Lena Schättes “The Black on my father’s hands” | EUROtoday

A number of instances in Lena Schättes brief novel, the time lasts. And one way or the other the textual content. Then there’s a sentence on the paper and flashes like a blue gentle.

“I fall in love with a drinking man because it’s like at home.”

“Shortly before I take off when my brother is already gone, my father and I only understand each other when we both drank.”

“After he has died, I’m ashamed after I assume badly. I think about that he hears me, each thought. And that is why I want to say issues loudly like I want you had been right here as an alternative of I want we had been others.“

“My brother tips the schnapps into the grave.”

“I’m saying, but shake my head.”

Lena Schättes “The Black on the hands of my father” is the village novel of a world, interdisciplinary and social courses. Seeks. A father drinks, the mom holds the store collectively, the three kids, relying on their age, outgrow the state of affairs (the oldest daughter) or her (the son) or overwhelmed (the youngest daughter who tells us the story).

The time is the nineties. The household lives within the Sauerland, which is the house of the writer and the long run Chancellor, who was drawn by the Federal Republic within the election marketing campaign with a truck, on which “more Sauerland for Germany”. Everyone has to know the right way to say on Twitter prior to now. In any case, it’s a deep Catholic area during which girls go to order by their neighbors once they go jogging on Sunday morning.

Lena Schätäte nonetheless lives there throughout our dialog at lunchtime, the church bells ring, and she or he says: “It wasn’t even a second in my head to put this story somewhere different from the Sauerland.” But she then explains instantly that her story might play anyplace. Because individuals drink all over the place. In the village. In town. Whether you select left or proper or under no circumstances, Catholic or nothing in any respect. Place, time and motion of this story are globally transferable.

They all drink in Lena Schätte’s novel. Almost a minimum of. The father. The first and second man of the grandmother. The pastor. The narrator even then in some unspecified time in the future. She calls herself, no: her father calls her moth – and that is the one recognizable metaphor within the unaffected prose of this e book, as a result of the daughter circles the daddy, who’s her gentle and can on the similar time cloud it without end.

First, the grandma dies. Motte had stolen a photograph album earlier than the girl who had demented might throw it away. “My ancestors look emaciated, exhausted and drunk,” she says. “Especially my great -grandfather seems to have this expression even on the photographs of the children’s festival in the wildlife park.”

Motte reveals the photographs of her grandma’s sister, who lives within the nursing house. “”That was fairly regular prior to nowshe says. I stood in entrance of the manufacturing facility with the opposite girls on Friday afternoon, and we intercepted our husbands and took the wage luggage from them in order that they didn’t convey them to the pub. She laughs (..) I ask her if she by no means drank. No, that did not work she shakes her head. I had the kids and the home and work within the tailoring, that may not have been doable.“

A personality speaks right here. The writer, which she has give you and who has been working within the habit help system since her coaching, most not too long ago in an integration help for individuals with habit ailments in Lüdenscheid, says: Women additionally drink. You could do it extra purposeful, and you don’t seem to the identical extent within the habit help system like males, however you drink.

In this novel, nonetheless, Motte’s mom holds collectively the state of affairs as greatest they’ll. She does not drink. But, says Motte, “My mother teaches us things. Other things than sitting at the dining table with a straight back than thanks and please say other things than her son. She teaches us that schnapps means trouble.” Then a set with flashing lights follows: “And she teaches us that a woman must always have escape money.”

If one thing stands out on this e book of books, it’s the giant variety of new literary publications of various codecs which are dedicated to the household of today-away from father-mother-child, semi-detached home, a mixture with a shadow cat in carport. These literary texts embrace Bettina Wilpert’s “A bearded woman” (prison writer) corresponding to Katharina Bendixens “A contemporary form of love” (Edition Nautilus), Kristine Bilkaus “Highter Island” (Luchterhand, on the shortlist of the Leipzig Book Prize) or Sara Gmuer’s “Eighteen Stock” (Hanser Blau). All of the books about tinkered, broken household constellations and the circumstances underneath which one thing like happiness or respiration can nonetheless come up. Apparently, the necessity for these tales has grown up.

