The Orphanage

by Hubert Fichte

  — Detlev, you mustn’t make such a comparison. You’re a Protestant. You’re not a Catholic.

  On Monday Alfred said over the mouldy bread :

  — She will lead you astray. Don’t listen to her. Listen to me, because now you’re in the orphanage. You mustn’t say: My mother is as beautiful and as good and as gentle as the Virgin Mary. That’s heresy. What did you do after you had eaten?

  — When the rain stopped we went for a walk by the town wall. Then my mummy showed me her new room. Then we ate goat soup at the veterinary surgeon’s. He said to his housekeeper: This goat soup could revive the dead.

  — And then…

  — Then we ate oatmeal cakes upstairs in mummy’s room. Then my mummy washed me.

  — Washed you again?

  — Yes. She cut my nails too. Then I went to bed. It was only a mattress on the floor. But once a week that’s all right, my mummy said. Then she read me a long fairy tale. Then we drank coffee together again and ate oatmeal cakes. On Saturday afternoon I played my recorder. Then I didn’t want to go back to the orphanage at all. But my mummy was afraid of bringing me back too late. We both ran because she wanted to be on time.

  — Are you frightened of the orphanage?

  — No.

  — Are you frightened of me? You don’t need to be. I’ll protect you. What kind of cake is that — oatmeal cake?

  — My granny sent it from Hamburg. She put the recipe in with it. Instead of flour you use oatmeal.

  — Give me your bread and jam. You had oatmeal cake yesterday.

  — There’s mould on my bread.

  — Mould is good for the digestion. In times like these we mustn’t complain about every little thing.

  Detlev noticed how Alfred pushed out his lower lip until the lower lip began to hang down. Alfred looked at Detlev. Detlev looked away. Detlev pushed the bread and jam over to Alfred.

  Detlev’s mother had waited between the parish church and the orphanage, until he had caught up.

  — Don’t dawdle so.

  Then she wrapped her blue coat around Detlev, pressed Detlev against her, and said into the blue coat :

  — What with all my fears and worries, I didn’t even manage to hug you.

  In the parish church, behind the bench where Sister Silissa knelt, hung another oil painting.

  When instead of the small, hoarse priest, the tall, pale one said mass, Detlev felt as if sand was trickling down his back. He turned round to look at the oil painting. A dark green meadow was painted inside the black moulding of the frame.

  Clouds of incense from the altar blew into the niche where the oil painting hung.

  The meadow was crowded with people. On the horizon they were as small as black lice, sticking to field poppies in big clumps, towards the front the people became larger and larger.

  — It’s called perspective. Leonardo da Vinci invented it. He was Italian, his name is spelt V I N C I.

  — The Italians are our allies.

  — The brave Spanish and the Japanese too. The Japanese aren’t afraid of death. They dive onto enemy targets in their planes.

  The altar lights flickered at the altar boys’ genuflections, at the hurried movements of the tall, pale priest. The people in the picture were only wearing nightshirts. Some were naked. But the ends of the others’ nightshirts fluttered across the impure parts of their bodies. The people in the meadow began to tremble when Detlev turned round to look at the oil painting. They moved their hands, shook their heads, raised their feet. The nightshirts fluttered when the altar lights flickered. When, behind Detlev’s back, the tall, pale priest shouted out the words, and Detlev stared at the picture so as not to jerk round, the painted people jumped into the air at every word, and when the little bells jingled they shook themselves like the neighbour’s dog, when it came running into the summerhouse out of the rain. Sister Silissa smiled at Detlev, nodded and jerked her head several times, to make him understand that he must turn to face the altar again. The tall, pale priest was leaning forward. The small, hoarse priest didn’t wave his arms about. The tall, pale priest carried out the movements jerkily. When he raised the communion cup into the air, Detlev saw the thin arms sticking out of his lace shirt. The skin on the arms was white. Thick tufts of black hair grew out of them. Detlev’s shoulders rocked back and forward. He looked back again: Three women hovered in the pale blue sky above the meadow. They carried staves and wheels and prongs which they wanted to play with. They let redcurrants fall from their hands onto the people in the meadow. The sun and the moon were painted beside the three women. The womens’ bodies were swathed in fluttering clothes full of folds. They didn’t tremble at the tall, pale priest’s bellowing, their robes weren’t blown from side to side by the wind from the watering can organ.

