Ernst is going home. He has decided, about a field of daffodils, My Country. He will not be shot with “Long Live” anything on his lips. No. He will not put on a new uniform, or continue to claim his pension, or live with a prostitute, or become a night watchman in Paris. What will he do?
When Ernst does not know what to do, he goes to sleep. He sits on the floor near the gas heater with his knees drawn up and his head on his arms. He can sleep in any position, and he goes deeply asleep within seconds. The room is as sealed as a box and his duffelbag an invisible threat in a corner. He wades in the water of a flooded cellar. His pocket light is soaked; the damp batteries fail. There is another victim in the cellar, calling “Mutti,” and it is his duty to find him and rescue him and drag him up to the light of day. He wades forward in the dark, and knows, in sleep, where it is no help to him, that the voice is his own.
Ernst, on his feet, stiff with the cold of a forgotten dream, makes a new decision. Everyone is lying; he will invent his own truth. Is it important if one-tenth of a lie is true? Is there a horror in a memory if it was only a dream? In Willi’s shaving mirror now he wears the face that no superior officer, no prisoner, and no infatuated girl has ever seen. He will believe only what he knows. It is a great decision in an important day. Life begins with facts: he is Ernst Zimmermann, ex-Legionnaire. He has a ticket to Stuttgart. On the twenty-eighth of January, in the coldest winter since 1880, on the rue de Lille, in Paris, the child beaten by his mother cries for help and calls “Maman, Maman.”
O Lasting Peace
Though my Aunt Charlotte, my sad mother, my Uncle Theo, and I all live together, and can see each other as often as we need to, when Uncle Theo has something urgent to tell me he comes here, to the Civic Tourist and Travel Bureau. He gets in line, as if he were waiting to ask about the Bavarian Lakes and Mountains Program or the Ludwig the Second Bus Circuit. He slides close to the counter. I glance over, and suddenly have to look down; Uncle Theo is so small he is always a surprise. He grins, scared to death of me. He is totally bald now, not a hair to stretch sideways. He looks like a child’s drawing of two eyes and a smile. After a furtive trip to Berlin last summer he edged along the queue to say he had called on my father, who is his brother and Aunt Charlotte’s brother, too.
“Hilde, everything has gone wrong for him,” said Uncle Theo, gripping the counter as if that might keep me from sending him away. “Do you remember how he couldn’t stand cigarette smoke? How none of you could smoke when he was around?” Do I remember? It was one of the reasons my younger brother cleared out, leaving me to support half the household. “Well, she smokes all the time,” said Uncle Theo. “She blows smoke in his face and so do her friends. She even eggs them on.”
“Her friends,” I repeated, writing it down. My expression was open but reserved. To anyone watching, Uncle Theo is supposed to be a client like any other.
“Low friends,” said Uncle Theo. “Low Berliners in shady Berlin rackets. The kind of people who live in abandoned stores. No curtains, just whitewashed windows.” At the word “shady” I did look as if I had seen my uncle somewhere before, but he is one more respectable survivor now, a hero of yesterday. “Ah, your poor father’s kitchen,” he went on lamenting. “Grease on the ceiling that deep,” showing thumb and finger. “They’re so down they’ve had to rent the parlour and the bedroom. They sleep on a mattress behind the front door.”
“He’s got what he wanted.”
“Well, it had been going on between them for a long time, eh?” Embarrassment made him rise on his toes; it was almost a dance step. “After fifteen years she and your mother joined up and told him to choose. Your mother didn’t understand what she was doing. She thought it was like some story on television.”
My father left us five winters ago, at the age of sixty-three. I still have in mind the sight of my mother in a faint on the sofa and my Aunt Charlotte with an apron over her face, rocking and crying. I remember my Uncle Theo whispering into the telephone and my Aunt Charlotte taking the damp corner of her apron to wipe the leaves of the rubber plant. I came home from work on a dark evening to find this going on. I thought my Uncle Theo had been up to something. I went straight to my mother and gave her a shake. I was not frightened – she faints at will. I said, “Now you see what Uncle Theo is really like.” She opened her eyes, sniffling. Her nylon chignon, which looks like a pound of butter sometimes, was askew on the pillow. She answered, “Be nice to poor Theo, he never had a wife to look after him.” “Whose fault is that?” I said. I did not know yet that my father had gone, or even that such a thing might ever happen. Now it seems that my mother had been expecting it for fifteen years. A lifetime won’t be enough to come to the end of their lies and their mysteries. I am the inspector, the governess, the one they tell stories to. And yet they depend on me! Without me they would be beggars, outcasts! Aunt Charlotte and my mother would wash windows in schoolhouses; they would haul buckets of dirty water up the stairs of office buildings; they would stand on vacant lots selling plastic combs and miniature Christmas trees!
