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

housekeeper (without an apron, only identifiable from her tired worker’s face and orthopaedic shoes) lets her in. In the study with ceiling-high, dark wooden bookshelves facing the terrace doors to the garden, (next to which hangs a small original Nolde?) sits a well-kempt man in his seventies, flicking though an old road atlas. He turns his friendly, sun-tanned face towards the visitor, raises his wild old gent’s eyebrows and smiles affably.

‘How can I be of service?’

The visitor does not smile.

‘You’ve never served anybody, so don’t say it like you know what you’re talking about!’

Her voice sounds hoarse, revealing her overindulgence in cigarettes and alcohol. The old gent’s smile becomes strained.

‘Do we know each other?’

‘No, thank God.’

She looks around.

‘So, this is where you live?’

The gent’s smile widens again, and his shoulders relax.

‘This is my humble abode, yes.’

She walks over to him and grabs him by the neck of his sweater. Pulls him up out of his study chair. Brings her face very close to his.

‘You’ve never been humble either, and if you don’t drop that tone straight away, I’ll make sure you do—’

She lets him fall back into the swivel chair. Thrusts him, even. The chair creaks dreadfully.

The creaking continues on the soundtrack long after the chair has stopped swivelling and the elderly gent has suffered torture that would have justified screams and groans in the background. But he’s not afforded that honour. During the scenes that follow, only the creaking can be heard; it’s all filmed in close-up, and even those who are into snuff, and usually hate these kinds of intellectual experiments with their genre, find it pretty interesting. Because there is real loving attention to detail.

Save me

The alarm clock goes off.

Why get up when you have a bed? Shouldn’t you stay in it to celebrate that you have one?

The day will come when I don’t, at least not my own, and no door to close either — and fear has me up and walking into the kitchen.

It’s not happened yet! And I still believe in the importance of being on time for school. As well as the importance of starting the day with breakfast, having a pencil case full of sharpened pencils, getting a kiss on your forehead, and hearing a friendly ‘Have a good day!’

I still have the energy to take care of my principles and my children; there’s still something between me and my basest physical needs.

Culture. Discipline. And routine.

Jack and Kieran are fighting over the toothpaste.

‘Since when have you been so crazy about toothpaste?’

‘Okay, then I won’t,’ says Kieran and chucks his toothbrush into the bathtub.

I fish it out again, get Jack to squeeze some toothpaste on it, sit on the side of the bath and clamp Kieran between my knees. Brush his teeth like I used to when he was two, even singing the song that went along with it: ‘This is the way we brush our teeth, brush our teeth, brush our teeth / This is the way we brush our teeth, early in the morning.’

Jack makes an obscene gesture on the way out. Kieran tries to run after him, but I hold onto him.

Then Jack has gone, and Kieran lets all the tension go in his body, so he ends up hanging like a rag doll on the handle of his toothbrush.

‘You’re really starting to annoy me,’ I say and let him go.

Kieran falls on the floor and bumps his elbow. Now I feel like chucking the toothbrush in the bathtub too but just about manage not to.

Just about manage to keep my show on the road. What made me believe I could keep anybody else’s show on the road too? I’m the last person who can save anyone. With what? A cheerful toothbrushing song?

October 2010; Mauerpark.

All of a sudden, Vera raised doubts about K23.

‘It’s a stupid idea. We should be doing it with people we have some distance from.’

We were jogging. Trying to get rid of the flab we’d accumulated during pregnancy. Gasping for breath, we reached Bösebrücke, from where there was a nice view across the zigzagging train tracks. I didn’t answer because I was panting too hard.

‘Then again,’ Vera carried on, ‘we all know what we’re letting ourselves in for. We know each other’s little quirks.’

‘No obligations to capital contributions; I can’t take that risk!’ she said, mimicking Christian, who, as everybody knew, had the most money, and despite this — or perhaps precisely because of it — was the stingiest of us all.

I laughed and did a few stretches at the railings.

I didn’t get the sense Vera was asking me for serious advice. She just needed me to listen to her problems as an outsider, or, as Frank had put it over quiche Lorraine: ‘I’m glad there are still two of us who aren’t directly involved.’

May 2005; Vera’s qualms about moving in with Frank.

‘I’ve lived on my own for too long.’

She was holding you on her lap, Bea, breathing in the smell of your hair, before she placed her chin on your head and looked at me.

‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘You love him.’

‘Yes, that’s why. I’m bound to ruin it.’

You reached up and tugged Vera’s ear, ruffled her hair. She laughed and pulled away. Stood up and set you on her hip. I had to stop myself from saying how much it suited her.

‘If you want to have a family, you’ll have to get into practice.’

‘Do we want a family?’ Vera stared out of the window.

‘You’ve come off the Pill.’

‘Well, there is that.’ Vera gave you back to me. ‘I don’t know. I’m not made for it.’

I didn’t dare reply. Was I made for it? After all, I was pregnant again. What did Vera think? Did she bitch about me? Did she do an impression of me for Friederike and Ellen to show me pretending to be a mother?

‘Frank really wants to,’ she said. ‘And anyway, it’s part of being human, isn’t it?

We all fell for it, one after the other. We couldn’t have saved anyone. Meanwhile,