Zbinden's Progress by Christoph Simon

Author:Christoph Simon [Simon, Christoph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contemporary fiction, literary fiction, translation, translated fiction, comedy, drama, love story, realism, Swiss, Switzerland, old people, old age, age, marriage, family, walking, rambling, city, countryside, novel, German
Publisher: And Other Stories Publishing
Published: 2012-06-14T04:00:00+00:00

I can hardly think of a single trait that Markus might have inherited from me. Are we completely different men? I could never have cuddled him the way he was later to cuddle his child. Markus took the whining bundle and rocked her gently, to and fro, murmuring all the while, to calm her down. Thirty years earlier, I wouldn’t even have pushed the pram across the square outside the church. Lullabies, I rattled off as if they were cavalry charges. Infants that had to spend the day with me were so homesick they fell ill. Markus, on the other hand, changed his daughter’s nappy, made her porridge, took her to the doctor, sat down beside her and read to her. How could he work and at the same time always get up in the night to comfort his teething daughter? Even on workdays, he played hide-and-seek and tig with her at the playground. If she went into a rage, threw herself on the floor and kicked her legs in the air, he knew how to calm his wife as well as their daughter. If Angela held her hand-made teddy out of their third-floor window, waving it to teach it how to fly, he would let her. Markus didn’t snatch the bear from her hand, didn’t give her a real ticking-off, just said calmly, ‘But don’t let go until I tell you. I don’t think he’s quite got the hang of it yet.’

I always had to coerce my son into carrying our mineral water delivery down into the cellar. To his daughter, he said one day, ‘Angela, I bet a big strong girl like you can carry that crate down on your little finger’ – and from that moment on, he didn’t have to ask.

In my day, I’d give Markus a clout. No, I did, I did. I had to explain to him that it could have dire consequences for him if he poked a piece of wire into an electric socket. I thought I could see in his face that he’d try again at the first opportunity, so I slapped him one and reiterated that putting wire in a socket could be very, very sore.

As a boy, Markus loved going to the airport. From the observation terrace, we would watch reverently as planes took off and landed. Shoulder to shoulder, we studied the flight information on the boards. Viewed, noisily, the displays in the kiosks and shops. As strangers, what would we take away from here? We observed the passengers, the staff, the porters. How do holidaymakers differ from business travellers? Are the group travellers already speaking to each other, or still standing some distance apart? Is the family there to welcome the man who puts the food on the table out of a sense of duty or because they can’t wait to see him again? We imagined we were returning from Tokyo or Zanzibar, or flying to Brazil, and felt some of the excitement we sensed around us.

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