by Lutz Seiler
Suddenly blood.
It poured from all his scratches and cuts, in every direction: it overflowed. In a complete rage, Ed dragged the sticky blade once again through his flesh, pointlessly — the blood quite simply did him good.
The sun disappeared. The sea became dark and massive. The trees’ outlines were now tangible. The night sound of the surf was powerful and even stronger up where they were. The island was like a stranded animal, breathing in sleep or on the brink of death, in, out, in, out … Ed saw a large, shining chrome stethoscope, saw it push into the wrinkled, grey skin and disappear; then the muffled heartbeat: Dr-Dr-Dr-Dolittle. It was all ludicrous compared with the three of them up there with the cleanly bleeding arms. The entire history of their childhood was ludicrous, as ludicrous as the term ‘border violator’, as ludicrous as the world in comparison. They listened to the long, continuous rolling of the surf, and they pressed their arms together, hands balled into fists. Ed felt a warm thread of blood trickle down his elbow, and it was the right moment: he slowly slid out of his cocoon, through a tunnel of sighs; he stretched forward, let himself go — and won two brothers.
PAN
It was all over with the clandestine quarters. The castaways trotted along the beach like sheep without a shepherd. Their pilgrimage gradually ebbed, but new faces still cropped up daily to follow the predetermined paths of freedom. There were always a few who had heard something about donkey stalls, waiter’s rooms, or gravedigger huts, and a terrace with wonderful views high above the sea where you could get something to drink and warm soup every day. A few stayed on the beach for a few nights. At one point or another, they were tracked down, charged with suspicion of desertion of the republic, and summarily escorted to the next ferry, not without a threat that ‘officials would be calling on them’ and that they would ‘hear from us again soon, very soon’.
The mood among the esskays was subdued. They were withdrawn, suspicious, sparing with gestures of fellowship. Part of the caste had already left Hiddensee and headed south, it was said. Not much more was said about them, as if the subject were somehow taboo, like a serious illness, or silenced by the reticence lovers experience when their relationship suddenly ends. That almost nothing was said about the new developments that played a role hourly for Viola and were already the second or third item in the news reports — this initially seemed to Ed to be a measure of general caution. Only gradually did he begin to understand that it was primarily due to a desire to hold on to an advantage based entirely on the island and the islanders, an almost ancestral sense of self-confidence and self-assurance that was secretly connected to the island: they were island people and would always remain island people. They wanted to protect this rare, yes, unique enclave from the challenges in the rest of the world, with its trials and tribulations, its threats and temptations, all its demands and intrusiveness, its boundless appetite for islands …
Kruso took over the bar duties without any fuss. Chris and Rimbaud gave their all to waiting tables. Ed practically washed the dishes by himself. He was strong enough, and he had the confidence. Since his return to work, he worked almost without stopping. After work, he sat in his place under the radio to rest awhile and gnaw on his onion. Notably, the reports about a so-called picnic, a pan-European picnic, they called it, at which more than six hundred refugees crossed the border into Austria, fit seamlessly into the world of images with which Ed imagined this southern region, with its bushes, vineyards, and a wire fence that was presumably gaping with holes. A deadly escape had turned into a picnic; people arrived carrying blankets, baskets, maybe Hungarian salami, too. Pan emerged and made music in European fashion … Exhausted from his day, Ed slipped into this bizarre dream in which a metal wall turned first into a ramshackle fence and then into sweetly whispering reeds.
During the day, these events were not a topic of conversation. Only Rimbaud, on whom Cavallo’s disappearance weighed (although he would never have admitted it), made a comment now and then, caustic quips, pronouncements about the situation, like blows, but the ends of his sentences trembled. He hadn’t left any books in the nest for quite some time, and at some point he had stopped writing philosophical mottos on the menu board. Instead, he started delivering monologues about politics, and preferred to hold forth on politicians in the West. It sounded like he was reciting a cynical poem, yes, as if Antonin Artaud had risen from the dead to spew his faecal scorn over everyone and everything.
