Abstract
She writes in the introduction to her new book Marzahn, Mon Amour that “the middle years, when you’re neither young nor old, are fuzzy years. You can no longer see the shore you started from, but you can’t yet get a clear enough view of the shore you’re heading for. You spend these years thrashing about in the middle of a big lake, out of breath, flagging from the tedium of swimming.”
Her life had become stale and her writing “a little iffy”, she says.
The problems people had with their feet became her salvation and, in the process, reinvigorated her writing.
After a course in chiropody that saw her confuse claw and hammer toes, cuticle nippers and nail clippers and learn the 26 bones in the foot, she started caring for peoples’ feet in the Berlin district of Marzahn which, as part of East Germany, was turned from a rural district into a series of vast, towering housing estates.
“At first, I didn’t tell anyone about my decision to retrain,” writes Oskamp. “But afterwards, when I was swanning around with my certificate, I came up against revulsion, incomprehension and, the hardest to bear, sympathy. From writer to chiropodist – what a spectacular comedown.”
But starting at the bottom has returned her to the top. Her book Marzahn, Mon Amour brilliantly weaves together the foot problems of the built-up suburb’s residents with fabulously gossipy stories of their lives both pre- and post- the fall of the Berlin Wall. When published in its original German, it became an overnight sensation thanks to its stories of corns, ingrown toenails and fungal infections.
Maddie Rogers of publisher Peirene Press says, “Once the largest prefabricated housing estate in the GDR, Marzahn is now home to a multitude of pensioners in need of foot care. From her intimate vantage point, the chiropodist keenly observes the clients who pass through her clinic and recounts their life stories with poignancy and humour. Each story stands alone as a beautifully crafted vignette; together they form a nuanced and tender portrait of a community. Part memoir, part collective history, this is Katja Oskamp’s love letter to the inhabitants of Marzahn.”
Peirene Press was founded in 2008 by Meike Ziervogel with the purpose of bringing more European literature onto the UK scene, where translated literature makes up only a tiny percentage of books published. It has published works in translation from 17 different languages, with a focus on contemporary literature and short novels and offers a subscription service where subscribers receive books two months ahead of publication.
The literature published by Peirene encompasses both social and political issues. Between 2016 and 2018 it produced the Peirene Now! series, a collection of commissioned works exploring contemporary issues such as Brexit and the refugee crisis. This series included Shatila Stories, a piece of collaborative fiction written by nine Syrian and Palestinian refugees.
It has also published Shadows on the Tundra, the memoir of Lithuanian Dalia Grinkevičiūtė who was deported to a Soviet labour camp at the age of 14 in 1941; Under the Tripoli Sky by Kamal Ben Hameda, a glimpse into deeply segregated pre-Gaddafi Libyan society; and Soviet Milk by Latvian author Nora Ikstena, which examines the effects of Soviet rule on one individual’s life.
The following extract is taken from Marzahn, Mon Amour, translated from German by Jo Heinrich, out in February 2022 (subscribers receive it in December 2021, peirenepress.com).
Herr Pietsch
There is, though, one dyed-in-the-wool party functionary who visits me regularly. Since I’ve known him, the stereotype has acquired a name: Herr Pietsch. He is a walking cliché.
Herr Pietsch arrives promptly at the salon door for his appointments, checked flat cap on his bald head, peering imperiously through the window. It is beneath him to knock on a door or ring a bell; a door needs to be opened on Herr Pietsch’s arrival. That’s what he knows and expects, even if it hasn’t been that way for thirty years. I let him in with a ‘Greetings, Herr Pietsch’, but my smile is not returned. Herr Pietsch silently hangs up his jacket, giving the impression that he’s here on official business, to make some kind of inspection. He acknowledges a woman waiting in the wicker chair for her beauty treatment, looking down on her in every sense, given his height. He leads me into the chiropody room, taking his little bag with him.
‘How are things with you?’ I ask.
Herr Pietsch, taking off his shoes and socks, stares out of the window. By now I know the routine: he is always wary at first, only to drastically overstep the mark later. I bend down, push the footbath into place and look up into his protruding eyes – two bulging orbs. Herr Pietsch speaks with a Thuringian-Saxon accent, a little indistinctly as he’s on his third set of teeth: ‘There are certainly a few things I’m not happy with, but I’m getting by. I’m on top of life.’
