The first thing they saw was a drunk lying across the pavement. People were walking around him. You got that in Canada too, said Hansi; drunken Indians – he’d seen them in Calgary once, rows of them, all huddled together. But a girl with a cow on a bomb site right in the centre of town – that was a new one on him.
While Hansi Strohtmeyer went to make a phone call to see whether the technicians’ car would be available tomorrow – these people are never there when you need them – Jonathan wandered all over the town making notes. The castle with the Copernicus museum (closed on Mondays), a city gate, and the Jakobskirche, on a par with his northern goddesses. In the market, farmers and traders had spread out their wares on the pavement: cabbages, carrots, home-made sweets, Western clothes, rusty taps and second-hand shoes. It was like a Hamburg flea market.
Jonathan was about to head back to the car when he noticed an old man with a stain on his trousers like the patch on a pair of riding breeches. A few books lay in front of him: Russian classics, a song book, newspapers – and a photo album. Jonathan picked it up and leafed through. It documented the life of a German family, beginning in 1922 with a picture of the bridal couple. The last photos were from 1944, with a picture of the father who had fallen in battle. The year 1936 also featured: the Berlin Olympics, two fat women with tiny handbags in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Every swastika had been carefully scribbled out.
•
Frau Winkelvoss stayed in the car with the windows up. Teenage boys were lurking around the vehicle. She felt as if she’d been left here to stew in her own juice; she’d been waiting forty-five whole minutes, she said to Jonathan when he asked her how she’d got on.
Soon Hansi was back as well. ‘All right?’ he said. He was thinking about all the dogs in this town; there were lots of them, all mongrels. If you were to try to separate them again, all those different breeds, you’d really have your work cut out. He’d found a restaurant; perhaps they could eat something there?
They counted the money Jonathan had saved, then the two men walked with Anita, one on either side, and took a seat in the cafe, which looked as if it dated from the 1930s. They tried to convey to the waitress that they were hungry – ‘Make dindins!’, as Hansi put it. ‘Eat . . . essen . . . manger . . . !’ Apparently this restaurant, where a slice of buttercream-filled cake once cost thirty-five pfennigs, only served beer. Just then, however, the landlord came over and offered them fish salad.
While they were waiting for the salad, which the landlord went to buy from the shop next door, Jonathan looked in his travel guide. In 1920, 97.7 per cent of the people of Allenstein voted for Germany and only 2.3 per cent for Poland. He wondered whether Germans still accounted for even 2 per cent of the population of Allenstein.
The restaurant still looked pretty damn German, though. Equalization of burdens: Jonathan wondered how much the former proprietor had received in compensation.
He took his camera out of his pocket and snapped a couple of pictures of the wall, which was adorned with art-deco-style panelling. It would have been better if he hadn’t, though, because a few seconds later some men in the background got up and approached him menacingly. What did he think he was doing taking photos of them? and so on.
Jonathan tried to explain what a wonderful construction this wall was, with its delicate panelling; he hadn’t been photographing them at all, just this wonderful structure. He tried but failed to do what Hansi Strohtmeyer had attempted with the men in the woods and bring some objectivity to their disagreement. Instead, he was grabbed by the lapels, shoved against the table, and the man who’d grabbed him drew back his arm and punched him on the shoulder. He’d actually intended to hit Jonathan’s chin, but it’s not that easy to hit a chin; boxers don’t always manage it in the ring either. There was quite a tussle, but Hansi Strohtmeyer pulled them apart, and, as they discovered, he had pretty strong arms.
When the landlord arrived with the fish salad the thugs backed off, and Jonathan and his companions took to their heels.
Layabouts, most likely, said Strohtmeyer, whiling away their time in here instead of hod-carrying on a building site. They probably thought he was going to photograph them and then maybe report them to the police.
•
They drove the old banger as fast as it would go, as if they were being pursued. Frau Winkelvoss handed out the last of her cough sweets to stave off their hunger.
