Every time a survey came back, we were to count the positive and negative responses until two of us came up with the same figures. That was the essence of our work. There were to be no mistakes, especially at our typing machines. We were allowed to use correction tape but it was hard to get the key back to exactly where it had been. Two out of three times a chalky white letter stood too high or too low up on the black one and we would be scolded for lack of dexterity. Years later, someone would invent a white liquid that hardened when it dried, making it visually melt into the paper, but we didn't have such labour-savers back then. Our waste-paper bins were checked to see how much paper we were wasting. Godmum was the only one who didn't stuff bad envelopes in her pockets, facing the criticism of a full bin but at least remaining honest. Astrid and Petra were not to be trusted — they would drop theirs in someone else's bin if they thought they could get away with it. Luckily, the 'i' on Astrid's typewriter was not centred properly, so her dirty tricks did not escape the critical eye of Frau Schmitt.
During lunch break we had half an hour to eat our sandwiches at our desks and, if need be, were allowed to have a cigarette. Then on the dot, our fingers were to be back in place, ready to go. With the two catty ones seated behind me, I was never at ease. Their smoke curled around me in a slinky manner until once, while I was trying to wave it away with subtle flicks of my elbow, a tomato slice fell out of my sandwich and rolled across the floor. Their chatting stopped mid-phrase. I could picture them making faces at each other, waiting to see what I'd do. Awkwardly, I leaned over, picked it up and dropped it in an envelope. They burst out giggling, and it might very well have had nothing to do with my tomato, but that's just the way those two made a person feel — like the subject of their mockery.
That evening, during inspection, they began to giggle as soon as Frau Schmitt reached her arm into my waste-paper bin. Naturally, this put her on her guard and in no time she had the tomato slice hooked by her little finger and was holding it up high.
'What's this?' she questioned me, absolutely stunned.
I felt the blood rise to my face and spread to my ears. 'A slice of tomato, ma'am.'
Astrid and Petra shrieked and were reprimanded. 'Hush up! If Herr Demner hears you cackling like hens during work hours, what will he say?' Frau Schmitt turned back to me. 'What is a tomato doing in one of Knopphart's mailing envelopes?'
'I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't want to stain the bin — nor throw it out the window for the inconvenience it might cause if it landed on somebody. Or the hazard, should some poor soul slip on it during the course of the day.' I stood as dignified as I could, considering the cause I was defending, 'And I could hardly be expected to eat it once it fell on the floor.' I cleared my throat. 'Next time I shall take care to hold the two pieces of bread together more securely.'
By then, Godmum and Frau Schmulka's corpulent bodies were shaking with laughter. Tussi was covering her mouth, and Frau Schmitt, despite herself, had to laugh too, though she was the first to pull herself back together. 'Quiet now! Herr Demner is paying us to work, not to split our sides!'
As we were punching out our cards, Godmum put her arm around me, asked if by any chance I happened to be a bachelor. Tussi made haste to insert her card into the time-clock and head off — no goodbyes. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Astrid and Petra exchange sarcastic raised eyebrows.
Godmum continued. 'Usually I can tell, but you're a mysterious one to figure out.' With her fingers she combed my hair every which way except along its natural course.
'What was his answer?' Frau Schmulka asked Godmum, adding her heavy arm to my shoulders.
'I'm . . . taken.' I felt tense as soon as I'd spoken. I'd never owned up to it in public before — in fact I'd never told a living soul besides Pimmichen.
'That doesn't exactly mean married,' said Godmum, playing with my muscles as if I were a piece of matrimonial merchandise she was checking.
'You're perfectly right to ask him,' Frau Schmulka praised Godmum, pulling my lips back to expose my teeth, whose state apparently satisfied her, even though she'd done it as a joke. 'One never knows.'
'I likely will be. Soon.'
'Ha-ha! Likely. Have you popped the question?' Godmum asked.
'She doesn't have a choice. She'll have to, and that's that.'
Godmum and Frau Schmulka roared at this.
