Mariella Mehr

Daskind

«Hat keinen Namen, Daskind. Wird Daskind genannt. Oder Kleinerbub, obwohl es ein Mädchen ist. Wenn den Frauen im Dorf danach zumute ist, wird es Kleinerbub genannt, oder Kleinerfratz, zärtlich. Auch Frecherfratz, wenn Daskind Bedürfnisse hat, oder Saumädchen, Hürchen, Dreckigerbalg.»

Thechild does not have a name nor does it have any rights. It lives with its foster parents. It is regularly punished by its foster father, sexually abused by their lodger, and reprimandes by the spinsterly sour moral of its foster mother. Whoever abuses it does not risk a thing – but the offenders aren’t getting any pleasure out of it either.
Mariella Mehr’s novel – the first part of a trilogy – describes the unhappy life of an adopted child in a community of people who are themselves marginalised. The borders between good and evil, right and wrong are dissolved. Thechild is a regrettable victim which is tortured and despised and silently suffers through all the assaults – but it know how to defend itself, because: “When we are grown up, Thechild says to itself, we are going to kill one of them.”
In an impressive and depressing way the novel describes an atmosphere of stupid dullness, hypocrisy and aggression that turns everyone into victims and perpetrators, it is hopeless. The author has found an impulsive, expressive language for this misery. Harsh, dry, and provocatively direct and often falling into a grammatical stutter she gives voice, above all, to the distraught and silent child. She intensifies in order to grasp reality. Mariella Mehr herself comes from a family of vagrant peoples which was separated in the 1950s in the context of the campaign "Kinder der Landstrasse".

(Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)

Translation of title: Thechild

Nagel & Kimche, Zürich / Frauenfeld 1995

ISBN: 3-312-00210-9