‘Cat got your tongue? Where did you pop up from?’ she said at last, making way for a woman who was carrying bowls full of salad out of the kitchen. ‘Couldn’t you have let us know you were coming?’
The skin on her upper arms was already turning slack and uneven. She moved a potted plant so she could sit on a stool and look her son up and down, from his hair to his boots. For a moment she seemed to like what she saw; she had always found costumes, liveries and uniforms ‘smart’ or ‘dashing’, and she chuckled with amusement, biting the inside of her lip. But then she pressed her fists against her hips and shook her head as she looked around, seeing that there wasn’t a chair free: ‘My, my, my, where on earth are we going to put you? One more mouth to feed . . .’
Someone laughed, causing the sleeping man to give a start and open his swollen eyelids, and Walter, who had been about to walk over to his mother, lowered his arms again. Her gaze was unsteady, avoiding his. Sweat glistened in the wrinkles on her forehead as Walter snorted, smiled, clapped Leni gently on the shoulder and turned to leave. The front door was still open, and the ringing of a tram pulling a trailer full of rubble echoed in the stairwell, the wheels screeching as it took the bend.
Out on the pavement, children were playing with gun cartridges and shrapnel that they had arranged like table settings, and Walter’s sister opened the window, bent over the sill and called after him. But he couldn’t make it out. He jumped onto the platform of the tram and waved.
*
The wheat was almost ripe, the sky blue, the swallows flying very high. An amazing number of cows grazed in the meadows along the Eider, not just black-patched Holsteins but short-horned Nordic Reds as well. The air above the flowers flickered with the wings of insects, new beehives stood beneath the spruce trees in the park, and the weathercock that had once squeaked on the tower of the farmhouse had been replaced by a British flag.
The bus stopped in front of the stables, whose roof was being replaced. The sound of the wooden leggets with which the men were knocking the reeds into shape rang out between the walls, chaff stirred with each footstep they took. The former feed kitchen, with its mildewed walls, had been torn down, and Walter peered through the open door of the smithy. In the forge, beneath a white layer of ash, a handful of coals glowed, and a cut cervelat sausage hung in the chimney hood, but there wasn’t a soul to be seen.
There was scaffolding in front of the farmhouse. The curved pillars of the portico and the coat of arms with the stallion under the sickles had been restored, the blown-out windows re-glazed and the slatted shutters painted green. Hollyhocks, roses and delphiniums blossomed by the doorstep. Walter lifted the heavy knocker and let it fall against the door. Even though he could hear a typewriter clattering somewhere on the first floor, no one responded.
He walked through the shade of the lime tree in the courtyard and stepped into the byre. Several men, probably plumbers, were screwing nickel-coated pipes to the walls and under the ceiling. The big room was empty but there was an animal in the bull’s box, a Belgian Blue with pale eyelashes; with its long, broad back and muscular hips, it must have weighed at least twice as much as ordinary bulls. Bran stuck to its muzzle and it snorted gently when Walter stroked the tuft of hair on its forehead as he asked the workmen about Thamling. Young swallows chirped in the hayloft.
No one knew where the manager was. Walter climbed the new outside steps, which had socks and shirts drying on the railings in the sun, to the milkers’ rooms. It was almost dark in the corridor and he flicked the switch beside the door to no avail; there was no lightbulb in the rusty socket. But then someone started soldering down below – bright blue light flashed through the cracks between the floorboards and Walter could see into the bedrooms, which were now being used as archives and storage. Beside his bed, trunks and cardboard boxes, bedside tables with no drawers, old ewers and a bicycle frame were stacked up to the sloping wall.
The flame from the soldering iron crackled, the cobwebs gave off a silvery shimmer, and for a moment Walter paused outside the den where Fiete had lived, looking at the pictures on the wall. They were clippings from newspapers and magazines: a half-naked dancer, the silhouette of a poet or philosopher with a pigtail, Hamburg harbour at night. Still hanging under the ceiling was the little basket in which Fiete had always hoarded a few apples, safe from the mice; Walter stepped over the threshold.
