— It’s a martyrdom. They’re holding out the instruments of their martyrdom. That’s not a little toy hammer. Their clothes are red from the blood of a thousand wounds. The blood drips from their hands onto the vision. Nothing was spared them.
— I’m afraid again. In a moment the ground here is going to start quaking again. The sun will fall down to earth and there will be a deep fissure in the road.
— Be still. Don’t shout it out. Come in here under the leaves. They crawled deeper into the spreading bushes. Detlev jammed his head between his knees.
Detlev said :
— Can he hear us?
— He always hears us.
— Can you feel the ground quaking yet?
— Pray for it not to quake.
— Is he there, wherever we are?
— Probably. I don’t know. If he can hear us.
— If he can hear us, he must be there.
— You can’t see him. Don’t talk about it any more. Otherwise he’ll punish us. We’re quite alone here. Apart from Him. No one’s walking along the road. Perhaps he’s walking along the road right now and we can’t see him.
— He can hear you. He’s standing behind you, Anna.
— I’ll run away. I’ll leave you sitting here.
She didn’t stand up. She didn’t move. The leaves of the hazel bush scratched their ears and hands. The dip in the meadow, the empty road shimmered through the foliage.
— You can run away. I’m staying. I’m not frightened any more. He is everywhere. I want to become a saint. He can hear it now. If you don’t want to become a saint he’ll pick you up and fly high in the air with you and let you fall from his claws and you’ll be pierced by a sharp rock.
Anna parted the bushes. The twigs caught her dress. She screamed :
— The devil is coming.
She ran down the hill towards the road. She stopped just before the road. Detlev caught up with her. She held her head to the side and looked up. She tried to bite herself in the hand. She fell down. She lashed out with her arms. A green, black and grey speckled lorry drove past. It had a camouflaged trailer. It drove slowly. The engine hammered and squealed.
Anna stood up again.
— I was so frightened of the thundering lorry. It was coming from the munitions factory and was heavily loaded. Don’t tell anyone that you’ve seen the lorry. Don’t tell that I said there’s a munitions factory. Otherwise we’ll be taken away and executed.
Anna walked slowly. She was tired.
Detlev doesn’t remember holy Mrs Weindeln. He remembers a rusty bicycle, a water pump, a pot with green soap, a large brush.
Mrs Weindeln helped him remove the spots of tar from his jacket.
The coffin stood in front of the altar. When the orphanage children pushed along the benches, the coffin was not far from the first bench — between the first two pillars of the nave, in front of the first altar step.
It wasn’t a coffin. It was a block, as tall as Detlev. Over the block, over the wooden frame, over the cardboard casing a black cloth had been laid. At the corners the folds had been smoothed out and pinned to the altar carpet. The moulding, the bevelling of a coffin were visible under the black cloth. Detlev no longer knows whether a sword, a knight’s cross, a bunch of gentians, bunch of roses lay on the black cloth. Detlev no longer knows where the people in black sat. They sat on an extra bench in front of the coffin, or they sat in the gallery or on the right or on the left in front of the altar or on extra chairs between the benches for the girls and the benches for the boys.
The parish priest was dressed differently from usual. He wore a black, silver embroidered chasuble. The parish priest wore the black, silver embroidered chasuble each time that the extra bench with four or five or six or seven black veiled people stood there, when the block with the black cloth was set up in front of it and the sword and the cap, edelweiss, the bunch of gentians, the roses, the Knight’s Cross, the Iron Cross first or second class lay on it.
At a certain point during the mass there was shooting outside.
— What’s that?
— That’s the gun salute.
— Where does that happen?
— At the town wall.
— How does the man at the cannon know when to shoot? Alfred shrugged his shoulders. Detlev thought of the sacristan. The sacristan ran out of mass and up the church tower with a white flag and waved across to the wall. Then the shot was fired.
Or someone who was standing by the altar signalled to the main door. At the main door someone signalled to the town hall. At the town hall someone signalled to the hotel. Someone from the hotel to the chemist. The chemist passed on the signal to the wall.
— A fallen soldier has earned it.
