by Steve Weiner
The sergeant gave Jacek new papers. He winked.
“Next time, run away from Blanke Hans.”
Pastor Kock gave Jacek cheese, cheroots, and a hat. Jacek slipped a pewter plate inside his shirt and limped down a narrow alley between the pastorate and almshouses. He came to a crossroads where Dutch boys carried bags of apples. He walked into a wetland.
Clouds broke. Cattle waded in lily ponds. Cows looked at him oddly. Plantain was uncanny.
Jacek came to a canal tavern: In Den Aap—At the Monkey. Dutch refugees had come from Brabant, poor farmers, and from Kempenland, Catholics, and farmers from Zeeland. Oyster men, ruined by shell disease, came from Zuidbereland. Lime burners from Wieringen and Texel Islands argued. Men spoke West Friesian, Dutch, and Gronings.
Jacek went in. A bird fancier with stained yellow shirt cuffs drank coffee.
A skipper of the Inland Waterway came in. He was a big man with a heavy red face. He wore brown leather trousers, a vest, and a floppy-brimmed leather hat. He sat at a table next to Jacek. Jacek took out one of Pastor Kock’s cheroots. The skipper held out a box of matches. Jacek lighted his cheroot and nodded thanks.
“It was a bad storm,” the skipper said. “Who was not rooted, drowned.”
Jacek nodded.
“You understand me?”
“A bit.”
“Good.”
A 4-80 boated past.
“Are you German?”
Jacek nodded.
“Soldier?”
Jacek showed his papers.
“I don’t need to see your papers,” the skipper said. “Everybody is going home. I am Jan Tjaarda.”
“Jacek Gorecki.”
A drunk Fries fisherman stood.
“Is he mad? So am I! Look!”
He unscrewed a wooden leg.
“I am hurt, but I dance!”
He danced.
“Nog een dansje, nog een dansje, ëën, twee, drie!” he shouted. “I still dance, dance, one, two, three!”
The one-legged Fries began dancing again, beating time against his chest.
Morgen sal’ wi haire, haire, haire
Morgen sal’ wi haire, hi ha ha
“What would you like?” Tjaarda said.
“Beer.”
Tjaarda laughed.
“Hier is bier ja,” he said. “There’s beer here, that’s for sure.”
Tjaarda signaled. The publican brought beer. Tjaarda raised his glass.
“Skol.”
The publican called out.
“Cargo! Who’s waited the longest?”
“I’ve waited the longest,” Tjaarda said.
Tjaarda signed a contract. The publican stamped it. An agent got four percent. They hooked hands, toasted, and drank. Tjaarda turned to Jacek.
“I’ll take you to the Ems. You’ll have to walk from there because there are no canals into Germany. Can you do that with your bad leg?”
“Jo.”
Jacek limped after Tjaarda to the canal bank. His tug was Ontwaking—Awakening.
“I belong to the Christelijke Bond van Ondernemers in de Binnenvaart,” Tjaarda said. “The Christian Union of Entrepreneurs in Inland Shipping.”
He nudged Jacek.
“Mit uns sinkt das Boot nicht,” he said in High German. “With us, the boat doesn’t sink.”
The canal unwound. Milky haze moved over roots, fibers, and clotted rootballs in flooded fields. Boards strapped to workers’ shoes kept them from sinking in mud. Fen hunters with long rifles waded past saplings. Tjaarda and Jacek drank rum. A boat came the other way carrying cattle. Branches on both banks raised and lowered. Tjaarda went ashore and bought butter, eggs, a mingel of milk and rum.
Canal locks raised the Christian boat higher. Jacek got off close to Germany.
“Trust God,” Tjaarda said.
“Jo.”
“Stay anonymous.”
Jacek limped to Brake. A farmer ferried him across the Ems. At Nieuwenschans, Belgian soldiers patrolled a shed. Iron girders lay on dirt: AEG, Vulcan, Schichau. Railroad cars of wounded came from Ypres. Dutch and French blew up German artillery, aircraft engines, gas masks, mine-throwers, shells, mines, gunpowder, small arms.
The road crowded with refugees and demobbed soldiers. Potato scourers bent in the rain. Prostitutes worked in tents. Orchards were blasted at Buxtehude. Jacek sat on the banks of the Elbe. Hamburg’s slums smoked. French and English cruisers went by.
