The Orphanage

by Hubert Fichte

  — But Siegfried is still standing there completely naked. If he doesn’t get dressed from a sense of shame, he’ll get dressed soon enough when the first planes crash onto the town. He’s big enough to get dressed by himself.

  Siegfried had slept in the orphanage that night. Little Xaver kept on his nightshirt under his woollen trousers. Odel buttoned up his jacket over his nightshirt.

  Siegfried stood naked among the half-dressed boys. He wasn’t even wearing a linen cloth. Detlev looked at Siegfried’s skin from top to bottom. He saw the hair in Siegfried’s arm-pits and the hair in the middle where the impurity began. Sepp in Steingriff had no hair growing there. The impurity hung down longer on Siegfried than it had on Sepp. Siegfried turned round. He bent down. At the back Detlev saw, in the cleft above the legs, a thick black dot.

  — That is the hole. You can’t see your own hole. You should not. It is impure.

  Siegfried said :

  — I’m not going over the church at all. If bombs really do fall, then those shaky walls won’t be any more use to us. My father says they never drop bombs here anyway.

  Sister Appia struck him on the head with her fist.

  — Now you see what can drop on your head. Into your trousers. And over to the church you go with all the rest. You’re a typical only child. Just like someone else here.

  — I’m ready quicker than the rest anyway.

  Mother Superior called from the stairs :

  — The lights must be put out. Otherwise we’ll be the first to be bombed. Lights out, I say, the enemy formations are overhead. We’ll only show them the way with our light. We’re dragging the citizens who are observing the regulations into misfortune along with us. Do you want to be responsible for Bavaria being levelled to the ground?

  — I can’t see anything anymore, Mummy, because everything’s dark, cried little Xaver.

  — Your dear mummy can’t save us any more now. Your mummy is running into the wood now, that’s where it’s safest. They don’t drop any bombs on the wood. The deer and the snails don’t need to be bombed.

  — If there are munitions factories in the woods, they’re strategically important targets.

  — Be quiet, do you know who’s standing behind the wall? Perhaps Kriegel is about, standing behind the wall, ready to take you away.

  — We’ll all be done for without your dear mummy.

  — Only the Holy Mother of God can help us, said Joachim-Devil.

  Odel and Alfred said the Ave.

  — I hope they haven’t brought any dive bombers with them. Then we don’t even need to bother getting dressed.

  The enemy doesn’t have any dive bombers.

  — Damn, I can’t find my boots, damn.

  — Erwin, don’t swear.

  — Sister Appia swore too.

  — Shut up. Don’t swear, I tell you. If Sister Appia dies in tonight’s raid and hasn’t sorted things out with her heavenly bridegroom first, then tomorrow morning she’ll be jumping about in hell’s frying pan.

  — Anna swore. Anna is pulling on her dress now with the other girls in the girls’ dormitory, thought Detlev. Emerging onto the church square :

  The sounds changed. The sound of steps, of arm movements, of the wind, of the crosses knocking to and fro on the nuns’ stomachs. The sounds flew up as far as the moon. Down from the moon, from the stars trickled the sound of a moving tricycle.

  — Be quiet. Keep together. Pray. Don’t talk. The enemy aircraft don’t hear your prayers. God hears them…

  Detlev saw the silently spoken words of the prayers rising upwards — like the howl of the sirens — along the church tower up to the aircraft, which flew through the prayers without paying them any attention. The prayers were cut into pieces by the propellers and the wings, but they came together again behind the aircraft and flew higher, as far as the moon and past the moon, and flew into the great ear of God the Father, on which the stars were fixed like his grandmother’s earrings. Detlev looked up. He saw the black sky and the stars that quivered from side to side.

  He saw the moon which rolled forward across the sky like a lemon ice from the ice tongs in the café. Detlev heard the thin sound of the tricycle, of the enemy aircraft high above. He didn’t see a huge ear. The orphanage children stepped into the shadow of the parish church which the moon cast onto the square. Sister Silissa opened the church tower door. Sister Appia led the way. It smelled of his grandfather’s summer house, of the bran which was mixed with warm potato peelings for the hens, of insect powder, of tulip bulbs. It smelled of the compost heap, where the earthenware pot from the garden lavatory was emptied, where peat, lemon peel, piss, feathers and chickens’ feet were mixed up together.

