— What’s worse than being shot dead?
— Being tortured. You don’t need to be afraid of Klasel. I told him what a bright and intelligent boy you are, that you always obey your mother and do your school work neatly. I would rather not have said it, what’s the point of making children frightened of a bogeyman at a time like this. Don’t worry. You’ll see.
In Hamburg no Saint Nicholas ran from water tower to water tower on winter nights, from Windsbergen to the zoo, from Niendorf Wood to the Alster.
Once a lovely red Father Christmas with a cotton wool beard stood on the Jungfernstieg and nodded. Grandmother squeezed Detlev’s hand. She was taking him to buy a box of building bricks.
Perhaps there had been a Nicholas in the hospital, when Detlev had been admitted with measles. Perhaps Saint Nicholas had brought the grocery shop and the other box of building bricks.
Later no lights were allowed on the streets in the evening any more. There were no Christmas trees with electric candles on the Jungfernstieg any more. There was no red Father Christmas any more. There was no grocery shop any more.
— There would have been no grocery shop at all.
There was no toy sewing machine any more. Grandfather let down the blackout blinds on all the windows. His mother no longer brought any brown or any white chocolate home from the shop in the evening. Twice a little red boot full of nuts, and with a fir twig, a few strips of lametta, stood in the dark. It still wasn’t Christmas. Then it wasn’t long till Christmas any more.*
He tapped at the window first. The two girls, Sepp, Sepp’s parents, his mother, Detlev quickly ran into the warm kitchen. Sepp’s parents hugged their children tightly.
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*Saint Nicholas brings small presents on December 6th.
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Detlev’s mother looked round the kitchen. No one sat down on a chair. No one placed an apple on the stove plate. Sepp wasn’t sawing at anything with his fret-saw. Everyone stood close together in a corner of the kitchen, opposite the door, far away from the door.
— How sore is it, if you’re tortured? Mummy had no idea, otherwise she would have done it differently.
It sounded as if Klasel was as big as the elephant on the chain in the elephant house. He scraped along against both walls of the passageway, he clattered over the flagstones, he knocked against the ceiling of the passageway. There was a hammering on the outside door, then he was already knocking on the kitchen door. Sepp and his sisters began to cry.
— In the hay loft he pretends to be so brave.
Detlev didn’t want to cry.
Klasel threw open the door. Now Detlev couldn’t cry any more. Behind his forehead everything tightened — around his eyes everything became dry and hard. Detlev would have liked to have turned round and jumped through the wall. Klasel had no eyes, no nose, no mouth. His face was made of a flat, cheesy, flapping mass of meat. In place of eyes he had small bulges without any eye white, without pupils, without lids, without lashes.
Unlike the death’s head on the soldiers’ caps he didn’t have any big holes in place of the nose. His nose was a small bulge without nostrils. He had no ears. Instead of hands, black clumps without fingers, without finger nails, without hair on the fingers stuck out of the sleeves. He held a sack in the two clumps. An iron pigtail grew from his head.
— He has to cut the others’ fingers off and the ears and the nose. He has to poke out the eyes of those who have been naughty and pull out their finger nails.
Klasel took a step into the kitchen. He had no eyes, he didn’t see the start of the linoleum. He fell over like a crane. Klasel with the cheese head lay at Detlev’s feet.
Detlev’s mother took him by the hand and walked out of the door.
When it grew dark, Detlev didn’t let his mother leave him alone any more. Detlev began to scream. Detlev was afraid that Klasel could be hiding behind the windows, under the bed, in the stove. In the evening Detlev no longer dared to stand by the door. In the morning, in the dark, he was afraid if he had to walk to the road alone, where he met the other children. In the morning his fear was not so great. The night was ending. The darkness was no longer growing thicker and thicker, but was gradually turning into the white light of day. Even during the day Detlev was afraid of the vent hole of the cellar and of the lavatory hole. Klasel could have popped up out of the toilet with his white face that looked like the flesh on the legs of Sepp’s father.
