by Lutz Seiler
After a while, Ed heard pots clanging in the kitchen and something that sounded like Chef Mike’s wheezing, and, as if in answer, Ed clinked the glasses lightly: Chef-Mike-Kruso and Ed-Ed. Together, they mimicked the Klausner, the last hope of all the freedom-seekers in this land; yes, in the meantime they had come to represent everything about the old life up here on the bluff, where no one came anymore that autumn. Ed rinsed one glass after another as Kruso stood right behind him, bending his head towards him as if he could smell Ed’s thoughts.
‘Are you ready, Ed?’
Ed jumped. He’d almost dropped the glass. ‘Ready?’
‘For the allocation this evening?’
FINAL ALLOCATION
It was already getting dark in the afternoons. Ed looked outside but couldn’t see anything, and he turned on the terrace lights. Kruso raised his hand as if blinded or maybe he had waved at Ed. At first glance, it looked like his head was wired. The rain had thickened his long hair into strange struts that seemed to be supporting his raised head. The upper half of his head gave off a golden glow in the light of the metal lanterns that stood watch over the beer garden.
‘Looks like no one’s coming today.’
Ed felt his obligation, but also that it was important to be considerate. His friend was untouchable. Near and yet untouchable. For a very brief moment (too brief for him to grasp things fully), Ed recognised that it must have always been this way. Kruso was like him. Otherwise, they couldn’t be together like this, near, but each keeping to himself, trapped in the capsule of their lonely, chaotic existences, to which a rare constellation of fate or an all-controlling cosmodrome had granted parallel orbits.
There were three glasses on the table, already half-full of rainwater. Kruso sat very straight, a saint contemplating his place in eternity, Ed thought. With his right hand, Kruso gripped the wine bottle. His left hand rested on his lap. And over everything, a rain so fine that you couldn’t feel it fall, but the air was saturated with it, a cold rain that congealed into a thick mist in the light of the lanterns.
‘Maybe it’d be better to come inside now, right?’
‘Yes, please wait for me inside, Ed.’
‘We could keep an eye on the terrace from the chess table.’
‘If no one’s here now, then no one’s coming.’
‘It’s the beginning of November, Losh.’
‘You don’t know what autumn is like. You were never here in the autumn. The allocations are different in the autumn. Autumn is different.’
‘We could leave the light on. We’ll put Chef Mike’s Stern-Recorder in the ice-cream hatch. You can hear it across the whole island.’
Ed gradually talked himself into his new role. Now he was the one who had to take charge. For a moment, he felt a need to press Kruso’s large, wet head to his chest and to rock him like a child who has hurt himself, to rock him until he was comforted, until his eyes fell shut — everything is OK.
‘Yes, Ed, yes. But give me a moment. You go ahead and I’ll follow, just in case.’
Ed understood he couldn’t accomplish more than that. He thought of one of the umbrellas left behind by the guests, but it seemed inconceivable. An umbrella was absurd. After a while, he went out into the rain again and draped his parka over Kruso’s shoulders, gently and without a word. It was as if he were completing a valuable painting, yes, perhaps that was his real task at Kruso’s side.
The coat turned the rain-soaked man on the terrace momentarily into a kind of abandoned military commander, a general without troops. A hero who was beginning to freeze. Although Ed was deeply worried (a worry that had been constantly deepening since the day Mona and Cavallo left them and started the exodus), he felt a kind of satisfaction or gratification at that moment. Everything he did happened for the sake of this story, as if he alone were responsible for its being told someday.
When Rebhuhn raised his head, the light of the desert sun began to flow along the metal frame of his glasses, a shimmering in all the colours of the rainbow. The Bedouins were pulling their camel over a rough metal frame; Rebhuhn was the team captain. The team captain’s job consisted primarily of cutting open the camel’s neck, which two or three players held as low as possible and stretched tight between the posts of the metal frame. The cutting was an art and was considered a privilege. Rebhuhn was explaining everything: the knife this way, the skin that way, then the cut, like lightning. Essentially, it was a matter of triggering a cramp-like tension in the camel’s body, a contraction, Rebhuhn elucidated, hard and persistent, enough for a firm, even playing field. Rebhuhn bent down under the frame; the Bedouins fell to their knees. They each carried a billiard cue.