  When the chemist’s wife lay among the flowers at the undertaker’s, her face all yellow, it smelled of his grandfather’s compost heap. The orphanage children had filed past the dead woman because she and her husband had conferred great benefits on the orphanage. His mother paid the orphanage fees at the chemist’s.

  His mother didn’t like the chemist because he had said that while the war was on, mothers shouldn’t clean their babies’ bottoms with cotton wool.

  When the neighbour’s four-year-old son died in Steingriff, Detlev hadn’t seen the corpse. When Detlev went to school in the morning he saw, through the railings of the cemetery gate, the black mourners and the white child’s coffin, which looked no bigger to him than the box for his mother’s high boots.

  When the butcher’s assistant had committed suicide, the undertaker’s room was covered with black hangings.

  — He has a big blister full of water and blood on each hand. His face is blue. His tongue is hanging out.

  When the gauleiter was laid out he didn’t smell of his grandfather’s compost heap. He smelt of the bread in the orphanage.

  Frieda took Detlev’s hand.

  Frieda is Alfred’s sister. She has promised Detlev the prayer of conversion.

  Sister Silissa pulled the door shut and hooked the chain over a nail. She lit a match. She held a candle against it at an angle. The wick burned. Sister Silissa blew out the match. Close to it her dark hand took on red edges. Drops fell from the ceiling onto their hair and noses, onto their hands. No one prayed anymore. Sister Appia lit a black candle.

  They stood on the rectangular ground floor of the church tower.

  — Stand against the walls. It’s safer and you’ve got something to lean against. It’s safer, Detlev, isn’t it?

  Detlev thought about whether it was safer. In Hamburg one couldn’t stand against the walls. The cellar wasn’t high enough. His grandfather had to stoop. There were garden chairs and camp beds along the walls. The package with the first aid kit and the valerian drops lay on the draining board for the washing. When there were air raids Mrs Selge came with her sister-in-law, her two children and Mr Selge and sat beside his grandfather, his grandmother, his mother, Detlev. Once they had gone to a tall bunker. But no one liked it. Some bombed-out families lived in the tall bunker all the time. The men grumbled from cubicle to cubicle. The children were pushed through the low passageways in prams. The Red Cross ladled out pea soup. A man held out a plate of pea soup for Detlev. He said:

  — It it.

  He laughed, because it was supposed to be a joke. Detlev’s mother pulled him away.

  — It’s bad German. It should be: eat, eat.

  When the concrete bunker rocked back and forward because a bomb had exploded nearby, because a bomb had exploded on the roof of the bunker, everyone was silent. After the raid it was a long time before all the people reached the open air again.

  — I think it’s safer if we stand against the walls.

  — Detlev has been through it all before.

  — We have to sypathize with Detlev.

  Sister Silissa pushed the pearls of the rosary along. White breath rose from mouths. The stones of the tower began to hum. The nuns prayed loudly. Some girls prayed with them. The exhalations of white breath quickened. The nun
s and the orphanage children didn’t pray loudly enough. The humming grew stronger. Detlev felt it with his hands, with his back against the stones. The praying grew quieter. The humming remained. The nuns moved their lips without uttering any sounds. They pushed the rosary pearls along. The children stopped praying. They looked into the flames of the candles which their breath blew about from every side. The humming stopped. The nuns put the rosaries into the folds of their habits.

  — Now it’s over.

  — I thought from the start it wouldn’t last long.

  The first bang had not been loud. The flames of the candles were no more restless because of it. Only when the breathing came faster did the flames flicker back and forward. Detlev felt the twitching in the stones. He looked up into the unplastered vaulting of the church tower. With every bang the vaulting sank down a little further on Detlev. Anna jumped towards the candles in the middle of the room. She wanted to bite herself in the hand. Sister Appia and Mother Superior held Anna’s arms back.

