– Tell us a story, they mumble, and, missing their mouths, they tip beer down their fronts in yellow, stinking streams. I steal a receipt book from Semmelweis-Märrie, it’s no skin off my nose.
My upper thigh and arm hurt for a few days, then everything was healed. The charges against persons unknown weren’t recorded, a criminal investigation was instigated against me. The delegation at the secondary school refused me admission: no more places available, according to the letter. Father once more held court at the school: his daughter had been subjected to harsh treatment, she was attacked.
– Proof?
– The scar on her arm.
– I don’t see any scar. Unfortunately we can’t do anything, Herr Doktor. In any case, university places are reserved primarily for workers’ children.
– Why?
– For the sake of historical fairness.
Father had lost his power. Katka Lorenz had an idea. Katka was the only one who believed me. After listening to what had happened to me, she demanded that the crime be solved and the offenders be charged and punished. These phrases made me anxious. I already practically believed that I’d been mistaken, that I’d cut myself in a fit of madness, and had dreamed the rest. Katka came over and wanted to get to the bottom of it. Crouched under the veranda, the black spiders as witnesses, Katka wrote a letter to Leibnitz district council. She described what had happened, asked for help.
– As easy as that, she said.
I envied Katka for her maturity and courage. I’d never had words like these at my disposal, such foggy, exhausting concepts that surely meant something. Katka was cheerful and energetic while she helped me, and summoned up a whole heap of scorn against our teachers and the other students. Weeks passed. Katka didn’t receive a reply.
She swore she’d go higher. The holidays arrived and at the beginning of the new school year Katka was missing. Transferred to another school, they said. Another time they said she was allowed to go to secondary school so she could study at university. Workers’ children preferred. I searched the entire city for Katka. In her home I stumbled into the middle of a party – mother, mother’s boyfriend, siblings – they sat in the splendid jumble of their own disorder, clutter and mirth… Didn’t I know where Katka was?
– Get lost, you stuck-up tart. She’s not here!
I asked at the secondary school.
– Katka Lorenz? Not here.
– She has, my father explained, gone to Timbuktu, like your mother and that actor.
– Where’s Timbuktu?
I didn’t understand anything any more. Everyone had left me, one after the other. No one showed me how things should be and where I should go. No one took me with them. We moved out of the villa into a one-bedroom flat in the spring. Frau Schramm was the next to leave me. The only thing she left behind was the green kneeling cushion covered in wax cloth.
– Your father’s having a tough time of it. Take care of him, Ehlchen.
Father sold the bulky wooden furniture, the piano, the carpets. People Father called criminals moved into the villa. I wanted to know what they looked like, but a corrugated-iron fence was put up around the property, blocking the view. Sometimes I saw men going in and out, businessmen or something.
Father spent most of his time at the clinic. He was researching a new varicose vein operation technique, worked twelve hours a day, sometimes longer. Now and again he slept at the clinic until his next shift. The neighbours gossiped that he was having an affair with the night nurse. I’d come home from school and be all on my own. I didn’t want to go to discos, or stand around giggling with the other girls. Fashion didn’t interest me and I found the magazines smuggled over from the West and passed around among the girls boring. I missed Katka and in the evening, before I fell asleep, I had dream-like visions where I composed violin concertos. Sometimes my body went through a violent, prickly pain like the highest note of a violin. My time had come.
The worst was the fog. It enveloped me in civics lessons. It wrapped itself around my head, constricted my thoughts and dreams. I was always tired, incapable of following any lesson. Only in the evenings did my head clear when it filled with sound and relaxation. I listened to every violin concerto, any concerto, that I could find on the radio. I would take up a ruler and a pencil – and draw the bow effortlessly over the instrument in front of the mirror. C sharp! F sharp! D sharp!
I finished tenth grade with a Four. The ‘I’ was still there in the register, red and ominous. Lazy and woolly-minded, read the form tutor’s report about me. Not unintelligent, but…
The only apprenticeship offer I received was as a mechanical engineer. When I showed my father the offer, he was furious. He chanted the words mechanical engineer like you might say leech or tapeworm. I shrugged my shoulders.
– So what? I’ll become a me-cha-ni-cal en-gi-neer. I have to become something.
– Shame upon shame! Father commented, then he went back to his varicose veins and the night nurse.