FAIRYTALE OF LIFE
In the morning, Kruso was gone. Driven by guilt, Ed roamed through the Dornbusch, but kept returning to the Klausner in the hope of finding his companion there. Because he was rushing, a branch whipped across his face. He was filled with a nameless rage that immediately turned into a sense of helplessness.
The consecrated sleeping spot was covered with leaves, and the outlines of the hollow were hardly visible. Under the leaves lay the mummies in their sleeping bags, castaways, forgotten searchers for freedom, clandestine sleepers who had turned black in their sleep, buried by leaves — these thoughts made Ed nauseous, and he marched quickly on.
The honey library was almost completely destroyed. The books had turned into a shimmering brown swarm of ants, woodlice, and cockroaches. Only a few linen-bound volumes still stood upright, though buckled and decayed. The shelves were a wall of blackened honeycomb. An enormous charred dollhouse. Ed watched the new recipients rushing rapidly back and forth apparently without any plan. They had eaten themselves into a frenzy of sugar and cellulose. Ed stepped closer and recognised the remains of a few volumes by Anton Kuh and Peter Altenberg, Harvest, Gleanings, and Fairytales of Life. A few isolated pages hung out as if they were reaching a hand out to him. Artaud was gnawed clean.
Ed had to calm himself; he wasn’t completely alone in the world. He took the bicycle and rode down to the village. He left the Klausner unlocked, which didn’t bother him. Everything felt different now. Over the door to the parsonage hung a sign with the words ‘The Reformation continues’. Ed stopped and read the notice posted in the parish display case. In an ‘open letter’, the islanders called for a ‘process of renewal’. The undersigned protested against the dilapidation, littering, and overdevelopment of the island.
Santiago hugged Ed. Cheek against cheek. An old black-and-white television had been set up in a corner of the Island Bar. ‘They want to drink, but now they want to see the demonstrations, too.’ Another new addition was a washing machine in the basement that heated water for the dishes. Santiago no longer had to heat water in the cauldron; he was distinctly happy about this. Ed’s question about Kruso surprised the esskay. He brought both hands to his cheeks as if something very bad had happened. It was the gesture the golden-haired girls in the Soviet fairytale movies made when they learned their beloved had been killed by a dragon or turned into an animal.
Ed went through the clandestine quarters. The path to the summer cabin was nowhere to be found, overgrown, covered with sea buckthorn. A few of the hiding places looked ruined. There were food scraps, empty jars, and newspapers left in the entrance to the stone caves between Kloster and Vitte. The smell of excrement reached the path. The small brick house behind the Hauptmann House (room for two people) had been broken into. Two bicycles were leaning against the front of the so-called headquarters in the woods above the harbour. Ed felt a flash of hope, but the shack was empty. All he could see through the smeared window were a few worn chairs and a rough map of the island, drawn in black paint or tar on the wall, its outline strewn with crosses as if it were an island of the dead. Ed realised the crosses marked the clandestine sleeping quarters. Their number was far greater than Ed had suspected or than Kruso had confided in him. The woods were f
illed with cold, unhealthy damp. In the woods, the wreck of an indefinable machine squatted between the trees like the skeleton of a dinosaur, visible from a distance. The garbage had disappeared under the leaves. It smelled of winter.
Finally Ed ran along the beach one more time, heading south. At some point, he just stood still, staring out to sea, the cold roar of the surf filling his ears. The sea — the promise. Every other area seemed to Ed to be exaggerated, maimed, turned grey under domination. He’d always had the feeling that the sea was trying to tell him something, that it held something decisive for him, a solution to his life. There was the abundance of roaring that was its breath, surging, endless, all-encompassing. There was no body, no vessel big enough for this being made of breath, this pneumatic giant. Instead, it contained everything; it gave breath to his thoughts or brought them to a standstill. It rocked him in his sleep and washed around his dreams and shaped them into something that was unfathomable.