  — I don’t want to burn.

  Saliva sprayed out of Anna’s mouth. She rolled her eyes, so that only the white was left between the lids. Anna tried to tear out her pigtails. Her knees banged together. She quietened down. The nuns let her slide to the ground. Anna fell asleep.

  The bangs outside became neither louder nor fainter. They were repeated at regular intervals.

  — They’re falling on Munich or Donauwörth. That is our deliverance. They won’t bomb Scheyern now. They haven’t got that many bombs with them.

  — You don’t know that. The only person here who can say that is Detlev. He knows all about it from Hamburg. Frieda placed her hand on Detlev’s head. Detlev closed his eyes.

  Detlev closes his eyes.

  The Feldherrnhalle is in Munich.

  When they went on holiday his mother changed trains with him in Munich.

  There’s a church with two towers in Munich.

  The two towers burn.

  In Munich the nuns and the orphanage children burn. The nuns have red dresses and red veils and black faces and black hands. They pop up and down in the flames like the teddy bear his grandfather burned in the potato fire.

  There’s a smell of singed hair. There’s no smell of compost heap nor of orphanage bread. There’s the smell of his mother’s singed hair in the bathroom. She came too close to the flame on the gas stove. There’s the smell of the teddy bear’s hair. His grandmother said:

  — It’s wool. That’s the test. You only need to burn a single thread, then you know.

  The nuns with the red veils fall out of the windows, from the balconies in Munich; like the teddy bear, the children fall zigzag from one burning pea plant to the next.

  The beams bend.

  In Munich all the cellophane pictures bend.

  — The fire produces a great storm.

  The storm lifts the roofs from the houses like a hand.

  The columns of the Feldherrnhalle fall over.

  The triangular gable ends, the windows, the stairs, the balconies fell across the table.

  The teddy bear shrivelled up.

  The teddy bears, the nuns, the orphanage children lie in a long row. A firewood cross lies on each one of them.

  After the battle the captain and the orderly lay the fallen in a long row, before he packs them into coffins to drive them home.

  All are naked. Thick curly hairs grow in the middle of the white bodies.

  The bodies are not white. The hair is burnt like wool. A long row of dolls. Baby dolls. Building blocks are tipped over the dolls. Thousands of dolls, building blocks, teddy bears. The dolls all roll their eyes like Anna. Detlev sees only the whites of their eyes. The dolls have nothing impure between their legs. The dolls are black like the teddy bear or they’re red and green and blue like the wooden figure in the dining room. The arms and legs hang from the bodies on thin rubber bands. His mother had mended Peter with a sewing needle and a rubber band. Arms and legs lie among the crosses and building blocks like charred building blocks. Detlev can no longer count the beams with black and green heads, the dolls without arm beams and leg beams whose heads have been unscrewed.

  Detlev opens his eyes again.

  Detlev opened his eyes again.

  No one says:

  — Detlev, why do you close your eyes for half an hour like a sick hen?

  Detlev closes his eyes. Detlev opens his eyes. Frieda took her hand away from his head. Detlev sank down. The siren pulled him up again.

  — We prayed and that’s why not a single bomb has fallen on Scheyern.

  — In Munich they were just too lazy to pray, weren’t they?

  — Yes.

  — If there were no Feldherrnhalle, if there were no air raid warning, if there were not three devils with the coffin, if there were no trip to Aichach, if he didn’t eat ice with his mother on Sunday, then Munich wouldn’t exist at all, there would be no hazel nut bush, there wouldn’t be any hazel nut bush at all, Anna wouldn’t have had any convulsions, I wouldn’t have seen Sister Appia burn up, I wouldn’t have seen the Christs lying side by side in a long row like baby dolls with broken off arms.

  It’s not over yet. Mother doesn’t appear yet. The orphanage children and the nuns don’t move. Siegfried is missing. The cleaning woman isn’t working in the orphanage today.

  Siegfried played with the orphanage children when his mother came to do the cleaning.

  There was also the fair.

