heard the bells chiming for midnight, We didn’t speak for and then cars honk- long, she said she ing and fireworks was busy. When I going off. I stuffed tried later, there the essays in the was just the answer- stove and lit them. I ing machine. I left watched through the a message on the glass panel as they tape. I said, Lucia, curled in the heat and I loved her and and burned, first I was lonely and slowly, then faster I wanted to spend and faster. Before the the evening with flames died down, I her. I waited. At ripped a few pages nine o’clock I gave out of an education up and went out. textbook on the floor, The bar was and shoved them in packed; I could too. I ripped more hear the music and and more pages out the din of voices of it, and when there from out on the was nothing left of it street. Lucia and a but the cover, I got co-worker stood another one. My eyes behind the bar; Elio were watering from was sitting at one staring so hard into end of it again. I sat the flames, and my down next to him face felt scorched. and ordered a beer. I burned one Lucia didn’t look at book after another. me. Sometimes she I ripped bundles of came down in our pages out of the bind- direction, leaned ings and threw them across the bar and in the flames. I was shouted something surprised how much in Elio’s ear, or strength it took to rip kissed him, or had a up a book. My hands puff from his ciga- hurt. In the end I rette. She smoked went to bed. hurriedly, scanning the room as she did fell. Lucia screamed with laughter. She so. The smoke slid around her hand as moved slowly to the music, ran her The next day I carried on. I was more though caressing it. I felt drunk, even hands down my hips and smiled at me. methodical now: I stacked my books though it was my first beer. She said something. I shook my head, next to the stove and burned them one I watched Lucia at work. She laughed and she put her mouth right up against by one. It took all morning. Then I with the customers and moved quickly my ear. Great vibe, isn’t it? she yelled. pulled my notes out of my desk drawers, back and forth. She was wearing a Then she disappeared back behind the my diaries, newspaper clippings I’d never skimpy top, and I saw she had a pierced bar. I got up and left. got around to reading. I burned the lot.

18 The room was full of smoke that billow- felled, as though the smell had been At the end of January I took the bed ed out of the open door of the stove. secreted inside it the whole time. And apart and sawed and chopped it up in That evening I went to the bar. There then the smells of burning: the sour the garage into little pieces that I burned weren’t so many people as the day before. smoke from paper that I pushed into in the stove. That was the last of the Elio was in his corner again. When I the stove in great wads and that slowly furniture. There was only the mattress sat down next to him, he looked at me turned to ash. The thick smell of burn- to come. doubtfully. Lucia came and took my ing gas, the acrid smell of varnish that On one of the following days I walked order. She asked me if I’d made any bubbled and blackened before the wood up to the place above the village where good resolutions for the new year. I said underneath caught fire. I’d sat with Lucia. I wiped the snow off I’d burned all my books. You’re crazy, Whatever I couldn’t burn I stuffed in the bench and sat down. The sun had she said. I’ll tell you a story, I said, but it rubbish sacks that I stowed in the Volvo, already gone over the mountains. After was probably more for my benefit than first in the trunk, then when that was a while I saw Lucia coming up the road. hers. I told her about how I’d first come full on the back seat, and finally on the She was walking fast and had her eyes on to the village, and how I’d met Lucia. I front passenger seat. the ground. Once she looked up at the told her about our long hike into the School had begun again. I had become bench. I waved, but I wasn’t sure wheth- next valley, and our first night. much calmer. During class, my thoughts er she saw me or not. She walked on a Slowly Elio drank his beer. He was were already on the work of destruction bit, then she turned back and returned looking at the bar; he didn’t seem to I would continue that evening. Thinking to the village. be listening. Lucia was, though. She of it seemed to calm me. When I met the The next day I was just about to was in the grip of a strange unrest, and headmaster in the hallway, he gave me a give my students a dictation when I wouldn’t look me in the eye. When I friendly nod and offered me best wishes saw Lucia through the window. I told was finished, she leaned across the bar for the new year. them I’d be back in a minute, and ran and whispered something into Elio’s One weekend I drove out of the vil- out of the classroom. By the time I was ear. Then she kissed him on the mouth lage and took a narrow road up the on the street, though, she had disap- long and lingeringly. At the same time mountain. At the beginning of the road peared. I hesitated for a minute, then she looked at me with an expression that was a sign saying no passenger cars, only I went home, packed a few things and was at once frightened and furious. At farm and forestry traffic. There were called a taxi. I knew the driver: one of least she wasn’t indifferent to me any very few marks in the snow. I followed his kids was in my class. He didn’t ask more. I got up and left. At home I wrote the zigzagging road up the mountain. me any questions, and didn’t seem to be her a long letter. When I’d finished, I After a couple of miles it came to a sud- surprised when I told him to take me to put it in the stove and burned it. den stop. I left the car and walked back. the station. I didn’t leave the house at all the next When I got home I was frozen to the There was half an hour until the day. I burned everything I could find: marrow. next train, and I was suddenly worried cardboard boxes, my grandparents’ pho- After a week the village policeman someone might come and prevent me to albums, old wooden skis that were in phoned and said my car had been found. from leaving. The driver had parked the broom closet, a broken stool. What- He was suspicious and asked various his taxi outside the station. He had got ever was too big I sawed or chopped into questions. He didn’t seem to believe out and was smoking and talking on the pieces with the axe. The tools were old whatever cock-and-bull story I told him. phone to someone. He laughed; I could and hadn’t been used in a long time: the On Sunday I went to church for the hear him from the platform where I was saw blade was spotted with rust, and the first time since I had lived in the val- standing. Sometimes he looked across axe was blunt. ley. I sat in the back pew. When the at me, and in spite of the distance I The following day I started on the minister asked the congregation to come thought I could make out a triumphant furniture. My grandparents’ things were forward for the blessing, I stayed put. I expression on his face. solidly built, and I had no idea how saw Lucia, kneeling down with maybe a The train arrived. A couple of skiers much work it was to destroy something. dozen other believers. The minister laid boarded with me, but they got off at the It was probably easier to kill someone, I his hand on their heads, one after the next station and I was alone in the car- thought. The application of pressure to other, and spoke the blessing. After the riage. I opened a window and leaned out. the correct spot, a twist of the neck, a service I tried to speak to Lucia. It was Cold air flowed in. The sky was overcast, blade slipped between the ribs, the way I the first time in ages that I’d seen her and the mountains looked threatening as had seen it done in films. I thought more without Elio. I love you, I said. You’re they passed. Not until the train turned in terms of killing Elio than Lucia, but it crazy, she said, you’re imagining things. a corner and entered a tunnel did I calm wouldn’t have changed anything. When She walked off. I followed her and said down. ◊ the shops opened after the holidays, I it again: I love you. But she didn’t react, bought a new axe. wouldn’t even look at me. I followed ‘The Hurt’ is extracted from the story Destruction had a smell. Torn paper, her back to her house, climbed the collection We’re Flying, forthcoming from cardboard, ripped cloth soaked in gaso- stairs after her to the back entrance. She Granta in April 2013. line to make it burn. Wood smelled opened the door, went in and slammed when it splintered as if it was freshly the door in my face.

19 TWO POEMS Curriculum Vitae By Pedro Lenz, translated by Donal McLaughlin

Almost no one knows that Ulrich Gwerder, who, dressed as a merry shepherd, posed in 1970 for a jazzy poster for Tourist Information in the city of Lucerne, was – at heart – a leftie.

Only Ulrich himself occasionally remembers his old parka jacket and his rebellious behaviour in the Mechanics class at the local tech.

(These days, Ulrich is a specialist in a state-of-the-art small business that produces a first-rate filling for chocolate mice.)

Consolation By Pedro Lenz, translated by Donal McLaughlin

When the schoolgirl in the Domino Tea Room suddenly started sobbing, an old woman, none of whose business it was, said not to take things so much to heart. Every hour God sends could hurt us, sure, she said, with exception of the last when Death comes.

From Die Welt ist ein Taschentuch (Verlag X-Time, 2002)

20 Fiction has so many warts, and Gunnar told me Cuckoo thinks they will go away if he throws a little note with something writ- Flamingos ten on it into the grave with the ashes and the earth. Gunnar didn’t know what the By Ulrike Almut Sandig, translated by Anthea Bell note said, but Cuckoo is always there, so it doesn’t seem to have worked yet. am the leader. I stride at the head of when funerals are held and he carries the I go first, with Gunnar just behind me. I the procession with measured tread. cross. He gets two euros a funeral for that, He says: Don’t forget, you’re the leader You don’t run, you stride, Gunnar told but he doesn’t spend them on anything. now, you stride with measured tread. me, with measured tread. Striding means Gunnar says it’s really profitable in sum- The coffin must be right behind me, walking slowly, taking big steps. Not mertime, when old people die in the heat too: I can hear the pallbearers’ heavy too fast, little one, Gunnar said, but not of their vegetable gardens; sometimes shoes crunching on the gravel path. If I tripping along either, so take big steps, he goes to three funerals a week with turn round I’m sure I won’t be able to although not so big that you’re bobbing Armin. Gunnar isn’t saying what he plans hold the cross straight, so I look at a place up and down as you go along, you must to spend the money on. If I ask him, he just in front of my shoes and take care to get it right for the occasion, understand? waves his arm with a grand gesture and keep going at a regular speed. The cross Besides, we have plenty of time. Striding looks seriously at me, which might mean isn’t heavy, but it sways in the air above steadily is what matters, that’s what with a voyage to Asia, or a motor-bike, or, me, and I have to hold it tight with both measured tread means. There’s nothing probably, getting a driving licence when hands to keep it still. Don’t let it bother worse than a leader who goes sometimes I’m sixteen. Gunnar is four years older you, Gunnar murmurs in my ear, I’m fast, sometimes slowly, so that there are than me and a head taller, and he’s already right here in your blind spot. gaps in the procession, and the people at allowed to carry the heavy metal cross. Gunnar is practising to take his driving the back have to make up for it by break- It’s black, with Jesus painted in gold on test, but he still has a whole year to wait. ing into a slight trot, while up in front the the front, and it looks beautiful. I’d have He’s already bought the book of written people getting their heels trodden on are liked to carry that cross, but I only have exercises that comes with a piece of card- taken by surprise. the smaller one made of pale wood, var- board with holes in it. You put the card- I practised it first. I walked with meas- nished, no Jesus on it. After all, this is my board over the page of answers, and then ured tread from the landing on Armin’s first time, and I still have to get used to it. you can see the right box through the stairs, and then down the long corridor From now on I’ll be the one carrying the pattern of holes, while the others are cov- to the built-in cupboard. Gunnar and I cross at the head of the procession. Gun- ered up. A blind spot is the space between go to visit Armin sometimes, but Gun- nar is around as well today, he’ll give me the wing mirror and the rear-view mir- nar goes more often than I do. Armin is a a bit of help. ror that the driver of the car can’t see for pastor. The door of the built-in cupboard The starting point was the little chapel himself. If a pedestrian gets into the blind looks like the door of a room, except beside the watering cans. I didn’t go spot of a heavy vehicle he can’t be seen at that it’s lower and has a key that you can’t in, although the door was wide open. all. Now Gunnar is in my blind spot, and pull out. So Armin’s built-in cupboard The smell of candles, cleaning fluid and I’m watching my shoes. is always unlocked, and a good place for perfume wafted out into the forecourt. From the chapel it’s about four hun- small people to hide. However, I never Cross-bearers stand outside and wait to dred paces down the main path. Every hide in it, because it smells of old fabric go first when the procession sets off. I hundred paces there’s a rubbish bin for and children I don’t know. The built-in was standing right beside the pallbearers. dead flowers and weeds; I counted them cupboard is full of choirboys’ cassocks. They had yellow stains on their fingers, once when I was imitating Gunnar car- Some are short, some are longer, they are and they didn’t talk to me. Gunnar said rying his cross, it was some time ago, but loose and black, like vestments for little hi to them, he said it loud and clear, but I remembered. The second rubbish bin pastors, and they have white collars. I they just gave me a funny look and didn’t comes up beside my right shoe. Armin took one of the smaller ones off its hang- say anything. is walking beside me in his black cassock, er and put it on over my anorak. It came The coffin lay in the dimly lit chapel. his hand on my back. I’d like to shake it down below my knees, but it didn’t cover Pale wood like the cross I was carrying. off, but I’m afraid of making the cross my dirty trousers. Try another, growled Flowers in front of it, with inscriptions wobble, so I leave it where it is and con- Gunnar from inside the built-in cupboard. on white ribbons. I couldn’t read them centrate. Let him, says Gunnar, he’s only The cassock looks better with my dark from where I was standing, but they leaning on you for support. Another two blue corduroy trousers. I found the dusty looked lovely; I’m sure Gunnar will think hundred paces. smear on its left shoulder myself and so too. Papa, in his suit, kept looking Gunnar got in the way on purpose on rubbed it off; it left my fingers all sticky, round at me. Mama was sitting some- Monday. A caravan is a kind of heavy and I had to wipe them on the door of where else. Old Cuckoo was there as well, vehicle, right? It has two wing mirrors Armin’s house on my way to the chapel. standing behind the back row of chairs and a rear-view mirror, so the blind spot This is Saturday. Gunnar is often short with both hands in his trouser pockets. must be very small, he claimed. Smaller of time on Saturdays, because that’s He always comes to funerals because he than me, want to bet? You can see what’s

21 on both sides in the wing mirrors, with rubbish bin. The heap of earth is lying in earth before and after it, and there isn’t a a glance over your shoulder you check the middle of the main path, it’s the third stone yet where people can read the dif- what’s in the corner, and you see every- space along beside the hedge with the ference between the graves. The flowers thing behind you in the rear-view mir- little graves for urns beyond it. lie on the mound of earth until it shrinks. ror. Unless you’re crouching down, but Armin’s warm hand guides me left and I’ve never seen someone shovelling the maybe even then you see it. past the earth. The hole is square and earth away from a mound or anything The caravan is still very new. It has a deep. My hat it has four corners, four like that, I wonder what happens to all kitchen with a corner seat, a ceiling light corners has my hat, I think. Ha, ha! You that earth, it can’t just sink in like com- and a boiler, a toilet, a shower with white never told me how it goes on, I think, post sinking into a flowerbed, there’s taps for hot and cold water, and four but Gunnar doesn’t reply. Armin’s warm something underneath it; after all, there’s empty built-in cupboards, but the coffin, so what happens to not like the one in Armin’s the mound of earth? The coffin corridor. What with our is much bigger than Gunnar. Volvo and the caravan there’s The thick ropes in the men’s almost nowhere left in our hands look like weapons. Now yard for visitors’ cars, they they put them under the coffin all have to park at the road- and lower it into the hole by side. And the entrance to the ropes. Gunnar said they let the yard is so narrow that the ropes down very slowly so you can only back into it, that the body won’t slip and says Papa, or you have dif- lie slanting in the coffin. Once ficulty in getting out again. bodies did lie slanting in their He fetched the caravan on coffins, but that was because Monday and brought it in many of them weren’t dead through the entrance with at all when they were buried. great verve, until he came It’s almost all just as Gunnar up against Gunnar. Ha, ha! said. Armin is on my right and Another hundred paces. has let go of me. He is reading You’re nuts, Gunnar, I say, something from the Bible. It’s that’s really funny. Gunnar about someone who has taken doesn’t reply. the wings of the morning and The caravan was Mama’s flown to the uttermost parts of idea. It takes three days to the sea, but even there thy right get to Spain, but if you’re hand will hold him. When I not in a hurry you can spend try my backwards glance over a week on the way. Stras- my shoulder, the upright of the bourg is halfway there, it’s a cross slips out of my hand and French city, and we’re going describes a semicircle in the air to make a side trip to the above my head; the cross falls South of France and see flamingos living hand guides me to the side of the hole past Armin’s suddenly outstretched arm, in the wild. They’re pink because they and comes down on my shoulder again. lands on the mound of earth and then live on small shellfish containing carotene. Stay where you are. Now I can see eve- slips slowly, head first, into the hole and Carrots contain that too. If flamingos ate rything. on to the wooden lid of the coffin, mak- carrots they’d be just as pink. You can’t The funeral procession is about two ing a hollow sound, and then there’s a miss seeing them. That’s where we’re hundred paces long. I know most of the loud clack of varnished wood on metal going. people, my cousins are among them, fur- fittings. But I haven’t yet asked whether all ther off are Winter and Johne, old Wolf No one says anything, and no one takes three of us are going. I haven’t asked any and others from our street; Cuckoo is a step forward to get a better view. The questions at all since Monday. No one has right at the back, I can tell him by his graveyard is a crowd of people in black asked any questions, although we look beige waistcoat, the other men are all and dark blue gathered on the gravel, at each other, Papa and me and Mama, wearing black or dark blue jackets, the their clothes rubbing against each other. I while we don’t ask questions. But only women wear blouses. Gunnar is nowhere turn away from the hole, I try my back- from a distance. Mama isn’t sitting with in sight. The men have put the cof- wards glance over my shoulder again, and Papa, and I’m here at the front. At the fin down beside the hole now and are take a deep breath: Gunnar, are you still moment everyone is looking at me. I’m unloading the big bunches of flowers. there? ◊ the leader. My back is sweating because They’ll go on top of the mound of earth of Armin’s hand and because of all the later. It’s always like that, this mound of From Flamingos (Schoeffling & Co., 2010) people behind me, watching. The last earth is just like all the other mounds of

22 A Single Book use a cant term meaning ‘to turn tricks’). Another challenge I had to contend with was the inconspicuousness of Wal- The Expansion of Literary Language lace’s deviations from the standard lan- guage. At times understanding was more Ulrich Blumenbach translates Infinite Jest, Translated by Ross Benjamin difficult than translating, as when it didn’t sink in at first that a word missing from hen, in 2002, Helga Frese-Resch ourselves, however, we give rein to exu- the dictionary, ‘underdue’, amounted to Woffered me the opportunity to berant anarchy, an equivalence between the simple opposite of ‘overdue’: a urolo- translate Infinite Jestby David Foster technical lingo and slang, erudite serious- gist has shown up earlier than expected to Wallace into German for the publisher ness and childlike jest. take urine samples from tennis players for Kiepenheuer & Witsch, I was excited – at Wallace perfectly balances engagement a drug test; he is underdue, or unterfällig, last, something that would be more than and distance. It would be hard to find a made-up word that inverts the German a flash in the pan, forgotten by the time another author of contemporary litera- überfällig in a parallel fashion. Then there the book fair after next rolled around, if ture who creates characters so full of life was the problem of awkward sentences, not before then. and shows them so much compassion, sol- which at first glance prompt the reader to As the saying goes, success is ninety- idarity and even love, while at the same call for the editor, but at second glance nine per cent perspiration, and over the time dissecting contemporary American have to be carefully mimicked. Right on years various stylistic peculiarities of the society with the clinical coldness of an the first page of the novel is the sentence: novel made me sweat. A central chal- autopsy report. Faced with this ambigu- ‘the others sit, stand and stand, respec- lenge I had to confront in the translation ity while translating, I repeatedly had to tively, at the periphery of my focus.’ Did was the aesthetic of the author: Wallace ask myself: How strange is Wallace’s syn- someone forget to delete the duplicate seeks to overcome playful postmodernism tax for Americans? How strange will my word during the editorial process? and grapple with real societal problems, sentences be for German readers? Where No, Hal Incandenza, the narrator without dispensing with irony. The have I gone too far, and where have I not of the passage, is a fastidiously precise stylistic expression of that aim is a sort gone far enough? Where is strangeness observer, who notes the position of each of double coding: in the novel, one and beautiful in the original but only jarring of the three people in the room with its the same narrator can move back and in the translation? own verb. Or a tennis coach says, ‘I went forth between different idioms, suddenly In Infinite Jest it’s often not only char- daily to there, to be with the tree.’ Here lapsing from an expository mode to the acters and events but also words and too it’s not that the author, translator, offhand colloquialism of a petty criminal sentences that seem strange. Wallace editor, typesetter or copy-editor screwed and ex-junkie: ‘A substance even just the portrays complex social issues through up; rather, the character produces a so- accidental-synthesis of which sent the nested sentence construction and a wide called aposiopesis: The initially planned Sandoz chemist into early retirement and vocabulary. There aren’t many writers sentence (‘I went daily to the tree’) is serious unblinking wall-watching, the in the German language who dare to abandoned in the course of speaking and incredibly potent DMZ has a popular- transform the world into literature with replaced with a new approach. lay-chemical-underground reputation as such an encyclopedic abundance of sub- Such difficulties pale in comparison the single grimmest thing ever conceived ject matter – with the exception of Uwe to the pleasure of translating Infinite Jest. in a tube. It is also now the hardest rec- Tellkamp perhaps, who in his novel Der ‘The limits of my language mean the lim- reational compound to acquire in North Turm [The Tower] adapts his style to the its of my world,’ Wittgenstein writes, and America after raw Vietnamese opium, characters and situations in a similarly at times when I wasn’t translating Infinite which forget it.’ many-voiced way. In the accumulation Jest over the past several years, I often For this passage I had to recreate the of specialist knowledge Infinite Jest is a felt like the Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, comic contrast between the theoretical ‘fight . . . for the return to the full use of Princess Leia Organa and the wily space- explanation and the sudden breaking-off the language’, as Hemingway once wrote, ship pilot Han Solo in Star Wars when of the sentence, the linguistic equivalent and I hope that the translation expands they suddenly find themselves in the of a dismissive gesture. The narrator, tra- the expressive possibilities of the Ger- trash compactor of the Death Star: the ditionally the direct cable from the navel man tongue; to that end, I had to consult adulterated language of the mass media, of the fable, is in Wallace’s work a fibre- the German dictionary compiled by the the linguistic junkyard of the Internet optic cable and conveys several messages brothers Grimm as well as lexicons of and the heaps of empty phrases pouring simultaneously. This oscillating writing is historical argot in order to enrich the out of the TV made me claustrophobic, reminiscent of the conversations we have German version with unusual words like for I had the impression that the walls of with ourselves. When we speak in public, bucklig (‘gibbous’, an astronomical term my language, and with them – in Witt- we pin ourselves down to the stylistic for one of the eight phases of the moon) genstein’s sense – the limits of my world, register appropriate to a given situation or kobern (for ‘petaled ass’ in the original; were closing in on me. (during a scholarly lecture I don’t tell the orthographic errors and malapropisms For me, Wallace is the Han Solo of lit- dirty jokes; at the gym I don’t pontifi- of this passage I worked in elsewhere in erature. He has an ‘allergy to the confin- cate). When we have conversations with my translation, and here chose instead to ing realities of the present’, as he writes at

