The Orphanage

by Hubert Fichte

  Someone struck Detlev’s knee.

  — God’s judgement.

  Detlev looks down at his legs. They’re thinner than Odel’s legs — no one can see the nuns’ legs. Detlev’s legs are fatter than Xaver’s legs, standing upright on his stomach.

  — There’s no use in praying any more. Hit him on the nose till it bleeds. It’s too late for that now as well.

  — The Lord God is punishing Detlev.

  — Detlev is seven. Little Xaver is five.

  — Detlev’s already eight now.

  — The Lord God has chosen little Xaver to beat Detlev. Alfred had set the smallest boy on Detlev. Alfred and Shaky and Rosi had praised little Xaver’s every blow. Frieda had been silent. She hadn’t warned Detlev about a single blow, she hadn’t told him of a single clinch.

  — Detlev was always just a Protestant.

  — He only came here from Hamburg, to eat up our bread.

  — Your bread smells of dead gauleiter.

  — Oh, just listen to him.

  — He’ll be taken to the devil’s bunker now as punishment.

  — That’s the death bunker.

  Alfred knew everything that Siegfried and Detlev had agreed. Siegfried had confessed everything.

  — Why did he tell it all? He could hardly stop himself. He even made up things as well.

  The shoe grows larger and larger until it covers the tangle of arms and legs and heads behind Detlev’s eyelids — one small black patent leather shoe on the end of the striped sock on Xaver’s right foot.

  Xaver kicked Detlev in the face.

  Detlev didn’t move. It hurt less than he had expected.

  — The prisoner is being kicked in the face.

  — The criminal kicked the postman with the registered letter in the face.

  — Mummy has Nivea cream.

  — Three days rain. Three days sunshine.

  — Detlev isn’t moving any more. He’s been so beaten for his sins. He doesn’t wipe the sand from his face.

  — Detlev won’t want to tell Sister Silissa anything about his defeat.

  — Detlev will be humble now at last.

  — Detlev is going to accept everything now.

  — I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. My nose didn’t run. I didn’t flail about.

  He became stiff, pushed onto the bottom shelf of the crockery cupboard, like one of his grandmother’s plum tarts. They closed the doors from the outside.

  He stood alone in front of the house in which the cockerel foot soup was cooking. It was evening. Children with lanterns came. His mother didn’t come. She had been wearing the amber necklace when she left.

  Chairs, shoes, tin plates, books, building blocks were thrown against the doors. Beacon flames leapt up with each explosion. Detlev warmed the air between the wooden walls.

  — That’s what it’s like when you die in a cellar. I’m not frightened. I want to go to Hamburg. Because the Anglo-American bombers will soon come to Scheyern and then nothing will be left.

  Sister Silissa opened the doors. Detlev was supposed to crawl out.

  — He likes going in there.

  — It was my own idea to go in there. It’s fun.

  When they wanted to push him in the next time, Peter crawled in instead of Detlev.

  Inside Peter shouted:

  — Youking. Youking.

  In the evening, before going to sleep, he ran around in the dining room with his doll, struck the doll’s head on the table, against the walls.

  Then the others said :

  — Now you have to go in again.

  He went, without them needing to push him, onto the bottom shelf beside the pots. He closed the doors himself from the inside.

  During the time that Peter spent in the orphanage, they forgot Detlev. Peter was taken away. Alfred questioned Detlev:

  — What did your mother do to you? What did you tell her?

  — She didn’t do anything to me. But I told her: I want to leave. I want to leave. I want to leave. Detlev shouted the four words more and more loudly. First he shouted them down at the floor, then they struck Alfred’s face, finally they shot right across the dining room to the girls at the opposite window.

  Now all that remains of the words is a few movements of the lips. The words fill up his whole head. They make the muscles around his head move. They make his jaw move. A few letters are formed by his lips. They aren’t even spoken out loud.

  Detlev thinks:

  — Now Alfred is thinking: Detlev is remembering that he shouted: I want to leave. I want to leave. I want to leave.

  — Now Alfred is afraid of me.