Eberhard Pietsch was born in 1941 into a modest family. He attended a Workers’ and Peasants’ College, and became a teacher of history and mathematics. He got married and had a daughter. He soon changed tack professionally and started his career as a party official. At first, he ran a branch of the Free German Youth in Thuringia, but before long he was promoted to a party position. He once boasted to me, ‘I was the youngest district party secretary in the whole of the GDR!’ The district whose party secretary he had been in the 70s bordered West Germany and I was given the impression that Herr Pietsch had guarded all twenty-one miles of the frontier by himself. In 1981 Herr Pietsch moved to the capital with his family, went to conferences in other socialist countries as an SED official, and accompanied GDR delegations to the Olympic Games. I’ve never found out exactly what his job entailed.
When he first came to see me, he asked me if I knew when the Pioneers’ Anniversary was. ‘Thirteenth of December,’ I said, and then, on request, recited the dates of National People’s Army Day (1 March), Teacher’s Day (12 June) and Republic Day (7 October), and I even sang ‘May There Always Be Sunshine’ in Russian for him, as a little extra. This won me a place in his faltering heart. In me, he sees the diligent young Pioneer I once was. I remind Herr Pietsch of his prime.
While I’m washing his feet, he tells me about a new armchair he’s bought. He’ll have to wait three months for it to be delivered. As he’s already got rid of his old armchair, a camping chair is all he has to sit on for now. I dry his long feet, which hang from long legs, reminding me of a hare’s paws. Then I step on the pedal, sending Herr Pietsch skywards with a low hum.
In his prime, Herr Pietsch found himself not only politically and ideologically on the right side, but also on the high ground, to his mind at least. He was a cut above, with others below. It’s a concept that, deep down, Herr Pietsch has held on to. As I’m familiar with the special dates and songs, I find myself on the right side in Herr Pietsch’s eyes, even if I am just a lowly chiropodist. In his prime, as an influential man, Herr Pietsch didn’t just go away on business, he often played away too: here an ambitious comrade, there an interpreter or a track and field athlete. He had a long-term relationship with his secretary. Herr Pietsch must have kept meticulous records about these affairs, as he once told me the exact number of sexual conquests he’d had in his lifetime (fifty-one), on which I congratulated him, as would be expected of a chiropodist as far as Eberhard Pietsch is concerned.
Housing estate in Berlin-Marzahn
CREDIT: Armin Staudt / Alamy Stock Photo
I get the better of his woody toenails, which are never easy to trim. I run a probe under the edges of his nails. It triggers his nerve endings, making Herr Pietsch’s toes twitch every so often. He finds it unpleasant and maintains he has no control over it. The drill starts up with a buzz. I carefully even out the grooves in his nails and try to give the freshly trimmed edges a smooth shape, with only partial success given the brittle material I’m working with.
Herr Pietsch had just begun an affair with a buxom party colleague fourteen years his junior when the truth came out. His wife caught him in the act, washed her hands of him and threw him out of the marital home. At the time, not only Herr Pietsch’s honour, but also the GDR was on its last legs. The Wall came down, East Germany was no more and Frau Pietsch got her divorce. While all of Berlin celebrated German reunification at the Brandenburg Gate, Herr Pietsch was moving into a one-room apartment in Marzahn, where he still lives (and currently sits on his camping chair). He wanted to get back into teaching, but he was turned down. To avoid unemployment, he started working for an insurance company in an office in Marzahn. He managed a customer base that had been absorbed from the GDR’s state insurance scheme. After thirteen years of insurance, Herr Pietsch collapsed in the street. An ambulance. Heart surgery. Five bypasses in eight hours. After rehab, Herr Pietsch retired at sixty-three, on a very much pared-down pension.
While I’m scrubbing the rough skin from Herr Pietsch’s withered feet, he talks about his next (and forty-third) hike with his cardiac rehab group, in which he takes a leading role. Herr Pietsch plans the hikes: he walks them in advance, times them, tests out the train connections and, once he has counted the names on the list he’s passed round, books a table at an inn so the group can refuel and revive themselves at the end of their hike. If it’s someone’s birthday, Herr Pietsch prepares a speech to give to the group.
