The Lifeguard by Katharina Hacker

"Wanted a dance with the rope maker's daughter, did he?" a neighbor called out to me on the stairs after the police had left. I was carrying my swimming things.

I'd vowed to myself that as soon as I'd done my school-leaving exams I would move out, go to university and never come back to my parents'flat. When I heard my father's footsteps in the hall, I try to hide my book, but he snatched it out of my hand and slammed it shut. I had bruises, it was only when I took up swimming that he began to be more careful. When I undressed the others laughed, we were all naked, I swam as fast as I could. I would move out straight away, I promised myself, away from those three rooms, the long hallway, my room at the end of it. We ate in the kitchen.

"It's a disgrace - eine Schande!" my father would say, but he didn't say why. A bunch of cowards, he'd rage, and my mother would nod nervously.

"What's the boy been doing today?" he would ask my mother, "What do you want to do, learn history?" he jeered, "Do you know what lies are? They would have shown you what's what, and this is supposed to be my son, sticks his head in his books and can't even look me in the face, what are you staring at me like that for?" I'd hear the footsteps in the passage, at once felt his eyes on me, pale eyes watching me, curious, as if waiting to see whether I'd fall down, as though I'd been made to stand there, were standing there in a row with some others, that's how I stood before him, as though at any moment he might send me plunging down, into what, I didn't know. Seized hold of me, dragged me into the bathroom, in front of the mirror, beat me with his belt in front of the mirror, "Bend over the bath!" he barked, "Here!" he forced my head round to look into the mirror and boxed my ears, I saw the naked body in the mirror, saw my face.

When my father was buried I didn't go to the funeral; I sat in my room, he wouldn't be tearing open the door, wouldn't be snatching the book from my hand and taking it away from me. I didn't need to hide anything, a book under the blanket, my face, my shoes and where I'd been in them. I thought I would die, my father had hanged himself, I had heard the rumor, a classmate repeated it to me, what father did - shot children dead, and every day the other boys at school would come up to me, he'd shot them in a pit, the girls wouldn't speak to me, they ran away when I came anywhere near them, shot them dead, said the boys, and I saw his eyes before me, my mother had closed them, she had very quickly become quite calm as though she were relieved. It was only three days later when I refused to go to the funeral with her, that she shouted. She shouted at me for the first time ever, and as I stood my ground and didn't give in to her I was thinking: "No. No one could do anything to me now."

"The Swimming Baths have been closed. I've been fired."
"You're not the only one," Cremer said.