  Detlev didn’t want to miss high mass because of the fair. Detlev was afraid the orphanage children would shout :

  — Detlev is missing high mass because of the fair. That’s how devout he is. He’s a Protestant.

  Detlev’s mother said to him :

  — At ten o’clock I’ll be waiting for you at the back entrance of the town hall.

  Sister Silissa said to Detlev :

  — Keep your eye on me during mass. I’ll give you a signal, so that you don’t get to the fair too late.

  Detlev had got used to the parish church. He had got used to its shadow during the night and to the roof that glittered like lametta in the moonlight, to the tower, to the bright yellow walls of the tower in the sunlight.

  Detlev had got used to the ribs and to the grey colour of the rhubarb stalk vaulting. He wasn’t frightened by the pale face of the tall priest any more, he wasn’t frightened any more if the hoarse priest — after he had been speaking hoarsely for a while — suddenly began to shout. Detlev knew the words and the melodies of the hymns. He knew when to cross himself, he crossed himself with the same dexterity as the Catholics, he knew how often the teacher went to holy communion. Detlev had seen the bishop reading mass.

  — The bishop trips as he walks, said his mother.

  All the benches were full during high mass. Farmers who had come to town for the fair sat on the orphanage children’s benches. The orphanage children had to kneel down on the left, half behind the altar.

  Detlev was afraid of the brown rear-side of the altar. On Fridays, when the orphanage boys walked round behind the altar, singing, with candles in their hands, Detlev looked away, to the other side, at the coloured windows, where the saints, the Virgin Mary, the Lord Jesus with string, earthworms on his face and on his hands were illuminated by the sun.

  Detlev was afraid that bones in boxes were lying around behind the altar, and the heads of saints, that spiders would be spinning webs across the eyes of saints, the eyes hung there in spiders’ webs like marbles in little gauze bags.

  Alfred whispered to Detlev :

  — I heard what you’ve arranged with Sister Silissa. Of course, Sister Silissa doesn’t know what you swore to the three devils. She doesn’t know what awaits you if you’re a hypocrite. You don’t need to take my advice. It’s nothing to do with me. But if you’re looking over at Sister Silissa all through mass, instead of praying — it’s not good. It’s all the same to me. But it’s certainly not good.

  Each time Detlev looked away from the brown back o
f the altar, Alfred whispered:

  — Don’t look at Sister Silissa. Better not. It’s all the same to me. Don’t look.

  Detlev imagined that Sister Silissa would make a signal, that he wouldn’t see it, that his mother would wait and think:

  — Detlev doesn’t want to go to the fair with me. He doesn’t want to eat an ice with me.

  She would go away without him.

  — No, she’s coming right now.

  What if she forgets? If she leaves him standing here with the dropping dirtying his hands? If the train left long ago? If she’s forgotten that he’s waiting here, in his Sunday things for the journey? If she forgets it, just as Frieda had forgotten the prayer of conversion.

  Alfred said :

  — Sister Silissa has nodded to you — despite her devotions. I happened to look up while I was praying. So I caught Sister Silissa’s signal. I don’t want to be the one to stand between your mother and your vow. You must know what you’re doing yourself.

  Detlev stood up.

  — Detlev, you’re exposing yourself to very great danger. Detlev bent his knees in front of the altar.

  — Turn round, Detlev. Or go. It’s all the same to me. Detlev tapped himself on the forehead, on his left shoulder, on his right shoulder, at his navel.

  Between the rings of the bell announcing consecration, his sandals pattered just as they did on the concrete slabs in the garden in front of the house in Hamburg.

  — Just let the devils come. Just let the devils come. Just let the devils come. Just let the devils come. As long as I’m with mummy they won’t do anything to me.

  Detlev did not run faster, faster, faster, faster between the arms, into the soft, flapping coat.

  — Then they’ll tear me back before I’ve got there.

  Detlev walked more slowly with each step. He didn’t breathe more rapidly. His mother came several steps towards him.

  — Just let the devils come.

  Then everything was warm and blue and soft and spinning.

  — She’ll be there right away. Then it will always be warm and blue and soft in her coat.