by Lutz Seiler
Despite all the difficulties, the kitchen rose like a cliff above the surf. Chef Mike was king, and when the king bellowed, covered in sweat, it was no time to delay. The primacy of the kitchen and gentle authority of the bar was beyond question. Nevertheless, there were increasingly frequent instances of not just René but also Cavallo or Rimbaud behaving with condescension or presumption. Only Chris never did. A hierarchy that had survived from olden times re-emerged, according to which dishwashers were on the lowest rung, fathoms below the rest, certainly beneath the kitchen and bar staff, especially beneath the wait staff, even if none of them really were waiters or dishwashers, but a lecturer in philosophy, a doctor of sociology, a poet who wrote good poems, a life artist on the edge of a steep cliff, or, as in Ed’s case, a student of German literature.
But was he still one, actually? No.
And did he actually still want to be one? No.
And did he find the idea of returning to this old way of life even conceivable?
No answer.
And the others, what were they?
Had they dropped out or been thrown out? Legal and illegal at the same time, outside the so-called system of production (the mechanical nerve centre of society), they were no Heroes of Labour and yet were awash in labour (didn’t gastronome sound like cosmodrome, evoking outer space, earth, mankind?), not useless, therefore, in any case not parasitical, just completely outside and far from the system, like cosmonauts from the cosmodrome, all of them dedicated to the nebulous star of a liberated life that was mirrored in their shining eyes like the reflection of the earth on helmets when the heroes of space travel left the mother ship for a ‘stroll in outer space’, as the euphoric news reports put it … Yes, they were all heroes, Heroes of the Season, Heroes of This Life, all together and each alone, end-of-shift glasses in hand: ‘To proscription!’, ‘To the proscribed!’, ‘To the island!’, ‘To Kruso!’, ‘To the sea, the endless sea!’ Rick filled the glasses again, the glasses of promise, glasses of defiance, and glasses of self-will.
Ed had, in fact, heard of esskays who, it was said, published in magazines and anthologies (what a magic sound these words had), self-declared poets, self-published authors to a certain extent, who could be certain of general admiration when they arrived at the beach in the evening and talked about the possibility of new works, so large and full of life, that it seemed they could only have come from the sea itself, only from the sea and only in this place.
Ed’s pace became slower, and he made mistakes. A stack of plates fell from his hands, whereupon René started drumming on one of his vats in imitation of a fanfare. Kruso came right over to help him pick up the pieces. ‘It’s important we get them all.’ Ed pictured the bare feet on the tiles. The arriving feet, he thought.
Ed’s friend slaved away without respite and offered Ed words and glances. He managed, apparently effortlessly, to link their time with the poems, forays, and walks at night along the beach. Words and glances, as if Kruso knew about Ed through Grit just as Ed knew about Kruso through Grit; he therefore knew everything about Ed. Kruso’s eyes were so markedly kind and patient — no, Ed was not at his limit, not completely.
The Klausner careened but held its course.
Everything that occurred didn’t just happen; each catastrophe was a necessary part of the whole process. As if the tension required to keep the chaotic machinery of the company vacation home high aloft over the sea could only be achieved with the help of collisions, curses, and quotations (‘Why do the moon and the man slide together so submissively to sea?’). The only important thing was not to change course — a point made by Rick, whose bar-room wisdom was crucially important at the time.
Once, it was Rimbaud’s turn. Although he tried desperately, he wasn’t able to escape from his recitation. His unfocused gaze and the feral tensing of his lips, a pitiful expression.
‘Fame, when will you come?’