I was crossing Währingergürtel on my way home when something odd happened to me. A car, still far away, was accelerating in my direction, the motor straining as the driver shifted gears. I was on the pedestrian crossing so there was no danger; that is, it was natural to assume the driver would stop, but the sound of the accelerating motor made me freeze in the middle like a frightened animal, round-eyed and paralysed. Only when the car was at a standstill was I able to regain control of myself.
That was the first but not the last such incident. The next time, a car was moving towards the red light at less than ten kilometres per hour and I found myself unable to keep walking. I couldn't get my eyes off the headlights closing in on me. The light turned green, the driver blew his horn, and by then cars were passing him on either side at full speed. The accident I feared, I almost provoked. In the beginning, if the cars were stopped, I was able to step out in front of them. But as time went on my mistrust amplified, and soon I had a hunch that a given driver was waiting for me to do just that before stepping on the gas. Yet, when the cars weren't stopped, I was convinced no one would or could see me. It was crazy and made something as simple as going home a real exercise. I looked left and right in a frenzy, and only ventured out if there was no car in sight and no car expected to be near during the time it would take me to cross. But during the time it took to confirm that, a car usually turned into the road, or I felt it was just a matter of seconds before one would. If I hadn't waited so long, I would have had time to make it over on my hand and knees.
To some extent, walking with other pedestrians reassured me. I positioned myself so they'd cushion me from the oncoming vehicles. I couldn't believe what a scaredy-cat I'd turned into. Once, in the middle of the street, I clutched an old lady's arm. She thought I was helping her across when she was helping me. The irony of it all was that I wanted to get home to Elsa rapidly and this foolishness prolonged the journey at least threefold.
What haunted me the whole while was the idea of death. When it was windy I anticipated flowerpots crashing down on my head. In bad districts I couldn't get my mind off murderers in obscure doorways waiting with cord or blade ready. Any freak accident would be a catastrophe, especially when I was so close to clearing it all up with Elsa, bringing our lives into order and her out of hiding. It was only a matter of a few months — a baby born and there could be no turning back, she couldn't leave me — but before that, with one slash of fate's sword, her world, her very idea of the world, could be cut in pieces, only to be fitted back together by someone else — someone else's explanation of what had been, what had happened, what I'd done and why — rather than mine. Fear stuck to me closer than my own shadow. I shuddered at each tram that passed me by, seeing myself mangled underneath it.
I was about to put my key in the door when I heard a stick snapping behind me in the garden. I turned to see a man half hidden in the trees, a colossal man with a head of unruly curls bluntly cut at the neck, observing me. He stumbled towards me, swinging his arms. Despite the anger and confusion weighing down his features, he was unusually handsome.
'I won't hide who I am. Yes, I am Max Schulz.'
He looked — and smelled — drunk. My arm, which he'd clutched forcefully, he was now resorting to for balance.
'Who?'
'You must have heard of me. Max Schulz,' he pronounced more markedly, drawing out the 'u'.
I shrugged.
'Come on. Max. Her first boyfriend. Yes? No? Okay, so it wasn't yesterday. I heard she once lived here. You wouldn't happen to know where she is now? Where I could get in touch with her?'
'No,' I answered cautiously. '
Have you tried her former house?'
'All gone. Another family is living there. New York. I heard a rumour about relatives in New York. That was . . .' He blew through his teeth, skimming the air lithely with his free hand as if directing a symphony. 'I almost got married twice, so . . . I'm just saying, see, my life's moved on. It's just for old times' sake. I don't suppose you have any address you could give me?'
'No, unfortunately I don't.'
'Any name of someone who would? Friend of a friend?'
'Nope.'
'Well . . . then . . . Goodnight.' He swayed back to the trees, groped around in the dark and, with unstable footing, hoisted something up off the ground that had the silhouette of a woman, either dead or stone drunk. 'Sorry to have scared you,' he called back after some paces down the road in the direction of the central city. Under the streetlight, I saw it was a cello.
