Marrow and Bone

by Walter Kempowski

  It was a beautiful day. Jonathan gazed out across the smooth, swelling water to a horizon veiled in mist. On a wooden terrace, which must once have been a cafe with a dance floor, some soldiers were keeping watch, looking through their binoculars to see what the young man was doing down there in his spotted bow-tie, a small vertical figure in this wide-open landscape.

  Jonathan turned away and looked up at the dunes. That was when he noticed a radio antenna. He took a few clumsy steps across the soft Baltic sand and saw that it belonged to a military observation post, a barracks, and in front of it lay the ruins of a small bunker. Jonathan indicated to Hansi Strohtmeyer: there it is. They got to within twenty paces before they were shouted at by the soldiers on guard, whose task it was to ensure that no one approached the sacred motherland from the sea. What were they doing here? the soldiers shouted. Hansi Strohtmeyer took it upon himself to answer: they’d thought this was an ice cream stall; it was very hot today. And Jonathan stood with his back to the bunker, and saw now what his father had seen in his final hours. He looked all the way out to the plumes of smoke on the horizon, and if this look had been a physical thing, a dove perhaps, it could have returned as an echo. In that moment, every look ever sent out from this spot could have returned: his father’s gaze, searching through his binoculars – were the transport ships coming soon? – Denmark! – the refugees’ looks of hope, the desperation of the Jews – and the nonchalance of the pre-war ladies slathering themselves with Nivea and watching sailing boats tilt to the side. All that nonchalance would have returned on the wind, all those hopes, all that despair, as a gust of faded images.

  Jonathan bent down, scooped up a little sand and poured it into Maria’s medicine bottle. Perhaps a forensic institute could have identified microscopic fragments of his father among the tiny brown, black and quartz pebbles. And that was the end of the ceremony. Hansi Strohtmeyer shouted, ‘Bye, then!’ to the soldiers. The fishermen bent over their boats, the birds flew away and the Wehrmacht lieutenant sank back into the warm mud from which he had been summoned.

  ‘It was my son, looking for me,’ he whispered to his comrades. And they passed the message on: ‘His son was looking for him.’

  And Jonathan thought: My mother breathed her last during the evacuation, and my father was killed on the Vistula Spit.

  I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.

  19

  Late that afternoon the LOT aeroplane landed in Hamburg. The colourful line of passengers emerging from it included Jonathan Fabrizius, his impractical but sturdy holdall bumping the backs of his knees. He was carrying his coat over his arm and Memling’s The Last Judgement rolled up in his hand, a little gift for Ulla: the damned tumbling into hell, the bland blessed ascending to God. Jonathan was preoccupied: the trip had been more of a strain than he had anticipated. This boded well for the reunion with his girlfriend. She would look at him and say, ‘Darling, you look exhausted!’ And then they’d have a fry-up, and he would tell her what had happened to him on the trip. She would simply listen, and then, in the night, there would be a whistle.

  •

  On the concourse, overlaid by announcements for passengers heading to Tenerife to take advantage of the off-season to swim, eat and sleep, the puffy-bloused Frau Winkelvoss, who was thirty-eight years old, gave Jonathan her card and said he should call her if ever he found himself in Frankfurt; she had a guest room with its own toilet; he could stay over any time; her husband would be delighted. She called him ‘Joe’. Then she gave him a kiss on the cheek. She would return home to her husband and child, a husband who sported a comb-over and a child who was called names like ‘café au lait’ on the street.

  Hansi Strohtmeyer, the ‘chauffeur’ with nerves of steel, shook Jonathan’s hand, squeezing so hard that the latter went weak at the knees. He looked at the man again and hesitated.

  This was an interlude, he thought. People like this are ten a penny . . . ‘There’s no point,’ he said quietly, and set off for Eppendorf in a taxi with a pop song playing:

  Oh, oh, oh, in Mexico,

  Where the boys are glad to go,

  ’Cause in every jungle town

  There are girls both black and brown

  Shaking their booties to and fro . . .

  For a moment Jonathan wondered whether he ought to look in on Albert Schindeloe, tell him that life in West Germany was enough to make you puke and they should go to East Prussia together sometime soon; that once you’d been to East Prussia it really had a hold over you; those magnificent avenues – from German times! – the endearingly disorganized Poles . . . Jonathan knew for certain that he would never go back. Florence, the Gates of Paradise or Castel del Monte – that would be something quite different from the fearful brickwork of the Marienburg. Or Flanders perhaps, in search of northern goddesses.