Rimbaud liked to insult the guests. He commented on their appearance, their orders, their, in his view, more than deficient intellectual and verbal abilities. ‘Each according to his ability!’ he would shout over the tables when he stepped out on the terrace with a tray full of beer glasses. With the exclamation, his imperious expression. Like a general the night before the last battle.
Rimbaud’s hair turned grey during those days. His moustache was stuck together, his eyes were round and shining when he speared the charge slips next to the cash register, but he hardly ever raised his head anymore. ‘Fame, when will you come …’ He slowly turned into a spectre. When he stormed down the racetrack to the dishwashing station and banged the dishes down on the rack, he looked like he was about to vomit.
As so often in recent days, the counter-couple’s absence was keenly felt: Karola’s magic tea, the ice, her cold fingertips on Ed’s back. And Rick, who never considered himself too good to apologise to the guests for his waiters, always without reproaching his colleagues. Only good words and paternal reminders passed from his lips as their old bartender lined up the staff’s personal glasses on the counter’s SprelaCart-laminated surface and filled them to the rim with the sticky, sweet balm of consolation.
27 August. Krombach lugged piles of bed linens across the courtyard, his face buried in the laundry. The last of the good smell, Ed thought. The manager had taken over his daughter’s tasks, and completed them like memorial service. Krombach also set the tables in the dining room: breadbasket, tableware, the condiment set with the orange mustard jar in the middle. Like a busboy on his first day, he traipsed back and forth in front of the bar. He filled the salt and pepper shakers, and stirred the mustard in those pots in which little pools of water had formed in the middle of the surface and the edges had turned dark brown and hard.
‘Good morning, Mr Bendler!’
Ed whirled around; a soup bowl banged against the side of the stone sink. The sanitation inspector raised his hands and smiled his photosensitive grin. He must have snuck up the ramp to the dishwashing station. Ed tried to concentrate on his work. The inspector dropped into a crouch with a flourish and poked around the drains for a while. Maybe the dishwashing fumes had wiped his memory. He suddenly sprang up, grabbed Ed’s arm, and told him to report to the registration office ‘at the end of the shift’.
Kruso had taken up his forays again. Ed didn’t understand how he could risk making his rounds again. The circuit on the first day off after his return was like a victory parade. He was greeted almost everywhere they went, often with a loud hello, drinks, food, small gifts. At the Dornbusch Apartments, he was given an entire bottle of peppermint schnapps. At the Island Bar, Santiago prepared him a meal. Still, no one was prepared to return to the old arrangements. People changed the subject, poured another drink, recounted island anecdotes. No matter how often their old impresario tried (in the most indirect, delicate, and respectful way), he met with evasions, excuses, and occasionally simple silence. In his disappointment, Kruso began using phrases like ‘by any means’ and ‘the situation requires’. The longer he spoke, the emptier the esskays’ faces became.
In those days, Kruso took very long walks. After work, he hiked to the relatively isolated southern end of the island, where he was less known, but he didn’t find any new confederates there either. The old readiness for enthusiasm that was naturally connected to the idea of freedom and the purest form of island patriotism, was suddenly gone. From Kruso’s point of view, it was a regression into se
asonal stupor, a kind of sickness, an infection — it all resembled the course of a plague.
The suspicion occasioned by Kruso’s quick return was serious. His reputation as a hero (led away in handcuffs) had become doubtful, and there were rumours.
‘Kruso, a Russian?’
‘But he speaks German.’
‘And his accent? Those funny words?’
‘Maybe some kind of Thuringian dialect.’
‘He’s not from there.’
‘But he’s not from here either, is he?’
On days that would have been allocation days, Kruso sat on the terrace of the Klausner and drank. A few esskays came and brought excuses from others. At work, Kruso now mostly spoke with Rimbaud. Occasionally, he would go see Krombach in his office. At night, he sat with Ed, whose blood-brotherhood scratches (seven cuts) had got infected in the dishwater. But it wasn’t worth mentioning, not in front of Losh when he came to visit Ed in his room, almost as before.
