Marrow and Bone

by Walter Kempowski

  That cold February, when calamity struck, his uncle had been driving the cart with its makeshift carpet roof, the pregnant woman tossing about inside the straw. When she went into labour he knocked on farmhouse doors to no avail, and so she died.

  Her corpse had been set down quickly and without ceremony in the vestibule of a village church, beside the hymn board with its wooden numbers, and then they had driven on. They had come across a sturdy peasant woman who had lost her child, and she had nursed Jonathan in its place in return for a seat in the cart. Jonathan pictured this as well: the heavy woman sitting in the cart, with himself at her large breast, and the picture more or less corresponded to the reality.

  I was suckled by Mother Earth, he would reflect on occasion, and he would stretch, feeling new strength in his veins.

  Today Uncle Edwin had sent two hundred marks – the new Avanti sofa bed had been a hit.

  Treat yourselves to something? That should be possible.

  •

  In the meantime Ulla had read her post: from her overbearing mother, her passive father, her psychologist brother in Berlin, and Evie, her goddaughter, whose birthday letter – ‘how are you, I am fine’ – was awkwardly written and decorated with ladybirds.

  She got out of bed and went over to the bookshelf, where the present she had given herself was standing: a 1950s Danish vase, which the two of them now admired. It was held up to the light, turned this way and that and praised as ‘frightful’. When they had finished with it they stood it on the window ledge alongside various other monstrosities, items that had once been dirt cheap but now had a certain value, or would have if left for a few more years.

  Jonathan was embraced again, assured that his little Callot etching had been ‘just right’, and then dismissed. So he went back to his room, which he was happy to do, as the birthday girl was now making phone calls and he had no interest in one-sided conversations.

  •

  Jonathan sat down on his sofa. He blew some fluff from the table then stared off into the distance towards the bright window opposite and the portrait of the plump child on the grubby white wall.

  He yawned, and his gaze drifted across the weird linoleum geography of his floor. He saw the Isthmus of Corinth, that hair-raising cleft in the rock; he saw a little ship, and steep rock walls to left and right. The water is flowing, he thought, and the ship glided down the canal as if caught in an undertow.

  He snapped out of it and read the letter from the Santubara car manufacturer. As it turned out, it wasn’t junk mail but a serious job offer. A Herr Wendland from the factory’s press office wrote that they had been admirers of his discerning prose for quite a while now and were wondering whether Jonathan might fancy a trip to East Prussia; Masuria, to be precise, in present-day Poland. The Santubara Company wanted to set up a test-driving tour for motoring journalists to convince them of the outstanding quality of its latest eight-cylinder model. Any such tour would, of course, have to be carefully prepared in advance. Would Jonathan care to help with this? He could go along on the initial preparatory tour, check out the local culture, see whether there was anything worth visiting in the region – stately homes perhaps, or churches or castles the existence and histories of which might add something to the itinerary. Then he could write an insightful piece about the trip, say twelve pages of typescript – ‘Masuria Today’ – which they could use to convince journalists that it might be interesting to look around that godforsaken region and take the opportunity of test-driving the new eight-cylinder car at the same time. He would have completely free rein, and they could offer him five thousand marks plus expenses. Travel and accommodation would, of course, be included, so that would be five thousand plus VAT. The precise sum was negotiable.

  Masuria? Poland?

  Jonathan’s first reaction was no! If it had been a trip through Spain or Sweden, then maybe. But Poland?

  No.

  On the other hand, five thousand marks . . . And negotiable?

  Jonathan took down the 1961 edition of the Iro World Atlas – which he still used simply because that was the one he had – and opened it at the map of ‘German Eastern Territories Under Foreign Administration’. Quite a sizeable chunk, East Prussia. How strange and unnatural the line was, drawn straight across it with a ruler. You saw that sort of thing on maps of colonial Africa or the Antarctic, but in the heart of Europe? It reminded Jonathan of dissection lines in pathology, scalpel incisions in a woman’s flawless white body.