23 one point in Infinite Jest. He presses back itself ’. I introduced such innovations that the English of that character partly against the constrictions of catchphrase of my own as compensation for those follows French grammar. A cocaine and cliché. His novel achieves an almost of Wallace’s elsewhere in the novel for addict lives linguistically beyond his inconceivable expansion of literary lan- which I was unable to come up with means and produces one malapropism guage, for Wallace ignites in the trash equivalents. His writing abounds with after another. compactor of the Death Star a supernova neologisms: ‘Byzantinalia’, ‘fitviavi’, Some characters emerge from the that explodes the space of language so ‘Momentumizers’, ‘contuded’, ‘Nordicu- wings only briefly; others are in the that the heart and brain too burst their lar’, and so on. Because this inventive- spotlight throughout the novel. Over bounds. ness is a feature of his style, I myself thus the years I grew fond of them. When I In this treasure chest I found words hammered a few dents into the walls of sat down at the keyboard in the morn- I will never read again in my life, and I the trash compactor and sounded and ing, I was happy to see old friends again. was occasionally able to substitute for expanded the linguistic and lexical pos- I was eager to find out what facet of them words that the German dictionary sibilities of German. their personality or event from their life indicates were last used in 1702, such as I also encountered numerous char- they would now present to me. Every unrüchtig (for ‘malefic’), or words that acters whose use of language Wallace day Wallace offered me a new gem, even were never even recorded by the broth- lovingly depicts. A mathematics freak if it was only sentences written in chil- ers Grimm, such as Schaller (for ‘sallet’, a speaks in formulas. An underprivileged dren’s speech or a description of photos medieval helmet). I invented words such young African American woman speaks in a headmaster’s waiting room. All told, as Halluzinogenivore (for ‘ingester’) or the notorious Black American English. I have spent years immersed in an almost thalassofiziert – the latter, which comes A young man has devoured the whole unbelievably varied and sensuous experi- from the Greek root thalasso-, meaning Oxford English Dictionary – an autobio- ence of pure word material, and I have ‘sea’, and would therefore mean, roughly, graphical element – and commits ‘a sort had the chance to draw as never before ‘oceanified’, is actually an addition to of lexical rape’ of the reader. A French- from the abundance of my native lan- the original, where Wallace writes only Canadian confronted me with the ques- guage to reproduce that experience. ◊ ‘plowing at high knottage through time tion of how to render in German the fact

Fiction Promised Land by Simon Urban, translated by Katy Derbyshire

riters are odd fellows, thought already, by life. So if you wanted to deliv- it would sell better than if the book had WMoll. They seemed to him like er something original you had to muck simply been called Promised Land, which vampires, what with all their leeching on in for yourself. That, said Vassiler, had had always been his working title. Well everything that crossed their paths. There become the writer’s real job: helping life anyway, the text was still called that for was no biography uninteresting enough out so that it was worth writing about. him, and what title other people had on not to squeeze a motif out of it for the Rewriting reality, into originality. the front cover was of no interest to him. great canon of human flaws. I wonder As Moll no doubt knew, said Vassiler, Moll asked if he could have another how I’ll find myself, in the stories, Moll the novel that was coming out next week cup of coffee, and Vassiler sloped word- thought, scribbling the date and time on had been a kind of demand made of him, lessly into the kitchen and came back his notebook. Across the table, Vassiler being a former GDR writer and all that. with his whole gurgling coffee machine. ran a hand through his straggly hair and People in the West had expected someone He plugged it in underneath the sticky told Moll to shout if he went too fast who’d been silenced for so long, over here, coffee table and said that the entire GDR with his story; he usually gave journalists to be gagging for a payback now. But issue usually got quite drawn out and he a written piece in advance. He hadn’t got that only went to show that the West still couldn’t be bothered to keep going in the round to it this time, though, because had no idea how people felt when they kitchen. The machine gradually calmed he’d had to urgently take care of some were bricked in. Even the greatest rage down and Moll carefully extracted the new material. Today’s writers, he com- wore down over time if you were behind jug from it. So to get back to Emmely plained, were condemned to get hold of bars for 28 years. So that was the reason Brüske, said Vassiler, she’d turned up everything themselves, even their stories, for the story of Emmely Brüske, which in the summer of 1985, here in this flat, which life was actually supposed to come was now coming out under the title of because she’d heard the writer Gregor up with. But they’d all been written Lady Liar, because his publishers thought Vasil was looking for a typist. And the

24 fact that this Emmely Brüske obviously have read him one too many Vassiler into performing a presumably planned didn’t know his name properly had made poems, and that had apparently sufficed number of shags with that horny intel- him like her straight away, because names to make him spill the beans right here, lectual in his sticky kitchen, and whether didn’t matter at all, as you could tell by over liverwurst sandwiches and advocaat. he’d included the kitchen-sink measure- the awful novel title. But Konrad hadn’t wanted to reveal ments in his equation, because that was So from then on it was Brüske who how he planned to do it, said Vassiler. where she got shafted once a week and it typed up his manuscripts, in the kitchen, Only that he was absolutely certain he’d certainly wasn’t regulation height. for ten East German marks an hour, on an find a way out of this cancerous uto- Emmely Brüske had simply stared old Torpedo. Just the prose to start with, pia. And that way would be found by out of the window at that, as if Erich because that was strictly apolitical with a mathematics alone. Because according to Honecker was out there counting the writer like Vassiler, as Mr Moll was pre- him, it was all a question of calculations. remaining hairs on his balls live on stage. sumably aware. And then of course he’d Probability and improbability, mass and It had suddenly gone very silent in the grown to trust this woman, said Vassiler, velocity, space and time. This world, kitchen, said Vassiler. Even Konrad had who’d spent hours deciphering his scrib- Konrad said – said Vassiler – was noth- been lost for words to begin with. Then blings over in the kitchen. And then it ing more than a salad of numbers and all he’d given Vassiler a cold look and said, had just happened one time, spontaneous- you had to do was go out and pick a few intercourse for ideas, it had come out ly, on the kitchen sink. When they’d just nice leaves out of the salad and pour the as zero on paper so it must be an equal got the last part of his Leptosom finished. right dressing over it and serve it up nice exchange. And the fact that Vassiler had Emmely Brüske had squealed like a stuck and neat and fresh, and Bob’s your uncle: seen through the plan then and there pig all the way through. And told him the perfect break-out. A bit of mental was part of the equation too, Konrad afterwards that was the only form of pro- arithmetic and you were free. That was had said. It was proof of the absolute test that Erich Mielke hadn’t yet banned. something only humans were capable of: correctness of all previous steps. Now That was why, she’d said, she always used pulling their head out of the noose by Vassiler had the opportunity to use his a good old proletarian copulation to using their noggins. And that very capa- kitchen sink for washing up as usual, or shout out her pent-up rage against that bility obliged them to do so. for a good scrubbing. The latter was wall-builder Mielke. You had to let it out The only thing Konrad was worried surely the more pleasant option for all somehow, she’d said. From then on, said about, said Vassiler, was that he’d need parties and wouldn’t give him dishpan Vassiler, he’d let Emmely Brüske type up human help for his flight from paradise. hands. So if that much was clear they his poetry too. At least in the planning phase. He’d have could finally raise their glasses. Advocaat, They’d gone from love-thy-neighbour to get hold of a few empirical values, said Konrad – said Vassiler – was better to an affair, of course, said Vassiler. That he’d need a minimum of material, access in the West as well. meant he’d not only been a writer with a to certain places: a few figures for his Moll put his notepad down on the secretary, but been having an affair with calculation. And that forced him to make table and took the jug out of the wheez- his secretary on top, and that had made contact with certain people. In these cas- ing coffee machine. Vassiler lit a cigarillo him feel like a whole bourgeoisie rolled es, however, he had to assume they were in slow motion, blowing the smoke into one. Even though Emmely Brüske being watched. And so, he said, before over to the sideboard in messy curls. was only ever operative in the kitchen. he could start his calculation, he was in The rings of smoke dragged themselves In any case, said Vassiler, it was via this search of a disguise. And who better to across the semi-dark living room like whole kitchen affair that he’d met Kon- ask than a writer, who had to disguise billowing spaceships running out of gas. rad at some point, Emmely Brüske’s son his political poetry, and who also pos- They got larger and thinner, puffing from her first marriage to an officer in sessed the only thing that a mathemati- up before they touched the sideboard, the border brigade. Konrad had just cian didn’t need, thank God: a lively where their thin circles tore. The coffee turned twenty-one and was a mathemat- imagination. And that was why a young machine hissed in the background. Moll ical genius. They’d been at Alexander- man like Konrad Brüske was confiding reached for his notepad with a cough. platz and the boy had worked out in his in a thinker like Vassiler the writer: to So the kitchen sink had stayed in head what the twelve years’ waiting time get hold of the necessary figures for his use on Sundays, said Vassiler, sending for a Trabant was in minutes. And after calculation. another ring out on its journey. Except that how many hairs Honecker would So now the ball was in his court, said that Konrad had always turned up later have left on his balls, assuming average Vassiler, and that had made him think on. In the evening, with a few bottles East German balls-hair frequency, if one that calculating Konrad and his typing of beer and half a pound of raw sausage. hair had fallen out for every refugee, on mother weren’t sitting around in a sticky Then the three of them had stuck to the his central organ. And what with Kon- writer’s kitchen drinking pale yellow kitchen table and examined Vassiler’s rad’s result being pretty bald balls, they’d advocaat for no reason. So he’d asked ideas and in the end decided on the first had to leave the café pretty damn quick. Konrad how much calculation it had concept he’d come up with. Once Vas- And so it was here in the kitchen, a few taken to find a man with an imagina- siler had made a number of enquiries of hours later, that Vassiler had found out tion equal to his sexual frustration, and a journalist friend on certain matters, he what Konrad was actually planning: a how much addition and division had retired to the strategic side of the plan- pretty decent escape. His mother must been required to talk his own mother ning and carried on working at home.

25 Emmely Brüske introduced herself to columns of numbers. The fact that the her steak had gone cold for all her exul- the comrades at the local Stasi office local Stasi office occasionally gave his tations, and the Major General had had and told them she couldn’t look on idly mother contact names for the fulfilment tears in his eyes by the end and looked any longer while her socialist brothers of her citizenly duties, which contacts like he’d really cried a bit. And that and sisters worked hard for the sake of in turn possessed material, or figures, or speech of hers, she’d said, had shown the state; she had to take an active role access to certain places, helped Konrad her how the country worked. How herself at long last. Perhaps it was to do to remove further unknown factors from the whole of socialism worked. She’d with her approaching menopause, she his equation. Despite her heroic uncle, invented socialism then and there, over told them. In any case it was high time the officials continued to treat Comrade lunch. Although she hadn’t been the for her to up the ante for the sake of the Brüske with suspicion, however. Konrad first. But it was easy enough to invent party. She could imagine her country therefore calculated that Vassiler would socialism, said Emmely Brüske: all you needed her. have to provide a few specific ideas for had to do was sing its praises for so long So the local Stasi head’s secretary Emmely, to advance her standing suf- that you started believing what you wrote down an address on a form and ficiently with the Stasi. His mother had said. That’s all there was to it. Idealistic advised her to send her written applica- now become a disguise, Konrad said – politics were as easy as that. The best tion and motivations to Central Depart- said Vassiler – but not yet to perfection. singers of praises were on the govern- ment VIII of the Ministry for State And a helm of invisibility could never be ment benches. They were a whole gang Security. But she added right away that good enough. who’d simply spent so long talking the operative tasks that Comrade Brüske Vassiler therefore came up with a about socialism that they were all con- had in mind were only possible, if at all, weekly coffee morning for trustwor- vinced of it themselves. on the basis of a long-standing and trust- thy employees and partners of various Konrad had gathered up his papers ing relationship between the institution local Stasi offices, with the purpose of from the kitchen table, watching and the individual. At which Vassiler exchanging methods and experiences in Emmely thoughtfully. She’d gone bright wrote a letter inventing an uncle for order to combat the class enemy more red from all her inventing of socialism. Emmely Brüske. This imaginary uncle efficiently. Emmely Brüske presented In the hall, Konrad had taken Vassiler had been imprisoned under Hitler and this plan as her own invention to the aside and said he didn’t want him to go sentenced to death for distributing pam- local Stasi head, but it tripped up on the thinking up any more executed uncles phlets containing socialist ideas. It was strict confidentiality stipulations. Vas- or idiotic Stasi systems for the sake of his terribly regrettable that the file on the siler’s suggestion to separate arrested sus- mother’s ego, there was to be no more of Bertolt Brüske case had been lost in the pects immediately in police custody and it. Vassiler was to lie back and think of bombings. Yet the niece of this forgotten imply to each party that the other was the kitchen sink the next time he came spearhead of socialism was all the more just about to betray them, however, was up with a Stasi method. He was perfectly glad to be able to provide Colonel Dr jur. accepted under Regulation 1/76 (Covert welcome to go on reinforcing the errand Wolfgang Weissbach with names of sus- Demoralization). Above all, the Stasi boys of this dictatorship with his evil picious individuals of her acquaintance was impressed by the idea of discredit- schemes, but that would mean he’d soon who might be considering leaving the ing consistent opponents of the party have to drill a hole in the wall to get his republic illegally and thus robbing the by means of carefully spread rumours rocks off. Then Konrad had slammed the fatherland of the necessary labour force about alleged secret collaboration with door without even looking at Vassiler for building socialism. A week later, the government. Only five months later, again. Emmely Brüske received a letter signed the police and Stasi success with these The next Sunday, Emmely Brüske by Weissbach’s deputy Colonel Stetefeld, absolutely non-violent methods earned had brought along a bottle of French congratulating Comrade Brüske both Emmely Brüske an invitation to the cen- wine. The wine came from the local on her biography and on her courageous tral headquarters on Normannenstrasse Stasi office, she’d said. They’d offered intent to work against unconscionable and a meal with Major General Hans her a position there that day. All official, enemies of the state. Stetefeld wrote that Carlsohn from Central Department VIII. in the administrative section. Unof- his ministry had to guarantee the protec- That evening at the sticky kitchen ficially, however, she was supposed to tion of the GDR’s social development and table, Emmely told Vassiler and Kon- spy on the local Stasi office. There were state security reliably and comprehen- rad she’d been in a cold sweat at first certain suspicions, she said, from above. sively under all conditions and depended over all her barefaced lies to Carlsohn, Dr Weissbach himself had called her on responsible pillars of society such patriotism and all that, but then it had and said they needed her help in this as Comrade Brüske to do so. Vassiler all come flowing out of her. You heard case – as a new informer, he’d told her, noticed that Emmely grew a little quieter all those speeches on the radio and TV, Emmely was not yet embroiled in the on his kitchen sink. she’d said, and you read them in the possible bureaucratic corruption. It was Every Sunday, Konrad reported over papers too. And then she’d just started her big chance, she’d said, Vassiler had beer and sausage on the progress of his talking like the telly and Carlsohn had to understand that. You could have a calculations, actually producing sheets been totally enthusiastic about her tel- career in this country if you wanted. It of paper out of his jacket pocket that evised address, so she’d praised the GDR just had to be a socialist career. And a were covered in graphs and endless more and more, to high heaven, even socialist career, she’d said, always began

26 with the intelligence services. So if Vas- And all it had said on the back was that would wish to envisage their mother and siler wanted to continue his activities Honecker would have one less hair on father imprisoned while gallivanting in on the kitchen sink he’d have to provide his balls that coming Sunday, maybe the midst of sinful capitalism? And if more ideas, because now she was dealing even his last. The Honecker-testicles cal- someone came back voluntarily his par- with the inner enemy, and that was the culation was the only one he hadn’t kept ents or siblings could be released imme- worst kind, as everyone knew. She was a backup copy of, so he had no precise diately. As Vassiler was also an expert on involved in the protection of social secu- figures any more. One thing was for sure public relations, being a writer, he urged rity and state development, and the fact though: there’d be a bit of a sting. Major General Carlsohn to link the that she shagged on a sticky kitchen sink That afternoon, Emmely had turned introduction of this socialist self-defence for the success of her work was doubt- up in a sombre office outfit and said mechanism to a spectacular example of lessly the best proof of how dedicated her appearance in Vassiler’s flat was not illegal escape, so that a widely reported she was not to drive even more potential out of gratitude that she’d got her boss precedent would be set, thus nipping socialists into the arms of the West. firmly in her grip since the day before, further family tragedies in the bud. Vassiler thought for a minute and but to announce with great gratifica- Vassiler was only making these sugges- then agreed. Once Emmely had made tion the end of the kitchen-sink affair. tions out of love for his fatherland, he herself available in the kitchen for the For one thing, she’d always had an wrote – as he said – and not because he defence of the fatherland and subse- incredibly sticky bum after all that rus- would like to see himself as an originator quently opened the Stasi wine, Vassiler tic humping; and for another, a writer of tighter criminal law. Ultimately, he suggested investigating the local Stasi who wrote about sex couldn’t help but would always remain a poet. And a poet head’s relationship to his secretary more be a lousy lover. Why else would he was always apolitical, as everyone knew. closely. Every man had a thing with his write about sex? From then on, Vassiler Three days later, both the West and typist nowadays, and if he was right she could go right back to using his ideas East German media reported in detail could soon be grilling her boss about for helpless protest poetry and he’d no on a 21-year-old Berliner and his dra- the intrigues in his own office. Emmely doubt find someone else for his kitchen matic escape in a People’s Army hot-air buttoned up her blouse and said Vassiler sink. The likes of Emmely Brüske balloon used for special surveillance needn’t expect to see Konrad any more. were perfectly capable of taking fate flights above densely forested border Having tried in vain to convince him of into their own hands, at any rate. Now regions. The man had previously posed his duty to the fatherland she’d had no she was sleeping with the local Stasi as a young writer and approached the other option but to put the young man head, in a proper bed and everything, border brigades in search of new sto- out on the street. She’d burned every one just imagine. And what he had to say ries. He had thus tricked his way into of his calculations before talking to him, afterwards was worth a great deal more the barracks and prepared his escape of course. You learned that kind of thing than the scheming excesses of a sticky over a number of weeks. In West Berlin, at the Stasi, she’d said. A mathematician provincial poet. however, he had crashed the balloon was nothing without paper. And now After that visit, said Vassiler, he’d sat into the Academy of Arts due to thick Konrad would finally have a chance to down at his desk and drafted a letter to fog and sustained multiple fractures of reflect on his tasks within socialist soci- Major General Carlsohn. Vassiler wrote his arms and legs on falling out of the ety. that, being a writer, he was necessarily basket. Moll saw that Vassiler’s cigarillo was a man of imagination. And as he wrote Vassiler leaned back in his chair and nearing its end. He took another big about people, and therefore had to think drank a sip of advocaat. Moll asked him puff at the smoking stump and pressed it about people all day long, he had also a few more things and at some point said out in the ashtray. Then Vassiler got up, become a man of psychology. And any- thanks for the coffee and the novel plot, went over to a shelf in the corner and one who was an imaginative psycholo- and that the story was very original. And picked up a bottle of advocaat. He put gist, and a convinced socialist on top of was he right in thinking that Vassiler two glasses on the table and filled them. that, had the odd idea every now and himself had occasionally toyed with the He spilt half a glassful. He wasn’t really then that was perhaps of more use to his idea of leaving the GDR? Vassiler, who used to telling stories all the way to the state than to himself. He therefore want- had already opened the front door for end in person, said Vassiler. He’d writ- ed to inform Major General Carlsohn Moll, laughed and said he’d be lying if he ten the whole thing down especially so how one might be able to curb the tide said he had. Believe it or not, he’d always he didn’t have to keep telling it. But he of illegal flight from the republic a little felt stuck firmly to the GDR, knowing couldn’t very well send a journalist home in future. It was a simple matter: merely full well that socialism would one day without an ending. Otherwise Moll reinstate the ancient but therefore all the collapse under its own weightlessness. would leave thinking it had all ended up more effective method of liability for And an escape would have done him no as usual. next of kin. Thus, when a wayward soul good anyway. The stories were no newer So three weeks after Emmely Brüske sought their way to the West, there was in the West either. Moll said his goodbyes had started typing up forms and spying little more effective than arresting the and walked down the worn-down stairs on her boss in the local Stasi office, a refugee’s next of kin in his lieu. It was to the ground floor. His shoes stuck to the postcard had arrived. From Konrad. On morally reprehensible, admittedly, but dark wood at every step. Moll was certain the front was an aerial view of Berlin. nevertheless enormously helpful – who he’d just been made part of a story. ◊

27 Poem Self-Portrait as a White Lady By Marion Poschmann, translated by Iain Galbraith

wayward, thin-walled, aloof: I began to appear, bitterly striving for the impossible body a huge hole in the hollow of the bus stop, an interior stadium

I shone

an igloo lit from within, in the spray zone of star clusters, the cold extracts of former community centres,

streets soused in alcohol, slow, gentle: I made halls, phantasms of origin; things based

the child that I was, in seal-skin boots, shy of being seen, waits in the seedy light of nervous exhaustion for buses and trams like some after-effect of wrongly prescribed medicine, a sylph-like umbra, sweat-stains under its arms,

expecting electric baths, the puzzles that a contact leaves: the sophisticated lighting of the terrain, hypersensitivity, ruins of the gaze; mist that forms at the touch

From Geistersehen (Suhrkamp, 2010)

