The Orphanage

by Hubert Fichte

  The market square would rock back and forwards. Brown earth would spout up from below the snow. The houses would topple over.

  Through the blackout paper Detlev heard little bells, Christmas songs, radio music.

  — I wanted to be an actress when I was younger, his mother said to Sister Appia.

  Mother Cecilia led Detlev away from the orphanage children and his mother. She took charge of the package. She pulled him through many doors, through dark rooms, down unlit stairs. She pushed him into a shadowy room.

  — Wait here.

  Someone gripped Detlev’s hand. Something jingled.

  — Don’t scream or anything. Don’t you recognize me? Detlev recognized a foot in plaster on the floor in front of him. A red coat fell onto the white foot. The red material reached up to the shoulders of the wounded soldier. The man’s face smelt of cake shops, of his mother’s little box, in the house with the cockerel foot soup.

  — In ‘The Crib’ there was almond pudding with raspberry sauce. Mummy didn’t promise me anything that wasn’t true. In the orphanage there was never almond pudding with raspberry sauce.

  The face of the wounded soldier came closer. It became round. The nose stood out. The eye sockets receded. The ears grew out to the right and the left. The Adam’s apple began to move. Smoke mixed with the smell of his mother’s little box. A spot glowed and shone under the nose of the wounded soldier. The cheeks became bright red. The lips blood red. The lids blue. The eye lashes grew longer. The hair became as yellow as clay.

  — Don’t you recognize me?

  — No. Yes.

  — I’m one of the three kings. There’s some surprises in store for you.

  The walls gradually receded. Violet light shone from bulbs which had been arranged in a square round a curtain.

  — They’re sitting behind that.

  — Who?

  — Everyone.

  — Who?

  — The town council. The heavenly girls. The police. The people from the Party. And the rest of my comrades.

  — And everyone from the orphanage and my mummy as well?

  — This is the stage. It’s about to start.

  All the men were wearing long skirts. Some limped. They carried little boxes and spears. They were brightly painted and had furrowed faces. The Virgin Mary’s lips turned black in the violet light. The blue tint of her eyelids looked like leaves of larkspur. She too had many wrinkles around her nose, around her eyes, around her mouth. A wounded soldier made up as a negro smoked a pipe.

  The Virgin Mary lifted Detlev up and carried him over to a small hole in the curtain. Everything was bright on the other side. Every chair was taken. The whole hall was full of people. The wounded rested the wire frames and the boards with the plaster wings on the backs of chairs. Two nuns carried in half a man.

  — He looks like a lizard that’s lost its tail.

  — Don’t talk such nonsense, otherwise I’ll let you fall.

  At the back the other soldiers were crowding in on their crutches. They wanted to move more quickly than the two nuns with the half man.

  The nuns set him down in a soft armchair and stuffed soft cushions under his hips — where his body ended. The soldiers with the crutches swung their fat plaster legs back and forward until they had found a good place. They sank down onto the chairs. The nuns wagged their fingers, when the wounded made too much noise with their crutches. Detlev wanted to wave to his mother. She was sitting right under him.

  — There’s no point in doing that. You can wave your arms about as much as you like. She can’t see you from down there. Now you’ve seen enough. I can’t hold you any longer. Mother Cecilia fetched him away. She led Detlev into a room full of clothes, swords, baskets, mirrors. The wounded were sitting around in their underwear. They had a lot of hair on their legs. The hairdresser — five combs in his pocket — was rubbing brown paint into their faces. When it was Detlev’s turn, his face was painted with make-up too. The hairdresser painted rings around his eyes with his pencil. Detlev was powdered — like a baby between the legs — Detlev’s face was covered with white powder.

  Under the violet curtains:

  The lions were roaring across from Hagenbeck’s Zoo. It was six. They were being fed. Powder and Nivea cream were mixed up together on the couch cover. His mother’s make-up pencils lay in the little black box.

  Mother Cecilia pulled a pair of yellow trousers and a small green jacket onto him. She hung a loose cloak around his shoulders. He had no time to look in the mirror.

  — Out of here. The space is needed for others.

