The Schlei coastal waters serve as a recurring backdrop to sharply different moments in the narrator’s life: a rowdy party ending in violence, and a meal with his seriously ill father. The water is not merely scenery; its changing views set the human commotion against a persistent, open landscape.

Views from the Water’s Edge

At the end of a party, the narrator looks through an open window toward the Schlei and Gull Island. The morning scene is tranquil on the surface: birds are singing, and people sit along the shore. Yet the view also carries an unsettling image. A girl floats naked among military speedboats, playing dead. The stillness of the water holds both the ordinary calm of morning and a scene that resists easy interpretation.

The Restaurant Pavilion

On another occasion, the narrator and Hermann eat at the Balkanstuben, a pavilion built on stilts over the water. From their table by the window, they have a broad view across the Schlei to Gull Island. The setting frames their meal as a family ritual: Hermann orders the oversized mixed-grill platter that the narrator and his brothers had once treated as a comic excess. The waterfront view accompanies the return of an old pattern, even as Hermann’s illness makes the family’s present different from its past.

Boats and the Wikingturm

The waterside meal also gives the narrator a vantage from which to watch boats whose slightly billowed sails do not seem to move. He looks toward the Wikingturm while reflecting on Hermann’s continued habit of staring after women, a behavior that has long embarrassed him. The motionless boats sharpen the contrast between the open future the narrator wonders whether illness might bring and the persistence of familiar conduct. Across these appearances, the Schlei provides a steady visual setting for scenes in which the narrator measures change against what remains unchanged.