  Here was the Vistula Spit, where his father was killed, and the Curonian Spit. Pictures from old geography books came to mind: wandering dunes, elk, a fisherman sitting on his upturned boat mending a net, amber mining.

  But the plague arrived by the light of the moon,

  Swam with the elk across the lagoon.

  Jonathan looked for the village of Rosenau, tracing the road with his finger. Here: this was where it happened. This was where he had first seen the light of day, at the cost of his mother’s life. Here, in this village church, was where she had been set down. The young woman had been buried in the churchyard, by the wall perhaps, beneath a laburnum. There was a single photograph of her still in existence, one that had survived their flight. It had been taken at the 1936 Olympics: a young girl in the uniform of the League of German Girls, beret at a jaunty angle over one ear. Jonathan had stuck it to the wall with a drawing pin. The last picture of his father, a young Wehrmacht lieutenant in field uniform and service cap, lay in a folder alongside Jonathan’s birth certificate and bicycle insurance policy.

  The tour would start in Danzig, said the letter from the Santubara Company. He would fly from Hamburg to Danzig, where the tour car would be waiting. He could then make notes at his leisure.

  Danzig? thought Jonathan. He could use Danzig for his essay on Brick Gothic: ‘The Giants of the North’. The Marienkirche was one of the northern giants still missing from his collection. Lübeck, Wismar, Stralsund: he had seen these cities with their medieval colossi, and that was all well and good, but he had no first-hand sensory impression of Danzig, and it would be difficult for him to describe it in an essay.

  If he accepted the commission he could kill two birds with one stone. As well as earning some money he would be acquiring knowledge at the same time, which, in turn, could later be converted into more money.

  Jonathan washed his hands as meticulously as a surgeon, looking out of the window all the while. A class of school-children was swarming on the other side of the Isebek canal, a teacher anxiously herding them together – ‘Don’t fall in!’ – while up in the sky a huge aeroplane was coming in to land at Fühlsbüttel.

  I’m here in Hamburg, and I’m making a living, thought Jonathan. What’s East Prussia to me? And a single great image arose in his mind’s eye, of Uncle Edwin entering the church with the dead woman in his arms – where to put her? – and setting her down on the steps. The folds of her white dress stained with blood.

  3

  At three o’clock Ulla came to fetch her boyfriend so they could go for a walk. ‘You need to air this room again,’ she said. She stepped up behind him and turned over the papers on his desk to see what nonsense he had been writing. ‘The nave is reminiscent of a womb’ . . .? That really was the limit. She was wearing harem trousers and a men’s waistcoat, unbuttoned, over her blouse.

  Seeing her like that, Jonathan thought: All she needs is a turban. He himself had put on an unironed flannel shirt with a patterned suit and a black bow-tie. For a while he’d seriously considered donning the straw hat his friends said suited him so well.

  •

  There wasn’t much going on down by the Elbe at this time of day. Young people were riding around on their bikes; teenagers who had grown up here and children whose mothers’ corpses had not been set down in a church. A man was playing with his dog at the water’s edge. He let the unsuspecting animal fetch the stick from the river, which was thick with cadmium. Some drunks were sitting on a bench with their bottles of vermouth, si
nging:

  Oh, you lovely Westerwald

  Where the wind whistles so cold

  But the faintest ray of sun

  Warms the heart like gold.

  There was a woman with them. She was holding a tin of Chappi dog food and had extracted a chunk of meat with two fingers; she seemed to be about to put it in her mouth.

  The wail of police sirens could be heard in the distance, along with chanting and shouting from a political demonstration that could have been mistaken for a football crowd. The big city! Everything here had its place – demonstrating, policing, looking on. Even the smashing of windows was tradition.

  •

  They walked along the Övelgönne, past what are known as the ‘captains’ houses’. Around the turn of the twentieth century retired seafarers had built them with their savings because they couldn’t bear to be parted from the sea. Now the tiny cottages, each with its own little front garden, boathouse, arbour and flagpole, were worth millions and were under siege from property speculators. There were English cat figurines in the windows, ships in bottles and enormous shells picked up at the fish market. Some of the residents felt the need to explain themselves to passers-by: NUCLEAR POWER – NO THANKS was written on a piece of cardboard propped up against a garden gnome. The smell of food was all-pervasive: fillet of fish and sauerkraut soup.

