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

be authentic, and leading a double life was just the thing for people who couldn’t get enough, like us.

Kurt sang that he liked it and wasn’t gonna crack.

Kurt put a bullet through his brain.

We had to leave Mühsamstraße.

Ulf grieved for Kurt as if he knew him personally. I knitted him an olive-green mohair cardigan, like the one Kurt was wearing on MTV Unplugged.

Ulf split up with me. He started applying himself seriously to his architecture studies.

1995; Berlin.

Vera edited music videos. Soon got to know real bands, Berlin musicians, and the clubs they played in; I didn’t want to go with her just to stand around. I still couldn’t sing, but maybe I could write pretty well.

I wrote lyrics, and Vera sang them. We shot a video.

We dreamed about becoming famous like — yeah, like who actually? Simon and Garfunkel? George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley? Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart?

A guy from Friedrichshain wanted to be our manager. He sent out our demo tapes but didn’t know the right people in the end. Or didn’t know them well enough. Vera shagged him but not because of that. We were after love, not a career. Or preferably both, like — yeah, like who actually? Kurt and Courtney?

Kurt was dead, and Courtney had managed to have his baby just in time, thank God.

And Marianne was so looking forward to having grandchildren.

Vera’s mother, too; she didn’t think it was ever going to happen.

Not to mention Friederike’s mum. She was already worried that Friederike might be — but no. Everything turned out fine.

We weren’t like our mothers.

We had our wild times, after all, fulfilled our dreams, got to know more than one penis, watched our waistlines only secretly, if at all, and our husbands knew how to use the washing machine.

Vera and I stayed close. We knew everything there was to know about each other, knew precisely what made the other tick, witnessed who we had been and who we had become. We belonged together. We were family, we had a maternal love for each other. Selfless and self-righteous at the same time. We were understanding about our lack of understanding. There was no hassle. No envy.

‘Just help yourself,’ we said unhesitatingly. ‘You can have the last, biggest, tastiest piece — because if you’re happy, I’m happy too. And anyway, I’m stronger than you. I can resist. I don’t have to keep stuffing myself—’

Maternal love is poisonous. It pretends not to demand anything, and in truth, it wants everything. It says: ‘I am because you are, and you only exist because I am. Because I take care of you! But don’t worry about me.’ When in truth, every step you make and every breath you take is about me.

Some stories might have warned us, stories about seduction, traps, and disguises; about the poison of maternal love, the other side of the coin when you indulge somebody’s every whim, and a mother’s fear of no longer being needed. Fairy tales.

In the Brothers’ Grimm, they’ve all been censored and turned into stepmothers. Did you know that, Bea? I didn’t.

Free will

‘Why didn’t you want to marry me?’

It seems like a good idea to start with an abstract, over-and-done-with accusation instead of a concrete, still-smouldering one.

Ulf has ordered a bottle of beer for himself, and wine for me. Ulf is emphasising his willingness to take the side of the working class, whereas I still don’t know the difference between Cabernet and Bordeaux and Pinot noir. I could have taught myself by now, but I bluff instead, pretending to think for a moment before ordering.

‘I don’t know,’ says Ulf. ‘No one wanted to get married. Did you? That’s news to me.’

‘No,’ I say, ‘I didn’t.’

I clear my throat.

‘But that’s my point,’ I continue. ‘I didn’t want to move into K23 either. So, where does that leave will? So-called free will?’

Ulf’s expression is sad. He looks good: he’s slim, well-toned, has an upright posture from yoga, and still has all his hair, which he’ll always keep if he hasn’t lost it by now, as I know from my hairdresser. His sad expression reveals his age, and will scare off potential candidates for an affair, unless they’re into psychological problems, misery, and arguments. If you look closely, you’ll see that the sadness weighs down his well-toned shoulders too.

‘We don’t have to beat around the bush,’ says Ulf.

‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘So what’s at the bottom of all this?’

‘To muck out the past?’ says Ulf. ‘You’re not the only one who gets to do that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You broke away from us. With your article. And definitely with your book.’

‘Well, I think I used you as examples too often. Seeing you as examples, that was the problem.’

‘The problem was you going it alone. You were underhand. Clearly you think everything we do is stupid. Well, then. Suit yourself.’

‘Do you remember the skiing holiday?’

‘What skiing holiday?’

‘In twelfth grade, when you all went to Laueli, and I didn’t.’

‘Dimly, yes.’

‘You mean the memories are dim, or we were dim?’

‘Stop it, Resi. I’m not going to walk into your trap.’

He gets up to swap his empty beer bottle for a full one. I rub the corners of my mouth in case spit or red wine has collected in the cracks.

When Ulf comes back, I ask: ‘Should I have accepted Ingmar’s money?’

Ulf looks tortured. I suddenly remember that when he split up with me, back when we were twenty, his reason was very similar to Vera’s. He said that, as my partner, he saw the world through my eyes, and although it had been a very inspiring experience, he was curious to see the world through his own eyes.

It had seemed a lovely, understandable reason to split up with somebody, and I loved him for that, even though at the time, he had implied that only a gentler, funnier way of seeing things than mine would be bearable in the long term. However, that was just speculation, and back then, criticism wasn’t criticised as much as it is