Sway to stay E-Book

Thekla Wilkening

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Sway to Stay
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 222

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

While hate speech grows louder, borders harder, and the world increasingly fractures along rigid lines, this novel chooses another path. It lingers in the fragile, dwells in the contradictory, and listens to what remains unresolved. In doing so, it takes a quiet but unmistakable political stance. Franca loves Ed. And still, she must leave him - for herself, for her survival. Between echoes of the past and the roar of the present, between family bonds and urban restlessness, unfolds a story of closeness and rupture, of queerness and care, of violence and the fragile bravery it takes to begin again. SWAY TO STAY is searching, contradictory, quietly radical and thereby a counter-narrative: against backlash, against the right-wing rollback, against the rhetoric of fear and in favor of belief, love and the messy hope that insists on staying. Told through shifting perspectives, SWAY TO STAY maps the hidden topographies of our relationships and the courage it takes to speak, to stay, or to go.

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*

An eastern wind pushed the clouds across the sky at a furious pace. The morning sun tempted with a few warm rays and the scent of freshly baked croissants drifted through the air.

Franca Albrecht lifted her face toward the sky and breathed in the crisp air filled with sweetness. In the pocket of her pink faux fur coat, her phone vibrated, again and again. She raised her shoulders, squinted, hoping it would stop. Hoping he would stop.

But he would not.

He hung up, called, hung up again.

Over and over, until she gave in.

On February 14, 2025, the Bundesrat approved the Violence Support Act to strengthen the aid network for gender-based and domestic violence.

A law instead of flowers on Valentine’s Day.

When Franca Albrecht met the mysterious Ed Meyer, he had been painfully shy, yet undeniably charming.

They went for a walk after meeting in a bar one evening and reconnecting on Instagram the next morning.

He walked quickly beside her, slightly nervous, hard to read. When it started to rain, they escaped into a café, shared a couch. Ed relaxed, his eyes lit up when Franca spoke.

They fell in love.

The emotional rollercoaster never ended. Franca spent years trying to recreate that one moment on the couch. She was never late, always called back, kept the apartment spotless, his and hers, spent all her free time with him, knew everything about him. If he smiled at her, she felt safe.

Ed promised things would settle once she moved in.

That was not true.

They had hardly any visitors. Watching him scream at her was unbearable. The fear that he might become violent was terrifying. From that point on, Franca lived two lives. One with her former roommates and at fashion school, one with Ed.

“Hello,” Franca whispered into the phone. She stood straight on the sidewalk, holding a large plastic bag with a disheveled bouquet (pink lilies that looked like starfish) and her birthday gifts wrapped in soggy, colorful paper.

“Are you coming home?”

*

The Eastpak hung low over the hip-hugging jeans, covered in colorful scribbles. Under the frayed flares, the three stripes of Adidas Superstars occasionally flashed, and a pink Baby-G clung on their wrist. On all of them, except for Ada Landau.

Ada’s pants were a bit too short, her watch had a leather strap and plenty of scratches. No one had written “luv ya” on her backpack, because Ada spent her breaks alone.

She was alone at home too. Both her parents worked full time. Still, the money barely covered the basics.

Years later, Ada Landau had blonde curls, a heart-shaped face and a strong desire to finally find her own way.

"You got that wild mane from your dad, just like your sense of justice and that endless hunger," said Ada’s mother, Karin Landau, as she entered the room and saw Ada sitting on the stool in front of the mirror. With her head between her knees, Ada kneaded sticky mousse into her damp hair. Karin paused for a moment and watched her daughter. Although they had a good relationship, Ada had always been a daddy’s girl.

"He’s going to miss you so much when you move out," said Karin with a touch of melancholy as she laid the clean laundry on the bed.

"Oh Mom, don’t make this harder than it already is," Ada pleaded, lifting her head with a quick flick so that her curls fell gently around her face. Her excitement to finally live on her own outweighed everything else. She found any sentimentality unnecessary. Carefully, she placed sweaters, shirts, and jeans into her wardrobe and closed the door, on which a childhood photo of her and Ben was still taped.

"With how impossible it is to find an apartment right now, you might have me around for a while longer," Ada said with a sigh.

Since last summer, Ada had been in love with Ben, whom she’d known all her life, who loved numbers and believed in a better world. Ben worked at an urban planning office that barely scraped by from one public tender to the next. For months, the newly in love couple had been desperately searching for a place of their own, hunting from one apartment viewing to the next - when they even got invited.

"This shit is unreal. We’re sending out one request after another and don’t even get a damn rejection," Ben blurted. His mother, Ida Adewale, had raised him to be polite, but the powerlessness of the situation had unhinged him.

