Our Offices & Partners Abroad

12 Swiss Books – 2015

One Inside the Other

one inside the other
eins im andern


GENRE Novel, LANGUAGE German

book_schwitter

Long-listed for the 2015 German
Book Prize

 

 

 

 

Portrait_Schwitter

MONIQUE SCHWITTER was born in 1972 in Zürich and has lived in Hamburg since 2005. She studied acting and directing in Salzburg and has had theatrical engagements in Zürich, Frankfurt, Graz and Hamburg, amongst others. In 2006, she received the Robert Walser Prize for Wenn’s schneit beim Krokodil (2005). Her novel Ohren haben keine Lider appeared in 2008, her second book of short stories Goldfischgedächtnis in 2011. Her reading of an excerpt of Eins im Andern at the 2015 Ingeborg Bachmann Competition was highly praised by the jury. PHOTO © Matthias Oertel

It’s evening. The two children are in bed, and in the next room her husband Philipp is going through the week’s e-mails. The narrator is sitting at her desk – and suddenly feels compelled to look for Peter on the internet: Peter, the name of her first boyfriend. What had become of him?
In One Inside the Other, the protagonist investigates her life. Having worked as
a dramatist and theatre director, she now attempts to lay bare her own life story;
in the process, twelve male characters appear, men she’s met over that lifetime. Some of them are still linked to her, and all are still around. They have names, which distantly recall those of the twelve Apostles.
This is still, though, a novel about the real world, and by the end, past and present become almost indistinguishable. “Love comes and love goes. One merges into the other, one love inside the other.” Monique Schwitter describes this complex tangle of love in a way that is pacy, exciting and entertaining.

TITLE Eins im Andern
PUBLISHER Droschl, Graz
PUBLICATION DATE August 2015
PAGES 229
ISBN 978-3-85420-969-0
TRANSLATION RIGHTS Annette Knoch, annette.knoch@droschl.com

 

EINS IM ANDERN, MONIQUE SCHWITTER
German original (p. 9-10)

Wenn man plötzlich nach seiner ersten Liebe googelt, ist das eine Reaktion auf die Klopfgeräusche, die man vor dem Einschlafen und, noch kräftiger, beim morgendlichen Blick in den Spiegel, beim Anblick der tiefen, senkrechten Falte zwischen den Augenbrauen, vernommen hat. Vergeblich hat man das Klopfen zu orten versucht, hat es immerfort abwechselnd außen und innen vermutet – auf dem Dachboden / unter der Schädeldecke –, aber niemals zu fassen bekommen.
Immer häufiger taucht es auf, immer unerklärlicher, so auch an diesem späten Freitagabend im Januar. Die Kinder waren, wie meistens am Ende der Kindergartenwoche, erschöpft und überreizt; den ganzen frühen Abend haben sie gemeinsam gestritten und abwechselnd geheult, und später, weil sie ins Bett gehen sollten, wie Verrückte geschrien. Endlich schlafen sie, es ist einen Augenblick völlig still, selbst der Hund liegt reglos auf seiner Decke unter meinem Schreibtisch, ich starre auf sein schwarzes Fell, bis ich sehen kann, dass der Brustkorb sich hebt und senkt; ich atme auf, und das Klopfen wird laut. Kurze Hammerschläge erst, dann abwechselnd auch längere. Ich male Striche und Punkte in mein Notizbuch. Es ist nicht so, dass ich viel vom Morsen verstehe, aber ich beuge mich solange über die Tabelle, bis annähernd etwas Sinnvolles herauskommt. Annähernd. RAUCH. ZEIT. KIND. Naja. (Die Alternativen wären LXCH. TDIA. CRNE oder ETINAKSI. MESA. NDKI. Ich kenne keine Sprache, in der das auch nur ansatzweise Sinn ergäbe, also entscheide ich mich für Rauch, Zeit, Kind.) Stille. Mein Mann, nehme ich an, ist in seinem Zimmer damit beschäftigt, die Emails der ganzen Woche aufzuarbeiten, wie jeden Freitagabend, wenn er keinen Dienst hat, um kurz vor Mitternacht Wochenende zu rufen. Wir nehmen uns schon länger vor, wieder einmal etwas gemeinsam zu machen. Etwas. Mal hat er keine Zeit, mal ich. Rauchzeitkind! Flitzt es mir durch den Kopf. Ich schlage mein Notizbuch zu, schließe die Word-Datei und öffne ein neues Fenster. Ins Suchfeld gebe ich Petrus’ Namen ein, den Namen meiner ersten Liebe.
Ich bin darauf vorbereitet, gar nichts zu finden und unbefriedigt abzubrechen. Auch mit Hinweisen auf eine Frau und Kinder rechne ich. Warum sollte nicht auch er inzwischen Familie haben? Sogar auf Fotos bin ich gefasst. Nicht aber darauf. Darauf nicht.

 

ONE INSIDE THE OTHER, MONIQUE SCHWITTER
Excerpt translated by Michael Hofmann

When you start googling your first boyfriend or girlfriend one day, that’s a response to the sounds of tapping you hear as you go to sleep, and, more loudly, when you look in the mirror first thing in the morning, at the sight of the deep vertical crease between your eyebrows. All attempts to find the source of the noise – is it inside, outside, from the attic, under your skull – are futile.
It crops up more and more frequently, more and more inexplicably, here it is again late this Friday evening in January. As usual at the end of the week in kindergarten, the children were exhausted and difficult; they squabbled all evening, took turns crying, and finally, when it was bedtime, they screamed. At last they’re asleep, for a brief moment there’s silence, even the dog is lying there on his rug under my desk, I stare at his black fur, watch his ribs rise and fall, I take a deep breath – and there’s the tapping at full volume. Brief taps first, then longer, heavier blows. I transcribe it into dots and dashes in my notebook. It’s not as though I knew Morse code, but I pore over the table until something close to sense comes out. Close. SMOKE. TIME. CHILD. Well. (Among the rejected alternatives are LXCH. TDIA. CRNE or ETINAKSI. MESA. NDKI. I don’t know the language in which those exist as words, so I have to plump for Smoke, Time, Child.) Silence. My husband, I’m assuming, is in his room, going through the week’s e-mails, as he does every Friday, before coming out a little before midnight and calling out: It’s the weekend! For a while now we thought we should do something together. No idea what. Sometimes he has no time, sometimes it’s me. Smoketimechild! Flits through my brain. I shut my notebook, shut the document file, and open a new search window. I write the name of my first boyfriend, Peter.
I’m perfectly prepared to find nothing and to give up. I’m also prepared to find references to a wife and kids. Why shouldn’t he have a family as well by now? I’m even prepared for photos. But not this. Not this.


“Her prose works so well precisely because she leaves lacunae: these
are the fundament of good literature. Her characters are well aware why they keep silent even when they’re speaking.” STEFAN GMÜNDER at the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition

Upcoming maintenance work

The application portal myprohelvetia will be updated from 1.1.-7.1.2024. Due to these changes, open applications must be finalized and submitted via the current online portal (myprohelvetia.ch) by the latest 23:59 on 31 December 2023. Until this date, the deadlines and criteria outlined in the current guidelines and calls for applications apply. New applications can be created and submitted in the application portal as of 8 January 2024.