by Jürgen Fauth
My parents' charred bodies weren't recovered from the ruins until the next morning.
It was justice–not the human kind, bought and sold, but some sort of cosmic justice, God's will, what the Oriental religions call karma. Along with the poison gas, my father had let the war into our home, and we all paid the price. I came to in a hospital bed next to Jupp's, in a room filled with every available quack who wasn't at the front, a whole flock of Dokters, hovering over us, shrugging impotently.
Dokters. The smell of disinfectant, the snap of rubber gloves. Useless at best, clueless most of the time, always dangerous. When your kind runs out of answers, you call for pills and electroshock. That night after the explosion, they ordered up morphine, and nuns brought wet towels to wipe down our sweat-covered bodies. My leg was disintegrating from the acid, and the infection progressed quickly, threatening to kill me. I watched Jupp struggle in the bed next to mine, trying to draw breath with his decomposing lungs. He was the youngest and liveliest of us, and it took him hours to die. Finally, the Dokters had to capitulate before the chemical, and soon, they shrugged some more, folded their hands. They called a preacher for Jupp.
For me, the saw.
It was Dokters who pinned me down, applied ligatures to prevent hemorrhaging, pulled up my skin below the knee cap, and divided it with one quick stroke of the double-edged knife, leaving the flexor tendons intact so the stump would retain the power of motion. With the practiced ease of men who had performed hundreds of these procedures during the war, they transected the muscles. They had a special piece of linen with three tails ready that was threaded through the space between the shin and calf bones and tied together to hold the muscles and skin back. The Dokter with the oscillating saw stood between my legs and worked quickly, to keep the calf bone from splintering.
And that's it. The leg's detached, a separate thing. You can't feel it yet because everything is pain, but you can see the assistant who takes it away swiftly, to be burnt unceremoniously in the hospital's ovens. Skin and muscle flaps are folded over the stump, and before the wound is dressed, they insert studs for screwing on a peg leg.
Knock on wood.
That was nearly fifty years ago. I still remember every second of the procedure, and to this day, I feel the pain in the absent limb. But I can't for the life of me remember what it was like to have two feet.
Dokters did that to me. I doubt you ever had occasion to perform an amputation, and for that reason alone, you're even more dangerous than those who took my leg. You are worse than useless. I despise you, and I am frightened of the moment you run out of ideas.
I am the only one who sees these pages half-filled, and I am terrified. One must be fearless to plow through sentences and paragraphs to unknown conclusions. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?
Heinz and I were the only survivors. We inherited the firm, the land, the money. I didn't want any of it–it was blood money, and I had paid for father's greed with my leg. But the fire hadn't lessened the hatred of our family. Disgusted, I gave my inheritance to charity and left Koblitz & Söhne to Heinz. I kept just enough to get by and went to Berlin to live among the common people: workers, shopkeepers, butchers, tram drivers, waiters. I was free of the pretensions of the rich. Nobody knew me as the son of a Kriegsgewinnler, a war profiteer. Berlin, seething capitol of a brand-new democracy that no one wanted. The city promised all I longed for: depravity, chaos, revolution, everything my sheltered upbringing had denied me. I enrolled at Friedrich Wilhelm University and rented a shabby room that smelled of beer and herring in a second Hinterhaus on Rosenthaler Platz, from a family of waschechte Berliners too polite to ask about my leg. They assumed I was a veteran, like everyone else, not a one-legged shut-in apprentice accountant from the provinces who'd grown up sheltered by five-meter walls, a Landei determined to join the twentieth century.
For the first few weeks, I dutifully took the tram to Unter den Linden to attend lectures. At the gymnasium in Frankfurt, our tutors had been stern and humorless Wilhelmine men with moustaches and starched collars who taught the same way other men lay brick or shovel graves: a solemn, joyless duty. Listening to lectures about Greek literature and natural science in Berlin revealed to me that learning was a pleasure.