His mother said :
— Klasel wasn’t a Klasel. It was the farm labourer from next door. He had a cow bell and chain from the well. The milking cloth was hanging over his face. Don’t be so afraid, be a brave boy. You must have seen that it was an old piece of curtain material.
Sepp said :
— Klasel’s wife is even more dangerous than Klasel himself. She only comes once every four years. She’s seven times as bad. Sometimes she comes unexpectedly. One day after -one day before her husband. She’s black all over. She has one red and one green eye. At night you can already see her eyes gleaming in the distance. But then it’s too late. She always sees you first. She finds someone wherever they’re hiding. She catches everyone she wants to get. She beats the bad children, the good ones get no reward from her. Often she takes some with her. They have to work for her. Plaiting birches and sorting bones, making whips. She doesn’t give the children anything to eat. They nibble at themselves with hunger. They eat the hair off their own heads. And hair is poisonous. If one of them doesn’t obey, she pulls out his toe nails or finger nails with pliers. The worst thing is, you never know exactly when she’s going to come and into which houses she’ll go and who she’ll take away with her. A few years ago she took three away with her from the main road one morning. We had expected her this year. She’ll definitely come next year. On horseback. She rides.
The orphanage children said :
— Klasel is coming tomorrow.
They were happy. First they were bathed in pairs in a tub — with a cloth around their hips — by Sister Appia.
Detlev made himself very small. He drew up his shoulders. He hunched his back. He drew in his head — when the nuns came running from the windows crying :
— We’ve seen him down on the church square. He’s coming. He’s coming.
— Mother hasn’t come yet.
Detlev looked down at the floor. When he heard Klasel knocking at the door, he shut his eyes tight. But behind his lids waited the Klasel from Steingriff with the face without eyes, falling towards him. Klasel’s wife rode by. Detlev saw Steingriff in spring. The cows were brought to the meadow, radishes sown, potatoes planted. The farmers were afraid of the winter, because Klasel’s wife would come then. The grain ripened. The school classes ran into the wood. The children picked blueberries, chanterelles. They didn’t laugh. They didn’t sing. In winter no one dared go out into the street any more. No light burned behind the windows. The chimneys didn’t smoke.
Detlev let some light between his eyelids. He wanted to press them together again right away. He hoped that the village of Steingriff and Klasel and the horse and Klasel’s wife would be destroyed by the short interruption and that the new Klasel from the orphanage couldn’t fall in through the tiny slit.
Detlev saw the new Klasel. The old one disappeared. Detlev opened his eyes wide.
The new one, who sat on a high throne in front of the orphanage children, really was the Saint Nicholas his mother and Sister Silissa had talked about. He looked like God in the town hall chamber under whom the gauleiter had been laid out. Saint Nicholas wore a cotton wool beard like the Father Christmas by the Alster in Hamburg. His cheeks were pink. He had brown eyes with white lids. He had a snub-nose, a small, pale mouth and protruding ears. He was wrapped in a loose red cloak. The pointed, gilded cap on his head was shaking. Two angels were busy beside him, threatening with little golden rods and pulling presents out of a sack. Each orphanage child was called out by name.
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— Saint Nicholas knows everything.
— Alfred, this year you have been a kindhearted person.
— Erwin, you must work harder at school.
— Rosi should help more in the kitchen.
— Anna, our problem child.
No one was thrashed with the rods. Only for Joachim-Devil did the two angels point the rods at Saint Nicholas.
— Joachim, you are causing the dedicated sisters a great deal of sorrow because of your incurable wickedness. Really I shouldn’t give you a present at all, but should chastise you with a hard rod. Are you going to better yourself at last, Joachim, so that your comrades no longer need to give you the nickname ‘Devil’?
— Yes, I want to better myself, dear holy Saint Nicholas.
— Then today we shall allow mercy precedence over justice and put away the rods for the last time and allow even you to receive a small present.
— God bless you, dear holy Saint Nicholas.
— Now comes a little musician.
