Kruso

by Lutz Seiler

  Once again, Chris poured Korn whisky into their cups, Korn and Kirsch-Whisky, half and half, the way Chef Mike preferred.

  ‘Why do the moon and the man …’

  ‘… slide together so submissively to sea?’

  A few voices were missing. They stood and drank. Ed knew Losh’s cheek (large, soft, unshaven), but now his hugs felt different than before when it was still about a photograph and a poem and someone who was missed more than anything in the world.

  The days of the skeleton crew began. In the morning, Kruso removed the unoccupied chairs from the personnel table and spread them around the bar room. In Ed’s eyes they remained there, the departed, at various tables, like outcasts even though they were the ones who had decided to jump ship (as Krombach put it).

  They held down the fort. Chris waiting tables, Rolf in the kitchen, Kruso at the bar, and Krombach, who appeased the company vacation guests. On Wednesdays, Krombach still led the social evenings, telling stories about the island and letting his grey hearts have their say. Without looking, and with arms raised over his head, he tied heart after heart and tossed them into the women holiday-makers’ laps. Krombach blossomed on these evenings. Ed saw him later, still on the terrace with a few guests. He heard their voices and laughter as from a great distance, laughter from a distant past. In the end, only a short, portly woman with a glowing white cardigan was left at his table. Krombach held her in his arms as if she were his very last handhold. His half-bald crown phosphoresced in the terrace lanterns’ glow, maybe because of the Exlepäng, Ed thought. He had to think of the swimmer who had swum more than twenty kilometres towards the north-west while escaping and at midnight had clung onto a navigation buoy with a gas-powered light that gave off enough heat to protect him from hypothermia. Cavallo had told him the story along with the man’s name, Mittelbauer or Mitbauer. In the morning, when Mitbauer wanted to continue swimming and cover the remaining kilometres, a large ferry from Lübeck called Nordland came by. From the railing, which towered as high as a house over the swimmer’s head, the captain asked the refugee if he should take him onboard for a stretch.

  ‘What do you think the swimmer answered, Ed?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why not. He said, why not.’

  The swimmer’s answer pleased Ed beyond measure. ‘Why not’ was an elegant way of saying yes in which possible reasons for a no had been considered. Why not. Cavallo’s refugee stories had a different tone than Kruso’s. His were good, satisfying stories.

  Ed looked out at the terrace one more time and realised that no more ships would pass by for Krombach. The white cardigan was the end of the line. His last buoy.

  On the evening before the day off, Ed was completely exhausted. Once again, he had had to pitch in at the bar and so still had some dishes to wash after the end of his shift — ‘bulldozing the dirt’ was what Rick called it. The bits of food on the plates were hard as rock, and the coffee stains seemed scorched onto the cups. Immediately after work, he lay down in his bed. His wet, dirt-encrusted cotton shirt gave off a nauseating smell. After Mona left, no laundry had been done. There was a humming in his head and a thundering in his ears. He left his room again, went down the Klausner’s stairs on the bluff. He had not been down to the sea in days.

  On his way back, he felt faint. ‘October, and the last honeyed pear / has enough weight to fall.’ With his fatigue, the verse hoard had returned, noticeably quiet and, how could he put it, sympathetic. They no longer dominated him. Climbing the stairs, he thought he would fall backwards into the sea. He felt a pleasurable heaviness in his head and a suddenly alluring faintness, flashing with the remains of his old, long-overcome temptation to let himself fall. He looked around. A silver goblet lay on the water, its base reaching all the way to shore. A black column supported the moon.

  Ed walked around the Klausner in a wide arc, and entered the dishwashing station from the courtyard. He left the kitchen light off. Viola, who was playing a Handel concerto, was enough for him to orient himself. He took an onion from the refrigerator and scraped the remains in the potato pan into a small, greasy pile. Then he sat on the chair under the radio. And there, leaning against the refrigerator with the frying pan on his lap, he finally fell asleep.