After classes, I headed west to the shops and restaurants of Friedrichstadt. I'd stop at my bank to furtively withdraw a few marks at a time, just enough to afford a pastry at Rumpelmeyer's or coffee and a soft-boiled egg at a Ku'damm café, where I sat for the entire afternoon. Soon, I took out more money and went for dinner, or to the Tingeltangel. I discovered the Wintergarten, just south of Friedrichstrasse station, an opulent world made for pleasure, a temple of delights, a palace of sparkling crowds and thrilling acts. I drank champagne between artificial fountains and grottoes filled with exotic plants, and no matter what happened on the stage–dancing girls in leather and fur, trapeze artists, a woman from Spandau getting hypnotized by a Mexican magician–you could always see the stars through the enormous vaulted glass roof. It was like Walt Disney's theme park–but with tits. Wonderful, classy tits!
To a Landei like me, the crowd at the Wintergarten was as thrilling as the stage, so different from the plump industrialists who visited in Königstein or the rough-hewn working men who ate knackwurst at the Gipsverein, where Herr Oberlin tended bar. At the Wintergarten, each person was fascinating, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, witty, and most of all, sexy. I laughed at the men's one-liners and desperately wanted to touch the women's silken dresses. I wanted to know them all, but even more than that, I wanted them to know me. After a couple of beers, I allowed myself to imagine that the applause was meant for me.
It was there at the Wintergarten I met Steffen. He approached from across the terrace with that graceful gliding gait of his, a smile so magnificent there was no way not to return it. By the time I noticed him, he'd already extended his hand, and before I could get up to take it, he'd introduced himself and taken the seat across from me. His cheeks were flushed–his cheeks were always flushed; it gave him a healthy complexion, even though I soon learned the real reasons were not of a healthy nature. His wild eyes were focused on me, and he talked quickly. He did not want to be forward, but he had a proposition.
Here was the attention I craved! Steffen's charisma made me feel blessed every moment his eyes were on me. Later, I knew movie stars like that, but unlike them, Steffen saw you when he looked. He smoked a cigarillo and talked fast, with so many clauses, interjections, and Scheunenviertel slang that was a mixture of Boxverein gangster jargon and the quasi-German the Romanian gypsies used. I learned later that he affected this accent when he wanted to impress. I didn't understand half of it, and the other half was unclear, but apparently, he was looking to play a prank on his friends–here he waved at a table across the terrace and rattled off names: Lady Miss Fear, Babsie, Kuno Kartoffel, Ute the Mole Girl, two more I didn't catch, and Anita Berber's sister Katja–and he needed my help. My help!
Why me? What kind of prank? I wanted him to slow down but I couldn't help smiling. He said he thought I had a mysterious air about me–he was talking about my leg–and he imagined that his friends would simply adore it if I robbed them. Furtively, he unbuttoned his jacket to show me the handle of a revolver. “It's not loaded.” He winked.
I looked back at his friends. One of the girls blew me a kiss. I still didn't understand.
“You want me to rob you? Do I get to keep the loot?”
Delighted, Steffen clapped his hands. “Adorable! ‘Do I get to keep the loot?’ Please, you must indulge us. Wait for us in the alley behind Dorotheenstrasse. I swear the loot will be to your liking.”
Now, I was not a complete innocent. Heinz and I both had favorite girls at a bordello in Frankfurt, and I knew how to use a prostitute. I thought of Steffen Kung as a playful dilettante, clearly drunk, looking for a way to spice up his Saturday night with a harmless prank. I wasn't entirely wrong, but I had missed the point.
So I agreed. Why not?
I had a surplus of optimism and no fear. Under the table, Steffen handed me the revolver. As instructed, I laid in wait for him and his friends in the alley, held them up–”Geld oder Leben!”–but instead of offering up their money, they turned and ran. This wasn't part of the plan! Dragging my wooden leg, I chased after them across the street, and for good measure, I fired the gun into the air. Bang! It was loaded after all, and the shot echoed down the street. Roaring with laughter, Steffen and his friends disappeared into one of the apartment buildings. I followed, climbing the stairs with my leg thumping on the wood steps until I reached the apartment under the roof, a wide-open space that was hung with Indian tapestries and cluttered with divans, mirrors, pillows.