‘Good thing we didn’t eat the fish salad,’ said Hansi Strohtmeyer. He’d eaten fish salad in Recife once and spent three weeks in hospital.
It was quite late now; horse-drawn carts with no lights loomed up out of the darkness. The question was, would they still be able to get anything to eat in Sensburg? The technicians’ car was parked outside the hotel. Hansi Strohtmeyer drove up alongside and pulled on the handbrake. Made it!
The mechanics came running up, as if wanting to make amends to Frau Winkelvoss. Naturally, they were feeling guilty. Instead of driving along behind Hansi Strohtmeyer and keeping an eye on things they’d been playing a game of skat in Sensburg. A lively discussion ensued. They’d already emptied the repair vehicle, given it another thorough clean; there was hardly any difference between this car and the one that had gone missing except that Jonathan didn’t have a reading lamp in the back. Herr Schütte said he could use his torch and pressed an inspection lamp into his hand. Many a car must have been repaired in the light of its beam. It was obvious to the two mechanics that they would have to make the return journey in the old banger, and they immediately set about inspecting the thing.
The tourism general had already called, having been alerted by headquarters. He’d said how sorry he was and that when the thieves were caught they would be severely punished.
In the foyer the German homeland association tourists were swaying along to music. ‘Cornflower blue . . .’ As Strohtmeyer remarked, these were people who would normally book a package holiday to Istanbul, three days for ninety-eight marks.
God preserve us from wind and rain
And Germans going abroad again.
These people had no clue about the sort of experiences you could have in Poland; they’d driven here in their fully air-conditioned bus with its composting toilet and reclining seats, and would drive home in that bus as well. And now they were swaying along to their drinking songs, demonstrating a particularly German kind of merriment to the Polish staff.
The Orbis Hotel wasn’t able to provide German newspapers, but it did have a bottle of vodka. This promised to be an entertaining evening!
It was late when the three of them reconvened. They could still order something to eat; the place had a decent menu. First they had bread soup with sausage, followed by duck breast. Frau Winkelvoss said the dry wine was too sweet for her, and Hansi Strohtmeyer remarked that there should be croutons floating on the bread soup; that was the way his mother-in-law had always made it. The duck breast was accompanied by oily sautéed potatoes seasoned with thyme, which elicited applause. The salad one could forget; it had been sitting on the sideboard for hours. A motorway-service-station salad was what it was.
There had been a letter waiting for Frau Winkelvoss. Herr Schmidt, the gourmet who had procured champignons for German officers in France, would be joining them in Danzig. In the meantime they could start by asking around and finding out if there was somewhere in Sensburg that served milk-fed lamb. They should just take a copy of the menu and bring it with them. She described her fear, back there in the woods, that those two filthy men would rape her, but already her tone was becoming more neutral; the story would eventually enter into part of her repertoire. Back in Frankfurt, she said, she would finally take that self-defence course she’d been planning to sign up to for ages. Kick the bastards in the balls, she could manage that.
Hansi Strohtmeyer, who had by now drunk several glasses of schnapps, dared to make an offensive remark. Rape? She was barren, wasn’t she? So why was she getting so worked up? He also revealed to them that he had a thing for coaches: three hun
dred and fifty horsepower, just imagine! What a feeling it must be to manoeuvre a twelve-metre-long vehicle like that through narrow streets, floating softly, elegantly over the asphalt. You didn’t hear the engine because it was at the back, and you didn’t notice the gear changes either. And the power-assisted steering had an incredibly high ratio. He showed them how you sit when you’re driving: elevated, with the window beneath you. The driver’s seat could be artificially reinforced, and, of course, it was air-cushioned too. The side mirrors were enormous and electronically adjustable.
After dinner. The hotel was beside a lake, and the night was mild. In the darkness you could see that the hotel had been intended to be twice as big. The left wing, an abandoned investment, ‘sat there looking rather sinister’, as Hansi put it. ‘Looks like they didn’t have enough cash.’
They sat down at a table, and soon the waiter was bringing them one piwo after another, and they had the vodka they’d brought with them under the table too.
