Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics)

by Unknown

  One time somebody cornered the market: Mr Woolf from New York, who, having suffered a terrible death after reading a popular novel that ended badly, came back to life, after sensing a fabulous business opportunity, and bought up – at the time, I think, he had amassed a total of 7,000 years – but was subsequently encircled by competitors and had to dump his stock. A day dropped to five cents, and people slacked off, what a damn shame. The theatres opened for business, well-heeled gentlemen started playing soccer and you could once again see members of the middle class idling, free and easy, on their doorstep in the glimmer of the setting sun, dreamily picking their noses …

  But the time of plenty passed; a month rose to a good eighty dollars, and everything returned to the way things were before.

  That’s how things stood when a curious bit of news was disseminated around the world. Near Munich, it was said, there lived a man who didn’t even save a second! Can you imagine? He was a medical doctor by the name of Bruck. Dr Bruck …

  Some wealthy individuals – for the others had no time – resolved to see this strange specimen of humanity for themselves. Indeed, as they approached his modest residence, they spied a man with a goatee smoking a pipe, a long pipe, on the porcelain bowl of which – you could see it clearly – a flowery wreath was painted with angels holding up the garland edges … The man puffed contentedly and blew little clouds of smoke in the warm summer air, in which, like light blue gauze veils, they slowly drifted upwards … And then this odd individual cheerfully followed their rise, and when one cloud vanished he sent another one after it, and may well have amused himself with this cloud game a good long time. And what’s more: he relit the pipe every time it went out and refused to burn, three times in a row. Then it burned. Wasn’t he a sight? … So it seemed.

  For when, so as not to waste much time, the wealthy Munich wholesale butcher Mauermeier hastily thrust himself into the man’s field of vision, the latter responded thusly: ‘How do you do!’ he said and chewed right contentedly on the mouthpiece of his glowing pipe. And before Mauermeier had rightly recovered from the shock, the doctor continued: ‘What would you say to a little digestive stroll? Look what a lovely green is the waving grass, over which the wind wafts, and the heights over there, up which I propose to climb, are already a diaphanous blue, which bodes well for tomorrow’s weather.’

  Whereupon Mauermeier took the time – since that’s what it was there for, and he could afford it, thank God! – he took the time to blurt out: ‘They ought’a lock you up, fella, for squandering precious time!’

  Whereupon Mauermeier headed off, at a trot, in the direction of the station, so as not to miss the train to Munich, so that he could go right back to saving …

  But the doctor just stood up with a chuckle, reached for his walking stick, his faithful companion on all peregrinations, and crossed the clean, quiet quarter in which he lived, gazed good-naturedly at the wide streets and squat houses and at the little octagonal tower atop the pub. Up there in an octagonal little room with a splendid view of the village and the mountains lived a mad countess, rumour had it, and when the cloud clusters passed through the rain-soaked firmament they brushed by the eight little windows, the oven smoked, and a white-haired lady crept up the winding staircase, muttering to herself, to end a lost life here … the doctor pondered this a moment, and then looked to see if the hospital was still in the same place, then turned to the post office, in front of which an old rattle-trap of a coach minus horses was parked, and then turned to the Rathaus – and, puffing all the while, could not finally withstand the temptation to complete a little poem that touched upon it all: how lovely was that little allotment of life, and how you only get one go of it, and how he, for his part, didn’t give a hoot about all the Mauermeiers and time-savers of this world …

  The Tattooed Portrait

  1941

  Egon Erwin Kisch

  Evenings when the coast was clear, that is, when I no longer had to fear a visit from the night guard, I could slip out of my solitary cell, though I had to remain in the guardhouse. I made my way to the watch-tower, where the prisoners gathered after a day spent behind walls, wood and iron, to see other souls, exchange chit-chat and play cards.

  With the arrival of the lithographer from the regimental orderly room, a lance-corporal under arrest, a new mood took hold in our midst. He heaped curses on ‘Old Pig’s Snout’ who, ‘on account of a mere trifle’, issued the order of his arrest.