  Once a week Detlev was allowed to walk through the church in a white surplice — from one chapel to the next — with all the other orphanage boys — singing, a stearin candle in his hand.

  He didn’t dare look up. He believed that in the darkness — which began beyond the radiance of the stearin candle — hovered the three women.

  The stearin ran over his hand. Before it could drip down onto the ground it had cooled and congealed.

  The smell rises once again. The wind, which blows across the terrace and catches the hair of the boys and girls, smells of the wet pollen in the town moat, of the fishy meadows flooded by the Salzach. Detlev imagines the smell of the stearin so strongly that he might almost have begun to look for dripping candles on the balcony.

  Detlev doesn’t look round. He’s afraid that his movements will attract the attention of the nuns, who are now standing and waiting, not yet forcing him to interrupt his thoughts. Detlev doesn’t smell the wind.

  The smell of stearin grows stronger.

  The hot stearin ran over his hand. Before the skin began to hurt, it lost its heat, thickened, lost its transparency, became milky then white. Detlev liked to smell it. For a while it was warmer than his skin. Detlev liked to feel it between his fingers, between nail and skin.

  The smell reminded him of his mother, of birthday candles, Christmas candles, of skin that had grown hot lighting candles, of fir tree needles and silver Christmas baubles covered in stearin, of his mother’s hot hair, of a single birthday candle

  — his mother carried him towards it in her arms.

  Finally the stearin became hard and cool. It tightened over the skin, as the bird dropping was now tightening across the skin. Detlev spread his fingers, clenched them into a fist. Detlev pointed his thumb away from his forefinger. Pure white flakes of stearin came away.

  The green traces itch on the skin.

  — When I’m in Hamburg I’ll play with my box of building bricks.

  Detlev sees shiny limewood railings emerge between the boys, the girls, the nuns. He imagines that, on a Friday, when two boys are sitting in the bath tub in their linen cloths, bright shiny building blocks are pushed through the walls to destroy the wash room. He sees the boys running out onto the church square in their wet linen cloths.

  Detlev pushes the room with the bath tubs away. The windows, the cellophane panes fall inwards. The mirrors tumble from the walls. The water slops over the edge. The bath tubs are overturned. Their legs stick up into the air. The bath tubs snap in two. The rust cracks loose.

  Every Sunday his mother washed him again.

  — It’s better if I do. A mother washes her son more thoroughly than a Catholic nun after all.

  She laughed at him and called him a holy Joe when, with her, he wanted to tie a linen cloth around himself.

  — What’s the cloth for?

  — I don’t know. But we have to have it in the orphanage, so that the sisters don’t see anything impure.

  He told his mother that a mosquito had bitten him the week before. Sister Silissa had come, had lifted up his blanket, pushed up his nightshirt and rubbed ointment on the mosquito bite.

  — Now confess it properly.

  — W
hat is there to confess about that? Detlev, just don’t let them drive you mad.

  On Monday morning Alfred asked :

  — What did you do with your mother on Sunday?

  — We walked to Lauterbach to visit friends from Hamburg.

  — Did your mother wash you again first?

  — Yes.

  — How does she do that?

  — You know how. You’ve been washed before too.

  — I’ve forgotten. Just tell me once again.

  — She undresses me and washes me.

  — Completely naked?

  — Yes, yes.

  —That’s impure. Does she kiss you as well?

  — That’s not impure.

  — Does she scratch your back as well?

  — Yes.

  — A lot?

  — Yes.

  — And you’re completely naked the whole time. That’s a great sin, I have to tell you that yet again. But if you give me your bread and jam, no one else will know about your impurity.

  Detlev thinks, that on the following Sunday, while his mother was washing him, he had remembered Steingriff. — I never told mummy that.

