2024-04-27 06:00:00
The Leipzig author received the Rheingau Literature Prize for his new novel “May Fly Time”. The book is about a family whose child is cruelly taken away
“May fly time.
Where uncertainty ends, dreaming begins – that is the maxim of the father of first-person narrator Hans in the new novel “May Fly Time” by Matthias Jügler. The title refers to a specific natural phenomenon on the upper reaches of the Unstrut that the author knows from his childhood: Jügler, born in Halle an der Saale in 1984, now lives in Leipzig. But how is that? Countless mayflies rise above the water to dance in the sky, mate, then fall back to the surface of the water – where they are already waiting for the hungry fish as welcome food. They, in turn, can now easily be caught and caught by anglers.
The novel “May Fly Time” is based on a real suspected case about a couple in the GDR who, after the birth of a son, are led to believe that the infant has died. Jügler’s “literary precision” allowed him to summarize the material in almost 150 pages and do justice to the psychological burden of the desperate parents and the experiences of the first-person narrator, praised the jury of the Rheingau Literature Prize, which the author has just been awarded for this : The book “makes a shadow of contemporary history visible”, but does not claim to clarify, but remains a “space of possibility”.
So the story is rather cautious: in May or at Pentecost, Hans is always drawn to this region because his life there is shaped by several strokes of fate. He maintains a close relationship with his girlfriend Katrin, whom he met during his studies: their child was born on May 7, 1978 in a Naumburg clinic.
But shortly afterwards the doctor and nurses appear and confirm the infant’s death verbally and in writing. Katrin protests, Hans is at a loss, and he does nothing to let events take their course. Katrin then leaves him and the home that had already been prepared for her child Daniel after a week of harsh arguments. Hans rejects his doubts about the child’s death, but they continue to simmer and increasingly burden him.
About forty years after these arguments – Hans is now in a relationship with Anne – they both receive a call: Daniel live! Details of Hans’ life are now told in a plot with flashbacks. Images of his childhood up to the present time in 2018 create an arc of tension: his childish fishing skills, his studies in Jena, his love for Katrin, the shattered atmosphere after her escape, the nervous stress caused by the fact that he did nothing other than the news of his death fell upon her. Only when Hans had fully confessed the unfortunate situation to his new partner Anne and encouraged her to inquire about the true background to authorities and clinics after the fall of the Wall, did Katrin’s previously severe doubts come to life again. But these investigations are initially unsuccessful; the bureaucratic apparatus continues to block things.
The event culminates when that call suddenly comes. Martin is alive, he was adopted by a family, lives near Leipzig, and a meeting is arranged. Daniel alias Martin had also researched and found his biological parents. However, he dismisses Hans and his version in a dramatic dialogue, because his documents attempt to prove that his neglected parents simply gave him away at the time. They part loudly and desperately. But Hans doesn’t give up and starts writing letters to his son, until some time later Martin calls him and carefully asks if he could come to visit during the Mayfly season…
The plot is easy to understand despite the jumps in time. Its emotional component is consistently provocative because one can hardly understand the cause of the fake child death. Jügler’s pictorial way of combining the conflicting foreground events with the passages from “Angler’s Latin” is beneficial, because in the end Hans manages to pull a barbel out of the river. But after a hard fight, she is able to free herself from the hook and slips back into the water. While a casual observer would interpret this as “Bad luck!” judged, Hans gives a liberating laugh. Will he be able to reach an agreement with Martin?
In the follow-up notes, the reader learns that there were around 2,000 such cases of fake infant death in the GDR.
The book Matthias Jügler: May fly season. Munich: Penguin Verlag 2024. 160 pages. Price 22 euros.
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