  By ‘mere trifle’ the new arrestee was referring to the fact that, thanks to a lithographed regimental command order prepared and issued by his own hand, he had personally promoted a corporal to sergeant. ‘My friend, the man I promoted,’ he said, ‘would have made a ten times better sergeant than anybody picked by that colonel, that “Old Pig’s Snout”.’

  Not only did the lithographer make a stink about the injustice of it, but also about the ingratitude of the colonel: ‘And to think that I did that Pig’s Snout so many favours.’

  ‘You did favours for the colonel?’

  ‘I painted his apartment, drew place cards for his dinner table and enlarged the photograph of the colonel’s wife. Which now hangs framed in their bedroom; and me, I sit here under arrest – there’s fine thanks for you! But when I’m back in my civvies, I’ll salt his snout for him, the ungrateful swine.’

  My fellow prisoners delighted in these outbursts, since it was a superior officer being insulted or threatened. I had once seen him in passing at our swearing-in ceremony. Another time, when I stood guard at the entrance to the barracks, he stormed by disdainfully without acknowledging me and my rifle raised in salute. I was, after all, a lowly private,* and as such, for a professional officer, the lowest form of life. As we learnt at our very first military training lesson, our colonel had risen from the ranks. Serving under Field Marshal Radetsky, the then eighteen-year-old Corporal Ferdinand Knopp had with his battalion shot himself up an entire Italian cavalry patrol in the West Ukrainian stronghold of Unterhausen. For which feat he was awarded the Emperor Ferdinand Medal – not the highest honour, but by far the most sizeable. On account of its size – more or less that of the lid of a kettle – it was later done away with. When Ferdinand Knopp was knighted and the name of that battleground added as honorary title, his heroism lay a good forty years behind him and he had already risen to the rank of Oberst, colonel. An Oberst Knopp von Unterhausen can’t very well be called anything by a lowly enlisted man but ‘Oberste Knopf von Unterhosen’,† a fair approximation of which might be Lord Colonel Long Johns.

  He was perfectly grotesque. Decked out with the sole remaining, kettle-lid-sized medal long since removed from circulation, his entire uniform was likewise anachronistic. He wore his low-brimmed billycock hat in the manner prescribed back in the days of Radetzky, such that, on the one hand, it covered his eyebrows, and on the other hand, the stiff sweat band left off right at the base of the skull. Under this headgear his head looked as if it had been scalped – on top of which, the colonel was profoundly fat and altogether neck-less. His chin descended in steps down to his breast, and his breast continued on without interruption all the way to his belly, the girth of which the stoutest uppermost long-john button could not rein in by so much as a millimetre. But his most noteworthy feature was his nose – not so much the nose itself, for the poor proboscis was essentially blotted out by a fist-sized flabby appendage that blocked its view. The latter growth was bedecked with red-berry-like splodges, so that the sobriquet ‘Pig’s Snout’ which our new fellow prisoner kept hissing through his teeth was by no means precise.

  This fellow, our new prison-mate, never grew tired of mean-mouthing Old Pig’s Snout while playing cards or engaged in the practice of tattooing. He was truly remarkable at this art. With a dash of the pencil he first flung his sketches on paper – an eagle, a pair of crossed dumb bells, a virgin with realistic features, a writhing, hissing snake, various inscriptions, emblems and arrows pointing to one or another body part. With a cobbler’s awl he
pricked each client’s selected sample into the skin, and to colour it in he pressed a barely still liquid trickle of ink out of a tube. The blood that spurted out of these prick wounds, the ink that failed to seep in and the sweat that oozed out of the pores – he wiped it all away in short intervals with an indescribably filthy rag.

  We prisoners surrounded the master and his living canvases, remarking on every dot and line. He was a highly accomplished graphic artist. Though I was disgusted, I must admit, by that rag begrimed with filth, blood and ink. I can’t say for sure if I shuddered, but one of the other onlookers cried out: ‘Look at the rookie, he’s trembling!’ I don’t know if I went white in the face, but another onlooker added: ‘He’s pale as a ghost, poor thing.’

  Everyone turned with scorn, pity and a sense of superiority from the nascent artwork to me. I had to do something to save my honour, the honour of a lowly private, the honour of an intellectual. ‘Nonsense,’ I said, ‘I’m not trembling and I’m not pale. I’m ready to be tattooed on the spot.’