My Uncle Theo began describing her – that other one. His face was as bright as if he were reciting a list of virtues: “I never did understand my brother. She has no taste, no charm, no looks, no culture, no education. She has a birthmark here,” touching the side of his nose.
“I’m busy, Uncle Theo.”
“We must send him money,” he said, getting round to it.
“Well?” I said to the person next in line, over Uncle Theo’s head.
“Hilde, we must send the poor old man money,” he said, hanging on the counter. “A little every month, just the two of us.” Uncle Theo thinks everyone else is old and poor. “Hilde – he’s a night porter in a hospital. He doesn’t like anything about the job. He can’t eat the food.”
Sometimes Uncle Theo will come here to intercede for our neighbours, having heard I have started legal action again. We have East German refugees in the next apartment – loud, boorish Saxons, six to a room. They send everything through the wall, from their coarse songs to their bedbugs. Long ago they were given a temporary housing priority, and then the city forgot them. The truth is these people live on priorities. They have wormed their way into everything. Ask anyone who it is that owns the laundries, the best farmlands, the electronics industry; you will always get the same answer: “East German refugees.” At one time a popular riddle based on this subject went the rounds. Question: “Who were the three greatest magicians of all time?” Answer: “Jesus, because he turned water into wine. Hitler, because he turned Jews into soap. Adenauer, because he turned East German refugees into millionaires.” Very few people can still repeat this without a mistake. Only two per cent of the readers of our morning paper still consider Hitler “a great figure.” My own sister-in-law cannot say who Adenauer was, or what made him famous. As for Jesus, even I have forgotten what that particular miracle was about. A story that once made people laugh now brings nothing but “Who?” or “What?” or even “Be careful.” It is probably best not to try to remember.
At a quarter to two this Christmas Eve, my Uncle Theo turned up here again. The watchman was already dressed in his overcoat, standing by the glass doors with a bunch of keys in his hand. The banks, the grocers, the bookshops, the hairdressers were shut tight. The street outside looked dead, for those who weren’t down with Asian flu were just getting over it. Uncle Theo slipped in past the porter. He wore his best winter pelisse with the seal collar and his seal hat. He looked smaller than ever, because of the great-coat and because of a huge brown paper parcel he was carrying. He made as if to come straight over, but I frowned and looked down. The cashier was on sick leave, too, and I was doing double duty. I knew the parcel was our Christmas goose. Uncle Theo buys one every year. Now, that he chooses well; it is not an imported Polish bird but a local goose, a fine one. I stood there counting money, twenty-five, thirty, fifty, and I heard Uncle Theo saying, “She is my niece.” In my position I cannot murmur, “Oh, sh
ut up,” but I imagined him bound and trussed, like the goose, and with adhesive tape across his mouth. He was speaking to a man standing before him in the queue, a tall fellow wearing one of those square fur caps with ear flaps. The cap had certainly come from Russia. I guessed at once that the man was a showoff. Uncle Theo was telling him his history, of course, and probably mine as well – that I spoke four, or even seven, languages and that the tourist office could not manage without me. What a waste of time, and how foolish of Uncle Theo! Even from behind the counter I could see the showoff’s wedding ring. None of the staff was happy. We were almost the only people still working in the whole city. It was one of the days when you can smell the central heating, like an aluminum saucepan burning. I looked sharply at Hausen, my assistant. He has devised a way of reading a newspaper in a desk drawer, folded in quarters. He can even turn the pages, with movements so economical only I can see them. You would never guess that he was reading – he seems to be looking for pencils. “Take some of these people over, will you?” I called out. Hausen didn’t respond, and the line didn’t move. Uncle Theo’s voice was now clear: “I also happened to be in Calcutta when the end of the world was expected. That was February 5, 1962. The Calcutta stock exchange closed down. People left their homes and slept in tents. Imagine – the stock exchange affected. Everyone waiting. Eminent persons, learned professors.” Uncle Theo shook his head.
