I tidy up the kitchen. Soak the encrusted muesli bowls, sweep oats and breadcrumbs into the gaps between the floorboards. I really have to hoover, but the bag is full, and our supply has run out. I pick up dirty clothes. If I do the washing today, then there’ll be fewer drying racks in the way at the weekend. But it’s stupid to waste working hours doing the laundry.
Even this endless deliberation over what’s the most efficient way of doing things is inefficient. How come I didn’t set up a routine long ago?
I should just quickly do the washing.
I should drive over to a housing agency, find out about offers, and apply for a flat.
I should give up looking for a flat.
On the website of a housing association, my search for a flat in zone A or B returns no listings.
I have to call Ulf to find out whether he knows about Frank’s letter of notice.
I have to call Ulf, Bea’s godfather, and ask him whether he knows that the autumn holidays are around the corner and that Bea is the only one in her class who has nothing planned—
I have to go to the store and buy vacuum-cleaner bags.
It’s good to be outside and walking around among strangers. They look pretty much like me, don’t seem any more efficient, and all still have a roof over their heads. They dither from A to B, hover around the make-up section of the store and can’t decide. Mobile phones ring in their handbags and pockets, and they take calls while paying or even serving at the cash register, and nobody looks unhappy.
I add some peppermints to the vacuum-cleaner bags on the conveyor belt.
‘Receipt?’ asks the cashier.
‘Don’t need it, thanks,’ I reply.
I don’t ask her where she lives, who she loves, who loves her, and how long she’s been doing this job. Whether it’s just a temporary thing or her real job, what school qualifications or dreams she has.
The so-called common people have long been discovered as main characters; the only strange part is when they open their mouths without being asked, thinking they’re important enough to add their own perspective. Did anybody say they could?
There are way too many people. They have to be sorted.
Where would we be if everybody just talked about themselves? One at a time, please.
Seen from this angle, I was lucky to find out anything at all about my mother.
Three stories, all about how she was humiliated. How she should have felt ashamed, and on no account think that she was something special, let alone better, and therefore the next in line.
Ulf: ‘Hello?’
‘Hello, it’s Resi.’
‘Hi! This is a surprise!’
‘Yes, I thought I’d give you a call.’
I didn’t want to say ‘I thought’ anymore. It sounds much too much like an excuse or apology.
Ulf: ‘Lovely! How are you?’
Does he really mean it? Does that mean he doesn’t know anything?
‘Well — um, I’m not sure. You?’
‘I’m fine. Very busy. Time just flies by.’
A pause. And now? It’s my turn because I called.
‘I just thought I’d give you a call.’
I’ve already said that. And ‘I thought’ for the second time. If I don’t spit it out quickly—
What do I expect from him? What’s he supposed to do, and what do I want to talk about?
I’m ashamed. I’m afraid of exposing myself, afraid that Ulf will give me a bollocking at the first wrong move:
‘Yes, of course you thought that. It’s your guilty conscience. You know what you’ve done, and now you think everybody’s going to behave the way you would — by being petty and cold-hearted. You weren’t generous. You were self-righteous, and thought you could tell others off instead of solving the problems in your own backyard. And now you’re afraid of being exposed? Well.’
Well.
A short, handy synonym for ‘Everybody knows that.’ A word like a slap across the face — no, like an electric shock. Leaves no visible traces, is inconspicuous and casual.
I was never hit as a child. I was slapped a couple of times, more by Marianne than by Raimund, and always in a moment of high emotion, never as a means of punishment. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know how violence feels, Bea.
The world is full of it.
Questioning your experience is another good way of making you feel small and silencing you, Bea. Yet again, you’re not worth listening to, and yet again, others take the spotlight — those who have already been beaten to death.
Let’s hold a minute of silence for them.
Would those who have suffered less kindly back off. Be still now, please shut your mouths. Violence is what they do over there; what we do here is called keeping peace and order.
Marianne was thrashed by her father with a clothes hanger. That’s the third story; and if I could, I would leave out the clothes hanger. Just like I made up the nibbles for the fashion show and the pastis bar in the south of France, I’d like to spare you the exact kind of punishment and replace it with something else — like her pocket money was stopped, or she was grounded. But that’s nonsense. Marianne didn’t get pocket money and being grounded hadn’t been invented yet. Children were thrashed and — boom! — the story already becomes irrelevant. Placed in the world of the 1950s; over and done with and obsolete.
September 1955; a rented flat in Gomadingen.
It was still the summer holidays, and the farmers’ children had a lot to do, like bringing in the harvest. The other children didn’t: they drifted around for hours on the streets in packs. ‘Hanging’, as they called it in Gomadingen.
The big kids had the younger ones in tow; the bigger you were, the more responsibility you had. Marianne had to look after her sister Brigitte; it was her contribution to the household.
And Brigitte ran across the road without looking. Her father happened to be standing at the window and saw it, but
