New Swiss Writing New Swiss Writing

Solothurner Literaturtage Journées Littéraires de Soleure Giornate Letterarie di Soletta Sentupada Litterara a Soloturn Solothurn Literary Days

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Contents

Kurt Aebli 5 Urs Allemann 7 Flurina Badel 10 Lukas Bärfuss 13 Bruno Blume 15 Wolfgang Bortlik 17 Arno Camenisch 20 François Debluë 23 Lisa Elsässer 27 Eugène 29 Katharina Faber 32 Andrea Fazioli 35 Anna Felder 38 Simon Froehling 41 Lea Gottheil 42 Svenja Herrmann 45 Franz Hohler 47 Annette Hug 50 Urs Jaeggi 52 Keller+Kuhn 54 Jochen Kelter 56 Tim Krohn 58 Rolf Lappert 61 Daniel Maggetti 64 Jacqueline Moser 66 Adolf Muschg 68

Paul Nizon 70 Maurizio Pinarello 72 Marius Daniel Popescu 74 Dubravko Pušek 77 Fabio Pusterla 79 Margrit Schriber 82 Esther Spinner 85 Isabelle Stamm 87 Peter Stamm 89 Verena Stefan 91 Jörg Steiner 93 Franco Supino 96 Raphael Urweider 99 Michel Viala 102 André Winter 105 Mireille Zindel 108 Emil Zopfi 111 Mary-Laure Zoss 114 Germano Zullo 116

Biographical Notes 119 The Translators 127

Kurt Aebli

At both ends (Metamorphoses)

This morning if morning is the right word is a grin like a letter without a stamp or the path of a scent that I photographed in my sleep with the words All the signs in the sky drift separately

It is the street that allows me to speak in the tribal homeland of progress and science the street that allows me to speak the proper channels to nothingness

I have little ground I have the time I spend waiting I have the miles I dont count when I walk intent on never stopping anywhere so as not to be taken to task what I think I’m doing here wilted leaf brushed away by a single question

I spend my day I start my day early get up at seven do nothing until approximately ten things then continue in that vein I spend my day doing nothing I watch how my day spends its day how my day spends me

The pedestrian zone paved with weekend people suburb people human masses human races raw versions of personal pronouns words dropped in the graves between me and me

The town too in which you wake up daily has just been some- bodys fantasy (On the day God turns into a fly you wont wake up) When I left the house all the people in the street had turned into beetles

At every corner the city is an entire city something boundless and yet can change at any moment into a prison

One afternoon on my way along Leopoldstrasse transformation into one of those knots that disappear into thin air when you pull on both ends of the string simultaneously

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From: Ich bin eine Nummer zu klein für mich (‘I am a size too small for myself’), © Urs Engeler Editor, Basel 2007

Urs Alleman

For the lyre

The hand that climbs into your breast your heart to tear out falls off. It is yours. You bend over to pick it up. Now your heart falls out. We fling ourselves to the ground to hit into what’s ours the hearts the hands the teeth. To jerk it down. Now you’re falling your head has slid from your shoulders and converts in rising flight up from inside to out as can’t be imagined but told yes. Even blood some think flowed now. Weeping a ways away. Patient the strewn all around the bones of others sound. If by chance Orpheus came by I’d sing him something shove the meat-eating lyre her part of what, like, fell after.

Alcaic number six

You rained. I crawled inside of an ancient book. The windshield wipers were blown away. The world was even yet the broad black ashlar round me the brick was pressed out of voices.

I wasn’t reading. I was just read. And you ran beautifully down on me. We died not. When I dissolved inside the pages you existed again. Reminiscence.

My Grandpa, he knew words such as synthesis. It isn’t true. He pressed the head of the child with fingers to denote by saying finger, a thing I had learned from him.

You rain no longer. Squall, I am hiding now. You sleep me, boa. Scale off my skin of words. There’s nothing underneath. The word wound swallows the word that means wonder. Bird shit.

Asclepiadic number five

You will crush the heel or the heel will crush you raw to mangle the head if out of dust it snakes thrusting, vertical, upward thickly to slur an antidote none were paralyzed all over and if of two one were always the foot, one were the mouth so that grounded it for no reason sung away and is sinking on till one another us to paradise’s screams screaming above it, mouth open in which the reptile screams is afraid of choking on the fruit to the dust of peach

From Holder die Polder. Oden Elegien Andere (© Urs Engeler Editor, Basel 2001)

censure

The black bar set in front of the genitals. The night air out of which such a bar is cut. The ebony, the even layers’ quiet reflection so none looks back.

The axe that – how! – cracks gorgeously in your hand. We are the splinters. Graft back into the tree what in your eye, between your legs or up in the heavens the sun is hurting.

From schoen! schoen! Poems (© Urs Engeler Editor, Basel 2003)

Translated by Ann Cotten

Flurina Badel a big field

– no no I don’t want out outside I’m staying here lying in bed waiting

I can see out-there through the window after all it’s like a picture on the wall the picture moving within the picture trembling the golden leaves on the tree a ray of sun playing on them casting its shadow on my duvet I have the markings of a magpie

I’m not going outside after all comes in to me the sound of a scythe being sharpened the sour smell of cut grass mixing with that of my ironed cotton sheets and with that of me from last night

I’m staying here I know after all what outside looks like I’ve been before

I know the birch trees that surround the entire field rustling gently

10 birches like clouds like cushions they stand there the birches

I know the big field at this time of year it is reaped new tufts of grass have grown in bilious green continue to push the field is wet from the last rain I’d sink in with every step tractor wheels have left behind their furrows the ground broken up torn up black tormented earth mucky tired where the furrows are deepest puddles have formed lukewarm water the sky reflected in it and a birch the leaves of the birch tremble when a spider crosses the surface

I’m not going out I’d look up after all

11 and miss the birch reflection a field like any other green-yellow-orange-red-brown birch-leaves lie on the earth thrown there without a thought with ease

I’m not going

I know the wounds it’s the scars I don’t yet know –

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

12 Lukas Bärfuss

One Hundred Days

Why are you here then, my dear friend, you and your splendid managers? We were sitting, after a Sunday in the Akagera, at the campfire in front of the bungalows, eating roast antelope. In the swamps, we’d seen stilts, snipes and crowned cranes, and had taken a logboat out to the island in Lake Ihema, to the seat of the old King of Mubari, where, in March 1877, Stanley had spent ten desperate days in his futile search for the source of the Nile. Why are two hundred different organisations working in this country? Why’s there not a single hill without an aid and development project? Why the incredible urge to cushion the President’s bum with our money? What do you think? If these volunteers are so altruistic, so concerned about human welfare, why don’t a few pack their things and travel across to Katanga? I’ve been there, and I can tell you: it’s hell. Children are dropping dead in the streets: are dying of diarrhoea; of malaria; some, of a common cold, just. Death, you can find on every corner. Illness, everywhere you look. Depravity and helplessness, in every face you see. You’ll not find a single volunteer there, though. Just a bunch of nuns, long turned grey, who delight in washing the feet of the terminally ill and lepers. Why don’t a few, at least, pack their cases and - instead of getting in each other’s way here - travel to where the squalor is? I’ll tell you: no one, not even the world’s greatest philanthropist, exchanges paradise for hell, voluntarily. And he was right. Here, there were no mosquitoes, there was no malaria, it was never too hot, never too cold. The land of eternal spring, as it was called, was far from being the heart of darkness that lay on the other side of the Kivu. We could see it on clear days, and a shudder would go through us when we saw the heavy clouds that meant humidity rising from the forests in the basin – the Congo basin, that is, that seems to stretch to infinity. In many a province, the plague was still raging. You heard of plantations where white men were said to have been dead in their beds since 1963. We’d all read Conrad’s Heart of

13 Darkness, but the world described in that book had nothing to do with this one. We didn’t identify with Kurt, and not with Mar- low either, although we enjoyed our relations’ admiring looks when they learned how close to the jungle we were. We were, in fact, further away from it than the people in Europe’s cities. In the Nyungwe, every bird had been counted, and every tree recorded, six international treaties were there to protect it, and if some crazy farmer had the audacity to fell even a three-year-old pine, he and his family were, for sure, disgraced, with the whole country against them. Apart from in the graben of Bugarama, there was no malaria, no bilharzia, only rarely yellow fever, and ebola was unknown. Up on our hills, the air was dry and clean, and no one wanted to swap for the humid swamps, infested with mosquitoes. That was Missland’s explanation, and it was worry- ingly good. And yet, for him, it was just a small part of the truth, of the reasons why we’d focused on this country. The most important reason for our love for it was, in Miss- land’s opinion, the fact there were no negroes. The people maybe looked like negroes, had black skin and frizzy hair. In reality, though, they were African Prussians: they were punctual; loved order; were extremely polite. They didn’t spit on the ground, hated music, and were really terrible dancers. But, above all, their state functioned. They did whatever the big shots, the Abagetsi, instructed them to, and completed the work reliably - and without a grumble.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From the novel Hundert Tage (‘One Hundred Days’), © Wallstein Verlag 2008

14 Bruno Blume

A Lot to Do

Once upon a time there was a great inventor. She was very re- spected as back then very little existed in the world and a lot still had to be invented. People, admittedly, did not realise they lacked things, but with each invention by the great inventor they could not believe that they had not missed whatever it was she had just invented. The inventor often had visitors. People wanted to see what she was currently working on. They would knock her door politely, even though there was a sign: ‘Please enter without knocking’. They would wipe their feet carefully though the inventor’s workshop was full of dirt as she worked with all kinds of stuff, with metal, stone and clay, too, and had no time to clean. Quietly, and bowing repeatedly, they approached the table at which the inventor sat, drawing, most of the time. They looked at the drawings and, disappointed not to recognise anything, inundated the great inventor with questions despite the large notice she had pinned to her back: ‘Please do not disturb. Invention in progress.’ Disappointed not to receive an answer, the people would scour the house, looking for the latest inventions. But the house was empty, the inventor had not invented anything that she had not yet made public. Disappointed, the people would leave again. On one occasion, however, a young man came by - he did not knock and did not approach and inundate the inventor with questions. He simply remained in the doorway and, full of admiration, exclaimed ‘Oh!’ Next, he went into the back garden and exclaimed ‘Oh!’ again. Then he came back to the house, entered the kitchen and exclaimed ‘Oh!’ for the third time. Then he put an apron on and started to wash the dishes. Three hours later, he had made so much progress he was able to reach the fridge. He opened it, said ‘Oh!’ - and filled the fridge with the things he had in his rucksack. Then he swept and washed the floor

15 and, while he was it, did the same in the workshop and the livingroom and bedroom. When he had finished cleaning the windows, too, the great inventor looked up from her drawings for the first time - for suddenly the house was all sunny. The young man gave the inventor a friendly smile, said, ‘There’s so much to do!’ – and disappeared into the kitchen. The inventor nodded and returned to her work. Beneath the table, her foot tapped to the beat of the knife with which the man was whiz- zing through vegetables. Once the evening meal was in the oven, he ran into the garden. Hearing the sounds of sawing and ham- mering and shovelling, the inventor looked up, astonished. Soon, though, she was immersed in her inventions again, her head wag- gling to the beat of the man’s tools. The man now ran to and fro, several times, between the kitchen and the garden - before turning up in the workshop and saying, ‘No doubt you can invent better on a full stomach.’ The great inventor looked at the young man and was visibly pleased. They entered the garden together to see a magnificent ar- bour, beneath which a wooden table was set and two comfortable wicker chairs stood. The inventor knew all of this from a long, long time ago, but had never used it, had let it go to rack and ruin. Now it looked more beautiful than ever. They sat down and ate and both enjoyed their food tremen- dously. And when the inventor looked up from her plate, she in- stantly realised all the things that were missing and so quickly invented the wind chime and the lantern, the cushion and the can- dlestick, the fountain and the swing, the open fireplace and the dishwasher. Now they both had time to get to know each other properly.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

16 Wolfgang Bortlik

Ambrosia

Fischer goes a roundabout way: across the former harbour area, where a new urban centre’s planned, with a gang of local archi- tects as its spiritual leader. Renowned the world over, they are. For the moment, though, the temporary users, the gap-fillers, are still installed here. The Interstellar, for instance, where you can sit round tables made from oil barrels, and drink a decent espresso. Fischer parks his bike and approaches this rival to Starbucks. Colourful, it is. ‘Well, well – who’ve we got here then?’ Fischer recognises the voice. It’s too late to escape. Eduard Mendota is the devious type. A skinny little man with his head shaven, he waves Fischer over. A colleague. Mendota – who wastes no time in casting his net. ‘I’ve thrown myself into management now, Fischer. Isn’t it obvious that it’s in that respect that literature’s got the most catching up to do?’ Desperate, Fischer looks round for a waiter. Unless he gets some caffeine, he won’t be able to go this. ‘The market’s hungry for new and good faces. For fresh bodies. Anyone can write. You can, I can! It’s everything else that counts. Clever marketing. Positioning things. The agency. Advances. The whole caboodle.’ Mendota shifts around on his stool, plays with his glass on the table. Fischer turns; stares into the goods shed’s dark entrance. The home of the bar’s more intimate secrets. Why’s no one coming to take his order? ‘Group formation in literature, Fischer. The days of the lone- ly hunter are long gone. Nowadays, you have to write together and read together, go to where the audience is. To anyone I take on – all of them with a first novel in them, like some contagious disease – I always say: You can write a book any time. First, you have to have a name. Or better still: be a rumour. A hot tip, a future cert. It has to be built up: expectation – for the moment

17 you arrive.’ With a forced smile, Fischer says something consoling, and gets off his wobbly stool. He enters the semi-dark hut - in which there are even more barrels, and several sofas. There’s also a counter. A fridge. An espresso machine. There’s not a living soul, though. The bald little man is suddenly behind him. ‘Sit back down again outside, Fischer. I’ll make you an espresso. What I was wanting to say was…’ Fischer doesn’t hear him as he flees. Merciless, Mendota soon places the coffee in front of his victim. ‘What I was about to ask you, Fischer, was: What are you working on at the moment?’ Fischer stirs his espresso. Another portion of sugar. Then says, ‘Nothing. I’m not writing at the moment.’ The bald little man opposite chokes. ‘No way! That can’t be. Pity – I’d a wee job for you, as well. Government dosh, too. The Swiss Department for the Extraordinary has found some petty cash and is prepared to sponsor an anniversary anthology. All in the Future. What will Switzerland look like, in fifty years’ time? The editor, of course, is our Number One Critic, but for time reasons he’s having to rely on subordinates. That’s how I’ve got a hand in. The fees are not to be sniffed at. Go on, cook something up on the subject of the future! Even if you plan to be dead.’ Fischer scrapes the remains of the espresso from his cup, and nods. Money is waving at him. He’s nevertheless thrilled by the thought he just uttered. He’s not writing at the moment. He’s downed tools! He’s on strike! It sounds much better than admitting to himself that, since splitting with Katharina, a bag of nerves is what he’s been. That everything he types and appears on his screen just seems hollow and stale. Mendota taps his glass, a really irregular beat, then, pushing a card towards Fischer, rises. ‘My details, as they say these days.

18 Fifteen-hundred words on the future of Switzerland. And none of your Culture pages rubbish. ‘The Ashes of Meaninglessness’ etc. Pull yourself together, Fischer. Our generation, of all gen- erations, with all its experience and its storm-proof skulls - we, with our awareness that art’s a matter of opinion, a cathedral’s a heap of shite - we have to write. Be it for. Or against. Forgive my pathos!’

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From the novel Ambrosia

19 Arno Camenisch

Five Short Short Stories

Your woman Muoth with the perm drives a Volkswagen Beetle. Your woman Muoth has been driving for decades but reverse she cannot. Your woman Muoth drives up the street and over the road marking and into little Roger with his specs on his bike. Your woman Muoth stops gets out and lays into Roger who’s lying under his bike in German cos she can’t speak Romanic Your woman Muoth tears into him says to disappear get out of here gets in puts her foot on the gas drives off Reverse she cannot the whole village knows it

Gion Bi

The door opens and in the doorway of the Helvezia is Gion Bi in his late mother’s fur coat and with a hat and a leather handbag with a clasp he’s smiling at the round table he opens the leather handbag with the clasp it too an heirloom takes out the poems he wrote at his Hermes in the parlour at home puts on his specs and proceeds to read aloud till the regulars all vanish and the landlady says that’s enough for today I reckon the beer’s on me

Not a member any more

You’re not in any case a member any more you didn’t pay your subs I didn’t get a bill the twenty francs I would have paid them if I had’ve you can’t expect us to send a bill to God knows where abroad subs can be paid in the pub we’re here every night after all but if you don’t actually come to the pub is it any actual wonder you haven’t paid anyway we kicked you out actually but that goes back to way before I took over as President

20 Day before Xmas

Christoph’s sitting opposite me in the train telling me how in the village pub they’d laid into that French-Swiss woman from up the Alp the one who was up with the cows back in the summer and how Seppli had got it an’ all the cows had been back down again long since he told me when in November the first five had to go for a paternity test all five over 55 it was none of them but then in mid December she’d produced the second list of five names with the next five paternity candidates all five over 65 number nine Seppli 71 he is too already it turned out to be it was announced the day before Xmas

Oscar and Maria

Before seven even Oscar and Maria are beneath the apple tree where the apples weigh the branches down where apples are already on the ground they gather the apples and place seven each seven lovely apples on the cemetery wall that’s four rows of graves from the church wall Oscar lets Maria go first who takes two apples puts one in her trouser pocket reaches back with the other and before you know it the first pane is shattering a red one too you get double points for that Oscar on the other hand only hits a green so it’s two-one for Maria who with a ripe fruit once again hits a red church-window pane four-one she’s leading too cos Oscar ham- mered his apple against the white village-church wall That’s how it will continue it looks as if Oscar’s having a bad day cos he can’t catch up with the apples that remain and Maria keeps scoring and keeps scoring and wins so clearly that Oscar as agreed has to give her a kiss Oscar but with his red face doesn’t say nothing not a thing and Maria thinks you fuckin

21 coward away home and kiss your dog then you’ll regret the day you ever and off she stomps

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

22 François Debluë

Conversation with Rembrandt

“A doubt remains” C. Doumet

Prelude

You come from a town of church towers, chimes and chari- vari, a place of piety and debauch, of secret prayers and braying blasphemy. I come from a town of heavy silences and muffled murmurs, a place of grim indifference and well-concealed vice.