The faces of the members of the family could not be made out under their veils.
The face of the widow and the face of the mother of the fallen soldier could not be made out under the black veils.
Against the black cloth the white handkerchiefs looked like broken egg shells which his grandfather mixed with the soft boiled potatoes for the hens.
— It’s good, because then the hens will lay beautiful new eggs again.
His grandmother said :
— It’s not good. The hens only get used to eating the egg shells. Then afterwards they only eat their own eggs.
The father, the uncle, the sons were wearing black suits. The widow, the sisters, the daughters wept under black veils. The boys didn’t weep.
— The boys are brave.
— Is the fallen soldier under the cloth?
— It’s a mass for the dead in absentia.
Detlev had believed that the soldier was lying under the cloth, because the widow was weeping and because the parish priest sprinkled holy water on the cloth, on the helmet and the bunch of flowers and the sword, because the organ played and the gun salute was fired.
— The fallen are broken in pieces.
Detlev had believed that after the battle the captain walked across the field looking for the dead and wounded. The dead were put in coffins and, accompanied by sad music, transported home on a carriage drawn by black horses.
— Sometimes all that is left of the brave soldiers who have fallen is a little bit of skin and hair and a button and their service pouch.
Detlev thought that everything — the hands black with blood, the shattered head, the broken limbs — the torn-off head, the broken forehead, the eyes lay next to one another in the coffin under the cloth.
— It’s not a coffin. It’s a dummy.
Detlev thought :
— I would only need to go up to it and lift the cloth and push the coffin lid aside, then the fallen soldier will be lying there and everyone can see him, like the gauleiter in the town hall.
Detlev wanted to know what the dead look like all over their bodies. Detlev wanted to know what the head of a dead person looks like and what the skin and the intestines in the stomach look like. He wanted to know whether it’s true that soldiers are torn in two parts or in four, and that the captain and the medical orderlies sometimes don’t find all the parts again.
It was only a dummy.
The widow, the mother, the daughters had black cloths over their faces. A black cloth lay over the dummy.
Detlev is frightened of finding bones from an earlier war in the ditch between Lokstedt and Eimsbüttel.
The widow, the mother, the daughters wept, as if the dead soldier was lying before them, as if the captain had really collected the pieces and sent them home — not just the cap or the helmet or the sword.
The soldier wasn’t in the church. The soldier no longer lay whole on the field. The soldier was dead. The soldier was gone. The dead soldier was nowhere to be found.
Anna on the balcony. The strokes of her pigtails on either side of her face.
Anna didn’t run after him on the balcony. Anna spoke to Detlev in the washroom, where linen cloths hung over the rims of the bath tubs.
— I
s there something you should tell me, Detlev?
— Is there something you should tell me?
— Did you blabber something to Alfred about the trip to Aichach?
— Not me. And you?
— I didn’t either — not to Alfred.
— Who to then?
— Joachim-Devil asked me whether I had committed a sin on the trip to Aichach.
Not me, I told Joachim-Devil. And Detlev? he asked.
— He didn’t either, I said.
What did Detlev do then, if he didn’t commit a sin?
Detlev said that his father is just as far away as the father of Lord Jesus Christ. He touched himself at the front of his trousers as he was walking. He doubted the holiness of Mrs Weindeln a little.
That’s not so bad at all, said Joachim-Devil. Just tell me a little bit more about the trip to Aichach and especially about Detlev. — I really didn’t want to tell any more. But then Alfred said: What you’re telling us about Detlev is very funny. It makes us laugh. Detlev is a clever boy. — I had to laugh myself, and I said: Detlev said, that if one keeps very still during torment, then one will be allowed to sit beside the Lord God afterwards. — Really, Detlev will become a saint or at least a parish priest. Tell us more. — Detlev told me about the dress in church. He said: You are a saint too, Anna. — Now we know everything, Anna. Now you shall learn the truth. You have been chosen by Providence to avert many mortal sins. Perhaps with your help we will even manage to save Detlev. Detlev is on the path of heresy. At first we pretended that it wasn’t so bad, to keep you talking without any fear. Detlev is lost if he goes on like this. He must be deterred, otherwise the Lord Jesus will let him fall, and he will remain in hell for all eternity. We want to pretend to be the devil one night, so that Detlev sees what he can expect. — I betrayed you Detlev. First I listened to your heretical talk, then I betrayed you, and now I’m betraying again by telling you what Alfred and Joachim-Devil intend to do to you. I am a betrayer. I shall go to hell. I didn’t know my father and my mother. When I get upset, I go into convulsions, and if they hadn’t taken me into the orphanage, I would have been buried long ago. I shall go to hell. As long as I live, the Host of the Holy Communion will strengthen and nourish me, so that when I die, I shall descend to hell all fat and plump and there will be plenty of flesh on me, which the devils can cut from me.