  Mother Cecilia led Detlev back into the violet lit room.

  — The shepherd boy. A shepherd boy. What a fine-looking shepherd boy. Where did you pick him up?

  — It’s Detlev.

  — We don’t believe that.

  — Yes. I am Detlev.

  — And I suppose I’m the parish priest.

  The nuns clapped their hands. The nuns pushed the wounded soldiers. They held forefinger to mouth.

  — The priest dresses up. His mother dresses up. Alfred and the others dressed up as priests. Sister Augusta dresses up as the Virgin Mary. The consecration, what does that mean? The consecration happens at the altar. Alfred, Odel, Joachim-Devil were devils. Siegfried was brave and not a coward like Siegfried.

  The curtain was gathered together on both sides. A large black barn appeared behind it. There was coughing and sneezing on the floor of the barn. Mother Cecilia said to Detlev:

  — You can’t go up yet. The shepherds have to receive the good tidings first. Keep still. You mustn’t make a mistake when you play. When you’ve finished the song you must remain sitting and look happily in front of you, till the curtain sweeps shut again. Because it’s a tableau vivant.

  The two sides of the curtain unfolded again and drew shut in the middle. The tins of the three wise kings rattled. The Virgin Mary’s blue dress rustled. The doll baby fell to the floor. A bench, straw, a manger were carried onto the stage. The Virgin Mary took the doll baby onto her lap.

  — Mary didn’t have any cotton wool in the stall. Our Lord Jesus Christ’s skin must have been very sensitive when he was small. There was only straw.

  The curtain in front of Detlev disappeared. Light shone from all sides. The light lifted the people on the stage up — in a single movement — just as the tall pale priest lifted up the monstrance.

  The dark auditorium looked like his grandmother’s square button box. One grey, two-holed button above the other. The buttons only varied in size. Not even the half man could be made out. Detlev looked in vain for his mother in the audience.

  The Christ Child smiled up at his mother. Detlev played ‘O little children come’.

  Detlev tried to follow each note of his recorder as it threaded the button holes in the black barn right to the very last row. Detlev played without a mistake. If he had made a mistake, he would have fallen from the narrow, shining sickle on which he travelled through the night with the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child and the water carrier.

  The thread would have broken. The buttons would have tumbled noisily on top of one another.

  The Virgin Mary smiled at Detlev. The three kings entered and laid down the presents for the Christ Child beside Detlev.

  A light was switched on right at the back of the box. At the rear wall of the hall a group of wounded soldiers stood up. They weren’t wearing bandages, but had crutches. As Detlev held the last note, he saw the clear syrupy drops falling onto the wounds from dead Marie’s tubes. He saw the nuns’ fingers pressing the edges of the wounds together, as the boys in Steingriff pressed the edges and flaps of the model aeroplanes together.

  The wounded held sheets of music in their hands. A small black man jumped around in front of the light. He raised his arms, waved, trembled. As deep as the siren before it stopped gurgling, the wounded soldiers sang, ‘A rose it has blossomed.’

  The Virgin Mary hummed along.

  The cur
tain stretched across the box again. Wounded soldiers pulled the straw, the crib, the bench to the side, took the Christ Child away from Sister Augusta, tilted columns in, made up a bed. Herod with his crown lay down on the bed. The box opened again. The stage was not yet quite lit up, as Herod began to groan. A white cross was dancing about on the stage. Herod screamed:

  — Not on me. Not on me.

  He held his ears with pain. He stuck his head in his own arm-pit.

  Detlev ran away. Mother Cecilia behind him.

  — Why is the king screaming so terribly? Did you see the white cross? It was a ghost. Or the Christ Child. The Christ Child is angry. Was it the devil, coming to fetch Herod?

  — But it was only the beam of light from our projector. We do it like that every year.

  — But that means the Christ Child. Why is the Christ Child so angry and torturing King Herod so terribly?

  — Because Herod had all the little children killed.

  — Mother Cecilia, King Herod is screaming so terribly.

  On the way back Erwin screamed :

  — Not on me. Not on me.

  His mother had gone back to her room.

  — You played very well, Detlev.