Often, housing companies asked for documentation even before a viewing. A young couple, she still looking for work, he employed at a city planning office, with a history of migration - their chances were slim.

"Screw it. Fuck it. I’m asking Adam for help," Ben muttered. He dropped into a kitchen chair, leaned his elbow on the backrest, and settled his chin in his hand. Looking over at Ada, he whispered, "I’m sorry, baby. I’m fucking this all up."

It wasn’t easy for Ben to ask his boss for help. But after he and Ada had once again spent hours standing in the cold to view an apartment and knew from the first handshake that it wouldn’t work out, he saw no other option.

"He’s probably still at the studio. I’ll run over and ask him," Ben said, kissing Ada on the forehead, putting on his jacket and hat, and closing the door behind him. Ada watched him from the window as he crossed the street with determined steps. She thought about how babies learn self-efficacy when they cry and someone helps them. It was time to cry out.

The desk lamp in Adam Winter’s studio was still on. He was working on a model when Ben arrived and explained the situation. Adam’s reaction caught Ben off guard.

"Why didn’t you say something earlier? I was starting to wonder. I thought maybe you didn’t like anything you saw."

Ben snorted and waved his arms wildly. The idea that Adam might be surprised by their struggle had never occurred to him.

"What... I mean, isn’t it obvious?" Ben mumbled, his hands still mid-air. He had a gift for conveying a lot with just a few words - messages that listeners absorbed and colored with their own interpretations. That often led to misunderstandings, quickly forgotten, because being around Ben always felt good.

"Yeah, when you put it like that, it is obvious. I was thinking about how long it took me to find this studio, but only because I had very specific ideas about what I wanted. Not because I wasn’t being invited," Adam explained. He stood up and paced briskly across the small room. He opened the door, stood in the frame, and took a deep breath of fresh air. A dog barked outside.

"I’m sorry. I’ll call Arcade. They’ll definitely have something for you," Adam said, clearly uncomfortable. Though he spent much of his time thinking about how people live together, he seemed to have overlooked the harsh reality his protégé was navigating. He pulled his phone from the pocket of his jeans and dialed the housing company he used to work for during his student days.

"They’ve probably already closed for the day," he said as no one answered, with a hint of contempt in his voice. "I’ll try again first thing in the morning, okay?" "Thanks, Adam," Ben said, sincerely.

It took a few days for Adam Winter to work through all possible contacts, but by the weekend, he had good news for the young couple.

"This one isn’t going on the market until Monday. You’ll be the first to see it in the morning. If you like it, they’ll only do one short showing. They have to. But with a bit of luck, I think it’ll work out."

Ada was flooded with excitement. She lay sleepless in her childhood bedroom, listening to her mother Karin humming in the kitchen and her father Ebert tiptoeing through the apartment. The familiar sounds of her childhood. If Ebert Landau weren’t her father, she might call him lost, but she had too much respect for him. He had always been her hero, but over the years, he had become strange.

A few streets away, Ben lay in bed in the apartment he shared with his mother, Ida Adewale. This was where he and Ada had sex for the first time, in his small bed, on one of those hot afternoons last July. Dust danced in the sunlit air, cars honked at the intersection, and the curtains fluttered in the breeze. Ben couldn’t say exactly when he had fallen in love with Ada, but that afternoon sealed it. Her curls, her laughter, her hungry kisses - he couldn’t get enough of her. The idea that soon they’d fall asleep beside each other every night nearly drove him mad.

Sleep-deprived and jittery, they stood in front of the high-rise that Monday morning, maybe the tallest building in the city.

"Ben, I’m so nervous. I hope the apartment’s nice," Ada said, bouncing from one foot to the other. Her red and white sneakers were freshly cleaned, her dark jeans hit just above the ankle, her jacket was short and black.

"It has to be. I mean, why else would so many people live here?" Ben grinned and counted the doorbells - 80 in four rows. A building full of people, stories, futures. Ben felt hopeful. He looked up. The building was gray with accents of light brown. It stood proudly beside a busy street, like a tower or a warrior, ready for anything.

"Good morning." A waft of heavy, woody perfume, followed by an elegantly dressed woman, pulled Ben out of his thoughts.

“Schmitt," she said cheerfully, shaking Ada’s hand, then Ben’s.

"Ben Adewale and my girlfriend Ada Landau," he introduced them. She was still shaking his hand.

"Fantastic. Let’s get started." She let go of Ben’s hand and walked toward the elevator.

"The apartment is on the top floor. You’ll have a stunning view, I promise you that," Mrs. Schmitt said in her polished, rehearsed tone. Ben and Ada nodded like obedient schoolchildren as the elevator carried them to the thirteenth floor.