“Now I have you!” I shouted, out of breath, heart beating with excitement. I fired another shot into the ceiling. Plaster fell in a cloud of dust.
Their arms went up.
“Oh my,” said a girl with a monstrous mole on her cheek. “Please don't kill us! We'll do anything you want!” To make her point, she wiggled out of her skirt. One of Steffen's friends, his arms still in the air, produced a silver tin of cocaine. Zement, they called it.
This was the night I learned there was a real upside to my “predicament,” as my brother Heinz liked to call it. You'd be surprised how excited a certain kind of girl–or guy–can get over a missing limb. I started off with Ute the mole girl straddling me, delicious, her blouse still on, but then I felt a hand on my thigh, and somebody was removing the strap that kept the artificial leg in place. I turned and Steffen kissed me and I returned the kiss and Ute was fucking me hard while someone else was fondling my stump. When the sun came up, we were all sitting at Aschingers, spent and eating pea soup, which was, as Steffen grandly announced, based on a recipe created by a Nobel Prize winning chemist. I used part of this story in Meine wilden Wanderjahre, but of course that doesn't mean anything to you.
There's a rush when you encounter something fresh, something that floors you, a great thing you didn't know existed–a kind of opening in the world, a precipitous teetering on the edge of possibility that's thrilling beyond belief. With age, these moments become more rare, until all that's left is a distant intimation one April day when the wind is just right. By the time you're as old as me, you barely remember they existed at all, unless they come to haunt you in your dreams.
Gottverfluchte Scheisse.
I get flowery when I'm sad.
Do you see what you're putting me through?
The stars above the Wintergarten are still there, but the building was ruined in a bombing raid in forty-four. I saw photos of it, in the newspaper. They made me wish I could have been there for the last show. It must have been tremendous when the roof burst.
Steffen and his friends roamed the cafés, lounges, cabarets, bars, dance halls, and back alleys of Berlin every night of the week. He was always flushed, all hugs and love and drive, his restless eyes darting while his mouth chattered on, fueled by the company and the cocaine. He knew everyone: dancers, musicians, retired Dadaists, free thinkers, anarchist lesbians, drunken Russian émigrés, actors, nudists. He was reckless and infectious and he became my teacher in depravity. As long as there was one Tingeltangel or revue, just one jazz orchestra playing anywhere in Berlin, Steffen would be there, up front, hollering and doing his own inimitable dance, throwing his limbs every which way and waving a bottle of champagne.
He had picked me out of the crowd at the Wintergarten as a kind of mascot, a handsome, crippled freak with a Rheinland accent and a fabulous peg leg. I was young and I learned quick. Drugs let my mind, liberated from my lurching body, soar. Under the Japanese-themed ballroom ceiling of the Residenz-Casino, where the tables had telephones and pneumatic tubes, the kaleidoscopic lights of the whirling mirrored globes and colored water displays sent me on dizzying flights of fancy while go-go dancers shook their tits and stretched their boot-clad legs, whipping the wild and drunken crowd into a frenzy.
And there was sex. There were always girls who didn't mind trying it with a guy like me. Something about the leg's absence made fucking more immediate; at least that's my theory. You probably have a name for this, Herr Dokter, but I assure you, reading about it in a book is nothing. A thing like that has to be experienced. Berlin was a school in bodies, desires, horrors, lust, jealousy, fantasy, and pain. I don't mind telling you that I've tried it all: girls, boys, three, five, ten, every which hole. Does that shock you?
It didn't take me long to understand that Steffen provided cocaine and girls for the countless friends he seemed to have in every section of Berlin. Most nights, our rounds–from the Vaterland to Café Braun, from the Stork's Nest to the Cosy-Corner–were on a schedule. The outrageous crowd that followed Steffen knew they wouldn't have to pay cover fees or champagne tabs. There was always enough Zement for everyone. In return or perhaps for fun, they might go to bed with people Steffen introduced them to. It was Steffen's particular genius to mix business and pleasure in a way that made everyone happy. From Steffen I learned to seek pleasure in everything I do. If it's not fun, why bother? That was his motto, and I came to see the wisdom of it. In those days, Steffen meant everything to me.