28 Fiction into rages or throwing bunches of keys. And she was proud of it. One could still show weakness. The occasional carrot, Ecosystems out of the blue. The important thing was to set the By Judith Schalansky, translated by Shaun Whiteside pupils in the right direction, put blinkers on them in order to sharpen their con- it down,’ said Inge Lohmark, and The mere prospect of wasting their days centration. And if chaos really did pre- ‘Sthe class sat down. She said, ‘Open in utter futility robbed the children of vail, you just had to scrape your finger- the book at page seven,’ and they opened all their concentration. With swimming- nails down the board or tell them about the book at page seven, and then they pool eyes, greasy skin and a sweaty urge the canine tapeworm. In any case the started on ecological balances, ecosystems, for freedom they slumped on their best thing was to make the pupils con- the interdependencies and interrelations chairs and dozed their way towards stantly aware that they were at her mer- between species, between living creatures the holidays. Some became erratic and cy. Rather than allowing them to think and their environment, the effective insane. Others, because of the com- they had anything to say. Her pupils had organization of community and space. ing report, feigned submissiveness and no right to speak and no opportunity From the food web of mixed woodland deposited their biology assessments on to choose. No one had a choice. There they moved to the food chain of the field, the teacher’s desk like cats laying dead were natural breeding choices and that from the rivers to the seas, and finally to mice on the sitting-room carpet. Only was that. the desert and the tidal flats. ‘You see, no to ask, at the next class, for their marks, The year started now. Even though one – no animal, no human being – can calculators at the ready, eager to work it had begun a long time ago. For her it live entirely for himself alone. Competi- out the improvement in their average to started today, on the first of September, tion prevails between living creatures. three decimal points. which this year fell on a Monday. And And sometimes, too, something like But Inge Lohmark wasn’t one of those it was now, in the dried-up tail-end of cooperation. But that is rather rare. The teachers who caved in at the end of the summer, that Inge Lohmark made her most significant forms of coexistence school year just because they were about resolutions, not on gaudy New Year’s are competition and the relationship to lose their adversaries. She wasn’t wor- Eve. She was always glad that her school between predator and prey.’ ried about slipping into insignificance planner carried her safely over the turn While Inge Lohmark drew arrows on as she was thrown back entirely on her of the calendar year. A simple flick of the board, from the mosses, lichens and own devices. Some of her colleagues, the page, with no countdown or chink- fungi to the earthworms and stag bee- the closer the summer break approached, ing of glasses. tles, hedgehogs and shrews, then to the were afflicted with almost tender pliancy. Inge Lohmark looked across the three great tit, to the roe deer and the hawk, Their teaching degenerated into a hol- rows of desks and didn’t move her head and finally one last arrow to the wolf, a low form of audience participation. A so much as an inch. She had perfected pyramid gradually formed, with man at dreamy glance here, a pat on the back that in all those years: the omnipotent, its tip alongside a few beasts of prey. there, wistful encouragement, hours of motionless gaze. According to statistics, ‘The fact is that there is no animal that miserable film-watching. An inflation of there were always at least two in the eats eagles or lions.’ good marks, a grievous betrayal of the A class who were really interested in the She took a step back to consider the grade. And then there was the nuisance subject. But those statistics seemed to be broad chalk drawing. The arrow diagram of rounding up end-of-year marks to in jeopardy. Regardless of the rules of linked producers with primary, second- heave a few hopeless cases up into the Gaussian distribution. How on earth had ary and tertiary consumers as well as the next class. As if that helped anybody at they managed to get this far? You could inevitable decomposing micro-organ- all. Her colleagues simply didn’t under- tell they’d been doing nothing but loaf isms, all connected by respiration, heat stand that they were just damaging their around for six weeks. None of them had loss and increase in biomass. In nature own health by showing any interest in opened a single book. The big holidays. everything had its place, and if perhaps their pupils. After all, they were nothing Not quite as big as they used to be. But not every creature had a purpose, then at but bloodsuckers who drained you of all still far too long! It would take at least a least every species did: eating and being your vital energy. Who fed on the teach- month to get them used to the school’s eaten. It was wonderful. ing body, on its authority and its fear, biorhythm again. At least she didn’t have ‘Copy that down in your notebook.’ doing harm to its responsibility. They to listen to their stories. They could tell As she said, so it was done. constantly ambushed one. With non- those to Mrs Schwanneke, who organ- This was when the year began. The sensical questions, meagre suggestions ized an icebreaking game with each new unease of June was long past, the time and distasteful familiarities. The purest class. After half an hour all the partici- of sultry heat and bare upper arms. The vampirism. pants were entangled in skeins from a red sun burned through the glass façade, Inge Lohmark wasn’t going to be ball of wool, and could each rattle off turning the classroom into a greenhouse. sucked dry any more. She was well the names and hobbies of the child sit- The expectation of summer germinated known for her ability to maintain a tight ting next to them. somewhere in the back of empty minds. rein and a short leash, without flying Only a few scattered seats were occu-

29 pied. It was clear now how few they and repeatedly withheld. And then the Inge Lohmark had no darlings, and were. A sparse audience in her theatre of candle-lit processions. never would. Having crushes was an nature: twelve pupils – five boys, seven Lately everyone had started insisting immature, misguided kind of emotional girls. The thirteenth had gone back on self-realization. It was ridiculous. excitement, a hormonally influenced to technical school, even though Mrs Nothing and no one was fair. Certainly effusiveness that afflicted adolescents. Schwanneke had intervened forcefully no society. Only nature, perhaps. Not Having escaped their mothers’ apron on his behalf. With repeated private for nothing had the principle of selec- strings, but not yet quite a match for lessons, home visits and psychological tion made us what we were today: the the charms of the opposite sex. By way reports. Some sort of concentration creature with the most deeply furrowed of surrogacy, a helpless member of problem. The things they kept coming cerebrum. the same sex or an unattainable adult up with! These developmental problems But Schwanneke, with her rage for became the target for half-formed they’d read about somewhere or other. integration, hadn’t been able to leave emotions. Blotchy cheeks. Sticky eyes. First there was dyslexia, then dyscalculia. well alone. What could you expect from Inflamed nerves. An embarrassing lapse What would be next? An allergy to biol- someone who formed letters out of rows which, in normal cases, resolved itself ogy? Back in the old days there were just of desks, and semicircles out of chairs; once the gonads had attained maturity. pupils who were bad at sport or music. for a long time a big U had embraced But of course: people without profes- And they had to play and sing along her desk. Recently it had even been an sional competence would only be able with everyone else anyway. It was just a angular O, so that she was connected to offload their educational material by matter of willpower. with everybody and there was no longer means of sexual signals. Ingratiating It simply wasn’t worth it, dragging a beginning or an end, just the circular trainees. So-called ‘favourite teachers’. the weak ones along with you. They moment, as she once announced in the Schwanneke. The way she defended her were nothing but ballast that held the staffroom. She let the year elevens call commitment to the year-eight idiots rest back. Born recidivists. Parasites on her by her first name. We’re to call her at the teachers’ conference. Her brow the healthy body of the class. Sooner Karola, Inge Lohmark had heard one girl in wrinkles, shouting at the assembled or later the dimmer bulbs would be pupil say. Karola! My goodness – they staff with her red-painted mouth: In the left behind anyway. It was advisable to weren’t at the hairdresser’s! end, we need all our pupils! The icing confront them with the truth as early Inge Lohmark addressed her pupils on the cake would have been if she of all as possible, rather than giving them formally from year nine onwards. It was people, childless Schwanneke, who had another chance after each failure. With a habit dating back to the days when that recently been dumped by her husband, the truth that they simply didn’t provide was the age that children were officially had started saying that children are our the conditions required to become a consecrated as young adults. With a copy future. Future indeed. These children fully fledged member of society. What of Universe, Earth, Mankind, and a bunch weren’t the future. Strictly speaking was the point of being hypocritical? Not of socialist carnations. There was no they were the past: the year-nine class everyone could do it. And why should more effective way of reminding them was sitting in front of her. They were they? There were duds in every year. of their own immaturity, and keeping the last one there would be at Charles With some of them, you could be happy them at arm’s length. Darwin Gymnasium, who would be if you managed to instil a few funda- The professional relationship didn’t doing their school-leaving exam in four mental virtues in them. Politeness, punc- involve intimacy or understanding. years. And Inge Lohmark was to act tuality, cleanliness. It was a shame they’d It was pitiful, if understandable, for as their form teacher. Just Class Nine. stopped giving out citizenship grades. pupils to tout for their teachers’ favours. They no longer needed the letters they Hard work. Cooperation. Contribution. Truckling to the powerful. What was used to have, from A to G. When year Proof of the shortcomings of the present unforgivable, though, was the way groups had been as strong as a wartime educational system. teachers threw themselves at adolescents. battalion – in terms of numbers at least. The later you left getting rid of a fail- Backsides perched on their desks. Bor- This time they’d only just managed to ure, the more dangerous he became. He rowed fashions, borrowed words. Bright scrape a class together. Almost a miracle, started harassing his fellows and making scarves around their necks. Dyed blonde given that it was the year with the low- unjustified demands: for decent school- strands. Just in order to chum up with est birth-rate in the region. There hadn’t end grades, a positive assessment, pos- the children. Undignified. They relin- been enough of them for the classes sibly even a well-paid job and a happy quished the last scraps of respectability below. Not even when word started life. The result of many years of intense for the brief illusion of fellowship. Lead- going around that this meant the end for support, short-sighted benevolence and ing the way, of course, was Schwanneke the Darwin, and the teachers at the three reckless generosity. Nobody who gulled with her darlings: cocky little minxes regional schools had got together to the hopeless cases into believing they who roped her into break-time conver- make generous recommendations for the belonged should be surprised if they sations, and broken-voiced youths, for senior classes at the Gymnasium. The eventually came marching into school whom she performed the cheapest kind consequence was that any half-way liter- with pipe bombs and small-calibre fire- of goggle-eyed, lipsticked sign-stimulus ate child was elevated to Gymnasium arms to avenge themselves for all the display. Probably hadn’t looked in the status. things that had been promised them mirror for years. There had always been parents who

30 were convinced that their child belonged proles. And then there was the awk- hair, which she constantly smoothed to the Gymnasium in spite of all advice ward rehearsal of partner selection. No, and examined, strand by strand. Next to to the contrary. But by now there nature wasn’t original. But it was fair. It her, a tow-headed, primary-school-sized weren’t even enough parents in the town. was a condition like an illness. You just squirt. A tragedy, the way nature was No, these children really didn’t strike had to wait for it to pass. The bigger presenting the uneven development of her as jewels in evolution’s crown. and older an animal became, the longer the sexes here. To the right by the big Development was something quite its youth dragged on. A human being windows, a small primate rocked back different from growth. This was an required a third of its whole lifetime to and forth, open-mouthed, waiting only impressively shocking demonstration reach maturity. On average it was eight- to mark his territory with some vulgar of the fact that qualitative and quantita- een years before a young human being remark. It was just short of drumming tive change occurred quite independ- was able to fend for itself. Wolfgang on its chest. It needed to be kept busy. ently. Nature wasn’t exactly lovely to even had to go on paying for the chil- In front of her was the sheet of paper gaze upon at this undecided threshold dren from his first marriage until they on which the pupils had written their between childhood and adolescence. A were twenty-seven. names, scribbles on the way to a legally developmental phase. Adolescent tetrap- So there they sat, life’s absolute begin- valid signature. Kevin. Of course. Who ods. School an enclosure. Now came the ners. Sharpening pencils and copying else. bad time, the airing of the classrooms down the pyramid on the board, raising ‘Kevin!’ against the smell of this age group, musk and lowering their heads at five-second Kevin started upright. and liberated pheromones, confinement, intervals. Not yet fully formed, but ‘Name a few ecosystems in our region!’ bodies on their way to their final shape, boldly self-evident with a claim to abso- The boy in front of him smirked. sweat behind the knees, suety skin, dull luteness that was both shameless and pre- Wait a second. eyes, unstoppable, burgeoning growth. sumptuous. They were no longer chil- ‘Paul, what sort of tree is that outside?’ It was much easier to teach them things dren who always had to follow, and who Paul looked out of the window. before they were sexually mature. And a disregarded personal space on the most ‘Erm.’ A pathetic throat-clearing. real challenge to fathom what was going threadbare of pretexts, who extorted Almost pitiful. on behind their blank façades: whether physical contact and stared at you bra- ‘Thank you.’ That was him taken care they were out of reach, far ahead; or zenly like hooligans on the cross-country of. whether their fundamental inner refur- bus. They were young adults, already We haven’t done that,’ Kevin claimed. bishments had left them hobbling along capable of procreation, but still imma- Nothing better had occurred to him. A behind. ture, like prematurely harvested fruit. brain like a hollow organ. They lacked any awareness of their To them, Inge Lohmark was certainly ‘Oh, really?’ Now to the whole class. condition, let alone the discipline ageless. It was more likely, in fact, that Frontal attack. to overcome it. They stared straight she just struck them as old. A state that ‘Think about it again, everybody.’ ahead. Apathetic, overtaxed, preoc- would never change as far as her pupils Silence. At last the ponytail in the cupied exclusively with themselves. were concerned. Everyone young grew front row spoke up, and Inge Lohmark They yielded unresistingly to their own older. Old stayed old. She was long past obliged. Of course she knew. There was inertia. The power of gravity seemed the halfway mark. Luckily. At least that always one of those. A little ponytail to act upon them with threefold force. meant she would be spared the indig- pony that hauled the class cart out of the Everything was a massive effort. Every nity of changing noticeably in front of mire. It was for these girls that school- spark of energy at the disposal of these their eyes. And that knowledge made books were written. Greedy for pre- bodies was used up by an excruciating her powerful. They were still all inter- packed knowledge. Mnemonic verses metamorphosis no less extreme than the changeable, a swarm in pursuit of the that they wrote down in their books elaborate transformation of a caterpil- minimum standard. But within a very with glitter pens. They could still be lar in the chrysalis. Only in the rarest of short time they would become perfidi- intimidated by the teacher’s red pen. A cases did a butterfly emerge. Becoming ously autonomous, they would pick up stupid instrument of apparently bound- an adult was demanding for these mis- the scent and start finding accomplices. less power. shapen transitional forms, on which And she herself would start ignoring the She knew them all. She spotted them secondary sexual characteristics flour- lame old nags and secretly back one of immediately. She’d had pupils like this ished like tumours. Here, the laborious the thoroughbreds. Once or twice she by the cart-load, by the class-load. Year process of becoming human was played had been on the right track. There had after year. They didn’t need to flatter out before you in slow motion. It wasn’t been a pilot, a marine biologist. Not a themselves that they were special. There only ontogenesis that recapitulated phy- bad haul for a small provincial town. were no surprises. Only the cast changed. logenesis; puberty did, too. They grew. Right at the front crouched a terrified Who was playing this time? A glance at Day in, day out. In spurts and over the vicar’s child who had grown up with the seating plan was enough. Naming summer, so that you had your work wooden angels, wax stains and recorder was all. Every organism had a first name cut out even to recognize them again. lessons. In the back row sat two dolled- and a surname: type, species. Order. Compliant girls turned into hysterical up minxes. One was chewing gum, the Class. But for now she just wanted to beasts, and eager boys into phlegmatic other was obsessed with her coarse black consider their first names.

31 Jennifer Dyed blonde Saskia Without make- Ferdinand Friendly but Kevin Unclean and hair. Thin lips. Preco- up possibly even pret- erratic creature. Hol- braggartly. Uneven cious. Selfish from ty. Regular features, low eyes. Whorly as fluff on upper lip, birth. No prospect high forehead, plucked an Abyssinian guinea sebaceous complexion. of improvement. eyebrows and dozy pig. Sent to school Stupid but demanding Unscrupulously expression. Obsessive too young. Decidedly – the worst possible ample, prize-winning grooming. late-maturing. combination. Only to bosom. be calmed by continu- ous feeding. Craves an attachment figure. Moderately disturbed. A pain.

Laura Outgrown, Tabea Wolf child Erika The heather Paul Kevin’s bull- Tom Disagreeably colourless fringe over in tattered trousers plant. Nurtured necked adversary. ponderous bodily saggy eyelids. Teary and holey jumpers. sadness in sloping Fast-growing and presence. Tiny eyes expression. Pimply Childlike face. Feral posture. Freckles on muscular. Expressive in fat face. Vacuous skin. Lacking in eyes. Back bent from milky skin. Chewed creature. Mane-like expression: still thor- ambition and inter- left-handed writing. fingernails. Stringy shock of red hair. oughly stunned by est. Unnoticeable as Not very promising brown hair. Squint. Permanent grin on nocturnal emission. A weeds. otherwise. Firm, slanting gaze. bee-sting lips. The cave salamander would Simultaneously weary classic: intelligent, but be more attractive. and alert. lazy. Hardy and risk- Little hope that the taking. unfortunate propor- tions can be corrected by further growth.

Ellen Dull, patient Annika Brown pony- Jakob Vicar’s child. beast. Arched brow tail, boring face. Over- Typical front-row stu- and rabbit eyes. Face ambitious. Joyless and dent. Narrow-chested. teary from break-time industrious as an ant. Squint-eyed in spite teasing. Superfluous Desperately keen to of glasses. Nervous as a spinster even now. read out papers. Class fingers. Hair thick Lifetime victim. representative from as mole-fur. Almost birth. Wearing. attractively transpar- ent skin. At least three siblings. Harmless.

That was it. As always: no major surprises. All that counted here was damage limita- She had seen it when she was in London. Ponytail was already finished. Hands flat tion. At best. Pupils were thoughtless Sitting there, in his huge wooden case on the table. Eyes fixed mesmerized on the creatures. They would all go one day. And behind glass. With walking stick, straw hat board. she alone would remain behind, hands and green suede gloves that looked exactly Inge Lohmark stepped over to the dry with chalk dust. In this room, here, like the pair she had bought in Exquisit window. Into the soft morning sun. How between the collection of rolled-up wall in the spring of 1987. For eighty-seven good that felt. The trees had already started charts and the case of visual aids: a skeleton marks. At least Vladimir Ilyich was asleep to change colour. Decomposed chloro- with broken bones, greasy dummy organs and could dream of communism. But phyll made way for bright leaf pigments. with cracks in their plastic skin, and the that Englishman was still in office. Daily Carotinoids and xanthophylls. The long- stuffed badger with burn-holes in its fur, he eyed the students on their way to the stemmed leaves of the chestnut, devoured which stared dead-eyed through the panes. auditoria. The display case was his grave. by leaf-miner moths, were yellow-edged. Soon they could do that with her. Like He himself his own memorial. Eternal life. Strange that the trees worked so hard with that English scholar who wanted to stay Better than organ donation. ◊ leaves from which they would soon be connected with his university even after parted anyway. Just like her as a teacher. his death. Take part as a mummy at weekly ‘Ecosystems’ is extracted from the novel Same every year. For over thirty years. meetings. His last wish was fulfilled. They The Giraffe’s Neckby Judith Schalan- Always starting over again. put clothes on his skeleton. Stuffed it with sky, translated from the German by They were too young to value the signif- straw. Embalmed his skull. But something Shaun Whiteside, forthcoming from icance of the knowledge they had acquired went wrong in the process, so that in the Bloomsbury in 2014. together. Gratitude was not to be expected. end they put a wax head on his remains.

32 THREE ESSAYS ABOUT W.G. SEBALD sounded better in English than another, he would accept it; I recollect explaining that the word ‘tome’ for a book always A Translator’s View suggests a large size in English, so that to speak of a ‘little tome’ sounds like a Anthea Bell contradiction in terms. Some authors ask a translator why a certain phrase can’t fter its writer, no one experiences Austerlitz goes to stay with his school be used in English, as if the translator Aa book as intensely as its translator, friend Gerald’s amiably eccentric family were to blame, but not Max; he knew who goes through the text several times. in their house near Barmouth. He finds that language develops of its own accord, Not surprisingly, then, I approached Max it a wonderfully liberating experience and his account of Austerlitz’s nervous Sebald’s novel Austerlitz with pleasure at after the stern atmosphere of life with his breakdown, when language itself fails being asked to translate it, but also with adoptive parents. As readers of the book him, is eloquently moving. I quote: ‘If some trepidation. W.G. Sebald, always will know, the child’s early upbringing by language may be regarded as an old city called Max by his friends, was known by the couple has suppressed all recollection full of streets and squares, nooks and then as one of the finest writers of the of his arrival from Prague on one of the crannies, with some quarters dating late twentieth century. After thirty years Kindertransport trains, and only as the from far back in time, while others have teaching at the University of East Anglia, book progresses does he recover his early been torn down, cleaned up and rebuilt he could easily have written in English, childhood memories and trace the fate of . . . then I was like a man who has been but he preferred to write in his native his birth parents. abroad a long time and cannot find his language and be translated. How closely On the strength of that sample, rights way through this urban sprawl any more, would I be able to reproduce his unique to publication of the book in English no longer knows what a bus stop is for, or voice in English? That is always the trans- went to Hamish Hamilton in the United what a back yard is. The entire structure lator’s aim. The process itself, I’ve found, Kingdom and Random House in the of language [was] enveloped in impen- cannot be described without the use of United States. I had already provided etrable fog.’ metaphor, so we speak figuratively of a sample translation from Max’s book With a translator’s extra pleasure in a finding the right voice, or of translation entitled in German Luftkrieg und Literatur. text, I enjoyed the way his mind dwelt as a performance art like acting, or of try- It is based on lectures that he gave in on all manner of subjects, from vainglo- ing to get inside the author’s mind. Zurich in 1997, in which his main thesis rious architectural styles in vast public Of course I had read Max Sebald’s was what he saw as the reluctance of Ger- buildings, which he hated, to botany and other prose narratives, Vertigo, The Emi- man literature to confront the horrors of entomology. Max knew a lot about natu- grants and The Rings of Saturn, written in the Second World War directly after it. ral history. I think he was amused to find the 1990s in his period of creative flower- There were some indignant responses to that, while I appreciated his descriptions ing. I was particularly fascinated by The that proposition, and he adds an account of moth species on the printed page, in Rings of Saturn, which I had read both of them. The book had already been real life I would run from them in panic, in German and in Michael Hulse’s fine published in German when Max began being a lepidopterophobe – a phobia akin English translation, because I am a native working on Austerlitz, and I worked on to arachnophobia if not so widespread. of the East Anglian coastal area described and off on drafting its translation while He told me that Graham Greene was in that book, and it was intriguing to he was finishing the new novel, to which phobic about birds, which I hadn’t known see scenes of my childhood in the new I then turned entirely. These days a before. We shared a common interest in light cast on them by Max Sebald’s keen, translator usually corresponds with an botany, and I was pleased when occasion- melancholy Central European mind. I author by email, but Max Sebald did not ally I could tell him some plant name that say ‘prose narratives’ because there’s a like computer technology, and indeed he didn’t know in English, for instance good case for describing them thus rather claimed, with a humorous glint in his traveller’s joy as a name for the wild than as novels – up to but not including eye, that when a computer was delivered clematis, Clematis vitalba. He wrote in Austerlitz, which is essentially two novels to his room at the University of East ‘What a lovely name’ on my first draft of in one, with a framework story told by a Anglia it stayed in its box, still packed. So Austerlitz. typically Sebaldian narrator much like the we corresponded by old-fashioned snail Max inserted pictures and photographs narrator of The Rings of Saturn, and a core mail, Max in his beautiful handwriting, into his prose narratives, not so much story told by the central figure, Jacques I typing my letters because it is unkind illustrations as glosses on the text. Fitting Austerlitz himself. to ask anyone to read my writing, as we them into the right places in Austerlitz When Austerlitz first came my way, discussed various points of translation must have been tricky for the Hamish it was not yet finished. Max had just back and forth. Some of these points ran Hamilton designers. Max picked these acquired a new agent, Andrew Wylie, to several exchanges in our correspond- pictures up here and there as they took who in the first place wanted a sample of ence, and it was interesting to be working his fancy, and many linger in the reader’s some thirty pages to submit to publish- with an author whose own English was so mind as well: the picture of the boy in ers. It included the passage that I think good. Because of that very fact, I think, fancy dress on the cover of Austerlitz, the of as the Welsh idyll, when the boy if occasionally I insisted that one phrase little girl with a dog on her lap in the vil-