The Red Cross distributes heavy lace-up boots from what has remained of the National People’s Army stock. I pick out a pair to get through the first snow, along with grey woollen socks, fleece underclothes, a fur-lined Russian hat with ear flaps. I hang around the chip stall, Inge’s Kiosk, in full gear, my colleagues fill themselves with grog, hardly anyone sleeps under the bridges any more, barely anyone knows a place to go. Atze steals some cigarettes and gets himself a couple of nights in the cells. Jail’s good for those who don’t booze. The Three Roses is good for the others, but only till midnight. Then horror and dismay set in. I’m writing less and less each day. Numb fingers, a dry cough, the Russian hat presses in around my head. Fog everywhere and the threat of awakening. Anything but that, anything but the fear of seeing myself.
On the afternoon of 18 December a metallic-brown four-door Opel pulls up in front of Inge’s Kiosk. Two women emerge. One is in a fur-trimmed lilac leather coat, white stirrup trousers, her aubergine-blue hair in a severe bowl cut, rouge on her cheeks and chin, clinking earrings. The other is dressed alternatively in black, large silver rings on all ten fingers, lilac nail varnish. Noppe goggles, gets down on one knee and warbles:
– One screw with you two and I’ll die happy!
Smiling politely, the ladies unveil their teeth, come closer. They are aiming for me. They’ve identified me as the only woman among all these mud figures. And this is what they have to say:
– May we interview you?
Noppe:
– What do you want?
– I beg your pardon, but you are a woman, aren’t you?
– Yes, I say.
– We’re from the magazine Mammilia, Cologne and Hamburg. We’re writing a piece about women in need. This is Eva, I’m Isolde. May we also take your picture?
The leather-coated Eva rubs her hands together to signify the cold and discomfort, directing me, while Isolde, click-clack, shoots one photo after another. They invite me for breakfast in the café of the local hotel. Leibnitz’s only hotel is almost empty. And when I enter in my Russian hat and soldier’s boots, greasy hair and my skin grey like asphalt, the snotty hotel boy is ready to throw me out. But Eva and Isolde from Cologne and Hamburg have other ideas. They make way for me. Their throats spew Chanel No. 5, the lilac leather coat is proffered for taking and the silver signet rings say: No buts! I’m given coffee and cake, toast for eight marks fifty, another coffee and more cake. I can have anything in the hotel café, and it’s as warm as a fairy tale. Eva and Isolde lean a little away from me, then I notice why: the warmth is reacting with my skin, melting the protective layer of sweat, releasing fumes, gases, miasma. I sniff inside my woollen jumper.
– Need the loo.
I wash myself, wherever possible, in the gleaming mirror-tiled bathroom of the Leibnitz Hotel. The awakening is getting closer. Just don’t panic, Gabriela. The good soap foams up. In the mirror I see my grey mask, hang my hair under the running tap, rub soap in it, wash out the slop until it’s black a
nd fragrant, then dry it – cheeks red and healthy: I’m awakening. What do you look like, Gabriela? What are you wearing? Where did this Russian hat come from? Everything on you stinks. You’ve dropped into the last hole.
The big international women’s magazine Mammilia awaits you in the café. They want an interview with you and to take your photo. I should have washed my jumper too, the filthy jeans should go straight in the bin, and these boots! I’m overheating from the confusion. Lilac Eva comes looking for me: I don’t have to be embarrassed, people know too little about the women in need in the East. But this article in Mammilia will send a message. ‘Women Having to Huddle under Kiosk Roofs’ will be the title.
What was my name?
– Gabriela von Haßlau.
– Fffon?
– Noble Anhaltinian stock.
– Tell us more, tell us everything.
The awakening. The total awakening. I pull packing paper, a torn poster, a semicircle of a cherry-stained bag, toilet paper, all of it filled with writing in pencil, from the plastic bag containing my possessions.
– This is my story.
– You write?
– My life.
Eva writes on her notepad: Woman writes.
– Tell us more!
I show them the first part of my story. A great moment.
– We’ll publish it! rejoices Isolde. Snap, snap, put your hat back on. Don’t smile for goodness’ sake, look how you always look: aggrieved, dejected, tortured. Yes, that’s great. And now like you’re freezing. Yes! Yes! And now like you’re hungry. Brutally hungry, great!
Awakening. Awakening. I’m hot. I take off my jumper.