My key in the door, I stood in deep thought a long time before I turned it.
xxiv
One morning a little boy was seated at my desk when I arrived at work. Petra explained that his grandmother, who usually watched him, was having surgery done on her foot. Frau Schmitt warned her it had better not happen again. The boy, according to his mother, had just turned five, so logically he couldn't have been the son of her husband killed in the war, because five years — plus nine months of pregnancy, I assumed — still left some months to spare even if her husband was killed on the last day of the war, May 8 1945. I think she read my thoughts because she looked at me in her customary dissecting manner and asked me if, by any chance, I liked children.
'Otto, this is Herr Betzler's seat. Come, come, my lion,' she coaxed. His refusal left her no choice but to wrest him out by force. His small fist struck me as he retorted, 'Mean man!' By way of apology, all she said to me was, 'He's in need of a father.'
He ran to and from the employees' toilet, clacking the toilet lid, making flocks of pigeons out of paper towels. The rest of the time he played under his mother's desk with marbles, his foot hitting the back of my chair non-stop. When Frau Schmitt made her rounds, she asked me if I was sure that rascal with ants in his pants wasn't bothering me. Petra must've appreciated my strident denials. My patience was rewarded at the end of the day when the kid made a punching bag out of my back and roared in my ear — a mark of affection, according to his mother.
After that trial, Petra taught me how to type with five fingers, for I had been using only my index finger, in the old hunt-and-peck technique. She touched my hand constantly during the demonstration. From then on her face would brighten as she saw me arrive: she chatted about her son's bed-wetting, her mother's in-grown toenail, the run in her newly invented synthetic stockings — 'nylons' she called them. She made a point of saying goodbye each night. In due course Astrid softened up too, as if her friend's change of heart won me points in her own assessment.
This unwanted attention was making me fumble in my typing, especially when I felt Petra's eyes on me. By late-morning one Friday my waste-paper bin was filled to the brim like a popcorn machine when she got up to get a list of customer names and on her way back had the nerve to drop one of her own envelopes in! I was going to drop it back in hers, indignant that she'd try her tomfoolery with me, when I saw that in place of the name and address, she had typed: 'I love you.' I was dumbstruck. I didn't know what to do, how I should react. If I left it, Frau Schmitt could have come across it. I had no choice but to stuff it in my pocket.
On some level I suppose I was flattered, as if her affection meant Elsa should value me more. Nonetheless, the workday over, I punched my card out well ahead of either her or Astrid. Frau Schmitt inspected my waste-paper bin before she inspected theirs, so this was the easiest way out and worked a couple of times. On Thursday evening of the next week, though, I was two blocks away when the light turned green and I found myself, despite the rain and the slowness of the one car in the far lane, unable to move. I recognised Petra's voice behind me, 'Johannes!'
I could tell she wasn't used to running, let alone in high-heeled pumps inadequate to protect her from the water dripping down her 'nylons'. One arm was in its sleeve but the other not, so her bright yellow raincoat was being dragged along the pavement. The raindrops streaking her face accentuated the emotion she seemed to be undergoing.
'Didn't you read what I wrote?'
'Yes.' I was at a loss for words.
'And it means nothing to you?'
'I already told Frau Rösler, I think you overheard. I . . . have someone.'
'Who?'
'You don't know her. What would it matter?'
'What's her name?'
'What's the difference? Claudia or Bettina?'
'What does she do? Where does she live?'
'Why all these questions?'
'I don't believe you. You have no one.'
'You're overly sure of yourself. You know me, my life, so well?'
'I can tell. You're just pretending to have someone. Because . . .'
'Because?'
'Because you're ashamed.'
After shaking my head at her as if she were nuts, I found the courage to continue across the road, cars or no cars. She grabbed me by the collar. I told her she was making a spectacle of us.
'You don't have to be ashamed,' she cried. 'My husband didn't live. I'm sure he would've traded places with you if anyone had given him the choice! What do a few scars matter? What's important is who you are inside! Who you are today, not who you were before! Who? Who are you?'