From indoors came the sound of a Polish folk-dance troupe rehearsing for a folklore festival. At the same time the German tourists were drawing attention to themselves with increasingly provocative songs, the lyrics of which the Poles, thank goodness, didn’t understand.
Hansi continued to talk about his thing for coaches, and Anita Winkelvoss told them about a friend of hers who didn’t have a clue about cars; she’d bought a second-hand 2CV, twelve-and-a-half horsepower, driven it around Italy and Spain and never realized it had a fourth gear.
Hansi could imitate the noise of a Trabi rolling over by cracking his knuckles. He talked about his Africa rally too, all the way across the Sahara and back, and how he’d got stranded in a river in South America. Anita Winkelvoss went on at length about how idiotic it had been of Jonathan to mistake Hansi for a chauffeur. Was he aware of how famous Strohtmeyer was in professional circles?
This romantic evening, in which the moon played its part, ended with them all completely plastered, and a long joke about a publican looking for the guest who had shat in his fan.
16
The next morning they switched to the technicians’ car. Herr Schütte from the Santubara Company had sent a message: they needed to be a bit more careful now and keep an eye out for any trouble. They couldn’t be constantly supplying them with new cars, after all.
There were some nice little gifts on the back seat: a grey leather writing case for Jonathan and a toiletries bag for each of them containing soap, cream and toothpaste. They also received two hundred marks apiece, which Anita Winkelvoss noted down on her pink clipboard.
Unfortunately there was no new woollen blanket. Jonathan had been looking forward to appropriating that.
There was a brief stop in town when they were pulled over yet again. A grey Santubara V8 was missing, the two policemen said. Everybody out! Could they prove that this car belonged to them?
Yes, they could prove it. But they’d been driving too fast again and were slapped with another fine.
The policemen were rather shady. Hansi had to open the boot and then the suitcases, all of which took a long time and was very suspicious. When one of the policemen started poking about in Jonathan’s jacket, Hansi asked, ‘Are you allowed to do that?’ and that was the end of it.
•
Jonathan gazed out of the window. A tractor drove past with a dog balancing on the rear axle. In the villages, farmers’ wives turned to look at the car; there were waving children and an avenue of white willows beside a little stream.
Whenever possible Hansi Strohtmeyer drove down the middle of the road. If a deer jumped out, he’d have a quarter of a second longer to react, he said. At one point he stopped, busied himself with something outside and got in again a few minutes later.
‘What was the matter?’
‘We had a flat tyre.’
Jonathan was glad they were on the home stretch. Today they would drive in a big arc, finishing in Danzig in the evening. He put the papers he’d gathered up off the road in the correct order and augmented them with a few notes from the travel guide; there was no chance of stopping now if a church hove into view.
‘This looks like northern Germany.’
‘Don’t let a Pole hear you say that.’
It was wonderful that this car didn’t have a radio either.
Undaunted, the two in the front resumed the meticulous preparation of the route book – careful: pot-holed bridge! – while Frau Winkelvoss continued her adoption story. The woman from the welfare office had kept turning up at their house: income, health, certificate of political good conduct, ancestry right back to their great-grandfathers. All of which they’d had to get translated and sent over, two ring binders full. Oh, yes – and proof that they couldn’t have children themselves.
At this point they were driving through a very pretty village that was clearly extremely old. They passed striking half-timbered houses with the arcaded porches typical of the region and a red-brick church with a high tower.
Then Jonathan cried, ‘Stop!’ The other two jumped – what now? – and they stopped in front of one of the old houses, which must have been protected by some sort of preservation order. Jonathan photographed it from both front and back; he also photographed the fence, which was made out of old bedframes. It would be great, he thought, if there were a village wedding coming up and they could persuade the locals to let the rally journalists take part – for a fee, of course.
Hansi Strohtmeyer went into the village shop to ask about Krakauer sausages, and Frau Winkelvoss stayed in the car to change her trousers; they were a bit too warm for the day. An old man turned up at the fence and said yes, Jonathan was right, it really was a very lovely house and in excellent condition inside as well. Would he like to take a look?