Jacek cried.
“God hates Germans!”
alleluja!
HAMBURG
KARL DRIFTED to Hamburg.
French warships came up the Elbe. British gunboats moored at Sandtor basin. The German merchant marine, what was left of it, was in quarantine at Cuxhaven. A Belfast coal burner unloaded whiskey. Karl walked the canals. His trousers were torn and his black hair matted. His overcoat collar tore off. He looked for work at Conrad Donner tobacco factory. There was none.
A Belgian put his hands in Karl’s pockets and looked for money.
“I can do this to you, you know.”
The Belgian pushed him.
“Bow to me!”
The Belgian slapped him.
“I said, bow to me.”
Karl bowed.
He went to the Salvation Army. It was full. He walked to the Shelter of the Homeland. It was full. A police shelter on Neustadterstrasse had three hundred places, but only three empty beds. Karl went in. It stank of unwashed feet. He took off his shoes. He crumpled his overcoat into a pillow.
Police arrested him.
“Work-shy?”
“No.”
“Paragraph Thirteen of the Reich Code. People who are not productive.”
“I am productive.”
The police made him build urinals for Hansa-City Hamburg. Karl walked Hamburg: Altstadt, Neustadt, St. Georg, St. Pauli, Barmbeck, Borgfelde. He passed the old marsh names: Billwerder, Moorfleet, Ochsenwerder, Reitbroch, Spadenland, Totenberg. His overcoat tore and the collar came off. Military police pushed him into a lamppost.
“Papers.”
“The war is over.”
“It’s not over until we say it’s over.”
“Learn French.”
“Shitface.”
“Shit-crap.”
The military police took him to a garrison.
“Is there uncleanness of the sex parts?” a sergeant asked.
“No.”
“Sickness of the abdomen?”
“No.”
The army sentenced him to the Protestants’ labor colony at Rickling.
Karl escaped. He drifted to Hamburg’s Horn District. He went to the Germanicus Marine Brotherhood. He was not eligible for shelter. He went to Catholic bed-houses. They were full. He went to Sea-Voyage Poorhouse. There was no room. He crept into Spice City. Barrels and boxes floated in narrow canals between the sheer walls of warehouses. Pulleys hung, iced, in mist by a stone bridge. Czechs unloaded light oil at their free port. Karl wrapped himself in burlap and curled in a doorway.
“A German gets into trouble, it’s his own fault.”
The next day stokers from the cruiser Strassburg came to Hamburg. Sailors of Squadron III came and also escaped prisoners from Wilhelmshaven. Rebel sailors came from Lübeck and shot at police.
“Bolsheviks!”
“Dupes!”
Gunboats came. The Kaiser’s Red Guard shot deserters. Karl ran.
He went to the arcaded dome at Landungsbrücke and looked for banknotes in the Elbe tunnel. He went to Paulinenstrasse and got a ticket for a liter of oatmeal. He walked: Ost-West Street, Millern Gate, Zeughaus Market, Rödings Market, Deichtor Place. Trains came from Cologne, Bremen, Hanover, Frankfurt, and Berlin. City trains left to Altona. At Klostertor Station he stole suitcases.
Trains pulled into Tierheim. Slaughterhouses steamed. On Tuesdays calves were bled. Fridays swine were butchered. Karl stole a bucket of blood and drank it in an alley. Germans stole coal at the railroad depot. Germ
an radio announced the coal train schedule for them.
Homosexuals stood at mutterstalls—mother stalls—at St. Georg railroad station. Briets and strotenkeuters—street toughs—threw bricks. Karl leaned against a wall. A policeman yanked Karl’s hand out of his pocket.
“By semen moistened!”
Karl was hauled to a judge.
“Is this true, Herr Dach?” the judge said.
“No.”
“It is,” the policeman said.
“Prove it,” Karl said.
The judge leaned forward.
“Under German law, it is the prisoner who has the burden of proof.”
The judge turned to the policeman.
“What happened?”
“The accused had his sex part in his hand.”
“Under the belt?”
“Behind the trouser slit.”
“Erektion?”
“Yes.”
“Ejakulation?”