Old sea-grass mattresses were stacked high in the room and the cupboard in the wall wouldn’t open more than a couple of inches. A smell of camphor and rancid milking grease struck Walter as he reached into the darkness, and he involuntarily closed his eyes. Tinware rattled, a book opened, and Walter felt his friend’s work jumper under his fingertips – the one with the holes in it and the shoulder deformed by a hanger. He pulled it out.
Frau Isbahner’s cat crossed the courtyard, a blue jay flew out of the lime tree. From between the stables, their thick brick walls, there came the sound of an engine, and the freshly planed railing of the outside steps vibrated quietly when Thamling came round the corner on a green painted tractor bearing the words ‘John Deere’. The hay tedder behind it, set at an angle, was about five metres long, the tips of its circular spider’s-leg forks gleaming in the sun. The old man held his hand over his eyes and called, ‘Isn’t that our Ata? Goodness, so you came back safe and sound?’
The air above the bonnet and around the vertical exhaust pipes shimmered; Thamling put the key in the breast pocket of his overall, climbed over the trailer coupling and held out his hand. The airstream had made his eyes run and his white moustache was yellow with nicotine. ‘A bit thinner, but no matter . . . We’ll fatten you up again.’ He looked at the pullover in the crook of Walter’s arm. ‘That’s a dreadful shame about the boy, isn’t it? He always had a bee in his bonnet. And what’s the point of being intelligent if you’re not wise? Come on, I’m starving, let’s grab a bite to eat.’
They walked past the open pigsty, where once again all the boxes seemed to be inhabited. Thamling shut the door in the gable side of the farmhouse and they washed their hands over the sink. Everything in the kitchen looked unchanged, and it was pleasantly cool as it always was in summer. Thamling filled a jug with tap water, set a bottle of Kümmel and two glasses on the table, and fetched a loaf of bread, a piece of ham and a smoked eel from the dining room. After Walter had fetched plates and cutlery from the dresser they sat down and began to eat.
The tall trees let only a little sun into the room, where a spiral of fly paper hung from the ceiling. Not all of them were dead – here and there a leg moved, or a wing, and sometimes a desperate buzzing could be heard. Then it would become silent again, apart from the ticking of the grandfather clock, and the old man smiled mildly when he noticed that Walter kept smelling the food, even the butter, and that he was dabbing up the crumbs with his thumb. Thamling cut up a few of last year’s yellow apples and distributed the pieces on their plates.
He too looked thinner, his eyes lay in shadowy hollows, but his hands were as big as ever. The schnapps glass looked tiny between his fingers, and he drank it down, grunted gently and filled it up again. As he did so he looked into the park, where shorn sheep were grazing and two English officers sat at the stone table under the yew tree. Their caps and their ivory-handled sticks lay beside them on the bench. ‘Hard work beats war, doesn’t it? Whatever you’ve experienced, it’ll stand you for the rest of your life, you’ll see. How old are you now, twenty?’
Walter, whose mouth was full, shook his head, chewing and swallowing, and the old man took out a crushed pack of cigarettes. ‘Just eighteen? The hell with them all!’ The brass pendulum in the corner paused then, and a sudden whirring of cogs – the so-called breath of the clock – was followed by the striking of the hour, twice. ‘Well,’ Thamling added, lighting a Chesterfield, ‘I guess he’s already taken most of them . . .’
The clock ticked on, a lorry drove into the courtyard and stopped by the pigsty. Four soldiers jumped from the cab and the same nu
mber from the jeep with long aerials fastened to its windscreen that then pulled in behind. The men put on gloves and leaned a few planks with nailed-on battens against the back of the flatbed before they disappeared into the old building with the cross-shaped air holes in the wall. Jazz music came from the radio, trumpet notes, and a few moments later they drove a small herd of dappled pigs, their front feet bound, through the doorway. While a few soldiers beat them with pitchforks and cudgels, others pulled them by the ears up the ramp, which was far too steep, and when one of the animals slipped off the dung-smeared wood and dragged one of the soldiers down with it among the heavy bodies, Thamling turned away.