You come from a town of squares and canals, of busty dames and dodgy lanes. I come from a town of riverbanks, of hillocks and ascending streets. Girls here are often slim and ravishing; others aren’t as lucky.

You come from a country where scandals burst and business booms. I come from a country where scandal is hushed up and there will soon be no craftsmen left to disappear. Business is better there for some than for others, and the others are in the majority.

There are three or four centuries between us, by all appear- ances. And yet what are three or four centuries but a trivial appearance? Men are all toys of the same Time.

23 Joys and sorrows have no age. All that changes is their form and number. Figures and statistics are no longer identical, but these dif- ferences are immaterial. Violence and pleasure do not change. Death, too, does not change.

There are three or four centuries between us. And yet you speak to me. And I speak to you as to a second self.

Taking leave of childhood

Never again would you cast your face in so much shadow. You are barely twenty-two years old.

You had just engraved your first self-portraits. A well-man- nered lad, a trifle prickly, you bend towards the mirror, your head tucked into your shoulders: as if you were still making an effort to answer your schoolmaster’s questions, on one of those days on which you had failed to do your homework because you had more important things to do! Your hair tousled, you look your adversary in the eye – but of course it is to yourself, to the mirror that you issue your chal- lenge, focused on yourself like a ball of hair, ready to laugh, ready to be vexed, ready above all to charge ahead; in a word, ready for anything.

We will never know anything about your childhood.

24 We can only guess. We have been able to make a few hypotheses. There will never be any visual evidence of it. We may catch the fugitive trace of it in a delicate earlobe, a soft cheek, barely a memory. Here you are, already out of childhood. You were not about to drag your feet, lose your way in fruit- less teenage years! You don’t have the disposition for it! Your disposition charges ahead. You are eaten alive by im- patience. You would be happy to burn your bridges. You do not burn them completely. You cross them full speed ahead. You don’t waste your time. You gave your masters the respect they deserved. You learned what you needed to learn from them. You learned from them, from your father, your mother, your brothers and sisters, your comrades too, you learned what they had to teach you. Now you have had enough. You do not struggle for independence, you take it. From now on you will not be afraid to show it: you know you have what it takes. From now on you will no longer be satisfied with engraving your face: you will paint it. Oil on wood. You are content with just a few colours. They will be enough to last your whole life.

Here you are, at the heart of the matter.

Your head above all, and your shoulders. Nothing else. Just a bright backlight on the nape of your neck and your still youthful cheek, pink in the pink of an infancy slow to fade…

Your first engravings were small dimension. This portrait of you, now, is still modest. And just the same it is four to five times

25 bigger than the engravings which preceded it.

You fear nothing. You will soon turn twenty-two. You charge ahead. And when you are at work, nothing can distract you. You are concentrated.

The sun has barely risen and already you have set to work. You allow the sun to light up the rough wall behind you with its vivid light. As for you, you remain in the shade. The shade suits you. The shade protects you. Viewers will never see your eyes: they will feel your gaze. The shade gives you an unusual softness and wisdom. You are young. How right you are! Your cheek is smooth, and pink, a final trace of childhood on your face. Your hair gleams with strands of red gold. A soft light bathes the nape of your neck and illuminates the white collar of your shirt. You are already within reach of perfection. Nothing is more perilous! You will have to do as well, if not better, next time; and still better the time after that; and so on. The danger is im- mense.

Tanslated by Rafaël Newman

From Conversation avec Rembrandt (© Éditions Seghers, Paris 2006)

26 Lisa Elsässer style

she said / meaning the style of writing she said: in writing, while writing, writing on, writing about, writing the style what is good style

and she stretched this word which, in my language, is pro- nounced “schtil”, she stretched this “s t i l” such that I immediately had a tulip before my eyes and with this tulip its stem (“stiel”, in german) before my eyes and its leaves and the flower, the main thing was the style of the stem of the tulip which carries as it were its every growing part, and really you could allow the “stiel” of the tulip to be spelt without an “e” because, quite simply, it has “stil” and as such becomes – is – comparable to matters relating to writing style. it is no coincidence that this comparison enters my head. whenever style of writing is discussed, I immediately see a tulip before my eyes and it stays with me, not before my eyes, it enters my head, now there are two “styles” in there, one (in german) with an “e” and one without, i.e. two words which are similar, they are almost exactly identical, and as god intends, a unity can be created from them, a divine growing together of nature and writing, style being naturally written into being, a stylistic naturalness that has first to be written: something that grows. tulips, grown from seed, need up to six years to flower (this writing-tulip, too, and more). propagation is made possible by separating bulbils (for which, not having a clue, you first sow seeds), and so you first try sowing a thought and wait for years for something to grow, a word, for instance, that has style, and if you have two or three stylish words, you begin with time to think a bit more, and follow nature’s example: a word is broken up, and the parts separated and planted anew, then it is about six months before the first green shoot pierces the cerebral cortex and reaches the light, just as the green of the tulip continues to grow out to where it can be inspected, towards the delighted oh-s inspired by beauty; you commit style to the blank

27 page, it grows there and then, grows hands, these humble strong tulip leaves are comparable after all to hands that, like a prayer, point upwards towards the head in which the prayer takes root and then unfolds, a head that, like a calyx, opens by day, then closes again at night, as if it needed to ponder itself, or dream, had to be within itself and alone with itself for one cold night, the stem, for the duration, is upright. it knows what it is bearing, these changes in the head make it determined to remain with this head, and this head only, that the calyx might also stay where it is and open up and bloom and not go past. style knows what it is bearing, it is bearing the calyx of writing, the opening up and blooming, you are taken with it and see this one colour (please), this one, distinctive colour which you discern in but one, your own, sentence, other sentences, in their own flowerbeds, should have their own distinctive colours, the cultivation, so to speak, of a style, for which there can never be comparisons: red is not the same as red and pink, come, come, someone says to me, that’s not pink, but he does not know what the different shades of pink are, pink-pink, for instance, and elsewhere yellow is giallo, it’s true, you wouldn’t like to see the same things growing in your neighbour’s garden, but there are about one hundred and fifty varieties of tulip,one hundred and fiftyand many more hybrids, which is some consolation, these products of cross- breeding, the cross, simply, is the similarity, surely you can assume that: that something else is meant by the same colour, the same stem (“stiel”) is bearing a quite different style (“stil”); writing-style is the uniqueness of embellishing a calyx such that everyone knows: stop right there, that belongs to such-and-such and such-and-such and such-and-such a grower and not to me and yet, nevertheless, you can hold it up to your nose and smell it. writing-style, s t i l, is a tulip. perennial, tenacious, beautiful, rooted, comparable. always these comparable springs and always these tulips, this comparable wretched beauty Translated by Donal McLaughlin

28 Eugène my name

I have a thousand words to say myself. I am not a native French speaker. I come from a foreign country. If I want to express the fact that I am leaving one place to get to another, I know two verbs: to walk and to run. If I am afraid, I run quickly. If I am relaxed, I walk slowly. And if I want to express a complicated internal process, I say: I run slowly. I have another handicap: the blood vessels in my legs are so clogged that I cannot walk more than two hundred metres without crying out in pain. My sphere of influence in the world is limited to a 200-metre radius around my car, a little Peugeot. Without my Peugeot, I am lost. With my Peugeot, I am merely in despair. In my country there is a joke about a pessimist and an optimist which goes like this: The pessimist says, ‘My god, it can’t possibly get worse than this!’ To which the optimist responds, ‘Oh sure it can!’ My lot precisely. It’s not enough that I am an island with a thousand words and a 200-metre radius: I must have a third horror. A nameless secret hidden within me which has had me running slowly for an eternity already. I am a husband and a father. I have two children, a doctor and a pharmacist. They no longer need me. They are perfectly complementary. My wife could not stand living on an island with a 200-metre radius. She took to the ocean a long time ago. That is to say, not physically. Physically she is still by my side, in our apartment, in our bed. No, I mean she has departed in spirit. I work at a little computing company. There are two of us. My job is to write programms, while my colleague consults with our English or German customers. I need never speak much French with my colleague. Programming code is our common language. As long as I have lived in this country I have never made the slightest effort to get involved in its life. I have no need of French theatre or friends to speak to me in French. I stay home

29 and listen to classical music. My wife goes out every now and then, to play bridge at a club. I have noticed that, in French, the words for ‘my name’ – mon nom – are the same backwards and forwards. I am mon nom. And there is no better way to conclude my introduction.

As I begin this investigation I am sixty-three years old. My investigation is a clandestine undertaking. No one suspects a thing. Not my colleague, not my children, to say nothing of my wife. I write in my Peugeot. My drive home from the office takes twenty minutes if I drive sixty kilometres an hour. I leave my office at the accustomed hour and drive for ten minutes at one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. This allows me to steal ten minutes. I stop by the side of a field and write. Then I return home, arriving at the customary time for doing so. This habit of writing by way of compressing time is quite expressive of what I mean. I wish to examine my life so as to take hold of a little temporal compression. A moment that has fled from the world or from my memory. Because I consider myself a suspect. I do not know if something has occurred; I do not know when this potential occurrence may have arisen; I do not know whether I am an actor in a drama or a witness to it. All that exists with certainty is a feeling of nameless horror, which I have always kept hidden within myself. Enough for today. I’m going home to be normal.

I am exhausted. Driving one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour wears me out. I am simply unaccustomed. Yesterday I introduced myself and explained the aim of this document. Perhaps today it might help me to know for whom this text is written. A psychiatrist could help me name the unnamable. A translator could use additional French words to help me say what I

30 mean. A police superintendent could help me assess my guilt. But if I do not know what has occurred, what can I say to a psychiatrist? If I do not even know the name for what I feel in my own language, what good would a translator do me? And finally, since I can remember nothing, what charge could a police superintendent lay against me? What I need is a psychiatrist-translator-police superintendent. Look at how I am making up words, I, who do not know how to speak French! I am going home. To be normal.

Tanslated by Rafaël Newman

From the novel mon nom (© Éditions de l’Aire, Vevey 1998)

31 Katharina Faber

Strange Signals

It is not nice to be ill; not to be able to do anything. A tiredness in your bones, in your muscles, your sinews, your organs feel leaden, things weigh heavily, press you down into the mattress, and you cannot sleep and you would like to do something, even sleep – but a restlessness joins the tiredness and something fidgets away inside you. You move your legs, this way and that, your hands feel for a cooler section of the bed. A trembling light filters into the room through the leaves of a tree, your head feels like it will explode with tiredness. You feel even heavier, soon you will fall for a long time and a long way down, and then you’re back to fidgeting. Sometimes, though, you lie, quite still, beneath the cover, and there’s a roaring sound in your ears, and you think: finally, the engine within you has started. You hear music that doesn’t exist, clouds of colour drift before your eyes. You can understand Mary- lott. Suddenly, you know how he lives his life, that he has a hard time of it, in his own way, that it’s dull for him always to have to do what his father wants. You lie in bed and have a temperature and feel awful, but you go walking on the beach and your thighs don’t rub together for once, you’re walking as if you were weight- less, you don’t sweat, you look at the waves and walk towards them and swim through them and resurface and go under again, you lie on your back and let yourself drift, the spray blows into your face and the small little waves break against you and flow over you, and it doesn’t bother you and you’re drawn into the gathering wave, you turn, come back to the top and race with the wave to the beach – and all the while you’re lying in bed, shifting this way, then that, and when the nurse comes, she frowns. I am speaking about the ill. Sometimes, they can do so much – as if they were already released from this life. You’re lying in bed, pain crawling like an animal through your arms and legs, across your chest and in your stomach, faster and more slowly, by turns. One minute, suddenly, it’s here; then

32 it’s there again. A pain you can’t even yammer about, it’s so re- lentless. So fleeting. Outside the sun is shining, but your skin is white as cheese, your flesh ill. You are not tanned, you’re not at the seaside. You are alone, and you know that you did not ever succeed in doing what you would have liked to do most – but now you can. You are ill. You are lying in bed. In the corridor they’re whispering about you. For them, you’re a poor sick boy, they pity you, but you want someone to admire you, and with Cathy R. you climb the steps quite calmly, without any fear, and at the top you both stand in the noise of the street and the sunlight and she tells you she admires you. And Marylott joins you both, and nods. Then, you fall asleep, smiling. Living as a sick person also means flying, from time to time. Means dreaming. That’s what you healthy people don’t get: that sometimes, if rarely, the world belongs to the ill. Because they discover a universe within that lures them out of their heavy bodies and into freedom. My parents are happily celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Trattoria Da Gramsci, and Diego is standing around, embarrassed – A huge success. My father is as he always was, you can’t know whether he’s in a bad mood or has just forgotten to pay attention to his expression again, the parts round the mouth, above all. He always did rise early, but now he drives to the vegetable market at four because he knows two Italians there who came here with him, back in the thirties. He also buys his meat there, fish and chickens. It takes him a long time because he examines every leaf, every potato, every piece of meat and every marrowbone and every gill and every fish scale for about ten minutes. He looks, turns up his mouth, shakes his head slowly, sticks his fingers beneath his belt, looks at his shoes, gives a slight cough, looks up again. Points at the items he wishes to purchase, brushes everything else aside. He is still not an especially friendly person, he is a soldier

33 of work. If he has to stand around with a glass in his hand and talk, he can seem strange; somehow pitiful. As soon as he turns round to tidy the trays or move a table, he’s back to his old self, solid as a rock. My mother, too, can hardly relax any more in the way she used to, she can’t just chat with a glass in her hand, she, too, is always on the go, over here, over there, always ready for action, and the guests have to be quick with what they’re saying, quick with their congratulations, they have to say it really quickly if they want her to hear before she races off again to welcome someone else or empty ashtrays. She has changed a lot since I died.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From the novel Fremde Signale (‘Strange Signals’), © Bilgerverlag, Zurich 2008

34 Andrea Fazioli

The man without a home

Prologue Here he is. He is near, he feels it. He is hiding behind the cur- tain, holding his breath. The sun slants into the attic. Tommi is crouching in the dark. The creaking of steps on the wooden floor. Shadow and light. From the glass of the windows the afternoon just does not end. It’s the summer holidays. A day in July. And who remem- bers that other things existed apart from games, afternoons running through fields and adventures in the woods? Where did the world end? Far away on the road the post van passes, tooting its horn. He must not be caught. But the other one is patient. He waits and waits until Tommi cannot stand it any more. “Got you!” “Hey, that doesn’t count. You can’t just stand there doing nothing.” “You were supposed to hide.” “Yes, but you were supposed to look for me.” The voices ring out. The dust dances in the sunbeams. The big house is full of secrets. The two boys run between the living room furniture, hide behind the piano, go into the wardrobes that smell old. Later they go out into the fields around the house, into the buzzing of insects and the last light before sunset. Until, creeping in the grass like a Red Indian, Tommi hears his father’s voice. “To-o-o-mi! Di-i-i-nnertime!” The vowels are prolonged and they too just do not end, like the afternoon. But Tommi has to go. His house is a few hundred metres away. “If I don’t get back soon, my father will get angry.” “So run then ...” “See you.” “See you tomorrow.”

35 Chapter 1 – The room with the photographs

It was a summer day when Tommi, waking up in the morning, decided to kill someone. The evening before he had not closed the blinds and so before the alarm rang a sunbeam had torn him from sleep. In reality it was not a proper decision but a vague idea that slipped between the remnants of sleep and his first con- scious thought. After so many years, everything was returning to normal. Tommi too was about to forget the injustices. But now they were going to enlarge the artificial lake and were going to pour even more water on the places of his childhood. He had to react, even at the price of using violence to show what was wrong and what was right. He felt it was a duty, in memory of his father and of the old house. He slipped out of bed. It usually took him a good half hour to wake up completely, but this morning rage made him active in the space of a few minutes. He put on his slippers and flung the window open wide, naked to the waist, half-closing his eyes in the sunlight. He decided to do without coffee. He poured himself a glass of milk and went out to drink it on the doorstep. It was quarter past seven on a Tuesday in August and the air was fresh. Two metres away on the road to Malvaglia signora Bionda’s old Toyota drove past. Just imagine, thought Tommi, even in August she is sitting behind her desk at eight on the dot. Signora Bionda worked in a bank in Bellinzona, but she preferred to live in the Val di Blenio and to spend half an hour travelling to work in the morning and in the evening. Besides, Tommi would never have moved away from Malvaglia and the dam. He stretched, thinking of the day ahead of him. At around eight he would leave for Lodrino to get to the Garage Baren- co by nine. Hoping that the Barencos would have settled their

36 marital problems that morning. The atmosphere had been awful recently. The day before he had come across the debris of a battlefield in the office. Paper everywhere, an overturned filing cabinet, the coffee machine on the floor. Signor Barenco, his face pale, had greeted him without looking him in the eye. “I had an argument with my wife…” “I can’t work here,” Tommi answered. “I’m sorry, Tommaso, the fact is…” “I’m going home,” Tommi said. Without listening to signor Barenco repeating his excuses, he got into his brand new Honda Civic and returned to Malvaglia. He was a commercial clerk, not a buffoon to be made fun of.

Translated by Paul Knight

From the novel L‘uomo senza casa (The man without a home), © Guanda, 2007

37 Anna Felder

Your debts

You said slippers, ducks lying like slippers on the soaked trunk, and she understood debts and eviction. You said sleepwalkers at the concert, park benches in the shade, and she took it as di- vorce, distrained furniture, expired passport. She understood the therapies, the series of incidents, the Protestant pastor; all her life she understood, the prima donna, but in your story: that you read out loud in the reading room, printed in the book; she was among the audience, in the first row.

