by Lutz Seiler
When he put his foot down flatter and harder, he could feel the imprints in the concrete slabs. A few, as far as Ed understood, indicated the quality grade of the concrete. Others resembled hieroglyphs, writing from the pyramids, Ancient Egyptian, Aztec, Sumerian perhaps. ‘They free us from all gravity. If you hit them just right, they will relieve you, heart and soul, from the burden of existence,’ Kruso had told him, and sped up. His stiff-hipped gait over the signs. The fixed square, in the middle of which were Kruso’s privates — Ed thought of the word, and it flashed in front of his eyes, in the centre of the movement. The path headed downhill, past the greater island view. His pace was now a run, without effort, a light bounce, each step covering two or three slabs, from one sign to the next. With every impact of his foot on the ground, something burst inside Ed. After fifty metres, he was freed of any sense of embarrassment: two grown men running down the slope like children. ‘Come on, come on!’ Kruso yelled, running even faster. Ed felt the springiness. Their loping stride. The island lay spread out before him, and he was set to fly over it. A rising and falling of the world, up and down; his spinal cord melted and began to flow, a feeling of omnipotence. It streamed into him from behind and filled him up. He rejoiced. He leapt and rejoiced, he could not resist. ‘Davai, davai,’ Kruso shouted. Land and sea had become one. Ed breathed in the sea air, the smell of the island. He ran through the air, as in dreams.
Fifteen minutes to the harbour. In any event, it was to be expected that the boats were under surveillance. First, he hid behind the remains of the harbour latrine, a boarded-up shack from a bygone era. He shoved his bag into the bushes and sat on it. He was now in the depths of defeat, just him on his own.
It soon became light, and the first ferry passengers arrived. Only the locals used the early ferry, people who worked on the mainland or went there to shop. They greeted each other and knew the captain. Ed envied the islanders their laconic way of being with each other, interactions that involved few, if any, words, but consisted of gestures. A curt nod, an incomprehensible phrase, expressions of their resistance to the countless strangers and their chattering invasion, the cacophony fundamentally alien to the north that flooded the island every summer. There was also a border against the esskays and their unrestrained gossip about the island, the sea, and life. Even on crowded ships, the natives were immediately recognisable. They seemed completely impervious to the surrounding din, as if they had permanently walled off their existence, yes, as if they had been inoculated and were forever immune to the repulsive species called holiday-makers. The worlds did not mix. Only someone like Kruso moved in both spheres … Arrested, Ed thought. Not for a long time, if ever. Torgelow.
The short gangway, made of boards with a metal pipe for a handrail, was dragged to the boat. Ed stood up. The straps of his travel bag cut into his shoulder. That’s when he saw them, the counter-couple. With a handcart full of luggage. Ed was still uncertain, something in their bearing seemed odd, as if they trying to not be that — and maybe they weren’t? Ed hesitated. Once again, he shoved his bag into the shrubbery, and walked in an arc — back towards the harbour.
The counter-couple. Two seconds full of joy. The way you meet an acquaintance unexpectedly and greet him more enthusiastically than usual. In the next moment, Karola’s expression had already become guarded; Rick was looking intensely at the ferry.
In a rush, Ed had explained that he had only wanted to collect one of the Klausner’s carts from the harbour to transport the bread. As he did so, his glance fell on the cart with the luggage and the name ‘Zum Klausner’ in red paint, and his lie hung there as if also painted in red.
‘Fine, hang on,’ Karola said abruptly, and started to unload their bags in her energetic way.
‘No, don’t, there are plenty of others, other carts, back there with the other carts,’ Ed quickly assured her. Blood surged in his head, but what else could he do — he helped unload. And finally, as if it were the only reason he was there, he also helped stow their things in the bow of the ferry. The gap between the pier and the side of the boat, his fear of drawbridges. The moment to confide in each other had passed. No chance to ask where they were headed. One of the messages or the mystery of the Hungarian border? No questions.