  He didn’t go to see Schindeloe; instead, he asked to be dropped off at Isestrasse 13. He rushed up the stairs as he always did, overtaking the juddering lift in which the general’s widow was going up, taking refuge in the apartment just before her. And then came the big surprise: it was empty. Not his own room, of course, but his girlfriend’s. Ulla Bakkre de Vaera had cleared out, right down to the cotton wool in the bathroom. She had taken advantage of his absence to go and join her boss. The attic apartment on the top floor of the museum had convinced her. Three rooms, wallpapered in the colours of the Frauenplan, and a sweet little tiny bathroom. Her belongings had been brought over in the museum van, and Dr Kranstöver had pressed a bunch of gladioli into her hands. He had brought round, in person, a painting from the museum’s collection: a Danish painting of a girl in a bobble hat. At this very moment Ulla Bakkre de Vaera was sure to be found hanging paintings in the museum – a descent from the Cross, perhaps – while Dr Kranstöver, in his office, placed a silver-framed photo of an older woman in his desk drawer and slipped some banknotes into his wallet. Drive to France for a few days, relax before the fuss of the exhibition began, with a person at his side whose mysteries he was eager to explore. She would hand him a cup of bitter tea as lizards darted across the slate chippings. Perhaps Fortune would smile on him and give him a few more golden moments. Time was not on his side.

  Ulla’s room was empty, and Jonathan didn’t understand it. This was where she had lived, played patience and listened to the Piano Concerto in E-flat major, and now she was gone. Jonathan opened the sliding door that had always been blocked by Ulla’s bookshelves; he strolled across to his room, to his leather sofa and kitchen table, and back again to Ulla’s window, where the kitsch vases had sat upon the ledge. A train rattled past on the elevated railway.

  There was no doubt about it: Ulla had left him, taking with her the Callot etching of the person being quartered and the Gallé lamp that had shed such a cosy light on the table as her delicate hands rearranged the cards in her index of cruelty. She had packed up and moved away, presumably with the help of Albert Schindeloe. Jonathan was sure he would be able to read the lawyerish reasons for her sudden disappearance in the letter propped on the window ledge. And all the reasons would be reasonable, and he still wouldn’t understand them.

  Whom was he to tell now about his East Prussian days? About his experience of the past, and that it could be dangerous to delve into things that were better left alone? About the northern goddess in Danzig and its counterpart, the Marienburg? Which ultimately, on reflection, left him unsatisfied. All those utilitarian extensions . . . no, the Castel del Monte was far more compelling.

  Jonathan went back to his room and set his bag on the table. He took out his notes and placed them beside the typewriter, then, still standing, typed a few letters on the old machine the way you tap on a piano at a friend’s house – E, F-sharp, G-sharp, B, C – and your friends say, He’s sad.

  The E jammed, as it always did.

  He thought of Rosenau and the graveyard wall and of how he had fallen over, the bright blow to the back of his head, and he saw an endless succession of doors very gradually clos
ing.

  ‘No matter,’ he said aloud.

  The bright, sunny room at the front of the house . . . He’d be able to move, put the table in front of the window. Yes, he thought, the best thing would be if he kept both rooms, then he could walk up and down, look out both front and back and put even more books on the floor. What a good thing he had made friends with the general’s widow; she would agree to it. She was probably standing in the kitchen now, leaning over the sink to rid herself of her smoker’s phlegm. Or was she pressing her ear to the wall and listening, to see whether he was taking it well or going to pieces at this stroke of fate?

  ‘Croak.’ The word came to him suddenly, and he knew who he meant by it, and he tried in vain to suppress the word. It referred to his uncle, who looked like Julius Streicher and yet was such a good man. Eighty-six years old? He would croak soon, you could be sure of that, and renting two rooms would be no problem then.

  Strange that the Botero had been taken off the wall. The painting stood on the floor; the nail had been ripped out, the hole filled in.

  What was that supposed to mean?