  The little wooden house in Steingriff.

  Sepp took him up to the loft. The medals lay hidden beneath the chopped wood. Sometimes they pulled the medals out and held one against their chests.

  — Who could have lost all those medals in the wood? Detlev and Sepp weren’t looking for the medals among the faggots. They climbed over the bicycles leaning against the lavatory wall and up to the attic, where the hay for the rabbits was kept.

  — What we’re going to do now, everyone in Steingriff does. We have to take our clothes off. It’s not impure at all.

  — No.

  — It’s called flucking.

  — They sat opposite one another naked. Detlev saw that Sepp had a mole on his hip. Detlev was shivering.

  — That’s not all. Next time you must bring your little bottles from the shop with you and the pieces of plywood left over from the fretsaw work.

  — Sepp’s two sisters came to fetch wood down below.

  — Now we’ll stick them between the beams and piss on their heads.

  The girls dropped their wood baskets, ran away. The next time Sepp said:

  — We have to stick our pipes into the little bottle and piss as much as we can. Then we have to scratch ourselves with the piece of wood and stick it in behind. That’s what flucking is.

  On Mondays Alfred questioned Detlev. He wanted to know what Detlev and his mother had talked about, where they had gone, what kind of dress his mother had worn under her coat, what they had both eaten, what Detlev had told about the orphanage, what Detlev had thought.

  Alfred remembered every word of Detlev’s previous reports, if Detlev wanted to deny something Alfred caught him out with his own previous story, when Detlev wanted to hold something back, Alfred guessed there was a gap every time and drew the rest out of Detlev. Detlev became afraid of missing out the smallest thing with Alfred. If he had done something together with his mother which he would rather have concealed from Alfred. Detlev didn’t tell Alfred that he had thought of Steingriff while his mother was washing him, because he had never mentioned Steingriff. Alfred couldn’t guess the name of the village. He couldn’t suspect that Detlev and Sepp and the rest of the gang in the wood had found a little bag full of medals, that they hid the little bag in the chopped wood beside the lavatory and only took it out occasionally, that Detlev and Sepp had gone into the little wooden house for yet another reason, Alfred couldn’t draw out of Detlev that with his mother, besides back rubbing, communion, eating cake, Hamburg, the orphanage, he had thought about the flucking in Steingriff.

  Detlev forgot it again, otherwise he would have told Alfred about it without being afraid.

  Detlev had only climbed up to the loft with Sepp three or four times, where the little toy bottles and the round left over pieces of plywood lay scattered in the hay, where Detlev had Sepp looked at one another, naked, and prodded one another with their fingers, with pieces of plywood, with crystal glass.

  Detlev at Saint Joseph’s Fountain. No one on the street. Joseph on his pedestal, black, covered in moss. Under Joseph’s feet water dribbled out of a green tarnished metal pipe in the pedestal. The water collected in a stone basin. It ran out of a hole close to the rim of the basin.

  — The water keeps running every day, every week, every month, every year. It was running before I was even born. It will still be running, when grandma dies, when mummy dies, when I die.

  Detlev began to cry about his own death, about the death of his mother and of his grandmother.

  — Perhaps we’ll all die on the same day. If a bomb falls on Saint Joseph’s Fountain, the water pipe will be blocked or the water will keep running out beside the fountain. Where does the water run to? Does Kriegel in the town hall have to guard the water? Does the Führer have to guard the water of all the fountains in the Greater German Reich? Is all that water not too expensive during a war?

  Detlev went diagonally across the street to the shop with devotional articles: rosaries, black, white, bone coloured, brown, pink rosaries. White altar lights, red candles, black candles, pictures of saints, cellophane pictures, Marys and Josephs. The Christ Child as a baby, the Christ Child at school, the Christ Child as a man above a field, before a wood, on a lake. The Christ Child on the cross.

  Detlev ran quickly away. Detlev went to the back entrance of the town hall. He remained standing by the barred windows and listened, in case a Russian, a Jew, a Pole was being whipped. He heard the clacking of a typewriter.