  Frieda called:

  — Are you tormenting Detlev again. You tormented Peter so much that he had to be taken away to an asylum.

  Detlev thinks about Marie in Steingriff. She always wore the same blue dress. It was never dirty. It was never freshly ironed. Perhaps Marie’s mother washed it in the evening and hung it over the stove at night to dry or Marie never dirtied her dress.

  Marie had black straggly hair. No one in Steingriff hit her, no one laughed at her, no one ran behind her. She walked very slowly and at every door she had to think for a long time whether she should go in. She spoke little and slowly and quietly. She lived with her mother in the last house in the village on the main road. Together with her mother she did outwork. They packed little tubes full of ointment into boxes. The boxes were sent to the front. The ointment hardened on wounds. It disinfected the wounds and sealed them from dust and rain. Detlev opened a tube. The ointment smelled like all-purpose adhesive. Everything turned black in front of Detlev, then he saw white plum trees. The ointment was fluid and clear. The boys in the village stuck the paper parts of their model planes with all-purpose glue. Detlev wished he could have cut-out sheets and adhesive and thin wood, so that he could build a Stuka or a Fieseler-Storch. He would have known exactly what an aeroplane looks like inside. Detlev saw himself flying up in a Stuka, flying down, engines off, bombs away, bombs away.

  — I don’t want anything like that in the house. If they find that in our house, they’ll end up saying we’ve been spies. Once a fortnight a lorry came to Marie’s mother and took away the packed tubes. Boxes of unlabelled and unpacked tubes were unloaded.

  Marie was taken away in the lorry. Marie died in the asylum. Her mother had to travel there and collect a black urn full of ashes. The boys in the village had different versions. The urn was sent to Marie’s mother’s house by post.

  The friend of Detlev’s mother had been burned, before the war. At the cemetery. She had chosen that herself before her death. The friend’s mother placed the urn with the ashes in her display cabinet. A bomb fell on the house.

  — My friend’s ashes had mingled with the ashes of the house.

  Frieda said to Alfred:

  — You know what’s happening to Peter now. Why do you torment everyone? It was you who made Peter really crazy. He ran around with his doll, shouting: Youking. — That didn’t hurt anyone. It didn’t even bother anyone.

  — No one had any idea what it was supposed to mean.

  — It was supposed to mean: You King. Anyone could work that out.

  —- What kind of king?

  — The King of the Jews, of course. Our Lord Jesus Christ.

  — You shouldn’t say it like that, Frieda. It should be, the King of Christendom.

  — Peter eavesdropped at the door of the enclosure, when the nuns were reading the Christmas plays to one another. They’re already preparing everything now. That’s where Peter picked up the word king.

  — Eavesdropping at the enclosure isn’t allowed.

  Frieda pulled Detlev over to the girls’ table. She lifted him onto the bench and sat down in front of him. She was sewing. Between the stitches she talked to Detlev. There was a long pause if she had to cut the thread and look for the scissors. She stretched the word out when she drew the thread up into the air after a stich.

