Higher Ground Anke Stelling (great novels of all time .TXT) 📖

The three of us go home. Not together: Bea walks several steps ahead of us. Looks into shop windows at her reflection in the glass, straightens her shoulders, pouts.

I pretend not to notice.

Lynn lags behind and collects leaves. Yellow sycamore and withered brown chestnut. In front of the corner shop, there’s a sumac tree that she also picks leaves from.

When we get home, Sven’s there.

Someone who could have carried out my orders and pulled the boys away from their computers. But Sven doesn’t do those kinds of things; he’s making supper instead. Grating carrots for a salad. Not all the grated bits land in the bowl, but Sven finishes grating before he mops the floor, and when he mops, he doesn’t care about the bits that disappear into the gaps between the floorboards.

If only I could do that.

I already get nervous while I’m grating; and after I’ve mopped the floor, I have to dig out all the stuff from between the gaps and look at it. I have to take care of everything, even the dirt.

‘Leave it,’ says Sven, but he doesn’t explain how.

The only thing I’ve managed to learn from him so far is to withdraw, close the door behind me, take a deep breath and: cigarette.

I know it’s stupid, Bea. And unhealthy. But I’m addicted. Smoking makes me feel independent when, in fact, I’m totally dependent. But even the addiction is a good feeling. I enjoy doing something bad for me.

Sven understands this. He even openly admits it to you kids. Of course he doesn’t like it when you gawp at the TV and eat junk food, but he doesn’t pretend you can just stop, or that he knows how you’ll not do it, or that he’s any different. Sven owns up that he doesn’t know and can’t stop either, and I love him for that, even if I sometimes curse him for it too.

‘I always have to take care of everything!’ I whine, and at the same time, I’m thankful that Sven knows how to stay out of it.

It’s not a skill you should despise, Bea: openly admitting things, looking after Number One. You shouldn’t confuse it with indifference. Sven waits until he’s asked. He doesn’t see you or me as his responsibility or property. I know, that’s what all fathers and husbands claim, and then prove the opposite by their behaviour.

Ingmar, for example. A modern guy, very nice too. How happy we were when Friederike found him! And don’t worry, I won’t bitch about him, even though he’s the biggest arsehole on earth — but it’s partly my fault, as shown by the sentence ‘How happy we were when …’ Which proves that we were starting to worry that Friederike might be damned to singledom and childlessness for good! Phew, we thought, just in time.

It’s very revealing the way Prince Ingmar’s appearance sent us into raptures, how relieved we were. No wonder he doesn’t take female autonomy seriously. Instead, he thinks he has to save women, and, if need be, give them orders. In any case, he has to be on constant alert. And if there’s no alternative: psychiatric ward.

I used to like him very much. It’s easy to like Ingmar, because he’s good-looking, and always cocks his head to one side as if he’s interested — like Gaby Dohm as Sister Christa in Die Schwarzwaldklinik. You won’t know that, Bea, you’ll have to watch it on YouTube; the opening credits are enough. Gaby Dohm cocks her head to one side three times, and Ingmar does it too, because it means you’re listening, taking your time, and showing empathy. A bit over-the-top, yes. I think so too now.

But at the time, I fell for it, didn’t notice the parallels to Sister Christa, although Ingmar’s eyes are very similar to Gaby Dohm’s: big and gentle and hazelnut brown. Add dark-blue sweaters, which make a reliable impression, and lace-up shoes. Men who wear slip-ons are slippery, men who wear lace-ups are solid: it’s as simple as it sounds. The worst are men who turn lace-ups into slip-ons by wearing down the backs. I know one of those, but it’s not about him now. It’s about Ingmar, who always ties his shoes carefully and takes his time.

Friederike met him when she thought nothing good would ever happen in her love life again, and we were all thrilled because Ingmar proved that it would. He was evidence of what we’d been preaching to Friederike for years: ‘He’ll show up one day!’ And he did, at Christian and Ellen’s wedding, who were the first in our circle of friends to get married, which is why everybody was still into weddings and thought they were exciting. And then Ingmar came along too, an old friend of an even older friend of Ellen’s, new to Berlin and single and a doctor.

Unbelievable! Like in the movies!

Friederike was wearing an outlandish dress, because she wanted to contrast Ellen, as she put it, who was getting hitched, whereas she was mutating straight from schoolgirl to old maid. So her dress was both short and high-necked, with a white round collar that went all the way up to her chin. And against all expectations of where Friederike stood that night, she ended up standing in the corner with her feet turned in, drinking one Caipirinha after another, and it was logical that Ingmar fell for her. He, on the other hand, was so unreal that she flirted with him outrageously and let him get her another drink before slipping her finger into the loop of his belt and pulling him towards her.

It even makes me dizzy now to think of how wonderful it was. A man for Friederike, a good-looking, dependable guy!

He fitted into our circle without a glitch, precisely because he was so nice, confident, and together. He had money, a real job, and wanted kids. And then even more money, and a talent for organisation, and half a doctor’s surgery, which quite soon became all