The floor boards under Detlev grew longer. He saw the beard, the white eyelids of Saint Nicholas grow larger and the recorder in Sister Appia’s hand grow larger. He took the recorder, placed it between his lips, pushed the halting breath out of his mouth into the plastic tube with holes, raised his fingers pressed them down. He didn’t look at the recorder, not at his fidgeting fingers. Detlev looked at Saint Nicholas’s face. Detlev waited for the moment when the pink Saint Nicholas would tear off his lovable face, and below it would appear the other one, white, made of cheese, of the flesh on Sepp’s father’s calves — without eyes and ears, with warts in the place of eyes and a scab in the place of the mouth.
— Why are you looking at Saint Nicholas so angrily? You don’t need to be afraid. You are an obedient and musical boy. You pray with great fervour and though you’re a Protestant you even go regularly go Holy Mass. Keep on like this and everything will turn out well.
— Perhaps he really is our heavenly Father? No. Our heavenly Father doesn’t have a woman’s voice.
Detlev was allowed to go down to the big hall alone — without Mother Cecilia. He played the song. The nun with the glasses turned the pages in the book. Sister Augusta smiled at the doll. The other nun crossed the stage with the cardboard pitcher on her head.
The orphanage which Detlev was beginning to know, whose stairs were growing smaller, whose ceilings were getting lower, whose rooms were contracting, the orphanage he had known was turning into another orphanage. The nuns cut it in half, they shook the rooms and jumbled them up. No one was allowed into the dining room. The Christ Child was to be allowed to fly in and out undisturbed. The Christmas play had to be rehearsed up there. Only Joachim-Devil was allowed up. He had a part.
— He’s playing the devil.
— I’m not playing the devil at all. I’m playing Leander who gets lost in the wood.
— I hope you drop dead in the wood.
— Drop dead yourself.
— ‘Yes, dear holy Saint Nicholas. Very good, dear holy Saint Nicholas.’ Anyway, holy and saint are one and the same thing. Didn’t you notice how sensibly even Detlev behaved? Did you all hear: Here comes a little musician. If you go into the dining room, the Christ Child will fly right out again. Sister Appia and Erwin carried the dining tables down to the dormitory. They ate beside the beds.
— Like robbers.
— ‘At six in the morn, we went on our way.’
— ‘…had to pay.’
— ‘…were done away.’
— If the Christ Child hears things like that through the ceiling.
The strips of moonlight across the dormitory were differently indented from usual, when Detlev woke up in the middle of the night, held his breath and swallowed down his saliva, listened. The strips of moonlight mounted over shoes, benches, tables, coats, bed rails.
— Joachim-Devil has been chosen to take part in the play again this year. He doesn’t grow fat out of pure badness. He farts. But he’s just perfect for acting in the Christmas play. Last year he had to weep by a spring. Everyone wept with him. Even the parish priest. And how happy he was with the bread that came from the Christ Child himself. In reality it wasn’t bread, only painted cardboard lids, the nuns keep them in a box all year and take them out for the Christmas play. In peace time they use real bread for the performances. Every year the nuns read through hundreds of books and only then do they decide what is to be performed. Joachim-Devil has to learn a whole book by heart. He’s best at remembering the sentences, that’s why they take him again and again. But after all the most difficult thing remains the choice and then all the things that have to be decided : What should the actors wear? Where should the light fall? The curtain ropes have to be fastened somewhere in the dining room. The artificial bushes for the countryside have to be procured and the chairs and the hall clock and the door for the room of the poor craftsman and his family and the delicate heavenly tinkling when the Christ Child appears on stage.
— You’re mad. It’s not as bad as that. But the hall has to be scrubbed, that’s why they throw us out. The fir tree is screwed into its base. It comes at night, it’s pulled up over the balcony, so that no one sees it beforehand. It’s ten feet tall. It always hides the cross completely — because it’s Christmas. Christ nailed to the cross isn’t right then. The fir tree is wonderful to look at. There’s nothing more beautiful in the world. It’s only another two weeks, then we’ll be allowed up again.
