Oskamp Half Swimmer

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-916806-01-6
Verlag: Peirene Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 152 Seiten

Half Swimmer. Noun. A German term for one who has recently learnt to swim but hasn't yet mastered the technique. Growing up in 1980s East Germany, as the daughter of an army officer and a teacher, Tanja seems set to become a model citizen of the German Democratic Republic. Except she has other ideas. And so, it turns out, does the course of history. Half Swimmer is a collection of stories from one life, following a young girl as she attempts to forge her own identity under the social pressures of both the GDR, and the capitalism of a unified Germany.

Katja Oskamp was born in 1970 in Leipzig and grew up in Berlin. Her debut collection of stories Halbschwimmer was published in 2003. In 2007 she published her first novel Die Staubfängerin. Her book Marzahn, Mon Amour, published by Hanser with the subtitle 'Stories of a Chiropodist', was selected for the 'Berlin Reads One Book' campaign and thus literally became the talk of the town. The English translation of Marzahn, Mon Amour, published by Peirene Press in 2022, was awarded the 2023 Dublin Literary Award.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Oskamp, Katja

Weitere Mitwirkende

Heinrich, Jo

Leseproben

Rolf and Hopsi
When I was a child, I had a hamster called Rolf. My parents bought him because I had to make do without any siblings. Rolf would sit under a pile of wood shavings in a glass enclosure by the door. He mostly slept; sometimes he’d eat something. He never used his wheel. The best thing about Rolf was the way he could get my father to throw himself on the floor and stick his head under the cupboard. Apart from that, Rolf was a disappointment and he soon died. Then I got two black dwarf rabbits: Hopsi One and Hopsi Two. The rabbit hutch was on the balcony, clear varnish peeling from its wooden panels. I only cleaned the hutch when my father forced me to. I’d bring the dwarf rabbits into the living room for hours every afternoon to sit them on the carpet in front of me and pull their back legs: it was called playing wheelbarrows, a well-known children’s game. Compared to the unimaginative repetition of Hopsi as the rabbits’ names, I think the hamster’s name, Rolf, was quite original. I named him after the father of the family next door, the Wiedemeyers, who were friends of ours. The Wiedemeyers were Uncle Rolf, Auntie Elke and the children, Jan and Fanny. Uncle Rolf wasn’t very happy when I told him my hamster’s name. Actually, I should have seen that as a sign. I didn’t think to ask whether he disliked his name so much that he didn’t want it copied, or if his name was too good to be wasted on a hamster. * I push the packet of cigarettes behind the radiator halfway up the stairs. Somewhere that stupid is the perfect hiding place. Sometimes I wonder if later, when I’m a grown-up and my father’s finished with parenting, I ought to tell him that every morning he used to walk past the cigarettes he’d tried in vain to find in my things the night before. I climb the last eleven steps to the third floor. The door to my parents’ flat is hidden in a deep alcove off to the left. They’ve always said it’s a privilege ‘not to be on show’, but even now I have a residual fear of turning off into the unknown: there might be someone lurking by the lift or behind the rubbish chute. The Wiedemeyers’ door is on the right. I can make it out by the little orange glow over the light switch – I don’t need to turn it on. Two fingers’ breadth below the light switch there’s the doorbell with the words ‘Dr Wiedemeyer & Family’ stamped in white letters on a black plastic strip. My father wrote our surname by hand on the white section next to our doorbell, but it almost looks as though it’s printed. We don’t have a label maker like that. And we have a completely different sort of bell. When you press it, there’s a continuous buzzing sound – you wouldn’t really call it ringing. Sometimes the button gets stuck. When my mother’s stressed, the button sticking can be the thing that sends her over the edge. My father tries to lever the button free again with the potato peeler, and meanwhile, anyone passing by can get a good look at my raging mother through the open door. Over the years our bell has become quieter and quieter, maybe from so much unintentional prolonged use. I don’t know why my parents don’t do something about it. They probably think it’s not worth the trouble: it’s not often that anyone other than the Wiedemeyers rings our doorbell. The Wiedemeyers’ bell makes a happy bing-bong sound. Recently I’ve been specializing in outsmarting their bell and I can now make it sound as hoarse and frail as ours. The trick is to stifle the bing and only let the bong happen; with the bing missing it sounds as if it’s been strangled. You shouldn’t, under