by Steve Weiner
“Thank you.”
Nicholas and Bogusia ate mille-feuille. On the Mulde a man rowed against the current.
“It’s good here, isn’t it?” she said. “We have butter, flour, sugar, coffee. Not like Hamburg. Nicholas, let’s go to the rose festival in Dornburg!”
“Sure.”
“Or the onion market in Weimar!”
“What about Hamburg?”
“Besides whores,” Bogusia said, “what’s there?”
They went upstairs. Nicholas threw her on the bed. She giggled. He took off her skirt.
“Little pink skin!” he said.
“Oh!”
He undressed her quickly.
“And whose tummy is this?” he said. “Eh? Whose tummy?”
“Stop tickling!”
Again, he failed to satisfy her. She lay on the bed breathing hard.
“It’s so quiet,” she said.
“It is.”
“Speak to me.”
“In what language?”
“Polish.”
“What should I say, Bogusia?”
“Say, I am Nicholas, your darling.”
“How?”
“Jat’jsem Nicholas kohanie tvuoj.”
Nicholas tried it. Bogusia laughed, hand over her mouth.
“You sound Albanian.”
Nicholas turned over. He ran fingers through her red hair. It caught gold light.
“Sünnschien …” he said.
“What?”
“I said, sunshine. It makes your red hair gold.”
“Don’t speak Low German, Nicholas.”
“Why not?”
“I learned to speak proper German. You should, too.”
“We should speak Turkish,” he said. “At least we wouldn’t pretend to understand each other.”
Bogusia bathed. Nicholas watched. She held up her breasts. She laughed.
“That excites me!” he said.
“Does it?”
“It could be dangerous!”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Why did I say that?”
Nicholas turned away.
“Did you ever sleep with a man?” Bogusia said.
“No.”
“Did you ever want to?”
“No.”
“Look at me.”
“No.”
Bogusia swayed her breasts. He struck a pose.
“Oh, baby!” he said.
She winked.
“Homosexual.”
“Not at all. Why would you say such a thing? Did you finish the whiskey?”
“There’s a bottle on the icebox.”
Nicholas went to the kitchen and poured whiskey into a squat glass.
“What did you learn in the merchant marine?” Bogusia called.
“Nothing.”
“What are you, then?”
“German.”
“God help you.”
“There is no God,” Nicholas said. “Not in Germany.”
Nicholas came back. Bogusia’s pink rounded soft navel was in light-crinkled water.
“Finally,” Nicholas said, finishing the whiskey, “we are what we are. Without knowing the meaning of it.”
“Well, stay away from masseur Friedrichs, Nicholas.”
“Who?”
“Masseur Friedrichs. He works in the hotel.”
“Why should I stay away from him, Bogusia?”
“He is … ‘so.’”
“… ‘So’?…”
“Yes … ‘So.’”
“Ah.”
“So stay away.”
Bogusia settled deeper. She held out her arms. Her knees separated.
“Come in, Nicholas.”
“In the water?”
“Why not?”
“I mean, you bathed in it, didn’t you?”
“Don’t be so German. Get schmutzig.”
“No. You come out.”
Bogusia came out. She put her hands on her hips, dripping water.
“What do you want!” she said.
“On my lap, Bogusia.”
Nicholas sat on a chair. She straddled Nicholas. Her back was warm and wet. She got off. Nicholas poured another whiskey. She dried her hair in the kitchen.
A railroad went by with ropes, lentils, and diesel engine parts. Machine-gun belts, cartridges went by.
“Nicholas?”
“What?”
“Are you staying in Bad Duden?”
“Yes.”
“Will you work?”
“I got a landsturm certificate,” he said. “I get rations. You could get some, too.”
“No.”
“Let’s go to Hamburg.”
“I’ve been there,” Bogusia said. “The slums. The whores. What a sad life. Why would anyone want to go there?”