First the giving of presents at his mother’s:
The new room was in the attic. The backs of the unlined roof tiles looked like the raw muscles of a rabbit, when grandfather skinned it in front of the allotment house.
Detlev had to wait outside until his mother rang a bell. The fir tree was very small. It stood in a flower pot. Coloured figures from the Winter Relief Fund dangled above the candles. The reddish light over the hair, the face, the hands of his mother, over the suitcases in the corner, over the table with the little packages and letters and sweets was, for Detlev, the most beautiful light he had ever seen. He liked it better than the yellow light in summer, than the orange red at sunrise and sunset, than the thick, milky light between the hop poles. He didn’t need to be afraid of the almost motionless light, as he was of the flickering flames of the candles in the church tower, of the moonlight and the light of the stars which sent a cold shudder down his back.
Detlev’s mother cried at his happiness. Then Detlev cried because his mother was crying. Then they both laughed, because they had cried — instead of laughing.
— There are other reasons for crying. We’re almost at peace here. At any rate we’re not at the front. We’re together.
— Is my father at the front?
— No. Let’s just talk about nice things. We should really think about the fallen.
Detlev sees Sepp’s father falling over outside the munitions factory. He sees a white field. Alfred, Frieda, Shaky, Rosi, Siegfried, Siegfried’s father step out of the wood. They cross the white field. They fall over. The white is stained red. Captains come from every side and collect the heads, the legs, the pouches, the medals, the caps, the edelweiss and the gentian in big coffins. The captains come without black horses. They pass by without turning to look at the bloody heap. The captains don’t come. The hands and feet are left lying in the snow.
Fathers come running over the white field. First their heads are broken. Holes are shot in their stomachs. The blood runs into the snow. They fall over and don’t move.
— I got cross about the chemist. I was paying him the money for next month. He was complaining about women who wipe their babies’ bottoms with cotton wool.
— In war time, cotton wool is needed for the wounded.
— No one’s denying that. But there are babies who have got chafed from lying or they have such sensitive skin that one can only wipe them clean with cotton wool. You know just as little about that as the chemist.
— Joachim-Devil never uses newspaper
. He always uses his finger. He wipes his finger against the wall.
— What a thing to talk about on Christmas Eve.
A semolina cake from grandmother. A letter from grandmother and grandfather in Gothic and Latin script. Two pairs of long socks from grandmother. A Rübezahl figure from the Giant Mountains from grandfather. If Detlev held the table at an angle, the Rübezahl figure began to run by itself. Two two-mark coins with President Hindenburg.
Detlev’s mother gave him a cap with ear flaps.
— In case it gets as cold again as last winter.
Detlev’s mother gave him a new recorder book and five cellophane pictures and a farm with a farmer’s wife, a farmer, two cows, a cart, two trees. The farm house could be folded up. His mother had made marzipan potatoes out of semolina and butter and almond flavouring.
When Detlev and his mother walked across the church square, the package with the presents bumped against Detlev’s legs.
— Detlev’s got a Russian hat on.
— Detlev’s got a Russian hat.
His mother stayed with him. The orphanage children assembled downstairs in the hall. His mother leant against the wall beside Sister Appia. Detlev didn’t look over to her. Alfred came and stood beside Detlev and tugged at the package with the presents.
Everyone went out. Detlev felt as if the darkness with all its stars was falling onto the back of his neck.
Half of the houses, of the church was gone. Only the walls of houses still stood in Scheyern. The snow-covered roofs were like the ground. The windows were tied shut. Water didn’t gush from Saint Joseph’s Fountain any more.
— In winter the town saves the money for the mountain water.
A shutter sealed off the windows of the devotional articles shop. The arcade was dark.
— In winter you can save the money for ice cream. You can put snow in your mouth. It doesn’t taste of anything. But it’s as cold as vanilla ice. Snow doesn’t even taste of water.
The blackout was complete.
— Scheyern hasn’t been bombed yet. But they’re afraid. They could be punished too. That’s why they keep to the blackout regulations.
The Orphanage Page 13