Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  “Off so soon, Mrs. Cresspahl?”

  “Oh, here you are, Gesine.”

  Late at night, the half-raised window. A defenseless ear to which cars driving by at liberal speeds patiently and yet again explain the Doppler effect, or into which sudden noises blast with no subtleties at all, buses starting up, creating the sonic world anew and carrying off the merely remembered one. Highway traffic noise, filtered through branches as thin as hairs, tests wind strengths of four to six, transmits groundswells and receding breakers, suspends pauses of wind, hurls waves like water—and now the comparison with the Baltic shuts the traffic out of this perception, replacing it with nothing.

  In Queens not long ago, four blocks blew up with a noise one would expect from a gas main explosion, and the loved ones the residents the citizens of Queens told the paper: It was like something from outer space, like a cataclysm, somehow inhuman.

  This is the sound I now hear from the apartment next door, from the ABC TV evening news, from Vietnam. Like something from outer space, it is cataclysmic like flak shrapnel just before the sudden, dull, earthshaking impact of the bombs, it is human. Sir.

  October 31, 1967 Tuesday

  In Cologne, former SS officers Carl Schulze and Anton Streitwieser were sentenced to prison and hard labor on charges of accessory to murder in their concentration camps, in nine and three cases, respectively. It is estimated that 120,000 people died in Mauthausen and its subcamps.

  The picture of the Vietnamese woman with outstretched hands in the smoke and rubble of her village, pleading with US soldiers that her home be spared, is on page 3.

  In Sing Sing, computer programming is to be added to the curriculum.

  March 1933 in Jerichow was also, all else aside, a season. The sea wind may have still blown into town, but wisps of rested earth, of coming flowers, fluttered in with it. There were gulls in the air, frisky fliers. Fat pigeons warming themselves in the lee of the chimneys, slipping off in leisurely glides, shitting on the long red flag flying over Town Hall. The sparrows let everyone know they were all taken care of. The light warmed the bricks, dyed the plaster of the town hall yellow, brought the grayed wood of the yard gates to life. Anyone looking could easily get the impression that nothing was amiss. It’ll all work out. Take care a isself. Now we just need to get the child into the files so she’ll have her papers for Richmond. Then we’ll pack her in a basket, I’ll pick up one handle and you’ll take the other, and we’ll carry her home.

  Avenarius Kollmorgen, licensed attorney, a little short but very stocky, strolled across Market Square with his elbows out, making his face with its parted lips and twinkling eyes even wider, and he doffed his hat to Cresspahl and squeaked in his pinched voice: All’s well, Herr Cresspahl? All’s well? and he paddled on and didn’t turn around and wasn’t expecting an answer. All’s well, Cresspahl?

  In the registrar’s office, Fritz Schenk had risen to his feet when handing over the birth certificate and given Cresspahl a handshake to congratulate him on the splendid times in which he had brought a child into the world—Fritz Schenk, the rabbit researcher whose mother hadn’t told him where children come from. Clicked his heels, and stuffily looked Cresspahl straight in the eye, and said: Life really is different now. This job is fun again! And in fact the birth rate rose in 1933, for girls it would do so every year until 1942, for boys it declined as early as 1941, and Fritz Schenk was looking forward to having more opportunities to apply his large S, convoluted with curlicues, which devoured the rest of his name in one flourish: Schenk, Records Clerk. Cresspahl returned the handshake in silence. He could think of nothing to say. He didn’t think to remember the incident, he thought he had no further reason to. All he had left to take care of now were the church and the certificate from Brüshaver.

  If you asked Papenbrock, this Brüshaver was pathetic. He offered the town none of the entertainment you could count on from Pastor Methling. He never dropped by uninvited. He didn’t leave the house in his cassock, he walked down Town Street in a suit that was not even black, a man of forty already walking with a stoop, with narrow shoulders, a little square mustache, such a faraway look in his eyes that his prompt reply to a greeting was a bit startling. It was always disappointing to see him take his gown out of his bag in the front hall and put it on, as though getting dressed to do repairs or some other such work, not perform an ineffable act. Well, they said dying with him was nice. But people like Käthe Klupsch—with ancestral seats in the front pew, under the pulpit—missed Methling’s loud zeal, said Brüshaver was like a doctor, and not only at sickbeds. And Brüshaver spoke, he didn’t preach. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t fling out his arms. He acted like church was his job. He thundered no threats when someone had failed to fulfill their religious obligation—he brought up the oversight casually. He issued no proclamations, neither about hats on the pew ends nor about recuperated new mothers. Methling had put on a real show, having beggars stand ten feet from his door and throwing them used clothes and berating them for reeking of alcohol in a hail of abuse, not without sniffing; Brüshaver quietly invited them into the house and they could take what they wanted from the Winter Relief and put it on then and there and come back out onto the street looking like respectable citizens. And Brüshaver stayed home. He didn’t turn up at the Lübeck Court. Not only was he missing at Steel Helmet and Tannenberg Society meetings, he was not even a member. What infuriated Papenbrock most was the way Brüshaver had read the Protestant Church’s proclamation for the March elections. (“For fourteen years, the forces of centrism, Social Democracy, and Communism, with their international connections . . . Now, in the struggle against these powers, the renewal of Germany must begin from within . . .”) – Like how you’d read a bank statement! Papenbrock had groused. It wasn’t grand enough for him, it almost spoiled his mood as he went to go vote.