She has collected miseries and miracles, sport and art too, for example the sailing boat, the English friends, the score, his business; when you meant your trip on the lake in winter with Rob- erto: whom you didn’t even name, whom she never even got to meet. With the ducks drowsing for you on one of the trunks at the level of the water, in the foreground of the story. It looked as if they had lined up there to dry. Roberto came out to say: slippers. Slippers in the sun. True, it was true. They looked like well-worn slippers, wide, floppy. The marks left by Roberto’s arm on your back remained. You had stopped, the arm weighed on you from above, from the sky, a tree trunk that has run aground on your shoulder, on the afternoon, on the sun on your shoulders. Things that belonged together, things and persons, and animals, even though they were sleeping: they certainly consented. She understood this perfectly, she half closed her eyes in the room to understand everything and so she did not stop at your idyll by the lake. She made your story from just before hers and she went further on your account too, on the basis of her experience. The scene by the lake was reality for her, true and lovely no doubt; but no less present than all the others: the hospital, inten-

38 sive care, the husbands, the alimony payments, the therapies and trips by taxi. Paying for example. Who pays? The prima donna is lying in wait for you, there with the comb in her hand like the linchpin of scales, the golden cascade of hair flung to the right, ready to swing left. She is standing waiting for you, the prima donna on the po- dium, for a minute only: you in person, who spoke in the room for a full hour, for everyone. These things you wrote, she says to your face, pointing to the things. I know this well. You wrote them in disguised form, I realised that straight away, but what’s true is true – and she stares at you in the mirror. In the bathroom, under the staircase, where usually women steal silent glances at each other. Her hair ready to be tossed on to the other shoulder; will it cascade like a wig; a scar appears, stamp in powder. Who pays? From above the hubbub of chatter arrives in waves, Ger- man, Italian: din, chairs moving, crockery, flags, tablecloths, old people, babies, women, politicians, electro-domestic products, TV. A hundred and more years of dishes are piled up beneath the staircase, a hundred years of vegetable soups and spaghetti to be served, spoons, forks, rags, money and knives, a hundred voices to feed, to quench their thirst, to medicate, to amuse, contraltos and baritones, hands raised, clapping, insults, laughter, cursing, ave marias, the orchestra is now complete. It is our turn now, the prima donna tells you. The attack is strident: slanders, crimes, a trial all piled on to your shoulders, louder than the orchestra, true, all so very true; the pains suffered hurl you on to the mirror as if they were reflected ducks, husband number one and number two, the incident at Christmas, blue card, green card rainbow, and money money accommodation the street the refuge, the Protestant hangover, all in a performance of one minute of time beaten, vanished into

39 thin air in the distance, on tiptoe now overhanging words, sun- tanned shoulders and arms while the fountain flings the gold of the long hair to cover one scar and then the other. Seven, she tells you, there are seven. I have lived through these things, you see, and I call them by their names. If only you knew how much more I have to tell, you can’t even imagine the books still to be written, books and more books like bills to be paid, like tree trunks to be counted, those tree trunks of yours in transit swol- len with freshwater – and now she is dragging you away into the bawling of the dining room (they are eating, the shipwrecked, they pay), scribbling you on a piece of newspaper as if you were a bill of exchange, her names, her numbers, her debts: which this very day will also be yours.

Translated by Paul Knight

40 Simon Froehling playing berlin

and this is how: watch a bird of prey catch a crow in the tiergarten and be overwhelmed by the cruelty and go shopping but not buy anything after all and let you stamp the credit for my coffee onto your bonuscard and rant about the schaubühne because ‘crave’ is completely sold out and pretend that we know everyone and even the author although the author is long dead and we barely know anyone and go to the cinema and watch a terrible american movie but still kind of like it and take your friend to a bar where women actually aren’t allowed and not really get into the swing of things and only realise at home that we should have bought wine and have good sex for the first time in ages even without kissing and watch tv together in the old fashioned rocking chair and for a short while not feel any jeal- ousy whatsoever and sleep until the others get back from the east and take them all to the flea market and buy your friend a green shawl made out of raw silk and say goodbye to her and lose the others somewhere by the vinyl and find the east german sandman but not buy the doll even though it’s really cheap because we think that’s far too nostalgic and cruise home hand in hand through the tiergarten and not see a single gay guy not even from afar and get invited for dinner and again the east and find an excuse to go out on our own and right at the end tell you that you smell of music much too loud and promise myself not to miss you and not doubt myself for a single moment. and then leave again.

Translated by the author

41 Lea Gottheil

Winter

Lotte is barely out of the house when she pulls off the scratchy gloves. The cold soon bites into her fingers. She puts them in her mouth to warm them again. All at once isn’t possible. So she just puts the gloves back on again. Her tummy rumbles. For breakfast, from now on, there’s only coffee made from barley with half a spoonful of sugar. Cold snow on her left cheek! Lotte squeals. Panting, Mari- anne runs up to her, hugs her. Lotte bends down, quick as a flash forms a snowball in her hand and presses it into Marianne’s face. ‘That’s a cowardly thing to do!’ Marianne complains. ‘I hit you from a distance!’ Her long black hair is damp with snow. Her cheeks are flushed, her nose is dribbling on her brown coat. ‘Race you to the school!’ Lotte shouts, stumbling off through the uneven whiteness. ‘I’m not racing!’ Marianne calls after her. ‘I’ve got a stitch!’ Lotte waits for her, after all. Her stomach rumbles again. Marianna asks did she not have breakfast? Lotte doesn’t say anything. Marianne takes a sandwich from her cloth bag and hands it to Lotte. She doesn’t take it. She has to, Marianne says, or they won’t be friends any more. The bread tastes fresh, like clean laundry. Cucumber’s stuck between the slices. It’s okay for Marianne, she doesn’t have brothers and sisters, doesn’t have to share things. Her mother plays with her when she comes home from the cotton mill. Her father takes her with him on long walks. If Marianne can’t play with Lotte because Lotte has to help at home, she invents her own games. Annette comes out of the house. She shouts, ‘Wait for me, you two!’ Her hands are in a pink muff. A similarly pink bow adorns her straight, light-brown hair. Annette lives in the villa. The villa is only a few metres away from the school. That’s what Lotte envies above all: Annette doesn’t have to leave the

42 house so early. Annette’s parents are very important at the mill. They have their own office, apparently. If they say one thing, the workers do another, Lotte’s father declared. Lotte thinks An- nette’s parents ride through the factory on horseback; giving the workers their orders, like kings do. The girls walk in silence. Their footsteps draw three snakes in the snow – with different patterns. The crunching is like a tune. Annette’s posture is so good, you’d think an angel in Heav- en was pulling invisible strings. Her hair doesn’t fall in her eyes. If Lotte were like Annette, she’d have nothing to worry about.

There is not enough space round the stove for the family of six. Marianne plays Hurry and Wait at the kitchen table with Lotte. A thick, red candle Mother picked up at the general store is burning. A pity, really, it could’ve been kept for Christmas. That said, they’re all glad of even the smallest source of heat. Never ever does Mother sit down to rest. She knows the house inside out. No-one can make something from nothing like she does, like things to eat. No-one can heat the stove as well as the lady of the house. Her little assistants are given clear instructions.

‘Marianne, it’s time for you to go home. Lotte has to help me fetch wood from the cellar. You’ll see each other at school again tomorrow.’ Lotte would love to go to her friend’s house. Marianne’s mother is constantly tired, it’s true, but she scolds her daughter only rarely. She only gets a real telling-off if she does something very bad. Like: scoffed the sugar that her mother needed for the cake. Or: left her homework at school. ‘Father’s not eating with us, you can set the table for five,’ their mother says. ‘Is he off to his meeting again?’ asks Ursi. ‘That’s right,’ their mother says.

43 The meeting, that’s men who sit at a round table, their father has explained, talking about the war that could break out soon on the other side of the border. Lotte doesn’t want to know about the war. It’s bad enough that it’s taking away their food and their clothes.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From a novel with the working title Wenn ein Laib Brot vom Himmel fiele (‘If a loaf of bread were to fall from the sky’), due in the Spring of 2009, © Atrium Verlag, Hamburg

44 Svenja Herrmann

Four Poems

the carousel on the square turning, still, in time pepino, granat and litschi of stalls abandoned signs dance-tunes gallop and the fruit-press clatters against the emptiness the carousel leaves its orbit a newspaper alone still darting in the wind

with the tips of their fingers the clouds touch the roofs a seam of rain circles round the canopy I drink – my seventh or eighth cup lightning strikes into the teapot and we calculate how far we are from the centre of the storm in the seconds before the cloudburst the jasmine tea blossoms

45 linguistic roots wind their way up the air to on high to a confusion over my head in the gaps between the roots breathe words

the sun lays a mirror red down over the pond carp swim dark expanses their silver shimmers with every fin-beat they’re secretive creatures you whisper you just have to ask them something it seems and speech bubbles form on the surface

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

46 Franz Hohler

Three Short Short Stories

Genocide

Our stairwell has old, coloured windows, which we insulated by having double-glazed secondary glazing installed, outside. As a result, on each floor, there is now a gap, about the breadth of a hand, that separates the old window panes from the new. When, in the middle of the hot summer, one evening at dusk, I discover hundreds, thousands, of ants crawling around the gap between the second-floor windows, I feel as disgusted as I do helpless, and fetch a stepladder and the hoover, open two of the inner windows, and begin to vacuum away the ants; the large, winged variety as well as the small ones, without wings. A Sisy- phean task. Next, I squirt one lot of insecticide after another on those hurrying around, still. They curl up briefly, then lie still; or drop from the sills and frames. It is night by the time my cleans- ing operation is complete. The next evening, however, it’s the same story all over again – as if nothing had happened. The windows are black with ants in hectic motion. The same excruciating destruction follows. I feel sorry for the population of tiny mites I feel compelled to obliterate, but I don’t know what else to do. A single ant is, no doubt, something beautiful, but a whole swarm preparing to conquer my house is a plague. When, the next day, a friend comes to visit for a while, we climb the stairs in the evening, and there they are again. The walls of our old house seem to contain entire armies of ants, endless supplies of additional troops. Disheartened, I tell my friend what action I’ve taken thus far. Can he think of anything else? I ask. ‘Why not open the outer window?’ he says. ‘I think they just want out.’ I follow his advice. The next morning, there’s not an ant to be seen – not a single one.

47 Ashamed, I apologise retrospectively to the two populations of ants I eradicated, and ask myself why I – someone close to nature, who loves life – did not get round to thinking that, instead of reaching for deadly weapons, I might offer the ants a path to freedom.

The Dove

A dove flew over the war-zone, only to be lacerated by the blade of a helicopter gunship. One of its beautiful white feathers floated down into the yard of a house - where a child picked it up. A short time later, the child had to flee with its grandparents and mother. ‘We can only take necessities,’ the mother said, grabbing a few clothes and stuffing them into a case with their documents and some money and jewellery. The grandfather filled two bottles with water. The grandmother packed the last of their bread, some apples, and a bar of chocolate. The child took the feather.

48 The Announcement

Just recently there, on the train, the wretchedly cheerful ring- tone of somebody’s mobile. That way: you know right away that that’s it, you won’t get to finish your page, you’ll just have to listen. To: where to look for the papers, back in the office. Or: why the meeting’s been postponed to next week. Or: the restaurant where people are meeting, at seven. You’re ready, in short, - you’ve no choice - for some mundane annoyance. – Sud- denly, though, the young man has fished out his gadget, he says hello, then, loudly, ‘No! – When? – Last night? – And what is it? – A boy? – That’s sweet! – Three-and-a-half kilos? – And how’s Jeanette? – That’s nice! – Say hello to her, eh – What are you calling him? – Oliver? …’ And all of us sitting nearby, dis- tracted and disturbed by the call, feel suddenly somehow moved for we have just received the age-old message: a child’s been born unto us.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From the volume: Das Ende eines ganz normalen Tages (‘The end of a perfectly normal day’), due to appear in Autumn 2008, © Luchterhand.

49 Annette Hug

Lady Berta

Then, one morning, the black shoe polish was missing. Berta needed it to do Madame’s boots. She searched the entire cleaning cupboard and even looked in the kitchen for it - maybe, un- intentionally, she’d taken the polish there the day before. She’d been a bit absent-minded recently. What troubled her most was that her attic room was not heated. She would work as long as possible in the kitchen, leave the apartment just before eleven, and climb into the loft. A skylight was her only window. In the part of the loft that was not yet converted, old furniture and chests were stored. Each evening, Berta would walk past a huge vase, and a cot without a mattress. Looking for the shoe polish, Berta opened the laundry door, then shut it loudly. She had not found it. And so she entered Monsieur’s study - where Madame normally spent the early morning. The latter reminded Berta that it was a particularly ex- pensive brand and asked her to take the precaution of checking all the servants’ rooms. There were only two servants, Berta and Margret, so Berta headed off to her colleague’s room. The door was open a little. Berta could see a narrow strip of wall. In different circumstances, she would have knocked, but the undertone in Madame’s voice had aroused her suspicion also. She slowly pushed the door open and got more of a fright than the woman in front of her who did not so much as turn round. She was sitting on the bed and looking into a small mirror, in which she had seen the door slowly open. Berta could see Margret’s back beneath the slanting roof, the back of her head, and her face in the mirror, but it was not the face she knew. Margret was bowing her head and smiling innocently while the curves of her jet-black eyebrows hinted at a nocturnal beauty. It was as if the make-up had absorbed the rough edges and set free in Margret’s features a purity which Berta had not begun to suspect. Madame’s shoe polish was lying on the bed. A quill was sticking in it.

50 Berta smiled against her will, and Margret turned to face her. ‘Would you like to try, too?’ she asked. The innocence had gone from her face, she now looked to Berta like a stall-owner at the fairground. Only the low neck was missing, or Berta, still standing, could have looked down the cleavage of her colleague. ‘Would you?’ Margret asked again, holding the shoe polish towards her. ‘How on earth will you get that off again?’ Berta asked, as if to ward Margret off; then added, more softly, ‘I’ve never used make-up.’ ‘I know,’ Margret answered, looking bored again. Berta returned the shoe polish to the cleaning cupboard and wanted to tell Madame what had happened, but Madame was preparing for a doctor’s appointment. Berta was instructed to phone her husband’s office and have him send the motorcar; Madame was not in a position to walk. The surgery was three streets away. And so Berta called Monsieur’s company secretary and returned, in no rush, to the study where Madame was sitting, waiting. ‘The automobile will be here in ten minutes,’ Berta said, unsure whether she should leave or come closer. Madame had started to cry but did not say a word and remained as straight as a poker. There was nothing to suggest to Berta what the ap- propriate response might be. So she, too, waited where she was, a little more relaxed, but curious to know what would happen. Suddenly, she sensed that someone had approached from behind and was looking over her shoulder. Her face reddened and she wanted to run away, to flee from Madame and the figure behind her. ‘Thank you,’ Margret whispered, into her ear.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From the novel Lady Berta (© rotpunktverlag, Zürich 2007)

51 Urs Jaeggi

Eudora or The Hole In Your Head

The voice shouts thick and fast. They crucified Jesus. It says so in the Bible, the Bible says it! Praise the Lord, all praise and honour to the Lord, Thank the Lord for He is good, Our Lord. Row after row of people, closely crowded together, offer their neighbours their hands. They include Edd, taken along by Eudora, hand in hand. A few, in a frenzy, throw their entire bodies into it, vibrating and shouting, they writhe on the ground, twitching. Hallelujah, Hallelujah. Speak to the wind, Lord, speak to the wind that it might lead us, Lord, O Lord – and the Lord and the Hallelujah rising imperceptibly, getting higher and higher, louder and louder, more rhythmic, chanted by a hundred voices, the voices more and more certain, the movements calmer and calmer, a wall of twitching bodies pressing forward, pushing towards the pulpit and into the thick-and-fast voice: Brothers and sisters, see the hungry, the dirty, the down-and-out, those murdered senselessly. They are our brothers and sisters. Those lashing out with their arms on the ground lean on each other to get up, singing, hugging. Lord, O Lord. May the day on which I was born be erased, and the night cursed. That day should remain dark. May it lose its shine, may dark clouds de- scend over it, may darkness engulf it. So be it, But you, Lord of Light, become us. Edd, Eudora said, has never been in New York, Hallelujah! Whereas Fred, as every Who’s Who will inform you, did actually teach for some years at Yale. Scrawling his long formulae on the overhead-projector for the incredibly quiet and attentive students, he thought Why’s Eudora not here? In bed, beside Edd, she was. You used me as a mirror, she’d raged, the night before Fred’s departure, before, slowly, drifting off to sleep. Eudora is beautiful. A snake. Eudora is clever. Her face is like an autumn sky – he can walk into it. The Yale students had the habit of asking impossible questions in the breaks. One quotes: You owe me a brother, says Medea – what does she mean by that? Does she

52 literally mean what she says? Do what you like, but replace him, one body for another, an eye for an eye, the questioner continues, and Fred thinks: and what does the Medea want, who calls herself Eudora? Eudora, spreading raspberry jam on a roll, says Life has been an abyss and a form, unjust and cruel, for as long as humans have existed, but, if you know the formula, it can be easy. Medea wants revenge. I will bury them myself. While Eudora is speaking, Edd’s eyes wander absent-mind- edly across the windows painted on the windowless walls, the escape route. The three of them go slowly up and down, from one wall to the other and back, over and over. Sometimes, in time with their footsteps, they scan words like missaw mismur- der misfool misfeel misarrest misslander misdrown mislove misscorn. Eudora asks Why not take everything as it comes, and change it. Make everything new. Eyes, hair, gestures, movements, language, seas, towns, people and societies. Every- thing new. Don’t say words, squash words and skewer them. Wordscapsulate Wordsable Wordsact Wordschant Wordslighten Wordslarge Wordsdanger Wordsrage Wordstangle. In visual, we talk about a scenes mix, says Fred. From the approximate, fish out what seems plausible and run it through your brain till you find a pleasing formula. Simple equations are not only aesthetically pleasing, they bear up. To know is beautiful. To be a philosopher is beautiful. Zero is neither positive nor negative, it is no-man’s-land at its narrowest and most exciting. Our obsession with analogy conquers the void as if the hollow oval ‘0’ stood for anonymity and mirrored our fear of not being able to make distinctions. Pass through, leaving no permanent traces.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From an unpublished text

53 Keller+Kuhn

Igor Kulti

“Who is Igor Kulti? Out with it, Harry!” Harry Delgado has never seen his writing partner so riled up. Kurt Prinz is flailing his arms about, his face is damp and flushed, making it look chubbier than it is. Delgado decides to wait it out, for if there’s one thing he has learned in dealing with his partner it’s that the basic rule in such situations is to buy time – and so he sits up straight in his deck chair and buttons his shirt. Does he know who Igor Kulti is? Stupid question. Despite the risk of provoking him, he rereads the last para- graph before closing the advance copy of forum helveticum. The journal has published an excerpt from their joint, still unfinished, novel, Julia’s Bequest: the first chapter, Julia’s bequest letter, in which she provides her friend Sofie with a detailed account of how her husband – now a widower – could have murdered her. I’ll be killed in the mountains, in the Engadin for example. There will be no denying that the alleged accident will have a certain poetry about it. Maybe I picked a flower. Igor will name it. Maybe I watched a family of marmots: Igor will provide precise information about the connection between the climate and the duration of their hibernation. And this, a lead for Josef: Some- times he’s too precise. Our chance to set a trap for him. It’s true Igor Kulti plays an important role in their current novel, but even Harry is finding it harder and harder to stand him and is already looking forward to his bloody and definitive departure. After last year’s dry spell, which he generously at- tributes to Kurt’s painful separation from his girlfriend, his other partner—her responsibilities had been of a different sort –, the book is now progressing nicely. Harry considers the long needly shadows of the Scots pine shimmering over the terrace. Are they not nature’s perfectly staged metaphor for his author colleague and friend’s emotional state? A gust of wind or a snap of the fingers and everything can change. Is he calming down or will he pounce?