  In part impressed, in part in doubt, somebody said: ‘Big mouth! Let’s see if he’s got the balls.’

  A soldier who had just had himself tattooed cried out self-consciously: ‘He’ll never hold out to the end. It hurts like hell.’

  ‘But it lasts for ever,’ said somebody else.

  ‘Do you really want to have yourself tattooed?’ the lithographer asked.

  ‘Of course,’ I was obliged to reply, ‘I said it and I mean it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He proposed an incised ring on my left middle finger or a tattooed watchband on my wrist. But I didn’t want it to be visible.

  ‘Okay, so I’ll put it on your chest,’ he said, ‘… or better yet, on your back.’

  At this latter remark, an infernal inspiration seemed to light up his look. But since no unauthorized person could possibly see such a tattoo, I gave my consent. We agreed on a harmless still life.

  And he got to work on me. But he didn’t start up at the shoulders or at the collarbone, which surprised me.

  ‘So nobody sees it when you put on your swimming trunks.’

  ‘Sound grounds,’ I said and gave the go-ahead.

  It hurt. I felt the pain of every prick. I bit down hard and repeated to myself: but it lasts for ever. Yet worse than the pain of the pricks, was when the repulsively filthy rag rubbed against my wounds. Even so, I did not let on to my disgust, for the whole gang of jailbirds was gathered in a ring around us.

  ‘Drop your trousers a little,’ said the master.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I drew the fruits, and now comes the bowl to hold them.’

  The onlookers laughed. I couldn’t fathom what could be so funny about a still life.

  ‘That apple looks good enough to bite into,’ somebody said, and again the whole gang burst out laughing.

  ‘Pull your trousers down a little lower,’ added the master.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the grapes are hanging over the edge of the bowl.’

  ‘By that much?’

  ‘I made the bowl too wide, you see. That’s why I have to fill it with more fruit and let the grapes hang over the rim.’

  I pulled my trousers down to my knees, felt the cold sting of the needle and the warm wipe of the rag, and heard first one, then another spectator give off a guffaw, and finally the whole lot split their sides laughing.

  Finally it was over. I pulled on my shirt, hung around another moment or two in the guardroom and then hobbled back to my cell. Sleep was not an option, it hurt too damn much, I could neither lie down nor sit up straight. My axillary gland was swollen, I had a burning fever. But it’ll last for ever, I tried to console myself.

  The next morning I had to go for a medical check-up.

  The barracks sick-bay was run by the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Böhm, an old buddy from way back when. He told me that just last night the girls at the Café Mikado had enquired when I’d be back. Then he asked what ailed me.

  ‘Serves you right!’ he laughed, when he found out. ‘You’ll be howling with pain for at least a week. And if you drink, the pain’ll be worse. Well, go ahead, show me.’ I showed him.

  ‘You filthy swine!’ thundered the Chief Medical Officer Dr Böhm, storm clouds darkening his sunny expression. ‘You swine, you!’ he exploded, whereby, the way he put it, the word ‘swine’ was hardly as injurious as the dagger-like thrust of that little word ‘you’.

  ‘Sergeant!’ he cried out into the adjoining room. ‘A criminal report on Private Kisch on the double!’

  Stunned and bewildered, I dared point out that the Chief Medical Officer had just a moment ago laughed at my tattooing.

  ‘You think I’m a complete idiot? Did you really believe I wouldn’t recognize the subject of that tattoo? Do you think, maybe, I might ruin my career for your sake, make myself an accessory to your crime, punishable according to the military code?’

  I swore, in vain, that I had no idea of what had transpired behind my back, while Chief Medical Officer Dr Böhm dictated the charges, which is how I found out what I was accused of.

  The lithographer, that scoundrel! Now I understood what idea flashed through his brain when he suggested putting the tattoo on my back – on that unseen surface he intended, undisturbed, to slake his thirst for revenge. His revenge on our colonel. Instead of the agreed-upon still life, he slyly and insidiously pricked me with the most malicious caricature, namely a portrait of the colonel, with his head half hidden by the cap, his neck-less corpulence hung with the kettle-lid-sized medal, and his flabby, red-violet berry-bedecked nose.

