Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  Leo Held, thirty-nine years old, of Loganton, Pennsylvania, father of four, baldish, six feet tall, two hundred pounds, “a quiet peaceful man devoted to his family,” “a respected citizen,” former school board member, avid hunter and good shot, with no police record, never treated for mental illness, an employee for twenty-one years at the Hammermill Paper Company plant in Lock Haven, walked into his workplace yesterday with a .38 caliber revolver and a .44 caliber Magnum and shot five of his apparently deliberately chosen colleagues dead and wounded four others. At around eight fifteen he shot and killed the woman at the switchboard of the Lock Haven airport, a neighbor. Back home, 17 kilometers away, he fired at a sleeping couple next door, killing the husband, and took the man’s ammunition, then had a shootout with twelve policemen until they finally shot the guns from his hands. He will probably live.

  Yesterday afternoon, when Robert Smith, of 470 Sheffield Avenue, Brooklyn, was having a fight with his wife, Clarice, their six-year-old son, Randy, went to the closet, got his father’s rifle, .22 caliber, loaded it, aimed, and shot his father in the chest. His father will never start trouble with his mother again.

  In Jerichow in 1933, Cresspahl felt that people were trying to keep him from starting trouble. In the morning, standing downstairs in the hall, he’d let his mind wander and before he knew it Louise Papenbrock was hugging him. At breakfast, old Papenbrock waited until he knew his wife was busy with the child (“with the children”), then sent Edith to the Lübeck Court for two pitchers of Kniesenack beer and poured himself and Cresspahl generous glasses of Richtenberg kümmel aquavit to go with them; he was happy for the chance to bend the rules a little and also relieved that this son-in-law of his knew how to drink. He hadn’t seen that yet. Papenbrock and Cresspahl walked down Town Street, and back up Town Street, so that people would see them; they stopped into some shops and accepted congratulations from Molten the baker, and Pahl the tailor, and Böhnhase, and over shots at the counter or in the back room they agreed, as circumstances dictated, that either shop owners or tradesmen were the backbone of the middle class, and that the Nazis clearly appreciated that about shop owners or tradesmen. Even Stoffregen didn’t run off when Papenbrock buttonholed him and fished for congratulations. Cresspahl didn’t understand why this Stoffregen kept looking so grief-stricken and depressed. At one point, he realized that Heinz Zoll had ducked into the post office at their approach. By the time they reached the mayor’s office, Papenbrock was quite red in the face and not uninclined to furious little outbursts about his wife, Louise, but Louise remembered the time in Vietsen and not once did she send a message to the Lübeck Court, where by now there were eight gentlemen drinking to the new baby’s health. Papenbrock was also congratulated on his son, who, due to the “change of government,” was moving up in the world, but Dr. Erdamer didn’t join in those congratulations and Papenbrock did his best to wave them aside, with a long hand now grown quite fat. Horst had commandeered a police detachment in Gneez and was now on the hunt for a Communist thing being called a cabal, with the district group leader’s full authority and list of names. Papenbrock’s feelings vacillated between pride and fear—he was proud that his boy had finally learned how to give orders in forceful, almost military fashion, and worried that in the end he himself would be held responsible for his offspring’s actions, not least his moves against Dr. Erdamer, who was not only a Social Democrat but also on Horst’s “hit list.” He wanted to keep Cresspahl out of it for now, if only for a few more days, and Cresspahl suspected nothing, not in the least.

  Starting trouble would have suited him just fine. It wasn’t just the ridiculous antics of all the women in Papenbrock’s house, using the birth to upstage the men (“My husband’s in the hospital. We have a new baby”); it was that he’d wanted everything different: a private room in a clinic, medical supervision, trained nurses, visits only by family members, a semblance of proper hygiene. Now his wife was lying in state in the sitting room, forced to put up with formal visits from families they were on good terms with, and the baby was picked up and shown to the visitors’ children and put down and picked up again, affectionately pawed by dirty snotty fingers, and it was probably getting a headache from the bouquets of flowers in the dry heated air, just like him, like Cresspahl. Nor did he manage to talk freely with Lisbeth (except the first night, which he spent on the floor next to her bed, hands clasped behind his head, speaking softly, until she forgot her sudden fear and could fall asleep). She didn’t commit to a departure date but didn’t oppose him either. When he looked at the baby, blindly helplessly sipping drops of sugar water from his chapped finger, he felt a powerful sense of urgency.