“You were there on business, I suppose,” said the man in the square cap. He had to stand in profile so they could go on talking. It made an untidy sort of queue. Uncle Theo looked ridiculous. The pelisse swamps him.
“No, no. I was retired long ago,” he said. “Forcibly retired. My factories were bombed. I made a little porcelain – pretty stuff. But my vocation was elsewhere.” Having let that sink in, he put on his quotations voice and said, “ ‘And now, like many another wreck, I am throwing myself into the arms of literature.’ I found much to inspire me in India. The holy men. The end of the world on February 5, 1962. The moon. The moon in India has no phases. It is full all the year round.”
In a job like mine it would be best not to have relatives at all. Nothing of Uncle Theo’s is quite the truth or entirely a lie. The remark about the moon was a mistake, caused by his lack of schooling. For “factories” he meant “one workroom,” and for “porcelain” he meant “hand-painted ashtrays.” It is true about the literature, though. Two of his poems have been set to music and sung by our choral society. “In Autumn, in Summer, in Autumn, in Summer,” with the voices fading on the last word, is not without effect. The other, which begins, “O peace, O peace, O lasting peace, / We all demand a lasting peace,” is less successful. It sounds preachy, even when sung in a lively way.
“Will someone please take over these people,” I said, this time loud enough so that Hausen couldn’t pretend not to hear. The whole queue shuffled obediently to the left – all but the last two. These were Uncle Theo and his new friend, of course. The friend made for me and put a traveller’s cheque down on the counter. I looked at it. It had been signed “F. T. Gellner” and countersigned “F. Thomas Gellner.” Haste, carelessness, perhaps. But the “T” on the top line was a printer’s capital, while the second was written in script. I pushed the cheque back with one finger: “Sorry, it’s not the same signature.”
He pretended not to see what I meant, then said, “Oh, that. I can cross out the ‘Thomas’ and put the initial on, can’t I?”
“Not on a traveller’s. Next person, please,” I said, even though the next was Uncle Theo, who had no business here.
“I’ll write a personal cheque,” said the man, getting a pen out first.
“This is not a bank,” I said. “We cash traveller’s as a favour to clients.”
“But the banks are closed.”
“Yes,” I said. “It is Christmas Eve. It isn’t only the ‘Thomas,’ but also your capitals. The two signatures are absolutely not the same.”
“Is that all?” he cried out, so happily (thinking it was settled) that even deaf Hausen looked over. “I write one way sometimes, then another. Let me show you – my driver’s license, my passport …” He started tumbling papers out of an inside pocket. “I should be more careful,” he said to me, trying to play at being friends.
“It is not my business to examine your driver’s license,” I said. “The two signatures are not the same.”
He looked round the office and said, “Isn’t there anyone else I can see?”
“It is Christmas Eve,” I said, “and I am in charge. The manager is at home with Asian flu. Would you like his number?”
Uncle Theo stuck his head out sideways, like a little boiled egg with a hat on it, and said, “I can vouch for the gentleman.” He must have forgotten who and where he was. “I can sign anything you like,” he said. “My name is important locally.”
“There is nothing to sign and I do not need your name.” Important locally? Where is his name? On the war memorial? Have they called a street after him? His name is not even on a civil registry – he never married, even though there has been a shortage of husbands since Bismarck.
The man took no more notice of Uncle Theo; he had finally understood that the honourary assistant head of the choral society was of no use to anyone. To be rid of the incident, I said, “Sign another traveller’s in my presence.”
“That was my last one.”
Uncle Theo repeated, “I can vouch for the gentleman. I have seen the gentleman buying in shops – spending,” said my uncle, making a circle of his thumb and forefinger for emphasis under the brown paper parcel, as if we were poor villagers for whom the very sight of money was a promise of honour.
“Ask your hotel to cash a cheque,” I said. “I’m sorry but I cannot deal with you any longer. It is Christmas Eve.”
“I’m not in a hotel. I mean that I am staying here with friends.” Of course, I had seen the “friends.” She was waiting outside, trying to seem casual, wearing one of those reddish fur coats. Snow fell on her hair.