  —The beam of light is the Christ Child. The devil has possessed the three of them. The beam of light falls on King Herod like the devil on Alfred, Odel and Joachim-Devil. Because of the beam of light Herod falls into a fit like Anna. The beam of light falls onto Sister Augusta, the doll baby becomes the Christ Child.

  — What kind of make-up did you put on?

  — We have paint like that in the orphanage as well for our Christmas play.

  — How do you get the make-up off again?

  — Afterwards the hairdresser comes and rubs brillantine on your face and wipes it all off with toilet paper.

  — Were you proud when you were allowed to play? Joachim-Devil played a poor, starving boy. He often had to speak alone and for a long time. On the stage in the orphanage

  — it wasn’t a stage, the floor went from the audience over to Joachim-Devil without rising — over there — on the other side — behind the wire on which the two curtains were hung — Joachim-Devil spoke like a devout boy. Anna held her head to the side and looked up, but she didn’t fall from her chair. Alfred bit his fingers out of fear that Joachim-Devil could forget his lines. Sister Silissa quietly spoke every word that Joachim-Devil spoke, along with him. Mother Superior wept. He wasn’t as beautifully dressed as the wounded in the hospital. He had no make-up on his face. Throughout the whole piece Detlev could recognize that it was Joachim-Devil. Detlev cried, as Joachim-Devil cried with hunger in the bushes in the dining room. When he took his bow, as all the orphanage children were clapping with the priest and the nuns, Joachim-Devil was red in the face, like a real devil. The presents were distributed :

  Detlev received a book. In red Gothic letters on the grey cover stood: Children’s Schott.

  There were many drawings in the book. Under the drawings Detlev read :

  The young believer at prayer.

  The young believer in the drawing had an asparagus head, no cheeks, three hairs, a body like a Christmas biscuit.

  The young believer at Holy Communion. The young believer with folded hands. The young believer with closed eyes. The young believer with eyes raised upwards. The young believer drinking from the communion cup. The young believer kneeling. Detlev had turned the pages of the book.

  The Christmas tree completely concealed the blue-white, bent, bloodstained Christ. The tip of the fir tree was bent over under the ceiling. Several thick silver baubles hung on every twig. Angel hair hung from the branches like straw from the fork in Steingriff.

  When Detlev had wished for the box of building bricks in Hamburg, he saw a fir tree, silver, like the Christmas tree in the orphanage, in the toy catalogue. It was a fir tree made of Meccano parts. Screws held the metal bar branches together — instead of needles the fir tree had holes.

  — Now my mother is coming across the church square below.

  At Easter Detlev counted it off on his fingers. The fingers moved once more. One, two, three, four. The Christ Child on Sister Augusta’s arm changed into a man with a beard, whom the sacristan pushed between the cardboard rocks in front of the altar.

  — There wouldn’t be the month of January, the month of February, the month of March. There wouldn’t be a birthday.

  — In Bavaria we don’t celebrate birthdays. Catholics celebrate name days.

  There remain the dolls and the sacristan’s son’s sugar lamb. Detlev sees the dolls. They grow larger before his eyes. A doll’s eye fills his vision.

  — The doll’s eye was not a doll’s eye.

  Alfred, Odel, Siegfried, Erwin, Joachim-Devil, little Xaver, didn’t try to do anything to Detlev any more. They were friendlier to him. But Detlev didn’t notice. Detlev thought only of the journey to Hamburg. His happiness at the departure was like the taste of a bedtime sweet which Sister Silissa slipped him in the evening before going to sleep, and which he quickly put in his mouth along with the paper, so that the others didn’t notice and become envious.

  Between Christmas and Easter Erwin screamed — whenever he met Detlev in a dark corner :

  — Not on me. Not on me.

  Detlev turns his head, looks down from the balcony. He sees himself turning his head, as all the orphanage children looked down from the balcony.

  The nuns had laid two hens’ eggs dyed brown with onion skins on the dining tables for each child.

