by Lutz Seiler
‘In any case, the sound of the boots — it was always there, like the sound of the ocean. And the singing. The soldiers of the guard detail had their quarters on the other side of the grounds, almost directly behind our house. The entire area was surrounded by little wooden guard towers and a wall topped with tangles of barbed wire; it was called Russian Military City Number Seven. I often thought about that number as a child and tried to imagine the other six Russian military cities. They were just like ours, with large villas, parade ground, shooting range, apartment houses, potato warehouse, coal depot, prison, and playground, and with a boy like me sitting on a camel in front of the fireplace, seven brave fireplace Budyonnys in seven German Russian camps, almost an army, and of course I was their leader …’ Kruso looked at the poem as if studying a drawing. After a while, he set it aside.
‘It was said that a Prussian prince had once lived in our house. That’s the only reason my father had wanted that house for his headquarters. He wasn’t the commanding officer, but the deputy. He was called the Zampolit, and to this day I don’t know what that means. Occasionally, he spoke of Prince Oskar, even the name seemed made up, but he, the great Zampolit, could claim in all seriousness that he would have liked to meet this Oskar, “the last Mohican of the Hohenzollern”, as he liked to proclaim, which seemed odd to me even as a child, but maybe that’s because I didn’t understand the words. In any case, he was reasonably knowledgeable about history, and mentioned other names of people who had lived in our city Number Seven — Hindenburg, Oppen, and Oskar were always among them. I believe he’d have liked to show Oskar that his vegetable garden had been turned into a great big parade ground, or how everything had been painted nice shades of light blue and Russian green, or that on his personal orders a sauna had been built in Oskar’s cellar, or also our pig sty — back then we owned our own pig, it lived in a shed on the balcony … I believe it all had to do with the fact that my father didn’t really hate the Germans; he understood them, I mean really understood.
‘Because both of my parents were German-speaking, the only ones in the entire Red Army, I believe, they often took care of negotiations with the German authorities. That may well have been the general’s only duty. I believe there actually were secret-police officers in his office who couldn’t put together a proper sentence after six or eight years of studying Russian. That would make my father furious, though he liked to show off with his German. His mother was a Volga German, like my mother, and his father was Russian. When there were problems, if things became difficult, they went to him. He had to mediate, explain, even apologise. In the name of the commanding officer, or in the name of the military, or in the name of all the Soviet republics, depending on the gravity of the case. Something was always coming up, a dead body in the woods, someone deserting or getting shot by accident, murdered, raped, robbed, or run over by a tank, things like that were always happening. Of course, I could hardly grasp that as a child, but still, I packed everything that was discussed in the general’s office into my fireplace, into the expanse of the steppe, and I retrieved some of it later and made sense of it. It’s all still in the fireplace, Ed, the whole story, in the Fireplace of Truth, as you’d probably call it.
‘Some tried to avoid the socialist fraternal kiss, but my father wouldn’t allow it. I saw how he pressed his lips to their cheeks, and with that, somehow, they lost everything. All the courage they’d been able to muster just to enter Russian City Number Seven was sucked out of them immediately. And finally, there was prosecution by the military police. As soon as the visitor was gone, everything would happen very quickly. If the guilty party lived in our city, my father had him brought in right away. A sea of marching boots outside and inside, my father who would say, “Three years Sakhalin,” or “Ten years Omsk.” I never witnessed it. The sentences were always handed down in Oskar’s garden hall. That was the room next-door. But that’s how it would have happened.’
Kruso emptied his glass in a single gulp.
‘A ride through the steppe, with all the problems, only a real general could survive that. A general like the one who called himself my father and probably still does to this day, although …’ Kruso fell silent. ‘He could stay very calm, but occasionally … Occasionally, I was afraid, not actually of him, but of the black maw that led up into the chimney. If I leaned forward a bit, I could see him. The general shouted, and I leaned a bit into the fireplace, and then a bit more, until I could feel the draft on my face, and the enormous black mouth gaped wide with its sour smell. Sometimes, I dreamed of a future in which I would reign from my seat in front of the fireplace with a book I’d written; four hundred pages of commands, which I would read out loud, softly and serenely, like a novel, in a room full of Budyonnys, full of good, determined horsemen.’
Kruso stood up and poured the last of the wine into Ed’s glass. Ed felt a pure, warm gratitude.
‘I believe my father’s Volga German made him somewhat indispensable, and so we were never sent back as officers usually were after three or four years. They all went, we stayed. A German anomaly in the vast body of the Red Army, somehow outside the nomenklatura. My mother would gladly have returned. She missed her family and her circus. She never felt at home in Russian Military City Number Seven.’ Kruso sobbed, composed himself, and folded up the Trakl poem, as if that part of his story had been told.
‘My parents always spoke both with us, German and Russian, sometimes even Kazakh. Somehow, it was connected to rooms. For example, in the kitchen we spoke German, which is why even today I think Chef Mike must be Russian, but there he is with Viola and her endless Radio Germany …’
He fell silent and seemed to be thinking.
