Kruso

by Lutz Seiler

  There were rarely any clandestine sleepers who did not speak about how they realised, after gazing for a long time into the fog in which the furthest, southernmost tip of the island became blurred — the tip was actually rarely visible, in fact, it almost never was — that their former lives seemed foreign and burdened to them now that they’d been completely changed. One of them whispered to Ed in the darkness, perhaps not very aptly, that his former life was left behind, cowering, forsaken, forlorn, shamefaced, surrounded by things, like a melancholy, alcoholic dog in its doghouse. Still, Ed wanted to hear it, to hear it all. He could feel the incomparable warmth of hearing stories in the darkness. He felt the warmth become a common heat as he listened without moving. He sensed how they all belonged together. How they effortlessly were confidantes of this country, longstanding confidantes of a calamity that had lasted for an eternity and would continue to last forever and yet seemed to contain a promise — if enough passion could be mustered. The promise lay deep within the calamity, Ed thought, a paradox he had otherwise only encountered when reading certain poems that meant more to him than anything in the world. He could think of this now: his verse hoard was silent, the tram was gone, there was no more ritch-ratch he had to yank on. Instead, there were hints of shame, shame and disgust across a broad range. But in the end, he was simply too tired for this, too.

  There seemed to be no fitting comparison to describe the island’s effect, and many claimed that there were no words for it in any case. All there was to say was that on this spot, called the greater island view, they had begun to feel again, to feel buried roots, as Kruso called them, the image to which all images wanted to return. They’d begun to feel ‘simply at home’, in the words of the castaway who had spoken of the drunken dog in its doghouse. With his bitter account, he lingered in the doorway for a long time before he stretched out next to Ed and immediately fell asleep whereas Ed kept listening. Surf and rustling pine trees.

  As different and occasionally bizarre as the stories of night figures were, and as varied their presentation, delivered standing or lying down, hasty or half-asleep, Ed was still able, through the darkness, to hear Kruso’s voice in each of them, an afterglow of Kruso’s words in the words of the castaways and homeless, who struck Ed as almost chaste, as untouchable. And sometimes it was as if Kruso were whispering directly into his ear, as if he were caressing Ed with the particular tone, the slurred consonants, the elisions …

  ‘The island is the first step, understand, Ed? The island is the place. Here most of them can feel the inner root after just a few hours. It grew into us from pre-history, not from birth, say, or more recently as some want to believe, no, I’m telling you: since the birth of thought. If we can touch the root, we feel it: freedom is there, deep within. It lives inside us, deep in our innermost self. That’s the freedom I mean. It’s our deepest self’s thought, our self’s thought in history. We don’t need to do anything other than wake this thought. Often, it’s imprisoned in unconsciousness. There are all kinds of imprisonment, Ed. Fear, nightmares, cramping, apathy. That is the dross, the endless dross, that covers us as long as we live. A heavy sediment of pride, power, greed, possession: rusty, poisonous, ashen dross. Of course, sometimes, the root has already rotted away or dried up. Those are the lost ones, the shady characters, abandoned beings. But not the castaways, Ed. Otherwise they wouldn’t come to the island — they have sensed the root.’

  Kruso’s tone.

  Ed remembered. He pictured Losh, how he would walk up and down the beach and talk. Ed had stretched out above, on the edge of the bluff, and looked down at the group that suddenly appeared sitting on the beach in a half-circle. He had gone on a foray alone. He had looked at the waves and tried to understand the rhythm of a diving cormorant. Twenty seconds, twelve seconds, twenty seconds. He had fallen asleep, and when he woke, they were there. They were making jewellery, threading bird bands and bending dental wire, drop earrings, twenty marks a pair. In Utopia, one works for three hours in the morning, then there is a two-hour break for ‘literary studies’, according to Thomas More; Kruso had read it aloud to him.

  The wind picked up; the surf drowned out their words. One of the castaways raised a hand, probably Grit, who always wanted to know everything. Ed couldn’t tell from behind. Kruso answered and pointed out over the sea. The sea. Its sheer size, its supremacy. And the ridiculous borders. That’s why people come here, Ed thought. They want to see the ends of the world, to have it always before their eyes.