“Almost.”
The judge turned back to Karl.
“This is illegal in Hamburg.”
“It is?”
The judge showed him the Punishment Code of the German Empire.
“Read Article Three Hundred Ten and Article Fifth-three of the Hamburg Police Powers.”
“I can’t read.”
“Learn.”
“Lick my ass.”
“Speak High German, Herr Dach.”
“You may, sir,” Karl said, “tongue my rectum.”
The judge sent him to a labor colony on Billhorner Kanalstrasse. He was classified Dangerous, Won’t Improve. He chopped wood for fourteen pfennigs a week and escaped through a hole in the fence.
“Shove it up Steigertahl’s ass.”
Karl picked fights on streets of Slavs: Pickhuben, Rabaoisen, Kattrepel, Stubbenhuk, Hüxter Streets. His shoes fell apart. He went barefoot. He found a dead mackerel, knelt, and ate it off the cobblestones.
“Hey!”
He turned. A huge form came in the mist.
“I know you!”
Karl squinted.
“Alois!”
Alois wore a torn sheepskin coat. His walrus mustache was long and dirty. He grinned and flicked a deer’s-foot knife.
“I, Alois Dach!”
“Where’s Mama?” Karl said. “Where’s Papa? I went to the house but the house was gone!”
“Dead.”
“Of what?”
“Spanish flu.”
“Where are you living?” Karl said.
“At Aunt Rosa’s.”
“Where is she?”
“Dead.”
A drunk soldier rotated down the lane with a Browning revolver. Alois lifted Karl.
“Off your knees, son of the Fatherland,” Alois said.
He took Karl to Altona. The portière handed him the key. Prosthetic legs were piled in the stairwell. A baby buggy rusted. Alois opened a door. Clothes were in a sudsy tub. Wallpaper curled over a sink. Suet dangled on a string. Somebody upstairs stumbled into a toilet. Then flushing.
“Pfui,” Karl said. “What a pigsty.”
Karl took off his overcoat.
“Got any money, Alois?”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Devil plague you.”
Alois turned on the stove. He banged a lamprey off a North Sea trout.
“Have you seen Nicholas?” Alois said.
“No.”
“I thought he lived at Nikolaifleet.”
“Well, I didn’t look him up.”
Karl rubbed dirt off his ankles and soles.
“Do you have vermouth, Alois?”
“I do.”
Alois served vermouth.
“Who’s on the wall?” Karl said.
Alois turned. Julius Bernai hung over the sink. Steam and seawater had blurred the spectacles.
“It’s funny,” Alois said, “what you grab in a panic.”
They toasted Bernai.
“To beauty!”
Alois cooked milk until a skin formed and added a spoon of syrup.
“I dreamed, Alois.”
“Of what?”
“I’ll die in two weeks. That’s what the police said. In my dream.”
“Dreams are not real,” Alois said. “Not mine, anyway.”
“No.”
“Police are everywhere. They use nine-millimeter Lugers now. You don’t work, they send you to Fuhlsbüttel.”
It rained. Ruins pitched into the Elbe. Upstairs came a strangled cry, knocks of wood, faster and faster, then a different strangled cry. After a while somebody washed himself.
Karl spat in a wastebasket.
“Do you have opium, Alois?”
“Helgoland Bight! The best!”
Alois mixed opium and vermouth. Karl drank. His dark eyes dilated. Alois turned on the radio.
“It’s better with music.”
Karl’s teeth chattered. He slumped over the table. Alois covered him with his sheepskin coat.
“The blockade killed us, Alois,” he said.
Karl was asleep.
“Our day will come,” Alois said.
In North Germany, it rained. It rained every day. Autos turned in flooded streets. Adulterated pepper flooded Spice City. Alois and Karl went to a public bath. Outside, little girls went by. Morals police rode chestnut mares.
They went to Nikolai Market. Nikolai church stood in snowy mist. Old men bartered. Rotted asparagus was tied in bundles. Cow tongues hung on hooks. Crates of bunnies stood on iced hay. Crowds pushed where wool was sold. A one-legged soldier sold medals of Hamburg’s Regiment 76.
Karl and Alois strolled the stalls.
“Candies!”
“Mother’s milk!”
“Vitello margarine. Best imitation!”