Lena Schättes new and second novel (after “Ruhrpotliebe” from 2014) suits in the course of it. Also within the sense of how the household of this story nonetheless stops in breaking and solely breaks extra on it. As unaffected and clear is the writer’s prose who obtained the WG Sebald literature award for an extract from this novel final 12 months: the energy of her textual content is within the ambivalence. That seems like Plattitude, ambivalence ought to be the minimal declare to a literary textual content.

But particularly with a fancy subject corresponding to habit, the simulation of this complexity can’t be simply achieved. However, Lena Schätäte succeeds that this ambivalence not solely varieties formally – within the shattering Lakonie, with which she describes probably the most horrible incidents – but additionally within the impacts that she lets her characters expertise by means of.

“I have read too many texts in which addiction or generally psychiatric diseases are told as a person of perpetrators,” she says herself. “This is unfair. Every day has 24 hours. You are not always drunk, you are not always just shit, everything is there at the same time, family life, love, trust, but also the break and the disappointment.”

Motte loves her father, however she additionally lives within the fixed risk of what he might do subsequent to destroy the household with out desirous to. Once he drives drunk within the snow by automotive on summer time tires down the mountain straight into the village bakery, we’re right here within the steep slopes of the Sauerland. The bonnet is buried deep within the counter, the doorway door smashed on the automotive roof. The household has lengthy since realized to dwell in such ruins. It is the key that the ladies of such households cross on from one technology to the following: the right way to do it. Motte needs you had been others. And she needs the daddy to be there when he’s useless.

“I come from a working -class family from the Sauerland with a addiction topic,” says Lena Schätät. “And even if this is not my father and not my story, it always brings a measure of responsibility and sensitivity. Everyone around me has to support the story that I tell. And that is why it was clear that there were things that have to be left out.” What this novel additionally leaves, however nonetheless brings up, you possibly can’t learn this story within the spring of 2025: these are the social circumstances.

“The black on my father’s hands” can be the story of a employee and his kids, the daddy works in steel processing, on Mondays his fingers turn into grey, “over the week and darker. On Fridays, the black crawl into every groove of his cornea, the brittle nail bed deep red.” Showly doesn’t psychologize, no connection between the manufacturing facility and schnapps. It additionally doesn’t function village kitsch like July toe and places the knowledge of the province in opposition to the conceitedness of elitist metropolis dwellers. She simply directs the view (like Christian Baron in “A man in his class” years in the past) right into a milieu, which is often solely taken to take a better look when it’s unusual on election evenings. And how a lot such tales are lacking, you possibly can see whenever you rely on what number of of this sort from previous time you possibly can bear in mind.

So the daddy calls his daughter – as I mentioned, that could be a recognizable metaphor of this novel. The different is the remaining space on the freeway, the mottes household begins to run in some unspecified time in the future. Everyone helps, the mom cooks, it additionally runs for some time, regardless of the daddy’s escapades, however then three journeys proceed to open a bigger relaxation space that dries as much as clients. But as a result of the tenant doesn’t know what else to do with the home, he leaves it to the household.

“And so we stay there. We clear the heavy wooden tables from the dining room, push living room furniture, just a few corner benches. My mother buys green wrapping paper with red flowers and sticks a window, sometimes peeking inside. My father goes to the guest toilet in the morning and brains the teeth there, distributes his magazines in the cabins. Drink coffee from the straightforward white porcelain. “

The household strikes into the scenes of a cosiness that was arrange for strangers in transit, however strangers who solely felt snug there, if in any respect. Rest websites, bridges, motorways, transitional desserts, provisionals: ciphers for homelessness, which trauma brings, for the unrest, restlessness.

For some time, the vehicles nonetheless final, and the visitors attempt to look by means of the glued home windows into the eating room, the place the household has distributed pictures of France holidays that no person remembers the place Christmas tree balls cling on the laid out faucet and the mildew climbs up the partitions. “And at some point everyone understood that we no longer exist.” Another sentence with flashing lights.

Lena Schätät, “the black on my father’s hands.” Novel. Verlag S. Fischer, 192 pages, 24 euros.