Those were mortal sins that we committed on the way to Aichach. We shall never make that good. Detlev interrupted Anna once during the five minutes that she talked :
— Don’t stare so wildly. Otherwise you’ll have your convulsions again. I didn’t have any evil thoughts on the trip to Aichach. Whatever did I do?
— And I did nothing? I cursed the Holy Name. I said dirty leaf and Lord Jesus Christ in the same breath. You didn’t betray me. I betrayed you, in order to wash myself clean of the anathema. In the hour of my death I shall enter a second hell because I betrayed you. For you there will perhaps be deliverance. Also you’re a Protestant, so it all doesn’t weigh so heavily. You’re not so great a sinner as I. I am afraid. But you shouldn’t be afraid. Alfred and Joachim-Devil want to make the devil appear to you. They say, to keep you out of everlasting hell — in reality only to torment you for fun. No one can save the likes of us from hell. The holy sisters can’t do it, the parish priest can’t. Perhaps not even holy Mrs Weindeln. If anyone can, then only the Pope. Joachim-Devil is going to imitate the voice of the real devil. That should suit him. They’re going to beat on the door and say the devil is nailing together the planks for your coffin. Don’t believe it. Remain silent. They’re going to talk through combs wrapped in cellophane.
Anna advised him to pretend not to know anything. Anna didn’t know her brothers, or her sisters nor her father and her mother. By her betrayal Anna wanted to wash herself clean of the anathema from Aichach.
In order to wash herself clean of the betrayal, she betrayed the plans of Alfred and Joachim-Devil to Detlev. She was afraid of no longer being able to wash herself clean of her sins at all, she was afraid of only dyeing her soul blacker and blacker, like white linen cloths which instead of becoming whiter in the wash only became blacker from being immersed in the water. Perhaps later she would have to go from one hell to the next, as she had been sent from one institution to the next, to escape death, to discharge her sins in all eternity, she said.
Alfred, Odel, Joachim-Devil in the group in front of Detlev on the balcony.
— Joachim-Devil is called Joachim-Devil because through his wickedness he doesn’t get plump. He looks like the devil incarnate under the feet of the Virgin Mary on the cellophane picture ‘Star of the Sea I greet thee’. Joachim-Devil wasn’t big and strong. He ran back and forward between the big strong boys. He never hit Detlev. He didn’t hit anyone else either. He was frightened of being hit. If one of the boys was cross with him, Joachim-Devil looked for someone else to protect him. He watched when the big strong boys had a fight or when they all set upon one boy. He was quicker than the others. He eavesdropped. He passed on what he had heard. Everyone was repelled by him. The big strong boys were afraid of him. He was seldom hit. No one would have accepted a present from him. The nuns pinched his ears. They didn’t give him any sweets.
Odel was stupid. He ran after the others. Not out of fear like Joachim-Devil, but because he didn’t know what to do if left to himself. He didn’t tell tales. He just ran slowly from one to another. He never defended himself. No one attacked him. He was fat. He had red hair. He wet his bed. He wasn’t laughed at because of it. He would not have been angry if he had been laughed at. Once he had a tantrum. Odel grabbed the nearest boy and struck him in the face with a tin plate, so that blood dripped onto his shoes.
The nun said :
— You’re all to blame. Odel is good-natured. Odel doesn’t harm anyone. Why did you have to go too far in provoking him?