The bedframe gate was opened and Jonathan was invited in. It was indeed a lovely house, timbered, with carved pillars in front; and the barn, which must have been about two hundred years old, was worth a look as well. The Russian invasion of 1914, the Second World War, Russians, Poles, Germans – this barn had survived them all.
A young woman joined them, and they went into the kitchen. Jonathan was offered a stool; a glass of milk was put in front of him, and a horse bucket of shrivelled but extremely tasty apples, with respectable wormholes, freshly picked. These are German winter apples, thought Jonathan. He wondered whether he ought perhaps to cut a few scions from the tree and take them home to bring some variety to the apples found in West German supermarkets – all green or all red or all yellow. He could give the scions to the agriculture minister, who would arrange their distribution, and suddenly everyone would understand just how wonderful an apple can taste.
The milk Jonathan had been given was not all that pure; it tasted good, but there was sediment in the bottom of the glass, and Jonathan didn’t drink it all.
Should he have said to the old man that the Germans had only themselves to blame for being expelled? All the university lecturers sent to concentration camps, schools closed – Poles didn’t need to learn to read; forced labour, starvation. And then the business with the Jews. Should he have debated with him about the Oder–Neisse Line, argued that Stettin wasn’t included?
The old man was speaking a flood of mostly incomprehensible words, in a quiet sing-song, almost to himself. The hair on the back of his neck hung over the collar of his jacket, and he still had a couple of teeth left in his head. He told Jonathan that in his youth he had served in the Polish army, then deserted, then served in the German one. Then he’d been a partisan and in the Polish army again; then he’d resettled and come here. Jonathan could understand all this because the old man occasionally mixed in German words among the Polish. He ascertained that the man had something against the Jews. Did he even rub his hands when he spoke of how the Jews were ‘gone’?
Children also appeared, proper children, like the apples in the bucket, barefoot or in rubber boots and brightly coloured pinafores. One was wearing glasses, the left arm of which was missing. A dog came
in as well, a proper village dog with a lot of Spitz in him; he came straight over and lay down under Jonathan’s stool, which was presumably his safe spot. The children stood in the doorway and stared at Jonathan, and he felt like a figure in the Fritz von Uhde painting The Mealtime Prayer.
•
In the meantime Frau Winkelvoss had put on her black harem trousers and came teetering across the farmyard in gold-trimmed shoes with the pink clipboard balanced on her hip. Had he seen the bedframe fence? she asked Jonathan. ‘Absolutely bonkers!’ She happily accepted an apple from these people, who assumed that Frau Winkelvoss was Jonathan’s wife. An apple, yes, but no milk, said Frau Winkelvoss, who had spotted the sediment in Jonathan’s glass: cow’s milk gave her allergies, little pimples – a rash. No, she’d better not have any milk.
Neighbours started appearing. They’d seen the glittering car standing outside and thought: German relatives have shown up; maybe we can tap them somehow. One of them called the Germans over; he wanted to show them something. He led them through the rhubarb patch, over a trampled fence and into the big barn, which was built on glacial boulders. The Poles immediately knew what this was about. A cupboard was pushed aside to reveal a cavity, which had clearly been used to store vast quantities of provisions: lard in milk churns, flour, a sack of sugar . . . The Germans had installed it just before the Russians invaded. The space had only been discovered the previous year.
Jonathan wanted to know whether there had been coins in there perhaps, or an old Bible. And what had happened to the people? Had anyone ever got in touch? No one understood these questions. He heard the word militsiya – police – but Bible? No. There was a Biblia over in the kitchen.
What had the village been called in German times? Jonathan asked. And the answer came: Rosenau.
Although he had studied the map very carefully – first in Hamburg, then every night in the hotel – and really ought to have known that they would pass through the village today, it was as if the desire to see his birthplace had been blotted out. Instinct had prompted him to ask Hansi Strohtmeyer to stop here of all places.
Marrow and Bone Page 13