Wait here long enough and don’t go anywhere.
Long enough.
This was the place where Sonya left her little brother. Ed realised this and could no longer move, not one centimetre. The place of farewell took possession of him.
Dear Sonya.
Dearest G.
Ed lost her at that moment. The pain, the despair, the self-pity. Immeasurable, irrepressible grief. Edgar, Ede, Ed, to whom all this had happened, now he could be that person. The news had reached him.
Dear Losh.
The observation tower behind Vitte hovered in the fog; the border patrol probably had him in their sights. It was simply inconceivable, the idea of swimming away from here, of going into the water. The place could hardly have changed since then. A run-of-the-mill beach, visible from all sides, a few breakwaters, dunes, a view of the Dornbusch hills to the north. ‘She was a very good swimmer, Ed,’ Kruso had told him.
Ed thought of Island Day. The place where he now stood, as if frozen to the spot, was only a few hundred metres away from the parade ground. It was the place of the little brother looking after his big sister — for a few seconds — then going back to his game.
Wait here long enough and don’t go anywhere.
What should he wait for, long enough? First for his sister, who had swum out to sea while he pushed the warm sand here and there with his plastic shovel. He could only see her head, if it was even she, very small, like a net buoy, a swimmer between the waves. He stood up and walked to the water. He stood without moving, holding his plastic shovel tight against his chest. Should he shout, yell, as loud as he could? Or was he not supposed to right now, long enough?
Ed imagined Sonya swimming out, then the wall of patrol boats, then a ship’s propeller or a shot. Or Sonya, who swam out, pulled by an aqua-scooter — in broad daylight, that was absurd. Rather, Sonya, who walked up the beach to the Dornbusch and stayed hidden until nightfall, next to the inflatable dinghy, between the buckthorn bushes. Everyone knew that this launching place on the tip of the coast lay in the blind spot of the radar that Vosskamp’s people used for surveillance of the sea — an MR-10, Kruso had told him and drawn the measuring system’s radius in the sand.
Eventually, Ed managed to move again. If you went closer to the water, you could hear a great agitation inside the breathing — thundering, aggressive — but underneath was a much higher tone, a gasping, a panting, as if the sea itself were struggling for breath, as if it were on the verge of suffocating … It was the childlike sighs of the dead. Ed couldn’t help such thoughts. He saw René on the pool table, the apparatus René, the stinking machine with missing parts, feet, legs, which were drifting about, rolling, turning, being prepared right here on the bottom of the sea. And he saw Sonya, saw her walking over the waves, completely intact with an emerald on her forehead, the amphibian princess. And he saw Kruso, his brother, untangling the nets of the Vitte fishermen underwater and declaring the fish caught in the net free. Bubbles came from his mouth, and his long black hair seemed to be floating in jelly, and no one could help the fact that Ed broke into tears.
Wait here.
Long enough.
The metal gate at the entrance stood open. In front of the sandstone building below the radiation ward, there was a vice. It had been welded onto a metal rail and held a metal box in its jaws. The metallic green paint on the steel sides was chipped, and the lid was sticking up. At first glance, it looked like the vice was waiting for its master to come and praise it and release the prey from its jaws. Coins gleamed on the cinder-covered ground, and papers were strewn over the path — charts, records, maybe experiment protocols. Ed picked up one of the bundles, heavy with rain. It was all in Russian.
He found identity papers with the emblem of two letters, J and P, combined to form a torch — Young Pioneers. He opened the pass and saw Kruso as a child. A dark hooded anorak with light dots, a bandana, early traces of dark rings under his eyes over his large cheeks, and a furtive, almost fearful look. Next to him, the stamp of the island school and the Young Pioneers’ ten commandments. His picture was the portrait of a child who knew that he would never be good enough for these commandments. It had never occurred to Ed that Kruso must have been a schoolboy on Hiddensee after the move from Russian Military City Number Seven, a Russian boy in a German school. Without a mother, and suddenly without a sister either. Having lost everything he had, and like a remnant in a place that was not a home.