The luggage: it was everything. Glasses clinked in one bag; a night-table lamp encrusted with shells and pieces of amber stuck out of another. Something large, something immeasurable had shifted. And things were still shifting, inexorably, incessantly, as if they were part of the movement of geological plates (a deep, childish feeling), and, when the counter-couple had crossed the drawbridge and the motors started up and the metal hull began to shudder, they were already as far from each other as if on different continents.
The ferry’s horn began to blow, and the crazy boy appeared. He was guiding the ferry on its departure. The rear of the boat slowly moved away from the side of the harbour and moved into the harbour basin. The boy’s right arm circled in the air like a windmill, and the hull turned onto its course. With a muffled hum, the steamboat began its trip. Ed breathed in the diesel fumes, the blue-black poison that burned his mucous membranes.
Karola’s lips were tight, as if she had decided not to say another word, neither about the Klausner nor about its sworn community, for whom the counter-couple had served as parents. Maybe they didn’t trust him — in fact, they surely didn’t. What else could they think about his sudden appearance in the harbour? Coming for the bread, even though at this time every morning he sat in the cellar tending the boiler. Coming for the bread, even though Baker Kasten never had the bread before eight anyway … Only then did Ed notice the tears, and Karola did open her mouth in the end. The diesel motor revved, so the only thing that reached him was the movement of her lips.
Ed stared at her. He raised an arm, doubtfully, hesitantly. Inadvertently, he had landed on the wrong side of the parting.
‘When else, Ed.’
Did she say that?
Yes, without a doubt, she had.
Or was it something else?
‘It was nice, Ed’ or ‘Take care, Ed’ or ‘Whatever you want, Ed.’
Take care. And she’d made some kind of sign at Ed, as if she wanted to caress him and then as if she wanted to caress the Dornbusch as well, the highland and the entire island. Caress it very tenderly, as was possible from such a distance. She and Rick had stood at the railing for a while and then they’d disappeared.
Ed still couldn’t believe they’d gone. It was even harder for him to accept what they’d taken him for. Betrayal from all sides. The idea of the counter without the counter-couple.
Herds of day tourists passed him. Departure of the next ferry and the one after, without Ed. The coachman Mäcki and his bear-horse, which gave him a questioning look. The crazy boy with his mouth open: he sat on a plastic chair at the edge of the harbour with his legs crossed and his upper body turned to the side, as if he’d been overcome with a sudden wave of disgust. But it was only in reaction to the wind: the boy bent his head so that the wind would blow into his mouth more easily. He grunted and roared into the wind and gave long, drawn out cries like a seagull or a baby. Ed realised as he passed him that this was no boy, no child, and hadn’t been for a long time. His face was old.
Since Ed’s embarrassment did not lessen, he continued to pretend he’d come for the bread. He dragged his bag from the bushes and threw it into the handcart. Too late, he remembered the bottle — the Blue Strangler, unbroken. He unscrewed the top, listening to the soft crackling. He drank, and heard the whistling — against the western moon.
The door to the Hitthim was boarded up. Ed wondered if it had been damaged in the fight. How he and René had covered the long way to the harbour basin, he couldn’t remember. He looked around as if there might still be some traces. As if the ice-cream man might come out from behind the chestnut tree that stood halfway between the Hitthim and the harbour basin, the only tree far and wide.
I’m sorry, but you know … A tuft of hair in his hand.
Ed recognised Santiago’s silhouette behind the counter in the Island Bar, He looked at the ground, skirted a hole in the sand, and passed by. A light still burned in the display case outside the Gerhart Hauptmann House even though the sun was high. Instead of Hauptmann’s poem, an announcement for a reading by the writer Rainer Kirsch hung behind the glass, the launch of his new volume of poems. The blue in Ivo Hauptmann’s watercolour was faded, and rust had spread from the thumbtacks. For some reason, Ed felt close to the painter Ivo Hauptman, perhaps simply because he had managed to be a son.
Ed left the handcart on the path and trudged northwards on the waiters’ beach. It was completely empty at this hour. He climbed over the wire that separated the beach from the stabilising coastal dunes. After a few metres, he dropped to the ground and fell asleep. Once again, he saw the hand that had blessed him at the first breakfast; then Losh’s hand on his shoulder.
