It's summer in the global North and winter in the global South. Reason enough to bring summer and winter together on Literatur.Review in August and publish previously untranslated or unpublished stories from the North and South of our world.

Axel Timo Purr is an author, editor and publisher @Literatur.Review. After conducting field research in East Africa on modern (anti-)witchcraft movements, the informal sector and global economic influences on individual biographies, he has been working as a freelance author on African, literary and film topics since 2001.

I'll tell you something: I'm not part of things down there in the valley, nor do I want to be. I don't have a regulars' table, I don't need one. But up here, I hear everything, often more than I'd like. Last week there were a few high-ranking police officers here, and sitting with them at night, you learn things. Not from what they say, but from reading between the lines.

In the past, the girls used to come from the Protestant organisation, groups from the YMCA. Young female teachers my age, glowing with the joys of nature. I would take them and their students over to the Schinder with me. Get up at half past four, down into the valley, up to the summit. Five and a half hours hiking, rest for half an hour, lie at the top for two hours, drinking in the view, back down again, snack, and then home. Everyone took part. EVERYONE! And now? Now I'm getting "We can't expect the children to do that any more". Because of allergies, or obesity, or bad weather neuroses, who knows what. Every second person pops pills like sweets. It's the norm down there, but let me tell you: if that's the norm, then I'm proud NOT to be normal.

(1) East Germany, until 1990 GDR

Since 1990, I've had school classes from the East (1). They used to be full of life, movement and energy. And today? Only twenty years later? Exactly the same consumerist rubbish as everyone else. Chocolate bars and satellite TV, and no one can get off the bus without complaining. I see that up here. I'm watching. I know what they used to be like. Today? Been to the Maldives, but can't get up a mountain.

And back in the day, yes, back then, we used to play in the evenings. Board games, played music. Devil's violin, does that mean anything to anyone today? A can, a wire, a bit of tin. One person would play, the others sing. Today? Today everyone sits around, waiting for someone to make a fool of themselves so they can laugh. Schadenfreude, nothing but Schadenfreude. But getting your own ass in gear? Not a chance.

That's the sickness of society: no one wants to give anything anymore, everyone just wants to take, eat, look, click. But not with me! I see, day after day, how they change. And then they come up here and act horrified: "What, you can live here? Alone?" Yes, damn it! Solitude is the greatest thing, if you can deal with it. But they can't do that anymore. No connection to themselves, no connection to nature. Instead, three selfies a minute.

And then they want to document my life. Media people. There were six of them. Well-known. Because they thought I was a curiosity. I told them to go to hell. My life attracts people who can't stand the fact that anyone might live differently. They want to destroy me because they can't do it themselves. But they don't get far with me. I'm happy with my tea and my margarine sandwich. But nobody understands that anymore. They think contentment is weakness.

(2) Tracks made in drag lifts to make it easier for skiers to glide up the drag lift.

I observe this, and if someone makes a fool of me, they get a telling off. Like this guy who destroyed my track (2), which I had painstakingly cleared. Warning sign? He didn't care. Ego came first. I pulled him out of the track. And when he then sat down provocatively in front of my hut with his wheat beer? That was the last straw. The glass flew, contents and all. The jacket followed. Yes, that's when I get loud. And if anyone thinks that's an exaggeration: I'm not getting an ulcer for three euros fifty.

I do my job. Every day. And if anyone thinks I'm an oddball: please feel free. As long as the right people come here and leave teary-eyed, I know I'm doing something right. And when I see how young people are exploited in shops or offices because "the customer is king", I feel like puking. And nobody says anything, they all suck it up until they're mentally exhausted. And I'm supposed to keep quiet? No!

I don't want to work for a world like that. I do my own thing. And if anyone objects, they can stay in the Maldives.

I've had Berlin school classes here for over thirty years. Before their final exams. School ski camps. I can tell you: sometimes teachers come along, true pedagogues, real authorities, not authoritarian shouters. They say something and the class listens. They create an environment in which young people can simply be themselves. And I sit there, watch and think to myself: that's how it works. Without pressure, without coercion, simply with humanity. Pupils leave with tears in their eyes. And then I remember why I'm doing this here.

But then there are also families who come here with a crowd as if it were an all-inclusive resort. Children jumping on the cushions with dirty shoes, parents who couldn't care less. I then say kindly but firmly: "I'm sorry, we're not a good fit. Please find another hut." I'm like my grandma, a real farmer's wife. She used to say: "Don't look in the mirror too often, otherwise the devil will pull you in." I didn't understand it back then. But today? Today I see them everywhere: the self-absorbed, the narcissists only interested in themselves, with no care for others any more. Who needs people like that?

