Und Ruth

The woman at the train station, is it really Ruth, the mysterious girlfriend of a classmate from the boarding school, hardly changed after all these years? Or is it just an illusion? It would tell an unsettling love story. Suddenly, unmistakably, memories emerge from a world that had been submerged for decades. A railway bridge becomes visible, a weir, a vigil. Hesitantly, the one remembering feels his way back, recalling: the first day of school, the strict rules of coexistence in the boarding school, the malice of the boys, but also the silence between them, the rivalries and intrigues, the quirks of the teachers, the first experiences with love and infatuation. Time and again, the memories return to Erich, the vulnerable roommate from back then, who was mocked by the others and - unacknowledged - envied. The act of remembering falters and starts anew repeatedly. What were those letters that drove Erich to his desperate act? Who wrote them? And what role does Ruth play in all of this? Individual motifs are circled again and again, like mosaic pieces, the details slowly come together to form a picture, making the unspeakable nameable: One has gone. Erich. And Ruth? Urs Faes' novel questions with piercing intensity the themes of responsibility and guilt, without offering relief through simple attributions.