  — You want to backslide,
Detlev. Do you really want to travel back to Hamburg, to the land of the Protestants? They don’t have the proper faith. Incense is too dear for the Protestants. The priests don’t wear beautiful clothes. There are no altar boys and little bells. You want to run away from the tests that God is setting you. You’re disheartened, but you were chosen to become a priest and perhaps even a bishop with a gilded, pointed hat. Now you’re going back and don’t want to continue on the difficult path. You could have raised yourself above your sins and would have entered Paradise. I know that for certain. Why are you so short of breath? The cross is heavy for every one of us. Yours is so heavy for you because you are only eight and because you don’t know anything about your father. But the Virgin Mary and the Lord Jesus Christ have chosen you for something higher. We are already hard-pressed enough, and we’ll never amount to much. We have no father and no mother any more. My brother Alfred is corrupted and torments everyone wickedly, Shaky walks like a duck. He’ll never amount to anything, because even before he’s started something, everyone’s already laughing at him. Alfred will end up a burglar. That’s what I think, and Rosi is as thick as a plank. We are not alone with our misfortune. You are not alone with your misfortune. Anna has fits, and who knows how long she’ll be allowed to have her fits in peace. Even the holy sisters have to struggle and die like everyone else in the end. They don’t ascend to heaven with bones and flesh. They have to let their hair be cut off. They aren’t allowed to have a single hair under their coifs. Every Sunday they have to soap their bald heads and shave each other’s stubble off. Sometimes they cut each other and one can see the spots of blood on the white coifs. The archbishop trips as he walks, as your mother puts it, and the Pope gets hiccups. Even Kriegel has his cross. If Kriegel doesn’t squeeze the work out of the Poles, then the people from the Party will dismiss him and whip him and his wife and children worse than he whipped the prisoners of war. The priests bear the heaviest cross at this time. But some throw it off, as you want to throw it off, and preach shooting to kill at mass, and lick the arses of the people in the Party. But they’ll lose eternal bliss for that, for in the Bible it says: Thou shalt not kill. And when Peter had cut off the ear to defend Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus lifted it up and stuck it on again. Don’t complain, Detlev, think what the orphanage has saved you from. Think how terrible the air raids in the distance sound. Just think how many little boys have died under the ruins! Think about Peter, whom they simply took away — and no one knows what will happen to him and how many are being taken away like Peter. No one has taken you away, because the sisters love you very much. And if all that can’t dissuade you, if you still believe you’re suffering too much, then think of your mother. You don’t need to explain anything to me. She stayed behind here after the evacuation because you’re safer in Scheyern. That’s why she moves from one apartment to another, because there are difficulties if she stays in one place too long. No doubt it’s all because of your father, Detlev.

  — My father’s dead. My father’s name ended in Schitzki or something.

  — The Schritzkis and the Schinskis and the Schitzkis all change their names when they join the Party. Then instead of Schitzki their names end in Burg or Dorf or Hausen.

  — My father’s dead. My father wouldn’t have changed his name because he was frightened. My father was strong and as big as a giant. Bigger that your father.

  — Finally, your mother has hidden herself away in a tiny room. She wasn’t allowed to keep you there with her. Then she was given notice anyway. She put you in the orphanage so that you’re safe if anything should happen to her.

  — If anything should happen to her? If she falls and cuts her knee? If she breaks her leg? Someone pushes her to the ground? Then we’ll miss the train. If she’s been arrested? If she’s died? Mummy doesn’t miss any trains. Mummy doesn’t die. Nothing will happen to mummy. She’s walking across the market square right now.

  — She would never have parted from her boy voluntarily. But you want to be weak and give up your priestly calling — only because Anna betrayed you once, because the three of them played the devil, because Siegfried is a dishonourable coward and because you didn’t want to defend yourself, when they set little Xaver on you and they told him every hold. That isn’t sufficient reason to give up God. As a priest you would look like an angel in mourning.

  — Why doesn’t God come, when the bricks fall on the babies and their bones are turned to pulp? Why doesn’t he hold out his hand to stop them? Why doesn’t he put a hole in the tyre, when the lorries come to take away Marie and Peter?

  — I don’t know. No one can know that. Be grateful that you’ve been saved until now. If you really must go to Hamburg — I’ll give you a prayer of conversion to take with you. You only need to say it once a day — preferably before you go to sleep — then you’ll gradually become a Catholic and in the end you’ll be able to take holy communion and become a priest, perhaps even an archbishop — a holy person in any case.

  But look into yourself, Detlev. Don’t grieve us, not Sister Silissa, Mother Cecilia, not me, not Joachim-Devil, who always looks up to you, and above all not your mother. Bear the cross. Don’t go away. But if you do go, you’ll get the prayer of conversion from me.

  Frieda would not have bitten off the thread. She wouldn’t have stood up and become very tall in front of him, wouldn’t have looked down on him, not laid her hands on his shoulders. Detlev would not have said:

  — Why doesn’t God come and pull the babies out from under the rafters before their heads become pulp?

  Frieda would not have promised him the prayer of conversion. Peter would not have been taken away — Peter and his bald doll. At first they wanted to take the doll away from him. But he screamed out loud. They let him keep the doll, so they could load him up with less fuss.