54 “Who-is-Igor-Kulti?” Why is Prinz suddenly speaking so softly? “Are you expecting a particular reaction from me? Have I not delivered my homework on time?” Delgado puts on his most peaceful countenance. “Chapter 5 is inside, ready for you. You can get to work immediately if you want. I thought our meeting was set for tomorrow, though. But go ahead, take a seat.” He vaults out of his chair and points to the stone table by the house where they hold their meetings when the weather is nice. He’s now standing level with him. Might the fact that they are nearly the same height, down to the centimetre, lend their writing partnership the equilibrium it needs? On the other hand, Prinz is at least five kilos heavier, and gaining. “Don’t play dumb!” Prinz’s voice cracks. “And please don’t use that therapist tone of yours on me!” He sits down on the stone bench only to immediately leap to his feet again. “I’m only going to ask you once. Have you violated our policy and slipped a real character into our book without telling me? In other words: Is Igor Kulti real?” “Well I should hope so,” Harry begins, striving to sound matter-of-fact. “Weren’t you the one recently complaining that in today’s literature the young are fixated on labels and the old on senior sex? Aside from the fact that you’re just churning out clichés when you say that, the reading of our own text seems to have so convinced you that you think …” “You know what I mean!” “... Kulti really exists.”

Translated by Alison Gallup

From the novel Der Stand der letzten Dinge (© Limmat Verlag, Zürich 2008

55 Jochen Kelter

My Alemannia An unsuccessful essay on reality

I look for a name for you in order to write to you. I call you Diotima. Were I to write to you now, I would not even know whether you existed or whether I dreamt you. What would you call me, were you to reply? But you will not reply. And I will not write to you. I no longer even know where you came from, what you look like, where you went to. Were you my lover or my invention? Was I your husband, or did you pick me up in passing – a fleeting adventure that lasted decades? Was there a crisp cold, or were the paths covered with blossom when we first met? Did we have children or did we want to go to America? Were you blond or had you black hair? No, blond. I am quite sure of that. More likely, blond. A dark blond, tending towards brown- ish, or smoke-coloured. A smoky-blue blond before a white background. Everything had to be white with you, table, chairs, spoons and bed. With grey, with blue eyes. With a laugh that cuts me to the quick when I try to imagine what it sounds like.

In the meantime, you no doubt have red hair or highlights, as is the fashion now. Back then, you wore your hair down, no such thing as fashion. But perhaps I have forgotten it, the fashion back then. You wore white shoes, white stockings, white trou- sers and a white blouse. And your food was always burnt. Back then, I read to you in the mirror what I’d written the night before. I read into the mirror, and you heard my text out of the mirror. Once in a while, suddenly the realist, you dismissed what I’d put down on paper. In those cases, the next night, I got straight back to work. Mostly, though, it was your life, or my life, that spoke from the mirror. You couldn’t wait - I was always under pressure to produce new episodes. Back then, you knew how to live.

In the meantime, you’ve possibly gained a little weight. No doubt that suits you, suits your slender joints, your delicate hands and feet. The lines around your hips and stomach a little

56 rounder, your breasts a touch fuller. You were never far short of perfection. Admittedly, your memory of glass, your dangerously loaded words - that would explode, if pushed - prevented you from being less than perfect; in your eyes, that is. In the meantime, you live perhaps in New York and work – since you were always lucky – in an advertising agency. Or in a fashion studio in Milan, or a restaurant boat in Amsterdam, so exquisite that it goes unnoticed that here, too, not everyone walks on water. That would suit you, for sure. But perhaps, in the end, you only went as far as Schaffhausen, to be a receptionist at Switzerland Incorporated, or Mountain Air Ltd, or Georg Fischer plc. What do I know.

I know that the years I have spent without you since were barely worth talking about. Should I have dreamt you, then I have wasted my life; if I lived with you, it was a dream. Would that I could discover where your roof-top apartment is, what your current number is. That I could outmanoeuvre your Italian figaro, dispute the terrain of your Arab real estate agent. I would - were one’s wishes to prevail over reality – do many things; would prove capable of this, that, and the next thing. As things stand, however, I am here, in life, I live in the stomach of lost time, in a sunken place which, like all places before our lives and realities assimilate them, once had magical powers.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From Ein Ort unterm Himmel – Leben űber Grenzen. Essays und Texte (‘A place beneath the sky – living beyond borders. Essays and texts’), © Waldgut Verlag, Frauenfeld 2008

57 Tim Krohn

Vreneli’s Garden

The Glarnerland lies in the mountains like an axe stuck in a log. The valley floor is seldom more than a stone’s throw or two wide, sometimes it’s a mere slit without any floor, and beside and behind it the rock face starts to climb, steep, overhanging, even, way up into the sky. A ‘slit’ is therefore also what the in- habitants call the valley, which is, in actual fact, not one valley, but two, or, more truthfully, is indeed one, but one that forks in the middle. The two branches are known as the Big Valley and the Little Valley, but the truth is that both are totally tiny, and run-down to boot. Tree trunks are constantly crashing down and landing on top of the huts. When it rains, rocks are washed down, and next thing you know, the water’s rising, the valley floor is flooded, like one big puddle it is, and fever breaks out and, in the end, half the population drops dead. Or the plague arrives, or a drought does, there’s always something, and the Glarner don’t learn their lesson and do as they did before and cut down timber precisely where half the mountain has already been washed away; or they build huts, for the second or third time, even, directly beneath where there’s always an avalanche. And always they find a neighbour to blame for all this misery, anything rather than blame themselves. It helps if the neighbour’s a stranger. In that case, word soon spreads: your man’s in league with the devil. And a Venetian has to come to break the spell. Either that, or the stranger gets murdered or chased. Then things go back to what they always were, and what they probably always will be.

And yet, one cold May, a stranger, undeterred, drove his herd of cattle from the flat land into the Glarner Schlitz, as if the grass was somehow greener in the slit. The thing was: there was still snow everywhere, and slush, it was raining and snowing on the day in question, even, and wherever the stranger went, the farm- ers came out to the path and gave it what on earth was the idiot

58 thinking, bringing the cows up so early for the summer, hadn’t they used all the hay up long since, and he could see himself: nothing was growing, feeding their own animals was difficult enough. The stranger, though, a skinny type with big feet and shiny ears, remained silent; just pulled up his collar; and, without stopping, drove his cows to as far as the marshes just before Untersool. There, he straightened his jacket, flicked the snow out of his hair, and climbed the steep slope to Sool itself where he left his herd beside the village fountain and went to see the authorities. When he returned half an hour later, he bought a barrel of salt and two sacks of flour from the shop, then led his cows further up the mountain, straight into all the ice and all the weather. In the Bären, meanwhile, where, in winter, the farm- ers all hung out, and where, already, they’d been gawking out the window, Muggli, the village clerk, was bragging; was telling them how the stranger had acquired the farm at Fessis, run-down and cursed though it was; had paid good money for it, too; and how the arrogant sod had even said he’d spend the rest of his life here. What Muggli was saying got a laugh from some present. May his cattle starve to death, they said. Or freeze in all that snow. Or fall in the undergrowth with all the loose rocks. Others said the devil would chase the guy away before daybreak, even. In the end, the clerk even opened a book as to whether the swine would last the night at Fessis, or would he take to his heels that very evening. Two hours later, the stranger was indeed back in the village, but just as Muggli prepared to collect his winnings, the same boy entered the shop and, after buying a heavy axe, again braved the elements and climbed the slope. That same evening, the wind turned. A foehn wind drove away the clouds. Above the mountains, there was now an alpen- glow, the colour that of a maiden’s blushes. At the same time,

59 just about, the blow of an axe thundered down from Fessis and echoed off the Glärnisch. It could be heard a long way out of the valley. A second blow followed, and so it continued for half the night − so regularly, you’d have thought someone was beat- ing time for Spring. The foehn, meanwhile, continued to blow, became warmer, and, in the end, was so burning hot that, by morning, the snow had melted as far up as where people live in Spring. Grass had grown everywhere and, with the first light, primroses and dandelions emerged. Eventually, blackbirds and swallows also dared to take to the air − and fought for the nicest places to build a nest. The bumble-bees nibbled at cats’ paws, and bellflowers, and were as over-excited as kids.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From the novel: Vrenelis Gärtli (‘Vreneli’s Garden’), © Eichborn Verlag, Berlin 2007

60 Rolf Lappert

Swim home

If a friendship consisted of adventures, of campaigns and con- quests, if it was based on romping around and mad games and the meaningless damming of streams, then what existed between Wilbur and Conor was not a friendship. Whole afternoons the two of them would spend, sitting in the grass on the flat hill next to the house, looking inland, not out to sea, and either not speaking at all, or only in short sentences, like old men did. A quiet agreement reigned between the two that had it that life was too complicated to be able to chat about it using just any old words; or to trivialise it, like the girls in the schoolyard did, out of sheer boredom. They would rather be silent than disturb the tranquillity with banalities. It was for the adults to philosophise about the colours in the sky and their influence on the weather; to display their knowledge of the Gaelic Football teams that had made it into the final; or to speculate as to why Rosie O’Sea, aged 17, had gone into the water when she knew she couldn’t swim. They left it to the boozers in the pub to complain about the falling milk prices and the rising beer ones; and to the boys in the playground to go on at length about English footballs teams and Italian racing cars. They would sit there silently, noting any movement in the grass on the hill, as the world around them, now all excited, now bored stiff, yapped away to itself. If it got cold or threatened to rain, Orla would come out of the house and fetch them in. They would then drink hot chocolate in the kitchen and listen to music on the new radio that stood on the shelf above the sideboard like a silver house with blue- glass windows. Orla would sing along to the songs she knew, and Wilber, both embarrassed and enraptured, would lower his gaze while, beneath the table, his feet danced wildly to the beat. This music seemed strange to Conor, as did the books piled up in Wilbur’s room. He listened to it with the astonished rever- ence and suppressed enthusiasm with which explorers register

61 the mating call of a hitherto unknown beast. The U2 song Desire blasted away his normally simple needs, opening up tunnels deep within him through which brightness flooded, as well as confusion and desire. Filled with hot chocolate and music, he would sit on his chair, his fingers tapping feverishly, his mouth open, as if to swallow the sounds. Sometimes, forgetting himself, he closed his eyes, and his head would jerk forward or back, and his ears, ideally designed to receive the sounds, glowed. If, in the short silences between tracks, he opened his eyes, he would go all red and hide behind his cup, the glaze of which echoed the colouring of turf. Orla would look at the friends with mixed feelings. She was pleased for Wilbur, who needed someone who was not more than fifty years his senior, a companion, with whom he could talk about things he did not discuss with her, and in whose company he could discover that he was not the only boy in the world who was confronted daily with new mysteries of the universe. But she regretted, too, that she had to share her grandson with Conor, that he no longer wanted to spend all of his time with her. To the extent that the hours they shared seemed to lose importance for him, they gained in meaning for Orla. The afternoons and Sun- days when Conor failed to show became even more precious for her, and if they built a new town together or drove through the countryside in their blue car, she savoured every moment as if it were the last. At night, she would often remain awake for hours, sitting at Wilbur’s bed, looking at him, or lying in the folding bed that Wilbur had insisted on acquiring as he worried about her back, listening to the sounds that the sleeping child made. There were times when she would stand at the window and, fighting the tears, look at the hill on which the two boys would sit. Then she would turn away, make hot chocolate and remind herself that Wilbur was only eight and that it could be another seven years, at least, before he would start going on pub-crawls

62 with Conor or other local lads, and would become interested in girls and do foolish things.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From the novel Nach Hause schwimmen (‘Swim home’), © Hanser Verlag, Munich 2008

63 Daniel Maggetti

Mrs Ostenmeyer

Don Rodrigo’s love of animals was mainly sentimental: he would pamper, pet, flatter, caress, think up nicknames and make faces; his hymns of praise were surprising, to say the least, and had even infiltrated his sermons. As for Mrs Ostenmeyer, she had developed a more methodical, more scientific approach; in fact, battening on official opinions, she had proclaimed herself the priestess of a just and healthy rapport with animals, insisting that hers was the embodiment of the sole correct relationship to be enjoyed with them, one which must be urgently re-estab- lished lest the cosmic order suffer irrevocable perversion. Her implacable severity drew on these convictions when faced with the harrowing spectacle that presented itself to view all around her, whether it featured the gentry, with their anthropomorphised widdle bow-wows, or rural folk, who were generally heartless – not to mention hunters, those criminals, who ought to be made illegal as soon as possible. She was beginning to feel that she had an actual calling and would sing the praises of Brigitte Bardot: now that woman was an example to us all, bowing to necessity like that, commendably renouncing the vainglory of the cinema and instead placing her energy at the service of the voiceless pariah; because after all, even the most destitute of humans can yet make themselves heard – but what of the seals? What of the pandas? One day, in her newly elevated status as champion of wildlife, Marie-Louise had an epic contretemps with Wallis, that’s right, cousin Wallis, the second of the “W”s: my late aunt, a reader of sophisticated magazines, had not refrained from a taxonomy somewhat out of place for the wife of a hairdresser, which is what she was, and, after Wilma and before Wanda, she had chosen Wallis, on account of Mrs Simpson, of course, and let me say in passing that this recherché adoption of a namesake did not go unanswered, since although the Duchess of Windsor was in the Bahamas, to say the least, she had placed her manicured palms over the head of the girl from Locarno like a good fairy,

64 just think. Wallis had followed in her father’s footsteps and pre- sided over a noted hairdressing salon, abusing a few apprentices, myself among them, who were trying their hand as members of the family; nevertheless, with her sinuous figure, her emerald eyes, her Tahitian mane, my beautiful cousin had no intention of spending the rest of her life doing perms and dye jobs, hence her tumultuous private life, which had begun precociously with a child born when she was eighteen and promptly consigned to the perpetual care of a foster family in a distant valley, and would continue in no less vergognosa a manner, in the eyes at least of her uncles in the town, who crossed the street when they had the misfortune to meet her. She was happy to recount anecdotes drawn from her burrascosa experience, stories inevitably featur- ing il suo papi, her titular guardian whose advanced age and ample bank account one could only guess at, doubtless a compre- hensive theory had arisen regarding this papi, between the man who had paid her way to Bora-Bora, from whence she had sent us a postcard, and the one who had gallantly held up the airplane for her, suffering from air sickness, so that she might retrieve that object without which she was defenceless, her charming little designer beauty case. She would regale us with these stories at teatime of a Sunday afternoon, having become accustomed to calling on us after spending a solitary moment at her mother’s grave, ogni ladrone ha la sua devozione, as my mother would say; Wallis would take advantage of these weekly outings to the mountain to raid the wild flowers, which she would then arrange in tasteful bouquets beneath the mirrors at her establishment, to the chagrin of her apprentices who, scolded for the merest mis- demeanour as it was, were forced to spend their time changing the water in the vases.

Tanslated by Rafaël Newman

From Les Créatures du Bon Dieu (© L’Aire, Vevey 2007)

65 Jacqueline Moser

Loose Days

Adrian’s business colleague can still remember exactly how as a three-year-old in the south of France he hunkered on the beach, close to the water that every few seconds washed sand over his little toes. He patted the sand with the palm of his hand, and the sand gave beneath his hand and rose between his fingers. His father had built him a sandcastle with two lakes. I bet you laughed, Adrian says, and your hand reached out for the small square box in front of you. You were wearing red swimming trunks and had a white cap that hung down into your face. Adrian does not believe in a visual memory that works so well. As his father destroyed all the photos and films from that period, Adrian has no clear idea of the first years of his own life. If he does remember something from his earliest childhood, then it’s a case of individual tesserae falling from a mosaic which - in the best-case scenario – are still intact and hold emotional memories.

On the glass shelf in the bathroom, the small bottles and the jewellery box were missing. His father was standing in front of the open cupboard in the livingroom. He was removing the photo albums and the spools of film and throwing them all in the dark sack. Next, beneath the door handle of his parents’ bedroom, Adri- an’s brown eyes appeared, spying through the gap. Grandmother was emptying the entire contents of the wardrobe into the boxes at her feet. She was tearing the blouses and skirts from their hangers, the clothes-hangers hitting the wooden wall, then clattering to the floor. A piece of smooth purple material was hanging from one of the boxes.

66 She is standing among the brambles, her hand reaching for the dark berries. You mustn’t pull them off, just touch them lightly and see if they give, if they’re ripe, they’ll come off by themselves. Her bare feet are in well-worn shoes, to which lumps of dried mud are sticking. Her arms and legs are brown. There are white scratches on her skin. Adrian’s heart was thumping in his head, it took his voice away. He put his hands to his ears and pressed hard. Water was flowing from his eyes, and from his nose blood.