33 lage later drowned to make way for Lake translation I was on my own, and I kept ing and whispering in their strange piping Vyrnwy. I had marked the approximate weighing up every sentence, wondering voices, but nothing they said to each other positions in the English typescript, but I what Max would have thought of this or could be understood except for the name could tell that it was not going to be easy, that phrasing. of whoever they intended to come for particularly in the long, nine-page sen- The Améry and Weiss essays were then next’. These figures of Corsican folklore tence describing the concentration camp printed in the German edition of Campo have made an easy transition to Wales in at Theresienstadt. An English translator’s Santo, a posthumous collection of pieces Austerlitz, appearing in the ghost stories instinctive reaction to such a lengthy by Max Sebald never before published in told to the child Austerlitz by Evan the sentence is to break it up, but as soon as I book form – fortunately the English ver- cobbler, whose Welsh ghosts have faces had done that once in my first draft, add- sion was still long enough for a complete that would – I quote once more – ‘blur ing a full stop two pages in, I knew it was volume without the Améry and Weiss or flicker slightly at the edges. And they wrong and took it out. The convolutions essays. Campo Santo also contains frag- were usually a little shorter than they had of that mighty sentence are there on pur- ments of a book that Max had begun to been in life, for the experience of death, pose to convey the busy, pointless activity write about Corsica; he then set it aside said Evan, diminishes us, just as a piece of the Nazi authorities preparing for a to concentrate on Austerlitz. Its title refers of linen shrinks when you first wash it.’ visit to the camp by a Red Cross delega- to a graveyard in a chapter describing They are surely echoed in the ‘little com- tion. But Max bore his English-language Corsican funerary customs. I can’t help, pany of some ten or a dozen small people’ readers in mind, and made a few changes greedily, wishing that we could have the seen by Austerlitz and his friend Marie especially for them. Corsican book as well as Austerlitz, which at Marienbad, ‘the sort of visitors sent to When Austerlitz had been delivered, I also meditates on time, death and conti- the spa because of their failing health’ by turned back to Luftkrieg und Literatur, the nuity – I quote, ‘If Newton thought, said the Iron Curtain countries. ‘They were other book by Max on which I had strikingly short, almost dwarfish fig- already been working. The question ures, slightly bent, moving along in of the title arose; Air War and Literature, single file.’ Diminished in their case, the literal English for Luftkrieg und perhaps, by the political system rather Literatur, was clearly not such a good than death. title in English, lacking the alliteration It’s ten years since his death, but we of the original. Ultimately, it became are celebrating the life and work of On the Natural History of Destruction. A Max Sebald this year, not just mourn- little while ago I heard from an aca- ing him. And it cannot be said that demic, let’s call him Academic A, who death has diminished his reputation. If had read a denunciation of the title by anything, the passage of ten years has Academic B; surely, said Academic B, enhanced it, as more and more read- wording so different from the original ers come to enjoy his poetry and his had been disgracefully foisted on Max astonishing narrative works, which are by a publisher taking advantage of his unlike anything else I can think of in death. Academic A was not so sure, literature. He was the founder of the and reasonably thought that I could British Centre for Literary Translation, settle the question, as indeed I could. and the annual lecture that the Centre Neither Hamish Hamilton as publisher, organizes, given when the various nor I as translator, I added, would have translation prizes are presented, has taken such a liberty on our own initia- been named the Sebald Lecture in his tive. memory. My own abiding memory of At the time of his death, Max Sebald Austerlitz […] that time was a river like him is of the last time we were together, had been through all the Zurich chapters the Thames, then where is its source and on stage at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in with me. An essay on the writer Alfred into what sea does it finally flow?’ There London for the forerunner of that event; Andersch was also part of the book, and are similar ideas in the Corsican fragments, we gave parallel readings from Austerl- a few weeks later his notes on the transla- along with curious facts like Kafka’s men- itz, which had only just appeared. His tion of the Andersch essay were found tion of a military custom whereby, said warmth and quiet humour were very on his desk. It was a strange sensation to Kafka’s informant, Napoleon’s tomb was much in evidence, and are still to be receive them, like getting a letter from opened once a year to let old soldiers file found in his books, countering the gen- beyond the grave, and I spent a long, pass the embalmed Emperor, until the eral impression of austerity that readers elegiac January Sunday incorporating the imperial face began to look rather green may have of him. ◊ changes. For the English edition of the and bloated. The Campo Santo graveyard book, Max had chosen to add two other features ghosts who haunt the living and Originally commissioned in 2011 for essays, one on the essayist and Ausch- are – I quote again – ‘about a foot shorter Radio 3’s The Essay, aired each week witz survivor Jean Améry, one on the than they were in life, they went around night at 22.45. Audio available at: www. dramatist Peter Weiss. Revising those in in bands and groups’ and ‘were heard talk- bbc.co.uk

34 Three Essays About W.G.Sebald A History of Memory or a Memory of History? Amanda Hopkinson

eaf through any of W.G. Sebald’s the next. He was an author of fiction into the everyday. In Vertigo he describes Lcore works of fiction –Vertigo , The that read like fact – and, sometimes, of a climb up Burg Greifenstein, overlook- Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn and Auster- history that read like fiction. He included ing the Danube, where, he writes, ‘I had litz – and you will find indistinct and photographs as a further form of allusion first visited the castle in the late 1960s.’ frequently indecipherable photographs that, like his writing, evoke recollections Accompanying the account is the image inserted into the text. None bear captions in the reader, true or not. And whether of a giant cactus sprouting over the walls although some are numbered, apparently or not as records of actual events, or as of a whitewashed villa typical of Latin at random. Their contents are similarly integral to the stories we all tell ourselves. America. Does any dwelling less resem- mysterious, often even when taken in ‘I am a history, a memory inventing ble an Austrian castle than a Mexican context. In other words it is as difficult itself.’ Not a phrase of Sebald’s, in fact, hacienda? Why is the description of the to conjecture their relationship to the but of the Mexican writer Octavio Paz. one accompanied by an image of the lat- writing as it is to conjure up what they And we have all learnt, if not to doubt, ter? The photograph, it would seem, has actually describe. What does an image of at least to question our memories. Is nothing to say regarding the story; the a window showing only sky have in com- this a memory or a recollection of the effort becomes the reader’s to discover mon with an image of a diary dated 1913, act of remembering? Is it my personal what it ‘really’ has to tell us. Its irrel- or of a tumbledown tower at a popular memory or that of something someone evance to the ‘reality’ of the story is only Victorian seaside resort? How does a pic- once told me, or I read in a book or saw the start. ture postcard of a dyke beside a ruined in a film? How is it that memories can The way to the castle/hacienda has windmill, a reproduction of a medieval have the qualities of dreams, with the already been paved by the immediately woodcut depicting souls in torment, or a preposterous appearing unexpectedly but preceding story of Sebald’s visit to a portrait of a young boy with a spade in a unsurprisingly in the midst of everyday long-term inmate of a mental asylum, manipulated mock-up of Pisa’s Campo remembrance? Ernst Herbeck: ‘He was wearing a glen- Santo, connect with the text, or with one A snapshot: my first memory of see- check suit with a hiking badge on the another? ing Max Sebald is banal enough – at a lapel,’ Sebald writes. ‘On his head he Historically, photography has had party held in his honour at the home of wore a narrow-brimmed hat, a kind of two fundamental characteristics. One is his then publisher. The drawing room is trilby, which he later took off and car- its link with reality and the other with on the first floor and I am standing near ried beside him, just as my grandfather memory. In this sense photographers are the doorway. A parting of the waters as often used to do on summer walks.’ The always witnesses and their photographs Susan Sontag enters, dressed entirely in grandfather roots the asylum visit in real- are their testament to the fact that ‘I was black, her characteristic white bang amid ity: Sebald preferred to spend his child- here, in this place, with that person you the long black hair like the crest of an hood free time with his maternal grand- see, at a particular moment in time.’ Yet exotic bird. She pauses beside me, and I father, his chosen father substitute. The Sebald, who wrote in all his works about wonder if she has picked up something of grandfather is the most ‘real’ – in terms history and memory, used photos for our conversation about Central America of being the most present – of Sebald’s the opposite purpose, to fracture and that interests her. Not at all: casing the family members in his books, perhaps fragment those links. In the words of crowded room, she immediately asks me also in his memory. Despite the detailed his long-standing friend and colleague to direct her to Max. Having only just physical description, the portrait shows Clive Scott: ‘Sebald’s photos don’t fill arrived myself, I glance randomly around the torso of a suited man, his head – hat- holes, they create them, and his histo- until I see the innocuous pink-cheeked, ted or not – cropped from the frame. ries (of herrings, or Chinese emperors, white-haired gentleman seated in the In looking for a head in a trilby – or or Edward Fitzgerald) make us feel less corner of a sofa in a corner of the room, a trilby in the hand of a suitably dressed sure of ourselves.’ As do, of course, his avoiding social conversation by peering hiker – we find instead a hand nervously books. For, whether ostensibly about intently at an adjacent bookshelf, and clenched to a man’s side, clothed in an reality (through travelogue, in The I direct her to him. Sontag crosses the unchecked three-piece suit and tie. The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo), biography (The room and literally sits down at his feet. great Hungarian photographer Robert Emigrants, Austerlitz) or history (On the Sebald deploys photographs to con- Capa defined a good photograph as one Natural History of Destruction), along with tinually subvert his readers’ expecta- that leaves the viewer yearning to learn many literary essays and academic papers, tions. Carefully selected and laid out (by what is taking place just outside the Sebald’s technique was to subvert not himself: this was too important a task to frame. Here the message is that the cam- only established genres but also the pos- leave to the designer or publisher) Sebald era doesn’t lie; it simply doesn’t reveal. sibility of conclusively dividing one from seeks, often playfully, to insert the exotic Perhaps the association with the

35 grandfather at least provides a clue. ary figures who had peopled his earlier on the Orford Ness dungeon where the According to the obituary in the Guard- studies and publications. Yet his archaic poor creature was incarcerated. Instead ian, as a young boy Sebald came across style has repeatedly been advanced as the we have wintry expanses of marshland his father’s photo-album at home. In it reason why his books sell less in German- and estuary, a stretch of shoreline which ‘… he found pictures taken during the speaking countries than in England: may or may not be at the place under Polish campaign in 1939, and he sensed ‘Nobody writes like that in Germany any discussion (Dunwich), plus a picture of that something in the grinning German more nowadays.’ some hatted gentlemen who may – or soldiers and boy scout atmosphere of As if by contrast, there was nothing may not – have been standing around the campaign, ending with the torching precious, or even professional, about Eccles Church Tower (they weren’t) as it of villages not unlike his own Bavarian Sebald’s own photography. He used the crumbled to sand and was consumed by home in Wertach im Allgäu, hinted at cheapest colour film, shooting book the invading tides. Whatever these oddly the meaning of the destroyed buildings, plates alongside holiday snapshots, to be cropped, poorly reproduced and fogged silences and absence of memory around converted into black-and-white prints reproductions are doing, they are not him’. His father, a career soldier who by the photographer Michael Brandon- visually documenting the text. enthusiastically rallied to the Nazi cause, Jones. Max instructed him in how to Another snapshot: the year after W.G. did not discuss the war with his fam- crop or manipulate them, or took a pair Sebald’s death, I become director of the ily. As an adult Sebald was to research, of nail scissors to them himself, famously British Centre for Literary Translation, discover and infill some of the missing removing a row of parked cars between founded by him in 1989. Before I can memories through a laborious process of the bed-and-breakfast hostels and the move my books on to the racks in his reconstruction and rewriting. sea at Lowestoft. Sebald was meticulous former room, a colleague knocks on the It was the first photo-album Sebald in his intentions, arriving at the UEA door and introduces herself. She is look- had ever encountered, and he began a darkroom with a text neatly typed on ing over my shoulder as she speaks and postcard collection. When he moved to A4, and with spaces carefully inserted for finally spots something of interest. ‘Ah,’ England in the 1960s, he became an avid a vertical or horizontal, square or strip she says. ‘The sherry glasses. I’ll have collector of found photos and a deliber- image, all done to scale for book-sized those.’ So saying, she removes a box from ate amateur in taking his own pictures: reproduction. Brandon-Jones could not the top shelf. As she departs she announc- by eschewing the well-known artist and understand Sebald’s German original so es, ‘They belonged to Max so I am taking their iconic images, he was placing him- at the time could not tell whether the them with me.’ The homage continues. self firmly on the side of the snapshot, visual matched the verbal narrative. He Sebald believed the legacy of the great the caught moment and the family album. gave his opinion on what the photos nineteenth-century novel to be dead. The use Sebald made of them is more were doing: ‘They were there both as Following a century of horrific violence, ambiguous but deeply deliberate. clues and also to confuse the reader. Max literature was bound to reflect fragmenta- Another snapshot: the first time I was the first writer, I believe, ever to use tion, and photographs could hint at a syn- met Max was at a summer school at the photos to deceive in that way.’ thesis between truths and fictions. Rather University of East Anglia. He had been Already in The Emigrants, his earli- than the set-pieces of epic Napoleonic in earnest and dynamic conversation est work of fiction, Sebald is cutting battles reprised at the start of Vertigo, the with the translator Anthea Bell about and pasting photos, some of which we scrapbook accumulation of images in her ongoing translation of Sebald’s On assume to be portraits – naturally enough Sebald’s work offers us something more the Natural History of Destruction. It was of the four exiles who are the subjects approaching a Kurt Schwitters collage. extremely clear he took a fastidious of the book. Sebald wrote to his first There is no history that does not incor- interest in the possible variants almost translator, Michael Hulse, saying: ‘I can porate (auto)biography, and photography on a word-by-word basis, and that every assure you that all four stories are, almost can no longer be used as reliable evi- association merited serious consideration. entirely, grounded in fact …’ but there is dence. Without history, or a common Anthea welcomed and engaged with little in the photo-images to endorse this. collective memory, then indeed we are each suggestion without getting into an There is an end-of-civilization aspect left with Octavio Paz’s statement of the argument. Her consummate diplomacy to the postcard of the idyllically named individual: I am a history, a memory invent- rendered it a discussion of equals; more, Hotel Eden at Montreux, as there is to ing itself. Max would have been amused at even, a meeting of minds. Over lunch the aerial view of a bombed British city, the story of the glasses. After all, as I was I asked Max why he persisted in writ- Manchester. Here, however, each image shortly informed: ‘They were left not by ing in German, a language he otherwise relates, if not to the lives of actual emi- the first but the last director of the BCLT, had had no cause to use in his working grants, at least to actual post-war places. years after Max.’ One person’s memory life for some 35 years. With humour, he Two years later in The Rings of Sat- becomes another’s invention and we all acknowledged that his German must urn – Sebald’s pseudo-realistic account believe what we desire. ◊ indeed have become a little arcane but of his long walk around the East Angian that it was his German for all that. He had coast – photographs are deployed differ- Originally commissioned in 2011 for a sense that the language needed cleans- ently. Not a train in the chapter on the Radio 3’s The Essay, aired each week ing of some of its former associations Princess of China’s steam locomotive, for night at 22.45. Audio available at: www. and reclaiming as that of the great liter- example, any more than a merman in that bbc.co.uk

36 Five Frames Correspondence A series by Paul Greenleaf

We are having a most enjoyable week. We went to Helford Passage & visited Emmie at Manac- can. She is very well apart from the arthritis. We have been lucky with the weather, rather breezy some days but no rain.

Crantock Village, Nr Newqua

37 This is were we go in the water you would love it the sun shines all day, hope you are feeling bet- ter. The Blue Pool in natural colour, Cavendish Hotel, Torquay, Devon

38 Now this is what I call work – sun sea sand a bit of cooking & washing up & keeping an eye on a v. well behaved 6yr old girl. This place is absolute heaven. The cottage we’re in is just opposite the Y.H. here and just to the right of the bench about 20 metres in from the cliff edge and a minute to the beach! Treyarnon Bay, Padstow

39 The weather is wonderful. The drive down was good. The children (all four!) are having a lovely time playing with their friends and their computers! The Beach Looking Towards The Harbour, Margate

40 I am enjoying every minute of our holiday & am a good girl. We have had lots of sunshine but today is cloudy. We went to Lyme Regis on Monday. Lyme Regis from the Tea Gardens, Dorset

41 Three Essays About W.G. Sebald conducted at his Victorian vicarage on the outskirts of Norwich. Teaching by Example Depending on the time of day, we would be sitting in the kitchen while by Uwe Schütte Sebald was preparing a vegetarian meal or drinking sherry in the study. In the summer we were often sitting in the gar- t was in the autumn of 1992 that I other critics’ opinions. Rather, he would den taking tea and once we even under- Iarrived in Norwich at the University come up with an overall assessment of took a trip in Sebald’s red Peugeot 205 to of East Anglia, or UEA as it was generally a writer that hugely differed from the a nearby hotel bar. Not only were our known. Having moved from Munich, generally approved opinion. Or he would meetings characterized by their informal- where I had studied German and English identify a certain flaw or easily over- ity, but we chatted mostly about personal literature, I hardly knew what to expect looked detail in a book and base his disre- affairs or recent literary developments. of the one-year MA course that lay ahead gard or approval of the text on this. About the progress of my thesis, we usu- of me. In short, his idiosyncratic approach and ally talked only little. At least regarding my supervisor, I heretical methods were miles away from Sebald was never the kind of supervi- had some idea of what to expect: W.G. the official ways of literary criticism. And sor who would try to steer me towards Sebald was known in academic circles for in that one year I learned more about a certain direction. Rather, he preferred his two essay collections on twentieth- literature than during the previous four to support me in doing whatever I felt century Austrian literature. Intriguingly, years in Munich. For this reason, I decid- worked best. As his student, I gained in he was also a literary writer. Or sort of. ed to hang on and also do my PhD with self-confidence and sharpened my inde- A somewhat strange collection of prose him. When I told Sebald about my plan, pendent thinking. But predominantly, I pieces called Schwindel. Gefühle. (Vertigo) he strongly advised against it. ‘Try your felt encouraged by the fact that he was had appeared in Germany in 1990 in the hand at gardening or land surveying,’ he so evidently different from all senior prestigious Andere Bibliothek series. suggested – spending one’s working days academics I had met before – and those Copies of the first edition, which now out in the open air would be so much I have met since. What I learned from fetch prices far in excess of £500, were more preferable to slaving away at time- him was more than a thing or two about still readily available in German book wasting paperwork in a stuffy office. literature. I also learned what it means to shops when I arrived in Norwich. As a That was meant as a joke, of course, be upright and detached in the bonfire of writer, Sebald had made little impact in albeit a serious one. literary as well as academic vanities. And his home country at the time. The lure of gardening, however, I learned the probably somewhat un- When I met Professor Sebald for our wasn’t strong enough, and when I British lesson of speaking one’s mind in first tutorial, I was immediately struck embarked on my first year of PhD situations where it is necessary to do so. by how different he was from the mostly research, Sebald’s fortunes as a writer When I dropped in on him at home aloof, self-important professors that I was had already changed: Die Ausgewanderten one late afternoon, he had just finished used to at Munich University – a helpful, (The Emigrants) had appeared in Germany burning parts from an emerging book he kind person, who was often funny and in the autumn of 1992 and was discussed was unhappy with. He told me that he occasionally even slightly shy. My new on the leading German TV book pro- had recently been to Corsica. There, he teaching environment was also quite dif- gramme a few months later. It became had made notes about local history and ferent: rather than being cramped into his breakthrough. While my PhD thesis archaic customs that had survived the classrooms with fifty other students, I progressed over the course of the next onslaught of modernity. These ‘scrib- enjoyed one-to-one tutorials with Sebald few years, my unpretentious supervisor blings’, as he called them, were no good, in his small office. not only became a successful writer in in his scrupulous opinion. After his death, We would meet every week, discuss- our home country but also gained recog- I learned that at least some parts of the ing individual books from a list that we nition in the anglophone world. manuscript had survived; they are now had agreed on at the start of the course. While I worked on my study of the known as the ‘Corsica Project’, the book The tutorials usually adhered to the same Austrian writer Gerhard Roth, he wrote he had planned to write after The Rings pattern: I would give a short informal his masterpiece Die Ringe des Saturn (The of Saturn. presentation following the model I was Rings of Saturn), which was met with His auto-da-fé led us to a discussion of trained to adopt in Munich – providing unanimous applause in Germany in 1995. Kafka’s rejected instruction to have all his a plot summary, reflecting on the critical The following year saw his immediate papers burned, and Elias Canetti’s very texts, then aiming to arrive at an interpre- success both in this country and the US same habit of destroying his writings in tation based on the secondary literature when The Emigrants appeared in English. the fireplace. Sebald knew Canetti per- available. Sebald became less inclined to spend time sonally, having originally met him when, Sebald would sit patiently, listening in his office, located in the rather gloomy by chance, the two were seated next to to me, normally with a wry smile, until basement of the School of European each other on a flight from Zurich to I was finished. Then he would embark History and Modern Languages. Our London. Not that he believed in chance. on an impromptu lecture that ignored all supervisory meetings were now mostly ‘Meetings like this are fate, not coinci-