The apartment gleamed. It smelled of fresh paint and lemon. There were two rooms, a small kitchen with a large window, and a balcony off the living room behind a wide glass door. Around them, nothing but sky, glowing blue on that Monday morning.

Ada could hardly believe her luck and shouted, "We’ll take it!"

Ben was in the bathroom, checking the water pressure in the shower. Water rushed onto his outstretched hand.

"We’ll take it," he agreed and wiped his wet hand on his jeans.

"Don’t you want to sleep on it?" asked the friendly woman from the housing office.

"No way."

"Alright then, please fill out this form and we’ll talk tomorrow."

The next morning, Mrs. Schmitt answered the phone with, "Congratulations." Ada let out a wild, off-pitch squeal of joy, followed by jubilant leaps that ended with her elbow jabbing Ben in the ribs.

"I’m excited too," he gasped.

They didn’t have much money. They were used to pressing their noses to shop windows and eating homemade mashed potatoes with fried eggs after school. Nowhere in the world would that taste better than on the balcony of their first apartment together.

Once the paperwork was done, the keys handed over, and the few pieces of furniture they owned crammed into the tiny elevator and moved in, they closed the door behind them, ran down the stairs into the summer night, bought a pack of cigarettes and a six-pack of beer at Sezgin Yilmaz’s kiosk, and threw themselves onto the little patch of grass in front of the building.

"Ben, are we free now?"

"Free as birds."

*

"Good morning, everyone," Franca Albrecht called out cheerfully as school began. She didn’t know hardship, which says a lot. Franca was pretty, smart, fashionably dressed, her grades flawless, and she was universally well liked.

"Hi Isabella, how are you?" Franca greeted everyone, even Isabella Sonntag, who had always seemed a little odd to her. Franca had once heard that Isabella had ADHD, but she never dared to bring it up. She didn’t know how to ask without hurting her.

Isabella had known from the moment she got up that today wouldn’t be a good day. Like every day, actually. She had no homework, even though she’d thought about it several times the night before. It happened often.

"How do you think?" Isabella replied flatly, nervously fidgeting with her braid. She undid it, carefully combed her hair with her fingers, then tied it back up sloppily. She wanted to tell Franca how dumb it all felt, how pointless, and yet how hard it was just to keep up. But she doubted Franca would understand her thoughts, so she stayed silent. Franca had no answer either and left Isabella standing there.

As expected, Franca graduated with top marks. That was the only point of overlap between her and Isabella Sonntag: both disappointed their parents with the first independent decision of their young adult lives.

"It’s my life!" she shouted on the afternoon of graduation day. The neighbors still talk about how surprising it was to hear yelling from the Albrechts' house that day.

"Not as long as you’re living under our roof," Johann Albrecht snapped back. The escalation caught him off guard, and apart from some reheated platitudes, he had nothing more to offer.

"Then I’ll stop that right now," Franca declared. Even as the words left her mouth, she was surprised by her own courage, or was it fury?

So Franca Albrecht packed her bags, five in total, walked down the white-pebbled path to the street, hailed a taxi, and went looking for her freedom.

At first, Franca stayed with her aunt Fanny, who ran a flower shop in a quiet part of the neighborhood. Fanny was tall, wore her light hair shoulder-length and down. Already as a little girl, Fanny had loved colorful flowers of all kinds, because even though her parents denied it for some time, Fanny had been born deaf.

Her mother dragged her from doctor to doctor. Inflammations were suspected, treated, and ruled out. Shamans were consulted, prayers were said. But in the end, the truth remained: Fanny couldn’t hear. She practiced hard, but could form only a few sounds, so the whole family learned sign language and accepted silence as their new companion. There was a sigh of relief when a sibling for Fanny was announced. Even before her brother was born, the responsibility to balance things out had been placed on Johann Albrecht’s shoulders.

Thanks to Johann, Fanny finally had the space she longed for, free from her parents’ expectations that a miracle might still occur.

"I’ve always thought my life was beautiful," Fanny would sign whenever Franca asked. Franca had never dared to ask Isabella if she was neurodivergent, but with her aunt Fanny, she no longer hesitated to ask about her unusual life.

"I learned to read and write early," Fanny added.

"And you always had that notebook," Franca chimed in, delighted. She loved her aunt more than anyone and never knew her without that little notebook with the red ribbon and the pencil tucked into the front pocket of her overalls. To this day, that was how Fanny communicated with others.