When Ed woke, the sun was shining in his face. He could feel it healing his wounds. He pulled the bottle from his bag, drank, and fell back asleep. He dreamed his camel dream, the dream with which he had first made his break. When he woke the second time, he saw the Klausner, the ark. Those missing: René, Cavallo, Monika, Karola, Rick, Kruso, and himself, more than half the crew. He drank, ate the onion he had packed for the crossing, and the two slices of bread. Pushed by the wind, the tips of the sea grass traced geometrically neat circles in the sand. And with it, the surf, the soft, constant rushing sound that had enveloped Ed’s thoughts like a warm, protective cocoon.
Then he heard it. The first time. The sound dwelt within him. His own sound, as good as a fate of his own. He just had to follow it. Two weeks until the end of summer, four weeks until the end of high season, Ed thought, and closed his eyes again, but only for a few seconds.
THE BLOOD WILL COME LATER
The island’s Capri-path ran close to the edge of the escarpment. It was so thickly lined with trees and shrubbery, that there was seldom an open view of the sea. Ed breathed in the smell of the forest, which, together with the noise of the surf, inspired some vaguely Asian associations. Before the flights of tree-root steps, long carpets of pine needles had piled up. They returned each of his steps, soft and springy, as if walking were pure grace and as if the way home had long been ready: yes, I’m coming, I’ll be there at the sinks and the furnace, dishwasher and boilerman, and if I can move fast enough, I could also help at the bar, with the lemonade, for example, the seltzer. Rimbaud and Chris will have to take over another part. Maybe Rolf could do the coffee. The ice-cream hatch will stay closed — no loss.
Ed hardly felt the weight of his bag. The horizon was white, as if smudged. In the foreground, he could see the outline of a patrol boat; the more clearly it emerged from the fog, the more unreal seemed to him the plans he had had just that morning. The unspoken requirements — he was now fulfilling them. He felt at home in the Klausner as nowhere else.
He remembered how, on afternoons after school when he was a child, he had headed off on his own through the forest, all the way to the forest’s edge. He had never thought about it before: he had always gone all the way to a small moss-covered embankment with a view of the fields in which the end of the world swayed or stood still. Then, sooner or later, it was time for him to head home.
He picked up a few large leaves, rolled his pant legs up to his knees, and squatted in one of the ditches. They reminded him of bomb craters. The undersides of the leaves were covered with small white hairs that felt surprisingly raw against his anus. He had to be careful because the leaves tore easily. He kept squatting for a while, as if turned to stone. A warm wind that blew in from the sea played between his legs and gave him goosebumps.
‘I’ve almost got it!’
Ed froze, then he recognised the voice. It was the good soldier. He was crouching just thirty or forty metres from Ed, trying to light a fire. As he broke small branches and blew on a flame Ed couldn’t see, the soldier talked to himself out loud. As if in the next scene of a shadow play, a second person, who had remained hidden behind the trunk of a tall, dark beechwood tree until then, was pushed onto the stage. His outline immediately came into focus. There wasn’t the slightest doubt: it was Kruso.
Or not. Too much Blue Strangler, Ed thought, and remained in a squat. The light of the setting sun projected shapes into the forest, desired images and voices. Ed tried to concentrate on his pants: pants, belt, shirt. A flood of joy had begun to throb inside him, and his hands shook. He couldn’t help it.
In the next scene, Kruso’s silhouette melted with the good soldier’s. Ed was almost blinded by the sun’s rays that penetrated the underbrush from the sea. He heard laughter, almost a snigger, and then he heard the Kruso-figure explaining something in its earnest tone. It pointed at the trunk of a tree, and all of a sudden Ed recognised the tree. It was the Buddha tree, the tree with many arms and bottles — the tree of inexhaustible drink, as the esskays called it — their enchanted tree.
Their embrace was long, tight, and full of meaning. The good soldier pulled a few bottles out from among the roots. They clinked bottles, drank, clinked bottles again. They laughed like thieves who had pulled off an utterly unbelievable heist.
Ed’s joy was completely pure and immediately outshone all his defeats — the loss of his room to the allocations, the loss of C. to the rules, all the sleepless night, the wounds on his face. He felt as relieved as a child who suddenly realises all his fears and worries were ungrounded. He had lost a friend, he had lost the island, and now he had got everything back — in a single blow.