Adrian holds onto a branch. Fingers remove a flat stone from the rockface. The stone is held gently in one hand while the fingers of the other carefully remove one thin layer after another.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From the novel Lose Tage (‘Loose Days’), © Weissbooks, Frankfurt am Main 2008

67 Adolf Muschg

Leave Her The Flowers

She was sitting where she had fallen back in the rocking chair, turned in, slightly, towards the right-hand corner, as if she’d something confidential to discuss with it. Her head had not fallen against it, it had been placed there, with the same care as her arms on the armrests. Her left hand lay on one, without holding it, and in just as relaxed fashion, her right hand had opened upwards. She was wearing a summer frock, short, white, sleeve- less, and had crossed her feet that were as small and bare as a child’s. On her lap, she had a big bunch of poppies with their different reds and yellows, but it did not conceal, not quite, the dark red patch on her left breast that was not a flower. The man who had come in stood speechless at the sight, but was not actually surprised. It was like this could have happened to him sooner than it did. The dead woman had her hair short, and her mask was only a pale imitation of the familiar face. Her pale, slightly open lips showed a quite strange expression, something between deep as- tonishment and cheerful contempt. Familiarity, she had always gently scorned; now her face was lit by absence. Her eyes re- vealed only that she was not sleeping, for beneath the eyelids that seemed to be magnified they were still slightly open. One would have had to go down on one’s knees, though, to look into them, and that was just not done. The dry bouquets reminded Ämil of the herbarium he had started as a child. At that moment, his colleague’s ring-tone started. To Loyalty and Probity be always bound. For you, she said, handing him the phone. Do you have to wear that nail in your lip? Every time I look at you, my mouth hurts. Don’t then. Here, it’s the boss. Ämil? Gőhler, the new man, checked. Don’t you two touch anything. I’ll be right there. Really? said Ämil. Why?

68 Forgive me for saying so, you could be considered preju- diced, though. Ämil looked around and said aloud: If you take her away, leave her the flowers. They must be from the person responsible, his boss answered. We’ll get them checked. Have you heard of proper respect? The worst thing that can happen to you, career-wise, is to be accused of not showing it. Leave her the flowers! I’m not trying to tell you. It’s a request.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

Unpublished extract from a new novel

69 Paul Nizon

Paris, 21 February 1992

When, on the escalator or stone steps, I emerge from the metro into daylight, and sometimes stagger a little, I am immediately surrounded by city – the broad pavement, the good greys, the flower stand, the glass fronts of enclosed café terraces, the hustle and bustle, the shaking leaf, the hint of sky, the city tint of the light, the streets going off, like flags in the wind, in all directions, and no gaps, no void, not anywhere; surrounded by this, and the droning, roaring, going-round-in-circles of traffic. At the top of the steps is the chestnut seller. Look, the chestnuts are now in the hands of the wily, good-natured, and diligent Pakista- nis. The way, using his fingers, this one lifts one chestnut after another from the coals and turns it. If you look more closely, you see that the base is the bottom part of a drum, punctured; the stove, an oil-drum cut in half; both fitted on a department-store trolley; the door is made of cardboard. Third world technology as this man’s equipment. From the flower-shop totters an ancient Belgian shepherd, its head confused and at least one leg lame. The dog is not lame, it is affected by gout. It moves like large theatre animals do, steered from beneath the costume by a group of acrobats. It moves like those comical centipedes, just the thing for children and the stage, perhaps - but it’s not in fact comedians, but the dog’s ancient limbs that drag his fur around for him. An animal, out to grass. A man doing a strange little dance just passed, on the arm of a much younger lady. He must have Parkinson’s or some other nervous condition, some other curse that forces him to perform these moves; to dance attendance upon her. To distract attention from his affliction, he speaks incessantly to his companion – who, it is clear, has trouble keeping pace. Both are well dressed. The lady is stony-faced. And then, mid-pavement, there is a group of people, parting. They are youngish, clearly enterprising, they mimic kissing air,

70 and when I, now parallel to them, risk a look, the lady’s glossy mouth, in the cold air, is like a cut-out. Puckered lips, for the taking.

Travelling in the suburban train, above ground. The pleasant purring; the changing outlooks; everything that catches the eye, unexpected; the motion smooth. I travel pointlessly a lot currently, as if, by doing this, I could trigger some writing; as if I could arrive, creating. Or, better: as if I could ride something long enough for it to fall like scales from my eyes. I think of the gait of my prose; of the curves and sideways darts; the sub- liminal testing the metre; the incredible things that can suddenly interrupt the uneventful. An influx of warm air, for example, would embrace both the author and the reader, and fluff up not just skirts.

Always have to think of the dark stairwell of my childhood and how its dreariness would engulf the returning boy. The humble life models stacked up in floors, the spiteful looks of the apartment doors, the short time allowed for climbing the stairs, the all being dyed one wretched colour as a form of brainwashing. A vertical blind alley. My walks should be seen against this background, as should my attempts to make everything interesting. Like the sower, I scattered, as I walked, the seeds of my imagi- nation, and let the seeds bear fruit. And yet there are all kinds of existence in the foul-smelling gullet of the stairwell. Cuboids wedged together. There to be opened.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From Die Zettel des Kuriers. Journal 1900-1999. (‘The Courier’s Chits. Diary 1900-1999’), © Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008

71 Maurizio Pianello

I’m on my way to Vienna

In this house he would live, from that moment on: cracks down the damp walls, also black with smoke; the wood of the staircase and doors: rotting, crumbling; a cold wind through the broken windowpanes; the roof leaking. In this house, where, three years later, his son Ermenegildo was born, who was always kicking with his legs: even once he’d learned to walk – at seven months, just - his legs didn’t stop going, now he chased the chickens – their wings flapping madly, they were so frightened, and the screeches of them! It was so bad, Mother had to lift him and bring him into the house. Hardly would she have put him down when he’d scurry off again. At the age of five, he led the pig out to the field. When he was six, his ears pricked up when the teacher told them, Vienna is the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the age of seven – how on earth did he manage? – he secretly swapped one egg for two. At eight, he saw the rooster shaking on the hen. At nine, at his father’s behest, he took a pickaxe in his hand for the first time, hacked away at a dry clod of earth, managed to hack a groove, a crack, into it, then – dong! – the blade hit something hard. You have to dig the stone out, his father said, or nothing will grow. He sighed and shook his head. Another dong followed. Another stone. Three days later, it was the start of April, Ermenegildo ran away. Vienna is the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He took the tracks across the fields that he knew, using the Montello as his point of reference, east of that was Nervesa, that’s where he wanted to be, across the bridge, the River Piave, he knew, were the railway lines that led to the border. A day’s walk to the river. Wrapped in a cloth: dried fruit cake; a lump which would keep forever. Dusk, a coolness descending from the sky, the breath from the ground cold and damp. Ermenegildo had a thirst on him, his feet were burning, when he entered the yard, the crunch of gravel, a weak light spilling from the window. He knocked. Some- thing creaking. The toothless wrinkled face of an old woman who

72 looked at him – where were her eyes? – surprised. Well now, what did the little boy want? A place to sleep. Where were his mother and father? From inside, noise like in a small restaurant. He was on his way to an uncle’s, he claimed, to enter service with him. That the case? In that case – A bowl of milk with bread, perhaps? Ermenegildo sat down at the table and pulled in his shoulders. The kitchen was full with children, women, men. The one with the white stubble spat on the floor, sniffed like he hadn’t got a hankie. At the edge of a raised tile his spit flowed into the gap. They were all staring at him, the little one, as he shovelled the milk and bread into himself, like his last hour had come. The amount of water he drank was enough for three cows. Ermenegildo ate and drank and didn’t look up. That night he spent in the hayloft. Elsewhere it was in stables. Conegliano, Sacile, Pordenone, across the Tagliamento, Udine, then to the North, Gemona, the mountains, left and right, as far as Venzone, Carnia, up along the road though seven villages, finally Tarviso and: a goods truck, almost at a standstill, a leg poking out. ‘What are you looking for?’ Ermenegildo falters, looks more closely at the leg clattering casually past him, the puffs of the locomotive, soot. The smoke breaks up, drifts off. The smell of burnt oil hangs behind in the air. ‘Yes, I mean you!’ Ermenegildo starts to run.‘What?’ The chap, though, laughs, holds out a hand to him. ‘ … Come on, climb in!’ A strong grip that nearly hurts, rough skin that scratches your own. ‘What did you say?’ he asks again. ‘I’m on my way to Vienna.’

Translated by Donal McLaughlin From Das Gedächtnis der Steine, © edition 8, Zurich 2008

73 Marius Daniel Popescu

The Wolf’s Symphony

One day, when you arrived around four o’clock and entered a hall in the factory, you looked out the window and saw a horse in the orchard, and you knew it was the Gypsy’s horse. You rec- ognized the horse that belonged to the Gypsy who lived a few houses past your grandmother’s house, you were pleased to see it there, free among the apple trees, it was out of harness and drifting along slowly. It was another witness to the defunct factory and the last ten workers, its master had discovered the orchard while strolling along the road, and he would bring his animal there every morning, early, then come to collect it in the evening, at sunset. The Gypsy was a man of small stature, his arms and back were muscled from his days working as a labourer at the freight station in town. Apart from a moustache his face was clean- shaven, he had a small, unpainted brick house, he lived with his wife and his four children. The ten workers were for the most part not fond of the Gypsy. They had started to discuss him, saying at first, “That guy with his horse, he’s got no damn business here!” Then they would call him a chicken thief, say he was “shiftless” and a member of a “dirty race”. You would hear their nasty talk, you noticed that their eyes shone when they talked about the Gypsy with the black hat, they criticized him constantly, little by little the Gypsy became one of their main bugbears. They felt the orchard belonged to them, the Gypsy and his horse were intruders, undesirables, outlaws, they couldn’t stand to see the horse grazing the tall grass in the orchard, they would spit on the ground and curse the “misbegotten” world. You didn’t know how things would turn out with the Gypsy, his horse and the ten workers, you sensed the hatred emanating from them each time they talked about the horse, their hatred was like a sort of haze covering all the scrap metal in the desert- ed factory, it transformed the halls into a labyrinth that reminded

74 you of an abandoned cemetery. They wanted someone or something to be against, they yearned to avenge themselves on some enemy, they hated the politicians and the priests, they hated their own poverty, they hated the Gypsy and his horse because they represented one of the roots of their affliction. This haze, which emanated from their bodies, through their words and their gestures, became thicker and thicker, you noticed that they had begun to move like blind men among the objects that made up their everyday world, they would exhale the haze and surround themselves with it like a great, all-encompassing blanket, they could no longer work without glancing at the horse that lived in the orchard. You felt how heavy their tread had grown. You would traverse the haze with stinging eyes and a pain in your ears, they would speak less and less to you, the haze issuing from their innards was hardening on the walls and on the scrap metal all around, like the greenish plaster of the stage set for a war film, or like camouflage. You came into the main hall looking for ball bearings to make a scooter and the horse was there. They had dragged it inside with a rope, placed it on a big piece of sheet metal and welded its hoofs to the steel. You stopped a few feet from the animal, upright and im- mobilized on its hoofs, it wanted to move, it wanted to leave this place, it could only move its neck, its head, its tail and a few muscles in its thighs, most of the workers were drunk and were taunting the horse, calling, “Go on, giddy up!” They were laughing at the animal as it attempted to lift its hoofs from the metal sheet, they were sitting around the sheet, they were sharing a bottle of alcohol and lifting it to their pursed lips. The haze was all-encompassing. You had lost the ability to move. One of them noticed you and said, “Come on lad, come play horsey!” Despite their apparent good humour they were all as rigid as the empty

75 bottles you would see by the side of the road you took through the fields, they were proud of what they had done, the horse had become their living trophy, they were enjoying themselves in this haze, this harbinger of death and mourning, they wanted to prove that they were strong, invincible, they were struggling with their own haze.

Tanslated by Rafaël Newman

From La symphonie du loup (The Wolf’s Symphony) © Librairie José Corti, Paris 2007

76 Dubravko Pušek

Lunaria

They are elsewhere the stones, elsewhere the ripples, the places in which we were profoundly close to ourselves and at the same time far from the world. And the inchrysalisation of the blue, a time all one with grey. Now we are bold travellers but the fog still forces us on to the ground. No one can foretell the fis- sures that we have within us. Only the speck of dust knows our yearning by the breadth of the sea and of the infinite night in which we remain unauthorised: for this alone we are desire and compassion. Elsewhere the horizons where we were inclined to look and shiver. All that remains of them is a few petals and even these have turned to stone.

Little is known of the life of a lunaria. Quickly it is born and dies. In this time the purple moves to the edge, the gleam brought by the septum of the seeds of the carob. At the same moment we think that things have finally turned out so that we can understand their perfection and their strength. Strange and incomprehensible: that is how they are and they feel the shadow of the lips that reach the remote day. Unknowable like everything else besides.

III

The universe uninhabitable, a frayed desert like the music of a puff of air from a crack. The spaces behind the false extremity of the hands. Depths clouded with silt.

77 Never seen such a thin and immobile light and a body so resigned to stillness. A horizon in which moonstones compress the silence. They are disturbing with their drowsy air.

It is not heaven; it is the age of anxiety. The difference is the waddling of the grey partridge, the transmigration of the stars, the thickening of the speck of dust. From each one the billowing of the blood, now and then a louder rolling. The thickening of the senseless, the royal road to the centre of the earth.

The nostalgia that rises from these bodies. It surrounds with walls the emptied spaces. It beats its breast. It is a shattered silence that comes back to us, inevitably, like a splinter.

In this way a new time unfolds. Away from us the bare trees die. We cross the silence between the waters. There is gurgling here as just before death, flight and fall are equally useful. Created for a double experiment. The hands caress flesh and hair. The spade ruffles the earth, which attracts it irresistibly.

Translated by Paul Knight

78 Fabio Pusterla

Letters from Babel

You say you had a horrible dream. On TV you saw us die, buried among rubble, and the scene was long, unending, repeated several times: the great collapse of the Tower of Babel, and us underneath it, white mediatic dust. You were then entrusted to very strict governesses, Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon, nasty. We were scattered. You add, though it’s not relevant, that maybe you would like to use your savings for a new video game with a surprising name: PANDORA TOMORROW. And as you know nothing or next to nothing about Pandora, I tell you about the gods’ envy of us imperfect obstinate human beings, eaters of bread and sensitive to beauty. One day follows the next, journeys, and still your dream accompanies me in secret, and I don’t understand why; until driving through traffic between Modena and Bologna, a flock of sparrows rises from behind a wall like a sea wind, even the images start flying in one direction only, like the sparrows, jumbled up even though united, not without a touch of grace and of fear. There is something true about your dream, a clear vision that escapes us. That is why I am writing to you. Because I know, I know now, that we are really here now, your mother and I, and we are holding hands in the midst of all this rubble of something that has not yet collapsed but is tottering and will perhaps collapse one day. Call it Europe, the world or only another dream; perhaps it is the shadow of a century

79 and of an emptiness that we saw and that we hope to erase with joy. A little bit of joy for everyone: that was the plan, nothing complicated. A little for everyone. We are writing to you from here, and there are many of us, marked with laughter and sadness. Others talk of great victories, of renaissances. We have known for some time: defeat was the real point of departure. Duty of commemoration and of hope, the right to happiness always denied, always about to be built. And shame too, not to be forgotten: everything that was and must never, never be again. Yesterday the loudest voice in Sarajevo said, hand on heart: I was part of a collective hope, it was a project from the ocean to the steppe, vast as the wind, and it has col lapsed. I can only raise my left hand, black with sadness, the right hand does not open any more, enclosed in a scream which welds the nails to the flesh, Bosnia to Europe which is falling.

There are terraces here, balustrades to lean on, my dear son, protruding into the plain; let’s keep the roads straight, monotonous, the ordered flow of traffic and of days, your future, and we are not sure of anything. But let us hope. Absurdly, let us hope. The fire is lit.

80 Fingers like butterflies run over the strings of many guitars, strange languages cross, squabble and touch, songs pass slow or fast across the sky, the wine is good. Now we are sitting on a bridge between invisible banks, above a river that sparkles, sings and smiles.

Tomorrow, shortly before dawn, when fish surface and dart on the luminous water, with a wing beat Pandora will slip out of bed, half-naked and very sweet, blurred in the dawn light. The gods of mourning and of anger will follow her with bated breath, poor Epimetheus, dazzled, will cast sidelong glances at her through his eyelashes, and on the tops of the Caucasus the eagles will raise their bloodstained beaks. Go, girl, says the dawn that arrives with a light step, a second time, and don’t be afraid, see how light now surrounds the earth, it is a caress, and you, continue, with patience, come closer to yourself, to that destiny which saves or which condemns. You know: TOMORROW IS NOW, for you and for everyone.

Babel sleeps, dreams in its languages the untranslatable joy.

Translated by Paul Knight

Unpublished 2007

81 Margrit Schriber

The Wrong Mistress

Sieur looks at her, this Swiss confederate, now in the Salon bleu of his castle in south-west France, who toys with her rags, await- ing a reaction. With his hands clasped behind his back, he circles round her. And nods. ‘Her appearance must match her social position. She’ll require assistance!’ She takes off her rags, the woollen hat and knapsack. She is learning quickly. A lady’s maid is required - who ties the ribbed corset as the woman leans forward, on the bed. A hairdresser is also required: to create cascades of curls. With the tip of her finger, she dabs rose water on her earlobes and her neck. She pulls white stockings on over legs that have been scratched by thorns. An embroidered garter holds each stocking in place. Her soft shoes are interwoven with flowers and leaves that match the garters. Ribbons are wrapped round her hat; they rise to form a point. Dressed like this, she now appears every morning in the private chapel. The pointed toes of her embroidered slip-ons catch nois- ily on the dress. She flows across the tiles like the water of the Muota. A scent of roses spreads.

‘She’ll hide away her washerwoman hands, the little one. But she’s thinking of us, there in the castle chapel, her mouth on the flame of her joined fingers, as she kneels, absorbed and motionless. Thinking of us, Joannes’ “tadpoles”. Of us here in a steamy laundry, boiling away our youth, our dreams, our hope of some joy. Whereas she’s risen to a higher rank - where people have the habit of buttering each other up. Where she’ll undo the string of her purse and dab her eyes with a handkerchief.’ ‘She’ll only be thinking of herself!’ Joannes knows his ward - who liked nothing better than to bathe in his tub, braying with laughter, and splashing; and who threw a wet cloth if even just his face appeared through the door. ‘The only reason for her kneeling so reverently in the family chapel will be to count the

82 precious stones in the tabernacle. And to work out how she can break them off and slip them into her purse. With a halo round her head, all the while.’