  WEST GERMAN RADIO

  26 September. It is now seven minutes to midnight. Viola brought the coming day’s program like a fairytale. The narrator’s soft bass only squeaked a little at first, but then it scraped noticeably on the bottom of things. Every word seemed to have the same value for him. Every sentence was spoken as if with numb and at the same time paternally soft lips. Ed listened and let the voice soak into him. He dreamed of the time when he was a child and had tried to make contact with extraterrestrials. He had set the portable radio on the desk in his bedroom. He had turned on the short-wave receiver and searched the ether, millimetre by millimetre, with the white tuning button between his fingers until the signal sounded. That is our program preview. West German Radio. To close the day, the national anthem. At twelve a.m., we will return to the air with — the news. Now and then, the extraterrestrials’ broadcast fell silent, which Ed took as a request: ‘Hello, hello, I am here, please come. I live on planet earth in Gera-Langenberg. Charlottenburgweg 24. German Democratic Republic. Can you hear me? Please come. Over.’

  The national anthem was unspeakably beautiful, and called up the forbidden as if in celebration, the old lyrics, sick with longing, about Deutschland über alles. The music and lyrics seemed indissociable. He thought the word: indissociable. Dr Z. had spoken about the anthem in his seminar. The way the poet August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben had sat on an island, then in English possession, and from that island in the north (sick with longing) had looked on his sundered land. Twelve a.m., midnight. West German radio — the news. According to the Head of State and General Secretary of the Communist Party Gorbachev, perestroika in the USSR can no longer be called a revolution from above. Offering simple solutions for enormous problems would be to deceive the people. Discipline is now more important than ever. It wasn’t easy to undo the snaps, but eventually Ed managed to free the transistor’s small wooden case from the stiff leather sheath. He could whisper into the receiver more easily: ‘Hello, hello, where are you? When are you coming? Over.’ His lips brushed against the metal loudspeaker cover and left behind a moist imprint. It made his lips tingle. The extraterrestrials had begun their broadcast again …

  Ed slept through the news, the weather forecast, the traffic report, and most of Rock Time, during which they played music by Jimi Hendrix. Dozing, he heard ‘Hey Joe’ recorded live — the guitars accompanied a kind of squawking, as if from crows, seagulls, or chainsaws. ‘Hello, hello, what is your planet called? In case you need a human being, I’m always alone in my room at night. Over.’ He had opened his window for the extraterrestrials even before making contact although it was already November, and the cold air blew over his neck as he alternately pressed his ear and his lips on the cool metal of the loudspeaker cover. The strangest part of broadcasting: his own voice. Its whispering between his lips, the hissing, the humming in his head, the grousing between his eyes, and above all the strangeness of its sound. As if it were stirring deep below, at the bottom of his own voice, an unknown, all-powerful being, something that could only be stopped by another constant whisper. It was the sound of death — that’s what he would call it later.

  He slept through the one o’clock news, the weather forecast, an announcement by the Hamburg marine weather service, and an emergency call from the General German Automobile Club. He slept through the second hour of the Rock Time show, in which they played folk music, including the song ‘Some People Say Go Away, Some People Say Stay’ by Melanie. Then a kind of interval signal, seven clear notes as soft as a music box melody used to lull children to sleep. He slept through the ARD night concert and the sentence spoken in a kind of night-blind voice: We greet all listeners of our regional channels.r />
  The extraterrestrials had fallen silent, and so Ed had begun fiddling with the telescoping chrome antenna. Since that didn’t do any good, he stood up and paced back and forth around his room holding the radio on his shoulder: ‘Hello, hello. I can’t hear you anymore. Please answer! Over.’ He had climbed onto his desk and was waving the radio in the air with outstretched arms. It couldn’t be a problem with the batteries. ‘Where are you? What happened? Hello, please answer! Over!’

  Ed woke and took a gulp of the coffee liqueur he had brought to his seat under the radio. Then he slept through the opera concert, which began with the overture ‘Dawn over the Moscow River’ by Modest Mussorgsky, then a Monteverdi madrigal for eight voices. Shortly before five o’clock, the marvellous music box’s seven notes sounded again. It was the call sign. Or the extraterrestrials, three times in a row. He dozed through the press review. Now and then, Irish music. The snow line had fallen by 1,500 metres. Those who want to get out no longer believe the leaders.