‘It would be good if we could turn off Viola’s juice at some point. She brings too much uneasiness, too much nonsense into the building. All her mainland chatter, that has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with us, with us and life here …’
‘It would be a shame,’ Ed objected cautiously. ‘After all, Violetta, I mean Viola, is the Klausner’s oldest inhabitant, and she has the name of a woman who … I mean, you know, like in Crime and Punishment.’
Kruso stared at Ed for several seconds as if he did not exist. Then he continued his story.
‘When my father met my mother, she was a circus artist in Karaganda, where there were a lot of ethnic Germans, former Volga Germans. It was a permanent circus, in the city centre, with a large building. She showed us pictures. One was of her in a glittering white costume, she looked so young, like a child, a circus child. My mother was very popular in the army. She performed for all the regiments, Masha, Manyushka, the little mascot, the tightrope walker, an act that every soldier in the victorious Soviet army must have seen at least once in his life, and so on. You know how the Russians love the circus. She taught me a few things, little magic tricks, although I was too young and too clumsy. Sonya, on the other hand, mastered everything very quickly.
‘After I was born, my mother was very ill and didn’t perform for a while. She didn’t want to go on tour, she didn’t want to perform at all, Sonya told me later. Then she took it up again. I’m sure the general, I mean, the man who acted as if he were our father, convinced her to. It was good for him, for his image among the troops. Because not all regiments had halls with high-enough ceilings, she often had to perform outside, on parade grounds that were covered with sand or with the soldiers’ narrow mattresses. For a safety net, they would string up camouflage netting between the lampposts around the parade ground — those lamps were always lit, always and everywhere. As they did for ceremonies or parade reviews, the officers sat on the tribune. The soldiers were allowed to gather, company by company …’ Kruso’s voice had changed; he was talking about his Mama.
‘They used Mama’s performances as occasions to award distinctions to the officers and soldiers, and sometimes also to deliver punishments. The officer slapped the soldier’s face with an open hand, left, right, no
t more than that. Once, I don’t remember where, Mama was suddenly called up front. She seemed completely surprised and also afraid, naturally, and tiptoed in her white ballet shoes across the soldiers’ mattresses, which smelled quite foul. She looked like she had come from another planet. She was given the Soviet army’s highest honour, a medal of distinction. Our father-general pinned the medal on her himself, I still remember what a hard time he had getting the needle through the silver-spangled costume and that I was afraid for her. In any case, he managed somehow and gave his military salute, he saluted his own petite wife in her silvery leotard, then he kissed her as well, after which his uniform cap sat crookedly on his head for the rest of the presentation. His lopsided cap, his embarrassed smile, and the thousand soldiers around him, the childlike joy in their faces, I believe that she did it all for this …
‘I always sat up front, in the first row. The commander gave me candy, Mischka chocolate, in the blue and white wrapper. On the wrapper was a small picture of three cubs and the mother bear. Sometimes there was ice-cream, too. Often, the smell of garlic from the soldiers’ uniforms made me nauseous. Maybe it was fear, too. It wasn’t so easy for me to understand why she always had to climb up so high, onto the wire, why she kept putting herself in danger, right in front of me. I couldn’t allow myself to think that my mama could fall, or she would fall — that was certain.
‘The best option was to think that she would never fall, and to think it constantly and to think of nothing else, but that was exhausting and I never managed to keep it up long enough. Evil always seeped in from somewhere, the evil, forbidden thought that had to be destroyed with heavy defences and a league of monsters, for which I invented an entire army, and weapons that couldn’t possibly exist, they were so enormous, but somehow the evil always found its way into my head.
‘The second best option was to distract myself. To smooth out the candy wrapper, endlessly, with my fingernail. I tried to stop paying so much attention to my mama, but it didn’t work. It only worked when I effectively broke off almost all contact with her, all my feelings, and retreated into myself completely, so that the only things left in the world were my fingernail and the Mischka wrapper and nothing else.
‘When I was six, she fell, the day after my birthday. I heard a hollow sound. That was the impact. A dull thud, like a sack falling. Suddenly she lay before me on the ground. One of her legs was bent sideways, as if it were no longer hers or as if someone had stuck it onto her body. One of her magic tricks. Her head was stuck between two mattresses, as if she were trying to crawl away, to disappear …
‘Of course, I didn’t understand a thing. It was a circus. And I had no choice but to laugh; I laughed. I was caught in the second-best option, without any real contact to Mama, you understand, Ed?’
Like a candy wrapper that had been meticulously smoothed out, Kruso carefully stowed the paper with the Trakl poem in his pants pocket, and, as if he were still caught in the second-best option, he did nothing but look out of the window for a long time.
‘A few officers rushed to her side and bent over her. At some point, I was told to stand up. Wstan, moj maltschik, they said very softly. My hand was wet, and there was a sticky puddle of melted ice-cream in my lap. It was the third of July 1967. I was six years old. Six years and a day.