  Brüshaver wasn’t home. Cresspahl was received by his wife, who to him seemed like a girl, not only because she was barely thirty but also because of her relaxed, offhand movements, because her blond braids were wound so loosely around her head, because she seemed too young and too bright amid the dark books and furniture of the pastor’s office. And she didn’t quite manage to treat Cresspahl as a helpless young father. She tried, but not even the dignity of her proxy duties sufficed. When she wrote down the names and dates, she held herself like a schoolgirl. She leaned her face so close to the book, pressed her index finger down so hard without realizing it. – And when? she said, her pencil poised above Brüshaver’s appointment book. Then he realized she’d been watching him closely the whole time, appraisingly but without real curiosity. What he’d thought was friendliness was an illusion caused by her youth. She, too, wanted to make him pay for the Papenbrock family. But by then he’d been looking at her steadily and obligingly for too long, he couldn’t very well be unfriendly to her now.

  – Wednesday morning we have the Voss funeral. Voss, in Rande, whom the Nazis beat to death. Later would be fine, let’s say Wednesday at eleven: she said. Now she wasn’t looking at him, she paged through her calendar, darted her pencil around the columns for the days, and without looking up took down Lisbeth’s request for a church christening (no charge) on Sunday, March 12. She said goodbye to him in the hall, took her apron back off its hook, let him see himself out.

  A home christening the very first available morning, Cresspahl.

  It costs two marks, it’s not the end of the world.

  The child would’ve been ready to travel.

  Lisbeth didn’t have Berling’s permission yet.

  And she wanted to be completely sure. She wanted to extend your time in Germany with a later date at the church.

  A home christening just wasn’t enough for her.

  She put one over on you, Cresspahl.

  I didn’t want to think that, Gesine. And you’ll learn soon enough.

  November 1, 1967 Wednesday

  The authorities of the Soviet Union want to show us what “Socialist humanism”
is and plan to release various people from their prisons and labor camps, such as war invalids, decorated veterans, pregnant women, and women with underage children, although not, for instance, two recalcitrant writers.

  The authorities of mainland China have issued their 444th “serious warning” against the USA, this time for border violations at sea.

  The authorities of the USA are celebrating the longest economic boom in human history, tied with the previous record (eighty months) and still going, and The New York Times has given its employees a raise.

  Last night a group of Negroes celebrated All Saints’ Eve in Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, knocking down gravestones and throwing small stones and eggs at passing cars. By the time the police drove up, first with one radio car and then with forty, the youths bombarding the representatives of law and order with bottles and rocks numbered three hundred, all of them “colored,” as a rule of language would have it.

  On Broadway in our neighborhood, too, bands of children were running wild—in witch’s robes, in witch’s hats, faces painted and blackened, but beneath the paint and the blackening their skin was pink and so even a policeman was fair game. He strolled down the sidewalk deep in thought, letting his holster bob against his hip and his nightstick twirl around his wrist, suspecting nothing, when five costumed children surrounded him, hopping and screaming, and offered him the options of paying a tribute or paying the price, until he started feeling around for coins in his back pocket, embarrassed, restrained from defending himself by the watchful eyes of the adult passersby, who not only monitored whether he acted as a Friend and Helper but also wanted to see with their own eyes a policeman publicly coughing up real genuine money. One of the children, keeping to the edge of the holdup, gesticulating and chanting in a not entirely carefree way, a girl about Marie’s height, was wearing a long yellow cloak with black tiger stripes much like the one that Marie had made over the weekend. Her face was blackened, and a black hood hid her hair, and even from a distance she couldn’t be Marie. Marie had wanted to throw her own party for Halloween, All Hallows, All Saints’ Eve, a party at her house, and her friend Francine was going to be allowed to come.

  The howling mass had already blown through Maxie’s store, and the man that the customers and employees called Max stood stunned amid his neatly laid out fruits and vegetables, for lying on the floor in the sawdust were trampled pears and grapes, flung down by disappointed children who wanted money. At the exit, near the hanging scales, a rearguard was still busy looting an older lady. She was audaciously dressed in bright colors, each piece of clothing a little off in one way or another, and her whitish strands of hair had a bluish shimmer, and she looked outlandish, not all there. She talked strangely. She had clearly collected change for this day, and she chattered on and on about the wonderful opportunity and permission the day afforded her to give these dear innocent young creatures a little joy, and Max’s staff watched disapprovingly as she dug coin after coin from the depths of her faded handbag, not only nickels, quarters too, rattling blissfully on, blind to the fact that the young creatures in question looked demanding and extortionate more than anything else. No sooner had she left, head trembling, muttering to herself, than the staff turned on the boys and shooed them out onto the street, and even though they hadn’t thought this customer was crazy before—she always paid for her vegetables—they now made gestures behind her back, saying that she was nuts, tapping on their foreheads just like the Germans do. Max said nothing about Marie. For six years now, Max has greeted the child with Hey, Blondie! and given her peaches or apples, Marie has gone through hundredweights of fruit in his store, and if he had recognized her among the Halloween marauders he would have mentioned it. – And the grapes that aren’t good enough for this generation, they come from California, by air! he’d said. – Maine or Long Island potatoes today, Mrs. Cresspahl?

