Motherdeath by Michael Lentz

 

November 16, 1944 - the German city of Düren's blackest day

Motherdeath - short story by German author Michael Lentz. Katy Derbyshire's English translation is available here: https://shortstoryproject.com/stories...

MOTHERDEATH
"Mother disappeared on the twentieth of August nineteen ninety-eight at around eleven fifty at night. At around eight thirty in the morning of the twenty-first of August nineteen ninety-eight, Father called and informed me: 'Mother died at around eleven fifty last night.' I went back to bed and continued reading the duck comic I had set aside the previous evening."

So begins the author's harrowing account.

Michael Lentz is renowned for delving into avenues that bring us closer to the reality of our physical, material world, which often eludes adequate expression through language. Perhaps this is why the time and date of his mother's death are reiterated in the opening lines. In essence, akin to minimalist music and its persistent repetition of a straightforward musical motif (consider pieces such as Philip Glass' "Music in Twelve Parts"), Michael Lentz utilizes repetition to intensify our understanding of his journey surrounding his mother's passing.

"It’s certainly the case that I last saw Mother at around ten in the morning on the sixth of July nineteen ninety-eight. I wave back again and the heavy grey door with the handle rubbed smooth to the touch slips slowly and safely closed. On this ward, a broken foot lies next to death. Everyone leaves via the corridor. Mother is having difficulties with her tongue but her voice is unupset. She is having trouble swallowing and has to drink artificial saliva."

Once more, Michael Lentz aims to delve into the essence, the precise reality, of experiencing being present in that room with its heavy gray door, handle worn smooth, watching his dying mother for the last time, his mother enduring such acute suffering that swallowing becomes arduous, necessitating the consumption of artificial saliva.

This autofiction serves as a reminder to English readers of Karl Ove Knausgård. Michael Lint writes autofiction with a specific purpose: the German author, known for his experimentalism, strives for a reality that is more immediate, more dynamic, and more authentically raw than traditional fiction.

"Now at last I rest my hand with no pressure on the blanket, beneath it her absolutely emaciated legs. Intuiting legs. She is so gaunt that the tendons in her neck grow out of her body like dry branches so gaunt. Her larynx protrudes as though it wanted to be alone. Her arms threaten to snap away, her whole body an ungoverned marionette whose strings somebody tangled."

This is just a snippet from a long paragraph. We're closely following the sensitive, twenty-four years old narrator as he vividly describes everything he observes. Pay attention to his description of his mother, whose "whole body an ungoverned marionette with tangled strings," which is a metaphor rather than a simile, making it more direct, more powerful. The scene, which is agonizingly intense, concludes with him realizing that he never asked his mother if she was contemplating death. He is acutely aware of how close his mother is to dying.

"Mother was not from this society. I think she was from the war, and she compared everything to its equivalent from the war. There weren’t many exact equivalents. She didn’t bring up her children at the level of society, I mean this society was always in the way of her bringing us up, I mean this society was always in her way."

After her death, the narrator reflects on the trauma his mother likely endured during the war, witnessing the devastation of her hometown, Düren. With bitter irony, he muses, "A town ninety-eight per cent destroyed in the war, ought never to have been rebuilt. They should have left it all as it was to rot away. Then they could have taken people and women from all over the world there fifty years after the war and said: THAT is war."

"German grammar always emits such an extreme stench of decay. This permanently papally blessed German language. This bargain language. This philosopher’s language. This money-back deposit bottle of a language."

It sounds like the narrator (and perhaps author Michael Lentz) has lost faith in his native language. If language no longer can be trusted to express our deepest, most intimate emotions, what does this say about our inner lives? Additionally, how reliable is our memory? Can works of a high literary standard come to our aid? Questions and ideas to keep in mind as your read this heart-wrenching tale of Michael Lentz.


Michael Lentz, born 1964