I looked at her earnestly — as earnestly as earnestly needs to, to be believed. My eyes were perhaps bulging a bit. 'I'm telling you, I have someone. Please, just believe it.' She allowed me this time to go in peace.
***
I dreaded going back to work the next day, but if I made out to be ill, it would have been worse. I tossed my scarf up on the coat-rack in an offhand manner. I'd fooled no one — everyone had seen my heart jump. That week was so laboriously slow it seemed to crawl by on its chin. No one asked me for a light, no one brushed past my desk, there was more smoke and less perfume.
The following Monday, everything seemed back to normal. Work over, I went to a fish shop and asked for two trout. The man showed me two small freshwater specimens. 'Will these do?'
'No, give me bigger ones. We're two.'
He slapped two bigger fish down on brown paper and weighed them. I stepped up to the cash register and started, on seeing Petra and Astrid staring at my two fish in disbelief.
Panic went through me, as though I'd been caught red-handed committing a crime. I had a hunch they were looking to blackmail me and I'd just given them the proof they'd lacked. I left with my purchase; they left without buying so much as a mussel. I could see in shop windows that they were following me. No matter how long it took me to cross a particular road, they hung back, waiting. I realised they wanted to find out where I lived so they could spy on me. What a situation I'd put myself in! I walked right past our house. At the end of the street I stalled before turning around to see where they were. Were they hiding behind a hedge? I strolled along casually and, seeing no one, darted home, slammed the door and locked it as if I'd left hell outside.
Madeleine was on her way to work in her work clothes, so to speak. I caught her by the leather strap of her dress and ordered her to stop. After much insistence on her part, I was stupid enough to tell her why. Jumping to conclusions, she deduced that I was ashamed of her. I actually had to get down on my knees and beg her not to bolt out to 'set things straight with those two nosy broads'. I used sweeter and sweeter words to temper her and probably overstepped the line. This calmed her for the hour I figured necessary before it was safe for her to go out.
But my problems were just beginning. Thereafter it was Elsa who was mad at me. She was jealous of how I always played up to Madeleine whenever she came around, 'between boyfriends' like a vulture, waiting for me to be free. She was fed up that everyone thought the woman I shared my life with was 'that Hure'. By now,
she and Madeleine couldn't bear the sight of each other. Elsa said that if I didn't kick her out by the time she had the baby, she would walk straight out the door.
After that, anything and everything seemed to make Petra and Astrid succumb to outbursts of forced laughter: Tussi's clandestine applications of mascara; a pencil falling, breaking its point on the floor. Frau Schmulka took the same tram as they did one evening, and the next day I caught her giving me a contemptuous look. This spread to Godmum, who stopped putting her arm around me. If I addressed her, she was stingy in her response — yes, no, don't know. Even her returned 'Goodnight' was abridged to a throat clearing or a gruff 'Night'.
The man from the fish shop eyed me queerly. Whatever I asked him for, he inquired, 'For two? Yes, I remember well, for two,' or 'Nothing's changed? Still two?' His eyes twinkled with irony. I wondered if they weren't all in cahoots, keeping careful note of what I was ordering. How much information had they gathered? I was more prudent, ordered one small fish, or one small fillet to be cut from one small fish. 'Only one today?' he'd chuckle. 'That enough? How's your better half doing?'
His behaviour spread like wildfire to other shopkeepers. My baker gave me a loaf of bread, remarking, 'We never see the little lady? Does she like this leavened specialty of ours?' I answered that the bread was just for me. With mock admiration he exclaimed, 'My, my, what a healthy appetite you have! All that for you alone? A wonder you're not fat like me!' He struck his paunch, eyeing my flat stomach doubtfully. 'You must feed all your crusts and crumbs to the birds? Isn't that right? Ha ha!' The dairy woman's mien was mistrustful as I piled my ration of eggs, butter, cream and milk in my basket.
I soon began going to the outskirts of town to do my shopping in a larger, more impersonal supermarket, with everything you needed in the same shop — a concept that came from America. The bread wasn't so tasty, the fish came frozen, but I was safe from scrutiny.
Caging Skies Page 27