A light drum roll sounded. It came from the metal lid of one of the lanterns; the rain had set in again. Ed was worried about Kruso. He wiped the pass on his chest (Speiche’s sweater) to dry it provisionally. The door to the old transformer house was open, but the tower was empty. The labyrinth of wool blankets had vanished, and the lower floor was completely visible. Around the room, rusted bins were attached to the walls with metal bands like medieval prisoners. Ed called for Kruso. Nothing moved. For a crazed moment, he thought his companion might be locked in one of the barrels — Jonah on his way into the sea. He inspected the barrels. Their markings had rusted away for the most part, only pine trees or skulls and crossbones, with traces of writing in black and red. ‘Pick me up and hurl me into the sea.’
After some time, Rommstedt opened the door, but did not cross the threshold. He didn’t seem to recognise Ed at first, but smiled and did not stop smiling the rest of the time. There was very little light in the hallway, and Ed briefly thought he heard noises — there was someone there, without a doubt. Ed tried to convey in hasty sentences what there was to say about his friend’s disappearance, beginning with the others’ disappearance, or rather, all the others, except for him. He half-turned towards the vice as if it were important for him to include that step in his search. Rommstedt also looked at the vice, but seemed to be looking at the vast, stormy sea beyond as well. Then he asked Ed to give him a moment, and closed the door. A short time later, he opened the door again and invited Ed into the ward.
He looked at Ed with interest, so Ed repeated his question about Kruso. The air in the hallway was stale and smelled of food and old sweat — it stank of Rommstedt’s loneliness. Ed briefly wondered if Rommstedt weren’t also an outcast, like the caretaker in Halle, educated, academic, but out of commission and therefore in despair, deeper than despair.
As on his last visit on the Schwedenhagen, Ed sensed his predisposition for this place. He was tired and his knees were buckling. ‘Do you know, by any chance, where Kruso … ?’ The professor stroked Ed’s head. ‘How are you feeling, Mr Bendler? You’ve healed wonderfully well, haven’t you?’ Ed needed to sit down. He had to rest, for just a moment. Rommstedt dragged a chair forward in a sweeping motion that seemed to extend infinitely into the depths of the ward: a thin, singing scrape along the linoleum that rushed towards Ed through the empty hallway. At the same time, the building’s floor plan turned, and all the rooms within the ward shifted to the sound of an electrical hum … Of course, that’s what it’s built for, Ed reasoned, sluggish and drowsy,
and he therefore wasn’t surprised that the chair coming up behind him and gently pressing against the backs of his knees was in the middle of the laboratory, right in front of the large, blue-grey photographic plates. He could also hear that the hum was coming from the plates. It’s no more than that, Ed thought as if he’d understood what was most important. Once again, he formulated his question about Kruso, his brother, but only in his thoughts because Rommstedt had started speaking.
He listed the previous names of his institute as if they were honorary titles. ‘Institute for Radiation Research, Institute for Radiation Sources, Heinrich Hertz Institute, Central Institute of Electron Physics.’ Clearly the great fire of 1970 was a definite break, combined with the loss of the institute’s own observation tower. In common parlance, however, the building had always been called the Radiation Institute. ‘Beginning with our success in fighting paediatric osseous TB, luminescence research, our invention of energy-saving lighting …’ It was a lecture on the history of his institute, solemn, proud, a lecture about experiments begun (under his direction) decades earlier, ‘you must imagine, everything done with our own materials, certainly no different in the end than with all great research families, just think of Becquerel, Curie, or Röntgen.’ Experiments, Rommstedt emphasised, that could soon be pursued with every resource, at least that’s the way he saw the situation, ‘because we are the people, young man, and we will stay here on this island, won’t we, because we, here, are the people!’
He stroked Ed’s head again, but this time more as if he were testing the rounding of his skull.
‘And so he took you on? With all the rights and obligations?’ The professor touched the blood brother scratches. He spoke softly and calmly.
‘And now you yourself are almost like Alosha, just as bold, as intent, and, yes, driven by longing, isn’t that right? What would you call this last … whatever is at the root of your separation? What you don’t yet possess?’ The professor had placed a hand under Ed’s chin and turned his head into position.