by Lutz Seiler
In the consultation room, the cabinets were open, and medications and diet powder were spilled on the floor like snow, scattered around the dented metal bowl of a baby scale. The beige steel cabinet with the patients’ files was half-torn from the wall, opening up accounts of all the illness on the island. A battery-powered wall clock lay on the table, as if forgotten, left there unintentionally. Next to it, some empty syringes, a doctor’s bag, and rubber gloves. The second hand on the electric clock made a soft clicking noise but didn’t move anymore.
It had taken Ed no more than ten minutes to get to the doctor’s office by bicycle. He had sped down the Dornbusch, over the concrete path and down the road behind the dunes, against the wind and through the cold of November. The house door was open, the door frame splintered at the height of the lock.
Someone had scribbled ‘QUACK!’ and ‘SHIT COUNTRY!’ in ballpoint pen on the eye chart. Next to it was the rail with the centimetre ruler. The slide was pushed all the way up, as if the last person measured were a giant. Ed saw himself against the wall, the wood slide on his head as he straightened his back as much as he could and tensed the balls of his feet. The result always came too quickly, not as if any care had been taken. Measuring and measuring are two different things, his father had always said. Usually, it was 174 centimetres, sometimes only 173, and only once was it 175, and that’s what was put on his identification papers. Category: medium-height. When the information was recorded, it was left to each person to provide their height and eye colour — no one looked him in the eye in the police registration office and no one measured him. That surprised Ed, and it was the first time the notion of possible holes in the system ever occurred to him.
Ed bridled at the heading, but it was already circling in his mind: silent despair. He saw the words; they were useless. Everything a feeling designated was useless; the generally human was useless — poor material. Medium height and brown eyes, those were the facts. In the light, however, grey-green, like his mother’s. In shade, brown, like his father’s. Ed let himself drop. It was the patient’s chair. In front of him, a cream-coloured metal cabinet and his face reflected in the glass — a look as if he could make himself at home there, just move in to this cabinet and go to sleep.
— No, I don’t know how serious the injuries are.
— He has a high fever, I believe.
— Almost two days, completely drenched.
— I think he hit himself badly.
— Yes, but only a little, really, not much.
— Yes, but not for long, then he came to.
— Yes, I think so. At least, he knew where he was.
— …
— No, nothing particular. Just that he was in the elevator, our old freight elevator, maybe all night long.
— …
— Exactly? A brown ring around a grey-green centre, I’d say — I’m a mixture of my father and mother, you know?
— Hello, Mr Bendler?!
Someone had called his name. Ed went to the window and saw the sanitation inspector slowly coming up the street. He wore the jacket with the many practical pockets. The consultation-room window was right next to the broken-in door that was just now reflected in his photosensitive sunglasses. Rebhuhn cleared his throat softly. A living noise, not intended for anyone in particular, and suddenly Ed felt very close to him, which sucked the strength from his very bones.
‘What was most valuable has already disappeared, Mr Bendler,’ the inspector called in a low voice through the open door. He must have watched Ed’s arrival. Maybe they always see us, day and night, Ed thought, and all evasions are superfluous, as are all the reports.
‘I’m looking for the doctor, Dr …’
‘And I didn’t mean anything other than that, Mr Bendler. Or did you think I held you for one of the looters? Unfortunately, we can’t stop it. There are too many of them, mostly the people next-door. They’re simply faster than we are. When our citizens see their fellow citizens on the street with suitcases and bags, they’ve already got a crowbar in their hands. But a fugitive’s property belongs to the state they’re turning their backs on. Ordinance Number Two, you see, Mr Bendler? That is why I must ask you to come out now. I have to seal the door.’
It was odd that the inspector did not enter the house. And strange that he asked Ed, that he had made a request, not a threat, not an ultimatum. For a moment, Ed thought René was standing behind Rebhuhn, without feet, lightly swaying on his rotten stumps.
‘Did you understand me, Mr Bendler?’