  On Sunday afternoon, while the loudspeakers of the Johs. Schmidt Musik- and Radiohaus blasted the windowpanes with classical music records interspersed with the latest vote counts from the Reichstag election, the child was given a name. She had been announced in The Gneez Daily News as simply “a healthy baby girl.” Lisbeth Cresspahl had expected a boy and had decided on the boy’s name, Henry, not the girl’s, and Cresspahl hadn’t expected what he wanted to take precedence for once over what she wanted. She asked him for suggestions. She was sitting half upright, propped against three pillows, and she looked at him, alert, receptive, almost cheerful. Her eyes seemed darker than usual; she hadn’t regained her color; even the loose hair around her face was not as light as usual. He offered suggestions slowly, not entirely convinced himself; she considered them carefully, parting her lips, chewing the air. It looked like she was testing the seasoning. No, not Elisabeth. – Which Lisbeth is supposed to come when you call one of us? Both, Cresspahl? She knew perfectly well that he only considered the middle name Luise out of politeness to Papenbrock’s wife, not because he wanted it. She brought up his sister’s name. Cresspahl hesitantly said it should be a name that was hers alone. – Gesine?: he said innocently, and wished he could swallow his words. – All right: Lisbeth said, acquiescent, kind, so that he would be forced to take it as a gift. He was sitting on the edge of her bed, at the foot. Not once had she looked over at the cradle. She lightly kicked his hip under the blanket and said: Gesine Henriette.

  Is that you, Gesine?

  It’s me, Gesine.

  In 1904? In Malchow?

  I was fifteen. He was sixteen. I was Redebrecht’s granddaughter.

  What did you look like, Gesine.

  I had braids. I was blond. He always wanted me to unpin my braids. The first time, I went upstairs to the window in the middle of the night, my hair down. Nothing had been planned, nothing said. There he was.

  Are you dead too, Gesine?

  Not necessarily, Gesine. I’d only be seventy-nine. The old lady standing in your way at the Wendisch Burg station in 1952, I could have been her. The old lady with the cane on the bench outside the old age home in Hamburg, maybe that was me. At least you can think so, Gesine.

  I can, Gesine.

  Peter Harper, a superintendent, lives at 2015 Monterey Avenue in the South Bronx. He has built himself a garbage shelter over the back door leading to the building’s courtyard—a reinforced metal roof. Now he’s happy. Now the garbage that the residents throw down into the yard from the upper floors can’t hit him anymore. (The New York Times is either not au courant enough or too diplomatic, for she leaves out the name for the trash hurtling down, gentle scraps of paper or hard juice bottles: airmail.)

  October 25, 1967 Wednesday

  The Soviets have decided to get mad after all about the defection of their secret agent, Runge, to the West: they admit that he exists, and they call him an unscrupulous criminal. They also make public the name of an American agent who defected to their side, from New Delhi. It’s John Smith.

  – Gesine, I’m having a problem with someone.

  – Someone I know?

  – No. A girl in my class.

  – Does she sit next to you?

  – They seated her next to me.

  – A girl from another school?

  – From H
arlem.

  – Is that the problem?

  – The problem is she’s colored.

  – Watch your language, Marie.

  – Okay, okay!

  – The right term is “Negro.” A black girl.

  – Yes, Gesine. I know, all right.

  Several children from the Polish, Bulgarian, and Czechoslovakian embassies have been threatened and beaten by American students at Lincoln Middle School in Washington (DC). One boy had to be taken to the hospital. The State Department says: This is very bad for our image abroad.

  – She’s the only black girl.

  – Doesn’t she have a name?

  – Francine is the only black girl in our class, and out of all twenty-one of us Sister Magdalena had to pick me.

  – You’re embarrassed.

  – No. The thing is, it’s pointless. She’s an exception.

  – An exception among Negroes?

  – An exception to life in America. She’s an alibi-Negro.

  – Miss Cresspahl, explain this concept.

  – An alibi-Negro is someone who can go to our school for free.

  – So the institution doesn’t lose its government funding.

  – To trick the law.

  – Do you want every black student to have a place at your school, for justice’s sake?

  – Well until then I have to do all the work with the alibi-Negro for all twenty-one of us and it’s not fair.

  The playwright LeRoi Jones, on trial in New Jersey over two revolvers found in his car during the July riots, denounced the white judge and white prospective jurors as his oppressors. He was put in handcuffs.

  – That’s too much to ask of you, Marie?

  – It’s a lot. Francine is behind in math, she writes English badly, she doesn’t know where Montreal is.

