Marrow and Bone

by Walter Kempowski

  Hansi Strohtmeyer conspicuously noted down the police car’s number plate and said, ‘Tourist office’, after which they left them alone.

  When he thought how friendly he had been to Poles all his life, he said, whenever he’d met them in Germany – always shown them the way and so on – they could kiss his backside! If a Pole ever asked him again how to get to the Reeperbahn in Hamburg he’d send him to the Botanical Gardens.

  •

  They drove on, towards Dzierzgoń, alias Christburg – ‘Careful: downhill, then the turning’s on the left!’ – and, as they drove along a splendid avenue of oaks, Frau Winkelvoss regaled them with the second half of her adoption story: the prelude, how it had actually come about that they had decided to adopt another person’s child. The manner of her report was different from the kind of thing she usually came out with. In dramaturgically structured speech she listed all the various things she had done to try to get her body to cooperate: meditation, diet, gymnastic exercises. Nothing had helped.

  ‘You saved a load by not paying for the pill for years, then,’ said Hansi Strohtmeyer roughly.

  The depressing aspects of a gynaecological examination were emphasized with rhetorical brilliance. The fact that, as a woman, one was completely at the gynaecologist’s mercy and that science still hadn’t come up with alternative ways of conducting this examination was a scandal. Frau Winkelvoss proceeded to demonstrate, in the very luxurious but rather confined space of the car, how you had to sit on that most uncomfortable of chairs.

  Jonathan was familiar with this. He had been to see a proctologist once; the treatment had done him good.

  The car purred softly over the pot-holed road. Jonathan was fascinated by the ceramic insulators on the telegraph poles. You saw things like that in old photos of the homeland. These must be from the German period, he thought. The trees along the avenue too. They ought to chop down one of these trees and count the growth rings. A hundred years old? Did roadside trees live to be a hundred years old? Before the war, holiday bulletins from the Curonian Spit had chirped along these telephone wires: the weather’s glorious, and Elke went swimming for the first time. Thomas Mann outside his house in Nidden, wearing white shoes . . . Then military dispatches were sent down the lines, triumphant at first, then depressing. Tentative enquiries from the Ruhr: mightn’t it be possible to find some sort of barn in Gumbinnen where they could take shelter? Gumbinnen – that was pretty safe, surely? Then, at the end, the very last communications, as if via shortwave radio, barely intelligible: for the love of God, the Russians are coming . . .

  •

  A signalman’s house, half burnt down, surrounded by lime trees from the days of empire; beeches, an overgrown garden with a broken fence, dahlias and chrysanthemums. The kind of house where bloody vengeance was exacted in 1945, first by one side then by the other. The victims’ screams still caught in the treetops.

  Jonathan thought he would like to live in a house like this, in complete seclusion, with a dog and no wife. Or perhaps not: at night they’d break in, knives in hand, and where were you supposed to get your bread rolls of a morning in this god-forsaken neck of the woods?

  It was a comfortable drive. Unfortunately, the two up front were smoking: Egyptian cigarettes for Hansi Strohtmeyer, and matchstick-thin gold-tipped cigarillos for Frau Winkelvoss. Clouds billowed into the back with every puff and were not dispersed by the ingenious internal ventilation system, which, like car-ventilation systems all over the world, proved useless. The stream of air blasting out of the nozzles blew Jonathan’s thin hair into his face. Eventually he opened the window and left it open, even though Anita felt a draught down her neck.

  When Frau Winkelvoss had completed the second chapter of her narrative – the idea of adopting a child, of saving it, and the discovery that there was a waiting list for such an undertaking – she grew restless. She needed to go, she said, and Hansi Strohtmeyer was ungallant enough to ask whether she needed to do a number one or a number two.

  She needed to spend a penny – to decant the coffee, to be precise; she couldn’t help it.