While still in school, Fanny fell head over heels for a young man, Fritz Haber, who also carried a notebook, because he wanted to become a poet. Fritz and Fanny, the ones with the notebooks - his for poems, hers for flowers - everyone was enchanted by such romance.

The lilies sway with gentle grace,

As if a muse had found their place,

Each blossom, every leaf and stem,

Holds poetry within, just then.

Fritz Haber wrote to Fanny Albrecht. But as the years together passed, and after a long-awaited trip to Morocco, Fritz Haber grew bored. He never became a poet and found it hard to find meaning in life. He came from a well-off family, never had to struggle, and never learned how to. For distraction, he drove his red BMW along the highway at dusk, pushing the speed limit.

"I think best when I feel free, the wind, the open road," Fritz explained.

"But please, not too fast," Fanny would always plead. She took a job at a small psychotherapy practice, doing cleaning, bookkeeping, and filing, all while saving for her own flower shop. One day, the phone rang at the practice. Her colleague answered, hesitated, and Fanny could already read it in her eyes. She had never felt such pain before. Her whole body screamed before she collapsed, trembling violently.

Her parents came and helped with the funeral. And although Fanny protested fiercely, they also put down the deposit for the small shop she had her eye on for a long time. The shop shared its entrance with another space, home to a little antiquarian store. From the outside, the large brassframed windows and tiled benches created a poetic atmosphere.

"Adele says your flowers speak of longing," her brother Johann signed one day, sitting on Fanny’s counter drinking coffee. Johann visited often. He was studying law and had helped her with the paperwork. He was also freshly in love and constantly showered his beloved with flowers from Fanny’s shop, which he always put on tab. Fanny couldn’t say no to Johann.

She nodded. She could never bring herself to tie lighthearted, easy bouquets.

"A touch of summer, as bright as life itself" - cheerful, flashy arrangements just weren’t her thing.

The flower shop became her refuge during the hard years that followed. The pain over Fritz’s death, it seemed to Fanny, grew a little every day.

"The longer Fritz is gone, the more I realize how long he wasn’t really there," Fanny wrote in her notebook and handed it to Johann. He nodded and gave it back.

"Why didn’t I see it? We were just drifting along. How futile," she wrote. "What a pointless death."

"Don’t blame yourself," Johann scribbled underneath. "He should have taken better care of himself, not you of him."

"I know," Fanny signed, nodded, and leaned against the counter beside Johann. Every morning, she went to Fritz’s grave first, tended the flowers, then opened her shop. She didn’t blame herself for Fritz Haber’s death, God no. He was the one who had driven too fast. But she still wondered why she hadn’t seen how bored he was. Or maybe, how boring he had become.

Johann and Fanny stood side by side for a while, lost in thought, when they spotted their neighbor, the antiquarian across the way.

"Every morning, when I open up, he’s already dancing through his rows of antiques, dusting off every treasure. He does it with such devotion, as if polishing gold," Fanny signed.

"Maybe he lives in there," Johann guessed, running his hand from chin downward, then pointing toward the studio. The antique dealer’s white hair stood straight up, his clothes were strictly black with accents of oxblood, as he called it. Calm and precise, he moved through the chaotic heaps of objects, all for sale. Wildly stacked, eccentrically arranged, and dusted with loving care every single day.

"There’s something poetic about it," Johann signed as they watched him.

*

"You always sat at that red table reading, felt like you had a new book every day," Ben laughed as he brought the hot pan of gnocchi to the balcony, sizzling with rosemary sprigs in butter and two forks.

He handed a fork to Ada and sat down next to her. Ada carefully picked out gnocchi, soaked up a bit more of the melted butter, chewed with satisfaction, and said:

"That’s exactly how it was. I was obsessed. I wanted to read more than this girl in my class, Clarissa. She always had buckwheat cookies in her lunchbox, smelled like musk, and could just read and write better than me. Her stories were disgustingly quirky, but also incredibly well written," Ada laughed. "I hated her for it, every single day. Jealousy ate me alive."

"I never heard that before," Ben said, trying to spear another gnocchi.

"One time I waited for her after school and claimed her mom had called because all her books had burned," Ada admitted, shaking her head. She remembered it so vividly, as if it had happened yesterday. They were reading Bradbury in school. Now Ben laughed too.

"You didn’t! And then you just walked into the dry cleaners all innocent and quietly read your books."

"That’s probably how it went."

"And Clarissa?"

"She had a breakdown. I’ve never seen anything like it. She cried, deeply and from the soul." "And you?"

"I told her I was sorry and ran off." Ada decided not to mention how gleeful she’d felt watching Clarissa’s despair.

