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

All the best,

Resi

I could send this letter, but I should probably wait until tomorrow and read it through again. It’s always better to sleep on it first, and that’s why letters are better than emails, and books are better than letters, and the afterlife is better than Lidl on the corner.

I’ve been creeping around Sven all evening as if I’m ashamed of something. Well, some might say I’m partly to blame for our imminent homelessness. And even though I know that Sven doesn’t think like that, I’m not sure this time. I avoid him precisely because he doesn’t believe I’m to blame, but I can’t talk about anything else except the fact that I am. And that’s another thing I’m sure of: Sven doesn’t want to talk about something he doesn’t believe in. He never wants to think the thoughts of other people; if anybody’s, then probably mine if I ask him straight out. But then they definitely have to be mine, and not what I think other people’s thoughts are. And at this stage, I can’t guarantee that. Come to think of it, I never can. So I’m silent. And lonely. Stuck in other people’s thoughts.

I pick up my mobile and press Ulf’s number.

‘Hello, it’s Resi.’

‘Hi,’ he says. And then nothing.

I know him; his silence speaks to me. He knows about the notice on the flat, and he knows that this phone call is to confront him.

‘So?’ I say.

He sighs.

‘Listen,’ he says, ‘I did my best, and I have to say that it didn’t help much.’

‘So this is a punishment?’

‘If you want to put it like that.’

‘That means everybody knows?’

He says nothing, so yes.

‘And that’s okay, is it?’

He sighs. ‘It’s Frank’s business.’

‘Can I now say I’m a victim, or am I still not allowed?’

‘What?’

‘Well, you said I shouldn’t make myself out to be the victim.’

‘Listen, I don’t want to talk about this on the phone. We can meet up, but this is just too confronting. Sorry.’

‘What are you sorry about?’

‘That it’s come to this. No one’s happy about it. Everybody has to figure out for themselves how they’re going to deal with it.’

‘Really.’

‘But there’s still a difference. You acted; Frank reacted.’

‘That’s a fact now?’

‘Yes; the way I see it, it is.’

September 1955; Gomadingen.

Father called Marianne into the living room from where he had just seen a car nearly run Brigitte over. Father grabbed Marianne and started thrashing her with the clothes hanger, and Marianne shouted: ‘Stop! It wasn’t me! She was the one who ran across the road without looking!’ And Father yelled: ‘Exactly, she’s still little, and you’re supposed to look after her!’ And Marianne said: ‘But I don’t want to look after her! I want to play and do what I want!’ And Father yelled: ‘I want doesn’t get!’ which meant that what Marianne wanted wasn’t important. The only important thing was what Father wanted.

And to drum this into her, he beat Marianne.

Marianne had it drummed into her, and from then on, she was able to stand Brigitte even less than before. Thirty years later, she defended her father with the argument that he had probably suffered a huge shock; thirty years later she had her own children, whom she always worried about, and because of that, or because she was an adult herself by then, she still felt she had too much responsibility and too little freedom, and was never able to do what she wanted. And perhaps her father felt the same way, although he tried for a while to pass responsibility for Brigitte to Marianne, just so he could have a nap in peace for once. But that doesn’t work, you can never pass it on: your child ends up dead, and then it all falls back on you, because you didn’t manage to teach her sister how to take on responsibility. And want doesn’t get.

In 1955 it was completely normal to give an eight-year-old responsibility for a five-year-old. An eight-year-old knows that cars are dangerous and that you can’t just run across the road. A five-year-old doesn’t know that yet, and that’s why she’s free to do so. All fingers were pointing at Marianne. If anything, she should have refused the responsibility in the first place: ‘No Daddy, I can’t look after Brigitte. I’d rather play on my own.’ To say this later was not okay. It was Marianne’s fault, and whoever says that Brigitte was her father’s child and not Marianne’s might just as well say that Marianne was also her father’s child, and that’s why she was already in his debt. That wouldn’t have been strange for Father to think and so the only question left was how and whether Marianne could have refused responsibility from the get-go. If not, then she didn’t stand a chance. She was unlucky: to be a girl, to be the oldest, to be born into a family with many children, and no money or staff. And to be upset all the time about being unlucky and the unfavourable circumstances of your birth isn’t healthy. It’s good that Marianne stopped that as an adult, forgave her father in retrospect, and understood why he did what he did; otherwise she would have been unhappy for the rest of her life. Worrying gives you wrinkles, and anyway, Marianne wanted to have her cake and eat it, and that’s exactly what I want to do too, and so I’m not making myself out to be the victim, but the perpetrator.

The story starts with me. I made the decision of my own free will; the sheet of paper was blank when I first held it in my hand, or rather opened it in Word on my feeble old laptop. I could have easily written something else on it.

Go. Fuck. Yourselves. You. Pathetic. Arseholes.

Love

What time can it be? Ten?

Probably later, because most of the windows facing the road are already dark. All the bedrooms face the back except for Ulf