Ed didn’t answer. He was confused. He had left a note for Kruso, next to the little plate, under the photograph, on the stool, next to the bed … He felt faint. He took a step backwards into the consultation room. He was like the child in his hiding place who doesn’t want to be found and feels like he’s moving further and further away from the world.
‘By the way, I’m pleased to hear that the Klausner is still open for business,’ Rebhuhn continued. He was speaking through the open door, his head stuck halfway into the hallway. ‘There are people in this country who stand by their work, by their place in society, they don’t just throw it all in — that’s what I call responsibility, Mr Bendler.’ He had called the sentence out as if he were speaking into a tunnel, clearly unsure how much of it would reach the listener.
Ed remained silent.
‘This doctor, on the other hand, the so-called island doctor is long gone — so much for the Hippocratic oath! Still, your wounds have healed, healed very well, haven’t they, Mr Bendler?’
He remembered one of Viola’s reports in the days before she fell silent. A good doctor doesn’t desert his patients, an unforgivable violation of basic humanity, and so on — and with it, the voice of the health minister and Viola’s commentary, which he had forgotten, as he had the title of the broadcast, maybe Midnight Update or Day by Day or Europe Today?
‘The border with our Czechoslovakian friends has been reopened for the past few days, an important sign of trust. But you know that already, of course. Now everyone can leave, from now on everyone — is that not a joke? Are you listening to me, Mr Bendler?’
The inspector’s situation was gradually becoming clear to Ed. But what kept Rebhuhn from entering the doctor’s office?
‘That’s why I’m glad, really glad, to see that you’re still here,’ Rebhuhn called. ‘You and our friend Krusowitsch. You’re busy with poems, we’re aware of that — and maybe that’s what this is about, who knows? We can’t exclude it, right? More than a few have created their works on this island, big names, God knows. I’ll just mention Lummitsch, Cibulka, Pludra, and Gerhart Hauptmann, of course, as well as Joachim Ringelnatz, great minds of bygone eras, representatives of bourgeois humanism. Have you thought of publishing, Mr Bendler? A candidate for the writers’ guild — how does that sound to you? We have to stick together now, we men of the typewriter, we typewriters!’
Rebhuhn cautiously squeezed through the doorway and made his way past the consultation room into the living room, which for Ed, at least for the most part of his confused awareness, was still something like home, like his parents’ living room: the dark gleam of the veneer, the yellow-brown carpet, the daily vacuuming around the stove, the small galaxy of scorch marks, later hidden under an oven tray — all at once, it all seemed worthless.
‘Your other colleague, on the contrary, that ice-cream man, was stupid, very stupid! First the nonsense with the beating, and then he just couldn’t wait, and his escape …’
‘What escape?’ Ed burst out. He had almost shouted — in any case, he had held his peace too long. His question was aimed from the hallway at the inspector’s back, and Rebhuhn flinched as if he’d been hit, and threw his hands into the air. Perhaps it was this gesture, overblown, hysterical — suddenly Ed felt hatred, a hatred that seemed to have been stored up for just this moment.
‘What escape?’ Ed repea
ted, slowly approaching the inspector.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon, it’s nerves, just nerves.’
The inspector took a step towards Ed.
‘What I also wanted to tell you …’ He tried to take Ed by the elbow, ‘I am authorised to inform you that a rubber dinghy was found, down near Gellen. The usual border violation, I’d say, and a terrible craft … A plastic milk jug was stuck in the bow with personal effects, some money, letters of reference, no ID, but the photo — his partner for all I know …’ He paused to reflect. ‘Everything was secured, Mr Bendler, and the suspicion that had fallen on you for a time …’
‘Listen to me, Rebhuhn. My … colleague, Alexander Krusowitsch, is ill. He urgently needs care, immediate care, a doctor, a … He’s injured.’
The word ‘injured’ — it was as if Ed had spat out some of the mixture of soap and rot that coated the inside of his mouth like fur and kept him from speaking freely. He had the feeling he had made some animal noise.