The laughter of the other men was louder than the squealing of the animals, and the old man blew out the smoke and said, ‘I know what I promised you, Walter, and I would love to take you on again straight away. No one was as reliable as you. But I don’t make the decisions here any more. Almost everything we produce is for the Allies now, as you see, and they’re putting in machines for everything. When you’ve got the three hundred and fifty cows that we’ll have next spring, it does make sense. You’d need countless specialists on staff, and we’d be paying out ridiculous sums in wages . . . It’s best to do some serious investing.’
The officers outside flicked through some files, and Walter took a sip of water and said, ‘Three hundred and fifty cows? And all the calves every year? Where are they going to graze here, Herr Thamling? They eat the grass quicker than it can grow.’
The old man nodded sadly. ‘That worried me too, of course. But it’s all going to work differently in future. The cows will just be penned in the byre all year, and they’ll eat silage imported from South Africa. Calving will be done with block and tackle or by Caesarean section, and any idiot could work those modern milking machines. They have these sophisticated vacuum pumps, you see, Walter . . . Not even a prize milker is a match for them. We’re already doing it here, out on the outlying estate.’
Walter tipped back his schnapps, winced and stared straight ahead for a while. Only now did he notice the changes in the kitchen. Beside the radio was a black telephone with a lock in the dial. A fly ran across the table, over the rim of Walter’s plate, and disappeared into the eel’s pointed head; he held his fingers over his glass when Thamling tried to top him up. ‘Well, great,’ he said in a muted voice, ‘then I’ve spent three years learning here for nothing, is that right? All that training for nothing.’ He scratched his chin. ‘I’d be best off going back to the Ruhr. They’re looking for hewers and steelworkers and they don’t pay too badly. A lot of pits have been reopened.’
Thamling nodded, opened the table drawer and took out a piece of paper. ‘No war without milk, they always used to say, remember? Soon they’ll be saying no milk without war. Every farm will go for the throats of every other, and in the end there won’t be any farms left – only factories. But that’ll take a while, son – the smaller operations can’t afford the machines and cooling systems yet. For now, they’re still milking by hand . . . and it’s so much kinder that way. Every week, now, we have to amputate teats. That never happened before.’
He emptied his glass and passed the piece of paper across the table to Walter. ‘Speaking of which . . . here, take a look at this. It’s not the job I promised, but still good,’ he went on. ‘Pauly is an old friend, we were together in the first war, in the field hospital. Great chap, fouled things up nicely for the Food Production Estate. In fact, he breeds trotting horses, real champions, but he also has thirty-five dairy cows and he’s urgently looking for a milking couple. Asked me if I knew anyone, and I told him about you. “If he comes home safe and sound, he’d be perfect,” I said. “He’s conscientious, and so clean they call him Ata, like in the soap advertisement . . .” And so on – I really talked you up. Go and see him straight away, before more refugees or returning soldiers show up and he can afford to pay you even less than he’s offering now! You can take my car.’
Walter went to the window, where there was a bit more light, to read: ‘Fahrenstedt farm near Böklund, 7 Spielkoppel, Telephone number 230’, it said on the piece of paper, and Walter rubbed the back of his neck and said, ‘A milking couple? But I don’t have a wife, you know that.’
The old man got to his feet, screwed shut the schnapps bottle and cleared the dishes into the sink. ‘Then marry one!’ he replied. ‘There are enough women fluttering about. Most of them have a dead husband in their luggage. They’re just waiting for somebody new to scoop them up.’
He cut a big slice off the loaf of bread and wrapped it, along with the last of the ham, in a clean cloth, leaving them on the table for Walter. ‘That little one you had in the winter, what was her name, Lisbeth, Lisa or something, she was good, she milked here with the other women. Cheeky as a monkey and always had a cigarette in her mouth, but faster and more thorough than an apprentice. You should grab her while you can. She’s working as a waitress in Kiel, in one of those navy dives.’
Thamling nodded and opened the door. ‘Come on, then, son, I’ve got to get back to the hay while it’s still warm. Take some of those apples, too. The car is in the stable.’
*
The unpaved road between the fields had been churned up by tanks, and when he looked in the mirror, Walter saw nothing but dust behind the VW’s split rear window. An olive-drab four-wheel-drive Beetle with thick-grooved tyres, the car’s engine clattered like a tractor’s as Walter drove slowly along the Eider. The dark water flowed sluggishly, reflecting the sky and some scattered clouds, and a stork in the grass on the bank arched its neck and clattered the halves of its red beak together.
