Higher Ground, Anke Stelling [historical books to read .TXT] 📗

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘then we could just do what we did in the evenings all day long, like we always do.’

But then he said that the evenings were different when you’d done a few hours of exercise — hurtling down slopes, in other words — and I said: ‘Yeah, but I can’t join in.’

‘Yes,’ said Ulf sadly. ‘I realise that but it’s not my fault, and not the others’ either.’

Back then, it was already about whose fault it was, I now realise.

In any case, I was at a loss for an answer, and waited to see what they would decide; and then they really did leave without talking to me about it and, at heart, I suppose I couldn’t believe it.

I sat at home that weekend and thought about what I would do, meaning the lesson I would learn, as well as the punishment I should mete out.

No one had mobile phones in those days — apart from Christian’s dad, who had one in his car, which was parked below their detached house in an underground garage that stank worse than all the others — and that’s why I couldn’t phone or be phoned, or send a scathing, reproachful, or forgiving text for the next eternal three days. Instead, I argued back and forth with myself in my head.

It was, to put it mildly, awful.

But afterwards, of course, it faded into the background, and life went on and the weekend was over, and I hadn’t managed to come to any particularly clever conclusions all alone in my head — certainly nothing about class issues and whether solidarity in such a system can be expected; but something about love instead, with me in the role of Cinderella, whose pride and bravery would shame the prince and even soften him in the end. Not even Cinderella’s shoe sprang to mind, or else I might have thought that whatever was too tight or too small for Vera, Friederike, and Ellen, made me, whom it fitted, superior to them. Nothing to do with virginity, though, because we’d all had sex by then.

Afterwards, things just carried on between Ulf and me and the gang: I forgot the whole incident, and no one mentioned it again.

But now the time has come to drag it all out in the open, since ‘Everybody knows that’ just won’t wash. Because that’s just the point: I didn’t know, and I didn’t have any words to describe it. Which meant that I stayed quiet and forgot about it. And it still means that.

Because we are all architects of our own happiness.

I could have gone with the gang and taken my first skiing lessons that weekend. Could have borrowed money from Ulf’s parents or stolen it from Christian’s dad’s wallet. Could have hired equipment in the ski resort or bought it second hand. Okay, not that particular year, because the sales of ski equipment in the primary school gym were always at the start of the season — but if I had really wanted to, I could have caught up, and so, twenty-eight years later, I could have been even with the others.

I could have, but I didn’t want to badly enough.

And it’s the same with everything else, of course; I could have made better choices, wanted more, worked my way up in steps. First, by making do, and then by cashing in at the right moment.

When the house was in the planning stages, Ingmar spoke to me one morning.

‘You know that I’ve got some money. Some of it is tied up and earmarked for Sissi and Sophie’s education. But some of it’s free, and I’d like it to be used for the things that money is there for: to create opportunities and give impetus.’

He had intercepted me in front of the school, where I’d just dropped you off, Bea; Kieran in a baby carrier on my back and Jack on the sled. I have no idea why Ingmar turned up like that: Silas was still in childcare back in those days.

I tried to pull the sled although there was barely any snow, but there was no alternative; otherwise I’d have had to carry Jack as well as Kieran, and the sled too. So I dragged it along the pavement, and it made a sound like — well, like grit being pulverised between paving stones and metal runners.

Ingmar pulled up to me in his van that made practically no noise — a hybrid car, already then — with Silas’s and Sophie’s booster seats in the back. Plush booster seats, the expensive kind. And Ingmar got out and took the baby carrier off my back and got Kieran out, and put him in Sophie’s seat. And then he buckled Jack into Silas’s seat and stowed the sled in the boot.

‘Don’t you have to go to work?’ I asked.

‘Not until nine,’ he said with a glance at my baby bump. ‘It’s really amazing how you manage.’

I thanked him, because I still thought that was a compliment.

Ingmar got out again at the nursery to unbuckle and let out Kieran and Jack, and I went to get out and fetch the sled, but he said he’d wait until I came out and take me home.

When we arrived in front of our flat, I thanked him again, and he smiled and said: ‘Of course,’ and then he mentioned the thing about money giving impetus, and at first I didn’t get it at all, just imagined comic coins with arms and legs and boxing gloves, giving each other impetus and creating opportunities.

Ingmar’s smile stayed put, and he said I should talk to Sven — and that he and Friederike would be delighted if we said yes.

That was the first time anybody had offered me so much money: a down payment for a building loan — fifty thousand euros? He didn’t name a sum, but it was about being part of K23.

I told Sven who didn’t say anything at first.

Then: ‘Ingmar must really have