  The plundered policeman was now outside Sloane’s supermarket, his back to the wall, standing very straight, unapproachable. His twirling of his nightstick no longer looked quite so playful, more like practice, and however vacant and even-tempered his gaze might be now, no child would ever dare go up to him.

  On the east side of West End Avenue, a troop of witch children was marching up the hill, plastic pumpkins on sticks in their hands, arms around one another’s shoulders, walking in an almost exactly synchronized rhythm. They looked tiny next to the dark red and gray elephantine buildings, and so innocent, singing in their immature voices:

  One little, two little, three little witches

  Fly over haystacks, fly over ditches,

  Fly to the moon without any hitches:

  Hi-ho Halloween’s here,

  until they swept under the awning outside Marcia’s front door, marched past a startled doorman into the lobby with the quick, shrill, badgering battle cry Trick or treat! Trick or treat!, and this time Marie was unmistakable, red boots, yellow cloak, black hood, a child who would rather give up her own party and go to someone else’s than invite a child of a different skin color into her apartment.

  And the child who came back home in blackest darkness had stood in the hall for fifteen minutes before she could bring herself to use her key. When she’d made up her mind, she’d rolled her Halloween costume into an unrecognizable bundle under her arm and walked past the table without a word, without a glance at dinner, straight to her room, and pulled the double door shut behind her, very softly, and wasn’t heard from again until morning. Tonight is the second night that she offers the excuse of not being hungry, immediately shuts the doors behind her, and in general is acting uncommunicative but not stubborn (behavior she used to believe she hadn’t inherited), but also like a child, with unguarded amazement, as though simply not understanding something.

  It wasn’t like that.

  Tell it to Francine.

  It wasn’t like that. Marcia invited us before I could invite anyone.

  And you’re not allowed to bring colored children over to Marcia’s.

  It wasn’t my party.

  You promised Francine.

  I promised it to you, she doesn’t know anything about it.

  I do.

  Anyway, it wasn’t a promise. It was a possible plan.

  And so why wasn’t it possible after all?

  Can’t you see I’m ashamed?

  And is that a nice feeling?

  For two days now you’ve thought I was lying.

  So what happened?

  I don’t know why I did it.

  Do you want me to try to tell you?

  No. If you did, I’d think it was the truth.

  What do you know so far.

  Not the truth anyway.

  The truth—as it said for all to read on the roof and side of a truck on Third Avenue—is:

  The truth is that NU-Skin Wash is the best way to care for your skin.

  That’s the truth, and the advice about how to save your skin is free of charge.

  November 2, 1967 Thursday

  Let it be known to one and all that I, Elinor S. Donati, love my husband dearly, and as such hope to remain Mrs. William R. Donati forever and ever.

  Are we supposed to send our congratulations? To: Mrs. William R. Donati, whoever that is, c/o The New York Times, Public Notices Department.

  On March 11, 1933, Albert Papenbrock, grain merchant and bakery owner, Jerichow, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, gave a present to his granddaughter Gesine H. Cresspahl. He signed over to her a property on the edge of town, with land, barn, and outbuildings, to be administered for her until her majority by her father, Heinrich Cresspahl, master carpenter, Richmond, Greater London.

  Lisbeth. Lisbeth. Lisbeth.

  Think of the child, Cresspahl.

  Lisbeth. Lisbeth.

  We owe it to the child, Cresspahl.

  Lisbeth.

  What if something happened to us, Cresspahl.

  This is why you came back to Germany, Lisbeth.

  You knew I was going, Cresspahl.

  It
’s not why I came.

  You’re here now.

  And I didn’t want to come.

  It was your duty and obligation to come.

  What if I hadn’t?

  Then you’d have had it your way.

  I’m not staying in Germany.

  But now we own a piece of it.

  I don’t need one.

  But I do, Cresspahl.

  You wrote in the birth notice: Jerichow and Richmond.

  Because it was true.

  Because you were bragging, Lisbeth.

  No harm done.

  They arrested me in Lübeck.

  A misunderstanding.

  I didn’t see it that way.

  We’ve had Nazis in the Mecklenburg government since last summer.

  Silly asses.

  See?

  Gun-toting idiots.

  See? What difference does it make to us, Cresspahl?

  You’re related to one.

  All the better.

  A house from your father, connections from your brother.

  Another man would be happy about it.

  Well I’m not another man.

  Oh, Cresspahl, your pride.

  Financially it’s crazy.

  Papenbrock bought out Zoll. Zoll’s going to Gneez to join the party.

  Him too. You too?

  You have Fascists in London too, Cresspahl.

  Not in the government.

  Not yet.

  Never.

  You want to gamble when your own child’s at stake?

  We wouldn’t be foreigners much longer, Lisbeth.

  Long enough.

  Lisbeth, the child would be a British citizen.

  Not right away.