  It certainly was a peculiar sight: this woman, in her puffy blouse, wound about with scarves of every colour of the rainbow, laden with twenty-six necklaces (and a brass-studded belt about her waist), teetering off into the woods in black harem trousers and high-heeled shoes. Had there been monkeys in these woods they would have followed her, swinging from branch to branch.

  The men also got out to stretch. Then they strolled in the opposite direction, along a narrow, asphalted road blocked by a rusted gate that hung crooked on its hinges. A sign on it in Polish said there was no thoroughfare, so they climbed over it to explore. No one had driven down the road in a long time; all sorts of plants had pushed through the asphalt and broken it up.

  ‘This is incredible,’ said Hansi Strohtmeyer. ‘They could make loads of films here!’ The Russian one – that film, what was it called? It reminded him of that.

  Eventually they came across a half-ruined factory, the kind you saw in Germany if you travelled by train and looked attentively out of the window. Only the outer walls of the main halls were still standing, and the chimney had collapsed. It was almost completely silent; the only sound was the rustling of trees, with the blue sky and two birds of prey circling high in the air.

  Jonathan remembered the ‘Documentation of the Expulsion’ he had bought in Hamburg. There was one report about an abandoned factory that had served as an ‘internment camp’ for Germans, a camp where people had starved, or been beaten to death, or had perished of typhus. Horrible details, officially preserved for ever and a day. Had it been this factory?

  Hansi Strohtmeyer smashed the last few windows. He told Jonathan he was an angler and chatted about all the fish he had caught.

  Jonathan wondered why he didn’t just leave the fish alone. If you wanted to eat something you could always open a tin.

  •

  They turned back. What big trees these were; a hundred years old at the very least. And the Poles were bound not to have the first idea about forest management. Hadn’t they shot the last of the wild horses? And the European bison? Think what you could do with all this by applying free-market methods. Breed deer and let West German capitalists shoot them for a fee.

  In a clearing they stumbled on a graveyard overgrown with ivy. It turned out that Polish forced labourers were buried here, and there were two Soviet graves beside them, little pyramids with red stars on top.

  ‘Wonder where they dumped the Germans!’

  •

  Frau Winkelvoss, meanwhile, was not having an easy time of it. Returning from doing her business, she saw two men standing beside the car, messing about with it like baboons in an automobile zoo. One climbed into the freshly washed vehicle and sat twiddling the steering wheel; the other had put on Hansi Strohtmeyer’s Prinz Heinrich cap and started rummaging in the picnic basket. Anita couldn’t hide any longer: they’d already seen her; she couldn’t run away.

  So she had to endure the two men hitting on her. The one who had just taken a swig from the vodka bottle corked it back up and started counting the chains around her neck. Their virile overtures were already pretty far advanced by the time Jonathan and Hansi Strohtmeyer stepped out of the woods – not a moment too soon.

  For a fleeting second Jonathan considered running away. Should he stay and let himself be beaten to death? His job was to write an article about the cultural riches of the People’s Republic of Poland. No one had said anything about murder, which was what now seemed to be in store for him. He could see the report in the newspaper: German journalist and famous racing driver found dead; woman repeatedly raped.

  What happened next, though, wasn’t murder and mayhem. The man behind the wheel revved the engine, his friend leapt in the back, and the three colleagues were left behind staring after their beautiful V8.

  ‘Nowt to be done about it,’ said Hansi Strohtmeyer, once the dust had settled. ‘We’d best get cracking.’


  And so off they plodded, like a gaggle of tramps. Would you believe it! Car gone, all their luggage, their passports, money!

  At least Jonathan had his briefcase with him and the big map of Poland with the German place names, as well as his pocket camera. But all his notes were lost! How was he to write the article without notes, let alone find an unusual angle?

  Strohtmeyer, on the other hand, had lost his peaked cap, which he’d had with him on the Africa trip, and the tweed jacket, which didn’t look like much but he’d bought it in London and it had been quite expensive. Anita Winkelvoss, on the other hand, with her mountains of clothes, didn’t complain – on the contrary. How nice, she said; now at last she could go on another huge shopping spree in Frankfurt.