Ed had plenty of questions, but Kruso looked at him questioningly. As if it were up to Ed to address something, to name it, a disaster, an invisible wound. Generally, he asked Ed to recite some Trakl, ideally the verses in which his sister appeared. There were many of these, twenty or thirty poems, or perhaps more. Kruso himself never recited anything anymore. He explained that he was no longer pure enough to do so, whatever that was supposed to mean. He said other strange things as well. The only thing he wouldn’t talk about was his arrest. Ed decided not to pressure him. Kruso only asked his friend to recite Trakl, and insisted until Ed actually tried.
Ed got through four lines, then stopped. For a while, he tried to continue soundlessly, only moving his lips, then gave up. His face became blank, completely expressionless. At the moment, his cheeks were too big and had the same firmness as a nursing infant’s cheeks. The place of deepest tenderness. For a few seconds, Ed looked at his friend with new eyes, but he could not bear it any longer than that. He softly read the poem out loud. He did his best, made an effort, and after a few verses he noticed that he was able to hit the right tone. His heart beat harder. In his voice vibrated the power, the rhythm, enough to doctor the invisible wounds with poetry, poetry of a melancholy and grief that outdid everything.
They drank Lindenblatt. They were talking about migratory birds and bird bands, when Kruso suddenly reassured him that he had not been with René. Been what, Ed asked, and Kruso explained that he and a few others had simply helped him, although essentially it was too late and he was still sorry for that. But now Ed was well again, after the radiation treatment. What treatment, Ed wanted to ask, but it wasn’t important. An X-ray, maybe several, whatever. He felt secure in his friend’s presence. Now, in fact, his brother.
THE MACHINE
‘How are you doing?’ Ed asked.
The boot sole had a bony face, patches of fur. The new, mocking grin couldn’t be attributed to any species, but it was still his fox, its empty eye sockets completely attentive.
‘When will you bury me, Ed?’
‘I’d like to read something to you, please.’
Ed ceremoniously pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and began reading:
You can ask me and I will tell you openly what I think and know, and I would like to maintain that same degree of openness with others, but I can’t when I am working with you …
‘What do you think?’
‘Dreadful.’
I cannot lead a double life. I have to be able to talk about everything I see and think with those involved. The mere idea makes me anxious.
‘And how’s that?’
‘Terrible, Ed. What’s with the anxiety? Do you think anyone is interested in your anxiety? Show it as a real weakness instead. You’re a talkative person. A bad character. You can’t keep anything to yourself, you always blurt out everything. You’re constitutionally completely unsuitable and so on. You have to admit. On top of that, you’re a moraliser about truth. You’re incapable of lying, even if you wanted to, you know? You assume responsibility, you prove your vigilance and class consciousness by warning others about yourself.’
After Vitte, Ed continued along the beach. He could feel inclusions of the old fear, mummified, half-petrified, imperishable fears, ready to rise again. Once again, they had begun transmitting their positions, their status, their childish labels and names like ‘Helmut’s dog’ or ‘Going blind in your sleep’ or ‘Ravenous, evil sandman’, and so on, along with the more superficial ones called ‘Exam in ten days’ or ‘Obstacle course’ or ‘Code red’. Languages also hibernate somewhere deep in the body if not spoken for a long time (like Russian, for example), like words unused for ages and feelings you don’t ever want to feel again, all endure this way, deep inside oneself, Ed thought.
A side door of the Free German Trade Union Federation hotel, Zur Ostsee, stood open. A dark-panelled room, dimly lit, the white tablecloths like small sails, lost in the room’s expanse. A waiter, bending over a chest of similarly dark wood, sorted cutlery into compartments for knives, forks, and fire. Ed looked at the ground and slipped by. He continued on in this posture. Black and white stone tiles in the entrance to the lobby, an intimation of coolness and a better life.
The door to the registration office. Ed hesitated briefly then entered. The woman behind the typewriter looked up and gave a wide smile.