And then there's the other kind - families where everything is just right. The children play outside for hours. They build a moss nest in a tree, are quiet, focused, just being children. And in the evening they sit together at the table. No mobile phones, no shouting. Just quiet happiness. I go out the next day and say: "It's been a pleasure being here for you." And I mean it. These people deserve praise. Especially when it comes from a mule-herder like me. They should be praised. Because they are rare these days.

And you know what? I'm here for people like that. Not for those who think they can act like the big shot from the city. I don't run this place for wheat beer heroes or architects with airs and graces who think money is a substitute for decency. I once threw a glass over the bench at one of them. I've told this story already, but I'll tell it again, that's how angry I was. He trampled all over my freshly prepared track, even though there were signs everywhere. I pulled him off and warned him. And what does he do? Sits provocatively with his beer on the bench in front of my hut. Do you know what I did? I tipped the beer over the table and threw his things in the snow. Then I explained why. And that was the right thing to do. Because I'm not going to grow an ulcer for 3.50 euros. I'm proud of my work and I defend it tooth and nail.

Then there are people who say: "Do you even know who that was?" - An architect from Landshut who builds banks. So what? Let him take five euros from his Daimler and book an etiquette course. Just because someone has money doesn't mean they deserve respect. Especially if they behave so rudely.

And then I see how young people are ruined because they have to slave away in some company where "the customer is king", yes yes - and they have to swallow it all, endure everything. And nobody protects them. They die mentally. And I stand here and watch and could cry. Or scream. Or both. And then they say: Don't be so loud. No! I will be loud. I won't stand for it. I'm not up for this broken world where no one has an attitude anymore, but everyone has a judgment.

I'll keep watching, keep going, I won't keep quiet. And if I do become quiet, then it'll be on my own terms. I'll sit under the steep face of the mountain opposite my hut. Not any old mountain, but my home mountain. When the grass and the rock are still damp. I'll sit down and point my rifle at my head. The rifle points at my head and I look at my hut. Then I pull the trigger. And in that moment, see everything again. My childhood. Skiing from the hut to school and the arduous climb back up, summer and winter. In summer, wearing the same old shoes. I don't see the rage of my later years, but the person with his hope, his laughter. I see the young woman, the young teacher, I see Martha, with whom I talk for hours. She loves the sound of the cowbells on the alpine meadow. I send her the cowbell to Darmstadt and we write letters to each other. I write to her that I want to marry her so that she can bring the cowbell back to where it came from. She marries someone else, the letters stop and I get married too. I see the anger, I see the despair, I see my wife's sadness. My wife hates the solitude of the mountains and my daughters go with her. Back to the valley. I don't stop them, I never tell them that solitude is not all happiness, because even I feel it rising now and then like a black sun. A sun shining darkly. So dark that at night I no longer tell jokes to my guests, the fun is over and I just mechanically pour the drinks and serve the food. I recognise others with their black suns, each with their own. The Englishman coming up the mountain with two friends in a snowstorm. I pick them up in my car and have to shout at them twice until they understand that there are no seat belts in my car. The Englishman is the first to understand and doesn't just laugh. To thank him, I put him on the outside seat of my snowcat for the last stretch up the mountain, the stretch that no car can manage. When we get to the top, he is covered in a layer of ice and his face is shiny with ice and joy, because his black sun has been extinguished in this cold. But we both know that it will rise again.

That will be the end of it. The change from light to dark, from dark to light, as the Lord pleases. The stifling, suffocating heat of the black sun above me. I won't live to see my daughter ruin the hut and go down into the valley for the second time in her life. I won't live to see the red-and-white checked bed linen give way to fashionable knick-knacks and my hut being sold to a burnt-out businessman. One who brags about having eaten with Elon Musk and who uses his savings to turn my hut into an expensive event venue, fetching old wood from distant, abandoned Austrian huts to make it look older.

Does that hurt me because that was my soul too? No! Only one thing hurts me. That the young teacher, old Martha, will come up the path to me again now that her husband is dead. And ask the new innkeeper, the burnt-out dude: Yes, where is he, Alfred, I've brought him his cowbell.

About the story

This monologue is a work in progress. It is part of a documentary and autofictional cycle of life stories that focus on depressive and suicidal moments that are "re-contextualized".