  There were no ships to be seen on the Elbe; they had set sail the previous night. These days no one could afford to stay in the harbour over the weekend.

  Ships have something maternal about them, thought Jonathan; all that loading up and unloading . . . He imagined lying in a crate on a bed of hay and being lowered into the hold of a ship by crane. It was an appealing thought.

  •

  You couldn’t really have said they were getting on well. The need to be civil on Ulla’s special day resulted in them both coming out with spiky remarks such as ‘But you said before’ or ‘Can’t you talk about something else for a change? Don’t you realize that gets on my nerves?’ Ulla’s habit of walking in step with Jonathan but half a metre ahead was also a source of friction. And there was dog shit all over the place; it was a wonder you didn’t step in it, and sometimes you did.

  Jonathan considered whether or not to tell his girlfriend about the invitation to East Prussia. It was on the tip of his tongue. Better not, he thought. Better to wait; she was sure to get jealous if she heard about it. Life with his girlfriend should have meant him running to his beloved, letter in hand, but it wasn’t like that between them, which was a shame. Ulla Bakkre de Vaera always got nasty.

  Ulla had something on her mind as well. A large bouquet of flowers had been delivered – a little too large, given that it had been ordered by her boss. She too should have run to her beloved and cried, ‘Guess what – the old man’s sent me flowers!’ But she hadn’t, and now it was too late.

  They were just having another go at each other when they saw a sign on one of the little houses: elbe gallery. So an artist had settled here. They must visit him!

  They rang the bell, and the artist’s wife opened the door. She had cuts and bruises on her face, inflicted by a husband outraged by his lack of success. On account of the privations of her marriage the poor woman had decided to be friendly.

  Jonathan handed over two marks to her, and she practically curtsied. They stepped into the low-ceilinged house and surveyed the nature-themed paintings that hung in the living room. These depicted looming trees assailed by creepers. Here and there, for a bit of variety, the artist had painted branches sticking out to the right or left. Perhaps inspired by a need to imbue his nature studies with meaning, he had furnished the trees with human features. They were pretty hideous.

  The painter had presumably heard plenty of negative comments about his work. At any rate, he sullenly shuffled out from the kitchen at the back, where a soup tureen stood on the table, it too sullen, almost mistrustful. He would have really liked to make a big entrance by smashing everything up with an axe, but he could always do that later.

  The two visitors walked past the neatly painted, neatly framed pictures of gnarled trees, slowly at first then increasingly fast (two and a half thousand marks was a lot of money, after all), only half listening to the man’s explanation of how with his tree paintings he had wanted to present a variation on Aesop’s fable about not tormenting animals for fun. Trees were living things too, with souls and nerves that felt pain, if you carved a heart into their bark, for example. Living things – why wouldn’t they have a soul? And we just chop them down. Trees can scream!

  Ulla was more patient than her boyfriend. She didn’t mind listening to the man, perhaps also because she could gaze at her reflection in the glass of the paintings. She parted her lips and studied her dead tooth.

  Meanwhile, in a neighbouring room labelled museum, Jonathan discovered a collection of flotsam and jetsam. While the artist was telling Ulla that one million trees were felled in South America every day and asking her how much rent she reckoned he had to pay for the cottage in which he lived and whether she had any idea how expensive a single tube of cobalt blue was, Jonathan examined fragments of china in the flotsam museum, cup handles worn smooth by the sea, bits of leached wood, an old shoe. These remnants of human life roused him to lively, almost tearful enthusiasm, attracting his girlfriend’s attention. What remnants of civilization would mankind discover and exhibit in a thousand years? asked Jonathan, regarding the little group with glistening eyes. He felt rather like a piece of flotsam himself, he said, and played the suffering card to his advantage: father killed on the Vistula Spit, mother breathed her last when he was born. Trek, icy wind, etc.