Anna Maria Inderbitzin is flabberghasted when she sees the magnificent garden. In the covered walk, climbing roses and bougainvillea flow from the columns to the paved path. The ter- raced garden drops level by level to a row of cypresses. It is paradise. Each morning, it lies at her feet. She flutters to the garden bench. Where she sits, undisturbed. Where she studies. ‘What gives Joannes’ washerwoman the right to sit, as they say, in the sun, with her feet up?’ ‘She makes it her right. Whether he likes it, or not! She’s climbed out of the tub that that pig Joannes forced her onto her knees at, naked. God reached out His hand to her. Someone with a name, and rights, she now is. The people around her are only the most distinguished. She has servants, wears robes, is carried around in a chaise. She has more lace than a princess. And takes the air in a magnificent garden. That’s how it is, now!’ ‘That’s not how it is!’ Joannes’ ward is reaching for the stars. And that is permitted to no mortal. Is against the ways of the world! The washerwomen look up from the soapy water, stretch their backs, and squint up at the sky where the little one is placing her embroidered shoe on a cloud. They then dry their faces with their aprons. Even recently, she was still crouching with them by the water. ‘It was a wonderful evening, the setting sun shining like a copper coin. Our chatter floated across the lake, as if our voices were packed in felt. Not a single word was carried away. It was as if every single one was significant and had stopped, waiting to be entered in the celestial book. Suddenly, Anna Maria reached into the air. “There!” She held her closed fist under our noses. We opened her fingers. Nothing!’

83 ‘ – “No, there is something there! A little time!” She had caught the moment. Her fist was closed around a tiny moment. Our teeth would all fall out, we told her, before we’d ever be able to magic up pleasures like that. Out of thin air, too! The little one, though, raised her fist to heaven. Swore she’d catch ten such moments before she breathed her last. “At least!” she added. “Ten, and not one less!” - ’

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From the novel Die falsche Herrin (‘The Wrong Mistress’), © Verlag Nagel & Kimche, Zurich 2008

84 Esther Spinner

Lament

Mariagrazia laughed with joy and immediately put water on to make tea. The alterations? No, no, these were difficult times. Her boy had wrecked the car, her daughter had a second child on the way, and her son-in-law was still unemployed. But, she said, mischievously, there’s something new, come and see. We climbed the staircase, on the upper steps of which Mariagrazia always gets dizzy. She opened the bedroom door wide. A blind- ing whiteness. But hadn’t it always been like that? She shook her head. It was all new. Her callous hand carressed the white lace throw, fixed the position of the cushions. It’s all new, but we, Pierantonio and I, sleep next door. She opened the door of the room that should have become a bathroom, pointed at the two narrow beds, separated by a bedside table. On the wall I saw the outline of the chest of drawers that’s now with me, up north. We’re protecting the other one, Mariagrazia said. I dust here every day and do under the carpets, and once, we lay down on the bed a little, but not for long, she said, and closed the doors. Nice, isn’t it? Mariagrazia asked on the stairs. I nodded and understood what I wouldn’t have understood years ago. The white room was what she’d always yearned for, was her dream and her hope. She had imagined living in it, and even that made things a bit easier, even if her son had an accident and her son- in-law no work. Life is more difficult now, Mariagrazia told me, with all these new rules. Mushrooms, you have to show to the mushroom inspector before you sell them, and he wants paid, too, and then there’s nothing in it, for you, financially. Looking for wood, even old, dead wood, isn’t allowed either. Nothing’s allowed these days, everything that brought in money has been banned, or regulated such that it’s no longer worth it. What’s the point of that? Mariagrazia asked, despondent. Forget Europe, if that’s what it means for us. You can no longer milk sheep by hand, my cousin told me, so tell me: what are people supposed to do who have just a small herd? Hands were good enough in

85 the past. Now, though, they want machines, they’re supposed to be cleaner, they say. And the butcher has to put in a ramp for wheelchairs. Figurati! Up until now he’s gone out to Piero and taken what it was he wanted. This ramp is the ruin of him and I bet you, whatever you like, that Piero will never go up it, that the butcher will deliver his sausage and mince likes he’s always done. In the past, Mariagrazia says, meaning: in the past, everything was better. In the past, things were different, I say, but things were difficult, too. Mariagrazia nods, reluctantly. You’re right, I agree, but at least, what was difficult then, I knew. I knew what needed doing. What’s difficult these days is different, I don’t know that yet. I visited nonna, too. Antonella’s mother. She’d forgiven me for not following her advice, or rather: command; for going away, further and further away. Now that everything had sorted itself out, that everyone had found their own paths, it was easy for her to forgive me. Nonna hardly looked a day older than back then. Walking was a bit more difficult, she now needed two sticks, and not one, but her dark little eyes beneath the black scarf looked alert, were still nifty little mice that didn’t miss a trick. Have you heard, she said, that one of my sons-in-law has died now, too, la morte non ha età, young or old – you never know the hour. She looked at me closely. So, she asked, what do you think of them? I knew immediately what she meant. She wanted to hear what I made of each and every one of them, was I happy with them, or not? She listened to me and nodded. You’re right, she interjected, when I said about everyone getting to where they belonged and living their own lives. You’re right.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From the novel Lamento (‘Lament’), due to be published in the autumn of 2008 © by Edition 8 (Zurich)

86 Isabelle Stamm

Twins’ Worlds

I would never have thought that my brother could end up here. So it wasn’t to Africa that he vanished, to Chile or Siberia, no, he remained in his homeland, or rather – let’s say, committing ourselves to less – in the land of his birth. Who’d have thought it? And it was a distant Switzerland he sought out for himself, steep and remote, a few hotels and ski lifts, farmhouses and guest houses scattered onto a mountain, black dogs in the yards, their mouths lying open in the winter sun, the human faces red and brown. They look at me. I followed my brother here. Finally. It is cold, dry, sounds and voices, muffled, muted, reach my ears. I follow the route description I noted down on some paper. I reach the guest house. The landlord was right, he said on the phone you could walk it in ten minutes from the bus-stop. I climb the steps to the entrance and stamp the snow from my boots, enter. Semi-darkness surrounds me. I’ve hardly looked round when the landlord comes up to me, his face is brown and red, like all the others, he himself is tall and slim, dark hair, a dark beard, and in between two steel-blue eyes from which I can tell what he’s about to exclaim. And so I quickly extend my hand, introduce myself, and an expression of fear and amaze- ment fleets across his browny-red face. The landlord had thought I was the other one. My word! slips out. He calls his wife and young daughters, we’re introduced, all nice people, the youngest of the three girls clings to my knee, her sisters take cover behind a chair and gawk, all brown-haired and blue-eyed. They miss him, the landlady explains, adding: We all do. Did I have a good journey? the landlord asks, he offers me a seat and a beer. I ask for a glass of water. In the background, an assistant chef is keeping busy, now and then looks across. The landlord hands me the keys, not just the keys, a parcel, too, he hands me. From Alex. The landlord clears his throat. This parcel

87 arrived a week ago, he says, it is, as I can see, addressed to me, and for him, the landlord, it was the ultimate sign that Alex would never come back, and that I, his brother, should be contacted. We are silent for a moment. The parcel weighs heavy in my hands, I make no move to open it right away. At some point, the landlord reaches for a knife, he peels and cuts up an apple; his girls, their eyes just waiting and just above the table, reach for the slices and run off. Their father continues to hold the knife in his broad hands, turning it this way and that, and soon begins to talk more. We’ve been in already, to dust and hoover, he says. You can no doubt imagine (he pulls a face) what an unlived-in room looks like after three months; two months were agreed, by the way, but I wanted to wait off a bit, it was three years down the line, after all. Three years he’s been living here already, I note – a sobering thought. The landlord nods. Did you not know? No, I didn’t. That said, he wasn’t always here, apparently, often he travelled or did some work abroad or visited someone, in those cases he’d been away for a few days, sometimes also for weeks, a month, two months, they’d agreed: two months, maximum. You had to bear in mind that he’d never paid more than two, in advance. This was my cue. As discussed by phone, I shall pay the third month, which means I have a week left which I intend to spend here, why not. I like the mountains, the air is fresh, I want to breathe in and breathe out and have the feeling that my breath can reach as far as my thoughts, and yet I soon have to concede: it’s an illusion. For there are doubts in heads, and dejection, that can’t be dodged. That just can’t be dodged.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From the novel Zwillings Welten (‘Twins’ Worlds’), © Edition Isele, Eggingen 2008

88 Peter Stamm

The Expectation

He asks do I live alone? He addresses me as ‘Sie’, not ‘du’, which irritates me though I’m quite a bit older. He asks about my life, my work, my family. He asks so many questions I don’t get round to asking him any. I’m not used to someone showing me interest. I suppose I speak much too much. I tell him about my childhood, about my young brother who died four years ago in a motor- bike accident, about my parents, and my work as a nursery teacher. None of which, I know, is that exciting, but he listens attentively. His eyes shine like the children’s when I tell them a story. The tea is finished, and Patrick stands up and opens the sideboard. He finds a dusty bottle of Grand Marnier which is still almost full. He puts two glasses on the table, fills them, and raises one in the air. - To an unexpected visit! I empty my glass though I don’t actually like liqueur. He makes a face while drinking, too – as if not used to strong drink. I had visitors, I say, two colleagues from work and their husbands. We always meet on the first Friday of the month. I don’t know why I tell him that. There’s nothing more to say about it. He says Janu- ary is his favourite month. His birthday’s in January, in two weeks. And he likes the cold. - What’s your favourite month? - I’ve never thought about it. November, I hate. He has a favourite month, a favourite season, a favourite flower, a favourite animal, a favourite book, etc. Apart from that, he tells me nothing about himself. I think he’s simply got nothing to tell. Like my children. If I ask what they did in the holidays, they say played. He is really like a child. He’s cheerful and helpless and sometimes shy. He always seems somewhat astonished. And he laughs a lot. He asks do I like children. Of course, I say, that’s my job. - It doesn’t automatically go. You can be a butcher and yet like animals.

89 - I like them, though. That’s why I became a nursery teacher. He apologises, with a frightened look, as if he’d said something terrible. He pours more. Not for me, I say, and drink it anyway. - I shouldn’t be so curious. - No, you really shouldn’t. I must sound like an old granny. And yet I’m already addicted to his curiosity, to his enquiring gaze which gives the most banal of things meaning. Sometimes, he says nothing for a long time and just looks at me and smiles. When he asks do I have a boyfriend, I get annoyed. I’ve been asked that question too often. And anyway, it’s none of his business. Just because I don’t live with a man doesn’t mean… He looks at me with big eyes. I don’t know what to say, and this not knowing annoys me even more. - Now you’re angry with me. - No, I’m not angry. And so it continues. We drink and talk about life, the world, the universe. About me; just not about him. He challenges me, but I reckon it’s not intentional. He stares at my legs until I realise that my dressing-gown’s opened a little, that my thighs are showing. I need to wax my legs urgently. But who would that interest. I pull my dressing-gown shut and Patrick looks at me as if I caught him doing something forbidden. I’m pretty drunk. He could now do whatever he liked with me, I think, and am immediately ashamed of the thought. He’s so young, I could be his mother. I’d like to run my fingers through his hair, to hold him against me, to protect him from something. I’d like him to hug me like my children do, to lay his head in my lap, to fall asleep in my arms. When he yawns, I look at the clock. It is three.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From Die Erwartung (‘The Expectation’), published in Wir fliegen (‘We are flying’), © S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 2008

90 Verena Stefan

Doe a deer

Until Lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters African saying

When you pass the runover deer in the car, crows start up. The deer lies up high on a snowbank, all four legs sticking up in the air at the edge of the road, right at the spot where I come out of the woods on my snowshoes. A doe. I trudge up to her and turn her on her side. One side is already torn up, an eye is missing. Tracks of coyote and fox lead up to and away from the animal in all directions. In the woods I’m illiterate. The cold preserves a script of paws, hooves, claws, of bellyfur, of tailhair which has brushed the surface layer of snow—stories of encounters, trysts, of the hunt and the chase − which I could read word for word, if I only knew how to decipher the signs. For this I need a book about animal tracks and a bookstore, Paragraphe, perhaps, or Renaud- Bray, and the good luck to find a parking place in the snowy waste of Montreal. And then for the book Traces d’animaux I also need French-German and German-English dictionaries, so I can study the signs of red fox, raccoon, skunk, porcupine and compare their names in the three languages. Here is the spread wing of a partridge; there are raccoon footprints in the snow. I learned these tracks from the racoons themselves; one afternoon they ran by the window, one after the other, three or four of them. I went out to study their prints, the toes sharp and filigree, the paws dainty. Every day on my walk I read my way along the trees, past boughs that hang lower when snow has fallen, that shoot up again as soon as it melts, past the towering base of an uprooted pine, past a bend and over the frozen brook at the point where the ice takes weight. Under gleaming sunlight I follow the tracks of a coyote, always around midday and still with worried

91 glances over my shoulder. Rose Ausländer’s voice in my ear: my mother was once a deah, the way she says deah with her Eastern accent. Years ago, in a bookstore in Rimouski, on a February day on which each footstep was carved out of white or greying snow- heaps, snowwalls, snow drifts, I read that, according to Rose Ausländer, the carp in Bukowina is silent in five languages. Elle disait d’ailleurs de cette région que la carpe s’y taisait en cinq langues. Rimouski lay desolate under snow, ice and fog, five hundred kilometres northeast of Montreal on the great river, which was itself covered all the way to its centre with ice floes and snowdrifts. I fell silent in four languages and learned snow. The mirrorcarp/ in pepper aspic/ was silent in five languages, so goes the poem Czernowitz: History in a Nutshell. It would have been silent in Ruthenish, Polish, Yiddish and German. In Czernowitz it seems there were more bookstores than bakeries, the streets were swept with dried rose bouquets and housepets bore the names of Greek gods. The deer at the edge of the road is more disemboweled every day. First the internal organs disappear, then one leg after another. In the meantime it gets covered by snow flung up by the snowplow. Then only two ears of fur can be seen sticking out of the snowdrift, and that only if you know the spot. When the snowcover sinks again, the animal has become hollower, more picked apart. Day after day I trudge over there and check to see how the cadaver has changed overnight. Piece by piece it is being incorporated somewhere else. I imagine the coyotes racing over here, the foxes too, one after the other. Do they come singly or all at once? Do they scramble to get to the kill, snarl?

Translated by Lise Weil

From Doe a deer

92 Jörg Steiner

A Cherry Tree at the Pacific Ocean

Even a week later, I couldn’t remember what the weather had been like on the way to the airport on 20 September 1996: changeable, I guess; erratic like the memory itself which starts everything moving. The night before, our cat had brought a viper into the house, and we had to catch the snake before it woke out of its torpor in the warmth of our apartment. We were a bit behind time. Nervous. In our compartment of the train, there was a strong smell of mushrooms from the forest. The stone in Silvia’s bracelet cast a green shadow on the book of crosswords that lay beneath her hand. Now, suddenly, we’d plenty of time; but the nervousness didn’t go away. The plane was to depart at 13.30. Flight time: eleven hours. I’d learned the route by heart: Zurich – Stuttgart – Amsterdam – Northern Scotland – Greenland – Canada – Las Vegas – Los Angeles; as if by conjuring up the names, any de- viation could be identified early enough to be able to correct it, i.e. before some tone in the stewardess’s voice hinted at a warn- ing, or at danger; the kind of tone that tells you the voice you’re hearing isn’t recorded, but live. ‘You know,’ I said to Silvia, ‘I’ve noticed that the people at the Max Kade Institute are hoping to discuss more than just literature. They’ve had writers visit from Switzerland before – from Zurich, the French-speaking part, and from the Ticino.’ My wife replied to that, or had another question, one or the other, then I spoke again – and that was how we parted. Once again, it was quite unreal. It had failed. There was an inexplicable embarrassment.

Between the sky and sea, I thought the Americans would want to learn something, too, about the untraced accounts, about Nazi gold, and about the refugees the Swiss turned away at the bor-

93 der. All the major newspapers had reported this that year, and since 17 August, a resolution of the Federal Government was choosing not to stress the “Jewish” aspect, but only to speak of victims, stolen property, and the affiliation of individuals and organisations with the “Third Reich”. I could not exclude the possibility that some participants in the course I planned to offer had first-hand experience of such violence: violence that gains momentum as you march; that crushes everything that gets in its way. It was possible these people had been able to escape the violence only by fleeing - thus losing their last securities. In Switzerland, the reports of the professors who wanted to establish the truth had met with collective amnesia. That was how they were dealt with. From 1936 until 1945, I had experienced at first-hand the history of those who were spared. In the streets of my childhood, all that remained of the start of the war was an echo of voices on the radio; some screaming, shouting, crying. Of all the stories, I would tell the most simple one, calmly, without getting agitated; the story of a school class, in which the same two pupils were always laughed at, when playing ball in the playground, in the classroom, and in the gym hall. One was called Georges. After the war, he moved to Israel with his parents, I know exactly in which year. I know how long I’ve already missed this friend – this friendship that, in normal circumstances, might not have been. You shouldn’t get used to being laughed at. I hope he didn’t ever come to accept that contempt – regard- less of what kind of exile or what kind of homeland he ending up living in. And yes, I could assure the course participants that the American soldiers had behaved decently in World War II. They would expect that of me.

94 I fell asleep, woke up again, looked down through parcels of cloud at the ocean. The day dragged on. We were following the sun. When we arrived at the International Airport in Los Angeles, it was late afternoon, still. Elastic time. We were led into an Arrivals hall. At Passport Control, four long queues had formed, from which people were occasion- ally taken and led away. The queues were surrounded by police women in uniform; and intimidated by the various shouts and orders given. It’s not difficult to imagine that border officials in every country can be easily irritated; that things are just repeated until everything’s sorted out. That’s what I was thinking when, half an hour later, someone called ‘Next’, and ‘Next’ was me – and so I crossed the blue line painted on the floor that separates the rest of the world from America. A man behind a table waved me across, looked at me for a long time, then calmly took my passport and started to leaf through it. Without looking up, he finally asked, ‘Are you here private- ly, young man?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I believe so, it’s pretty much private.’ ‘Aha – ‘ he said, ‘I see you applied for a visa as an author.’ ‘Yes,’ I said. Then he asked, ‘What do you write?’ ‘Books,’ I said, ‘novellas, stories, all kinds of things.’