any circumstances, press the button head-on with your thumb. Instead, you need to tap the button at an angle on its edge, not very hard, but of course not so gently that it doesn’t make a sound at all. It’s not just about the technique: it’s also your inner mindset. If I picture myself as humble or apathetic, that’s when I manage the tortured bell sound best. Just as Auntie Elke presses our button twice to let us know she’s in a good mood, I can always be counted on to half-ring the Wiedemeyers’ bell, and some days even ring it just a third or a quarter. That’s how they know it’s me. The hallway’s dark. I manage a quarter-ring, but it still seems too loud for this time of night. I quickly make the kind of face a scared child would make. Before I know it, I’m standing in front of Uncle Rolf, and he’s standing in front of me in his pyjamas. He looks as if he’s pleased. Come in, he says. It’s not the first time.   ‘Are you watching TV?’ ‘Not really, it’s just on.’ Everyone’s asleep already – they’ve got to be up and out early. Only Uncle Rolf has a nightlife after ten. He pushes aside the blanket he must have had over him, and we sit down on the leather sofa. There are books lying around everywhere, and there’s that magazine with the beautiful naked women; I think the Wiedemeyers have a subscription to it. ‘Did you go to your dancing lessons again?’ ‘Well, you know I go every Thursday.’ ‘Was it good?’ ‘No, it was boring.’ Sometimes he’s just so happy to see me. That’s when Uncle Rolf takes my head in his hands and ruffles my hair and ears and everything. He’s also the only one who’s always said that the thing about my fat thighs is nonsense, that I should stop moaning because they’re fine the way they are. Uncle Rolf laughs more than anyone else. He used to throw me over his shoulder, whirl me around and pinch my thighs until I couldn’t help but scream with laughter. Once we accidentally hit a tomato plant’s stake and I bled. I still have the scar. ‘Come here.’ I slide over and curl my legs up beside me. Uncle Rolf’s skin has large pores and is always covered with a fine glossy film; it’s greasy skin, and his face gives off a certain smell if you get really close to it. In our family, no one has greasy skin. My skin, for example, is so dry it cracks in some places in winter if I don’t put cream on it all the time. It would be good to mix my skin with Uncle Rolf’s, then our skin type would be ‘combination’. ‘Have you got any chocolate?’ Uncle Rolf laughs again and reaches behind the sofa for the porcelain bowl, which Auntie Elke always keeps well stocked with bubbly chocolate and pralines. When we were talking in his study a few weeks ago, he stroked my head and said, ‘Wow, you’re too clever by half!’ Unfortunately, I can’t remember what clever thing I’d said, but I want his hands to stroke me again. They’re warm, soft and clean: proper doctor’s hands. The chocolate melts in my mouth. His fingertips touch my ribs and brush somewhere near my breast. He makes sure it’s never completely in his hand. I take a deep breath, so that my breast reaches his hand. Boys can be so annoying, with their clumsy tongues. It’s Uncle Rolf who makes me happy. I can’t help pressing myself against him, holding him tight, and I know how it’ll go next. I feel a little shudder, and Uncle Rolf takes my head in his hands, ruffles my hair again and pushes me up off the sofa. ‘Off you go now, back home to bed.’ He walks me past the bedrooms, where Auntie Elke and the children are sleeping, to the front door. I give him a big smile as I say goodbye; I can’t think of anything better to do. Then I stand there in the dark, my cheeks glowing.   The Wiedemeyers are sitting in their usual places in my parents’ lounge. My mother’s decided to ‘clear the air’ today. I’ve made a cosy nest out of my bedding and I’m listening to them fight it out in the living room. But I don’t know whose side I’m on. My mother talks to the Wiedemeyers in a forceful tone and then shouts that this friendship has not been mutual for a long time, that she’s tired of being taken advantage of and that Auntie Elke should stop giving her used lipsticks. Uncle Rolf laughs from time to time and interrupts my mother’s outburst with cheeky comments. Auntie Elke sobs and says that she and Uncle Rolf don’t deserve this, but no one responds to her. I can’t hear my father – I assume he’s topping up everyone’s glasses. I wonder if the Wiedemeyers get upset with us behind closed doors, too, or if they’re really surprised by this attack on them. In all probability the friendship’s over after this. But how’s it going to go with me and Uncle Rolf now? I can’t just ring the enemy’s doorbell. It’s two o’clock. Time has gone by very quickly. I’m still sitting in my bed, listening, but now I’m fed up with the row in there. I can’t have a lie-in tomorrow: I’ve got to be at the bus station at six. Our class agreed to wash buses...