‘How are you doing, Losh?’
‘I’m doing well, Ed, really well.’
‘Didn’t they …’
With one wave of his hand, Kruso swept the question aside. They drank and laughed. They were laughing! Ed thought of handcuffs, interrogations, a cell in Rostock or Torgelow, maybe even torture …
They embraced again. They would talk later, for sure.
Ed could read a few things from Kruso’s big, warm cheeks and from his chest, his heartbeat, in which their friendship and an iron will throbbed. Ed thought of Rommstedt, the radiation ward, but this moment overpowered every doubt. Cheek against cheek.
‘Ho-ho,’ the good soldier said. With a secretive expression, he pulled a razor from his pack — that is, later, Ed wasn’t sure where it had suddenly come from, that cheap, dull blade encrusted with dried soap.
They followed Kruso a few steps towards the shore. The fireball sank, the red sun; in a few minutes, the sea would swallow it.
First, the question of where they should cut themselves. It had to be a good spot, Kruso declared. With the word ‘cut’, Ed’s first thought was of the pulse, then the soft white inner arm with the blue-green delta under his skin. He felt hardly any fear. He was probably drunk. Like a craftsman testing a tool, Kruso felt his own tanned, hairy arm. He found a suitable spot above his wrist, ‘always visible, a scar for life, more precious than gold’ — Alexander Krusowitsch could say such things without seeming ridiculous.
Of course, he went first, vigorously and without hesitation. To Ed’s surprise, the good soldier grabbed the blade next. Kruso encouraged him, which did not annoy or hurt Ed, which it might have done since the soldier was suddenly on the same level with them, the two companions, on the same level with their reunion (his friend’s return home, which merged with his own return — good thing he had left his bag behind in the ditch), a reunion filled with a joy on which everything to come could be built … Yes, it was a victory. And the more Ed thought about it, the less clear it was to Ed why the good soldier should be allowed, just like that, to be the third in their bond.
‘Brothers, to the sun, to freedom,’ Kruso enjoined, then lapsed into an incomprehensible murmur. Brothers get up to the light. Ed’s heart caught the hint. You have to open yourself up, stand together, let go. And the soldier
was certainly not one of the shady characters. Kruso knew what he was doing.
The blade was greasy with the good soldier’s blood. Ed was surprised at how easily it bent and how hard it was to hold between his thumb and index finger. Ed’s father had shaved dry and, when Ed was fifteen, had given him his old Bebo Sher electric shaver.
One jerk — no blood.
So Ed tried again, and his hand cramped as if he were a child determined to write even though he is not used to the writing implement. His hand slipped, and he missed the previous cut. The thought of how good he had been in drawing a straight line freehand was completely useless at this moment. ‘Exactly as if you’d used a ruler, Edgar!’ his mother had often exclaimed, full of praise. But on his own skin, it was different. Skin doesn’t give way, skin slips away.
What he later recalled: that he would have liked to say his useless thoughts out loud. Maybe he had, in his fear, too much force and would, for example, damage a valuable vessel. For a moment, the absurd thought flitted through Ed’s mind that he might be dry inside or that there simply wasn’t enough of the sap of brotherhood flowing through him, which now needed to be brought out in the open and displayed. It surely had something to do with his low blood pressure. Since his earliest childhood, he had got used to drinking coffee, not just at family celebrations, but also on weekdays, coffee and cake, every afternoon with his parents after work, ‘real coffee beans!’, the proud exclamation about the costliness of the bitter drink they had to dilute for him with milk or water, ‘the blood will come later …’
‘The blood will come later,’ Kruso whispered soothingly and with a note of concern in his voice when he saw Ed fumbling with the blade on his skin, his movements hectic and nervous as he attempted to deepen the cut he had made.
Kruso and the good soldier held their bent arms together as if they were comparing watches. The good soldier’s wound seeped a bit along the edges. Kruso’s blood dripped right onto the sand. He put his foot on it and then twisted it as if he were crushing a cigarette.