Years later, now a university student, reading had turned into something else. Ada had a deep urge to put the world into words in order to understand it. She began studying literature and, with her cheerful demeanor, landed an internship at the local newspaper LOZ. Almost unpaid, long hours included.

"What does journalism mean to you, Ms. Landau?" editor-in-chief Lorenz Martin had asked during her interview.

"Everything," Ada replied. "It’s like an own language. I speak English, German, really bad French, and I can write. I write about what happens, see patterns and connections, sketch out solutions. I understand things in ways my eyes can’t see, and my mouth can’t express."

"Very poetic, Ms. Landau," Lorenz Martin replied. He’d sat across from her, marveling at this raw gem, clearly still in its natural state, fresh from the mine - but the polishing would come, there was plenty of work.

"Around here, things tend to move fast, rough, and sometimes a little dirty. Time and money force our standards to bend. Can you live with that?"

"I’ll do my best," Ada promised.

"Great, then you can sit right here and start. There’s a lot to do. Oh, and we’re all on a first-name basis here. That okay?" Lorenz Martin stood up, shook Ada’s hand, and left her stunned.

"Okay, okay," Ada smoothed her skirt, leaned back, and looked at the desk in front of her. It wasn’t very large and shared a border with another, currently empty, desk. A big monitor, a keyboard, pens in a glass, nothing more.

"I got the job!" Ada texted Ben. She wouldn’t earn much from this internship, just a small expense allowance she needed for school, rent, dinner. She was allowed to eat lunch in the cafeteria for free, a relic of a bygone era, won by a conservative staff who now claimed it as their right and ate together daily.

"Time to get started," Ada thought, stood up, and walked through the rooms. The LOZ editorial office was huge. Each neighborhood had its own department, which mostly consisted of a few desks pushed together. You could say Ada had worked her way up, her parents’ work ethic paired with her ever-present sense of lack gave her the drive to rise, even if that rise currently offered more prestige than financial security.

Many of her coworkers were a mystery to Ada, with quirks she found both magnetic and repelling. Big topics were always money and power, which made sense when trying to understand global dynamics - one of her tasks as a budding journalist. She didn’t know much about money, except what it was like not to have it, and she kept that to herself. She wrote down much of what others said on colorful sticky notes that she stuck to her screen, trying to match LOZ’s linguistic tone.

"The market regulates itself," read a yellow sticky note. "Competition stimulates business," was written on a pink one that kept falling off. "We need more entrepreneurship, not more bureaucracy," on a green one. "The rich create jobs," Ada stuck behind the others.

"The world runs on money, but what if it’s the wrong engine?" she whispered before placing it at the back again. How could one escape it when it was the very air they breathed? "Performance must pay again," read an orange sticky note. Below it, "Instead of redistribution, we need more incentives for achievement" and on the back, "Germany must not become the world’s welfare office." That one filled up the fastest and was the one she hated the most.

She often stood in the break room, used the free coffee machine to save money, and listened to all those catchphrases. After a few weeks, she dared to push back when her colleague Max Richter once again droned on about performance and pay:

"For whom, Max? For those already earning plenty or for those working hard and still barely scraping by?" Ada left the little kitchenette proud but fuming. Her internship was a fulltime job, not just in hours, but emotionally too. She’d jumped in unprepared and was now trying to keep her head above water. She worked day and night, saw Ben only late in the evening, then they curled up together, sometimes sleeping with each other, sometimes just falling asleep on top of one another.

"So, this is freedom?" Ada whispered after snuggeling in with Ben under the blanket. She’d carried that disappointment with her for a while now, though she didn’t want to seem ungrateful.

"Doesn’t really feel like it." Ada looked at Ben, but he only caught the melancholy in her voice, not the empty question behind it.

"Yeah, it’ll be okay. Just give yourself time," Ben replied with a gentle smile. Ada returned a faint smile that quickly faded as she pulled the blanket tighter around her.

"Maybe."

Ben moved even closer to her.

After the global COVID pandemic broke out, everyone packed up their computers and worked from home. Ada wrote her texts from the bedroom and followed the endless editorial meetings on Zoom, bored, while Ben planned new projects with Adam in the living room. Neither of them liked remote work. They struggled with the anonymity and rigidity of the meetings, where the phone would ring if you were even a minute late.

"Where are you, Ada? We have a meeeeting!" Ada was tired of hearing that sentence and longed to return to the office, where you could grab a coffee between meetings and chat for a moment.

Small talk was in her blood, because her mother, Karin Landau, also thrived on everyday encounters at the dry cleaner’s she’d taken over a few years ago. That didn’t mean Karin liked everyone - quite the opposite. Many struck her as utterly peculiar.