  The cormorant had disappeared. In the light of the setting sun, Møn jutted from the sea, higher and more real than Ed had ever seen it. A fine, trembling line of surf separated the water from land, and from the chalk cliffs that slowly turned from white to light grey and in that form seemed to be related to the bluff on which Ed lay. Møn is like a mirror, Ed thought. A mirror in which you can see yourself reflected in the other world, the archetype of longing. The sun slowly lowered a golden bridge over the water, which rolled into shore in massive slate-grey waves that bit deeper and deeper into the western coast of the highlands every year. In the middle of the bridge, the blood-red outlines of hearths flashed, the plan of a settlement on the ground. An undersea glow and glistening reflection, as if the mythical city Vineta might burst through the surface of the Baltic Sea at that very moment, might emerge in space like a third power, a third place that would put an end to all reflections, once and for all.

  ‘Sometimes it’s laborious work,’ Kruso lectured, but he was not referring to the bird bands or dental wire. ‘First, you have to … the root … Each and every one of you … that is …’ The wind had turned again.

  Oceanographers had discovered the sunken settlement not long before, exactly halfway between the two coasts. ‘Imagine, they live down there. They sit at their tables, go for walks. They’re free. They’re all free …’ It was a pleasure just to say the word — Losh, who knew that this sea was a grave.

  The wind was blowing to the west. It carried his words out over the water, over the golden bridge. Ed saw two wide, strong currents flowing into each other, and suddenly they looked like rivers of light.

  ‘No one should ever flee, never …’

  ‘Many know …’

  ‘Half the lan …’

  ‘Freedom draws us …’

  ‘… called to ser …’

  ‘A pilgrimage like no other …’

  ‘… go on,’ Ed whispered. He never wanted to fall asleep before the castaways had finished talking, but sometimes it happened. He simply couldn’t keep his eyes open. Once again, he experienced the heavy, unadulterated exhaustion of his childhood that allowed him to slip from a fairytale into a dream, from this world into the beyond, from one story into another, without barriers, without borders.

  In a dream, Ed saw that the island was too full. The ports, the moors, the highlands, and the beaches, thick and dark with people. They were even on the breakwater and on the stones from the ice age that towered out of the water along the shore. They looked like giant, sluggish seabirds, but without feathers. Their skin was burned by the sun. He could hear their murmuring even at night. It blended with the sound of the sea and floated up to his window. The beach was filled with filth and rotting seaweed, out of which dead fish peered along with other detritus.

  ISLAND DAY

  ‘It’s your sign, Ed.’

  Kruso had taken a square piece of packing paper from his neck pouch. He pushed it across the table.

  The black spot, Ed thought.

  It was the sixth of August, the rest day of all rest days, the day on which the different rhythms of the entire island lined up so that not a single establishment was open — a yearly constellation, as reliable and rare as a solar eclipse, in the middle of the season. It was the esskays’ day.

  ‘Our signs correspond to the ancient house markings of Hiddensee,’ Kruso continued softly. ‘It’s a particular form of writing, like the runes that
used to be branded onto things and animals, even into the land, the earth, whatever one owned.’

  He smiled and looked Ed in the eye.

  ‘So it was since Hithin and Högin and King Hedin of Hidensey …’

  As Kruso expanded on their island’s fateful role in the sagas of the north, he pulled piece after piece of the creased packing paper from his neck pouch. ‘The eddas, then, but also in Gudrun, in which the king …’

  He apparently carried an entire alphabet of runes around his neck, not just the proceeds from the jewellery business. In the end, there were probably even more signs than marks making the greasy leather pouch bulge so uncomfortably. Ed found this supposition somehow reassuring.

  ‘It will be a long night,’ Kruso continued. ‘Because of the celebration, we’ll start the allocation in the afternoon.’ He sounded grave and worried, as he always did when speaking of the castaways. Krombach stood up, nodded at everyone, and retreated to his office.

  ‘Acceptance at three o’clock. The soup should also be ready by the afternoon, please, and the ablution as well. Washcloths and soap at every sink. The signs are on the sand, next to their heads or feet, just keep your eyes peeled.’

