Even when Mum said, he had it hard, your father, this didn’t change our minds; we said to our mother, don’t cop out now, you were being so brave; of course we knew that my father had come from a poor background and had to battle his way upwards, which he managed to do solely by virtue of his huge talent and intelligence; it’s hard to do what he did, my mother said, who had it easier; she didn’t come from the very bottom and so didn’t have to make it the whole way up. When her father died she still had a house, although she was heavily in debt and had to fork out for the mortgage as well as her brothers’ studies; both my mother’s brothers became musicians as they’d wanted to, and as my mother had wanted to as well, but she quickly became a teacher, while my father wanted to become a scientist and study mathematics, coming as he did from the very bottom and out of wedlock, in the village where his mother wove baskets and knitted jumpers for other people. My grandmother was a very poor woman, and was a constant embarrassment to my father as she had so little to give him, nor could he take her anywhere; I can’t be seen anywhere with you, my father said later, when he was already on the verge of being promoted. He didn’t have it easy with his mother, she lived in a dingy and grubby place, she only had a single room and the kitchen smelled as it does in poor people’s houses, because it was a poor person’s house, and my father was always angry with her; later, whenever he visited the village, he preferred to stay at the inn rather than at his mother’s, even though they had no running water. My mother and I used to stay with my mother’s mother, and my father and brother stayed at the inn rather than with my father’s mother, who we always called the other grandmother because she was poor, whereas our proper grandmother wasn’t poor; she had her own house, and everyone in the village knew her and greeted her, whereas almost nobody knew or greeted the other grandmother, who remained a stranger, a foreigner after she came to Germany. And there was another reason why my other grandmother was called the other grandmother: in family photos she always stood to one side, on the periphery, always a gap between her and the rest of the family. My mother reminded us that it wasn’t easy for my father; his mother and his background were huge liabilities, in comparison to the trivial liability on my grandmother’s house when my grandfather died; my father did what he could to paper over his background, but it wasn’t easy, for my other grandmother was tremendously proud of her brilliant son and clung to him wherever possible. Whenever I visited her she would cry, saying how proud she was that my father had made his way from the bottom to the top. I was very attached to my other grandmother, and my father was very attached to his mother, too; to see her living in the village in such poverty broke his heart, a woman who nobody apart from the simple villagers knew or greeted; your other grandmother is a simple woman, my mother would tell us, and because she was a simple woman she was desperate to receive letters; my mother used to write to her mother once a week, she always wrote to her mother on Sunday evenings, whereas my father couldn’t write to his mother; he was a very busy man, and couldn’t do that as well; he didn’t have the time or energy to do everything, and he couldn’t stand being clung to. It’s hard enough coming from a poor background and making your way up in the world, you need to use your fists to escape a background like that, you can’t allow your background to cling and stick to you; my father would churn inside at the thought of it, he couldn’t eat at his mother’s house, either, because it wasn’t clean or inviting; so untidy, my father said, but there was one occasion when he couldn’t avoid it. His mother had said to my mother, you never eat here, you only ever eat there, by which she meant my proper grandmother’s, where we always ate when we were in the village, because my father found her place inviting and tidy. And his own mother was offended that we never ate at hers; she said to my mother, he behaves as if he’s ashamed; my mother understood — she understood everything — and finally my father agreed to eat at his mother’s if she asked someone else to cook: there was no way he was going to eat at hers if she did the cooking herself, he said. In fact she not only paid for the food but the cook, too, so just for once we ate at hers and she was delighted; she was so excited and nervous with delight that she couldn’t keep her hands still; my father couldn’t bear it when she couldn’t keep her hands still. Keep your hands still, he said, but she was too excited about our visit, and after keeping her hands still for barely five minutes, she couldn’t keep them still any longer. All her life she’d had to work very quickly with her hands and these rapid movements had made her hands independent; she’d keep them still for barely five minutes, then her fingers would start up again, executing these work movements independently. Eventually my father’s patience snapped, and the cook who my other grandmother had hired was no longer good enough to avoid the mood being spoiled. It’s impossible to eat here, my father said in a strop because once more he felt ashamed at his mother, who’d led a menial life and had never been able to shake it off, no matter how many times he’d told her to keep her hands still instead of fidgeting. And then he stopped going to hers, whereas I liked going to my grandmother’s, because although she was unable to keep her hands still, she did something which never happened in our family, it was forbidden — the other grandmother, they used to say, spends hours staring out of the window. I didn’t really understand what there was to disapprove of; I wanted my grandmother to teach me how to stare out of the window for hours, and I liked going to her place; when I was at my grandmother’s we did nothing at all. In our house doing nothing didn’t exist; it was absolutely imperative that everybody was doing something, all the time; when I went to cafés later on, I merely carried on in secret with what I’d picked up from my other