Going Dutch with German Writers (10): Most perceptive man: Eugen Ruge

Who?

Eugen Ruge is the author of two novels, In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts and Cabo de Gata. His debut won the German Book Prize and has been translated into twenty languages, including Anthea Bell’s In Times of Fading Light. The New York Times called it “a pulsing, vibrant, thrillingly alive work, full of formal inventiveness, remarkable empathy and, above all, mordant and insightful wit.”

Where?

Lorberth, Prenzlauer Berg

What?

Eugen Ruge had Spätzle and Spätburgunder, I had Grauburgunder.

What did we talk about?

This is the first time I’ve approached an author through a publishing house rather than directly, and I’ve been a little more tense than usual about the whole affair. But Mr Ruge, it turns out, is very charming and very used to interview situations, and puts me at ease fairly quickly. We sit outside and order drinks – the waitress seems to know him – and he orders food. I ate at home beforehand and he apologises for making me watch him eat. Later I regret not getting anything to soak up the alcohol.

Still a little nervous, I suggest to him that he’s from Prenzlauer Berg, and he bristles slightly at my ignorance. He was born in the Urals, he says, so he’s not exactly from around here. I knew that, I say, and I did but I’d forgotten until he said it. We start off on a little smalltalk about where I’m from and how I got to Berlin. There was a man involved, I say, who turned out to be an idiot but I stayed anyway. I tell him I know a few women here who’ve fallen for fools before their German was good enough to notice that all their jokes were stolen, and that takes us on to the importance of a sense of humour in relationships. Is it as important to Germans as it is to Brits, I ask, and he nods vigorously. The German equivalent to lonely-hearts jargon GSOH is “humorvoller Mittfünfziger”, he says. I pull a face.

He once wrote a whole play about people composing self-descriptions for personal ads. Of course, anyone describing themselves as “humorvoll” ought to ring alarm bells. Ruge moves swiftly on to Derrida, and my face drops. I am hugely embarrassed to find myself sitting with a famous writer talking about Derrida and structuralism in conjunction with personal ads, and I am too dumb to pick up on what is surely a totally interesting subject. My mind racing, I decide against bluffing and come clean about my ignorance. So Ruge tells me about the German metacommunications man, Schulz von Thun, and his book with the unfortunate title of Miteinander reden. About how very few of our utterances can ever be taken at face value – someone saying “The traffic light is green” is unlikely to be giving the driver a helpful tip, for instance, and the answer is unlikely to be “Oh, thanks for pointing that out.” So nothing we say actually means what we say, or is necessarily understood as we mean it. Isn’t that scary for a writer? Perhaps nothing you write is ever understood the way you mean it either. Well, he says, obviously not scared at all, that’s why writing dialogue is tricky, but once you get the hang of it you can squeeze a whole lot of meaning into realistic conversations, and that’s something he learned in his many years of writing plays.

The waitress comes to take his plate and asks would we like another glass of wine. Yes, he says, and yes, I say. Our top-ups come in dinky 0.2-litre carafes. But then he remembers he only wanted to drink one glass and decides I’ll have to help him out. English people can take more alcohol than Germans, apparently. This assessment proves incorrect later in the evening.

We talk about Prenzlauer Berg. In Ruge’s second novel, the narrator flees Berlin in disgust at what becomes of the place in the nineties – makeshift cafés serving overpriced latte macchiato to property speculators. Has he got used to it now? He thinks for a moment. It’s not that he minds where they’re from, he says, although they’re all from the West; it’s more that the people who live here now are all of a certain type. Living on inherited money and raising their kids on organic food; pushing six-thousand-euro strollers and expecting everyone to leap out of their way. Ruge is not the first person from Prenzlauer Berg to express this opinion. No, he hasn’t got used to it, but should he be the one to move away?