The attempt to submerge the head of the Klausner’s most intelligent waiter into the cool water of the cutlery sink came too late. Declaiming fiercely and imperiously, Rimbaud freed himself from Kruso’s grasp and stormed out onto the terrace, his arm loaded with plates he had grabbed while rushing past, which he then threw onto the tables of the unsuspecting and completely startled day tourists. As he did so, he bared his broad white teeth beneath his moustache, leaned on the back of a chair in the beer garden as if it were a podium in a large auditorium. However, Rimbaud did not then address the crowd of holiday-makers who were gathered, as always, in great number. Instead, he roared into the ear of the guest who had sat down on precisely that chair:
‘I don’t know why …’ (pause, teeth, trembling moustache)
‘but it always seemed to me’ (a multitude of teeth, teeth all the way to his throat)
‘as if he no longer lived in prison with me.’ (bite)
Or rather, a failed bite, since Chris and Cavallo grabbed him at that very moment and pulled him away. Rimbaud dragged his bottom teeth over his moustache as if he wanted to pull it down. ‘Dostoyevsky,’ Cavallo groaned, ‘now he’s onto Dostoevsky …’
By the afternoon, Ed had almost forgotten his hatred for the ladle. With the coffee sets, it was simpler and easier, and at the end of the shift he was drinking kali with Cavallo. His work was done. They sat in the courtyard and shared the balm of contentment in silence. Chef Mike joined them at some point, heaving his walrus body onto the bench. Cavallo poured; no one spoke. They were not sitting facing each other, but in a row like prematurely aged schoolboys on their school bench. They stared at the pines along the forest’s edge, which had begun to glow in the evening light. There was nothing better than this.
After a while, the yellow of the pines darkened and seeped into the bark until it was completely absorbed and the trees finally began to glow from within. Cavallo was filling their glasses when the question came.
Why is the light of the pines trees so kind to our eyes?
The unexpectedly aged schoolboys thought this over, sitting on their bench. Cavallo gave the answer.
It’s the pine trees’ soul shining.
It’s related to our own souls, Ed added, you can also see it in paintings by Bonnard, for example.
In that case, the soul’s colour would be a shade between yellow and brown, Chef Mike thought, and said, ‘I still have to prepare potatoes for tomorrow.’
The chef stood up with a sigh. Cavallo patted his shoulder.
EARS
29 JULY
Kruso’s criteria? Rimbaud says: It’s all poetry, and, in that, Losh is never wrong, ‘despite morally dubious sources’. Chris claims I’m the only one who gets allocated almost only women. With men, it’s different. With Tille, I was even still in the sea, because of the waves, it was heavenly. All my tiredness was washed away. Tille wants to study photography or cinematography, but can’t get a place at university, not a chance. He’s teaching himself how to do it, he does drawings, reads, he’s full of energy. He’s saving up for a good camera from the West. I would have liked to show him the cellar.
The fir tree behind the shed raked the six a.m. dawn light into broad stripes. Everything was silent. Since Ed had charge of the furnace, his day began near the woodpile, at the chopping block. He piled a few pieces of wood onto his arm and disappeared into the cellar with them. Sometimes, he saw the manager coming along the bluff, approaching the Klausner with short steps, as if under hypnosis. A white, neatly folded hand towel was draped over his shoulder.
In the Black Hole, Ed could hear Krombach setting up his cubbyhole, pushing his chair, straightening his bed. At some point, the clattering of a typewriter as he typed up the daily menu. Ragout fin, solyanka, fricassee of chicken, steak with peppers, hunter’s schnitzel. Ed sat in front of the furnace and stared into the fire. His desire was still there, but seemed detached, foreign, and only there to make him crazy. Sooner or later, it broke over him and whispered s
omething like ‘ears, oh those ears!’ and suddenly nothing excited him more than small, nicely formed ears. It was absurd. Some ears smiled incessantly and some remained serious and resolute. An ear’s expression could be the exact opposite of the expression on the person’s face, the expression of the eyes, for example. Usually, the ear was much more honest, more straightforward. And as a rule, ears appeared more innocent than faces. C.’s ear with the small mole on the auricle surpassed all others in this respect. At first, before he’d got used to the sight, he had sometimes thought ‘a crumb’, his hand prepared to brush it away discreetly. In the end, this crumb had contained everything, expressed everything. ‘My dearest ear, my most beloved,’ his desire whispered, painting a few images as well. Beautiful ears were like one’s sex, or more than that: an always visible orifice. There seemed to be more than a few ears with wicked expressions in the world.