grandmother: doing nothing. I never thought my grandmother was a simple woman; I thought she was an extraordinary woman, because she was capable of doing nothing, whereas everybody else was always doing something; your mother is an extraordinary woman, I’d often say to my father; he felt flattered, and then said, look at me, nothing comes from nothing. Clearly, he didn’t understand what I meant. In any case, he resented her for her menial life and for the fact that she couldn’t keep her hands still as a consequence of those years when she’d had to graft so that her son could reach the top. He was very attached to her, however, and was so distraught when she died that my mother thought he’d gone crazy with pain; he mourned his mother and tore his hair out; he holed up in the bedroom, locking himself in, and refused to come out for days. When he did come out he swore that his mother would have the loveliest grave in the whole village; he made all the arrangements for this lovely grave, which wasn’t easy because we were in the West and the village in the East. But he managed to arrange for the most splendid grave in the whole village; he invited the entire village to the funeral, everybody who was anybody, and reserved the restaurant in the town hall for a meal that nobody was going to forget in a hurry. He made a precise note of who came to the funeral and who didn’t, and thank God almost everybody came; there were more than a hundred people at his mother’s funeral, more than had ever known or greeted her, and the grave lies in a lovely spot, not too close to the perimeter, under trees, not in the part of the cemetery for poor people; it’s the only grave with a gold-leaf inscription — my father ordered gold leaf specially from the West because there was no gold leaf over there. He could not rest until his mother’s grave was the only one with gold leaf, and only then did he find peace — apart from with me. I didn’t come to the funeral; he never forgave me for not coming, you of all people, he reproached me, you of all people, and he reproached me for being stubborn and cold-hearted, he had no sympathy; in our family I was always known as the stubborn and cold-hearted one, and my stubbornness and cold-heartedness, which developed from my unappealing nature, were in evidence yet again when I refused to go to my grandmother’s funeral, to a place I’d always enjoyed going and where I felt happy. My father never forgave me for this act of spite and irreverence, as he called it. But he couldn’t force me, because I’d come of age; my grandmother died at the very moment when I came of age, just a few days afterwards; and when I came of age my stubbornness and cold-heartedness really showed, my father said, but unlike in the past, before I’d come of age, now there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t beat the stuffing out of me; I’ll beat the stuffing out of you, he’d have said in the past, I’ll give you what for, and I really would have been given what for if he’d beaten the stuffing out of me. My mother would have stood with my brother in the hall by the living-room door, while my father locked the door behind him and fetched a cognac from the bar in the wall unit, the key to the living-room door in his trouser pocket as ever, and my father would have tried to identify the reasons for my stubbornness; could you explain it to me, he’d have asked, and I wouldn’t have been able to, because I wasn’t able to explain anything if my father yelled at me, and so I’d have been given what for. The more insistently he harangued me, the more stubborn I became, refusing to say a word, all speech abandoning me in one fell swoop. I never knew what to say when my father said, answer me for God’s sake; just once, when I was a child, I managed an answer, but it was the wrong one, and wrong answers incensed my father, then he really gave you what for. Since then I’ve never managed a single answer when my father says, answer me for God’s sake, I asked you a question, what have you got to say to me. Out of sheer disappointment he’d have drunk another cognac, leaving me to wonder what I might break if I jumped from the first-floor balcony, but because of the neighbours the windows and balcony door were of course closed, and I couldn’t escape. Now my father would have looked completely wild, because I hadn’t answered him, he’d have asked me again and again, haranguing me, but ultimately he wouldn’t have been able to help himself and he’d be forced to punish my stubbornness, since no understanding or answer had been forthcoming. My father would have said, I’m not going to put up with that, you don’t do that with me, and he’d have drunk another cognac and finally said, take your hands away from your face; after the second cognac I’d have already put my hands to my face, hidden my face in my hands — I didn’t want my father to hit me in the face — and I’d have said, please, not my face; my father would have said, for God’s sake take your hands away from your face, it would have made him livid that I hadn’t taken my hands away from my face, it makes me furious, he said again and again, I’m not going to put up with it, but I never took my hands away, he had to remove them himself, both of them, he had to grip both of my hands in his left so he could hit my face with his right and that really made him furious. My stubbornness; he tried to use violence to knock the stubbornness out of me, just as he tried to use violence to knock the wimpishness out of my brother. All my stubbornness was trying to achieve, however, was to avoid flying head first through the bullseye glass; it would have been a catastrophe to fly head first through the bullseye glass, I’d have cowered under his blows, fallen to the floor without saying a word, and I’d have whimpered that he should stop; no, no, I’d have said if my father had started kicking me in the head with his clogs, but my stubbornness would have been absolute. Only later, in my room, where I’d have been locked, would the words return, wicked and vengeful words lacking all understanding. Whenever my brother was locked in his room he always sang loudly, he always sang, always the same song, a folk song, ‘