For a whole year Odel and Detlev went to school side by side.
Detlev remembers waking up. The air around him was like black glass. He heard the breathing of the others. It sounded as if gigantic thin men were approaching the bed on every side and the glass cracked at each of their steps. Detlev remembers the fear he felt beside Anna in the midday sunshine between the hop poles.
The white moon was sticking to the black church tower. The moon was made of cardboard, the church tower too. The moon shone on the cobblestones. Detlev looked at the church tower. The glass around Detlev grew paler. The church tower became four cornered. The moon turned into heavy black masonry. The moon became more distant than Aichach or Munich. The sky began far beyond the moon. The air between the sky and the moon and the church tower and Detlev’s bed didn’t move. Detlev held his breath. He didn’t turn his neck. He wanted to listen carefully, in case anyone was coming closer behind the walls or behind the moon.
Detlev breathed regularly again.
— Otherwise the others will notice that I’ve woken up.
He didn’t Swallow his saliva. He opened his eyes so wide that, whatever happened, he would have been able to recognize a large shadow or many large eyes in the dormitory. He tried hard not to let his eyelashes quiver.
Detlev heard :
— Are you both ready? I’m ready.
Odel? A dead man? A sister? A devil? Odel. Detlev saw Odel’s lips before him — the drops of spittle as his lips moved. The teeth behind the lips. Sometimes the spittle formed a bubble as he was speaking. He spoke slowly. The bubble burst again. Alfred said :
— Me too.
Joachim-Devil said :
— Me too.
— Let’s start.
Detlev heard Odel climb out of his bed, go to the washroom door, raise one of his slippers and strike the door with it. Detlev heard the rubber sole of the slipper strike the wood. Odel struck regularly. He counted : — One, two — and struck. Odel wanted to strike with the same force each time. Sometimes the blow was uneven and Detlev heard first the edge of the sole strike the wood and immediately afterwards the felt of th
e slipper; sometimes Odel struck the door frame and it gave off a different sound from when he struck the border of the ornamentation in the middle.
Detlev felt himself jump with fright. A vein under his chin throbbed up and down. With each new blow of the slipper the saliva pushed Detlev’s tongue higher. Odel waited. He didn’t strike the door any more.
— Now it’s over. Odel didn’t strike the door with his slipper at all. It was a door banging shut. A piece of tin from the gutter knocking against the wall. No one said: Let’s start. I was dreaming. Someone was talking in his dream. I must go to sleep again. It’s still a long time till morning. I’ll sleep right through. I won’t see Sister Silissa when she comes in to make her round and turn the pages in the prayer book.
Sister Silissa didn’t come. Detlev didn’t fall asleep. He heard the others swallow their saliva, carefully push their hands down under the blanket.
The walls sank down. The windows, the doors flew away. Moonlight speckled their faces. The moonlight was reflected in their eyes. Detlev closed his eyes. Detlev heard Odel go back to his bed and pull out the chamber pot, which was still empty, which rang as it was dragged across the floor, and call into it:
— Detlev.
Odel went to the washroom door with the chamber pot. Joachim-Devil didn’t have a chamber pot under his bed. In a high voice he squeaked :
— Detlev.
Alfred cried into his cupped hands:
— Detlev.
Then the three didn’t cry out any more.
Detlev swallowed the saliva. He couldn’t gulp down all the saliva in one go. He opened his mouth. He coughed and spat out the saliva in long strings over the bed.
— Now I’ve moved. Now they’ve heard me coughing. Now they’ll jump onto my bed.
In Hamburg they lay under the bed too. His mother sat on the edge of Detlev’s bed. Beside her feet in the dark, to the right and to the left, they looked out. Detlev saw their noses, their eyes, their legs.
Detlev saw Alfred’s nose. It swelled up. It grew as large as the rest of his body. It gleamed violet in the moonlight. Thick tufts of hair grew in the nostrils. When Alfred breathed, the tufts began to rattle and clatter and blood dripped down instead of snot. The veins lay on the surface of the nose, one vein next to the other, thick as garden hoses.
The Orphanage Page 6