  This interested the gallery owner, and he invited the young people to sit down. Where exactly had that been? he wanted to know, because he was from those parts himself. He too had trekked westwards, aged seven, in February ’45. He still clearly remembered them finding a milk churn in a farmhouse, full of pork dripping. He’d never eaten such delicious pork dripping again in all his life.

  Jonathan knew that the man was going to open up now, with all the charm of someone who usually acted tough. He had no desire to hear the dreadful stories the artist would have to tell. He’d had enough of shackles and chains. As Ulla sat down to take it in without distraction, he spotted a portfolio of water-colour paintings lying on a table. They’d been done by some children at a local school; a teacher had given his pupils the topic ‘Environmental Protection’ and had dropped their paintings off here. Whether or not they were art was questionable, but the money raised by selling them would go to Greenpeace. ‘Good poison for all’ it said on the portfolio. Jonathan studied the paintings, rejoicing at the originality with which the children had approached the subject. Good poison for all. What a thought!

  It really was funny: cowboys drinking arsenic from bottles and exploding down below; cows, their front halves bloated into elephantine monsters, hindquarters dissolving in puddles of green slime. They were funny and frightful at the same time. And original. He called his girlfriend over: didn’t she find it breathtaking too, this wealth of ingenuity?

  ‘As long as young people keep showing this much imagination we don’t need to worry about the future,’ he said. And he pointed out to Ulla that these children’s drawings were relevant to her subject: cruelty by way of thoughtlessness.

  He waxed so enthusiastic about the lines and composition of the paintings that he ended up buying one for twenty-five marks. Greenpeace could use the money to buy itself some decent ballpoint pens.

  •

  After convincing themselves that there wasn’t another bit of the house for them to look at – some sort of infernal machine in the cellar, perhaps – they said, ‘So long!’ to the artist and his wife. Over the course of the hour they had, in a way, become friends. The artist went on standing in the doorway for a long time, gazing across at the shipyard, which until just a few months ago had been full of sparks and clanging, but had now, unfortunately, been closed. An 8 per cent increase
in wages had finished it off.

  •

  They sat in the Café Elbblick eating raspberry tart with whipped cream. The tart had been in the fridge and was ice-cold, the whipped cream was watery, the coffee weak and a pop singer was bawling from the loudspeakers.

  The German proprietor, whom Jonathan summoned so he could complain, was not, in fact, the proprietor but an overworked employee who handed over the takings every evening to a foreign-looking man in a Mercedes. The cafe was gradually filling up, and he had no desire to discuss the topic of ‘hospitality’ with Jonathan. He recommended that if he didn’t like it he should go elsewhere. ‘Plenty of people come here who like our food.’

  Ulla took the man’s side. Did Jonathan actually have any idea how hard a waiter had to work? On his feet all day with people constantly moaning at him?

  Jonathan countered that working at a steel furnace was presumably far more strenuous than working in a tourist restaurant with the sun shining up above and birds tweeting away. If he had to choose between bringing little girls fizzy drinks in a tourist restaurant and standing in seventy-degree heat every day for eight hours, he’d much rather walk around with a tray.

  While Jonathan and Ulla were quarrelling the promenade was filling up with people of all ages who wanted to be seen as respectable citizens. They strolled from the Övelgönne to Blankenese, or the other way round, having taken to their cars to escape their trade-union groups. There were some demonstrators among them too, as the demonstration had ended at half past three; they were carrying reusable banners, folded and tucked under their arms, decent people who were very concerned about atmospheric pollution. They too wanted to enjoy nature here beside the Elbe, even if painters no longer needed cobalt blue to paint the river water. Incidentally, the abandoned shipyard over there – that was just typical! You could turn that into a cultural centre, with cabaret venues, self-help courses and hobby studios and rock concerts on summer evenings. Thousands of people were sure to come. What was the betting it’d all be knocked down? As if Germany hadn’t seen enough rubble . . .