  – She’s also never been taken to Montreal for the weekend, like a certain other girl I know.

  – Francine can’t even learn. She doesn’t remember things and then gets them all mixed up.

  – Maybe she doesn’t have anywhere at home to study, or peace and quiet, or time.

  – That’s not my fault.

  – Welcome a Stranger.

  – That’s what I’ve been doing since Labor Day. I’ve been checking her notebooks for seven weeks, going over the tests with her during break, listening to her recite the lessons, explaining the homework to her again over the phone. It’s not that. When I say all the work I mean something else.

  When the Reverend Stephen McKittrick of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church heard on his car radio the news about the father of four running amok, he ran into his house and got his over-and-under shotgun, a birthday present from his wife, which he had actually been hoping to use during turkey season.

  – So what do you mean by work?

  – The work is being nice.

  – Is she nice?

  – She was paralyzed with fear the first couple weeks. She never looked up. Even now she needs courage, or a nudge in the ribs, to raise her hand. But she feels comfortable around me.

  – She thanked you.

  – I told her not to.

  – So she is nice.

  – And I have to be nice back! Otherwise my help doesn’t work. Her feelings are hurt. And

  – You don’t like her.

  – Right. I don’t. I think she’s ugly.

  – What Negroes don’t you think are ugly?

  – Jason. Esther. Shakespeare.

  – Because they look like the ones on TV.

  – I don’t watch TV behind your back.

  – Sorry.

  – Now she says to my face that she likes me. Next thing she’ll want to hug me in the morning and when school gets out. Now she wants me completely.

  – She’s been taken in by the alibi.

  – But I don’t want to pay for it anymore.

  – Pay for it?

  – With Marilyn. With Marcia. With Deborah. They think I’m helping Francine not only because it’s the right thing to do. They think what Francine thinks: that I’m doing it because I like her. I want out.

  Seven years ago, it cost only $5,790 for a family of four in New York to live a life without luxuries. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has added home ownership to this standard of living. As a result of the change, as well as increased prices and higher taxes, the cost for the same family in 1966 was $10,195, a 71 percent increase. Maybe we won’t make it here after all.

  – Why are you only now telling me about all this?

  – I was waiting for a good time.

  – Good in what way?

  – A good time to talk to you, Gesine. Say one word about the condition of the Negroes and you can count on a very prickly reaction from Mrs. Cresspahl.

  – You don’t want to tell Francine.

  – No. I can’t.

  – Then let her go on thinking what she thinks and keep the real reason why you’re helping her to yourself.

  – What about my real friends?

  – You can let them know how you feel by asking them to help with Francine.

  – That’s not lying?

  – Not exactly lying.

  – Good. I’m off the hook. Thank you.

  – It doesn’t bother you that all this is on tape now?

  – No. By the way, I want to invite Francine over. For my Halloween party.

  – Now you’re trying to trick the tape.

  – And you never trick anyone, Gesine. Not even tapes.

  – Maybe I’m better at it.

  – Sorry. I didn’t mean you. I meant: When I recognize a thought even before I’ve completely said it, does that mean it’s actually something I’ve thought before? Did I mean it, when I maybe thought it? Am I remembering the thought, or remembering wanting to think it? Tell me, Gesine.

  That night, no sooner did we get home than an army of thunderbolts and rain showers moved in from the west, battering our windows, striking the city fast and furious, from five until shortly past midnight. The cold weather’s here now.

  October 26, 1967 Thursday

  The Soviets still can’t grasp, except as a ruse or a stupid joke on the part of their competition, that their secret agent Runge has crossed over to the other side. The East Germans even claim him as one of their own (criminal and fugitive) citizens. As a countermove, the competition in London is showing around Runge’s passports, identity cards, and documents—genuine photocopies.

  Dr. Gallup has put a question to the nation once again. Forty-six out of a hundred have confided to him that they regret US involvement in Vietnam. In 1965, it was just half that many.

  This Stalina woman has distributed a little of her more than $2.5 million among the needy whom she finds simpatico. Seven-eighths of her booty she’s keeping for herself.

  The man who ran amok in Pennsylvania died yesterday morning. His incoherent mumbling revealed no further information (six executed, six wounded).

  Cresspahl did not have an easy time registering the birth of his child. City Hall was under armed guard.

