by Uwe Johnson
Old Papenbrock was somewhat confused. It wasn’t easy for him to make his way among the new things and new words being sent down from Berlin to Jerichow: the Reichsnährstand set up to regulate food production, the State Hereditary Farm Law, the Winter Relief Program. In every law from Hitler’s government he found something to object to, though they did have their reasonable side too. He thought it was a practical idea not to allow entailed farms to be divided or mortgaged, while also pointing out that the eldest son was not always the best farmer, and that for him there had never been loans without collateral. As for the Winter Relief Program collections, Papenbrock found it quite humane what the Austrian had to say about fellow members of the German people suffering from hunger; Papenbrock did not, though, feel that he had done anything to cause that hunger, and to be honest it went against his conscience when he finally coughed up a five-mark coin so as not to look bad. He still hadn’t gotten over the fact that the new government had killed an actual governor of Mecklenburg-Schwerin; he decided that just maybe the Reich government had done so unknowingly. For in the end, though worried, he had attended the memorial service for Johannes Stelling, had shown himself quite openly there in his black suit, and had they come and arrested him? Had they dared to even warn him, an officer in the First World War and a pillar of the economic system? By no means, my dear Cresspahl. These are people who know what’s what, after all. And in terms of property rights there was nothing to worry about now. This Hitler had announced the conclusion of his National Socialist revolution on June 6, hadn’t he. So that was that. Not such a big deal. You probably couldn’t see that so clearly from England.
Louise had fixed up what was basically a self-contained apartment for the Cresspahl family in the part of the building that had been a gabled house of its own before Papenbrock had bought it because he needed the storage space in its attic. There were two rooms with three windows looking out onto Station Street, and a room for the child with a window and a door onto the balcony on the garden side. Louise didn’t entirely manage to respect her daughter’s new rights and dignities, though, and was liable during a meal to send Lisbeth to fetch something she’d forgotten, and Lisbeth would stand up from the table like a child. The first time, Cresspahl let her go. The second time, Papenbrock noticed and called for the maid.
Lisbeth’s sister, Hilde, was still at the Papenbrocks’, waiting to see whether her Alexander would find his bourgeois footing once more. When the sisters were together Hilde wasn’t like she’d been in March. She was still the more self-assured of the two, carefree, lively, even-tempered, but she didn’t pay much attention to Cresspahl. She succeeded more than once in bringing the conversation back around to the mayoral election next October and attributing to Alexander Paepcke the necessary abilities, if no more. Then old Papenbrock would tense up his face, disgusted and amused, so you could read from the tip of his nose what he didn’t want to say out loud to Paepcke’s charitable wife. Maybe he liked that Hilde was gradually coming to see Alexander’s clients’ “missing” funds and his burned-down brickworks as something amusing, in any case long since forgotten. Here Papenbrock had not fulfilled one of his daughter’s wishes. Paepcke in charge of the Jerichow city treasury—that made Cresspahl laugh too, as long as it didn’t actually happen.
Papenbrock could have been. For Papenbrock had his finger in more than one pie when it came to Jerichow city planning. He’d spoken up in a public council meeting to say that the town should be developed to the south and the west, not up where Dr. Erdamer had proposed and pushed through a neighborhood of single-family houses but down at the other end, on the other side of the railway line, away from town, where up until now the land had been used by townsman-farmers, as well as on Brickworks Road, which petered out into nothing past the brickworks villa. – Once this street is built up and the Bäk is built up too and they’re connected, Jerichow will have a complete western ring road! Papenbrock had cried. Past the Cresspahl property Brickworks Road was just sand, and where it met the Bäk there was also nothing but sand, and the houses on the Bäk stood at a good and proper distance from the intersection. Since the councilmen had already decided against the development of Granary Street, the workmen soon got busy on Brickworks Road and tore it up and laid gas pipes under it. The pipes stopped behind Cresspahl’s barn. Lisbeth had grown used to cooking with gas in Richmond, and Papenbrock wanted to make his daughter’s life that much easier, especially if the town was paying for it. (Actually, two-thirds of the gasworks belonged to the neighboring nobility, but Papenbrock had presented it to them as though they would pay only a third of the construction costs at most.) Cresspahl didn’t like it. Papenbrock saw only the profit in it; in his scheming he’d overlooked that he was thereby taking his son-in-law’s business into his own hands, making it look as though Cresspahl were unable to fend for himself.