A more personal turn

I tell him about my issues with the newer Anglophone arrivals; my generation of immigrants is convinced we’re the only ones who did it properly, learning German and getting proper jobs. And these ne’er-do-wells with their laptops who don’t speak the language, well… Again, it’s not the first time I’ve said this. He laughs and talks about an interview he read with a British writer (Jeanette Winterson, we think at the time, but now I’m not so sure), who complained about Russians coming over to the UK and flashing their money about and buying all the houses. He seems to admire her for being so outspoken. Does he think of himself as Russian? Well, no, not exactly, or certainly not that kind of Russian – although he told me earlier in the evening that he does remember the Urals from childhood visits. But he doesn’t feel entirely German, either. I wonder out loud whether any intelligent person feels entirely of any nationality.

So he’s not moving out of Prenzlauer Berg; in fact he’s buying a flat. In retrospect, this is when our conversation takes a more personal turn. Although we stick to the formal Sie all evening, from about this point on we switch not to the informal Du but to a special Berlin kind of Sie somewhere between the two, slurred by relaxed tongues into “Se”. “Wiss’n Se?” “Woll’n Se?” “Seh’n Se?” So Eugen Ruge is buying a flat in Prenzlauer Berg. It’s the sensible thing to do, what with all the money he made with his first book. He’s a writer; he never knows what kind of income he’ll have and we agree not to even think about pensions. He’s had years when he earned absolutely nothing, not a cent – I cover my face in mock horror – so it’s really the only thing that makes sense. All these excuses, and of course they’re true, and of course all they do is highlight his guilty conscience at contributing to gentrification, as he puts it, all the more. Buying a flat is very stressful, he tells me, and I express my heartfelt sympathy. I don’t think he blushes.

The restaurant is empty and the staff are performing the kind of activities that suggest they’d like to go home now. There’s no need to rush, Mr Ruge says, but I do have to help him with his wine. We agree to share it but he does the pouring and I end up with more than my fair share. We drift off the record slightly as he starts to question me more closely. He’s very perceptive; over the course of two hours, he’s noticed exactly how I’m feeling and why. We get back on track by talking about youth; theatres want playwrights to be young, he says, which doesn’t exactly work in his favour. That’s not such a problem for novelists though, because young people don’t read books any more. It occurs to me that the leap from writing plays to writing novels wasn’t such a huge one for him, especially compared with his leap from mathematics to writing. He’s made a few leaps in his life, he says; one of the few moments when he plays on the difference in our respective ages.

The problem with young writers – he says, and almost launches into a clichéd comment but then corrects himself – actually, Lermontov and Büchner died far too young but they had lots of experiences to write about. I say that Helene Hegemann is very young but also seems to have plenty of material. Maybe that’s our problem with these neo-Prenzlauer Berg people; that their lives appear to be so smooth. They seem to have led extended youths by waiting so long to have kids, and then the only life experience they have is from drugs and travel. But a lot of what we call experiences are quite unpleasant things to go through, I say, getting maudlin now. Really I envy those Prenzlauer Berg mothers their easy lives, he points out, and he’s right. What a perceptive person.

I’m quite drunk by now. I don’t think Eugen Ruge is actually, but we talked earlier about the very enjoyable placebo effect of non-alcoholic beer (he recommends Krombacher) and I think watching me get drunk is making him feel more relaxed as well. He tells me he likes translators a lot – he’s translated Chekhov and taken part in a workshop with his own translators – we’re much more modest than writers. I go off on a tangent, fearing we’re being too hard on Prenzlauer Berg mothers. What if they’re thinking deep dark thoughts in their heads all the time while we just assume they’re pondering what to cook for dinner? What if everyone we ever sit next to on the train is remembering some really sad thing or planning something terrible? Something about Ruge’s jacket keeps catching my eye but I can’t put my finger on what it is. It’s dark beige leather and has aged well; the zip isn’t quite symmetrical at the collar. He calms me down by pointing out that neither of our lives, presumably, have been dramatically awful. He’s right again. So perceptive.

The wine is gone, the waitress says goodbye, Eugen Ruge goes home to his wife and I walk home with a huge grin on my face. On the way I realise I forgot to take any photos. It’s only half past ten.

Hangover?

No actual pain but definite grogginess.