  •

  They spent the first two kilometres itemizing everything they’d lost. Like in the war, after an air raid. It occurred to Jonathan that the Kuschinskis’ address was lost as well. What on earth would they think of him when they never heard from him again?

  Then Frau Winkelvoss turned her ankle. The heel of her left shoe snapped off, at which point she removed the ‘worn-out old things’, as she called them, flung them into the woods and walked on barefoot on her firm little feet, through the beautiful natural surroundings, with birds of prey circling above them, and all the while she longed to shout Whoopee! ‘Isn’t it great, this adventure we’re having!’

  Was she a child of nature, then? She circled her arms, inhaling the fresh air, and rhapsodized about rambler roses and riding. They’d bought Cariossa a pony so she could ride with the grown-ups one day. It turned out that Frau Winkelvoss’s husband was the German number one in eight-horse carriage driving. After a while she grew so high-spirited that she gave Hansi Strohtmeyer a shove, and he humoured her by reeling across the road. It was a splendid road, but, alas, there wasn’t a single vehicle tearing along it: no Poles, no tourists, no shiny clean West German coaches, and no motorized three-wheelers with orange canopies either.

  •

  Over the next few kilometres their hike turned into a treasure hunt. They had to gather up their belongings, which the Poles had thrown out of the car window. The first thing they found was Anita’s pink clipboard, then Hansi’s tweed jacket hanging in the bushes (from London, all six hundred pounds’ worth) – with his passport in the inside pocket, moreover, which prompted Strohtmeyer to ask whether perhaps they had been White Poles, anti-communists. As in, people who could still muster a degree of sympathy for their fellow humans.

  When at last they came to a lake, with some benches to rest on and a little car park, they saw that the Poles had behaved like Europeans, in that they had rifled the suitcases but had at least left them behind. Jonathan’s bag was there too. His notes were fluttering all over the road like flurries of snow. The money was gone, of course, that was obvious, and Anita’s little bracelet from Rio was missing, which made her momentarily sad. She’d picked it up so cheaply back then, when they’d gone to fetch Cariossa; but never mind, the main thing was that they were all safe and sound. As they were gathering and sorting out their things, the West German homeland association bus materialized in the distance. All three ran out into the road and waved – Stop! SOS! But the bus driver did nothing of the sort. He drove smoothly past, and the passengers looked down on them from above and wondered who these strange people were, running about in the road and waving.

  Hansi Strohtmeyer took it upon himself to walk on alone and get his hands on a set of wheels. This would take some time, even though he was a racing driver. The two of them should just sit here and wait for him, he said. A massive old oak tree blasted by lightning would serve as a marker for him to find them again.

  So Strohtmeyer disappeared, and the two of them grabbed their suitcases and bags and sat down on a bench and gazed out over the lake, which had once been a German lake with German fish in it, and in winter a stake had been driven into the ice for the children to skate around like a merry-go-round, and the ice was so clear you could see the fish motionless beneath it.

  Anita was still disgusted by the two Poles. She couldn’t just shrug it off, she said. She explained in great detail how the guy had felt her up and that the first thing she would do when they got back to Germany was have everything cleaned, obviously. She squatted down by the water and rinsed her hands and said, Ugh! It disgusted her. And Jonathan thought about the women of 1945, and what they’d endured when the Russians came.

  God, that lovely car! The Poles would probably use it to transport geese!

  Jonathan said he didn’t think so. If a grey V8 showed up anywhere around here they’d collar the thieves in no time. No, no geese. They were bound to sell the car on the black market, to someone in Warsaw perhaps.

  This thievery was also a kind of reparation.

  ‘Just look at the nature here,’ Frau Winkelvoss said finally, ‘one lake after another and not a soul in sight!’ What amazing resources they had; the region would be great for surfing or sailing, or simply swimming. ‘Build a hotel, with a cafe – it’d be a goldmine!’ There were no lakes like this anywhere any more. She was tempted to tear off her clothes and plunge into the water.

