german-german narrative

• Hardcover with satin book ribbon
• 204 pages

978-3-86638-915-1

18.00 €           

In this turn of 1989 / 90: the thought, who, when, why and also in which deceived the others in all this years was the actual question.

Marianne: Those who went across the border to take what one searched for had to expect that others would deny him his right of this claim.

Renate: Almost a year ago she hiked with a man on christmas vacation. And she liked him, back then they both returned to their inflicted roles as soon as the evening came. Now the evening ought to change everything. Didn’t she made an agreement with Johannes without many words? Suddenly he could travel.

Richard: He stepped to the balcony to leave her the bathroom.
This time they had a room with single beds. After their arrival Renate didn’t ask if this was an coincidence or if this was about his circumspection. She remebered how they once more slept in a french bed together, how she feared that he could accidently embrace her and he wasn’t ready to challenge his luck.

Johannes: At crummy times without true heroes the tabloid market presses unformed material into welcoming legends. So it was spread that Johannes Wiedemann was shot from behind.

Novel

• 204 pages
• Hardcover

978-3-86638-003-5

20.00 €           

An excerpt of the last third of the book.

What remains? – is written in Anna’s diary
What remains of our mother? What remains, to whom it remains and how? We entrusted the urn with her ashes to the soil today. I was numb and didn’t derive comfort from anything. At this moment I didn’t surrender to the grief. Adverse circumstances. I couldn’t dismiss the twins, Jan and Edgar, from my imagination. Both linked arms with me. So it was my duty to keep them apart. Jan’s girlfriend put an arm around Marion’s schoulder. It was discussed, that Marion didn’t walk alongside her husband. She had a single room in the hotel for the night. It was arranged by Edgar. I didn’t understand my brother. We walked after a strange employee from the cemetery who was dressed light gray. He carried the urn. I gladly would have carried it myself on this last path. As mothers ashes were given to the soil the light gray uniformed man cleaned up the hole under the opening. He pushed the urn of my father from the middle to the right side, to create space. He took his hat off, stood still, took a bow, then he gave us his hand. So he left. No prayer. No blessing. At these moments a priest is missing. I furtively made a little cross. Iris repeated the sign. Edgar read a poem by Gottfried Benn. Afterwards I copied it:

The many things you deeply sealed
carrying them alone in you through your days,
which you also didn’t release in conversations
didn’t let it in in no letter and no look –

After this verse my brother stopped. He looked upward as he was searching the sky. In the treetop of an Atlas cedar was a squirrel. Did Edgar embedded it in his speech? A welcoming confusion for him? Banal solace? He listened. Then he continued:

The many things –
the silent, the good and the evil,
the so suffering therin you go,
those you can only dissolve in that sphere
in that you die and finally revive.

I felt miserable after this. Did he mean mother? Didn’t he actually thought of himself? An artist? Who says goodbye. To who? And revives? How? What a claim. Where did the courage come from? At this moment? Did he rely on his profession?
We looked at each other. We were alive. Edgar took a bow. He went alone ahead to the exit beside the hall on the street. Iris was at Jans side. Marion grasped me under the arm.
We ordered a table on the other side of the street in the adjoining room of the Café. The name of this pie smack was a bad omen. The last instance. As the brothers began to argue I stood up and went to the hotel with the cab.
What remains from our mother? She took a riddle to her grave. Edgar struggles to solve the riddle. Jan is agitated. So what remains? Her name besides the name of my father on a stone in which the stonecutter mills an addition? Under fathers name? Beside it? On top? I didn’t watch out for that. Jan has to straighten it. He knows what I’m wishing for. We can set an example for small things, too. – What remains?