‘Starting in the early 1970s, the Soviet army flew home its dead. My mother was one of the last ones who remained here. I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted that, after all, she had always wanted to return home. She was carried through the military city in an open coffin, up the Ulica Centralnaja and down to the metal gates, past our house twice, and then to the memorial for officers of the secret police who had fallen in the war. A sergeant marched in front, carrying Mama’s medal on a small cushion. He marched in goose-step, so hard that his heels banged on the street, otherwise there was not a sound. I stood on the steps in front of the door, I wasn’t allowed any further. Still, I caught a glimpse of her and saw she was wearing a red costume. Adults were buried in red, children in white. That’s what my sister told me. She stood next to me the entire time.
‘They kissed Mama at the cemetery gate and then again at her grave, that’s how they did it. At the graveside, she was saluted, like a high-ranking officer, which was definitely against regulations. A small orchestra played “Loyal Comrades”. They didn’t sing any songs. My father had them shoot salvos, one salvo after another. Everyone loved her and I loved her, too, I just couldn’t kiss her. I don’t think anyone judged me for it, except for me. I was ashamed. Instead of laughing, I tried to cry, but it didn’t work. I just couldn’t escape from the second option. My sister performed little magic tricks at the grave, everything Mama had taught her, without trembling. From that point on, I knew that she was the one I had to hold on to for the rest of my life — not that I thought of it as the rest of my life, but I felt it, felt it very clearly. We had no idea how we could go on without Mama.
‘Then the consequences came. The general had probably made too many enemies. It came to light that there had never been any official permission for the tight-rope walker’s performances, as they put it. Furthermore, the circus had had a deleterious effect on the soldiers’ morals and battle-readiness. That was that. My father was transferred to Russia, but because they needed him or for some other reason, soon he was back again and rather strange. What exactly he does, or where he is, no one knows. We haven’t heard from him in a long time. But it doesn’t matter, Ed, it doesn’t matter at all. When I think of Mama now, I always see the wrapper with the three bears. They’re playing on a tree trunk. One is up high, the brave one, the one I always wanted to be. Below is the timid one, who won’t climb any higher, and on the ground is the third, standing off to the side and not doing anything, just looking dreamily into the forest. And in the forefront is the mother bear, her mouth wide open, roaring like a wolf. Why she’s roaring like that is something I’ve always asked myself.’
LIPS
Ed turned his face to the side because it was even better that way. The girl hadn’t noticed him. He lay in the water as if dead. He could feel stones on his body, the sand, bits of ground-up bricks. The sea enveloped him, flat and sluggish. The sea cradled him. It was the moment to give it all up.
The girl was playing in the waves. She threw herself into the water, not boisterously, but deliberately, she rose languidly and staggered backwards, but only to get a running start. When she’d had enough, she squatted at the edge of the waves, just a few metres away from Ed. Maybe she hadn’t noticed him, an animal lurking, a piece of driftwood in the tepid surf. Ed noticed that she enjoyed the way the water played around her ankles. The foam slipped between her legs and wet her swimsuit. She stuck her hand into the sand in front of her and turned it slowly this way and that. Then she held still. She stared at the horizon as if there were something to watch, but neither Møn nor any ships were visible. Ed realised she was passing water at that moment. He briefly caught sight of the narrow, steaming channel in the sand, and saw the passing waves douse and erase it all. Once again, he submerged his face in the water. He waited, but the girl didn’t leave.
At a certain point, Ed had no alternative. He turned onto his side so the girl wouldn’t see his erection. As if he had to remember laboriously what walking is, he strode stiffly up the beach. He had grown thinner during his stay. His work on the island seemed have made his body more taut, more slender and sinewy, and like all esskays his skin was evenly tanned and shone like bronze when he stepped from the oily steam of the dishwashing station into the open air. He no longer wore a headband. Like Kruso, he wore his longish hair pulled back in a short ponytail. He had never worn it that way before because he hadn’t wanted to look like a girl. He used the hairband his friend had left behind in his room.
The midday break wasn’t finished yet, but Kruso was already standing at his sink. He lifted his hands from the water and grabbed one of his towels.
‘I’m sorry,
Ed, it should never have happened. The esskays in charge of distribution … They’re often just too drunk.’
It took Ed a moment to realise Kruso was talking about C.
‘Sometimes, it’s just too much. I can’t oversee everything, and again and again there are problems that come from the interaction between open and centralised allocations …’
‘Is she still on the island?’
‘Who?’
‘C., the castaway.’
Kruso kept his eyes on Ed.
‘I knew it, Ed, I …’
He took a step — maybe he wanted to hug his disciple — but Ed had quickly turned to face the sink for coarse cleaning, and reached for a pan.
‘That’s not what it’s about, I mean …’
‘What is it about, then, Ed?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It is only ever about that. About what we’re all’ — he made a broad, sweeping gesture — ‘championing.’
Ed nodded. For a moment was amazed at Kruso’s acceptance. And along with it, the sudden return of the terminology of centralised allocation in a place so far removed from housing authorities … But first, he had to breathe, to get some air. He sucked in the dishwashing station’s vapours, the iridescent broth in which his hands were circling, a decoction full of strands and clots, a mash of organic scraps. There was no doubt he was about to lose consciousness: C. was still there.