  It was all meaningful and absurd at the same time. And not a single person seemed to harbour serious doubts. Only in René’s expression was there icy scorn. Since he and the little invisible one were a couple, they were exempt from the billeting, as were the counter-couple and doubtless Krombach, too.

  ‘Good,’ Kruso said, and conjured up a fresh apple cake from behind the bar.

  ‘From Mother Mete!’

  ‘Mother Mete, a good soul!’

  Rick served schnapps. Karola sliced and served the cake, while Kruso poured freshly brewed coffee, which required him to make a full circuit around the table with the heavy, steaming steel pitcher. He served each person at the table with equal attentiveness and laid a hand on Ed’s shoulder.

  ‘Let’s start the deployment, friends.’

  Everyone began talking. Chris gesticulated. Rimbaud bared his teeth. Chef Mike jumped up and demonstrated a few shots that would have gone right in, one hundred per cent, if … He was almost shouting, and he twirled his towel in the air like a lasso, ‘right in, one hundred per cent!’

  ‘I say Ed goes on the left side, in Speiche’s position,’ Kruso called. ‘You take left midfield, Ed, secure the back, move forward when they attack, and put yourself forward.’ Kruso’s tactics were completely drowned out by the general commotion.

  Ed nodded automatically. He had always played leftfield. Kruso must have known that. After all, he had seen Ed coming. He had dreamt him. And he had binoculars in his room with which he could see into things, see far into their past … Whether he was playing backfield, midfield, or offense: always left. Although he wasn’t a left-footer. On the left without actually being able to play left, Ed thought, not even ‘for domestic use’, as his father had once put it. Over the years, Ed had always carried within himself the same vague feeling of disappointment (despite what could be considered a solid balance sheet). His sense of phoniness, yes, of imposture, was revived. A kind of unease that overcame and weighed on him here on the island as well, especially now and then when he was with Kruso.

  ‘You don’t need to be a left-footer to play left!’ Ed burst out much too forcefully in the hum of voices. They had moved on from deciding the team’s positions long before.

  ‘I’m in the backfield, but I’ll put myself forward. I’ll put myself forward!’

  For a moment, the table was quiet. Ed had jumped up and knocked over his coffee cup.

  ‘Good, Ed, very good,’ Kruso said. René’s shoulders shook.

  Ed felt uncomfortable stomping around amid all the runes. The soft sand made each step awkward and difficult. After a while, he inevitably had the feeling that his legs were growing shorter and that he had to raise his head now and again so as not to sink down completely. A few of the signs were made with surprising carelessness, using tiny, almost invisible shells, black pebbles, or thin twigs, some with just grass or seaweed. But it was important that they be made neatly because they were so similar, Ed thought. The girl with his sign sat far to the front, near the water. She was staring out to sea, as if help were coming from there, a ship with seven sails …

  Ed recognised her shame. Her breasts were small and still white. She twirled a lock of her blonde, shoulder-length hair around two fingers. A ship will come, Ed thought.

  Her name was Heike, and it was the first time Ed was taking a castaway to the Klausner himself. Maybe because until then he had been the only one without his own sign. He was still mulling over what he should do next and what words he could use to explain it, as Heike got undressed.

  ‘Is that your sink?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was his sink.

  ‘The sink for coarse cleaning,’ he added, and blushed.

  Heike climbed right into the stone trough. First, she set one foot on the slightly lower metal stand for the dishes. She crouched on it for moment as if she were imitating a larger, rare bird, then stepped into the sink. She already knows all about it, Ed thought.

  ‘Is the water OK?’ Ed asked like a hairdresser. Or a minister — at his first baptism, the thought flitted pointlessly through Ed’s mind.

  ‘It’s fine,’ the girl said, ‘just right.’

  She had turned, and held her head bent forward slightly, no doubt as a request for her back to be soaped up.

  Ed calmed down.