– What are you doing? Actually, this underwear’s perfect! Dreadful, yes! Yes! That’s going to be a great photo! Roll up the sleeves. Do you have any tattoos? No? Pity, but wait a minute, what’s that? Did somebody hurt you?
– I’m a Binka.
– Say again?
They take pictures of the round scar tissue. Eva manically takes notes.
– What a story! We’ll make you famous!
Coffee, cake, more toast.
– Eat, Frau von Haßlau.
Aglow from the joy of discovery, the women forget their disgust, pat the stack of papers.
– Mammilia will drag you out of the gutter!
Is my name Binka? Is my name Ehlchen? Perhaps my name is Gabriela? Gabriela von Haßlau? I’m full, clean, doing well. I still have nothing, but I’m already walking a little differently on the cobbles of Leibnitz. Elegantly, proudly, in heavy black soldiers’ boots. Everything’s going to change. That evening in the Three Roses I buy a round. Then another and another. And one for Klunker-Lupo behind the bar too, and one for Semmelweis-Märrie. The glass washer has a drink. Ha-ha, drinks, slurps, boozes.
– He’s breaking my glasses, shouts Semmelweis-Märrie.
– Another round. Today I’m buying.
– She been shitting gold or what?
– She’s bonkers, that’s what she is.
Klunker-Lupo knocks back the twenty-third beer… and collapses. His head with the hole hits the bar, blood everywhere. Even I’m back in the fog.
– Now you can wash up, barks Semmelweis-Märrie after Klunker-Lupo’s carried off in an ambulance.
I stand behind the bar of the Three Roses, washing glasses. Are you awake or are you dreaming? It can’t be real.
I flew away during 10a’s leavers’ ball. Father had bought me a gauzy silver dress for the occasion.
– It’s time to become a lady, Gabriela.
The advantage of the dress: the director’s hour-long speech ran off of it like liquid soap.
– As of this day, declared the director, we have entered our socialist reality, one of productivity, a life of peace, of solidarity, of challenges. He spoke of our abilities: we were a steadfast group of people ready for anything. And the time has come, the director knew to add, to prepare ourselves against those hostile towards us.
The first Sekt of my life. Father stuck to apple juice. He stayed for half an hour. His face had darkened during the speech. What made me tired made him angry. He went to work, and I danced in my silver dress with Grumert-Thomas and and and… then I jumped out of the second-floor window, danced across the schoolyard, down the street, my certificate fluttering in the wind, a piece of bumph.
That was the summer I started to write. Short, sassy stories, high jinks by naughty girls, seduction fantasies. Father read them after work, his moustache twitching with amusement.
– What’s the matter with you?
– Assignment.
– School’s finished.
– That’s why.
Father checked if I had a fever. The surgeon’s finefingered hand stroked my forehead and cheek. Ether, iodine, varicosis. I thought Father had got smaller, the white giant had shrunk, the once-black moustache quivered in a faded grey. Ever since we stopped living in the villa everything had become much smaller. I spent the whole summer in my room. I dropped out of time, woozy, endlessly tired, weak.
– We’re going to the Baltic Sea, Father decided.
The sea didn’t revive me in the slightest. Father went on long solitary walks on the beach, cursing and grumbling to himself. I asked him about the night nurse and he cut me off.
– That doesn’t concern you.
On 1 September my apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer began at the Leibnitz Industrial Plant. It was called the I-Plant for short and specialized in the manufacture of hydraulic pumps and milling machine parts. The first day of the apprenticeship comprised 100 lots of five kilograms of iron. They put me in blue overalls, wrapped a headscarf around my hair, gave me sturdy black leather shoes. The air was stagnant in the machinery hall. I was pushed into position. So you know your place. My training began. My mentor, Kulisch, led me to a stack of iron plates, pressed a file in my hand, assigned me to a machinist’s vice.
– File every edge at a thirty-degree angle, round them off, let me know when you’re done.