  Peter would not have called his doll ‘Youking’.

  Frieda didn’t say anything else. She had passed a new thread through the needle and was sewing without looking at Detlev any more.

  — But the Christ Child does exist.

  You only need to put a five pfennig piece in the slot above the fish tank.

  It wasn’t a fish tank, but it looked like a fish tank. The stars began to twinkle. Heaven’s door opened. Little bells tinkled. The Christ Child came jerkily out of heaven’s door. On the floor of the tank Detlev could see the groove with the pivot on which the Christ Child was mounted. He jerked forward in an arc along the groove to the glass wall. When he had arrived on the right hand side of heaven, the pivot swung the Christ Child round and he jerked back, through heaven’s door again. Heaven’s door snapped shut behind him. As the Christ Child jerked through the fish tank he moved his right arm. The Christ Child was made of tin. The right arm had a joint. The joint creaked as the arm moved. Detlev couldn’t work out how the Christ Child operated the joint. The Christ Child raised his lower arm, his hand, lowered his hand to his stomach, brought his lower arm and hand to the left, drew his hand to the right. That was the blessing. He made the sign of the cross once when coming out of heaven’s door, the second time in the middle of the heavenly firmament, the third time shortly before turning round at the end of heaven and three times on the way back. The Christ Child appeared each time Detlev dropped in a five pfennig piece. Each time he gave his six blessings. With his head against the fish tank wall Detlev wondered whether the gauleiter, before he died, had also put in lots of five pfennig coins, whether Kriegel, when he came from whipping Poles, was also blessed by the tin Christ Child. The Christ Child had definitely blessed Alfred, the veterinary surgeon, the chemist, the pale priest, the teacher and his mother when she had gone into Our Lady’s Church with Detlev — on the day of their arrival, before they had seen Saint Joseph’s Fountain.

  The little bells tinkled, when the big bells in the two towers of Our Lady’s Church rang. The little bells tinkled, as the bells from the towers were being broken. The Christ Child gave his blessing six times after each recorder lesson. He gave his blessi
ng six times after the devil had come and after the Anglo-Americans had bombed Munich or Donauwörth.

  — But the Christ Child does exist.

  There was also the doll, which Peter called ‘Youking’. There was the doll which Mother Augusta rocked back and forward as a substitute for the Christ Child, when she rehearsed with the wounded in the military hospital. The more beautiful doll was used during the performance. There was the beam of light over Herod’s bed. The beam of light was the Christ Child. Herod was afraid of the beam of light. He had given the command to kill all the little children. That’s why the Virgin Mary fled to Egypt with Joseph and Jesus.

  Detlev no longer remembers exactly what happens in the play.

  There was the Easter lamb which the sacristan’s boy found in the bushes. They all looked down on the apse from the balcony. The lamb had a red ribbon round its neck. The sacristan’s boy held the sugar lamb in his arms. He received the best Easter present, the Christ Child as Easter lamb, because he was the sacristan’s son.

  Detlev doesn’t think every word through to the end. The pictures lie on top of one another like cellophane pictures. The lines cross over one another with different degrees of boldness.

  The first letter or the first syllable of the words is enough, often a part of the first letter. Of the faces that are not present on the balcony, the nose is enough, the eyelashes, the hair. A noise is enough, a smell, a drop of rain.

  The little ladder at the beginning of a song means :

  — You must not forget to play an F sharp instead of an F. Everything jerks past more quickly: The repetitions, the twice remembered speeches, the hardly varying actions, his mother’s new room, his mother’s face in the new room. Detlev couldn’t tell whether she was happy. She lived by a field at the edge of town. The road in front of the house was muddy.

  It doesn’t take much time to think about the new room — the smallest fraction of a part of the seconds between raising his little eye and his mother entering.

  Detlev doesn’t conclude that :

  — To think about the hazel nut the second time, took as long as for the sun to fly from the edge of the cloud to the middle of the cloud — or: To remember the walk to Aichach, I needed just as much time as Alfred needed to look up from the floor to Sister Appia.