The day before, on his way back from the beach, Ed had seen a man with violent ears; he bit a child in the neck. Only a moment later was the movement recognisable: the slight raising and lowering of his head, the surprisingly long tongue under the collar. The man was licking the boy. Then he gave the child back his ice-cream, the dripping cone he had been holding at arm’s length the entire time. The man’s kneeling posture and extended arm suddenly took on a chivalric aspect; the criminal aspect had vanished. My father would never have licked my neck, Ed thought. He looked at the thermometer on the hot-water tank. The roaring noise of the fire after it was lit, like a current that engulfed him, washed over him, calmed him. This was his place, in the cellar, by the furnace. Here, he could be alone; he could sit quietly with the objects.
He liked to walk around and inspect the closets. The supply stores, the safe, the Ur-hermit’s zinc tub, with the inscription ‘Hermitage at Tannhausen’. From above came the first noises from the kitchen. Chef Mike’s shift had begun.
The passage to the drinks cellar ended with a steel door, always unlocked. Behind it, six degrees and the refrigeration unit’s hum. At the beginning of each season, a truck filled with liquor drove to the Dornbusch highland. Everything that could be stored ended up in the drinks cellar. There was a trapdoor in the floor behind the bar that led to the drinks cellar below. One problem for the bar was that the labels peeled off the bottles in the cellar’s mouldy dampness. They rotted away, became covered with mildew, and turned brown with time. Because the cardboard boxes in which the bottles were delivered also rotted, each bottle had to be taken out separately and carefully — Rick had taught him that. He often assisted the barman now. ‘Führer-concrete, indestructible!’ Rick called when going down the grimy concrete stairs; it was one of his favourite stories. The Klausner had the soldiers from the navy to thank for the ‘blue stairs’, as he called them (because of the adamantine concrete’s blue sheen). They had been stationed in this forest inn at the beginning of the war so they could set up their anti-aircraft batteries and bunkers in the north along with their underground conduits that apparently crisscrossed the entire highlands.
‘Beyond a doubt, the same material — good old German bunker concrete!’
Since the beginning of the month, the Klausner was going through ten barrels of beer a day, a thousand litres. Ed washed the barrels, which stank terribly. Rick set the tap, a device that dated from before the war, with a CO2 connection and a manometer. When he hammered the stem into the bunghole, Ed had to tighten the bolt with the gasket. Now and again, it went awry and they ended up wading in beer or red shandy. Rick always remained completely calm; he swore, but very quietly. For Ed, Rick was the most even-keeled person on the island. Rick said the island had enlarged his soul. He believed drinking was good. After all, they weren’t tapping the alcohol of unhappiness here, but the alcohol of bliss. ‘The soul rumbles and wants even more happiness,’ Rick would say.
Rick’s dreamy gaze and his thin, gently arching eyebrows that curved up slightly at the ends instilled a sense of trust in everyone who entered the aura of his bar. Rick emanated goodness. And yet, he was a giant; at first sight, too big, too massive for the bar. But as soon as he came into contact with glasses and drinks, his movements became lithe, catlike. It was a pleasure to watch him work; every move of his hand flattered his surroundings. Indeed, he almost entirely filled the space behind the bar, so his wife, Karola, often took up position in front of the bar and did her work from there. It didn’t seem to be a problem at all for her. With her slender arms, she could also reach the tap and work the two enormous coffee machines, the coffee bombs as Rick called them. Each bomb filled forty pots of coffee. In all, around three hundred pots were served (or ‘drawn’, according to Rick), that is, seven to eight bombs a day.