42 dence,’ he assured me. load. From the mid 1990s onwards, the his books in translation – were enough to After all, Sebald believed that there number of languages offered at UEA was provide him with an unassailable standing was more to this world than what the gradually reduced and the Department in the canon of contemporary literature. sciences were able to explain. of European Languages eventually dis- In Germany, however, the situation Still, it would be wrong to assume that solved. Sebald accepted the changes and is not as clear-cut. This has mostly to do Sebald was a kind of aloof esoteric. On retreated to his vicarage whenever he with Sebald’s contentious critical essays. the contrary. He took great pleasure in could. It was telling that he was the only Some critics are confused by his ambiva- telling jokes and relating funny episodes academic in the whole university who lent positions. Some opponents tried to from his recent experiences as a beguiled refused to have a computer in his office. discredit his literary writings on the basis literary star – about the vanities of lead- In his entire life, Sebald never wrote an of his critical essays. Sebald always had ing literary critics or the arrogance of email, preferring to write letters in his vocal adversaries, particularly among fel- fellow professors, which he liked to elegant handwriting. His books were low writers, such as the Nobel laureate expose and ridicule. After all, he was written on an old typewriter that was Günter Grass. Maybe, without admitting their exact opposite: unassuming, mod- so worn out from use that it didn’t even it, what these opponents are up against is est, empathetic. produce a straight line any more. less the indisputable quality of his writ- Fame had its consequences, though: Establishing himself as an internation- ings, but the monument that his many journalists from Germany now flocked ally known literary star had its trappings. admirers have erected for their Saint to his home to interview him. He was As his books often dealt with the fate of Sebald. also often away from the university. exiles of Jewish extraction, some crit- These iconoclasts won’t stand a chance When asked why, he would tell me that ics were quick to pigeonhole him as a though – the hagiographs are far too he had been to Germany to pick up ‘Holocaust author’ – a label he resolutely numerous. At the recent world meet- one of the prizes that were awarded to detested. Alongside this one-sided per- ing of Germanists, Sebald was the most him with increasing frequency. He saw ception, he sometimes also became the popular subject of papers presented. To these trips as a burden. Particularly as he object of an irrational reverence. Sebald keep track of all research articles, critical detested the formal ceremonies at which sanctus. Max the messiah. The apogee of essays and PhD theses on him has become he had to wear a suit and tie and was this was expressed in the words of the an impossible task. Conferences keep expected to shake the hands of dignitar- US critic Richard Eder, who declared in being organized, books on Sebald keep ies who had no clue about his books. The New York Times Book Review: ‘Sebald being published, Sebald events draw While I slowly worked my way into stands with Primo Levi as the prime capacity audiences. He has attained cult academia, Sebald increasingly trans- speaker of the Holocaust.’ status even in popular culture, with musi- formed from literary critic into a literary In his 2010 Sebald Memorial Lecture, cians such as David Byrne or Patti Smith writer. A crucial factor for this change Will Self was right to remind the English referencing him. had to do with what, at the beginning of literary establishment that ‘In England, It is difficult to say what he would The Rings of Saturn, he called ‘the increas- Sebald’s one-time presence among us have made of all this adoration. Most of ingly adverse conditions’ prevailing at […] is registered as further confirmation it would have appalled him; some praise British universities. that we won, and won because of our might have pleased him. It is probably fair Sebald had spent his entire career as an righteousness, our liberality, our inclu- to say, however, that he would have pre- academic in the UK. First, at Manches- siveness and our tolerance. Where else ferred the status of a controversial misfit ter University, where he arrived in the could the Good German have sprouted to the unreserved idolization he mostly autumn of 1966 and worked as a Lektor so readily?’ The Good German . . . a label received in the English-speaking world. (a language teaching assistant). In 1970 Sebald hated. Being co-opted as the shin- Writing, he once observed, ‘is a strange he moved to UEA in Norwich. There ing representative of his native country, behavioural disorder that forces one he spent nearly thirty years, rising from towards which he felt a deep ambiva- to transfer every emotion into words PhD student and lecturer to Professor lence, was a development that could only and that manages to miss reality with of European Literature. ‘Conditions cause him further unease. astounding precision […] but […] those in British universities were absolutely W.G. Sebald died far too prematurely, pitiful writers imprisoned in their world ideal in the sixties and seventies,’ Sebald in December 2001, at the very height of of words sometimes succeed to open up explained in an interview with the his literary career. It happened shortly views of such beauty and intensity as life Observer in 1996. ‘Then the so-called after publication of the novel Austerlitz in itself rarely delivers’. Opening up views: reforms began and life became extremely German and English, and so this, his last it’s what W.G. Sebald did as a writer and, unpleasant. I was looking for a way to – though by no means best – book came for me at least, it’s what he did as a teach- re-establish myself in a different form to be seen as his literary legacy. Compari- er too. ◊ simply as a counterweight to the daily sons to the deaths of writers such as Kleist, bother in the institution.’ Kafka, Celan and Levi were quick at Originally commissioned in 2011 for The writing of literature for Sebald hand by those who saw a kind of literary Radio 3’s The Essay, aired each week became more and more a place of escape redeemer in him. In the English-speaking night at 22.45. Audio available at: www. in the face of bureaucracy and a con- world, those mere five years from 1996 bbc.co.uk stantly increasing administrative work- to 2001 – which saw the publication of

43 Two Poems

By Raoul Schrott, translated by Iain Galbraith

Physical Optics XI

luff · the pirogue in the shadow dips one arm shallow in the swell · five strokes to the land the horizon a tendon on the back of a splayed hand shore · algae with their knotted script · a swarm of flies on a jellyfish · behind it the holds of hulks as rusty quarters for dockers · a barge in the harbour · its derrick unloading night off the clouds that turns on the branches of the macadamia to a blue wax in which the sun scratches a few lines · its meridian inches over the hotel roof-timbers veined with cracks then the surf · the fricative of waves on the sand and the sea flowing over the earth and its end

hotel générations, tamatavé, 8.12.97 Figures V

even the palms here are not real a feather boa on top of white-painted trunks and no less melancholy than the violinist and gold-leaf on the bar · smoke trails over the dark green in front of the window and the nile is reflected only by the sky · nothing else · but a mere hand’s breadth from the edge of the fields the rock is burning · on the parapet two half- empty glasses in their so dissimilar bodily exactitude · the N of your legs as you lie on your side stretching an arm to the bed’s edge like the glyphs on the headed notepaper · a dancer’s profile and what script is · geometrical papyrus flowers and the dashes of these blinds through the sun · it remains only to colour you in with tongue and mouth

luxor, old winter palace, 6.2.96

44 On Fiction and Reality misunderstandings possibly be countered? In the world of books, it is standard practice now to talk about texts in a To Hell with Authenticity way that has more to do with voyeurism and criminal forensics than with literary By Juli Zeh, translated by Sally-Ann Spencer reception. Instead of considering formal features, the use of language or the dram- he fictional story of me started on never asked myself these questions. Ever aturgy of the work, critics and historians Tthe back seat of a Renault 4 packed since my authorial beginnings in the back of contemporary literature proceed by to the roof with leisure equipment and seat, the fabrication of fiction had been a examining the biographies of writers. prospective holidaymakers. The year pre- matter of course. Take a handful of ingre- Entire classes of school kids, furnished dated air conditioning, it was thirty-four dients – namely, events, people, ideas and with encyclopedias, street maps and news- degrees in the shade, and we were travel- thoughts that have made an impression paper archives, are currently examining ling at 120 km/h. For a seven-year-old on the mind – blend until the mixture contemporary fiction for mistakes – for with a predilection for car sickness, escap- resembles reality, place over maximum deviations from ‘reality’. Recently an ism wasn’t a sign of mental affliction but imaginary heat, leave to cool, and then editor stated that she would simply ‘edit a necessary form of self-defence. Gazing sieve. Coat in language, season to taste out’ streets that couldn’t be found in cities out of the window at the countryside of with humour, melancholy or defeatism, in which the novels in question were set. the South of France, I flipped a lever in and serve at once. Increasingly, readers are spotting them- my head, switching from daily function The life of a writer, I tell the audience, selves as well as the author in works of to daydreaming mode. The stories I con- is like a quarry from which the material fiction, and feeling flattered or insulted in cocted were dominated by a heroine who, for stories is mined. Some characters and corresponding measure. quite coincidentally, shared my name and places have prototypes in so-called real- We could call these various phenomena physical appearance, and was endowed ity, some don’t, and others are mosaics ‘metrofictionality’ to indicate a mode of with the very qualities that I wished for of splintered reality and invention put reading in which mistaking fiction for myself. The supporting roles were filled together at will. The degree of alienation reality is not a critical blunder but de by all manner of imaginary creatures, follows no law other than that of the will rigueur. What has become of the secret plus my mother and father – usually as to create and shape content and form, and compact between writer and reader? parents who, forced to see the error of varies from case to case. The method has What remains of the mortar that holds their ways, ended up begging their child nothing in common with autobiography. together the many-storied artifice of lit- for forgiveness. The cast also featured From my perspective, writing a story erary works, the fictional As If …? an assortment of my classmates, divided with one-to-one correspondence with Authenticity is available on all channels. into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. The plot was Aris- reality would be pure tedium; but mak- TV reality shows (real!), documentary totelian in structure; the end was always ing up stories with no connection to my soaps (even realer!) and Big Brother series happy. Owing to the unity of author and own life seems somehow absurd. (realer than real!) achieve phenomenal recipient, there were never any misap- The question as to which parts of my ratings. In cinemas every second set of prehensions about the real-life content of fiction are ‘true’ is impossible to answer – opening or closing credits announces that narrative prose. because it isn’t the right question. the film is based on real events. The music Twenty years later I am seated on a Ever since Plato accused literature industry advertises by publicizing the life hard plastic chair behind a plastic table of ‘lying’, writers and readers have been stories of its figureheads – of question- with a glass of water to my right and the bound by the secret compact of fictional- able interest but genuinely real. glare of a spotlight on my face. Lurking ity, under which terms literature suspends Everywhere the public’s nose is being behind the dazzling brightness are count- its claim to truthfulness. Which is to say, rubbed in the alluring aroma of authen- less pairs of eyes, waiting for questions to if you don’t claim you’re telling the truth, ticity so that everyone can experience the be answered. Is my novel autobiographi- you can’t be lying. My first novel makes intoxication of watching as it happens cal – and if so, to what degree? Is the no claim whatsoever to be rooted in and Being There. It seems that the age of first-person narrator (male, thirty-five empirical events. For readers, this means a communication with its wealth of pos- years old, addicted to coke) an alter ego moratorium on checking the facts. sibilities for presenting and transmitting of me (female, twenty-seven years old at But, says someone in the audience, isn’t content, for reproducing and retelling, the time, not addicted to coke), given that it true that you own a dog, just like your has led to a hunger for unmediated expe- he and I are both qualified lawyers with a protagonist? rience, which is to be supplied by that specialism in international law? How can My dog, I explain lamely, looks noth- most artificial of expressive forms – art. I know the things that I wrote about in ing like the dog in the story, and has a At the same time, the perception that the book? What are the actual, real events different name. people’s lives – easily exploitable and behind the plot? Which other characters Do you mean you disguised him? fast-burning – have become the staple exist in real life? shouts someone from the back. fuel that keeps the media engines running This is my first novel, and I am evi- Not ‘fiction’; a ‘disguise’. How can and running has led to calls for stricter dently underprepared. The truth is, I had challenges that rest on such fundamental privacy control.

45 In the case of literature, which does myself from the quarry of biographical Was my parents’ car really a Renault 4? not have recourse to images and sounds experience, I no longer act as a child who Exactly how old was I when I concocted but must operate with black symbols sacrifices herself, her friends and her rela- my first story? Were we really holidaying on white paper, these developments tives to her imagination. It is the desire in the South of France? Fictional passages seem particularly absurd. Nonetheless, a to make things my own rather than legal can even insert themselves into essayistic number of recent novels have sought to prudence that leads me to endow my texts such as this one, and if readers are simulate this kind of immediate experi- characters with names of my invention, honest, they won’t seriously insist on ence with the help of first-person narra- to clad them in custom-made physical factual accuracy or feel that the text is tors bearing considerable resemblance to suits (which might nonetheless be bor- somehow specifically, maliciously, about their creators and through everyday por- rowed from reality), and to place them them. Deliberate sabotage aside, the Aris- trayals of modern life. And so novelists in situations of my making and see how totelian compact is still in force: readers are knocking holes in the wall painstak- they come through. This desire to appro- continue to recognize signals that point ingly constructed by schoolteachers across priate stems from a characteristically to a wider situation beyond the appar- the country to separate author and narra- literary preoccupation. Literature, unlike ently concrete circumstances described, tor, form and content, discours and histoire. journalism or history writing, is not and experienced writers know whether Too true to be good? their texts draw on the clas- Mimesis, not mimicry: sic notion of fictionality or Aristotle also wrote of lit- whether they seek to satisfy erature as mimesis, but not the contemporary passion in Plato’s terms of the lie. for voyeurism. Aristotle’s understanding This isn’t a question of of literature as the repre- literary quality or even of sentation of reality hinges legality per se; at most it’s a on imitation, but not as a topic for debate and a mor- means of deceiving one’s al dilemma. Nonetheless, if predators or rivals. For Aris- authors, rather than creat- totle, mimesis describes the ing a fictional ‘I’, choose attempt to interpret reality to feature themselves as through literary representa- real people in their texts, tion. By nature, this notion the collapse of the wall of mimesis, which contin- between (real) external real- ues to govern the Western ity and (literary) interior approach to literature, gives world isn’t an unexpected rise to the expectation that consequence but a funda- literary texts should pos- mental component of the sess a certain amount of chosen literary form. realism. Equally naturally, Of course no one is pre- it raises the question as to pared to renounce the com- how much historical accu- fortable tout-va that guar- racy is necessary, desirable antees the luxury of artistic and permissible in a literary freedom with regard to work. Doubtless any writer content and form. But would assert his or her right wouldn’t we do well to ask to make these decisions with ourselves whether the real- maximum artistic freedom. ity mania of the media and On terrain that consists almost entirely concerned with describing the particular, entertainment industry should be granted of grey zones there can be no means of with reporting an individual, unique and full access to literature’s most delicate setting objective standards or establish- contingent case. It deals in the general, parts? Perhaps the dogma of always seek- ing legal parameters, and it is futile to try. seeking to bring it to life and summon ing authenticity will turn out to be just Writers, though, who seek to barricade it into the consciousness of the reader as restrictive as (self-)censorship based on themselves and their work behind the through a concrete example. The work of privacy concerns. On this note, and for protective shield of ‘fiction’ are at least literature consists in assessing the material highly personal poetic reasons, I make the as naive as readers who think authors for its suitability to serve as a metaphor, following appeal. We have the words, we and their narrators wear the same colour motif or symbol, and it obeys the laws of have the ideas, and we have the privilege socks. intratextual necessity, which differ from not to claim that we’re telling the truth. Speaking from my own experience, I the rules of selection and representa- Mon dieu, stay fictional, and to hell with would say: subjectively, there is a differ- tion applicable to empirically anchored authenticity! ◊ ence, a tangible distinction. When I help reports.

46 Fiction twigs of an impressive library. In the dusty sunlight they seemed to await a small spectacle; the books literally The Language of Ravens held their breath. Not today, Lewad- ski thought. A rainbow-coloured drop By Marjana Gaponenko, translated by Arabella Spencer glistened on the tip of his nose before exploding on the parquet floor. Another ove is cold. Love is cold. But in the geously expensive and highly impractical shuffle and Lewadski was already sitting Lgrave we burn and melt to Gold . . . press-stud dentures in the direction of the in his rocking chair by the window. Lewadski waited for the tears. The tears plughole. He closed his eyes and was certain: he didn’t come. In spite of this he wiped his Sceptically, he leant forward and looked imposing like this, genuine and face. Disgusting! picked them up – a dead thing, from alive just as he had been in front of the With a fixed stare he had just put the which a last laugh was to be expected. window of the café. receiver on its cradle. What else, if not No, he did not want to encounter this The way he was sitting there with the impatience, had he sensed in the breath- girl again. If she were still alive she would strip of sunlight on his chest. Or perhaps ing of his family doctor? Impatience and either be blind or demented or tied to a the strip wasn’t a strip, but a spear driving the buzzing of thoughts that had nothing wheelchair. What was her name again? through an old dragon’s body? He smiled. to do with him: Mustn’t forget the bak- Maria? Aida? Tamara? After Lewadski’s If someone had observed his face at this ing powder . . . moth repellent, furniture performance in front of the window, had moment they might have believed that a polish, what else . . . he could smell his she finished her cake? It didn’t matter. wafer-thin slice of lemon had dissolved own tiresomeness through the receiver. A tablet dropped into the glass of beneath the old man’s tongue. But there Breathe in, breathe out. Hang up, old water. After a brief deliberation it started was nobody who could have seen Lewad- man, hang up … to fizz and circle; a drunken bee. Care- ski’s face. Since he had started ageing, he Lewadski went into the bathroom and fully Lewadski let the dentures fall into had always been alone. threw up. He was overcome by tears. the glass after it. Plop . . . since he had Done, damn it! Lewadski feebly tapped Whimpering, he realised that it was the acquired artificial teeth he found this his scrawny thigh. So, the suspicion that first time he had vomited in ages. The sound soothing. Perhaps it was connected he had carcinoma of the lung had been last time it had happened to him, he had to the fact that it invariably accompanied confirmed! The patient and pseudo- still been wearing knickerbockers. What the arrival of the Sandman. That must respectful whispering of his doctor at the had the girl’s name been? Maria? Sophia? have been where its magical sweetness other end of the line said as much. It hit The young girl had allowed her hand to came from. Plop . . . and Lewadski’s eyes Lewadski harder than it would have if be kissed by a man with a moustache. In would already be falling closed. Plop . . . the diagnosis had been roared down the front of her a slice of cake. and he was already whirring into the receiver. Jealousy had grabbed the schoolboy sunset on the scintillating wings of a rose He would have liked to have said a Lewadski by the throat. He had stopped beetle. What is sweeter than your choco- prayer, something sublime, but every- in front of the window of the café, taken late cake, girl? Only sleep. And what is thing venerable seemed either unspeak- a bow and spilled the contents of his sweeter than sleep? Only death. able or defiled by mortal fear and self- stomach on to the pavement. Touch- On the short and laborious jour- pity. Impure, simply impure. Ultimately ing his chest, he had slowly assumed ney to the living room, Lewadski was everything in this world referred to man, an upright position again. The girl had annoyed to see his telephone glowing, as to him alone. Even in the purportedly looked straight through him, her dilated if nothing had happened, as if he, Luka most altruistic stirring of the soul yapped eyes filled with a delight that was not Lewadski, Professor Emeritus of Zool- a little I! I! I!, and a tiny actor stood whis- intended for him or the man with the ogy, hadn’t just had his death sentence tling in the wings of the most deceptively moustache, solely for the slice of choco- pronounced down the receiver. ‘We need genuine feelings. Disgusting, thought late cake … to talk about your results – at the hospital, Lewadski, you can’t even face a stroke of What made me touch my chest back right away.’ Lewadski had understood. fate candidly. He thought this, and knew then? In the mirror, Lewadski was cling- There was nothing left to discuss. Talk that another Lewadski, as if to confirm ing on to a glass of water. If my heart about what? If the results were OK then his thought, hovered the width of a hat had dropped to the pavement when I you didn’t call on a Sunday around lunch- above him, amusing himself at this sight: was throwing up, if my arms and legs time when old patients were possibly an old man with lung cancer sitting in had failed me, I would have noticed that enjoying their deepest sleep. You also a rocking chair, with a pretentious strip something was missing! didn’t call if the results were bad. If you of sunlight on his pigeon-chest and, how Lewadski rinsed out his mouth, took had any manners, you would knock on strange, all the particles of dust, how they the showerhead and aimed it at the den- the door personally in order to convey danced in the ray of light allowing it to tures he had spat out into the bath while the news of someone’s death. be seen in the first place. throwing up and which now reminded In two scraping steps he reached the Lewadski pursed his lips and, in his him of a capsized boat, in the sick. The middle of the living room. Lewadski’s mind, spat on the carpet. What was he jet of water jerkily inched the outra- books sat stiffly on the branches and still supposed to think, when what he

47 knew of human beings filled him with like an empty drawer on to a table; there gestured dismissively, rose from the rock- disgust? This scrap of knowledge ruined is nothing to be had here, thieves, leave ing chair with a groan and shuffled to the his pleasure in the unknown, in the me alone. He opened his mouth. The ray shelf with the medical books. mysteries of nature that were yet to be of sunlight now rummaged in his mouth. Cyclophosphamide, sounds like a ban- revealed. That he would no longer come Lewadski stuck out his tongue and rolled dit . . . checks the multiplication of rapidly to discover them made him livid. May it back in. Birds are better than we are, he dividing cells. Side effects: nausea, vom- youth figure out the secrets of creation – thought, not least because they are able to iting, hair loss. May damage the nerves the thought triggered a dull pain. It was open their beaks properly, unlike human and kidneys and lead to loss of hearing, not that he begrudged the others, those beings, whose mouths only open through also an irreparable loss of motor function, left behind, the revelation, no. Lewadski their bottom jaw dropping ; birds simul- suppresses bone marrow, can cause anae- just thought that mankind, if anything, taneously raise their upper beak slightly! mia and blindness. Well, bon appétit. had a simulated reverence for the simple Slowly Lewadski shut his mouth again. ‘Adieu,’ said Lewadski to the medical and the great. It was the simple and the The thought that his body had been dictionary in his hand, before he shut it. great that he felt sorry for, because it was at the mercy of a parasite, that his lung He looked around his flat, not sure what purely curiosity that led man to pursue had been thrown to a sea creature as food, he should do. Instead of watering flowers, the wonders of nature, with every solemn made Lewadski peevishly swing back making himself some porridge or dusting, gesture pure hypocrisy; every action, and forth a couple of times in his rock- he took a walk around the four corners of even if a self-experiment with a deadly ing chair. I am at the mercy not only of his library to calm his nerves. outcome or involving years of sacri- The only thing that really fice in the name of science, nothing belongs to man is the genuine. but egoistical defiance, nothing but And the only genuine thing about pure self-assertion. man, Lewadski thought, breath- Lewadski rose trembling from ing on his magnifying glass, is his the rocking chair. Even now he had pride! He was proud of the book- lied: regardless of mankind, it was shelves that filled the walls. This not the simple or the great that he trait may have belonged to the felt sorry for, but that he would be department of deadly sins, but denied coming one step closer to how could it be bad and depraved this mystery. He was envious and if it was purer, more sincere, jealous and he begrudged the others, than the love that man imagined knowing at heart that all effort was himself capable of? Only pride in vain – the mystery of life would had no foundation and needed just grow further out of reach, for no admirers to sustain itself. It as long as this world still existed. may be that it poisons the soul. I have trampled around on this But it also elevated the humble globe for long enough, Lewadski species of man a little, be it to thought. He opened the balcony dubious spheres, from where it door and sat back down in the became aware of the flicker of an rocking chair. The dusty curtain immeasurably greater providence. enveloped the figure of its guest It was a most beautiful thing that for a moment, the street air. The a single surge of pride eliminated road itself entered Lewadski’s any kind of basis for loneliness. library, filled it with the bother- So why shouldn’t man commit some yet welcome signs of life, the noise that bloodsucker but also of a cocktail this sin? of klaxons, the shouting of children and of chemicals if I let myself in for chemo- ‘So what if I was never capable of love?’ the perpetual hurry of women’s heels. He therapy, thought Lewadski, and clenched Lewadski asked the back of a slim volume could also hear snatches of a conversation his fists. with the tight gold lettering Manual for the between ravens: I love you, I love you He noticed that after the telephone Domestication of Extremely Reluctant Parrots. too, feed me! ‘Antonida! Put your trou- conversation he far too frequently used ‘At least I was capable of being proud, I sers on! Now!’ a mother’s voice ordered. indecent vocabulary, words that he had was proud of you, little book. Just as love Ledwadski raised an eyebrow; when he always avoided in his life, ‘bloodsucker’ or allegedly pulls the lovers’ rug from under was Antonida’s age, girl’s names like hers ‘damn it’. That he had even been sick was their feet, my pride pulled the rug from didn’t exist, and girls still wore skirts. outrageous and a certain sign of his decay. under my feet. I floated neither high nor ‘Oh dear,’ Lewadski sighed. Why the Who cares, Lewadski thought, if I kick for long, so didn’t land on my snout, but intimation of his imminent demise hadn’t the bucket soon. He tore his eyes open. softly and in my element – in my library. allowed him to die on the spot, but had There you have it, kick the bucket, that’s I was never disappointed …’ instead stirred up a lot of dust, was an the kind of language I hear myself using! Lewadski would have liked to have enigma. His chin dropped to his chest I should just die! Die and rot! Lewadski cried, but he suspected that these tears