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

From: Ein Kirschbaum am Pazifischen Ozean (‘A Cherry Tree at the Pacific Ocean’), © Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 2008

95 Franco Supino

The Other Life

The green suitcase lay open beside the bed in front of the wardrobe. What do you pack if you don’t know when you’re going? If you don’t know how long you’ll be away for? If you don’t even know whether you’ll actually be going?

The daughter sat at the table she used for drawing. The half- finished sheet before her. It was resting on the folder for her collected drawings. She had painted the suitcase in a rich green colour; the bed, wardrobe and door were yet to be coloured. To her right, the window. She had drawn the view. Several times. The cherry tree through the seasons. The garden. The bench to the left of the entrance to the house. Her father’s study, the kitchen, the hall, her parents’ bedroom. She had drawn the rooms from memory, as if the house were about to be demol- ished. She had done portraits of her father, her mother, Johanna, the cat, herself in rough outline, moments of her life recorded in a sketch. She had drawn landscapes. Speuz, the village. The stream and the valley. The river between Olten and Aarau. The Jura, the blue mountain, above all. Her earliest pictures she also kept in the folder: the unicorn, the Swiss Cross, the map of Speuz. Scenes were depicted which she knew from her parents’ stories: from Leipzig, Engelberg. That memorable matinee in the Schauspielhaus in Zurich when suddenly her mother was the centre of attention. Or the time the Minister of State had lunch with them at Whitsun in the parlour still decorated for Christmas.

She kept all her drawings in the folder. She should pack the folder first, her father had said. You’ll drop by on the first or second day after you arrive and submit the folder, he had said.

The Academy would examine the drawings. She could see the men on the committee before her: amazed, they would say,

96 strictly, She’s not the finished article, but it’s all there. It’s all there already, there’s nothing we can teach her. She’s a dilet- tante, and dilettantes can only help themselves, their talent cannot be fostered.

If she went through all her work, she was torn. She asked herself which she should leave in, or what she could change in the individual pictures, if she were to try to second-guess what was wanted. It wasn’t possible, though. She couldn’t bring herself to judge, to select. She would submit the folder with all her drawings – or she wouldn’t do it at all. What she was putting before the Academy was not a promise for the future, it was the result of a life.

She should pack her case, her father had said. First, the folder, then the usual bits and pieces, the kind of things you need. She would know what. The usual bits and pieces… The kind of things you need… You’re leaving tomorrow, her father had said.

She was in a hurry, and she wasn’t in a hurry. One day, like everyone else, she would have gone and would never come back.

Her father was in his study, but he was not working. He was waiting. Towards evening, in the Lőwe, he had taken a call from the hospital in Aarau; they had kept her mother in, as they, father and daughter, had sensed they would.

They knew what that meant. They were immediately hoping for the miracle that wouldn’t happen. They knew it wouldn’t happen because they didn’t believe in miracles. How was a miracle to happen if you didn‘t believe in it? -–If I were the good Lord, the

97 daughter thought, I wouldn’t give non-believers anything either, and certainly not a miracle. There was nothing for them to do, but wait. Her here at her drawing table; her father across in the other room, at his desk.

Her father was pretending that things were as they always were. But he would sit at his desk all through the night and discover he couldn’t work. Not without his wife. His daughter had drawn him: bent over the desk, his forehead in one hand, the other hovering over the death mask of his playwright friend, Georg Kaiser. As always, he would retire to his bedroom only towards morning. He would lie there and not get to sleep.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

98 Raphael Urweider

All Your Names

pre-spring partly snow still scattered bright scraps a constricted stream involves water and light as an ache does a groan glassy beetles overrun ants as if they weren’t there the male sparrow gets off the female hops proudly into the still bare white tree fully spring in the cathedrals’ cupolas the angels build their nests from their eggs comes music thus live the not-yet-born the born angels are echoes that reside in the domes like the heart in the thorax from egg-shells their song lingers on

(from: eight seasons)

99 tone it down antonia the dogs are sleeping already the cicadas breathing so evenly antonia bring your skin close to mine and linger exhausted as we are the dogs’ legs twitch as they dream the cicadas draw slowly to a close shoosh antonia the dogs sigh as they dream the pounding in our veins for me replaces cicadas I am happy to be so close to your heartbeat beatrice I sing when noone’s listening I conjure up your names sotto voce I am well beatrice thank you I hum and not just do I have you on my lips I blast you out of my lungs right out and love you from memory as a high note in my head in my ear I am listening beatrice to you on saturdays elodie the newsmen struggle the botanic garden closes at four the leaves of the trees dry up relinquish their green the clouds break up it doesnt manage to rain elodie saturdays drag on a bit they dont count for autumns elodie begin on sundays the botanic garden contains miracles I leave them where they are the green decreases makes room for fruits saturdays seem not to be my own

100 my sundays however are for you elodie you are playing with fire jana I smoke we are silent time is in no hurry jana you watch what the smoke does it hangs in the kitchen I am ash what glows is the tip that apart its dark your eyes flare up when your thumb flicks the lighter time stands still we sit there jana you are playing with fire

From: a rondelle

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

101 Michel Viala

HE, Outside there is nothing left. Charred trees. Children returned to a state of nature. HE lives in a hole. Perhaps the cellar of a former psychiatric hospital. When HE goes out, HE wears a gas mask. HE has constructed someone to talk to. A female form made of scraps and rubbish. Depending on his fantasies, the life-size doll becomes his mother, Death, a little girl, a Greek psychoanalyst. HE is looking for the fault, the hole. Why this desolation? HE re-enacts his childhood. HE sees himself once more at boarding school, in hospital, in prison, at the asylum. Is HE his father’s killer? Is HE the sole survivor? And of what civilisation? Is this theatre, madness, or reality?

HE’s voice in the darkness Winter was refusing to say die Old women got up like clowns were cluttering the streets in motionless procession The desert, aghast, was filling up with dying chants Frozen sparrow hawks were clawing at imaginary prey Trains were no longer pulling into the stations

My shadow connected me to the horizon with a crimson streak The very words were dying of cold

102 The branch where I was hanging shattered like glass leaving me stunned on this frozen pond A pale sun laughed malevolently at the wound I inflicted on myself as I fell

How long must I wait And nothing to soothe my agony My leg bone at a curious angle I will never walk normally again

At centre stage, an armchair in which a sort of giant doll reclines, constructed of randomly assorted materials. A noise is heard. Enter a man. He is rigged out in a gas mask. He is shod in sewer worker’s boots. It is HE. HE holds a fragment of a sign in his hands. HE speaks to the doll.

— May I come in? Hello mommy… I was afraid you were sleeping… I found this… HE gestures to the fragment of a sign. … more than a kilometre away. There is a little spring among the charred trees. I saw a child… He thumbed his nose at me… He ran away… He must be a member of the gang. HE approaches the doll. You’ve slipped down, mommy… let me prop you up again… more than a kilometre away… you hear me… I am growing steadier on my legs… I am no longer short of breath… My body is on the mend… and my mind is making things out… I think I remember… I wanted to remove my mask… I was suffocating… still the children don’t seem to mind… HE

103 reads from the sign. Hos… pi… tal. S… Saint Something Hospital… We weren’t wrong mommy… This is the cellar… this used to be the cellar of a hospital… outside there is nothing left… the earth scorched… Mommy. HE fusses with the doll. I would have liked you to be a better likeness… unfortunately… the materials I have to hand… HE removes a few tin cans from his pocket . … found some sardines in tomato sauce… better than in oil… I dream of salads… of lemons… He was a boy… not yet a youth… he was smooth-cheeked… The last time they were older… the girls had large breasts… I frightened them… I need to find a mirror… and a razor… When I am clean-shaven I look younger… HE pulls on a piece of string which leads off stage. I put a tin of sardines at the entrance… at the end of a string… I want to lure them in here… I didn’t hear them speak… perhaps they don’t speak… The walk made me hungry… but before eating let’s perform our little drama… Eating makes me sleepy… Are you comfortable? Tilt your head a little… There we are!

Tanslated by Rafaël Newman

104 André Winter

1909 K & K

‘Ahm tellin ye, they two have a wee yin!’ The older of the two women, Frau Kaschke, the widowed wife of a doctor, whose hairstyle echoed her hefty double chin, put her hand to her mouth, in disbelief. The grey tower of her double bun now quivered over the blue dungaree of her pinny. ‘Naw, it cannae be, two women wi a wee boy?’ The caretaker, and younger of the two, Frau Kruse, nodded. A pearl of sweat ran from her ear to her chin. The hot August day was making its way into the musty stairwell, that also smelled of soap. ‘Tellin ye, ah seen it masel…’ As if to confirm the point, she pushed the basin with the dirty hot water aside. Some drops splashed onto the step. ‘… or rather I heard the bairn greetin, at night. Ma place is right above theirs, sure. Ah dinna believe it, ah thought tae maself, aye so pernickety an’ finicky an’ noo they hiv a wee yin! An’ it’s no’ as if ah noticed anything!’ ‘Ah don’t believe it…’ The older of the two now had her hands against her cheeks, cheeks puffed up with all the heat. She looked out the open stair window, down onto Sophienstrasse, at the end of which, at that moment, two little dots, pushing a pram, appeared. ‘There they’re there noo!’ ‘An’ who would the faither be?’ she whispered, once she’d composed herself, into the dark stairwell. ‘Which o they two,’ the younger one mumbled, into her ear, ‘is the mother, more like?’ Frau Kaschke put her hand to her heart, tortured as it was by her girdle, all this heat, and the scandal of it.

Laughing, Jule and Paula turned from Rosenthalerstrasse into Sophienstrasse. Their mood was light-hearted. At lunchtime they’d taken wee Albers in a borrowed pram to the big field

105 at Tempelhof so that they, too, could welcome and admire the “LZ6”. An airship had never landed in Berlin before. The Kai- ser and 25,000 Berliners had given the Count and the Zeppelin – a highly combustible flying cigar, as was later to emerge – an enthusiastic welcome. Kaschke and Krause – or: “K & K”, as Jule and Paula called them – were waiting in the stairwell, but, today, not even those two would spoil their good mood. They put the pram in the potato cellar and started to climb - with the wee one in Jule’s arms – back up towards the auld dears, who, their necks craning, had taken up position on the bottom landing. ‘Now, there’s a fine lump of a lad!’ Kruse enthused – sweet as anything - into the poor wean’s face. ‘Lovely blue eyes he’s got,’ echoed Kaschke, the old one, leaning over Kruse; also as if butter wouldn’t melt. Couldn’t take her eyes off the wee yin, she couldn’t. Suddenly, she looked up, registering the eyes – brown - of the two dark-haired sisters. ‘Must take eftir his faither…’ She winked conspiratorially, gave a slight dry cough. The caretaker caught the nod and asked them straight. ‘Who’s the proud faither then?’ ‘Dad, of course!’ the sisters answered, as one. Albers, who’d grabbed Kaschke’s little fat fingers, watched the fingers, amazed, as they withdrew - accompanied by a scream - to race towards a mouth that was still saying ‘Oh!’ Kaschke’s heart almost stopped dead. Kruse’s mouth was hanging open, too. Totally aghast, they were both thinking the same. Kruse actually said it. ‘Yir ain faither!’ ‘Obviously, if he’s oor brother,’ Paula retorted quickly, squeezing past the gossips. Back in their room and kitchen, they both exploded with laughter.

106 Paula’s hand – imitating Kaschke’s - raced up to the Oh! on her lips. Jule, holding her tummy, had her mouth wide open. Her eyes popping out of her head, she gawped at Albers and Paula. ‘I thought K was never goney manage to shut thon mouth of hers, sister!’ Happy mood or not, the wee yin yawned from his seat. He blinked, first at one sister, and then the other. ‘Do ye mind still how ye were hangin oot the washin wan Sunday an’ K gave ye a lecture – an’ the wind blew the sheet intae her face, all ae a sudden?’ Paula took a nappy from the indoor line and held it up to her face. Some of the cloth went into her mouth as she breathed in, through it. Dusk had filled the room, as had the heat of this Ber- lin summer’s evening. Paula edged her way through whatever light there was. Albers had fallen asleep now, his head to one side. Carefully, Jule lifted him and put him into the cot that stood at the foot of their bed; behind one of the several sheets hanging, white, in the twilight.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

107 Mireille Zindel

A Stray Guest

I think it is a straightforward story.

On 16 March 2004, I left the apartment at six in the morning to buy cigarettes from a vending machine. I had slept badly and was at a loss to know what to do with my time. Outside the building, unexpectedly, was Elias, kneeling on the ground, such that at first I recognised his jacket, and only then his body, his proud build, second to none. Then the unbelievable thing: a knife goes into his back. I try to remember what the person responsible looks like, but I don’t manage, I see Elias’ back, and yet again the knife, Elias protecting his head, the knife once more, but nothing that stands apart from Elias’ silhouette, Elias, a body removed from the background, a black mark on a white surface, there’s not a sound from him, and then once more, into his back, the knife. Everything is quiet. There is a smell of dust and dry wind. Then I remember that I had wanted to kill him. And I comprehend that it is too late now for that, and will remain so.

***

My name is Elisabeth Vil. People call me Eli. I am thirty-five, a doctor, live in Zurich’s Englischviertel district, and come from a humble background. These facts will help, perhaps.

***

Since Elias’ death, there is a lot I can no longer remember. De- tective Krieg from the Canton of Zurich Police reports what he knows: two road workers discover Elias and myself at quarter past six, Elias is still alive, there is not a sound from me, the ambulance drives us to the hospital where Elias succumbs to his injuries an hour later. Krieg is prevented from asking me

108 questions by the senior physician. As night begins to fall, an orderly accompanies me home. I remember: getting out, I see Elias’ outline in yellow chalk on the asphalt. The orderly uses gentle force to push me into the building, up to the third floor, and into the apartment. I remember this, too: through the dining- room window I observe how two figures use a water jet to wash away the chalk marks.

***

Detective Krieg arrives, accompanied by a thin man who seems unable to breathe and is introduced as his assistant, Franz – as well as by a man with a sketch pad, without a name. As I am ill, I am not required to accompany them to the station, instead the kitchen becomes their station. The kitchen is a long narrow room, done up in white and chrome, the window looks onto Wohnstrasse at a point where – with no houses on either side – it fails to live up to its name as it is not lived in. Krieg needs a statement from me to help with the identikit picture. The artist starts to draw and looks at me expectantly. Krieg asks what the person responsible looked like. I don’t know. I close my eyes and see Elias protecting his head with his arms, Elias on his knees, Elias’ back at the moment the knife penetrates, Elias’ arms, the knife once more, but never the ex- tension of the knife, nothing that stands apart from Elias’ body. Several times in quick succession: his back, with the knife in it; in between I try to see the face, but I can’t see the person responsible, can only see Elias, a body freed from its background, a black mark on a white surface, I can see nothing on that surface, nothing, except Elias. There is nothing to draw.

Krieg knows more: wallet, keys and a bag with two bread rolls were what Elias was carrying, the bag from the Stocker Bakery

109 at the station. Elias was not on his way to work. That, I can confirm: normally, Elias would not leave the house before 10am, and he would go directly to the office, two blocks away. He was a lawyer, but not in any firm. In the last five years Elias did not ever come to mine early in the morning, he only rarely visited, in fact, although our apartments are just ten minutes’ walk away from each other.

Krieg asks: ‘What did Herr Krebs want with you that morning at 6am?’ I don’t know. ‘Had you arranged to meet? No. ‘Frau Vil, please say something.’ I wanted to kill Elias and now comprehend that it is too late for that, and will remain so.

Translated by Donal McLaughlin

110 Emil Zopfi

The Seeker

There is money in the streets. All you have to do is pick it up. A man discovered this years ago while walking around in the hills near Zurich during a life-crisis. He was deep in heavy thoughts and his head was bent. Suddenly he saw a coin glimmering on the forest trail. Fifty cents. Not much. But more importantly, it was a sign. There was a way.

He returned to the city and started looking. Wherever goods were bought and sold, salespeople and customers would often drop coins that rolled away, disappearing across the shoes of people waiting in line. Who bends down for twenty cents nowadays? Or even a five cent coin. Time is money.

He searched and he found. He bent down and he picked up. He didn’t get rich, but he had a purpose and he made a living. His first path in the morning was past the ticket machines ofthe Tram. In the hustle and bustle, many coins were dropped on the pavement and rolled into the gutter. In the course of time he learned where to look for them. Where they ended up depended on the structure of the ground, on the slope, on cracks and holes. Grate-covered manholes and ditches were especially profitable. He would pull up the grate and grope at the bottom. Sometimes he would even find a fiver or a key. He would bring the keys and all finds of greater value - like wallets, jewelry, bills and passports - to the lost-and-found office. He was an honest man and strictly obeyed the law that allowed the finder to keep everything below the value of ten francs as long as it hadn’t been found on private property or in the public transportation system. After three months, he would usually get back the banknotes or the reward for having found a bunch of keys. But this was only a bonus. His core business, as we call it nowadays, was looking for money.

111 “Are you looking for something?” he was often asked while wandering around the city, gazing steadily at the ground. “Yes,” he would answer. “I’m looking for money.” “Oh, you’ve lost your wallet?” “No. Looking for money is my job.”

Nobody understood him. Money was something you earned. Money was something you brought to the bank and invested. They could sympathize with people who stole money. Many ad- mired the gangsters who had robbed Zurich’s main post office in broad daylight and had disappeared with several millions. But they shook their heads when they saw the man who looked for money in the street. He’s a nut, they thought and went along.

His task didn’t seem senseless to him because he put money back in circulation that would otherwise go to waste lying around in the streets. He wrote down the amount, place and time of all his finds in a book. From these statistics he learned on which occa- sions people were most careless in handing over their money, and was able to optimize his route accordingly.