Walter drove up the hill and through the beech forest, which was less dense there. The remains of broken trees loomed, white and brown, from the shadows. Some trunks were charred, others were in splinters, but ferns were already growing again in the bomb craters. There were workers in blue Wehrmacht twill sitting on the drawbar of a rack wagon, eating their lunch and looking pointedly past Walter. One of them threw a handful of herbs into a pot that was steaming away on a fire. In the grass lay the bloody pelt of a hare.
The light in the lofty avenue made Walter’s hands look pale on the steering wheel; he stopped the Beetle by the edge of the forest and turned off its engine. Between mown meadows in which the hay had already been raked into long bales, the road twisted its way down to the ferry pier. Two women with bicycles were waiting there, watching carpenters working on the half-timbering of a bombed house. The new wood was reddish, amber tears sparkled here and there in the sun; a topping-out wreath of fir twigs was hanging on the roof ridge, streaming with brightly coloured ribbons.
The women wore headscarves knotted at the forehead, and as they chattered and laughed together, clearly about the young workmen, stripped to the waist, the ferry approached from the opposite bank of the canal. Part of the guardrail was missing, the windows of the wheelhouse were broken, and the white walls of the cabin were riddled with bullet holes already rusting at the edges. The engine must have been new, however – it was barely audible – and the bell was different too, smaller, gleaming as if it had been freshly polished. The blue municipal flag, with its silver anemone petals, was once again flying from the mast.
Water rushed up the cobbled approach, the gangplank was lowered, and Ortrud stepped from the wheelhouse and said something to her father, who was turning the winch. Her flaxen hair tied up at the back of her neck, she wore patched work trousers and an outsized man’s jacket with the sleeves rolled up. After she had thrown a loop of rope over the bitt and a motorcyclist had driven ashore, she waved the waiting women on board.
Her father, almost unrecognizable under the frayed brim of his straw hat, was stuffing a pipe as Walter restarted the VW, keeping his foot on the clutch. Her face distorted, Ortrud grabbed at the small of her back with both hands and pressed her pelvis forward like someone in pain. Wind whipped over the hay and blew into her open jacket, and when she shaded her eyes with her fingers and tugged on the bell pul
l again, Walter shifted back into gear. He bit a hangnail from his thumb and waited under the beech trees until the gangplank had been winched up and green water foamed over the ferry’s propeller shaft.
The motorcyclist rolled past him, raised a hand, but Walter didn’t recognize the driver behind his goggles. The air tasted salty and the ribbons fluttered on the topping-out wreath. The pregnant girl in the ship’s cabin drank something from a thermos as she took the wheel; her father lit his pipe, and the ship drifted almost silently, moving on a slant, towards the other side of the canal, where no one was waiting. Only a mailbag was left behind, lying against the bitt, and Walter closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Then he turned and drove off, between the paddocks and meadows full of carefully raked bales, towards Sehestedt, where there was another ferry pier.
*
Only a few buildings on Maklerstrasse still had their roofs intact, the walls topped with old tank tarpaulins or corrugated iron plates. The swastika over the door of the naval mess had been chiselled away from the relief, but its negative could be seen in the light from the setting sun. Walter parked Thamling’s car beside a three-wheel truck full of barrels with English words printed on them. From the open windows of the inn came the smell of fried potatoes with onions and bacon. The men’s laughter had the sound of schnapps.
Almost inaudible in the noise, a one-legged man in a wheelchair was playing the accordion. Walter threw a few coins into his hat and wound his way between the tables and chairs to the long bar, on which there stood a clock mounted on spiral columns. Bowls full of gherkins, pickled eggs and Kiel sprats stood on the buffet table, and the amber-coloured layer of aspic on the fish quivered when the waitresses walked by carrying heavy trays. One of them smiled at Walter, but most of the customers – dockworkers in oily canvas overalls and women in apron dresses – only looked at him and his American uniform out of the corners of their eyes, resentfully, Walter thought. No one stepped aside for him.
To Die in Spring Page 16