Rebhuhn turned away as if disappointed. With a half-pirouette, he sank onto a faux-leather chair and sighed audibly. A gust of wind whistled against the windowpanes. The storm blew unchecked over the narrow island, as if it had to be swept clean before the final downfall. Heavy as a stage curtain, the drapes behind the sitting-room suite billowed. Ed felt the wind on his face, and noticed that one of the windows was broken.
‘Oh-ho! Our friend is sick.’ The inspector pressed his fingers tips together to form a small pointed roof.
‘Not your friend,’ echoed from Ed’s felt-covered mouth. His left hand moved instinctively to the scribbled scars on his right forearm. He momentarily sensed his body’s smouldering outline.
‘It’s completely irrelevant, Mr Bendler, whether or not he once was or still is or if he one day will be or will be again, as I believe, our friend — we who have stayed behind have to stick together, understand? All who are still here, compris?’
The sanitation inspector crossed his legs, as if to anchor permanently his remaining behind. A gust of wind, the broken window — a large piece of glass crashed to the floor and splintered. Ed leapt at Rebhuhn and forced his putrid breath in the man’s face:
‘My friend, my friend, my brother!’
Like a young child, the inspector brought his elbow up to shield his face, and waved the other aimlessly at Ed, who was pressing the man’s head into the faux leather. The photosensitive glasses slipped. A large insect losing his eyes, Ed thought, just a slight pressure and they’ll fall to the ground. For an instant, he saw the inspector’s flattened profile; just a hint of mouth and nose, a face like a giant worn-down fingertip, yellow and grey, like the sandy ground in which Kruso and he had buried the bottles against the western moon on the day of desire.
‘My friend!’ Ed roared again, because shouting felt good. The felt in his mouth had torn and he could finally hear his own voice, and he heard that what he was shouting was true, while the inspector cowered, arms and legs drawn in, contracting to the size of the ridiculous bird he was named after.
The storm had abated and a fine rain was falling. The inspector was in front of him. In single file, they trotted the hundred metres down to the registration office. There was no one else on the street; the village seemed deserted. Even the inspector’s gait emitted a sense of loss: short, choppy steps, as if his feet had been shackled for years.
In his office, Rebhuhn gradually regained his composure. A number of files landed on his desk, over which he ran his hands for a time. Something needed to be sorted or enumerated in the air. ‘We’ll help your friend. We help whenever we possibly can, of course …’ His muttering was like an incantation that allowed him to keep his fear in check, and Ed realised that things were serious for the feeble figure behind the desk, that Rebhuhn was not acting this time.
‘I must ask that you not be surprised, Mr Bendler,’ Rebhuhn began, ‘we will help your friend, we can help him.’
Still standing, he dialled the number. Ed stared at the bent index finger that repeatedly missed the dial. ‘Please don’t be surprised, it’s the quickest …’ The connection went through. The inspector snapped to attention, his voice immediately became strong and confident and he continued speaking in Russian. He spoke in short, monotone sentences as if he were giving a report that had probably been expected. He asked only one question, and the answer was just as short and restricted. Each of his words evinced respect and readiness to subordinate himself.
Ed understood no more than two or three phrases. In all the years of instruction, his vocabulary had hardly increased. Rebhuhn dictated latitude and longitude as was no doubt the usual practice of providing location in the military, then he gave the Klausner’s postal address — it was the first time Ed had heard it. Rebhuhn pronounced the address with a Russian accent. In the end, he was obliged to repeat his name and rank. He spelled it slowly and clearly, but it sounded expressionless, futile, like a final attempt to be someone.
THE TASK OF THE EAST
Kruso slept. It was a kind of fairytale sleep. Ed touched Kruso’s large, unshaven cheek, stroking it with his bent index finger like a father bending over his son’s bed one last time at night. He held the back of his hand against Kruso’s forehead, then put his lips against it, because the back of the hand’s feel is unreliable. A hundred years had passed since the morning.