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  The history of East Prussia is long and complex. Over the centuries the region has repeatedly changed hands, and under its various rulers its towns, villages, castles, churches and geographical features have been known by different names. Many Germans still use the familiar Teutonic ones – Danzig, for example, rather than Gdańsk. In German this does not have political overtones. It would, however, if someone were to use the new place names briefly imposed under the Nazis, as indicated here (‘Gotenhafen’).

  The translator is faced with a conundrum. If no specific English name exists, which name should be used? Does one follow the original text and retain the German name? But what if in 1988, when the novel is set, this place was part of Poland, Lithuania or Russia? The choice of language has political and cultural implications. In the novel, for example, the driver, Hansi Strohtmeyer, makes a point of using Polish place names even when his colleagues do not.

  The translator’s decision is further complicated by the fact that the book refers to certain places at different periods in East Prussian history. Despite the usual preference for consistency, it would make no sense to use the Polish name of a village if the context is that of a predominantly German settlement in the Third Reich.

  The story is told primarily from the point of view of Jonathan Fabrizius, whose ambivalent relationship with his East Prussian homeland is at the heart of the novel. Jonathan takes pride in the region’s German history. He hunts down an old map with German place names and often expresses irritation with the Polish ones. I have therefore, for the most part, adhered to Jonathan’s perspective by retaining the German names; but I have used Polish or Lithuanian names where these are specified in the original, and when quoting characters whose perspective is not a German one. In this translation, for example, the Polish tour guide at Malbork Castle refers to the Lithuanian leader as Vytautas, not Witold. (For Jonathan, of course, Malbork will always be Marienburg, the great fortress of the medieval Teutonic Order.)

  The Frische Nehrung, Frisches Haff, Kurische Nehrung and Kurisches Haff are known in English as the Vistula Spit, Vistula Lagoon, Curonian Spit and Curonian Lagoon. I have used the English designations because the reader needs to be able to visualize them, but it is probably useful to know that Jonathan refers to the River Vistula – which empties into the Vistula Lagoon – by its German name, the Weichsel (Polish: Wisła).

  Finally, the italicized quotations throughout the text of the book are from a wide variety of sources, including adaptations of works by German poets such as J. W. von Goethe and Agnes Miegel, as well as folk songs, patriotic songs, popular songs and verses of the twentieth century, and the chorale of Bach’s St Matthew Passion.

  Charlotte Collins

  London, May 2018

  GLOSSARY

  German Contemporary

  Allenstein POL: Olsztyn

  Braunsberg POL: Braniewo

  Brodsack POL: Chlebówka

  Christburg POL: Dzierzgoń

  Danzig POL: Gdańsk

  Frauenburg POL: Frombork

  Gumbinnen RUS: Gusev

  Gdingen (NS: Gotenhafen) POL: Gdynia

  Heilsberg POL: Lidzbark Warmiński

  Kahlberg POL: Krynica Morska

  Kolberg POL: Kołobrzeg

  Krakau POL: Kraków

  Lodz POL: Łódź

  Masovia POL: Mazowswe

  Marienau POL: Marynowy

  Marienburg POL: Malbork

  Memel LIT: Klaipėda

  Nidden LIT: Nida

  Pillau RUS: Baltiysk

  Preussisch Holland POL: Pasłęk (ENG: Prussian Holland)

  Rastenburg POL: Kętrzyn

  Sensburg POL: Mrągowo

  Stettin POL: Szczecin

  Tannenberg POL: Stębark

  Zopot POL: Sopot

  Jakobskirche (Allenstein) ENG: Church of St Jacob Cathedral

  Marienkirche (Danzig) ENG: St Mary’s Church

  River Oder POL: Odra

  River Nogat POL: Nogat

  River Weichsel POL: Wisła; ENG: Vistula

  Frische Nehrung ENG: Vistula Spit

  Frisches Haff ENG: Vistula Lagoon

  Kurische Nehrung ENG: Curonian Spit

  Kurisches Haff ENG: Curonian Lagoon

  Witold (Grand Duke of Lithuania) LIT: Vytautas

  Borislaw III (Prince of Poland) POL: Bolesław III

  Konrad von Masowien ENG: Konrad of Masovia

  Jagiello (Grand Duke of Lithuania, King of Poland) POL: Jagiełło; LIT: Jogaila

  POL: Polish; LIT: Lithuanian; RUS: Russian; ENG: English;

  NS: National Socialist (Nazi)