  THE SEVEN SAMURAI

  On the seventh of October, Krombach announced his resignation. His speech was short, more of an organisational talk, a kind of final report. The manager had been making his preparations all afternoon. He had taken over the kitchen and hurried back and forth across the courtyard. Despite the national holiday, the coachman Mäcki had brought eels from the harbour, a few special wines, and two cases of Staropramen beer that had come to the island on the tugboat.

  Mäcki’s cart stood in the courtyard until evening. Ed went down to greet his bear-horse. It seemed to him to have come from some distant past. He brushed his fingertips over the horse’s smooth coat between its eyes, and it jerked its head in the air. Ed remained standing for a while, waiting for his thoughts to come. Instead, it began to rain, and he went back in the house. The weather was gradually turning cold. The heating in his room did not work.

  At the agreed-upon time, they sat only as a threesome at the table. At some point, Krombach raised his hands, and they started eating. Rolf and Chris had hinted they’d rather go to the Hitthim, to the yearly ‘Republic Dance’, which Ed did not pass on to Krombach. The eel was good as far as he could tell. There were also potatoes, Russian caviar, and later some kinds of cheese that he didn’t recognise. Kruso poured the wine; they drank quickly and in long drafts.

  Krombach told them that he had abruptly cancelled the last round of holiday-makers, ‘rescinded, you might say, because of severe staff shortages’. The parent company of the VEB Smelters and Semi-fabricators in Niederschöneweide had immediately relieved him of his position and initiated an investigation. The Director of Hospitality had outdone herself on the telephone. ‘Criminal’ was the mildest of her accusations. She went above and beyond in expressing her conviction (in fact, she downright screamed her conviction, Krombach told them, caressing his bald head with his fingertips) that he had always been swindler, a double-entry bookkeeper who bartered goods and illegal accommodation, in short, a saboteur of socialism, and therefore the whole affair hardly surprised her, didn’t surprise her at all, in fact, no one was at all surprised, and so on. In the end, the Director of Hospitality asked him how he was planning on answering to the seven workers and their families, all in all twenty-four citizens of this country, who had been waiting for their holiday spots for years and had worked hard for them for years, if not decades, and had distinguished themselves — or, and this was her last question, did he happen to have a few other islands in his vest pocket?

  The vest pocket fits, Ed thought. He was sure that Krombach had worn vests during his time in the palace …

  ‘Other islands!’ Kruso’s voice was almost shrill. ‘What did you answer, Werner?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve now been summoned to Berlin. On top of that, the Director of Hospitality called for an audit commission, accompanied by the forces of law, who are probably already on their way.’ He poured another glass and raised it. His hand was trembling, but it didn’t seem to bother him. It didn’t embarrass him.

  ‘So then. I’d just like to say that I don’t have the slightest intention of’ — he took a deep breath — ‘answering to these seven, to these seven workers, to these’ — he searched for a word that would be big enough, at least for a moment, to encompass his bitterness — ‘these seven samurais from Schweineöde.’ Schweineöde was what Kruso called Schöneweide when he had been drinking and started in on the parent company in Berlin. He himself had only been a leaseholder, leaseholder of the dream of one day owning the Klausner, the ark, in another era, in a late life. ‘And I don’t see any reason not to share this with you, one on one, in this group — more or less.’ He made an expansive gesture, as if they were all still at the table, his entire crew, the sworn community. ‘Unlike some others who, how to put it, jumped ship without a word, right?’

  He threw back the contents of his glass. A short silence fell. Krombach was breathing heavily, then he had to burp, and immediately began singing. Very soft at first; it was more of a hum.

  ‘Out on the breakwater, where the old lighthouse stands …’

  They joined in.

  The tablecloth blinded Ed. The sight of the leftover food was making him nauseous. He squinted and saw tears running down the face of the manager of the company vacation home.