Bogusia worked. Nicholas walked the Mulde. Romanies butchered horses. Boats of iron, boats of wood, went to the Elbe. He watched them.
“O Vadder,” he said. “O—father.”
He whistled.
“I am involved with a crazy Pole.”
He went back to the restaurant. He opened a white picket gate at the riverfront beer garden. Bogusia served customers. She waved. Nicholas sat at a table.
Germans sang.
In the lovely Mulde valley
Vineyards lie in the golden sun
But the sweetest river of the Empire
Is the Elbe, our German Elbe
Bogusia was through. They went upstairs. Nicholas plucked an apple from a gold bowl.
“De Appeln sünd riep,” he said.
“What?”
“The apples are ripe.”
“Don’t speak Low German, Nicholas.”
Bogusia was very happy.
“Let’s get married!”
Nicholas woke.
“Us?”
“Why not? We’re in love.”
“Sure.”
“Think of it, Nicholas. You’ll be a father!”
“Stick it in a pail of water,” Nicholas said.
“What?!”
“A gnups,” he said. “A little knock on the head.”
“Nicholas!!”
“No suffering!”
“No!”
Nicholas got dressed. Bogusia dressed.
“Something is awful abut you,” she said.
“Nu, giff keen Mucks von di,” Nicholas said. “Come on, no noise from you.”
“What kind of person are you?”
“Mook man keen Rook in de Köök!” he said. “Not so much noise in a small place!”
Nicholas smoked at the window, looking out.
“So. Where are we?” he said. “Where do we stand? In the candor of friendship, where are we?”
“Aren’t we together?”
“Wi sünd quitt mit ’nanner,” Nicholas said.
“What?”
“I said, we’re quits with one another. Let’s get it over and done with.”
“You’re crazy.”
“You made me crazy,” Nicholas said.
“I’ll take poison.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why not?”
“Slavs lie.”
Bogusia ran toward the bathroom. Nicholas caught her but she slipped away and locked herself in. There was a sound of bottles. Nicholas pounded on the door.
“Bogusia!”
“I’m going to die, Nicholas! I’m killing myself!”
Nicholas kicked chairs.
“I dreamed dreams, too, you know!”
Bogusia came out.
“You’re an idiot, Nicholas.”
She went down the stairs. Nicholas ran after her, shirttail flying. She fell at the white picket gate. He cradled her.
“Bogusia!”
Her hands twitched. Her eyes glazed. The pupils grew very tiny.
“Nicholas, you idiot …”
The police interviewed Nicholas but let him go. Frau Rosengarten threw his suitcase out the window
. He slept on a riverfront bench. A street song went through his head. He couldn’t get it out.
“Agatha … Hamburg … yes, sharp little teeth. I remember. She was a little clown, she was.”
A boy jabbed a forefinger into Nicholas’s neck.
“Neck shot!”
The next morning Nicholas applied for work at a war cemetery.
“Former profession?”
“Merchant marine,” Nicholas said.
“What ship?”
“Yellow Sailor.”
“Never heard of it.”
The chief of the cemetery leaned back, put his hands behind his head.
“Can you do grave work?”
“I can.”
“You’re enthusiastic?”
“I am.”
“Fired up?”
“Yes! Like nobody in Germany!” Nicholas said.
“Really?”
“Lashed! To fury!”
Grave work was raking autumn leaves, digging dirt out of names with the thumbnail: Hans-Dietrich Ferner, Defender Erfurt. Michael Zell, Hero of Bad Duden. Karl Johann Brakk, Killed by Foreign Enemies outside the Homeland. Each day Nicholas turned a page in the Book of German War Dead.
Nicholas walked Ox Street at night, Wine Street and Stone Way. Germans sang in a rathskeller. Veterans of the Russian front smoked. A twelve-year-old girl danced with high school teachers. Germans banged beer steins.
