Monika Helfer: Die Bagage.

Riffraff.
Novel.
Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2020.

Monika Helfer’s novel Die Bagage (Riffraff) starts with a picture. We imagine a child drawing a scene for us. That child also depicts for us the character that everything revolves around. But only if we turn a blind eye can we call the "upstanding woman" – Maria, the narrator’s grandmother – a protagonist.
Maria lives with her family, her husband Josef and an ever-growing horde of children in poverty at the outer edge of a village in Vorarlberg. The family is called "riffraff" and, as the term implies, they are at the very bottom of the village’s social ladder.
The story, but not the novel, begins with the arrival of the letter drafting Josef into the First World War. Josef entrusts the mayor with the task of looking after his property and his wife. Because Maria is so beautiful, she’s besieged by the desires of the village men. The postman worships her from afar, the mayor turns out to be overbearing, a northern German man, Georg, visits her at home. And Maria does not always stand by passively; she flirts when it’s fun for her and knows how to wield her charm to get what she wants. She even falls in love with Georg, but it’s a brief dream of a great love, envisioned more by the narrator than by her grandmother Maria. A break in the narrative, a technique used by Helfer again and again, creating both distance, and – paradoxically – great intimacy.

At some point Maria becomes pregnant with Margarethe, the mother of the narrator. His whole life, Josef will never speak a word to her, on account of the rumors sweeping the village about her paternity.
Monika Helfer’s story has a clear autobiographical style. She does not proceed chronologically, knowing that memories and order do not necessarily match up. The same goes for the truth, which depends on the perspective and sketchy memories. This opens the door to fictionality, to conjectures and a mood of nuances.
Written with dry clarity, uniquely distanced and yet immersed in it all, Monika Helfer tells the story of her family. Without self-pity or dramatization, she chronicles the hierarchies and dependencies, but also the resilience and cohesion in adverse circumstances – revealing the curse and blessing of one’s origin.

Short version of the review by Johanna Lenhart, 28 April 2020
Translation by Ida Cerne

>> Incentives