  Jonathan asked if she could give a two-fingered whistle. No, Frau Winkelvoss couldn’t do that; she could just do a bit of ordinary whistling and then only if no one made her laugh. Jonathan couldn’t whistle either. He clapped his hands and there was an echo; but it was better if they didn’t clap, otherwise some other guys might turn up and they’d be completely at their mercy.

  Was it the cool breeze coming off the lake; was it his cosmopolitan attitude? Frau Winkelvoss was seeking support. She had moved in a little too close for comfort. Jonathan, however, felt no excitement. Was she trying it on? Actually, in his spotted bow-tie and Italian jacket he felt rather out of place in the great outdoors.

  There was a shed nearby; it was dark and smelt of carbolineum. The high-spirited Frau Winkelvoss inspected the shed and found two boats inside. She called Jonathan over. He should come and look at this shed, there were boats in here, he should come and lend a hand.

  With considerable effort they pulled one out and pushed it into the water. ‘Let’s sink it,’ said Frau Winkelvoss. As they discovered, this wasn’t all that easy.

  When at last it was accomplished, Anita started babbling, not making a great deal of sense. Was he always such a killjoy? It wasn’t easy for a woman to persuade a man.

  Jonathan acted as if he didn’t understand, and perhaps he really didn’t.

  Then Anita went on about what a loser her husband was – he had girlfriends all over the place; why shouldn’t she, as a woman, pick up a man from time to time? This was what she didn’t understand. At that moment Jonathan didn’t feel like a man, more like a schoolboy with a satchel on his back and the blackboard duster sticking out of it. He didn’t respond to her overtures, and eventually Anita gave up. She took off her clothes and walked into the dark, cold forest lake with outstretched arms, step by step. She stroked the surface with her hands, then finally pushed off and swam out, or in, or whatever.

  15

  Three hours later Hansi Strohtmeyer drove up in a rented car. He’d made lots of calls from the police station. The V8 had gone, of course, but they could count on the technicians’ car in Sensburg, and everything they’d lost would be replaced. The Santubara Company, which even maintained a small symphony orchestra, would be generous in this regard. How marvellous that the car had the long scratch down the side – that would reduce its value for the thieves.

  As soon as she saw Hansi Strohtmeyer, Frau Winkelvoss turned into a bit of a nervous wreck. She’d tied back her hair in a wet ponytail. She wanted to take the quickest route to the hotel and urged Hansi Strohtmeyer to drive down the tree-lined avenues as fast as possible; they knew what these looked like by now, they were basically all the same. The German Automobile Association should visit; it would get all of those trees cut down!

  They passed through several villages and towns, which Jona
than ought to have stopped to look at. He was tracing their journey on the map and in the travel guide and hoped he would quickly pick up on any culture here, things he should suggest for the rally.

  They raced through the villages, in every one a shuttered kiosk selling fruit – frukty – washing on the fences, goats, sheep, houses with tin roofs. A cow standing by the side of the road raised its head. ‘Don’t forget there’s a sump under the engine,’ said Frau Winkelvoss as they thundered over the cobblestones. They had a Polish licence plate now, so no one stopped them any more.

  Stooks of corn in the fields; a horse being beaten because it couldn’t pull a cart; a calf, trussed up in a wooden cage on a tractor trailer with rubber tyres; giant umbellate flowers; a nun with a wheelbarrow; half-constructed buildings, started and abandoned – all slid past. The city of Allenstein – oh God, yes: now Olsztyn. ‘Write it down for all time.’ The Germans had abandoned this town in a hurry in 1945: a trip to the cinema one evening; next morning the Russians were there. The whole town fell into the hands of the glorious Soviet army undamaged, and then they’d torched it, even the warehouses, although they could have made good use of the stuff that was in them.

  •

  Factories of all kinds, rubbish dumps, big groups of people by every bus. They did stop in Allenstein after all.