How We Grow Old

How we grow old
wie wir älter werden

GENRE Novel, LANGUAGE German

“A book for our age, which jumps from one story to another but also tells the time-old story of world history across the generations.” THURGAUER ZEITUNG

 

 

 

RUTH SCHWEIKERT was born in 1965 in Lörrach, Germany, and grew up in Switzerland. She lives with her family in Zürich and works as a novelist and playwright. In 1994, her collection of short stories Erdnüsse. Totschlagen brought her great acclaim; her first novel Augen zu (1998) was entered in the Ingeborg Bachmann Com-petition and won the Bertelsmann Scholarship. Her last novel, Ohio, was published in 2005. PHOTO © Andreas Labes

Ruth Schweikert’s novel How We Grow Old is a fine and richly orchestrated portrait of family life, which reflects the many facets of both world history and the modern age. Two Swiss families, the Brunolds and the Seitzes, are the focus of the story, bound together from the 1950s right down to the present by a secret, which only the parents know about. Jacques Brunold and Helena Seitz were a couple for many years and almost got married. But Helena suddenly decided for Emil and Jacques eventually married Friederike. But they both continued to love each other, until it emerges that Jacques isn’t only the father of three children by Friederike, but also of Helena’s two daughters.
When the children learn the truth, many things begin to happen. With the lightest of touches, Ruth Schweikert reveals how the two families are entwined. She lets her characters look back over their past lives in a series of cross-fades and loops, viewed from different perspectives. Their life stories are shown to rest on shifting sands: as they get older, their experiences continually develop new facets and new values. Life is a tangled web, as Ruth Schweikert’s novel so beguilingly shows.

TITLE Wie wir älter werden
PUBLISHER S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main
PUBLICATION DATE May 2015
PAGES 272
ISBN 978-3-10-002263-9
TRANSLATION RIGHTS Katrin Meerkamp, Katrin.Meerkamp@fischerverlage.de

 

WIE WIR ÄLTER WERDEN, RUTH SCHWEIKERT
German original (p. 9-10)

Friederike saß, wie fast immer in letzter Zeit, mit dem Rücken zum großen Wohnzimmerfenster, das auf den Balkon ging; ihre schmal gewordene Gestalt beinahe reglos, dabei erstaunlich aufrecht; die Beine hatte sie waagrecht ausgestreckt und die Füße, in dicke braune Wollsocken verpackt, auf einen zweiten Stuhl gebettet, so dass Ober- und Unterkörper einen rechten Winkel bildeten; wie die Zeiger einer Uhr, dachte Jacques einmal mehr, die stehengeblieben war auf Viertel nach zwölf. Das Bild hatte sich festgesetzt in seinem Kopf; ausgerechnet Kathrin hatte ihn darauf gebracht bei ihrem überraschenden Besuch in Saanau Ende November – eine knappe Stunde nur war sie da gewesen, auf der Durchreise von Zürich nach Genf, wo sie fürs Radio über irgendeine Ausstellungseröffnung berichtete; ihr strenges Gesicht blass und angespannt unter den aschblonden Locken, der dunkelblaue Satinstoff ihres Hosenanzugs zunehmend dichter gesprenkelt mit winzigen Hautfetzen, die sie sich ununterbrochen von den Fingern pulte; als hätte Friederike die ihr zugemessene Frist gleichsam unbemerkt überschritten, hatte Kathrin angefügt und ihre Mutter kaum aus den Augen gelassen, als könne sie die Wandlung nicht fassen, die allerdings, dachte Jacques, weniger Friederike vollzogen hatte als vielmehr Kathrin selbst, ihre rätselhafte Tochter, die seither jeden zweiten Tag anrief; einfach so, ohne besonderen Anlass, nur um nachzufragen, ob und wie sie zurechtkamen.
Es war der 30. Dezember 2013. Auf dem Couchtisch stand noch das grasgrüne Plastikbäumchen, das Jacques kurz entschlossen anstelle der Nordmanntanne besorgt hatte, für 25 Franken samt integrierter wechselfarbiger LED-Beleuchtung, die sie jeweils nach der Tagesschau für eine Viertelstunde anmachten. Jacques löschte die Deckenlampe, setzte sich neben Friederike auf das Sofa und stimmte eines der Weihnachtslieder an, die er halbwegs auswendig konnte; Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, O Tannenbaum oder O du fröhliche, laut und deutlich, damit sie es sicher hörte. Wenn sie einen guten Tag hatte, fiel Friederike ein, und sie sangen zweimal die erste Strophe, bevor sie sich auf den Weg machten ins Bad; Jacques hielt ihren rechten Arm, und mit der linken Hand stützte Friederike sich an der Zimmerwand ab, den Blick fest auf den Parkettboden gerichtet, damit ihr nicht schwindlig wurde.
Nur noch selten bat sie ihn, eine Bachkantate aufzulegen oder die große Messe in c-moll von Mozart, die sie zuletzt im Kirchenchor gesungen hatten, bevor sie beide austraten, weil es einfach keinen Sinn mehr machte; das war an Weihnachten vor drei Jahren gewesen.

 

HOW WE GROW OLD, RUTH SCHWEIKERT
Excerpt translated by Damion Searls

Friederike was sitting, as she almost always did these days, with her back to the large glass doors leading out from the living room to the balcony. Her body, grown thin, was almost motionless but marvellously straight; she had stuck her legs out horizontally, nestled her feet wrapped in thick brown wool socks on a second chair, so her upper and lower body formed a right angle, like the hands on a clock, Jacques thought once again, that had stopped at a quarter past twelve. The image was firmly planted in his mind, and it was Kathrin of all people who had said it first, on her surprise visit to Saanau late last November: she had stayed barely an hour, on her way from Zürich to Geneva, where she was to report on the opening of some exhibition for the radio; her severe face pale and tense under her ash-blond hair, her dark-blue satin pants suit sprinkled with an increas-ingly thick cover of the tiny flakes of skin she constantly picked off her fingers; as though Friederike had exceeded as it were her allotted time without noticing, Kathrin had added, keeping her eyes fixed on her mother, apparently unable to grasp the change, which had, to be sure, Jacques thought, come over not so much Friederike as Kathrin herself, her enigmatic daughter, who since then had called every other day, for no special reason, just because, to check in and ask how and if she was getting along.
It was December 30, 2013. The little grass-green plastic tree that Jacques had decided on impulse to get in place of the Nordmann fir was still standing on the coffee table, 25 francs with colour-changing LED lights included, that they turned on for fifteen minutes after the news. Jacques turned off the overhead light, sat down next to Friederike on the sofa, and struck up one of the Christmas songs he more or less still knew: “O Christmas Tree,” “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” “Oh, how joyfully, oh, how merrily,” loud and clear so that she could hear. When she had a good day it came to Friederike too and they sang the first verse twice before making their way to the bath, Jacques holding her right arm, Friederike supporting herself against the wall with her left hand, keeping her gaze fixed on the parquet floor so that she wouldn’t lose her balance.
She only rarely asked him to put on a Bach cantata now, or Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor, which they themselves had recently sung in the church choir until they both left because it just didn’t make sense anymore; that was Christmas three years ago.

---

“Ruth Schweikert is a master at understanding how to capture moods, actions and motivation, so that when we read her novels we often feel we’re looking at ourselves in a mirror.” SCHWEIZ AM SONNTAG