Ed stood bent over Kruso’s face for a time, and for some reason he closed his eyes. He pictured Rimbaud at the cash register and Karola at the bar; even his predecessor, Speiche, sat with all the others again at the table and asked each in turn about his bag, his glasses, his toothbrush. Unreality had reached a pitch in which it was possible for Ed to be wearing Speiche’s jumper and at the same time to be taking it from the wardrobe and handing it over, as ceremoniously as if it were his final evaluation report, the admission of a nearly immeasurable guilt he had accumulated as successor. ‘Please forgive me, my dear Speiche, I …’
He couldn’t manage to make himself coffee, so he poured boiling water into some coffee liqueur. He drew back the curtains and looked out onto the terrace as if help might arrive there at any moment, a helicopter, perhaps. Or a new Russian MiG, a vertical take-off aircraft that did not require a landing strip, only longitude and latitude coordinates. He tried to drink, but burned his lips.
He went upstairs and started packing a hospital bag. It was cold in Losh’s room. He had forgotten to turn on the heat. The shaving kit was tidy. Ed took some clothes from the wardrobe, which was also neat and tidy. Little piles, black cotton pyramids topped with a pair of socks. Ready for action. No pyjamas, no bathrobe — he would need them. (Immediate disapproval from the head nurse: ‘No pyjamas? Then this.’ A short tunic, open behind, revealing buttocks and back.) Ed stuck most of their revenue in an envelope and placed it in the bottom of the bag. After a while, he fished the envelope back out and wrote his mainland address on it: Wolfstrasse 18, 4020 Halle / Saale. He didn’t know why, he just did it.
‘My folder is safe, isn’t it, Ed?’ Only then did Ed remember the poems. Kruso had mentioned them several times in the past few days. He had entrusted them to Ed. ‘Let’s leave it for now, Ed, until things have calmed down here. Then I’ll put the volume together.’ Forty minutes to the fox’s cave and back — but what if help arrived just then, what if Losh woke up and needed him. There was no room in Ed’s head to think any more about it.
He brought the bag to Krombach’s office and placed it on the foot of the bed. When the impression that something had been irrevocably sealed began to overwhelm him, Ed removed it again and placed it instead on Kruso’s chair at the personnel table. His helplessness was palpable.
Because Kruso was shivering, Ed plugged in the portable heater and slid it under the bed. ‘One after another,’ Ed whispered, and got a crumpled NIVEA inflatable ball from the shed, washed it, and filled it with hot water. He tried not to watch himself as he did so. He tried to see it all practically. Fo
r a moment, Ed recognised how unreal it all was. He saw the crew of a phantom ship stranded on the coast of a ghostly island; castaways, islanders, and esskays, they were all phantasmal.
When he went to slip the half-filled ball under Kruso’s legs, he saw that his feverish friend was clutching something to his stomach under the covers. It was the photograph. It was Sonya.
‘Good, good,’ Ed murmured, ‘you snapped her up, didn’t you?’
He had an idea.
Krombach’s Exlepäng. He took a fresh bottle from the wardrobe, and the packing leaflet fell into his hand.
It’s never too late, but also never too early … Care and nutrition, like all ground that will bear fruit … refreshes and rejuvenates … The name Exlepäng guarantees quality and effectiveness for far longer than half a century. Ed calculated: 2039. Far longer: 2050? That’s what it says, but that’s not what it means, no, surely not.
He gently pried the picture from Kruso’s fingers, which crumpled it even more. He sprinkled a bit of the elixir into his hand and rubbed it into his friend’s hairy chest. ‘Just for the moment, Losh, just for the moment, she’s coming right back. She’ll watch over you. She’s coming back, we know she is. She’s right here on the chair, waiting for you.’ Ed felt the warmth under his hand. Kruso breathed more quickly, his skin became hot, a wave of coughing came, like an avalanche of gravel …
Alarmed, Ed stepped back. It could all be wrong. It could all have the opposite effect. Ed took the photograph from the chair and slipped it back onto Kruso’s stomach.
Only then did he notice: the emptiness on top of the wardrobe. Krombach’s grey hearts were missing. They had stopped beating.