We are a people
From the stream of time
Full of catastrophe
And heart pain
Nicholas got drunk. He stumbled out. It was black. Moonlight hit rotted doors. He fell into ecstasy.
“Agatha …”
“Hey! Schmutzfink! Dirty guy!”
Nicholas turned. Alois flicked his deer knife.
“Alois?”
“I!”
“Where’s Karl?”
“Harz Mountains, I think.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“A bird told me.”
Nicholas put his arm around Alois’s shoulder. They went to the gunpowder room of a schloss. Stag and boar heads hung from stone walls. A flannel cartridge and a punch die for bullets stood on a fireplace mantel.
Alois dug insects out of a black cigar.
“How’s life, Nicholas?”
“Schietig,” Nicholas said. “Shitty.”
“Got any money?”
“No.”
“Nicholas. Please.”
“Plagt Di de Deuwel,” Nicholas said. “Devil plague you.”
They drank.
“Hey. Alois, I was a good cook’s assistant, wasn’t I?”
“I couldn’t shit for a week.”
“Ha.”
Nicholas drank.
“I might join the army, Alois.”
“Where?”
“Bohemia. Moravia. They have German regiments.”
“Well, you couldn’t be a soldier,” Alois said.
“Why not?”
“You’re skinny. No target.”
“Ha!”
Alois giggled. He leaned against Nicholas.
“Nicholas.”
“What?”
“Do you remember?”
“What?”
“You know.”
“Alois, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Alois put his arm around Nicholas’s shoulder.
“We’re married, Nicholas.”
Nicholas edged away.
“It was during the war, Alois,” he said. “It means nothing now.”
Nicholas ordered more beer.
“Nicholas—”
“The beer here is good, isn’t it, Alois?”
“Nicholas—”
“Especially the black beer.”
“Nicholas.”
“What?”
“I have a proposition for you.”
Nicholas’s eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“Nicholas, maybe we—”
“What?”
“Could live in Altona.”
“I’m a bit—uncertain—about things, Alois.”
“We’re friends. Good friends,” Alois said. “Special friends. Aren’t we?”
“Yes, but—”
“Come on, Nicholas.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Forget it.”
Nicholas and Alois drank. Germans, fat and shabby, smoked and drank by dirty windows.
“I begin to think, Alois.”
“What?”
“Life is no fun.”
Nicholas grabbed the fire poker. He stood up and waved it around.
“Rat-a-tat-a-tat!! Boom! Boom! One G-G-German d-d-division wipes out the whole f-f-fucking P-P-Polish army!”
“Ha!”
Germans at the next table poured old Prussian wine into new green bottles.
“Alois, did you know a woman in Hamburg named Agatha?”
“I didn’t know any women, Nicholas. In Hamburg or anywhere else.”
“She created a furore—”
“She knocked the schwul out of you,” Alois said. “That’s for sure.”
Nicholas’s pounded the table.
“I LEFT HER!”
“She doesn’t remember you.”
“I LEFT THE ONLY WOMAN I EVER LOVED!!”
Alois signaled the bartender.
“Bring mal’n Glas Beer for Nicholas,” he said. “Bring a glass of beer for Nicholas.”
Alois lifted Nicholas’s head. He let go. Nicholas’s head
bounced on the table. The waiter brought mustard, bread, buttered potatoes.
“Zum fress!” Alois said. “Eat! Like animals!”
Alois ate. He went out and urinated. A boy rapped on a window. Nicholas woke.
“Come! Look!” the boy said. “The biggest bladder in Germany!”
A PERSONAL SAVIOR
ALOIS WENT TO Hamburg. Karl was not there. Alois picked fights. He drifted to Flanders. He kicked a policeman in the head and was sent to prison.
West Flemish prisoners from Ypres, Roulers, Ostend, and Bruges were in the right wing. East Flemish prisoners from Antwerp, Ghent, St. Nicholas, and Oudenaarde were in the left wing. German, French, and Italian prisoners were in the central wing.