Steffen had a new prosthesis handcrafted for me by the capital's best manufacturer, with real hair and a flexible ankle, and my limp practically disappeared. He took me shopping for smart clothes, and when I began to dabble in writing, he bought me notebooks, leather-bound beauties from Italy, much better than this Ramschladenscheissdreck you have me write in.
As a joke, Steffen introduced me as whomever occurred to him at the moment. I was an orphaned painter, an undercover Spartakist, a science protégé on scholarship. Steffen introduced me, and then I had to keep up the lies–that was the game. I was a saxophone player in Bix Beiderbecke's band. I was a Swedish mesmerist. When I was asked about the leg, I talked about dogfights high above the Somme; when they wanted to hear my award-winning poetry, I said the poems were so Futuristic they hadn't been written yet. All it took was a straight face.
There was one lie that made me seem more interesting than all the others. Everyone wanted to drink with me, get high with me, and sleep with me when we told them I was a movie director. It was the lie that turned me into the center of attention and opened the tightest twat. One night over dinner, Joachim Ringelnatz–the whimsical poet who wore a sailor's uniform wherever he went–eyed me funny and asked if I wasn't a bit young to be working for the cinema, “für's Kino.”
I had my mouth full of lamb stew, so Steffen came to my defense. “Don't you read the papers? Klaus is a prodigy! The youngest director in Neubabelsberg!”
I put down my fork, swallowed, and pointed a finger. “Joachim,” I said. “I don't work für's Kino. I am Kino!”
And that's how I gave myself my own nickname. At the time I didn't have the faintest idea about the true potential of cinema. To be honest–and I know this will sound incredible to someone of your generation–I had, in the summer of nineteen twenty-four, never seen a feature film.
Of course, I'd been to the Kino in Frankfurt, but father always made us leave the Film-Palast after the Pathé newsreel, before the movie proper. All I ever saw was the Kaiser giving speeches, columns of soldiers leaving for the front, generals being decorated. Afterwards, father tortured us with questions about what we had learned, and Heinz always knew all the answers. I begged my father to let me stay, but he said there was no point, that movies were a waste of time.
I was twenty-two and I had never seen a movie. When Steffen found out, he laughed his red-faced out-of-control-laugh and announced, still out of breath, that we would remedy the situation immediately–after a quick stop at Ronja's basement in the Scheunenviertel, where an ancient Russian woman with long white hair kept hammocks and served pipes of sweet opium. We arrived at Ufa-Palast am Zoo in a dreamy state to see Murnau's vampire movie.
How can I describe it to someone whose eyes have been sullied by decades of trivial images dancing by on TV screens? You'll never understand t
he rapture, the horror, the euphoric bliss I felt at the sheer visual surprise. With each passing moment, with every new shot on the screen, waves of pleasure rolled through me.
During my miserable childhood, I had been a relentless daydreamer, spinning tales from books into wild fantasies that helped me through endless days of drudgery. I dreamed of the heroes and villains of the books my mother called Schundromane, the adventures of Alain Quartermain, Phileas Fogg, and Hadschi Halef-Omar. After I met Steffen, I barely slept at all, and my nights were occupied with drinking and fucking and dancing. When sleep came, unconsciousness would have been a better name for it. Dreams had vanished from my life until the opium, until the movies, until Nosferatu brought it all flooding back.
I had read Bram Stoker's Dracula, and I had seen those images before–but not out in the open, outside of my head, projected against a wall for everyone to share. At once fascinating and terrifying, Count Orlok, the death bird, was a wicked apparition with a skull-like, elongated face and pale, wide, haunting eyes. Killing for blood was his nature, and he could not escape it. I loved the ghastly shadows of overgrown nails, the meat-eating plants, the sleepwalking bride, the caskets filled with plague-bearing rats. This was the opposite of father's newsreels, this was the technology of the night, modernity pressed in the service of poetry, culling images from dreams and rendering them visible as if by the light of the moon, for all to see.