It would sometimes happen that, after his early evening tour along the Bahnhofstrasse - on which he earned an average of 12 Francs and 40 Cents - he dropped an uncleaned and uncounted coin into the hat of a busker. The man wasn’t only clean and honest, he also had a good heart.

Once, after he had dropped a franc into the pot of the Salvation Army and listened to their song for a moment, a lady in uniform addressed him: “I have the impression you are searching for something, sir.” He gave the usual answer. “Aren’t you looking for something else?” she asked. “May-

112 be God? Search and you shall find – it is written in the Holy Bible.” The man had been thinking about this question for a long time on his walks through the city. “Everybody is looking for something,” he said. “One person looks for luck, the other for truth, the third for sense. I myself, I am looking for money.”

He walked on and on his way home he found another glimmering five-cent-coin.

Translated by the author and Johannes Gorannson

113 Mary-Laure Zoss in search of which

from the top room the snotnoses are dreaming, they graze their hands on the wooden balustrades, their soul, returned, skins the slope of the fields, under the grass the dead man’s eyes prick the heavens, catch on the muddy bellies of foxes in search of prey, they lose themselves, feet in the soft earth where bones are dis- integrating, in their games prop ladders against trees, they listen to the night draining under the bark of the elm, the roads are full of holes, they are still trying to climb back up by means of the packages of night which remain in their throats, worry about the black cavities in the walls their beds are below the roofs, parcels of garden come up to the springs, they burrow into them in their dreamless dreams, their old man’s hands go underneath the piles of crumbled leaves, they have cries in their head, like tow or smoke, they review their little rag men, the same white pinched lips that refuse to speak to them, prophets unfurl their pasteboard sentences, it stops them from thinking, or weeping, the night drains the slopes of the dark sky onto the branches of the elm, from there falling onto the cold earth, and still in reverse they follow the gaze of the dead man who sees the soles, the bottom of the paving stones at the entrance, the roots torn out with a knife, it’s been three years now in winter the nights are very long, you would say they begin in the morning, in the lamps that refuse to go out and which drink the white of the walls, when you don’t hear them, they ask if someone is there in the night, no one answers, you hear the rain in the patches of giant cabbages and mushrooms hollowing out the wood of the fences, on the kitchen table, the mother counts sandwiches for each of them

114 some days they feel nothing, even level with the leaves, when their soles catch the mud and the roads pockmarked by tractors, they hide behind the trunks, the beech trees have grey bark all the way up to the slightly blue sky, pieces of light spin at the bottom of the leaves where the water would flow, they are bored on Saturday, they squelch through the wet grass, their tears back up their throats again, the forest destroys them beneath a white sun and the earth descends into the holes of their shoes; the little one never waits to weep, he is quicker to find the roads, fills his eyes with pebbles, tears his sleeves on the brambles there where the streams roll up their roots, and the two snotnoses proceed on their sprains, mouth full of mutes the route begins at the transformer, if the old man’s gaze followed them, on the bottoms of the trunks cut in the mud, but nothing to be done, he will not see them, others pass along the same road their necks huddled in fur, with the paws of their dogs, while they plunge into the rust of the forest, do not speak, seek the night of the streams, a biscuit in their pocket crumbled, in November the sky is green at the fork of the trees

Tanslated by Rafaël Newman

115 Germano Zullo

I was born with an impenetrable head of hair.

I am kept largely by my wife. For the last long while, it is she who has made it possible for me to write. That’s not why I love her. I love her because she is who she is. I have never been able to write well. I drag out ideas and words across great empty distances from page to page. I know that one day or another the moment will come when I am able to deliver the complete goods. That moment is somewhere out there in the void of the universe, waiting for me. I have already written a great deal. I can write about anything. I can tackle any genre and any style. But I have yet to write truly well. Writing is everything. Writing, nothing but. Writing. I have never been able to write well, but I continue writing, seeking. Day by day. Hour by hour. Second by second. You could also call that work, but it isn’t work, it’s writing.

I didn’t sleep a wink all night. My wife didn’t come home. It’s the first time she’s spent the night away from home. She gave those hours to a man. A man who wanted those hours with her and who had doubtless earned them for one reason or another. So she gave them to him, because she wanted them as well. Lover is a prettier word to write than husband. It‘s also prettier to pro- nounce. Lover makes you want to fly. Husband makes you want to flee. And yet my wife never uses that pretty word, lover. she prefers to use the word man, or gentleman. And that’s how she’s always been, ever since I’ve known her and ever since she‘s loved me and I’ve loved her, when a lover passes by she says, there’s a man, or, there’s a gentleman. On occasion, particularly when she is confiding in someone, she also uses the word delicious to describe these men and these gentlemen. And in the end she has said something pretty after all, something bursting with desire: delicious man, delicious gentleman.

116 I have never had the sense that I was a man, or a gentleman, or a lover. I am a husband. A nice husband. You know nice is that pretty word which has become synonymous with jerk, but in fact, once upon a time, it meant fabulous. I am a fabulous husband. And then above all, above all I am a writer. And as it happens I should never be anything other than a writer. I stretch out my hand towards the empty place in our bed and say very quietly, “My love.”

In the end she comes home at dawn, guilty, but full up with the other. I feel guilty as well. Without quite knowing why or how. I feel guilty the same way I love her. I speak about the other. I speak about us. I speak about us and the other. She speaks about herself. She speaks about herself and the other. She speaks about the other. She speaks about me. It’s an argument. And then everything is calm. She slips into my arms. I take her in my arms. We fall asleep for a while.

The first time the pain was truly quite acute. She literally ran me through, and to this day, when I stand against the light, you can see it penetrating my body, shining through my tissue. The gap left in me by that first blow continues to fascinate me. That said, I have been carrying something painful within me since my birth. Here I must write a sentence which apparently has nothing to do with what I have set down so far but which in reality, I know unconsciously, is intimately related to it. And that sentence is: I was born with an impenetrable head of hair. Mama told me that when the midwife saw me come out with my impenetrable head of hair she cried out: “It’s a poet!” This prediction, which might at the time have sounded like a blessing,

117 turned out to be more of a doom. But the thing to remember is not the midwife’s exclamation; it is instead the sentence: I was born with an impenetrable head of hair. Ever since I learned about death I have thought about suicide. My first imaginary suicide involved a knife, which I plunged into my heart. So I had already conceived a thirst for stigmata.

Tanslated by Rafaël Newman

Novel in progress.

118 Biographical Notes

Kurt Aebli born in 1955, lives in Tagelswangen Previous works include: Ameisenjagd, poems (2004); Der ins Herz getroffene Punkt (2005); Ich bin eine Nummer zu klein für mich, poems (Engeler, 2007)

Urs Allemann born in 1948, lives in Bettingen Previous works include: Holder die Polder. Oden Elegien An- dere (2001); schœn! schœn! Collection of poems (2003); im kinde schwirren die ahnen. 52 poems (Engeler, 2008)

Flurina Badel born in 1983, lives in Chur Various publications in literary magazines, radio play

Lukas Bärfuss born in 1971, lives in Zürich Previous works include: Meienbergs Tod/Die sexuellen Neuro- sen unserer Eltern/Der Bus. plays (2005); Alices Reise in die Schweiz/Die Probe/Amygdala. plays (2007); Hundert Tage, novel (Wallstein, 2008)

Bruno Blume born in 1972 in Zug, lives in Buchberg (Germany) Previous works include: Tamara und die Teufel. Illustr. von Franziska Biermann ( 2006); Wer liest, ist. Various Illustra- tors; Gufidaun, Martin und der Ausserirdische. Illustr. by Jacky Gleich (Tulipan, 2007)

Wolfgang Bortlik born in 1952, lives in Riehen Previous works include: Hektische Helden (2002); Am Ball ist immer der Erste (2006); A Hard Day’s Night (2007); Hopp Schwiiz (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2008)

119 Arno Camenisch born in 1978, lives in Biel Ernesto ed autres Manzegnas (Romania, 2005); Various publications in literary magazines and anthologies

François Debluë born in 1950, lives in Rivaz Previous works include: Pour l’instant (2002); Courts traités du dévouement (2004); Conversation avec Rembrandt (2006); Le front aux vitres, poèmes (Empreintes, 2008)

Lisa Elsässer born in 1951, lives in Walenstadt Ob und darin, poems (Pudelundpinscher, 2008); Various publications in literary magazines

Eugène born in 1969, lives in Romanel-sur-Lausanne Previous works include: Mange Monde, novel (2000); Pamakul- ie, pays fabuleux; Hand made club (2003); Sammy et Betty (2004); La Vallée de la Jeunesse, autobiographical novel (La Joie de Lire, 2007)

Katharina Faber born in 1952, lives in Zürich Manchmal sehe ich am Himmel einen endlos weiten Strand (2002); Mit einem Messer zähle ich die Zeit (2005); Fremde Sig- nale, novel (Bilger, 2008)

Andrea Fazioli born in 1978, lives in Bellinzona Chi muore si rivede, novel (2005); Swisstango in: Delitti di pro- vincia (2007); L’uomo senza casa, novel (Guanda, 2007)

Anna Felder born in 1937, in Lugano, lives in Aarau

120 Previous works include: Nati complici (1999); L’accordattore, Domani pesce (2005); Il prima e il poi in Val Bregaglia (in La luce del mondo) (2005); I sogni in barca (2006); Le Adelaidi (Sottoscola, 2007)

Simon Froehling born in 1978, lives in Zürich Previous works (plays) include: Fieberkind (2006); Absolut Züri 1: Rolis Baby (2007); Absolut Züri 2: Beats Fest (2007); gibt sie antwort atmet er (2008); Alles Walzer – Monolog für eine Aufrechte (2008); Feindmaterie (Autorenagentur, 2008)

Leo Gottheil born in 1975, lives in Zürich Various publications in anthologies and literary magazines. Wenn ein Laib Brot vom Himmel fiele, novel (working title) will be published in Spring 2009 (Atrium Verlag)

Svenja Herrmann born in Frankfurt 1970, lives in Aarau Eingrenzung, poems (1996); ein viertel blau, poems and elec- tronic music, audiobook (2003); various publications in anthologies and literary magazines

Annette Hug born in 1970, lives in Zürich Lady Berta, novel (Rotpunkt, 2008); stories in various literary magazines

Franz Hohler born in 1943, lives in Zürich Previous works include: Die Torte und andere Erzählungen (2004); 52 Wanderungen (2005); Vom richtigen Gebrauch der Zeit, poems (2006); 112 einseitige Gschichten (2007); Es klopft, novel (Luchterhand, 2007)

121 Urs Jaeggi born in 1931, lives in Berlin and Mexico Previous works include: Brandeis (1978/1998); Lange Jahre Stille als Gräusch (1999); Durcheinandergesellschaft. Versuche, die Gegenwart zu verstehen (Huber, 2008)

Keller+Kuhn Christoph Keller, born in 1963, lives in St. Gallen and New York; Heinrich Kuhn, born in 1939, lives in St. Gallen and Paris Previous works include: Unterm Strich (1994); Die blauen Wunder (1997); Der Stand der letzten Dinge, novel (Limmat, 2008).

Jochen Kelter born in 1946, lives in Tägerwilen Previous works include: Hall oder die Erfindung der Fremde, novel (2005); Verweilen in der Welt, poems (2006); Ein Ort unterm Himmel, Leben über die Grenzen, essays (Waldgut, 2008)

Tim Krohn born in 1965 in Germany, grew up in Glarus and lives in Zürich Previous works include: Quatemberkinder, novel (1998); Bi- enen, Königinnen, Schwäne in Stücken. plays (2002); Die Er- findung der Welt, novel (2002); Heimweh (2005); Vrenelis Gärt- li, novel (Eichborn, 2007)

Rolf Lappert born in 1958 in Zürich, lives in Ireland Previous works include: Der Himmel der perfekten Poeten. Novel (1994); Die Gesänge der Verlierer, novel (1995); Nach Hause schwimmen, novel (Hanser 2008); Wiener Walzer, anthology (Nagel&Kimche, 2008)

Daniel Maggetti born in 1961, lives in Lausanne Previous works include: La mort, les anges, la poussière. Fic-

122 tion (1995); Pleins-vents, poems (2000); Fourmis cosmiques, illustr. by Muma Soler (2004); Les Créatures du Bon Dieu (L’Aire, 2007)

Jacqueline Moser born in 1965, lives in Basel Lose Tage, novel (weissbooks, 2008)

Adolf Muschg born in 1934, lives in Männedorf Previous works include: Sutters Glück, novel (2001); Das ge- fangene Lächeln (2002); Eikan, du bist spät dran, novel (2004); Goethes Reisen in die Schweiz (2005); Wenn es ein Glück ist, love stories (Suhrkamp, 2008)

Paul Nizon born in 1929, lives in Paris Previous works include: Die Erstausgabe der Gefühle. Journal 1961-1972 (2002); Das Drehbuch der Liebe. Journal 1973-1979 (2004); Das Fell der Forelle, novel (2005); Die Zettel des Ku- riers. Journal 1990-1999 (Suhrkamp, 2008)

Maurizio Pinarello born in 1963, lives in Bubendorf Das Gedächtnis der Steine, novel (edition8, 2008)

Marius Daniel Popescu born in 1963, lives in Prilly La symphonie du loup, novel (José Corti, 2007)

Dubravko Pušek born in 1956, lives in Lugano Effeta Raman (2001); Anime, erbe (2004); d.c.p.m. poems (Laghi di Plitvice, 2005)

123 Fabio Pusterla born in 1957, lives in Lugano Previous works include: Bocksten (1989); Le cose senza storia (1994): Pietra sangue (1999); Folla sommersa (2004); Storie dell’armadillo (2006); Il nervo di Arnold, essays (Marcos y Marcos, 2007)

Margrit Schriber born in 1939, lives in Zofingen Previous works include: Schneefesseln, novel (1998); Von Zeit zu Zeit klingelt ein Fisch (2001); Das Lachen der Hexe, novel (2006); Die falsche Herrin, novel (Nagel&Kimche, 2008)

Esther Spinner born in 1948, lives in Zürich Previous works include: die spinnerin (1981); Nella (1985); Starrsinn (1988); meine mutter hat meinem vater mit einer pfanne das leben gerettet (1996); Was kostet ein Wort? (2003); Lamento will be published in Autumn 2008 (edition8)

Peter Stamm born in 1963, lives in Winterthur Previous works include: Agnes (1998); Blitzeis (2001); Unge- fähre Landschaft (2001); In fremden Gärten (2003); Der Kuss des Kohaku, plays (2005); An einem Tag wie diesem (2006); Wir fliegen (S. Fischer, 2008)

Isabelle Stamm born in 1977, lives in Aarau Zwillings Welten, novel (Edition Isele, 2008)

Verena Stefan born in 1947 in Bern, lives in Montréal Previous works include: Häutungen (1975), Mit Füssen mit Flügeln (1980); Wortgetreu ich träume (1987); Es ist reich gewesen (1993); Fremdschläfer, novel (Ammann, 2007)

124 Jörg Steiner born in 1930, lives in Biel Previous works include: Der Kollege (1996); Wer tanzt schon zu Musik von Schstakowitsch (2000); Mit deiner Stimme überlebe ich (2005); Ein Kirschbaum am Pazifischen Ozean (Suhrkamp, 2008)

Franco Supino born in 1965, lives in Solothurn Previous works include: Musica Leggera, novel (1995); Die Schöne der Welt oder Der Weg zurück (1997); Der Gesang der Blinden (1999); Ciao amore, ciao (2004); Das andere Leben (Rotpunkt, 2008)

Raphael Urweider born in 1974, lives in Bern Lichter in Menlo Park, poems (2000); Kobold und der Kunstp- feifer. Fast eine Räubergeschichte (2002); Das Gegenteil von Fleisch, poems (2003); Alle Deine Namen, poems (Dumont, 2008)

Michel Viala born in 1933, lives in Céligny Recent publication: Théâtre incomplet I: Monologues et pièces à deux personnages; II: Pièces à grandes distributions (Campiche, 2007)

André Winter born in 1962, lives in Emmen Die Hansens, novel (Bilger, 2008)

Mireille Zindel born in 1973, lives in Zürich. Irrgast, novel (Salis, 2008)

125 Emil Zopfi born in 1943, lives in Obstalden Previous works include: Londons letzter Gast, novel (1999); Steinschlag, crime novel from the mountains (2002); Glärnisch, Rosen auf Vrenelis Gärtli (2003); Schrot und Eis. Als Zürichs Landvolk gegen die Regierung putschte (2005); Spurlos, crime novel from the mountains (Limmat, 2007)

Mary-Laure Zoss born in 1955, lives in Lausanne Le noir du ciel, poems (Empreintes, 2007)

Germano Zullo born in 1968, lives in Dardagny Previous works include: Quelques années de moins que la lune (2006); Une bonne longueur en bouche (2007); La Murelle (2007); A la mer (Joie de lire, 2008)

126 The Translators

Alison Gallup a native New Yorker currently living in rural Germany, is a freelance translator. She is co-author of Great Paintings of the Western World and has translated books and essays on art and architecture.

Paul Knight lives in Berne and works as a translator for the English Lan- guage Service of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland. Among his translations ist Ernst Bloch’s famous book The Principle of Hope.

Donal McLaughlin was Scottish PEN’s first-ever écrivain sans frontières and is a recent winner of the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award. In 2004, he spent six months in Berne as that city’s first „Scot- tish Writing Fellow“. His translation work includes collaborat- ing with Chris Dolan on The Reader, a stage version of Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser. His translations of German-Swiss writers have appeared in two previous anthologies - one British, one American.

Rafaël Newman translator and book author, studied in Toronto, Berlin and Paris and lives in Zürich. His anthology Contemporary Jewish Writing in Switzerland has been published by Limmat Verlag in Zürich an by the University of Nebraska Press.

127 Lise Weil was founder and editor of the feminist literary review Trivia: A Journal of Ideas based in North Amherst, Massachusetts. She currently teaches in Goddard College’s M.A. program and is at work on a book of literary nonfiction titled In Search of Pure Lust.

Ann Cotten was born in Ames, Iowa, and lives as a poet and translator in Berlin. Her first book, Fremdwörterbuchsonette, has recently been published by Suhrkamp in Frankfurt am Main.

128 ISBN 978-3-9523242-1-9