“Ask your friends to lend you something.”
“You could save me that embarrassment,” he said, trying for friendliness again.
“It is not my business to save you embarrassment,” I said, glancing at his wedding ring.
Even when he had got as far as the door, and the watchman was preparing to lock it behind him, he kept looking back at me. I made a point of being taken up by Uncle Theo, who now stood woebegone and scuffing his feet, shifting his burden from arm to arm.
“That wasn’t kind, Hilde,” he began. “The poor man – he’ll have a sad Christmas.”
“Be quick, Uncle Theo. What do you want?”
“Tonight,” he said, “when we are eating our dinner, and the candles are lighted on the Christmas tree …”
“Yes?”
“Try not to cry. Let the girls enjoy themselves. Don’t think of sad things.” The girls are my mother and Aunt Charlotte.
“What else is there?” I said. I could have piled all our sad Christmases on the counter between us – the Christmas when I was thirteen and we were firebombed, and saved nothing except a knife and fork my mother had owned when she was little. She still uses them; “Traudi” is engraved on the handle of each. It worries my mother to find anything else next to her plate. It makes her feel as if no one considered her – as if she were devalued in her own home. I remember another Christmas and my father drinking wine with Uncle Theo; wine slowed him down, we had to finish his sentences for him. They say that when he left us he put an apple in his pocket. My Aunt Charlotte packed some of his things afterward and deposited them with a waiter he knew. The next Christmas, my Uncle Theo, the only man of the house now, drank by himself and began to caper like a little goat, round and round the tree. I looked at the table, beautifully spread with a starched cloth, and I saw four large knives and forks, as for four enormous persons. Aunt Charlotte had forgotten about my mother.
“Oh, my own little knife and fork, I can’t see them!” cried
my mother, coming in at that moment, in blue lace down to her ankles.
“Oh, my own little arse,” said Uncle Theo, in my mother’s voice, still dancing.
He was just as surprised as we were. He stared all round to see who could have said such a thing. My mother locked herself in her room. My Aunt Charlotte tapped on the door and said, “We only want you to eat a little compote, dear Traudi.”
“Then you will have to bring it here,” said my mother. But after saying that, she would not open the door. We knew she would come out in time to watch The Nutcracker Suite, and so we left the house, pretending we were about to pay our Christmas visits a day early. We sat in the railway station for a long time, as if we were waiting for someone. When we came back, we found she had put the short chain lock on the front door of the apartment, so that all the keys in the world wouldn’t let you in. Here we were, all three wearing hats, and hoping our neighbours would not peep out to see who was doing all the ringing. Finally someone did emerge – a grubby little boy. Behind him we could see a large party round a table, looking out and laughing at us, with their uneducated mouths wide open. We said courteously that our relative must have fallen asleep and, being slightly deaf, could not hear the doorbell.
“We knew there must be a deaf person in that apartment,” said someone at the table.
“There is no Christmas in India,” said Uncle Theo, becoming one of their party. “It has no meaning there.” I was glad to see that my aunt and I looked decent. “My sister-in-law once had a great emotional shock,” said Uncle Theo, accepting a glass. “Christmas is so sad.”
A gust of feeling blew round the table. Yes, Christmas is sad. Everyone has a reason for jumping out the window at Christmas and in the spring. Meanwhile I was calling our number, and I could hear our telephone ringing on the other side of the wall. The neighbours’ wallpaper is covered with finger marks, like my sister-in-law’s. “Why not send for the police?” someone said. My aunt looked as if she wanted to throw an apron over her face and cry, which was all she did when her own brother left. “Well, Uncle?” I said. Everyone looked at the man who had been to India. Before he could decide, the little boy who had opened the door said, “I can get round by the balconies.” Do you see how easy it is for these people to spy on us? They must have done it hundreds of times. All he had to do was straddle the partition between the two balconies, which he did, knocking down the flowerpots covered with squares of plastic for the winter. My aunt frowned at me, as if to say it didn’t matter. He cupped his hands round his eyes, peering through the panes of the double glass doors. Then he pounded with both fists, breathing hard, his cheeks as red as if they had been slapped. “The lady is just sitting on the floor watching television,” he said finally.
The Pegnitz Junction Page 14