‘Please go right in to the back!’
She must have been familiar with the entire procedure and so Ed interpreted her peculiar cheerfulness as a dubious, perhaps desperate, attempt to escape her role.
The door to the back room was ajar. The sanitation inspector came to greet him. Halfway to Ed, he thrust his arm in the air like a traffic cop on duty, and, for the first time, offered his name: ‘Rebhuhn, at your service!’ With his right hand, he gestured towards a chair that was obviously meant for Ed. His left hand pointed to his own seat. They sat across from each other on opposite sides of an elongated table, around which stood ten or twelve more chairs.
‘How are you, Mr Bendler?’
It briefly occurred to Ed that the staff breakfasts had recently been especially subdued and silent. The ends of the table were unchanged: Chef Mike and Krombach, like bridgeheads. The one drenched in sweat, the other in a cloud of Exlepäng and face cream. On Ed’s side, only he and Rolf were left, separated by a few chairs, since the seating order remained unchanged. To his left, the counter-couple was missing; to his right, René. They had distanced themselves from him, and it was his own fault … Sometimes this thought overpowered him.
‘Mr Bendler?’
The inspector was wearing the black leather jacket with the many practical pockets. His photosensitive glasses shimmered a soft light brown. On the chair at the head of the table was a flat briefcase, as if it were presiding over their meeting.
Ed brushed the hair from his face. His wounds had healed. He didn’t know what to say.
‘Excellent treatment from Professor Rommstedt, right? Did you speak to him at length? How do you judge him? We had some problems with him earlier, which is always a shame — with such an excellent scientist, if you know what I mean. We need science! More than ever. We need hand, heart, and mind! Surely you’ve heard about our 32-bit microprocessor! Neither ox nor ass!’
‘I was still unconscious during the — treatment. And what I wanted to say was …’
‘Of course. You were not conscious, Mr Bendler. But it’s now time that you came to. How is your friend doing now, after his happy return home?’
Ed looked out the window. A muddy courtyard with deep, broad tyre tracks, as if a tractor had driven in circles. In the middle of the mud circle was a discarded vehicle, and next to it the island police officer’s green moped with a helmet hung on the handlebars. The sea was only one hundred metres away, but Ed couldn’t hear it.
‘How are you managing now, up there in the Klausner? And was else do you get up to, in t
he evenings, say? Back to poetry? Or drawing maps? Visuals for the castaways and the homeless, as your friend calls them, so thoughtful and caring with his Slavic soul, isn’t that right, Mr Bendler? Speak frankly and unburden your own heart!’
Rebhuhn. ‘Partridge’ is an odd choice if it’s a made-up name, Ed thought. He wondered if there were a tape recorder in the briefcase to capture the self-criticism he had prepared with his fox’s help. Again, he pictured the B56, his father’s Czech tape recorder in the wall cabinet, the little gears to spool the tape and the fire-engine-red record button — ‘Don’t cry for me Argentina’. Ed had often rewound to that song and …
‘I’ll just say it between us, more or less. If your friend weren’t so thoroughly Slavic — or how should I put it, Mr Bendler? — then he wouldn’t be walking around free anymore, wouldn’t have been for a long time, now. You do understand that, don’t you? Or let’s just say: Soviet jurisdiction. A father in Potsdam’s Russian Military City, Lordy! A general! But you’ve known that for a while. However, we’re the ones who get stuck with the aggravation, the work, the consequences, as if this here were Sakhalin or Saint Helena! But not just us: you, too, and the professor, the Klausner, everyone he draws into his circle. That’s exactly what you don’t seem to realise, Mr Bendler, how much danger …
First the DJ’s voice, his fake enthusiasm, which even the soft, swaying beat of the song’s opening couldn’t stop, and so it forever spoiled the first measures. But Ed was already stretched out on the carpet, his arms outspread, in anticipation of the unearthly voice of a singer named Julie Covington. He was fourteen years old and actually hated everything that could be considered pop music. But he just lay there on the carpet, and soon his tears began to flow.