Koala

The main character’s brother commits suicide. Reflecting on the reasons for what happened, the one who remained alive tries to understand this choice, this character, and this brother’s life—trying, among other things, to solve the mystery of his scout name—Koala—which carries the narrative back to the times of the colonization of Australia, to the story of the relationship between a person and an animal.

I was invited to my hometown to give a talk about a German writer who, two hundred years ago—one November day in Berlin, by Lake Wannsee—after finding a secluded spot on the shore, shot first his girlfriend, Henriette Vogel, in the heart, and then shot himself in the throat. In the main hall of the town hall—a powerful building whose mass has dominated the central square since the sixteenth century—I was to present a couple of or three thoughts about this man’s life and work. But since it was a small town and all the establishments closed incredibly early, the hope of having a proper meal after the talk had to be discarded in advance; and to avoid being hungry altogether, at six in the evening I sat down for dinner in a little restaurant by the river that splits the town into two arms.

Half an hour later, along with the event organizers, when the food had already been ordered, my brother arrived at the restaurant and sat down at our table. I had called him about three weeks earlier and told him about my plan to visit home, even though I was sure the content of the talk—trying to grasp the meaning in the dimly-muddled, sometimes almost inaccessible to understanding, work of the German author of the late eighteenth century—would interest him little. The chance to see each other rarely came. In the town I left twenty-three years ago not of my own free will and where I had been avoiding visits ever since, my brother, on the other hand, lived almost without interruption. Our lives were too different, and besides our mother and a few—though not always pleasant—shared memories, nothing made us kin. So the two hours we spent—by silent agreement—on following brotherhood formalities were usually more than enough for both of us.