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

now, but was desirable and inspiring, as Ulf said. At least, I only felt a brief twinge of shame, as if he’d said he’d like to try a girl with bigger breasts, because who knows, perhaps it would be a kick. ‘To be a kick’ was an expression we used back then.

I ask: ‘Do you think it would have been a kick?’

Ulf doesn’t react. Perhaps he really has forgotten everything. How it was when we were together, and the reason he split up with me, and the plans we had, like having cats and kids, goats and street theatre, sex and house squatting. Like the expression ‘It’d be a kick.’

I decide to go for broke because none of this matters anymore.

‘I think we had extremely different starting points in life, which we ignored at all costs, and I think it’s still the case, or even more the case, and it’s being ignored more than ever — or worse, it’s being glossed over with neoliberal rubbish about opportunities of moving up in the world and “Everybody knows that”, and I hate to say it, because you’ve joined in with that horrible mantra that I’m making myself out to be a victim, but while I’m sure I’m partly to blame, and others have suffered because of me, I still think it’s right to think and talk about what’s at the bottom of all this, because it’s just too easy to make me a scapegoat and declare me insane. And effectively evicting us from the flat is totally outrageous, and can’t be justified at all, especially not with “Everybody knows that”, “You only have yourself to blame”, and “Well, it was just a reaction”. Okay, maybe Frank has decided to muck out the past, but the muck he’s cleaning out is still breathing!’

Now I’m out of breath.

Ulf’s handsome face, shaven early this morning, is now a silvery, elegantly stubbled mask. I know that he was against the vanilla-coloured façade. He wanted grey with a sparkly mica finish, so that the house would glitter when it caught the sunlight, but would otherwise look modest. I know he thought about pushing his choice through, against the majority, and stepping forward as the architect rather than an equal member of the building group. But he decided against it in the end, because the exterior wasn’t that important to him: being accepted by the group was more valuable than recognition in his professional circle. I sense how difficult it was for him, because he has always been ahead of the times in aesthetics. He knows that he knew better, had proved it a thousand times, and yet, decided to sacrifice himself for the sake of the others.

‘You only think of yourself, that’s your problem,’ he says, while almost at the same time, I say: ‘I’m openly selfish, that’s your problem.’

We don’t laugh. We don’t say ‘Jinx’, like the kids do, and anyway, we didn’t quite say the same thing; but we are jinxed somehow, and I understand this phrase for the first time.

Ulf doesn’t have any children, and I don’t feel like explaining it to him. I want him to explain something to me. I want to force him.

‘How’s Willi?’ I ask.

For the first time, I realise that Willi is called Willi and lives with Vera and Frank.

‘He’s famed for his selfishness too,’ I say, ‘famous for having a will of his own, and that’s why the adults can’t stand him.’

Ulf looks at me blankly. He’s sticking to the etiquette of not talking about people in their absence. This is another rule I break. ‘But he’s tormented and pushed around and never gets what he wants in the end. Which is for everybody to admit that they’re lying. That they wish they were somewhere else and had some peace and quiet. Do you think Frank really wants to take his boys to the swimming pool every weekend? No. But it’s the only place left where he can keep them under control. The last resort. All these holidays, parties, the whole eternal show. Being. A. Family. Isn’t. Nice. It’s exhausting and gruelling, and just one long bickering session. You get cold, you get athlete’s foot, and end up with soggy biscuits on the changing-room floor. And it’s fucking convenient to put the blame on one person, especially if it’s someone who doesn’t realise what’s going on and can’t defend themselves, because they’re small, or weak, or a little rebel. And it’s fucking convenient to dump your guilt on somebody while making out it’s just your way of helping, disciplining, or restraining them, and to use self-defence as a justification for tougher measures — not of your own free will, of course, but because you were forced, and it was just a reaction.’

‘Are you talking about yourself now, or Willi?’

‘You were there, for fuck’s sake! At that awful christening. You saw the way Frank dragged out Willi with his hand over his mouth. It was brutal!’

Ulf says nothing.

I close my eyes. Ulf must have seen it; we were standing right next to each other. He didn’t say anything at the time, obviously, and neither did I. Nobody said anything, as far as I know. It was Willi’s fault, because he’d provoked Frank and wouldn’t behave in church, and Frank didn’t know what to do and was probably in shock, like my grandfather when he saw Brigitte running across the road without looking. You have to keep your kids under control; otherwise things happen, and that’s why these measures are always for their own good. I’m the last one who wants them to die, and I understand Frank, and I understand why he dragged Willi out and held his mouth, and the silence afterwards. What was there to say? But it’s true that the clothes hanger broke, and that Willi’s shin hit the church pew on the way out. A mistake, a consequence, unintentional, but a fact, nevertheless.

Ulf isn’t listening to me. Ulf says nothing. Here in the bar, we