  Horst Papenbrock’s own seizure of power hadn’t started on Market Square. The Monday after the Reichstag election, when he came back from Gneez having sniffed around for Communists and not caught any, his day felt incomplete, and the Jerichow school flagpole caught his eye. He thought it seemed a bit . . . naked. Later that same afternoon, the SA mustered on Market Square, some of them not much interested in simply standing there stiff and straight and silent, and they marched off to the right onto School Street, no songs, a bit wobbly, like a tank with a drunk driver, between the low buildings and the dogs, and they hoisted the flag of the National Socialist movement over the schoolyard and left a pair of sentries on guard in the form of the two men who still had both a semblance of their wits and a relatively complete uniform about and on them, respectively. The mayor sent the police only at nightfall. The police consisted of Ete Helms, also not much older than twenty and with the fast-approaching moment of going off duty very much on his mi
nd, so he didn’t object to being dispatched on an errand; only when standing on Papenbrock’s threshold and asking for the young gentleman did he button the jacket of his uniform. Horst had kept the bottle of Koem next to his plate of ham all through dinner and he played the superior officer to the younger man for a few minutes, until he heard that Dr. Erdamer had said: Stupid nonsense! (to himself, while shutting the door). Five minutes later, Horst was defending the sentries with pistol drawn, while Ete Helms was left to stand by the schoolyard fence until almost midnight, now alert, his hands on his belt, envying the Nazis’ supply of hot coffee, impressed by their dashing hourly changing of the guard, not entirely comfortable amid spectators who hadn’t enjoyed so much nighttime entertainment in years, not least the game of stepping forward again after every time he’d ordered them to step back. Around midnight, Dr. Erdamer had the good sense to yield to Geesche Helms’s requests and send her husband home to bed, so that the SA, having lost its audience, also lost interest in saluting and goose-stepping around, and they cleared the schoolyard, but still it had been a victory for Horst Papenbrock.

  For the next morning, when the children arrived for school, the honor guard was back in the schoolyard, though not accompanied by the police. Horst had delegated command to Walter Griem, while he himself had the Nazi flag hoisted on the roof of Town Hall and posted two uniformed men to the left and right on the landing at the top of the front steps. Dr. Erdamer had a good view of them from his window above the stairs, and also of the fact that members of the Steel Helmets had forced their way into this sentry duty by that point. On his desk was The Lübeck Gazette from Monday. The newspaper stated on the top of the page that it was for sale every morning except Mondays. It had appeared on this Monday, in honor of the Reichstag election and because of the nature of the election’s results. In the Mecklenburg district, the Social Democrats had lost one seat, keeping 120. The Communists were down from 100 seats to 81. The Mecklenburg soul had not, however, been satisfied with 195 Nazis in the Reichstag; they provided that party with an additional 93. In his hand was that day’s Lübeck Gazette. He had read the headline so many times that the bold Gothic type no longer turned into the meaning of the words when he read it, it turned into other meanings. “Lübeck No Longer Red!” the paper exulted. But there hadn’t been any Communists in the senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Lübeck—what the headline meant were the Social Democrats. What it meant was him. During eight and a half years of administrative service he had always rejected the label “Red” in his mind, those were the Communists, who wanted to destroy the republic, not serve it. That was what he had tried to do, in the small towns of Mecklenburg, and it wasn’t the citizenry or his party that had driven him to move on from one to another but better offers. He had cleaned up both the Jerichow town hall and the road to the sea, the fire station at the gasworks, the employment office, and the weedy vacant lots in the northwest part of town, which he’d started to develop into a residential neighborhood. Neither his law degree from the University of Leipzig nor his party card nor his successful career was what gained him respect; in Jerichow, as elsewhere, he was on good terms with both the nobility and the citizenry, in agreement with them, not only observing the proper formalities of behavior but also evincing the decency these formalities were purported to contain. Now he no longer understood the local nobility. He understood them, he could grasp the economic interests of these people intending to wait out the political turmoil in the safety of their estates, but he was ashamed of them—sitting there calmly, not having their people kick the squads of Nazi thugs out of the laborers’ settlements, not proclaiming either directly or through the church that they were against the National Socialist plebs. He was ashamed of the church. It bothered him that Papenbrock didn’t give his son a good smack. He used to agree with Papenbrock, not only over wine but also about the decisions he wanted to see emerge from the city council meetings. Papenbrock had been too genteel to put himself up for office, but he had liked having his finger in every pie that Town Hall had in the oven. Now he was letting his brat put a red flag with a swastika on the town hall and set an armed guard to watch over it, a guard who aimed his gun at Ete Helms the moment Helms showed his face at the edge of the dormer window, and that gun wasn’t loaded with birdshot either.