I interject to say that the cardiac rehab group must be happy that Herr Pietsch always organizes these hikes to perfection. Unexpectedly, Herr Pietsch isn’t pleased with my compliment, raising his brows over his goitrous eyes dismissively and retorting in his broad Saxony accent, ‘Bassema off Mädschn’ – in other words, ‘Look here, young lady!’ This kicks off an explanation that goes right back to basics, a wily fox telling a mentally underdeveloped creature that he can plan these hikes at the drop of a hat, thanks to his years of experience as a district party secretary. Herr Pietsch spells it out for me, almost as if I should be taking notes: ‘I, Eberhard Pietsch, have always been able to organize anything! I, Eberhard Pietsch, know what the cardiac rehab group needs! I, Eberhard Pietsch, am good at public speaking!’ Herr Pietsch has been living alone for almost thirty years. His relationship with his ex-wife is chilly and even his daughter keeps contact to a minimum.
Herr Pietsch isn’t invited round for family birthdays. No one rings up every once in a while to find out how he is. Herr Pietsch signed over his garden plot to his grandson. The grandson took it on without a word of thanks and still never calls.
I rub the dust from Herr Pietsch’s feet and reach for the cream. His skin absorbs it like a sponge and I need to top it up several times. Herr Pietsch starts on his illnesses and doesn’t register his foot massage at all. He’s lost contact not only with his relatives, but also with his feet. I could be poking in his ears, for all the notice he takes.
He talks of the cardiologist, the orthopaedist, the ophthalmologist and the dermatologist, and finally reaches the urologist, whom he visits intermittently for monitoring purposes. Her routine question about his sexual activity forms the transition to Herr Pietsch’s central theme: erections, or, more specifically, his erections, which he goes on to describe in detail as attainable, although unreliable. Like the GDR, like his marriage and like his career, Herr Pietsch’s erections are leaning towards a sudden collapse. He worries about the medication he’s taking for his heart, but nevertheless wants to try out the tablets the urologist recommends for keeping it up. There’s just one thing missing: a sexual partner. No sign of one, for miles. Then Herr Pietsch asks me if I might be interested in having sex with him. I tell him I’m already taken; he’ll have to make do with a pedicure. But Herr Pietsch sticks to his guns. He says that I’m not stupid and that I have an ‘erudite’ air about me. I politely turn him down again. Despite, or maybe because of, his defeat, Herr Pietsch straightens himself up and says rather contritely that we’ll move on from that subject now. Of course – he still needs to give the orders.
I put his socks back on, unroll his trouser legs, bring the chiropody chair down to ground level and pass Herr Pietsch the shoehorn. His hare’s paws disappear into his shoes.
His meagre pension doesn’t allow for any extravagance. He’s labelled some envelopes that he keeps in his one-room apartment. He puts money aside in them for bigger expenses: the new armchair, a short trip back to his hometown in Thuringia and, last year, an International Garden Exhibition membership. One of his envelopes is for chiropody. Herr Pietsch first came every six weeks, then every five. Now he stands at the door every four weeks.
As I go to leave the room, with the now cold footbath in my hands, Herr Pietsch whips a mini bottle of Söhnlein Brillant sparkling wine out of his bag and presents me with it: ‘Good work, Comrade.’ I laugh and thank him for the present. Herr Pietsch puts his arm round my waist. ‘Can I have a photo of you?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘no photos, Herr Pietsch.’
His goitrous eyes look sad.
At the till, he tells me off - ‘Look here, young lady’ – as if I were his incompetent secretary: it can’t be that difficult to find a new appointment; I must hurry up, he’s got other things he needs to do today. I write the appointment in the diary and on Herr Pietsch’s client card, put twenty-two euros in the till, lead him to the door and hold it open. He takes his leave seriously and professionally. The six-foot-three pensioner creeps off, checked flat cap on his bald head, back bent, empty bag in his hand. Oh, Eberhard, you old child of the workers and peasants. All your life, you’ve mistaken your position for your personality. Give my regards to the cardiac rehab group.