  Detlev went down to the left to the bakery. It smelt of bakery. There was no smell of bread in the orphanage. It smelt of the Indian cattle in Hagenbeck’s Zoo or it smelt like the smell Detlev imagined when he thought of the Indian cattle. Detlev went to the front entrance of the parish church. The sacristan had locked the big door with the pointed arch. But in the big door Detlev could open a little door which was padded, like the door of his grandmother’s preserves cupboard in the cellar.

  The church interior was deserted, grey, with dusty coloured patches.

  Detlev walked back to the town hall. He looked up at his mother’s window where the geranium was in flower. The lavatory was next door.

  — Mummy goes to the toilet with organ accompaniment.

  — The hall for the dead gauleiter is next to it.

  Detlev walked to the Lenbach Museum.

  — Lenbach Street. Lenbach House. Lenbach postage stamp. Lenbach commemoration.

  Detlev carried the recorder with the cleaner in a cloth case under his arm. He held the recorder book in his hand.

  — The mayor, the veterinary surgeon, the parish priest eat in the Post Hotel. Artistes in town for the variety evenings eat there, as well as the new gauleiter. The wife of the general from Hamburg ate at the Market Hotel.

  Detlev walked across the market place. The swing boat from the last fair was being taken down. He went to the vegetable stall, to the poultry stall, to the café by the arcade. Two signs hung in the café window: Ice Cream. Cream Cakes.

  Detlev walked through the arcade tapping his recorder book against the shop windows. He went to the smithy. It smelt of singed hair, of singed wool.

  His mother had leant too close to the pilot light as she was lighting the gas boiler. His mother’s hair had caught fire. She extinguished the fire on her head with the bath towel. Detlev had cried because he saw his mother burning. A horse was being shod in the smithy. The horn sizzled under the hot iron. The horse didn’t kick out. Detlev mounted the steps to the stationery shop. Black bound books lay in the shop window. Golden letters — like the letters on the orphanage — were impressed on the book covers.

  — Large S. Small C. Small H. Small O. Double T.

  The edges of the pages between the book covers were coloured red.

  — Mummy’s black box, in Heim Way, where cockerels’ feet were boiled.

  N
ext to the chemist’s shop where his mother paid in the orphanage money — in the undertaker’s room the chemist’s wife had lain in front of the orphanage children with a yellow face, among flowers, amidst a smell like that of his grandmother’s compost heap — Detlev looked in the window of the toy shop. German soldiers were advancing across a green mat. Some of them raised a hand grenade in the air. Two at the front held a flag. The folds in the flag looked real. Detlev clearly recognized the blood on the bandages on the heads of the hostile partisans. An Anglo-American parachutist was led away. The brave scout ventured far ahead. An enemy aircraft lay on the ground, destroyed. On the right, the general consulted a staff map. A column of soldiers marched through a burning enemy village. A brave German soldier was ambushed by a cowardly partisan. Several mobile anti-aircraft guns stood ready for action. Mortars and mine throwers were being camouflaged. A dog from a medical team was barking in front of the dressing station. It had a red tongue.

  Behind the tanks, the field kitchen, the trenches, the camouflaged railway tunnels, the toy shop owner had arranged cranes made of Meccano parts, aeroplanes, biplanes, dive bombers made of perforated iron ribs, which were held together by small nuts and screws — as well as trees and people made of iron parts, an elephant and a duck.

  Detlev crossed the high street and walked down the left hand side as far as the scaffolding against the Church of Our Lady. The holes in the two towers had not yet been walled up again. A week ago, prisoners of war, under guard, had brought the bells down from the towers over the scaffolding with ropes and chains. One had toppled over and shattered on the pavement. The bells were to be taken to be melted down in the munitions factory.

  Detlev remembers that in front of the scaffolding he remembered the ringing of Our Lady’s bells, when Sepp and Detlev and his mother came out of the wood.

  Detlev walked past the convent gate to the mesh wire which separated the convent yard from the street. A large round, white circle with a fat red cross had been painted on the roof of the convent, so that enemy aircraft didn’t bomb that part of the building.