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

and Carolina’s, which is a loft, and so it’s impossible to tell what’s the bedroom and what’s not.

Whatever I’m looking for here, the façade facing the road isn’t giving anything away.

To get into their courtyard, I have to go through the gate of the next-door house, which is almost always open, and then I have to climb up on the wall of the next-door house, which is not a problem because the rubbish bins stand next to it. What is a problem: it’s night-time, and I’m not a kid. Especially since I have to hitch up my skirt to even clamber up on the recycling bins.

So what.

Go fuck yourselves, you neighbours, fellow parents, guardians of public morals, homeowners, landlords, and prigs. Go and mind your own bloody business.

I am the woman by the lift. No one can tell me what to do and what not to do, where I am allowed to stand, and where not. I am part of this community and am going to get the best view of it I can. The lid of the bin gives a little. In the K23 courtyard, there are lights on in some of the windows, but just soft night ones or the blue flickering of television screens. No one is outside on the balconies. Why would they be? No one smokes anymore, and it’s much too cold to sit out there. And yet, the building is saying something to me. Something about wealth and warmth, security and seriousness. There is no clutter lying around except for a few empty flowerpots on Friederike’s balcony. Friederike goes to the garden show every year, repots her purchases in balcony boxes, and plans to grow new plants in the empty pots. Well, next year perhaps. It’s okay; it doesn’t mean she’s not serious. The façade hums comfortingly. The façade is holding the building together and preventing me and all the other outsiders from getting inside. That’s okay. That’s what façades are for.

Come out, you cowards! Fuck you!

I have nothing to throw. Perhaps I could take a shit on the lawn. Because lying below me, in nocturnal peace and autumnal decay, is the garden. But first of all, I don’t need to go, and second, no one would notice. It would even be welcome, as fucking fertiliser.

My heart hammers as I walk home. I don’t want to be alone: I want to see the others, and I want them to see me. The road is all mine, but it’s no use to me: I want company, not a motorway.

Marianne was more like our grandfathers in that respect. She didn’t bake cakes or surround herself with people, but she got her driver’s licence as soon as she could afford it, and a car as well.

The main reason she dated Werner was probably his car. He let her drive. Ecological concerns, which I raised many times when German forests began dying in the early 1980s, just bounced off her. She even drove the shortest of distances. Never had a cassette recorder or CD player in the car because she didn’t need any other incentive or entertainment.

Perhaps I should just try it out, Bea. On the road, down the highway. After all, I don’t know what I’m missing. Maybe it’s so addictive that I’d have kept on going if I’d had a car.

I could have driven instead of writing books. Eyes fixed on the road instead of on people’s faces; escaping from Laueli, you kids strapped safely in the back. Instead of having to climb aboard Ingmar’s plan, I wouldn’t have had to climb aboard or join in anything, let alone be grateful or relieved.

And even if everything had turned out the same way, at least we could have crawled into the car and slept in the Lidl carpark.

Thursday, early in the morning. Two more days of school.

No doubt about it — I’m writing for my life, like a woman possessed.

What’s the difference between baking cakes and driving cars? Does being creative help a hungry heart more than being destructive? What role do speed, sugar, and dizziness play?

While in the shower, I sketch connecting lines and transitions in my mind. Later, in my broom cupboard, I won’t use any of it. I hear voices and listen out for the ones I don’t hear.

There’s a quarrel going on outside. Sven is yelling at someone in the hallway.

Kieran has lost his jacket, and Sven can’t understand how. ‘Weren’t you cold, for Christ’s sake?’

I don’t want Sven to scold Kieran — but what else is he supposed to do? I would do the same.

But when I do it, it’s not the same. And why? Because I love Kieran. I don’t care about his jacket.

I let the water run over my head and face.

Oh, to be under this shower and its warm, soothing jet forever.

List for Bea: be careful not to become addicted.

To motorways, sugar, or cigarettes, and certainly not to wanting to be understood or any other kind of attention.

You can lose it all at any moment.

Practise karate. Do pole dancing. Keep fit.

Make your body supple but sturdy, hard but flexible. Practise holding your breath every day. Take cold showers.

Train your soul. Be aware that things are never entirely black and white. Everything has at least two sides. Love is security and dependency at the same time, dependency is connection and impotence, impotence is helplessness as well as freedom, and then it starts all over again.

Nothing is solid. Everything’s always in motion. Don’t lean on things, whatever you do. Treat all certainties like the partition doors in our flat: at first glance, stately and solid, but when you lean against them, they give way and swing open, because the lock is broken.

Idea for a dance-theatre piece: empty stage, except for doors. Dancers reel about, trying to rest by leaning against them and — whoops — the doors fly open, they have no time to take a breather, and have to dance away again. Probably for ever. Until the audience decides to