48 would have been because of his doctor’s had suffered a heart attack. For a time, you so much, such a pleasure call rather than the solemnity of the Lewadski was under the illusion that Karr (resolutely) – adieu! moment, and so forbade himself to. My he had brought about the demise of his Kro— decorum will be the death of me, thought French colleague with his collegial kiss. Lewadski, for even the most natural thing ‘Such a beautiful book,’ said Lewad- suddenly seemed inappropriate to him. ski. He said it loud enough for the other Kronos! Kronos was the word! ‘Let us fly’ Honesty, he said to his books, is a slippery books to hear. ‘This is how the destiny of in the language of ravens, chronos in Greek. customer, it always slips away when we a man, children, fulfils itself,’ Lewadski Lewadski shut the book. It was this junc- think we are surrounded by it. Lewadski continued ceremoniously, ‘a stranger tion that mankind had rushed past, past breathed on the magnifying glass again arrives, makes a present to a stranger and its own kinsfolk – past its brother animal. and polished it on his shirt-sleeve. Think gives up the ghost!’ The books listened as Along with it the thought of the exist- on it! How am I expressing myself! That if Lewadski hadn’t already told this story ence of a common primeval language had he had a long time ago thought of win- twenty times. ‘And you won’t believe been buried! ‘Dear books,’ Lewadski said ning over the opposite sex with this that what I was thinking of on that day to his library, ‘that contemporary animal pathetic affected behaviour, when his was that I would have to die soon! Such a psychology stubbornly refuses to credit head had been filled with nothing but beautiful gift …’ the higher vertebrates with a power of the mating dances and brooding habits of Lewadski’s knuckles cracked as he abstraction and a speech centre is not only birds, was something he did not want to opened the book. He turned the pages a scandal. It is a disaster! The existence of think about. But he did think about it, he with pleasure. a common primeval language is perfectly thought about it with a hint of bitterness. obvious. Tell me, does the animal give Lewadski took a book from the shelf Kra, Kre, Kro, Kron, Kronoj the impression of being apathetic? On and blew away the dust. Dictionnaire of Gra, Gres, Gros, Grons, Gronones the contrary, the animal looks lively and the Language of Ravens by Dupont de Krae, Krea, Kraa, Krona, Grones inquisitive, not because it has just laid Nemours, incomplete edition. A French an egg, but because it possesses language. ornithologist colleague had hidden the Language …’ raved Lewadski, craning his facsimile in a cake, smuggled it through It is a blessing that I know French, neck and shuffling, moist-eyed, along the the Iron Curtain in time for Lewadski’s thought Lewadski, otherwise I would bookshelves. Lewadski spoke to his books seventieth birthday. Lewadski’s delight have had to learn it at the age of seventy as if to his most gifted students. in it had overcome his reason to such an in order to be able to read this gem of a ‘A common primeval language appears extent that he had kissed the Frenchman book. Simply and unassumingly the con- to be physiologically and philologically on his moustache, in front of the entire tent of the language of ravens had been undisputed. But from where is philol- professorship. scraped together and distributed over ogy meant to take the means to prove Somebody had raised their glass, he twenty-seven pages, silent and powerful. the language ability of animals and to could remember that, and said, ‘A kiss Lewadski remembered the bad mood he explore their grammar?’ The approving without a moustache is like an egg with- had fallen into every time he had read the silence of the books spurred Lewadski’s out salt!’ Everybody drank to interna- dictionary. Every time he stumbled over eloquence on. ‘The day will come,’ he tional friendship and Raven Research, the the word that suggested that man, in his continued, ‘when the dictionaries of words ‘May the day come, in which …’ search for enlightenment, had possibly animal language will no longer cause and ‘with a clear conscience there should overlooked the decisive junction – a word their authors to be taunted and ridiculed, not be a utopia’ rang out. People chinked from the language of ravens. Which one but bring them fame and honour. The glasses and patted each other on the back. was it? Lewadski turned the pages and felt authors will demurely lower their gaze.’ ‘From the primeval fish to the bird: a a surge of heat creeping up his hunched Slightly embarrassed, Lewadski stared stone’s throw!’ ‘From the lungfish to the back. at the floor on which balls of dust were human: the bat of an eyelid!’ They hoped being driven back and forth by the draft. that he would gain many years of pleasure Kra (quietly, deliberately, talking to ‘Despondent because they had arrived too from this unique and scientifically totally himself ) I aKra (quietly, drawn out) – I late at the thought of recognizing in the uninteresting book. His anniversary was am fine; or I am ready animal an equal neighbour, a friend that at the same time a farewell. He left the Kra (short staccato) – leave me can be confidently ascribed a language university and the students – everything Kra (tenderly, coquettishly) – hello; or and an immortal soul again, after such a that he had never really been attached wake up; or excuse the tomfoolery long time …’ to – with the thought that he would Kra (questioningly, long) – is some- The books kept up their silence. Let us not live much longer. ‘Adieu, mon ami!’ body there? hope that it is not too late to create this Lewadski had tried to joke when he stood bond of friendship, Lewadski wanted to opposite the Frenchman at the airport. say, but he only thought it to himself in The Frenchman had nodded hastily and Which word was it then? silence. ◊ withdrew from Lewadski’s brotherly kiss on the pretext of a coughing fit. In the Krao (loud and demanding) – hunge From Wer ist Martha (Suhrkamp, 2012) aeroplane the man with the moustache Kroa (chokingly) – thank you, thank

49 From the Sidelines This 18th June was for months an abstract date, an unreal, far-off day: the very last game day of the season. To make it to this Gentlemen, We Are Living on the Edge day, improbable and incredible things had to happen: two gruelling and nerve-rack- By Thomas Pletzinger, translated by Ross Benjamin ing play-off series against the Oldenburg Baskets and Frankfurt Skyliners had to eavy silence on the bus to Bamberg. locker rooms, we’ve stood at Italian buf- be won, the finals had to go into the fifth HEveryone is in their seats, every- fets, at luggage conveyor belts in Moscow, and decisive round. thing is the same as always: Big Micha at we’ve sat in Quakenbrück conference And now we’re sitting on the bus and the wheel, Baldi and Demirel and Coach rooms, on Hagen locker-room benches, heading to Bamberg, for the final for the Katzurin are sitting behind him, all of in cafés on the outskirts of Seville, we’ve German championship. All this sounds as them are working and talking on the checked in, we’ve checked out. We’ve if it were contrived for sport romantics, phone. Konsti is reading Handke, Bobby been mired in snow and in crisis. We’ve as if it were material for a novel, perhaps is snoring. My seat is next to the water been at a hundred autobahn rest stops, a screenplay, with a showdown on the crates. The players are riding on the top thirty midnight McDonald’s, Burger dusty main street of a town and Ennio level of the double-decker, strewn among Kings and Subways. I say ‘we’ because I Morricone providing the soundtrack. the seats, Yassin Idbihi surrounded by have been accompanying the Alba Berlin ‘Another chapter for your book?’ Yassin newspapers and magazines, Süddeutsche team since last August. The players lifted Idbihi asked after each win, as if I had Zeitung, Der Spiegel, The New York Times, weights, watched videos, gave interviews, made up this season in order to have a next to him Schaffartzik with a book. had their ankles taped, signed autographs story to tell. Tomorrow is Saturday 18th Schultze and Femerling are arguing, and licked wounds. I sat in my seat in the June, tomorrow Alba Berlin can, after a Taylor Rochestie is singing to himself, locker room, I watched, listened and took turbulent and complicated season, despite Beach Boys, Rochestie is always sing- notes. I ate what the team ate, I gave up everything, still become the German ing to himself. Staiger is sleeping in the my objectivity bit by bit. I was there. champion. We’re heading south-west. aisle, the 6-foot-11 man Miro Raduljica In these ten months the team has This season may sound like a fast-paced is sitting bolt upright, wedged between played almost seventy games, in the rollercoaster ride, but it feels like an the reclining seats, staring stoically ahead, European competition, in the Bundes- absurdly long bus trip towards Bamberg. Tadija can’t keep still. Bryce Taylor is sit- liga – the German national league, made The players are talking, but when ting where Hollis Price used to sit. Julius up of eighteen teams – and in the Ger- twenty men sit on a bus for ten months, Jenkins wearing headphones on the rear man Cup, a mid-season side competition. what they say loses more and more of its bench, Derrick Allen with the scouting There were terrible defeats, tears were meaning. English is the language of the papers, Immanuel McElroy wrapped in shed, noses bloodied and tendons torn. basketball world and the lingua franca on his pillow. Up front the physio, Tommy, This season was a long journey through the bus. By the end of a season, an outsid- and Hi-Un, the doc. Everything is the a rough landscape: the early elimination er can scarcely follow the conversations same as always, and yet everything is dif- in the Eurocup, the dashed expectations, any more. Team captain Patrick Femer- ferent. Today is a perfect day for a last bus bitter losses, disgruntled faces among fans ling and Sven Schultze, the enforcer, have ride, clear and pure, the sun shining down and journalists. The low point was the been arguing since the departure this on everything. The route is the same worst defeat in club history: a 52–103 bar- morning about something neither of the as always: Brandenburg Gate, Victory rage, in the Bamberg arena, of all places. two can exactly remember. Perhaps it was Column, the old AVUS race track, the We were run out of town, taunts and originally about telephones, BlackBerry highway junction Schkeuditzer Kreuz, pit jeers, dishonour and disgrace. Muli Kat- vs iPhone, it often begins with things like stop on the autobahn, uphill, downhill, zurin replaced Luka Pavićević as coach, that, but now it’s about who said what Bamberg. There’s melancholy in the air, two players were fired, three new ones when and how. The two of them are but no one would admit it. In the morn- hired. We kept losing, there were strings arguing about arguing itself. For months ing a few players cleaned out their lockers of defeats, things kept going downhill. they’ve been sitting next to each other on in the training centre, shower gel and We failed in the German Cup. Then there team buses, for months they’ve been shar- pictures of their kids, amulets and socks were some convincing wins, things were ing hotel rooms. Femerling is Waldorf with holes in them. Big Micha loaded up finally going uphill again. and Schultze is Statler, they’re Estragon the bags and greeted his passengers one But above all, things kept going: Alba and Vladimir. by one. ‘The very last time today,’ he said. Berlin made it to the play-offs. And A professional basketball team is a ‘After this I’m not driving you anywhere.’ tomorrow is Saturday 18th June, and the strange family, in which everything has The season was long, the longest in the Alba Berlin team is still here, we are still already been said, but which keeps talk- history of the Alba Berlin basketball team. here – much longer than the journalists ing anyway. The language of a basketball We’ve been travelling for more than ten wrote and most people assumed, much team is rough and raw, it’s full of disses, months. Ever since the training camp longer than assistant coach Bobby pre- superlatives, sexist remarks and national in Kranjska Gora in the Slovenian Alps, dicted. Perhaps there were times when prejudices. There’s mimicry, there’s rau- we’ve been sitting in buses, planes and even the team itself was not convinced. cousness, there are inside jokes and ironic

50 comments, there’s mockery. There’s curs- town rivals SSV Hagen and TSV Hagen ented and cool-headed enough, at deci- ing in three languages – Alter, what’s wrong in the smoky and completely packed sive moments my hand shook. At some with you, brate! – things get silly, childish, Ischelandhalle; I covered my ears to point in the summer of 1994 I folded up clever, grandiose, there’s sound poetry, block out the noise and my eyes to block my jerseys and put them in the closet. ‘Nonono,’ says Femerling, ‘Yesyesyes,’ out the suspense. To be a basketball pro There they remain to this day. says Schultze. And when it matters, a in Germany meant that someone paid Still, I couldn’t get basketball off my good basketball team communicates with for your apartment and your car, plus a mind. I know all Dirk Nowitzki’s stats by no words at all. salary that was enough to live on. I was heart, in my first novel there’s a basketball We’re leaving Berlin for the last time astonished that people could jump as scene on the outdoor court on West 4th this season. Outside the bus windows the high as the black point guard Keith Gray, Street in Manhattan, and once, on some old autobahn rest stops and border instal- the former Detroit Mercy Titan, who court in Jackson Heights, Queens, a kid lations of the once-divided city rush by. stayed in the air for a few seconds before I had just won $2 off told me I got game. The Berlin bear, the city’s heraldic animal, he shot. I was amazed and frightened by I’m an enthusiast, but a fan only at rare gives us a melancholy nod. the wild enthusiasm of adults, by their moments. It’s hard for me to give my I must have been about nine years old drumming, their chanting, by the smell unqualified support to a team. I love the when, at some point in autumn 1984, of beer and cigarette smoke. In those days game, but at the same time there’s always shortly after my first communion, in you were still allowed to smoke in Ger- nostalgia and melancholy when I watch a 1950s gymnasium in my hometown man sports arenas. In an essay about what the players during training, in the locker of Hagen, I first held a basketball in my the world would be like in the year 2000 room, during the game. It’s my old dream hands. On the bus to Bamberg I remem- I wrote that I would be a basketball pro that doesn’t release me. The clear daily ber the glass blocks and wall bars, the dark in America or, to be precise, in Boston routines and precisely set goals, the wide smell of the equipment room, the rips in (without having the slightest idea where horizon of physical possibilities. It’s the the blue gym mats, the other kids who Boston exactly was). I would play against almost complete improbability of the had long known what a lay-up was, right, Magic Johnson, I would win, 121–103. fulfilment of an old idea. It’s the unat- left, up, get it? My cousin Andreas had My teacher Frau Elsner commented on tainability of a physical condition, an ease, taken me with him, my first coach was my report card that my thoughts had a speed, flexibility. The jumping power named Martin Grof, in my memory he ‘tendency to wander almost poetically’. that wanes. It’s the gradual loss of these wears green and white Converse sneak- I spent my youth in gymnasiums, I possibilities. A life’s path not taken. It’s ers and faded jeans. On the wall of his remember every single one, the locker the dwindling of time. I spent a season apartment hung a poster of Larry Bird rooms, runs through the woods, weights sitting on the team bus of Alba Berlin, and Magic Johnson. In Germany at the rooms, I remember the bus connections a season observing what I had as a kid time basketball was considered a sport to get there. We hitchhiked to the Europe wanted to be. My seat was in the middle, for college students. Martin drove an old League games of Bayer Leverkusen, I right next to the water crates. ◊ Opel, I think, he must have been a college remember Oklahoma State’s ‘Sly’ student. He taught me that you snap your Kincheon, German and international Extracted from: Gentlemen, wir leben am wrist when shooting, that the ball should star player Mike Koch and Hall of Famer Abgrund by Thomas Pletzinger (c) 2012 by spin backwards, that a high trajectory is Arvydas Sabonis. I remember the brightly Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & the most important thing, he showed us coloured Kronos shoes worn by Rimas Co.KG, Cologne again and again how the ball was sup- Kurtinaitis, who was known as the ‘three- posed to soar through the air, he made point czar’ because he was the first player one shot after another, he set the rhythm from the USSR in the West. I know the for lay-ups, tak-tak-tak, again and again, squeaking on the linoleum in gymnasi- right, left, up, a sort of dance, tak-tak-tak. ums from Thessaloniki to Soest. I’ve been In my first summer as a basketball promoted and relegated, I’ve seen flags player, I took city bus 512 to practice, waving and jerseys burning, I memorize sometimes Andreas and I got to watch a stats to this day. I had the jersey number basketball video from America in Mar- 7 like Toni Kukoč and long hair like the tin’s tiny apartment, the television on an German legend Henning Harnisch. Once overturned beer crate, an imported video I stood at the graveside of the Croatian cassette with the fifth game of the finals, sensation Dražen Petrović, who played Boston Celtics versus Los Angeles Lakers for the New Jersey Nets and was killed in the old Boston Garden, 8th June 1984, in a car crash on the German autobahn in known as the Heat Game. There weren’t 1993, and was deeply moved. any others. Game five again and again, I watched my teammates become Bun- Boston always won, 121–103. desliga players, even members of the Ger- ‘Martin’s brother is a pro,’ said the man national team. Eventually I had to other kids, and eventually I saw my first acknowledge that I wasn’t good enough Bundesliga game, between the cross- to become a basketball pro, I wasn’t tal-

51 Invitation By Tilman Rammstedt Translated by Katy Derbyshire

he time has come at last. It’s time to school’s-out party, a record-release party, shine all night you know. We’ve got it Tthrow a party. It’s time to celebrate. a pyjama party, if you like, a reclaim-the- all. Gala night, the night of all nights, a It’s time to play the music. It’s time to streets party, reclaim-your-feet party, a band to play the samba, we’ve got moji- comb our hair. It’s time for the guests masked ball for all I care. It’s really time tos, we’ve got it all, we’ve got caipirin- to turn up. I declare this party open. It’s to party. Tonight’s New Year’s Eve after has, and we’ve got sweat-drenched hair, high time to celebrate. We’ve got plenty all, tonight’s Walpurgis night, tonight’s sweat-drenched shoulders, we’ve got of reasons. Bring outside clothes along. St Nick’s and Halloween and carnival sweat dripping from the ceiling. It’s gala Bring swimming suits along. We’ll drive and everybody’s birthday. Garlands eve- night. Drum & Bass & Rhythm & Blues you home afterwards, no need to worry. rywhere and lanterns everywhere and & French & House & Big & Beats & Break It’s time to celebrate. Theme: roaring evening dress as well. It’s time to throw & Beats & Latindub & Datapop & Rare 20s. Theme: rocking 50s, theme: swing- a party. It’s a glorious gala night. It’s the Grooves & Common Grooves & Charts & ing 60s, theme: raging 80s, theme: outer night of all nights, it’s prom night, it’s Hiphop & Mega-hits from three decades, space, theme: Mafia. All that counts is the opera ball, it’s a coming-out party, at least three decades. At the bottom are that you come along. Come with your it’s an awards ceremony. An orchestra our sneakers, that’s what we’ve got, in the most embarrassing piece of clothing, to play the waltz, a band to play light middle our bare midriffs and at the top not come with your first 7-inch single, come jazz and swing, salmon sandwiches and a word to be made out. We’ve got it all. with your ex-boyfriend or -girlfriend. champagne-glass pyramids, we’ve got it It’s time to party. It’s time to celebrate Come on, it’s time to party. A beach party all, well-tailored cocktail dresses, well- at last. We have to party in our flat, we if you like, a foam party if you like, a tailored tuxedos, that parquet floor won’t have to party in the park, we have to party

52 on the roof, on the beach, if we can, in the plastic forks. I want pasta salad. I want we’ve ever met, yes, I know, we’ll have church hall, if we’re allowed, in the sum- tomato salad. I want potato salad. I want to find out phone numbers, we’ll need merhouse, if we want, and we certainly chilli con carne, chilli sin carne, I want to check addresses, we’ll end up asking have to party up the hill and down the pizza and quiche and fat sausages in a friends of friends of friends, but they’ll road. It’s time to party in the basements, in saucepan. I want beer in the bathtub, beer all be invited along too, the acquaintances, the old officer’s mess, it’s time to party in on the balcony. I want to see names writ- and the acquaintances of the acquaintanc- the backyard, in the abandoned villa, it’s ten on CD covers in black marker pen. I es, and the acquaintances of the acquaint- high time to party in the garden, by the want midi hifi systems, and I want a queue ances of the acquaintances, and that’s a lake, in the empty outdoor pool, we have outside the bathroom. Stubbed-out fag- great incentive, isn’t it? And we’ll invite to party on the stage, we have to party in ends – I want them on half-empty plates, everyone’s brothers and sisters, and their the stalls, in the crypt and in the forest too. in beer bottles, on saucers. I want to see parents, and their grandparents, and their It’s high time now. notes for the neighbours in the hallway. It grandparents’ bridge partners and carers Bring a bottle, bring a friend, bring might get a bit noisy, they’ll say. Come and doctors and nurses, and the boyfriends good vibes if you like, ’cause this is the and join us, they’ll say. I want it to get and girlfriends of the doctors and nurses school disco, ’cause this is the after-exam noisy. I want them to really come and join can come along too if they like. And Han- party, this is the topping-out ceremony, us. I want everyone to come. nes says: We should un-invite the boy- this is hen night and stag night and wed- ’Cause now it’s time to party, I tell Han- friends and girlfriends or else it’ll get too ding night. It’s bloody well time to party. nes. You mustn’t leave the celebrating up crowded; and I insist on the boyfriends And yes, I want glossy invitations, and to the wrong people, I tell Hannes. It’s and girlfriends, and Hannes suggests rent- yes, I want precise directions, I definitely high time to party, ’cause nothing else is ing a ship so no one can leave early, and want to see the guest list, I want to order any use, ’cause we need to draw a line, a we argue briefly over whether that’s a the taxis, I want to form car-sharing pools. caesura, we need to take a break, forgive deprivation of liberty but agree in the end I want to have tried on the shirts, the and forget, see what comes next, I tell that the ship has to dock every three hours skirts, the dresses and the trousers, in front Hannes, and Hannes nods and lights up a to let people off. Hannes wants nametags; of the mirror, to loud music, I want my cigarette. And now it’s high time to party, I say: Right. Hannes wants a tombola, and friends on my bed as judges, shaking their I tell him, ’cause otherwise it’ll all fizzle I say: Right. Hannes says: We can discuss heads and shaking their heads and shaking out, I tell him, ’cause otherwise it’ll all stay the details later, let’s just get started, and their heads and covering their eyes, and open-ended, ’cause we’ll have to look up I say: What, right now? Hannes shrugs. then I want thumbs up, best of all both phone numbers, ’cause we’ll go for coffee, He hasn’t got anything else on right now; thumbs up, I want air guitars and deodor- ’cause we’ll arrange to meet up Tuesday have I? And I say: No, not really. ant microphones. I want gel in my hair, week for an afternoon, for an evening, Finding solutions isn’t particularly spray in my hair, glitter on my cheeks. I ’cause we’ll meet up for breakfast, for those difficult. There are plenty of solutions, want lipstick, I want eyeliner, I want mas- long, hard breakfasts, ’cause we’ll give perhaps there are even more solutions cara. I want shaving foam. back borrowed books, ’cause we’ll leave than problems, probably in fact. The only And of course I want you all to come, I our outdoor shoes on, ’cause we’ll won- dumb thing is that solutions aren’t much want everyone to be here already, I want der if the trains are still running. It’s time use. The dumb thing is that solutions just to hear laughter from the stairwell, from to party or else everything’s adjourned, remind you of the problem. The dumb the street, if possible, I want the hugs, I or else everything’s decided, or else the thing is that the real problem only starts want the kisses just missing my cheek, I ground is neutral, or else we’re asking with the solutions. want to be introduced. I hardly need questions, or else we’re giving answers, or Hannes looks at me. What’s the matter mention I want dancing. I hardly need else we’ll say: It’s been lovely to see you; now, he asks. OK, I say. OK. Let’s start mention I want singing along. With eyes we’ll say: I’ve got to go now; we’ll say: with the invitations, let’s start with the closed, with eyes open, with arms akimbo. No, I can still get home; we’ll say: Say hi lists, let’s start coming up with names. I I want snogging on the sofas, in the hall, to Andreas from me. It’s high time to par- get up to find something to write on. in the kitchen. I want entangled bodies. I ty ’cause that’s good enough reason, ’cause Have you got enough paper, asks Hannes. want to hear screams from the bathroom. this whole lack of reason’s a reason, and I think so, I say. ◊ And I want close dancing too. I want red Hannes nods and says: Right. wine stains on the floor, I want broken It’s high time to celebrate, and every- From Erledigungen vor der Feier (DuMont, glass and paper cups and paper plates and one’s invited, I explain to him, everyone 2003)