Cresspahl had a hard time putting down roots in Jerichow. It wasn’t that the terrain was all that different from around Malchow—a little colder, barer, relatively treeless. It wasn’t that he was an outsider—he’d been an outsider in Malchow, too. In the Netherlands too, in England too. He had no need to know who was living behind every window, the way Lisbeth did. Foreignness had always been good for him, if not always to him. But something was missing here. Was it that the town was so small, so alone on the wide flat countryside? Was it Avenarius Kollmorgen, with his indefatigably reiterated “All’s well, Herr Cresspahl?” and his conspiratorial facial expressions meant to allude to enormous reserves of secret knowledge? Was it life in the house of, obeying the rules and habits of, Albert Papenbrock? Was it that here you had to raise your right arm when you saw someone walking down the street with a flag?
All December long Cresspahl kept thinking about what to do if someone here should try to give him an earful. He thought he’d decided to pick Lisbeth and the child up under his arm and leave the country. He thought that’s what he would do.
Then it was Christmas.
December 3, 1967 Sunday
“QUOTATION OF THE DAY: ‘Cardinal Francis J. Spellman, Archbishop of New York, has passed away on this day at St. Vincent’s Hospital at 11:45 a.m. May he rest in peace.’ Message sent over the Police Department teletype.
. . .
The spokesman said that the Cardinal earlier had been feeling fine and had even discussed the possibility of going off again to Vietnam for Christmas visits to American troops there.
. . .
The Cardinal’s brick and mortar, valued at more than a half-billion dollars, was spread over an archdiocese of 4,717 square miles. This includes Staten Island, Manhattan and the Bronx in New York City plus Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, Sullivan and Ulster Counties.
. . .
The Cardinal traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, many of them as the head of the Military Ordinariate. This was, in effect, a second archdiocese that extended all over the world, wherever American troops were stationed. Beginning with World War II, the Cardinal visited training camps, fleets at sea, air forces at their bases, fighting fronts.
. . .
The Cardinal was a gregarious man, at home with a great variety of persons. This characteristic puzzled some of his friends, who could not understand how he could enjoy, seemingly equally, the company of a serious intellectual and that of a fun-loving, yacht-owning lawyer.
. . .
He enjoyed listening to songs, Irish ballads in particular. A favorite was ‘Danny Boy,’ and a monsignor on his staff, possessed of a good tenor, was often called upon to sing it and other sentimental lilts.
. . .
But what was memorable amid the opulence of the Cardinal’s garb was his face. It was round, benign, shining, almost cherubic. The forehead was high, the ears large, the nose a mite pointed, and the dark blue eyes peering through old-fashioned rimless spectacles, were steady. The face conveyed a sense of cheerfulness that even long hours of ceremony rarely seemed to dull.
. . .
His father
had a dry wit. ‘Son,’ he used to tell the boy, ‘always associate with people smarter than yourself, and you will have no difficulty finding them.’
. . .when he traveled to South Vietnam at Christmas time. Addressing American troops, he asserted: ‘This war in Vietnam is, I believe, a war for civilization.’ He went on to say that ‘less than victory is inconceivable.’
. . .
The President, recalling the Cardinal’s visits to South Vietnam at Christmas, said that his ‘grace of goodness touched all manner of men and nations.”
© The New York Times
“PUBLISHERS COMPETING FOR THE RIGHTS TO CHE GUEVARA’S DIARIES
Ernesto Che Guevara, the Latin-American revolutionary who published only one book during his lifetime, has posthumously become the center of a literary struggle.