Every iron plate weighed five kilograms, ‘women’s weight’, Kulisch called it. I heaved the plate up from the pallet, pressed it against the bib of my overalls, took three steps to the vice, clamped it in the lathe chuck. Too loose – the plate slipped, I pulled my feet back just in time, the part flew clanging like a bell to the floor. The other operatives at their machines turned their oily faces in my direction, grinning. Start again, Gabriela, watch what you’re doing. Clamp it securely, not too high, not too deep. Position the file and go. The tool grated across the metal. I froze when it made this sound, shook like a dog. Get on with it! Ten minutes and I still hadn’t managed a single plate. Each plate had eight sides to file! Don’t tilt the file like that. How stupid are you, girl? I got a dusting of fine filings all over me. After working on three plates I had blisters on my hands and pains in my shoulders and back. Another ninety-seven to go, Gabriela, then a thirty-minute lunch break. The file got hot and dull. I forgot to file one of the sides on a plate, it had to be fetched back. You’ll be filing for the next fortnight! By lunchtime I’d finished a measly six plates. Filings and oil had sunk deep into my palms and when the machine was turned off there was a ringing like an alarm in my skull. There was a lump of paste made from sand and almond clay to wash with. I rubbed my hands together with it like the others did – they were red, swollen and raw. It couldn’t be done.
Kulisch:
– Who do you think you are?
Five kilograms of iron, heave up, press to bib, clamp, screw down, file, position, up and down, thirty-degree angle, release vice, hold the plate tightly, turn the plate, retighten, file, up down up down, only fucking’s better, rotate, change, take off plate, set aside, check with bare fingertips, five kilograms of iron, heave up, clamp, turn it the other way, nose wipe, iron stinks, bad filing cuts into flesh, five kilograms is women’s weight, arms like a heavyweight, the screech of drilling, shriek of milling, screech of grinding, file by hand, up down, the stack of plates shrinks, the o
ther grows, filing needs technique not strength, but where do you get it from without keeling over, round file, flat file, riffler, what’s better, stopping is better, throw everything away, Four according to the certificate, weak pass, so keep filing, five kilograms, don’t look around, don’t look up, after eight hours I don’t know who I am. My name is Gabriela von Haßlau. My father is chief medical officer, top vascular surgeon at the Leibnitz clinic. I for Intelligentsia, I for I-Plant. I sink into hot bathwater, try to feel my body: This is you, Gabriela von Haßlau. Close my eyes, my mind keeps filing, file, file, metal on metal, water, soft Ba-Du-San bubble bath. Take the plunge, bathe in Ba-Du-San. This is your life, stupid Binka. Six o’clock in the morning at the workbench. And again, 100 times five kilograms. Where are the others? There’s not much difference between a violin concerto in A minor and an iron plate in need of filing. That’s what I told myself, the crust of work softened from my skin, the world seemed bearable bathing in Ba-Du-San. The next day the 100 iron plates I had filed awaited me. So you know your place. Pay attention. This is an electric drilling machine. We’ll drill here and here. First put the puncher in position here, put the mallet on it – ping! First run. Make 200 small, cone-shaped indentations, every plate gets two holes. Ping! The puncher jumps off the plate onto the floor. Clink. Pull feet back at the right moment. We call that a drill chuck. Repeat after me, Gabriela, drill chuck! And this is how we open and close it. The drill chuck key fell to the floor, the part fell to the floor, I fell to the floor, all my strength. You’re useless! Kulisch clamped a plate in the machine, main switch on, mind out, Gabriela. He slowly led the drill bit downwards, he had to meet the punch point exactly otherwise the drill would break, drill in slowly, bring it up straight away, dab the whole thing with drilling fluid otherwise it’ll smoke, back down again, slowly, moderate strength, you’ll know when you’re through.
This machine was a monster. Within ten minutes two drill bits had broken on me, I’d put four holes next to the markings. Shavings and filings fell all around me: small, greasy iron filings, thin spirals of aluminium, round curly ones made of blue steel, colourful flickering artworks, waste, dirt. I made filings too: dull ones that broke when touched. Shavings to sweep up, shavings soup made of drilling liquid, dust and blood. I saw black and collapsed. Before I fainted, Kulisch thundered: Turn the machine off! And: They shouldn’t send us females as apprentices. After I fainted there was theory. We apprentices were taught about occupational safety by means of a slide-show presentation. Strong footwear, bulky like military boots, otherwise – see slide of crushed feet. No jewellery, no rings at work, otherwise – see torn-off fingers, ears, garrotted throats. Hair always kept under a hat or headscarf, otherwise – see worker scalped by drilling machine. The realistic photos brought on my second fainting episode. I spent the rest of the day in the I-Plant’s women’s relaxation room, where a medic treated me with camomile tea.
The Dance by the Canal Page 6