  But all this did not yet amount to a crime according to the military code. The punishable crime consisted therein that the portrait was painted backwards. The head was turned upside-down and from the mouth an exceedingly long tongue extended over hill and dale, disappearing beyond the horizon. This tongue, then, was the ‘overhanging grape’, for whose sake I had to drop my trousers. That’s why the art connoisseurs split their sides laughing; that’s why Chief Medical Officer Dr Böhm feared being charged as an accessory to a crime, according to the military code, and brought charges against me. Insubordination, insulting a superior officer, the regimental commander to boot, which amounted to outright mutiny.

  That very afternoon I was hauled off before a military tribunal. The commission appointed to establish the facts of the case comprised three officers. One of them, a lieutenant from my company, was a young and amiable fellow – unfortunately, however, honest and naive. No sooner did he cast a glance at the tattoo than he cried out that it was unquestionably the spitting image of our colonel. Even the depiction of Emperor Ferdinand on the medal was a perfect likeness. After having in this way faithfully offered his expert opinion, he happily took his leave.

  Then the next one, a captain, jurist and head of the commission, took a look at the tattoo. He was a sly one, he was, careful not to recognize in a disgusting caricature any likeness to his commanding officer. ‘There’s not a speck of similarity,’ he said, ‘it would be an offence to the colonel to suggest otherwise.’

  The lieutenant who had just testified to the contrary turned pale as a corpse.

  ‘And to see any similarity between that inept depiction on the medal and the wise visage of His Majesty the late Emperor Ferdinand is an outright Crimen lasae majestatis.’

  Trembling with fear, the poor lieutenant listened. He did not catch the hint of irony with which the captain spoke of the wise face of Emperor Ferdinand; Emperor Ferdinand had been notoriously dim-witted and looked just like his tattooed likeness on the medal.

  The major, the third to step forward and offer his expert opinion, was perhaps not very sly by nature. But he was sly enough to grasp why the captain had disputed any similarity between the portrait and the original. Even before donning his pince-nez for closer inspection he declared: ‘There’s not the slightest hint of a likeness. It is sheer impertinence, an insubordination to even speak of likeness.’

>   The lieutenant stood at the wall as if awaiting his execution.

  ‘Imagine comparing that puss, that ugly mug,’ the major cried out, ‘with the face of our colonel! Scandalous! Our colonel is a handsome man, an imposing figure.’ And since such a bare-faced lie seemed to be laying it on a bit too thick, the major made a big to-do of supporting this assertion with closer observation. He leant forward, practically poking his nose so deeply in the tattoo that I felt his hot breath. ‘Our honoured colonel …’ he began again.

  Whereupon the door swung open wide, and in the span of its swing no lesser a personage than the model for the aforementioned tattoo appeared in the flesh. Broad-hipped and mighty, Colonel Knopp von Unterhausen strode in. His eyes flashed beneath the brim of his cap. All leapt to attention, but the colonel hardly took the time to think. ‘Where is the man with the tattoo?’ he asked.

  ‘Colonel, sir,’ the major replied, ‘permit me to remark that there is not the slightest resemblance. Only a malicious or a foolish mind could possibly infer …’

  The colonel waved him off. ‘Where is he, I want to know.’

  The man in question stood still as a statue, the male equivalent of Venus de Milo. But instead of the skimpy gown she tried to hide behind, he attempted to do the same with his dropped trousers.

  ‘About-turn,’ commanded the colonel, and at the precise moment when I’d completed my turn, a din like the sum total of a thunderous boom, the clash of swords and the sound of a cavalry charge rang out in the barracks: ‘It’s me! By God, it’s me! The low-down dirty scoundrel!’

  A long pause followed this outburst. All you could hear was the snorting of a wounded tiger, a pained and angry sputtering. Then he let loose a barrage of salvos against the monstrous reproach of the drawing.

  ‘I served under His Excellency Field Marshal Count von Radetzky,’ he began with pride and pathos, adding in the same breath that never in all his days serving under His Excellency Field Marshal Count von Radetzky had he ever done what the drawing suggested.