Since the Bolivian Government announced on Oct. 9 Mr. Guevara’s death and the capture of his campaign diaries, a number of American and European publishers have been competing for international rights to the documents.
. . .
Negotiations for world rights to Mr. Guevara’s Bolivian diary are under way between Magnum Photos Inc. and the Bolivian Government. The Government claims ownership of the manuscript on the ground that the diary is a ‘captured war document.’
Magnum, a cooperative of internationally known news photographers, began the talks six weeks ago in La Paz on behalf of a consortium that includes The New York Times. The price offered for the diary was reported by reliable sources to be about $125,000.”
© The New York Times
“MANILA NEWSMAN FINDS REGIME IN HANOI IS FATALISTIC ON THE WAR
At cock’s crow every weekday, factory and office workers in Hanoi assemble in courtyards for 15 minutes of calisthenics.
This ritual is one of the war, which, according to offiis bracing its people for what their leaders call the ‘supreme sacrifice’ of a long war.
There is little question that the North Vietnamese have conditioned themselves for such a war, which, according to official Hanoi predictions, may last 10 to 20 years.
Planners in Hanoi tend toward the most pessimistic and fatalistic estimates. When North Vietnamese leaders talk about a ‘protracted war,’ they take into account the complete leveling of their cities, including the capital and the nearby port of Haiphong.”
© The New York Times
THE 20TH CENTURY MAKES FINAL RUN
“The Twentieth Century Limited, known to railroad buffs for 65 years as the world’s greatest train, pulled out of Grand Central Terminal for the last time last night. There was no fanfare and the train was only half full.
. . .
At exactly 6 p.m., Herbert P. Stevens, a brakeman, signaled the highball, and the historic train slid down Track 34. ‘It won’t be the same,’ he said. ‘I’ve been with the line for 42 years, and with this train for 10. We’ll all miss it.’
Among the passengers there was a sprinkling of mink stoles and sparkle. Older men and women who rode the Twentieth Century in its heyday were a little sad. As usual, carnations were given to the men boarding the train, and perfume and flowers to the women.”
© The New York Times
December 4, 1967 Monday
When Guevara the revolutionary was dead, his murderers lashed him to the landing sled of their helicopter and flew him to Valle Grande.
The cardinal who loved the war is lying in state in an open coffin in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in The New York Times.
Yesterday it rained from early morning through late afternoon. The snow has been washed away.
Yesterday I gave dying a try.
The dream knew the day of my death in advance, whether by calculation or prophecy. I did have a hard time waking up, but I could recognize the sounds in the apartment on the street and of the elevator outside our door. You would have to put a coffin into the elevator tipped upright.
You have to put your papers in order before the burial. You don’t wash on a day like this. I was so busy planning that Marie had to call my name twice before I helped with the coffin. Marie seemed to be carrying the heavier end. We slowly, laboriously put the box on a folding cot that was suddenly there in front of the door, put it under the soft brown blanket. The coffin was so heavy that I could have been in it myself, but since I was carrying it from the outside, and could see Marie at the other end, I was only a little nervous.
The straightening up consisted of organizing large clippings from newspapers, mostly pictures. The clippings were dated by hand, and as each one was set aside it had to be put to the left, facedown, to preserve the sequence in reverse. This was happening in a room that the apartment hadn’t had before: on the side, behind the long wall of the living room. In the living room people were moving around, there were footsteps and conversations, enough of a disturbance to make me mess up five pages. As I retraced my missteps in the papers, I saw a young man wearing the uniform of an American sergeant in the doorway on the displaced sofa. I didn’t know him. His wife was next to him, a frizzy-haired brown-eyed woman with crazy lips who maybe I had gone to school with, not in Jerichow; what bothered me was something Marie said from behind the sofa.
– Should I wrap you in a blanket?