53 Let Us Get Some Action From… The Back Section

This Particular Back Section May Include The Following Elements:

I Knew Nothing The Serial The Best Bit ☑ Food and Drink On Something ☑ Five Minutes to Midnight

54 The Food and Drink Column jolly in a charming Welsh village. It’s a fair cop. But still, I present a defence for my trip. Ale is the new wine, Eating’s Cheating I say. Now available in a plethora of tastes to complement your lovely meal! Pubs Paul Ewen takes his enormous appetite to the Abergavenny Food Festival have changed, I cry. They have proper chefs now, some of them! Lovely pub tanding on the concourse of Padding- after that it goes off into fairyland. One meals, I plead. But at this point I’m talk- Ston Station, I observe a man rubbing review of the book likened it to ‘a cross ing quietly to myself because my wife has a woman’s protruding belly in a circular between Bladerunner and Coronation Street’. left the room. motion. The woman is clearly pregnant, The central character, after losing touch but still, the action makes me think of with reality, gets thrown out of every Ian is a nice man, but he struggles to find the food event I am about to attend. It’s pub he visits, and he certainly never eats my B&B. We’re still inside his car, like slightly inappropriate, this link, but it anything. Still, the organizers of the that couple at the start of The Rocky Hor- sums up how I feel about speaking at the Abergavenny Food Festival are putting ror Picture Show, driving around lost. Ian’s Abergavenny Food Festival. I feel it too is me up in a flash B&B tonight, and I’m the man, the driver, and I suppose I’m the somehow inappropriate. also getting picked up at the station, so woman character. All the knowledgeable My train seat is one of four, set around I’d better forget about my stupid bloody local drivers are no doubt busy picking a table, as if for dinner. I don’t know any book and try to get my head around up the proper food writers. of my fellow diners, so it’s a bit like that fancy food, quick smart. Beth is the person who runs my B&B, show Come Dine with Me, except we’re but she’s not waiting for me, nor am I belting through the countryside, and we I think my driver’s name is Ian. His sign welcomed inside her home. Apparently don’t talk, and eat little. A young man doesn’t have my name on it, but it men- it’s all full up, so she’s offloaded me on to opposite me is demolishing a pack of tions something about a Festival Courtesy another house, further up the road. The crisps like the Cookie Monster, his eye- Car, and when I approach him he seems owners of the other house, Lynnette balls spinning round, while the teenage to know who I am. Ian’s sign is a lami- and Graham, are waiting outside Beth’s. girl beside me carefully peels a banana, as nated bit of paper, and maybe when it’s ‘Come with us,’ they say. It’s all very if expecting to find an explosive device not being used for incoming arrivals it mysterious. It’s also dark because it’s night inside. The young man gives his trousers doubles up as a place mat, to catch all of -time. We walk up a path, down an alley, a loud walloping, to rid them of the crisp Ian’s wayward dinner. along a road. But they don’t knife me in crumbs, before starting on a very quiet My bag, which I put on the back seat, the guts or murder me, and instead we yoghurt. The teenage girl has now spread is full of copies of my book, which I am chat about the lovely room that awaits me, her fingers on a tissue and is painting her hoping to flog. But in all likelihood, I and Lynne’s chest infection. nails avocado green. Dinner’s over, that’s shall be run out of Abergavenny with Lynne and Graham live in a modern it. My final meal before the Food Festival, my unpaid-for books striking me from and bright house, and Lynne leads me and I didn’t even eat. I’m facing back- behind. Ian perks up when he hears I’ve upstairs to my room, promising that I wards in the train. written a book. But he wouldn’t be so will be very happy here. It looks extreme- The whole premise of my being keen if he knew the whole story: that it’s ly comfortable, luxurious even, in a invited to a food festival is really rather a small-time work by a nobody, lest of slightly New Age way. farcical. It’s absurd. I eat little, I rarely all in gourmet circles. And that’s why I’m ‘There’s no lock for your door,’ says cook, and I tend to regard food as a waste sitting in the front with him, rather than Lynne, ‘but just sing out if you need of money and eating as a waste of time. lounging back there, making important anything.’ With this, she shuts the door The fine dining experience is lost on me, calls to experts in the food trade. I might and pads off down the stairs. It’s only partly because it means dressing up, and be a total fraud, but I’m not taking the 9.20 p.m. Having been bumped from my that isn’t something I care for either. piss. original lodgings, I start to get suspicious, My invitation was on the basis of a My wife, I think, finds the whole and this flows down, like champagne book I wrote about pubs. Some of the premise deeply suspicious. She, more in a champagne glass pyramid at a wed- pubs in my book might have served food than anyone, knows my aversion to food ding reception, to a tepid, bitter pool of of some description, but if they did, it and the fact that I don’t eat dinner. She’s paranoia. Is the Festival committee on to was probably cooked in microwaves the one who misses out on all those fancy me? Have they exposed a grifter in their or sealed in crinkly packets. I wouldn’t restaurant meals and is never pleasantly midst? Has the tablecloth been pulled know, because I simply wasn’t interested. surprised by something I ‘just threw from beneath my feet, leaving me stand- The link between a revered Welsh together’. What’s more, she knows my ing exposed in the middle of the kitchen food festival and my book gets even more pub book only too well and is the first to table? I turn on the TV in my room tenuous, however. Because London Pub point out the discrepancies between its and I’m half watching a drama of some Reviews is a work of fiction. The pubs contents and the expectations of the Food description, when suddenly the channel and the descriptions of the pubs are real, Festival delegates. Unsurprisingly, she’s changes by itself. Gripped with feelings because I’ve actually visited them, but less than enthusiastic about my fine food of madness, I grab my coat and make for

55 the stairs. Tapping lightly on the living- residents all give me a wide berth. grab a tomato and throw it at me.’ room door, I explain to Lynne that I have After further wandering, I find a tre- There is some laughter, appreciative to find a pub or I’ll go mental. mendous pub called the Station Hotel glances and a few nods. It’s all bod- a small distance from the town centre. ing well for a great half-hour to come. Breakfast is at 8 a.m. sharp. But it’s not The landlord’s name is John, and he’s just They’ll be eating out of my hand, this downstairs. It’s down the road, up the opening the doors to the pub as I arrive. I Food Festival crowd. But then an elderly alley, along the path, back at Beth’s house. ask if he was peering out from behind the woman (who may have been a bit pissed) I’m the first seated in the dining area, and curtains, waiting for me to arrive, and he comes up to the stage and takes the entire I choose a table with a window view. says no, he wasn’t doing that. bag of tomatoes away. Shocked and con- Someone on the organization commit- John has a jazz background, both as a fused, I half shout after her, ‘Um, excuse tee must have told Beth I was a speaker performer and as the former owner of a me? Where do you think you’re going? at the Festival because she quizzes me on local jazz club frequented by many of the With all my tomatoes?’ this. circuit’s big names. The walls in a side There is an awkward silence around the ‘So, Paul, are you a chef?’ room of the Station Hotel are covered in tent as she disappears to a seat at the back. ‘No, I’m doing a talk about pubs.’ John’s pencil portraits of jazz greats, and I’m not quite sure how to respond further, ‘Really? Pub food, you mean?’ various related paraphernalia decorates so I start flipping through the pages of my ‘No, just about pubs generally.’ the surrounding shelves. John has even book. Once I start reading, the audience ‘Oh, I see, the history and that. Oh, I’d written a book about his jazz days, and turns to stone. Actually, not quite stone, love to read it because I have a publican he gives me a copy, for free. Naturally, I because many of them begin talking or background.’ return the favour, warning John that my looking around at other, more interesting ‘No, you don’t understand [shaking hero character sometimes smashes the things. Some leave entirely. It’s all a bit Beth], it’s a deranged, mental interpreta- things in the pubs he visits, on purpose. distracting. For me, I mean. My book is tion of pubs! It’s stupid! And pointless! I John smiles, but it’s a jittery smile. supposed to be funny, but no one’s laugh- shouldn’t be here! This is a huge mistake!’ Ensconced within the jazz room, I ing. A young guy near the front seems to ‘Lovely, I must read it.’ attempt to construct a plan for my thirty- be smiling, so he becomes my best friend minute stage appearance. I can’t simply in the world. You’ll help me get through In the village, I look about for an early read from my book for thirty minutes, this, you one appreciative soul. But the opening pub. The Coliseum was the because I’d probably end up skewered on next time I pick him out, he isn’t smil- only pub open after 11 p.m. last night, a slowly turning spit. So I concoct an idea ing at all. In fact, he actually looks quite and its doors are open and welcoming in that involves tomatoes, for which I will angry. I begin to feel like something you the early morning too. I ask for a pint need to buy some actual tomatoes. When grill for thirty minutes, like sausages, but of standard Abbot ale, but the bartender I eventually leave there’s no time to scour I’ve only just been put in the oven. Time tries to upgrade me to an Abbot Reserve, the fresh delights of the market stalls, so passes incredibly slowly and I can feel my which is 6.2%. I buy a selection of packaged supermar- skin shrivelling, my innards boiling and Why not? ket tomatoes before sitting at a bus stop, popping. I’m reminded of some lyrics Because I’m a New Zealander, I am transferring all the tomatoes into a large from a Lou Reed song, something about compelled to watch the televised Rugby plastic bag. sticking a fork in their ass and turning World Cup. I don’t normally follow the them over because they’re done. All Blacks, and I don’t know when they’re I’m on a makeshift stage in a tent called, After my gig, I’m busy putting my playing, or who. But I hope my team fittingly, The Dome. White plastic chairs book away in my bag when the tomatoes wins the tournament, because if they are provided for the audience, together are mysteriously returned to the stage. don’t the entire New Zealand population with plenty of room for standing. The Some hungry student types quickly may well walk out to the many unspoilt spacious tent has been kitted out with pounce on them before disappearing with beaches on our beautiful coastline, and large papier-mâché bees and other curios, the lot. The sound engineer comes over keep walking out to sea with stones in which hang down from the ceiling. It’s to readjust the microphone, and as I put their pockets and keep walking. a free event, and a good third of the tent my jumper on, he says, ‘That seemed like Afterwards, since I’m in Wales, I look is open, so passers-by can pop in at their a lot of hard work. Hey, why are you so for a Prince of Wales Feathers pub. But I leisure, and also leave quickly. red?’ can’t even find a normal Prince of Wales The initial introduction, I think, goes pub, without the Feathers. However, I do well. For an ice-breaker, I carry my bag I miss breakfast the next day, finally get- happen past a sportswear shop, and in the of twenty tomatoes on stage. Explain- ting downstairs around mid-morning. window is a mannequin with a hockey ing that my book is not food-related, I Lynne plonks me in front of the TV with stick leaning against its crotch, like a huge add, ‘But I’ve brought these tomatoes a coffee. I mention how the TV in my penis with a bendy end. I double over along, lovely tomatoes. I’m going to put room was changing channels by itself. with laughter. When I straighten up, I them down on the edge of the stage there, Lynne laughs. point at it, still laughing, and turn around, and if you don’t think my talk is foody ‘It’s hooked up to this one, you see. trying to share the gag with other passers- enough, or you just think it’s boring or Whatever we watch, you watch.’ by. But the Festival-goers and the local a bit shite, I want you to come up here, ‘Um, why …’

56 ‘No wonder you were going all loopy I don’t have anything to prepare for my into awkward silence, and I sat back in up there!’ second event, apart from my own cour- my chair. I put my vegetative state down After I’ve said my goodbyes, Graham age. I do this quietly in the jazz room. to tiredness and low energy levels, caused drops me into town, next to the Angel Eventually, cutting it fine yet again, I say for the most part by a lack of food. At a Hotel, in his sporty Volvo. my farewells to John and rush back to food festival? I buy some chewing gum, which is kind town. As I run, I see a mobility scooter I make my escape. There are no taxis of food, like food of the future. But it’s that is encased within a large weather- about, so, encouraged by locals, I decide a poor breakfast, even by my standards, proof plastic covering, sealing off the to walk to the train station. It isn’t that so I wander around the food stalls in the male occupant inside, as if he were an far, I suppose, about half an hour’s clip, marketplace, the heartland of the Festival. extraterrestrial undergoing fumigation. but there’s a hill involved, and I still have One stand promises duck burgers with For the second time of the weekend I find most of my books. honey and rosemary, chicken hotdogs myself howling with laughter. My connecting train from Newport with leek and chilli, and duck hotdogs is cancelled, so I lose my reserved seat. seasoned with cranberry and orange. It all I’d had a good feeling prior to my first When the next train comes, to save smells very nice, and the dishes sound like stage appearance. In fact, I had pictured bother, I stand in the bendy bit, between they’ve been created by Dr Seuss. Perhaps the large crowd afterwards, once the two first-class carriages. As we’re shoot- that’s what these foody types are seeking: a applause had settled, and they were ing through the countryside, a first-class break from the norm, a taste for something throwing me up in the air on a billowing passenger, a stern man without manners, different. I’ve always thought of food as a tablecloth, cheering, ‘hip hip hooray!’ Of comes striding into my liminal zone. He means to an end, something a bit plodding, course, it didn’t pan out like that. Despite has a protruding belly, which begs to be but the dishes and combinations in Aber- my optimism and careful planning, my rubbed in a circular motion. gavenny are nothing short of bonkers. It inaugural food festival event went down ‘Where are the toilets?’ he barks. makes me wonder if it’s actually me that’s like a shit sandwich. I direct him to a side door, saying, ‘Just very boring. I splash out on one of those My second and final appearance was here, my lord …’ chicken hotdogs. It tastes like chicken. at the Angel Hotel, in the refurbished, He goes to open the door and step With time to kill before my event, I ultra-modern Wedgewood Room. There through. But I stop him and say, ‘No, no, sniff about town like a stray dog, half would be no tomato-throwing here. I was I’m joking. Don’t step out there. You’ll expecting to be shooed away with a firm to share the limelight with fellow writers kill yourself!’ clap. My artist wristband should bear Pete Brown and Ian Marchant, and the testament to my authentic credentials, plan was for the three of us, and the audi- I get a bit drunk on buffet carriage drinks. but I don’t think anyone’s buying it, least ence, to have an informal chat. How diffi- I should have eaten more at the market- of all me. My fraudulence is only exac- cult could that be? This time the audience place, but instead I spent much of the day erbated by the ‘realness’ of the Festival. had bought tickets. They actually wanted trying to calm my nerves with booze. In Everything is hopelessly real. There’s a to be there! We were sat behind a table at fairness, I did buy some fancy olives for real lemonade stall, a real bread the front of the room, and in front of me my wife, and some handmade chocolates, campaign, a real ale and cider was a single beer. I spent the next sixty and a salami in a presentation box. I had festival and two stands selling real minutes anxiously watching this disap- them all packaged up in a special bag, coffee. I put my sunglasses on, hoping pear. along with a bottle of fine wine, compli- to avoid being recognized by anyone at It wasn’t long before the conversa- ments of the Festival’s organization com- yesterday’s tomato debacle. I’m not real at tion was directed towards me and I was mittee. But back in London, I fall asleep all. I’m a bowl of wax fruit. expected to be forthcoming with a view- on the bus, and when I’m awoken at the point on the gastro-ization of lovely tra- end of the line, the special bag of treats is It starts raining, so I find shelter in the ditional pubs. This was a subject close to nowhere to be seen. Patchwork & Quilting Exhibition at my heart, and I began strongly, outlining The next morning, my wife is prag- the United Reformed Church. It’s not my disapproval and providing an example matic. food-related, and I can hide there. When of a pub-conversion atrocity. But then ‘At least they didn’t steal all those the rain eases, I head back to the Station I became vaguely aware that I was talk- unsold copies of your book.’ ◊ Hotel. Opposite it, someone has spray- ing about something not even remotely painted on a wall, ‘[Man’s name] is a connected or relevant to the flow of pedo’. discussion. The more I tried to talk, to John tells me he had a good night last explain my point, the further I drifted night, and that a few people said they’d off topic, as if I was actually driving away heard me at my gig, plugging his pub, from the Wedgewood Room in a car, which I did. But wait a minute. No one waving and tooting. I looked in despera- was actually listening to me. They were tion towards my glass, perhaps hoping to all talking or looking away, or scowling. drown myself, but there were insufficient I don’t accuse John of lying, but I think beer reserves to cover all my breathing he is. holes. My ramble eventually tapered off

57 And Finally… reason, but now her way up off the sofa is totally clear. So what’s stopping her? The temperature in the room drops by a Five Minutes to Midnight degree or two. The lid of her laptop thuds shut, then A series on the ends of days. By Laurence Howarth slowly raises itself to its full height, then thuds shut again, raises itself again, thuds 23.55 ting quietly, in her own house, on her own? shut again. From above, a foot joins in, It’s later than she thinks. So when she It is strange but why? The room comes to silently stamping out the same jeering, catches sight of the time on her DVD player, resemble an historical reconstruction of funereal rhythm. The cheese plant bellows she immediately looks at her watch. Not itself, faithful to the last detail. How on at her to get a bloody move on, while the because she suspects the display is wrong earth did they find exactly the right lamp? dragon tree just shakes its head. Her moth- but because she’s annoyed with her wrist for Besides, she needs more time alone, if er’s sherry glasses rattle in the drinks cabinet. failing to disport itself in front of her eyes only to stop it scaring her when she gets The halogen bulbs in the ceiling pulse and half an hour earlier. She should be in bed it. She needs to relax, to reflect and to shudder. The beanbag threatens to capsize by now. Light from the street lamp steals work. The realization that this is the perfect itself. She has got to get up right now. in through the blinds, while an ungainly opportunity to get her work done thwacks Here we go. Now. Go, go, go! Now! silence lumbers into the room and plonks her across the chops. She sinks down into itself next to her on the sofa. the sofa, impressing herself on the foam. 23.58 Her laptop catches her eye. It squats on If she wakes him now, it’ll be irritating She watches an advert for car insurance and the kitchen table, open but not switched but unremarkable. Whereas if she wakes then another advert for a different provider on; an absurdly self-important posture. It him in an hour, there will be a conversation. of car insurance. strains towards her but, despite feeling a And a conversation will lead to the conver- familiar twinge of duty, she refuses to drop sation. Better then to get up early tomor- 23.59 any worms into its pleading mandibles and row and tackle it with a fresh head. She Judith Mitchell, forty-three years old, wife, turns away. stares at the television and fantasizes about mother of two, marketing director, sitting Suddenly, a floorboard directly over her acquiring one of those. on the sofa in the living room of her new- head doesn’t creak. Then a couple more Liam Neeson doesn’t have to write pres- build maisonette near Leicester, closes her above the kitchen down tools and join in. entations in his own time. So why should eyes and starts to fall asleep. Nobody, not Soon, the entire storey is conspiring in a she? A woodlouse careers into the skirting even Judith, is aware of this. The subtle pointed stillness: the people upstairs are board next to the fireplace, rolls itself into changes in the pattern of her breathing are giving the impression of being not merely a ball and vows to survive at all costs. She inaudible to the entire human population of asleep but also dead. scratches her neck and wonders how many the globe and she cannot be seen from space. The low noise of the television starts to of her problems would be solved by being Her grip on the TV remote control, reassert itself and her attention drifts back Liam Neeson. A faint smell of … already loose, slackens further and the to this film she doesn’t want to watch and device slides nimbly out of her hand, rolls is watching. She’s instantly soothed by the 23.57 over and assumes the crash position. Her colours and clothes. Then a dreadful truth Good God, this is it. This is her opportu- head teeters then collapses back into the presents itself: she’s too far in now just to nity, the moment when it all has to happen. cushion behind her. Her eyes roll and her switch it off and yet it doesn’t finish till half It’s now or never. There’s an advert break. jaw drops. Only her glasses remain alert. past one, an unthinkable hour. The impos- She prepares to stand up. The muscles in The film returns to the TV screen and sibility of her position is almost thrilling. her legs and back begin to stiffen and there carries on as if nothing has changed. If any- is a suggestion of tilt in the pelvic area. She thing, it seems happier to be going about its 23.56 sends signals to every outpost of her being, business unobserved. This is understand- If she does go to bed this minute, which ordering them into action, or rather she able: the graveyard slot is a place for privacy she may well do and won’t, is that going thinks about sending signals but since the and introspection , where even films which to disturb them more or less than if she only way to send such signals is to think once craved the attention of millions now were to wait a while? The cushion consid- them – movement is thought – this ought just want to be left alone. ers her question carefully. Because for all to amount to the same thing. Her body sets about its nightly chores: it knows, they are right now falling into a She examines her stock-still frame, men- repairing damaged muscular tissue, pro- blissful but still brittle sleep. Any interrup- tally frisking herself for synaptic ignition. ducing new skin cells, emptying the brain tion could be catastrophic! Kinder then to The operation of her own body suddenly of blood and adrenalin to consolidate allow oblivion to take hold before passing strikes her as an absolute mystery and, hav- unconsciousness and prepare her to dream. through, unheard and unseen, like a consid- ing had this epiphany, she briefly wonders Everywhere, something is happening. She erate binman. if she will ever be able to resume her blithe is becoming, by increments, a different per- She notices herself eating a biscuit. command of her extremities. son. If only she’d— And what’s wrong with this anyway? Why is she still here? While the film was Why should it be strange for her to be sit- on, there was at least the appearance of a 00.00 ◊

