Over the noise

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Norbert Scheuer (2013)

In his novel Überm Rauschen from 2009, the writer Norbert Scheuer , who himself comes from the Eifel , describes two days in the early autumn of 1996 and a childhood and youth in the Eifel in the 1950s and 1960s.

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The presence of the 45-year-old first-person narrator Leo Arimond is the second day of his stay in his hometown. After many years he came back to help his older brother Hermann. Hermann, the host of the family's run-down inn on the river, has barricaded himself in his room for days. Alma, Hermann's partner, asked her brother and two younger sisters Claudia and Renate for help. But Hermann doesn't let anyone in and no sound comes from his room. Alma has to look after the guests in the pub and in the guest rooms. The siblings spend the day trying unsuccessful contact, waiting and visiting the demented mother in the local nursing home separately.

During a last attempt at contact in the evening, the door to Hermann's room is suddenly open. Hermann sits naked on the bed, a fishing lure glued to his shaved head and his lips painted like a fish's mouth. A few minutes later the veteran policeman Sartorius arrives, accompanied by a doctor and two nurses. You take Hermann with you.

The sisters go home that evening. Leo stays at Alma's request and spends the next day fishing in and around the river.

Fishing was the great passion of his father, to whom Hermann passed it on, while Leo was never interested in it and was only forced to go with him as a child. The hunt for the legendary old fish Ichthys became a mania for the father and for Hermann. The ichthys (Greek: fish) is, according to ancient Christian tradition and in modern depth psychology, a symbol for the truth hidden under water, which must be caught in order to gain knowledge.

One of the numerous Ichthys symbols

On this day Leo is surprised to see how much he has learned about fishing from his father and Hermann. The steadily flowing water that falls on the Rauschen , the weir just below the parental home, becomes for Leo a symbol of his heritage and a source of long-buried memories.

Leo's most important reference person was Hermann, the older brother. As children, the two boys shared a room. Leo listened to Hermann's stories and felt secure. They became estranged as teenagers, especially when Alma stepped between them. Hermann, who himself failed in school and training, went to sea for years. He sent Leo money for his studies and audio tapes instead of postcards or letters. He kept talking about the river and the fish. When he returned home, Hermann sent cassettes at irregular intervals. Leo found them more and more confused and no longer listened to them.

There is the mother who lost her great love in an accident before the wedding. According to Leo's observation, she shows no love for either her four children or her husband. She met and married the man the children call father when the two sons were born. According to Leo, the two daughters were also fathered by two of the occasional lovers. The mother never talked about her affairs and also left the children in the dark about their biological fathers.

The stepfather had been an insignificant employee in town. As the husband of a very beautiful, unfaithful wife and as an innkeeper in a remote Eifel town, he was not happy. He read leftist writers, called himself an atheist and felt superior to the locals. He had withdrawn more and more to fishing, although being alone in the river did not make life any better for him. A special inheritance from his father, a fishing lure, saved Hermann from great distress. Leo was not particularly touched by the father's death many years ago.

There is Aunt Reese, who told the children some truths. Above all there is Alma, who hired in the inn when she was sixteen and gave the two adolescent boys their first sexual experiences.

The two younger sisters only play a marginal role in Leo's worldview. For Leo, Magda, Hermann's Dutch lover, who drowned in the river last winter, with or without Hermann's help, is also unimportant.

The fate of the family is embedded in the changes that the Eifel as home is going through. Agriculture steadily declined in importance after the Second World War . As a result, the market days, an important source of income for the inn, are becoming increasingly uninteresting.

The Rauschen , built decades ago in order to be able to supply the local grain mill with an even supply of water, has largely lost its raison d'etre because grain has long ceased to be ground.

The unpunctuality of the railroad, precisely registered by Aunt Reese, is also a sign of decline.

On this day in the eternally flowing water, Leo gains some knowledge about his family, his home and himself. At the end of this day, Leo catches a glimmer of hope for the future from the past.

Others

In Chapter 3, Norbert Scheuer mentions the “wonderful book” by the American author Norman Maclean about his brother Paul and fly fishing : A river rises from the center , which was later successfully filmed under the same title . Chapter 3 also mentions books by Berens and Renell, both of which are also listed in the Acknowledgments.

Above the noise contains numerous drawings of fish and bait. They were created by Erasmus Scheuer, the author's son. Similarly, the American novel A River Runs Through It included woodblock prints by Barry Moser .

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  1. ↑ Werner Berens at DNB. Course leader (fly fishing) of the Rheinischer Fischereiverband
  2. ↑ Rolf Renell homepage. Typo on p. 167. No publications can be verified for Renell.