Rick had wisdom and Karola could do math. She kept every price in her head. For beer (.56 marks), Korn (1.56 marks) or shandy (21 pfennigs a glass), it was easy, but the barwoman also knew the prices of the countless wines, all the Murfatlars, Cotnaris, and Tokajis, not to mention the Czech, Polish, and Russian schnapps, or sparkling wines that were just becoming the fashion and were extremely popular among the Klausner’s guests. ‘She’s got a head on her, that one,’ Rick would say.
Karola was one of those whom Ed pictured as homegrown Berliners — proud, daring, quick-witted. She had a snow-white denim suit she sometimes wore to work. Her movements were energetic, and everything about her inspired respect, even her red hair, which she wore piled up in a small tower that swayed dangerously with every step but never collapsed. Karola added up the daily receipts for Krombach, and it was she who oversaw the crew’s bar tabs — no one else could have managed.
From the beginning, the counter-couple had treated Ed very well, almost lovingly, like parents — or, at least, in a way he missed being treated. Rick had chosen him for the drinks cellar. He had become Rick’s assistant, instead of Rolf or René. And every day, Karola brought him fresh tea in the dishwashing station, now and then giving him and Kruso her ice-cube massage as they worked. She placed the ice on them like a tool and made long, flowing movements with it as if slicing. ‘Just keep working, kid, act as if I’m not here. Trust me, it’s the only way you’ll really relax.’
Like Krombach, the counter-couple lived in one of the tiny log cabins that surrounded the Klausner. Rick called them chalets. They had no running water, no toilets, and very little space. ‘How much does one really need?’ Rick would ask, and launch into one of his bar room lectures. The conditions on the island made people more peaceable. ‘As if someone had stretched out time, Ed, into infinity.’
THE ROOT
Ed’s experiences had taught him that the desire C. had kindled in him would not release its hold just like that, but then suddenly it was gone. The castaways whispered their names in the darkness, and only a few seconds later he had already forgotten. He couldn’t even remember if they’d spoken. He often fell into a coma-like sleep, and no longer wondered how he would be able to stand being close to this or that body in the darkness. The secret was simply to fall asleep.
From these days of sleep, Ed surfaced as someone else. He now trusted Kruso’s system of allocation without reservation, and hardly even saw his companions’ faces anymore. Yet more: the vague idea that first occurred to him with the castaway named Grit, that all these clandestine sleepers had been chosen as Kruso’s emissaries, became more definite. He could hear Kruso’s thoughts, even the melody of his words. Pronouncements that slipped into his room just before midnight in the shape of castaways or as utopias-become-castaways, Ed fantasised. One could smell them, one could listen to their voices, one could (now that his brazen lust had finally quieted) learn from them when they lay stretched out beside him or on the floor or paused in the doorway barely visible in the darkness — the range of different temperaments, Ed thought. He knew already, knew perfectly well. Nonetheless, his guests now seemed different to him, changed, mostly without the signs of failure or world-weariness.
When they fell silent, he softly encouraged them to keep talkin
g, to tell him everything, the entire story of Kruso’s great freedom. Most understood Ed’s wish. He was like one of those children who want to hear their favourite fairytale (the story of their favourite hero) again and again. Some thought it was an examination, a final test, a kind of admission charge for the night, for the precious lodging on the bluff, one last thing before sleep, which could hardly surprise them after the seminars on the beach, the soup, the ablution, and the hours making jewellery.
Once they began talking, their lives (with all the hardship and conflicts) seemed elevated by the indescribable effect of the island, as many described it, lifted up by the sound of the sea and its ceaseless motion, from the coolness of the water in the morning and the wind that always blew straight through one’s eyes and into one’s head, freeing all thoughts. The stories always returned from the view up on the highlands and over the island back to what was called the greater island view, which had opened their eyes with its unfathomable beauty and recalled the beginning of a memory into their consciousness, a memory of themselves. Indeed, they often mentioned a completely childish desire to take the island’s entire silhouette, as it lay stretched out so vulnerably before them — the sea to the left and right, and, in between, the tender, fragile stretch of land — and press it to their hearts …