58 Show Your Work November, 2012 The making of the issue Photos by Emma Capps

Charing Cross Road, London

Kentish Town, London

59 Bonus Fiction the thing, thought Monika. She changed the channel to a hectic cooking show, then to MTV. A boy band was jumping The Ferris Wheel around the stage. One of the young sing- ers tore his shirt off his muscular upper By Clemens J. Setz, translated by Ross Benjamin body, and Monika shook her head. Then she switched back to the channel with onika had moved into the Ferris on the other end of the city park could the self-massage class and waited. Three Mwheel in the summer of 2003, after be seen clearly. Next to it an ugly white minutes to go before the beginning of she had dropped out of law school for church steeple. Everything else was more the show. She watched the end of a docu- good. Her parents, wealthy entrepreneurs, or less hidden in the fog. mentary on the life of insects. There was had declared themselves willing to keep The highlight of the day lying ahead of a shot of the multifaceted eye of a fruit helping her out financially, and had not her was the visit from a technician. Moni- fly, in which the planet earth was reflect- even been surprised by the extraordinarily ka was expecting him to arrive at ten ed hundreds of times. high rent for the apartment in car no. 21 o’clock. Yesterday, when she had pressed The self-massage show was hosted by of the gigantic steel construction on the the button, the wheel had stopped for a woman. She was at most twenty years outskirts of the city. only five minutes and had then automati- old and was wearing a skintight leotard. Built in the late nineties by Austrian cally started moving again, and she had Huge tits, Monika noticed, giggling and star architect Albert Zmal and accompa- fallen down in the slowly tilting elevator. holding her hand in front of her mouth. nied by some media hype, the blue wheel, That was dangerous, that sort of thing The first exercise consisted of a gentle with its cross braces and bicycle-like shouldn’t happen. She had immediately massage of the neck muscles with the spokes shimmering through the fog on called the doorman in the main tower balls of the thumbs. this September morning, had gradually and explained everything to him. He had – This exercise is ideal if you work sit- become the new emblem of the city. At apologized repeatedly for this error in the ting down for a long time, straining your the same time, however, the demand for controls and promised to send someone neck in the process, said the girl on the the apartments had declined steeply. That to her apartment the next day. screen. most likely had to do with the way you Monika looked at her watch. It was Monika tried to do the exercise exactly left your dwelling, which took some get- only seven. My God, she thought, what as it was demonstrated to her. The result ting used to. Either you had to wait up am I going to do for three hours? A was a slight dizziness. to forty minutes until the car reached the walk was out of the question, because – Make sure you don’t press too hard, ground, or you pressed the stop button she didn’t know how much time she said the masseuse, as if she had guessed and took one of the express elevators would idle away. Of course, there was Monika’s problem. within the spokes to the central main the cafeteria in the main tower, but there Monika reduced the pressure of her tower, from which you could get outside she would probably run into old Frau palms, but that didn’t make it any better. by way of the stairs. Schuster from car 7. She often sat there The exercise seemed only to exacerbate At the moment, Monika’s apartment early in the morning, and Monika was her tension. She stopped and waited was at the top, the highest point of the in no mood for a conversation about until the next exercise began. Soon she wheel, several hundred yards above the house plants, cake recipes and the liter- lost patience and switched back to the ground. Monika was sitting at the kitchen ary success of the woman’s grandchil- music channel. An interview was being table and warming her hand, which suf- dren. No, she would simply stay here in conducted. Two smiling men on a black fered from chronically bad circulation, on her apartment and try to kill time. She couch, holding their microphones as casu- a steaming cup of tea. Darjeeling. She took another sip of tea. Still burning ally as if they were beer cans they wanted read the label on the little teabag for the hot. Morosely, she went to the sink and to pour over themselves. At first she third time. A friendly, almost tender added a dash of ice-cold tap water to the couldn’t tell who was the star and who word, like ‘darling’, only stretched apart cup, stirred it with the little silver spoon the host, then she listened for a while and in the middle by a foreign syllable. and took a sip. No difference. She put the figured it out. Bored, she switched back Her day had begun dismally. First she cup back on the table and went out on to to the self-massage. had tried to air her rooms, but realized the balcony. Fresh air greeted her, foggy, When the show was over, she turned that someone had once again pressed the oxygen-deficient city air. She folded her off the television and went to her CD stop button, probably was even holding arms over her head and tried to take a rack. For a long time she let her forefin- it down, which always happened when deep breath, but then this gesture struck ger wander over the band names, then she someone was moving, and that she was her as much too silly and she went back chose a CD she had had in mind anyhow. still hovering much too close to the noise into her apartment. She sat down on the Suzanne Vega, Monika’s absolute favour- and grime of the main street. So she had small, velvet-red yoga cushion next to ite singer. Many years ago she had seen taken a bath and then painted her toenails, the heater and turned on the television. her live and remembered to this day what but that had not improved her mood. Scrolling through the digital guide with she had been wearing on that wonderful She looked out the window. The grey the remote control, she found a self-mas- occasion. She especially liked the a cap- exoskeleton of a vacant factory building sage class. It began in seven minutes. Just pella version of ‘Tom’s Diner’. That song

60 could brighten any morning, however much too early: it was just ten after nine. the elevator, so what’s with that question, gloomy, in Monika’s view. Besides, it For a moment she hesitated, then she did I press it again? couldn’t hurt to store up a catchy tune; pushed on the stylized blue thumb under – Okay, okay, said the technician. I you never knew what silly and torment- the screen, and the door opened. only wanted to make sure. ing songs would get stuck in your head in – Good morning, said the technician. He wiped his face with his hand, then the course of an entire day. From the Treadmill Company, I’m here felt for a particular tool on his belt. Hav- The simple little melody was so elegant because of the control box …? ing failed to find it, he bent over and and graceful, it almost enticed you to – Yes, please, said Monika, stepping looked in his leather bag. He rummaged write your own verses, yes, she always aside. and rummaged, and finally he found it: felt like singing, or at least thinking, all She was about to show the technician a long silver thing, which Monika could linguistic expressions of the day in that the way, but he found it on his own. All not identify to save her life. A thing like melody. And the lyrics were definitely the the apartments in the Ferris wheel had that might be used in operating rooms or most beautiful poem about life in a city the same floor plan, only some were torture chambers, but here— that Monika knew. That first line about the mirror image of hers. The man had She cleared her throat and looked sitting in the morning at the diner on the already been in many apartments and elsewhere. It was so burdensome to have corner. A triple specification, temporal knew immediately where to go. Monika strangers in your apartment. and spatial: in, at, on. It was a completely followed him silently. As she passed a simple image, a zoom-in from above on mirror, she briefly checked whether she It had taken the technician over an hour a solitary person sitting in a café. That had messed up her hair during the self- to repair the malfunctioning in the time was true poetry, not the difficult cryptic massage. No, everything was fine. She controls of the module. And yet he could nonsense that was constantly presented looked the same as always. not guarantee that the problem wouldn’t to you everywhere. She sang along softly The technician had found the control recur at some point. until the end of the song. box and began his inspection without a – Okay, said Monika. Monika played the song five times in a word. – I cannot guarantee that the problem row, but stopped singing along (because – Yeah, said Monika. Maybe some error won’t recur at some point, repeated the the sound of her own voice always gave in the time controls … technician. her a feeling of abandonment); instead, – Mhm. His facial expression was grim. He she merely moved her lips silently with He removed the top cover. When that seemed to be angry with himself. Prob- the words. Then she listened to the whole was done, he looked around with light- ably it didn’t happen often that he could album. Meanwhile she looked out the ning speed, smiled mechanically and said: only half-complete a job. Monika no window. She thought about how great it – You have a nice apartment here. longer wanted him to leave. She accom- would be if the window could be control- – Thank you, Monika said with a shrug. panied him to the apartment door and let led by remote too, just like the stereo sys- The technician nodded emphatically, him out. tem or the television. Then, at especially as if she had contradicted him. Then he She looked at her watch and decided wonderful moments, you could simply turned back to the control box and mur- that it was not too early for a proper press pause, or speed up or slow down mured: lunch. From one of her four shelves the course of the day, as needed. Fast- – Stupid, the thing with the stop but- devoted solely to the subject of food she forward. How light-footed and uncom- ton. Poorly programmed, if you ask me. took a cookbook specializing in Asian plicated a city always looked in time But still. You’re pretty lucky. dishes. She found something that looked lapse: the headlights of the cars fuse into What exactly he meant by that was pretty good and began to read through multicoloured May ribbons, which run unclear to Monika. She didn’t ask either. the recipe. Half of the ingredients listed seamlessly through the streets, the sun is Instead, she said: meant nothing to her or she didn’t have a coin tossed from east to west, construc- – I don’t even want to think about what them at home. Disappointed, she shut the tion cranes do gymnastics over emerging would have happened if I’d had to get out book and put it back on the shelf. buildings, clouds race across the sky like of my apartment really fast. I mean, really In the kitchen it was completely silent. flocks of sheep fleeing a shepherd dog. fast. Monika clapped her hands a few times. Everything is fluid, everything merges. The technician had now removed the Since that didn’t make any change worth People can be seen for a hundredth of a last screw and lifted the gossamer-thin, mentioning, she began to sing. Her voice second at most, flashing through the pic- flesh-coloured metal cover from the con- was definitely similar to that of Suzanne ture like impurities on old film stock. trol module. Vega, not very, but a little bit. Softly Monika was sitting there with her – Did you try pressing it again? singing, she got dressed, chose the light- eyes closed when the doorbell rang. The – What, the button? est of her three autumn coats, put on sound ruptured her daydream and the – Yes. her favourite scarf and pressed the stop urban poetry of Suzanne Vega’s songs. – But that would have been pointless. button. On cue, an extremely gentle jolt She pressed stop on the remote control, It’s not even possible. I mean, if the wheel passed through the apartment. If you stood up and went to the intercom. On suddenly starts turning again while I’m in didn’t know, you could easily think it was the small screen she saw a man in overalls. the elevator, I fall down, no matter what only in your head. That had to be the technician. He was I do, right? Besides, there’s no button in She left her apartment and took the

61 elevator to the main tower. The café with weather had simply changed. One or the with the flat of her hand, spraying it eve- the unimaginative name Wheel Bar was other. The young waitress came repeat- rywhere. She would have liked nothing empty, despite the fact that it was lunch- edly and asked whether she could bring better than to get up and go down naked time. No trace of Frau Schuster, thank anything else, and each time Monika and wet to the Wheel Bar, to kneel down God. Monika sat down at a table near the thought about it and flipped dutifully there in front of the girl and ask for her door to the kitchen. That way it wouldn’t through the menu, only to shake her head hand. take the waitress long to bring her the and murmur: Gradually she calmed down. order. – Thanks. With slightly trembling legs she – Hello, Frau Stilling, said the waitress. The waitress never shed her friendly climbed out of the tub, bent down (so It’s nice to see you here so often. smile. Monika sat there and watched that a pleasant aftershock passed through Monika suddenly felt hot. She had for- her. The afternoon began. Eventually she her lower body) and drained the water. gotten to take off the scarf. decided that she had been sitting here With a soft towel she dried herself off, – Oh, yeah, she said, red-faced. The long enough, and paid. She did not forget especially carefully between the legs. She coffee here is really good. to give the waitress a proper tip. Then was very sensitive. Easily hurt. A breath – May I bring you one? she returned to her apartment. When she of wind could kill her. – No, I’d like to eat something. So just a took off the scarf – why had she put on a The massage device she put back in small beer and … scarf in the first place, when she had not the dresser, placing three layers of colour- Though she had long known the menu gone outside at all? – tears suddenly came ful underwear over it. Then she sat down by heart, she opened it and studied the to her eyes. She could not help thinking in front of the television and changed the selection of snacks. For a quick bite, was about the young waitress. How old could channels indiscriminately. In a sitcom, written there. she be? Sixteen, seventeen? laughing people sat in a coffee shop and – A grilled cheese, she decided. With She felt like taking a bath, for the were served by a very old, ugly waitress. ketchup. second time that day, but this time she Monika had to smile, and contentedly – Sure, the waitress said with a beauti- did not fill up the tub all the way. From wrapped her arms around herself. ful smile. her dresser she took her . . . but the name Just as she was starting to follow the Monika watched her as she walked of this device sounded so silly, like a plot of the sitcom, the telephone rang. away. The outfit she had to wear at work hero in a stupid comic for children. She – Hello? was somewhat reminiscent of a tennis felt embarrassed every time she read or – Hello, Moni. It’s Elke. I just wanted uniform. Over the young woman’s small, heard it. But it was necessary. Or else she to ask whether it’s all right if I drop by compact behind the material stretched would burst. With desire, with . . . Just a tomorrow with the boys. You remember, and produced a single crease. Monika short session in the bathtub, she told her- we spoke about it a few weeks ago. closed her eyes for a moment and thought. self, then she would feel better. She still Elke was her sister. She was a single Then she shook her head and opened needed lubricant to insert the black thing mother of two sons. Monika recalled them again. She touched the cool surface into herself. Like a teenager, she thought. Elke mentioning once on the telephone of the table, felt crumbs and greasy spots, In general it was very hard for her to have that her two boys would like to see the which came from previous customers. an orgasm when something was inside Ferris wheel from inside. Monika hadn’t Perhaps even from herself. When she ate of her. From outside it was easier and had time just then, and Elke had called lunch in the Wheel Bar, she almost always faster, but the result was never as intense. at most three or four times since. They sat here. It was her regular table. My reg- She sat in the warm water, which was hadn’t seen each other for a long time. ular table, thought Monika, repeating it only up to her bellybutton, and pushed – Okay, said Monika, amazed at how a few times until the words began to take a rolled-up towel under her neck. Since easy it was to say that. What time tomor- on a strangely bleak meaning. After five the water could not reach part of the tub, row? minutes, the waitress brought her order. she flinched from the cold surface as she – Oh, I thought in the afternoon. Monika avoided direct eye contact, but leaned back, but after a few minutes she Around three? watched her walk away again. The crease got used to it, and everything went quite – Great. So how are you doing? was still there and winked with each step. easily. She thought about the young wait- – Actually the same as always. It’s never She ate slowly and deliberately. Some- ress. She imagined her wet, as if she had quiet for a second here, my two little per- times she found herself gobbling down walked through the rain. The uniform, as formance artists make sure of that. her food much too fast, and then she felt if of its own accord, peeled off her small, The two sisters exchanged a few more sick. The grilled cheese was perfect. At supple, spirited body. My God, all the words and said goodbye. The conversa- once crisp and juicy. The cheese was only things you could do with a body like that. tion had not been especially profound, just beginning to melt. The first orgasm announced itself very but that was quite all right in Monika’s After she was done eating, she quickly. Before it was there, she had view. She returned to the sitcom, but the remained seated for another hour and decided to satisfy herself three times, but commercials had begun, so she changed looked out the window. From here the then she came so intensely that she began the channel. fog looked less dense. Perhaps that was to cry again, and she could forget about She watched television until evening. because she had not washed the windows the other two times. She howled like a At one point, she warmed up a frozen in her apartment for a long time. Or the small child and slapped the bathwater pizza for herself. It tasted disgusting, far

62 too many mushrooms. She threw half of thing clearly: the visit from her younger know. it away. sister and her children would be the – Why didn’t you say that before? The bitter mushroom taste brought highlight of the day tomorrow. Just as What’s different now at . . . my God, one- back her bleak thoughts, and she searched the visit from the technician had been thirty? for a channel on which people were talk- the highlight of the day today. Highlight, Now it’s night-time, came to Monika’s ing. She needed voices that always sound- the word expanded, became sticky and mind. Aside from that there was actually ed the same, or else . . . choked off her air. Monika felt afraid. She no difference. She had thought about it She searched and searched and finally switched on the floor lamp next to her a little, that was all. She preferred to be found a panel discussion on modern bed and looked at the clock. One-thirty. alone. At least tomorrow. At least for the music. She listened and concentrated, It was actually already too late, but she next few days or weeks. trying to understand something of what had to try anyway: with ice-cold fingers – Moni, what’s going on? Elke asked they were talking about. she dialled her sister’s number, let it ring after a while. Talk to me. You woke me – The problem of the series in itself is once and then hung up with pounding up, so talk to me. far from obsolete, let alone solved, said heart. Like a little kid, she chided herself. – I don’t know what to say, Monika one of the men. Of course, the telephone rang shortly confessed. All I can say is that I’m sorry. Monika didn’t understand a thing. thereafter. She picked up. It’s only because of …Today a technician Nonetheless, she listened until the end – I misdialled, Elke. Sorry. was here in my apartment. of the discussion, then went to bed. It – It’s okay, said the drowsy voice of her – There in the Ferris wheel, Elke said in was already quite late; she hadn’t noticed sister. a somewhat sleepy voice. the time. That happened often when she – Did I wake you? – Yes, and he . . . he had to come, you sat in front of the television. The hours – What? know, because there was a problem with passed as if they were being dissolved – Did I wake you up? the control mechanics or something. It in hot water. While brushing her teeth – Yes. I think so. You woke me up. was pretty dangerous. What would have Monika briefly thought again about the – I’m sorry. happened if I’d had to escape from the girl in the café, and the movements of her – You woke me up. I was just dream- apartment really fast? Do you under- toothbrush slowed down slightly. She ing … stand? gargled, spat the foamy water into the The voice broke off. Something rustled. – No, I have no idea what you’re talk- sink and watched it disappear down the Perhaps Elke had sat up in bed. What ing about, Moni. But if it helps you: yes, drain. might her bedroom look like? Monika I understand. The bed was cold, the pillow uncom- had never been there. – Thanks. fortable and misshapen. As if she were – Sorry, she said, that was really stupid – No problem. But I’m really tired, lying on a fully inflated balloon. Her chin of me. maybe tomorrow we can …? was pressed against her chest, and despite – I was . . . ah, wait a second . . . Okay, – I didn’t want to wake you up. It’s just the fact that she was lying down she felt that’s better. I was dreaming; you know . . . maybe another time. Please. like she was hanging her head. So she what I was dreaming? Something really – You really mean it, don’t you? said had to sit back up and shake the pillow funny. I dreamt that it was raining fans. Elke. You don’t want me to come over and even beat it a little until it was soft Rotor blades and such. Little saw blades … with the boys. enough. Then she lay still for a long time – I’m such an idiot, said Monika, I – No, it’s not that. It’s about tomorrow. on her side and listened to herself breathe. shouldn’t have woken you up. But you And the next few days. I’d prefer to be Her left nostril was slightly louder than know, now that you’re already awake, can alone. the right. I . . . could you maybe . . . possibly do me – But why? You’re always alone anyway. They’re only coming over, she thought, two favours? – No, I’m not. because I live here. They don’t want – Hm? – Yeah, I know, the technician who was to visit me at all. For them I’m only a The muffled rustling of sheets. Slow there today. means to an end. They want to see the breathing, much too close to the receiver. – That’s not what I mean. Ferris wheel, ride the express elevator, – First of all: could you maybe come – Did you make him up? wander on the stairs in the main tower, over with the children some other time? – No. Something really was broken. have something to eat in the café. Order Silence. The breathing became some- – The control mechanics, yeah, you something from the waitress. Behave like what softer. mentioned that. young monkeys, soil everything and scat- – You didn’t misdial at all, Moni, her Silence. The two sisters breathed into ter food on the floor. And I, I have to play sister stated quite matter-of-factly. Go the receivers. the friendly aunt the whole time, have ahead and say it. I know you, after all. – Don’t be mad at me, OK? Monika to show them my apartment, go out on Monika bit her lip and thought: I’m said finally. Remember favour number to the balcony with them and explain to biting my lip. The gesture was stupid and two. them how often I sit downstairs in the unoriginal. I definitely watch too much – What? café and that it is one of the few constants television. – Favour number two, which I asked in my life. – And second, she went on hesitantly, you to . . . oh, forget it. And then she suddenly saw the whole please don’t be mad because of . . . you – I’m not mad at you, I just don’t

63 understand you. The boys have been the two of them wouldn’t be disappoint- wind blowing through the night outside. talking about nothing else for two weeks. ed. They were so looking forward to it. Like a drunk man on the run. No, that They want to ride around once in a com- And to be honest, so was I. How long has wasn’t right. Basically, the wind could not plete circle. And they want to see how it it been since we last saw each other? be compared to anything. Especially not is on the balcony, whether you can feel Monika had to think about it. when you were at its mercy, somewhere the wind from the motion and such. – You see? said Elke. You have to think between heaven and earth in a slightly – No, Monika said softly and earnestly. about it. Three. It’s been three years. Last rocking car containing four overpriced – No what? week at some point it was, to the day, apartments. And one of these apartments – No, you don’t feel it. The wheel exactly . . . contained her, Monika. She lay in bed, in moves much too slowly for that. – Three years, Monika completed the a pitch-dark room. – Moni, what’s actually going on with sentence. Down in the Wheel Bar the lights you? Why are you calling me so late – So? What’s the problem? Three years, had definitely gone out a long time ago. and telling me not to visit? Is something that’s a long time. And tomorrow those She imagined what it would be like to wrong, do you need help? three years could be over. break in there at this hour. What would Monika thought about it. Monika bit her lip again. This time she she find? An abandoned restaurant with – If I needed help, I’d probably let you didn’t notice it. tables, on which the chairs practised come, wouldn’t I? – But it’s not about that at all. It’s not headstands. And in a closet the lifeless – I actually doubt that. There’s some- that I wouldn’t like to see you. You don’t uniforms of the waitresses. The little thing you’re not telling me. Have you . . . have to calculate for me how long we name-tags. Tina. have you moved? haven’t seen each other. Monika forcibly dragged her thoughts Monika had to laugh. She had not – Yes, I do, because you don’t even away from the name; it was difficult, like expected that. But it was such an elegant, know any more. a pack of dogs attached to a single leash. crystal-clear solution to the problem – at – My memory was never …, Monika But she managed it. She strapped a rocket least from her sister’s point of view – that began. to her back and flew over the city. The it almost cheered her up. But then she didn’t go on. A very, very black night sky made her invisible. Down – No, she said with a laugh, no, I gentle jolt passed through her apartment. below passed the many thousand build- haven’t moved. I’m still up here, that is, at Someone had pressed the stop button, ings that made up the city. And all of the moment, I think, I’m pretty far down. and in the middle of the night. them were filled to bursting with people. But then it goes back up again, all day, all – I think I’m going to lie back down, No space was wasted. night. Up and down. she said. Sorry again that I woke you. I The wheel continued to stand still, and – Up and down, repeated her sister. somehow have no sense of time. Monika wrapped herself tighter in her Still, there’s something you’re not telling – Wait, said Elke. Do you really not blanket. At that moment, strangers were me. want us to come tomorrow? I mean, are riding the express elevators to their apart- – No, there’s not. I was just lying awake you sure? ments. for a long time and thinking. That’s all. Monika thought about what else she Monika rolled on to her side and stared – Hm. The boys will definitely be dis- could say. It seemed as if she had tried out into the darkness. I won’t close my eyes, appointed. It’s quite possible that they all available sentences. There was none she thought, until we start turning again. won’t want to visit you at all any more. left that would have been appropriate. But she knew that the gears of the Fer- Because they’re insulted. You know how – Don’t be mad, she said finally. ris wheel always got going again with children can be. Elke didn’t reply. Then she cleared her extreme restraint and gentleness, so that Monika felt tears gathering in her eyes. throat and said: you scarcely noticed it. There was noth- – Please, Elke, don’t do that. – All right. If that’s what you want. ing wrong with that in itself. The only – What? Then I’ll pass that on. To the boys. problem was that no one deserved to be – The guilt trip. I’ve just been going – OK. treated so tenderly. No one. At least not through withdrawal from guilt. I quit – OK. tonight, thought Monika. At least not by cold turkey, so to speak. – Good night, Elke. I hope you can fall a gigantic inanimate metal structure on She couldn’t help thinking of a plucked asleep again, after I— the outskirts of a medium-sized industrial turkey lying on a silver platter with its – Don’t worry about me, Elke said, and city. ◊ fat thighs pointing upwards. Elke yawned hung up. close to the receiver, then she said: Now Monika was alone again. She From Die Liebe zur Zeit des Mahlstädter – But it would be a lie if I told you that stretched out in bed and listened to the Kindes (Suhrkamp, 2011)

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