Now I could see the dead woman on the guest cot, a shorter and thinner figure than in real life, in a limp and helpless position, her head already half wrapped in hair. The figure was wearing a brown dress I didn’t recognize. I’ve never liked wearing brown.
I knew the next thought but I just couldn’t think it: I was dead, ever since I’d heard the elevator if not longer, probably since the night before last. I could still tell that much. But now I had to go view the body before I lost all my strength, and be the body.
The child told me to get to work. Marie was standing at the gray window, in the morning, at dawn, and holding up a handkerchief by both ends to block the meager light. The handkerchief was strangely square and unusually bright. I went and stood carefully behind her. Pictures appeared on a radiant patch of light between Marie’s fingers—never before seen, never before photographed, in cold, precise colors:
Lisbeth Cresspahl in her coffin
Lisbeth Papenbrock, six years old, with long hair, lying as though floating, in profile
the barn before it burned down
a chicken pecking off a strawberry from beneath
the Baltic from a very fast very long flyover
the corner ripped out of the Empire State Building
but you weren’t allowed to want anything, or tilt or otherwise move the handkerchief, or say anything.
– Give me the handkerchief, Marie.
She turned around. It was someone I didn’t know, half a head taller than me, with long, sand-gray hair. Her face was in shadow. She folded the handkerchief up and politely pressed it into my hand. It felt soft and dirty, like a rag for cleaning, and it left marks on my hands and gradually got warm and it was the blanket I was being carried in. It wasn’t unpleasant.
What remains today is the feeling of being carried and the numbness. Sometimes I had to tell myself things: This is what people call a candelabra, this is a fire alarm, Marie’s geography notebook, the number 5 bus. Then it was all right again. On the north corner of Forty-Second Street and Third Avenue the rain is allowed to form ankle-deep puddles, so that many thousands of people have to swerve around them onto a part of the street that the red lights have cleared of car traffic, surely that is well known. The way one crowds to the right at the same spot every evening, at the entrance to the Flushing line, submits anxiously to the blast of air through the swinging doors, lines up in the lane into which the crowd enters three steps before the turnstiles, the way one then pivots left toward the stairs, the way once you get down to the platform you push ahead to the exact center of the newsstand, at the front door of the very train car that will stop two stops later exactly across from the foot of the staircase that leads to the West Side line, surely that is well known. That the IRT platforms seem emptier on Wednesday
mornings than on other days is known. That the IND platforms at Fifty-Ninth Street being more crowded in the morning than in the evening is due to the people who work in the Garment District in the Thirties and have to punch in, anyone can figure that out. That Riverside Drive makes an S outside our building, with an infinite worm of light creeping toward us on it, has been thought so many times.
The lamp illuminating the main entrance seems new.
December 5, 1967 Tuesday
US DEFECTOR IN MOSCOW IS PICTURED AS A PARANOID IN WIFE’S
TESTIMONY IN FLORIDA DIVORCE CASE
ENEMY BATTALION SMASHED IN TRAP
WEEK OF PROTEST AGAINST THE DRAFT STARTED
SCHOOL HEAD TURNS IN SON ON $81,000 BANK THEFT
FIRES KILL 9TH CHILD IN CITY IN 36 HOURS
BROOKLYN DRUGGIST IS KILLED IN ROBBERY
DEAL FOR A WITNESS IN FRANZESE TRIAL
MADRID STUDENTS RESUME RIOTING
By December 1933, it was already being said around Jerichow that this Cresspahl was a stubborn bastard.
No sooner arrived from England than he’d retreated from the eyes of Jerichow to the property he’d wheedled out of old Papenbrock and went to work on his barn. Came out of Papenbrock’s house bright and early in the morning, showed his face in Market Square, and disappeared. Instead of turning onto Town Street, now called Adolf-Hitler-Street, he’d go the long way, past the school, down the Bäk to the end, then back again on Brickworks Road. Never came to Wulff’s pub in the evening now, didn’t stop to talk in the market, who knew what was on his mind.