  He saw the flawless row of vertebrae, strange and unreal, and the soft skin stretched over them. He took the washcloth from the side of the sink and ran it down her back, slowly and carefully, back and forth, from her neck down and then further still, between the two sides, gleaming with suds and taut from bending forward, down to the invisible source of this vertebrate animal, the point of greatest temptation, which he reached almost distractedly and where his hand hesitated for a tiny, not even measurable instant.

  ‘Your hair,’ Ed murmured, ‘now your hair.’

  If he knew anything, it was this. He’d seen the hair when they were burying the amphibian …

  In the meantime, Chris had arrived in the dishwashing station with his castaway. They used the sink on Kruso’s side. Their presence instantly simplified the procedure — this was the ablution, an important stage in the process, nothing more and nothing less. And suddenly Ed knew what to do. He was a dishwasher at his sink. He washed, scrubbed, rinsed. Heike obediently stretched her head forwards. She was so small that she had plenty of room in the sink. Ed raised the hose, but it was too short. The girl had to turn again and hold her head directly under the tap with her forehead on the bottom of the sink, as if in prayer.

  Chris treated his castaway like a patient. He said, ‘That’s right, that’s the way’ and ‘just this spot here’ and ‘we’re almost done’. The straightforward completion of the ritual eliminated all shame. And doubling the procedure made it seem almost normal. Chris circled the sink with his short, energetic steps, no differently than when waiting on tables on the terrace. The water channelled Heike’s hair into the drain and down the pipe to the mouldering grate, where the hungry amphibian snapped at her split ends with its slimy grey jaws … From every hair, a mushroom; from every ablution, a soup. Baptism and rebirth. Ed fantasised as he — with almost dreamlike certainty — raised the short hose again to rinse the soap from Heike’s back.

  The drying towel was laid out ready.

  Like Aphrodite, Heike rose from the sink. Ed held the Roman out for her. The stiff cloth made a dark sound, a sound of reliability. And as the castaway wrapped herself in the large, perhaps century-old sheet and stood in the dishwashing station like the outcome of a long, tenacious dream, Ed finally understood: all these castaways were pilgrims, pilgrims on a pilgrimage to the place of their dreams, to the last place of freedom inside the border — just as
Kruso had said. And he was no more than a helper, a kind of assistant on the way. Auxiliary staff in the Klausner, part of its sworn fellowship, which had its own laws, a special trust, and perhaps only this duty.

  Seven against seven. Cheering came from all sides, successful plays were celebrated with applause, while Khmer drumming thundered hollowly and incessantly. It was the island Cambodian with his flying hands. He could drum and dance at the same time. By the end, Ed had played in four games of the tournament. Their team was chosen from the crews of the Klausner and the Island Bar (their ‘family’, as Kruso put it); each half was ten minutes long. Many of the games were an endless series of fouls and apologies, fouls and professions of friendship, fouls and hugs, cheek against cheek: there were players who stood like that for a long time after sliding tackles right in the middle of the field, immersed in the usual signs of affection. The families from the Hitthim and the Dornbusch were considered strong, but could be defeated. Indian from the Island Bar played sweeper; Kruso played midfield; Antilopé, a waitress from the Island Bar, played forward. Ed was surprised at how confidently and powerfully Chef Mike leapt and flew between the goalposts despite his heft. ‘He’s a passionate goalie, an unconditional goaltender,’ Rimbaud remarked. ‘That’s what makes him so frightening and unpredictable.’

  Everything was different than at night. Ed’s castaway was not swallowed up by the darkness; she remained completely visible. Her fair skin, her face, on the sidelines for the entire tournament. Now and then, she shouted something at the players. Ed forgot that just a few days before, he had been at the end of his tether. Rimbaud fought like an animal and debated every play, which made for constant interruptions, but no one really seemed to mind. Indian, his hair tied back in a ponytail, crossed the field in enormous strides: he appeared to move slowly, almost sluggishly, because of his large, angular body that upset all ratios, as he was, in fact, fast, unstoppable. He executed a diagonal march, opening the game, then passed to the forwards, to Santiago, who lurked, or Chris, who jumped about like a dervish, agile, shrewd … Ed saw Kruso running in front to his left, and received a pass. He was not as fast, but it was hard to steal the ball from him. Ed moved up quickly and put himself forward.