Guards shaved Alois’s head.
“Are you morally clean?”
“No.”
“Did you do anything shameful?”
“No.”
“With whom?”
“It was a secret dream.”
A tattooist removed Alois’s tattoo, N. B. with a contre-tatoo of oil phenique.
“Who is N. B.?”
“A friend.”
“How good a friend?”
“A personal savior.”
“Does he know it?”
“No,” Alois said. “He rejected me.”
Guards took Alois to a bath hall and washed him in carbolic acid. Alois’s belly warmed in chemicals. A German rose from a tub. His derriere was tattooed: immer hinein. Always in here.
“There is no escape, Alois.”
“No.”
A Belgian car thief leaned on a mop.
“German.”
Alois turned.
“What?”
“How can you knock out two Jews without touching them?”
“How?”
“Toss a coin halfway between them.”
Alois laughed.
“How can you knock out two Germans?”
“How?”
“The coin, you don’t need. They’ll do it for fun.”
Alois smoothed his walrus mustache. He turned to a petty criminal from Merkplatz.
“Why are you here?” Alois said.
“I stole from sleeping addicts.”
Alois brushed his hair down. He turned to another petty criminal.
“And you?”
“I stole clocks.”
“Why are you here?” the German said.
“I
kicked a policeman in the head.”
“That is frowned on in Flanders,” said the juvenile from Merkplatz.
French prisoners came in. They wore white towels. A veteran of Constantinople, 3rd Consort, was tattooed with an anchor, sign of colonial infantry. His buttock was tattooed: souvenir d’Afrique. A black man from Marseilles was tattooed: a white man and Negro smilingly entered a vulva. A Cambrai veteran who had lived in Spain, El Maricón—the Spanish Faggot—dropped his towel. Fingers were tattooed on El Maricón’s genitals.
El Maricón pursed his lips.
“My German warlord.”
Alois turned away. There was graffiti in Old French on the wall.
Caresses nuisibles.
Unpleasant caresses.
Guards took Alois to a cell. There was a sleeping board, a tin cup, and a thin blanket. Alois took Kruschen salts for liver impurities and Rodell Saltrates for his corns.
Out the window were old artillery positions. Bombed houses leaned roofless. Belgians rolled barbed wire. Women baked poffertjes, twisted dabs of paste in iron molds. Men in Café Rotonde drank Oudenaarder beer. Black automobiles were parked in an unlighted market square. Belgian Congo missionaries sold portraits of King Leopold.
Gendarmes patrolled the alleys outside the prison. Black marketeers sold bomb fragments.
“Bon, bon, shrapnel!”
Alois stuffed his shoes with pages of Vooruit. He nailed boots for the Flemish military and polished them with ca-va-seul shoe polish. A guard drank hot chocolate.
“Flikker,” he called, in Flemish.
Alois turned.
“Me?”
“Aren’t you queer?”
“No.”
“Of course you are. All Germans are.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re just too lazy,” the guard said.
“Leave me alone.”
“The cure is spiritual.”
“I’m not sick.”
“Are you kidding? You’re infested.”
Prisoners marched back from the infirmary. Germans got German diseases: thickened ribs, psoriasis, scales, “persimmon seeds” erupting from their anuses, and abnormally hairy backs. French prisoners got French diseases: military fever, thickened lymph, stomach acidity, sour sweat.
Alois went to the privy. It was a hole in a corridor wall. Excrement fell into a courtyard below.
“Ah.”
The guard threw open the door.
“At it again?”
Ie me suis moy mesme emprisonne.
I myself imprison myself.
Bells rang.
“Lunch!”
Alois went to the mess hall. Brussels criminals guzzled chicken. Aalst criminals ate onions. Wilrijk criminals wore goat hair. Redskins, so called because of clay-red arms from digging ditches, ate doughnuts. An Italian boy poured coffee. The boy’s arm was tattooed: Q.F.Q.P.