  ‘Out on the breakwater, they looked over the wide, wide sea, out on the breakwater, their hearts heavy with longing, out on the breakwater …’

  By the end of the evening, Krombach was completely drunk. As was Kruso, who sat as if he’d been turned to stone on Chef Mike’s chair, on the other end of the table, at least twenty nautical miles away. And Ed, too, who bobbed up and down in the stream of events and had to listen onerously for the meaning of things but was no longer able to grasp their meaning.

  AUTUMN, AUTUMN

  Day was dawning when Ed climbed down into the Black Hole to light the furnace, and it had hardly got any lighter when he climbed out again. A raft of small fires floated towards him from the bar room. He rubbed his eyes to chase away the camel that should appear any moment, but it wasn’t his dream. In the middle of the personnel table, there was a cake with plain white candles. The cake looked like it had been blown up. The candles were much too large. In the crumbled cake, they looked like sticks of fresh dynamite, ready to explode any minute.

  ‘Thirty-five, my friend, you don’t need to count. No one here needs to!’ Ed noticed the table had been set for everyone. Plates, cups, glasses, and cutlery for twelve people. He saw Sonya’s photograph, like a silent offering, a small grave at the head of the table. It was a place lovingly set by parents at a breakfast table in anticipation of the child who would come out of his room at any moment and pad into the room, still drowsy and in the blessed certainty that he stood in the middle of a warm, fundamentally good world. To the left and right of the photograph was a thirteenth place setting — knife and fork, surrounded by candles. Ed saw the light on Sonya’s forehead: it was his photograph. Kruso stretched his arm out to Ed, but didn’t reach him. Instead, he waved it impatiently about. The dynamite started to flicker.

  ‘You have to blow them out, Ed!’

  ‘The birthday child blows out the candles.’ He said it quickly, without thinking. Maybe simply because it was his picture, his own little dead person.

  ‘Blow them out, dammit!’

  ‘I mean, they’re not mine to blow out, Losh.’

  ‘So then. So then, Sir Edgar … The birthday child isn’t here just now, she is — still on her way, out there somewhere!’ He waved his arm at the sea. ‘That’s why she can’t come today, get it? Is that enough for you?’ Kruso’s cheeks were grey, leaden. ‘Strictly speaking, it’s the nineteenth time she has missed her birthday. And strictly speaking, today she became older than her mother ever did, rather strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Losh.’

  Ed had an idea, but he was also worried.

  ‘Let’s do it together, Lo
sh, I mean the two of us, like — her brothers.’

  Kruso stared at him and muttered something angrily in Russian without bothering to articulate it — rather, he spat it out. Ed wondered how he had managed to bring the plates and glasses to the table in one piece and set up the candles. Losh’s face was blank, but then, as if he finally got it, the corners of his mouth tightened.

  ‘The-two-of-us!’

  Ed lowered his head.

  ‘Besides, there’s no one else here,’ Kruso prattled, ‘all gone, Ed, gone, gone, gone! — even though there’s champagne for breakfast, Soviet champagne with Kirsch-Whisky.’ He poured schnapps into his half-full champagne glass. Ed was still expecting Krombach to come out of his cubbyhole or Chef Mike to show up at the table, a sweat-soaked supply list in hand — he wished they would.

  ‘To Sonya, Solnyschka, Sofiya, to Sonya Valentina Krusowitsch, thirty-five years old! Long may she live, long … Dammit, Ed, can you imagine, I sang that, me, Ed, her tiny little brother?’

  ‘To Sonya,’ Ed replied, and raised his glass. He thought of G. Of the day they found Matthew, still blind, his fur still sticky.

  The movement of their heads towards the table, suddenly energetic, hungry, lips pursed — as if they were both trying to kiss the photograph at the same time. Ed almost forgot himself in the process; he blew, sputtered, breathed in smoke.

  ‘You’ll stay, little brother, right? You’ll-be-good-and-wait-for-me-right-here!’

  Kruso’s head swung drunkenly in explanation of why it would be absolutely necessary.