  Detlev knew that both he and little Xaver would look for proper Easter eggs once more with their mothers. The sacristan’s son ran through the church yard below. He held the bushes with their fresh leaves aside. Behind the holly tree he squealed with pleasure. He held up a pink animal with a red ribbon round its neck. From above, the orphanage children saw the laughter in the face of the sacristan’s son. But the orphanage children couldn’t tell what kind of animal it was. The sacristan’s son pressed it to himself. He ran — his cheek against the animal’s body — to his parents. He turned in a circle with the animal. He rocked it. When the sacristan’s son noticed that all the orphanage children were leaning over the top of the balcony railing and following his movements with their heads, he held the animal high above his head.

  — It’s the Easter Lamb, of course.

  — What else could it have been?

  A small golden bell hung from the red ribbon. The orphanage children stood up straight again.

  — Don’t lean so greedily over the railing.

  — They’re happy because none of them has received a pink lamb.

  — We shouldn’t grudge him it. It’s the Lamb of Christ. The Agnus Dei. It’s made of sugar. He deserved something nice.

  His mother came through the dining room, stepped onto the balcony, took him by the hand.

  — Mummy is about to come through the dining room, step onto the balcony and take me by the hand.

  The procession came closer. The cross swayed above the praying people.

  — In the hazel bush I too was ready to be nailed to the cross for Our Lord Jesus Christ.

  Frieda asked him:

  — Do you want to backslide.

  Detlev thought:

  — I want to backslide.

  Christmas was long past. In the dining room the only remaining decoration was the cross, the first thing he had seen when he entered the room for the first time. It was Easter again. At the church entrance the procession divided into two groups. The man who was carrying the cross, struck the door with the upper end of the longtitudinal beam. One group sang a verse in Latin. The other group replied singing.

  The priests sang behind the closed doors. At Easter there were three priests. They ran around the altar, carried thick books, swung censers, swung sprinklers of holy water, lifted up hosts. They bumped into one another. They made mistakes in their singing. They got the movements mixed up. In the church the sacristan had constructed Our Lord’s tomb out of
cardboard and supports. One of the three priests gave a sign at a certain point — or the sacristan knew when without a sign. He turned a handle behind the rock pushing forward a carved Christ figure with a red and golden flag in its hand. Joachim-Devil had already explained this surprise to Detlev in advance, so that Detlev wouldn’t be so frightened again as at the death of King Herod, so that Detlev didn’t start to scream as at the appearance of the three devils.

  Detlev woke up.

  — I have to pee.

  There was a new moon.

  — Why does one say new moon when there’s no moon in the sky at all?

  It was so dark that the breathing of the sleepers sounded quieter than usual to Detlev.

  — I must get up, otherwise I’ll do it in the bed.

  He sat up. He held his breath. He swallowed down saliva. He listened, to hear whether one of the others would interrupt their regular breathing because of his movement, would swallow down saliva.

  Nothing changed.

  Detlev put his feet on the floor. He waited, in case anyone grabbed his ankles from under the bed. No one grabbed him. He took the first step. His feet made a smacking noise on the linoleum. The linoleum ended. Detlev had found the doorway without first groping to the right and to the left with his hands.

  The smell changed. There was no longer a smell of urine. There was a smell of soda. Where there began to be a smell of burnt fat, Detlev turned to the right. He stretched out his hands in front of him. He bumped against the iron flower stand in the hall. He felt the threshhold under his feet. He went further. The tiles in the little passageway were warmer and not as smooth as the tiles in the hall. The lavatories were on the right. There was a smell of cold turd. Detlev sat down on the hole in the wooden board.

  — If you’re afraid and if you’re shivering, you can’t. I haven’t got any paper. I would have to wipe myself with my hands. I only need to pee. Does the Lord God have to go to the lavatory? I mustn’t think that, otherwise I’ll go to hell.

  Detlev stood up. The lavatory door. The warmer tiles. The smell of geraniums.

  Detlev bumped against the stairs. Detlev felt his way along the wall till he came to the door. He went in. It grew warmer. It smelled of warm, wet cloths. A clock ticked in the warmth. Detlev opened the next door. Behind it was the church square. Outside it was brighter. Detlev pushed the door shut. There was a bang.