“Sweet water!”
Poles, Russians, Latvians, and Lithuanians stole butter. Karl stole köömkas—white cheese. A boy sold Kiel sprotte. Karl pulled his ragged pockets out.
“Sorry. No money, kid.”
The boy tossed him a fish.
“Pay me tomorrow.”
Karl put the fish under his shirt with the cheese. A man wore a sandwich board:
Hearty afternoon dish from noon to 4 P.M.
Men 55 pfennigs
Ladies 45 pfennigs
Kaiser Hotel
“Why is it?” Karl said.
“What?”
“There are people have hot food every day and we don’t. Is it the Jews?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Jews have their own problems.”
A fishwife hammered a fish backbone. She wiped her hands on an apron, slime and blood. She threw sacs onto the floorboards between her legs. Her man dumped ice.
“Your vagina,” he said.
“Your prick to the sea!”
“Your vulva.”
“Your rectum!” she said.
Karl and Alois left Nikolai Market. Two Liverpool sailors threw towels of vomit.
“Sea murderers!” Karl said.
One of the sailors turned to the other.
“What did he say?”
“Dunno.”
A Liverpool sailor turned to Karl. He stuck out his chin.
“Hit me, mate.”
Alois balled a fist and hit him backward.
“Holl di! Alois!—Holl di!” Karl yelled. “Give him hell, Alois!”
Kids put fingers in their mouths and whistled.
“Udl! Udl!”
Security guards came running. Karl and Alois ran, coats flying.
“Let’s go to Horner Derby,” Karl said, catching his breath.
“No.”
“Come on, Alois. A little racetrack.”
“Don’t like races.”
“Women.”
“Don’t like women.”
Alois’s eyes narrowed. Karl punched his arm playfully.
“Come on, Alois. Let’s go to St. Pauli.”
&nb
sp; “No.”
“Please … Pang Sauli …”
“Okay, Karl. We’ll go to St. Pauli.”
“Where?”
“The Promenaden!”
“The Promenaden!”
They went to the Reeperbahn. Nightlife began. Germans punched each other. Hotels were bright: Rheinland, Kandler, Minerva. Dance halls were crowded: Alkazar, Tivoli. Cafés were noisy: Menkes, Clasen, Roland. St. Pauli’s beer restaurants were full of singing men: Naglers, Ostermann, Hammonia. Cheap prostitutes wound false hair into their own. Some used rancid oils and rouge and some wore scarves the colors of the rainbow.
They went into the Promenaden. A stuffed American grizzly stood by the bar. Germans called for drinks.
“Kümmel!”
“Anisette!”
“Danziger!”
Timber rafts had broken up at Moorfleet and timber-raft men came in. Trawlermen, seamen, unemployed men drank Stehpiepol, Bock, Patzen. Workers from Blohm and Floss came in. Lütt und Lütt was their drink. Slaughterhouse workers danced with East Prussia girls.
Poles, Belgians, Mecklenburgers, Pomeranians, Silesians spoke mix-German. White-slave transporters looked for factory girls. A composer from the Great Fleet strolled drunkenly into posts. Lottery collectors from Lilienfeld Brothers went from table to table. Austrian schillings, English pounds, rubles, guilders, kronen, reichsmarks, and Belgian francs circulated.
Alois toasted.
“To the Kaiser!”
The Dach brothers drank. They put their arms around each other. They sang.
—I was born in Hamburg
—With a knife, with a knife.
—Got into school
—With a knife, with a knife.
—Into the navy
—With a knife, with a knife.
—Killed that policeman
—With a knife, with a knife
—Slit his asshole
—With a knife, with a knife
Alois pounded the bar.
“Beer!” he called. “I’m an EXTROVERT man!”
A sailor woke a corvette captain at the next table.
“Get back to the ship, sir.”
“Wha—?”
“Kommandeur has ordered review.”
“What kommandeur?”
“Of the navy.”
“What navy?”
Karl nudged Alois.
“Look by the door,” Karl said.
“What?”
“A girl.”
She was about twelve.
“Leave her alone, Karl.”
Karl brushed his hair down and parted it with his hands. It glistened. The girl had thin hips and a flat stomach. She wore a worn green dress and black shoes.