by Uwe Johnson
– We all wish you a pleasant Christmas: de Rosny says, and he actually does stay standing at his ancestral portal till the car has left the driveway. Marie is still waving through the back window when there’s no longer any possible way he can see her.
And Marie gets something else, too. The false gifts just won’t stop coming tonight. De Rosny wants to start his fishing expedition on the quiet. I’m learning Czech to make a vacation in Prague that much easier. The next time I happen to be asked about the bank’s stance on credit to Eastern European countries, the more intelligent answer would be: The bank’s policy in this direction can be described as not aggressive, repeat: not aggressive. Strange that Dmitri Weiszand should have spent a whole evening and dinner at St. Wenceslaus drawing Mrs. Cresspahl out with this question. And it would be better if even Marie acted like we’d spent this evening over juice and popcorn at the Riviera Theatre. As expected, Marie is thrilled.
– A real secret? she says. – You mean a secret even The New York Times doesn’t know about?
That kind of secret all right. For Marie that’s exciting.
December 17, 1967 Sunday
Either it’s Christmas approaching or else old madam New York Times is in serious decline. Because here she is, claiming unashamedly that there is a West German author by the name of Günther Glass. Even the “th” is wrong, and the rest simply beggars belief. Surely The New York Times knows that it’s another author who has given life to the Glass family—Jerome D. Salinger, of Westport, Connecticut?
The New York Times was back in East Germany once again, and she looked around to see what’s what, and found it. Hans-Dietrich Dahnke’s the name, professor of German literature at Humboldt University in East Berlin is his game, and he tells The New York Times: “But people cannot see everything that is printed in any case. It is better when the party makes the selection for them.” All right then, and DON’T FORGET THE NEED-IEST!
And the Air Force is dumping everything it has on Hanoi and even members of congress feel that the Vietcong are doing a better job of land distribution than the Saigon government and a charred package containing $44,000 in cash was found in the burned-out post office and the city’s burglars are now going out to the suburbs and the common cold may be caused by psychological depression not a virus and Sonny Franzese is back home with his wife, Tina, and Hannah Arendt has said in public that “To oppose the government in the United States with violence is absolutely wrong” and, what else, REMEMBER THE NEEDIEST!
In 1935 my father started two things.
The first was he started planting a garden. Behind the house, from the back door to the front of the workshop barn, was untilled, weed-choked land, and one Sunday evening in March a whole group went to work turning over the soil, which had grown dry and hard. Each with his or her own spade, there were Hilde Paepcke, Alexander Paepcke, Aggie Brüshaver, Creutz the elder and Creutz the younger (“to be good neighbors”), Arthur Semig, Meta Wulff, Albert Papenbrock, Louise Papenbrock, the two assistants, the two apprentices, Lisbeth Cresspahl, Cresspahl, and the child. That was a long front against the land, and they dug in, they turned the soil, they threw the stones neatly into a pile, and people had fun, for Louise broke her spade, and Heine Klaproth was leaving a large and growing mound in his wake, and there was laughter, for Louise Papenbrock didn’t want to let anyone help with her share, and after a few hours they were done. Lisbeth was given the honor of beating the paths between the beds. The others were given beer and pea soup from the very biggest pot in the house. Creutz had brought over ten fruit trees but he didn’t want to plant the first, that wasn’t how it was done, and so Cresspahl walked over and planted a tree and watered it and hoped for good apples. Then he paced off Lisbeth’s paths again and made sure everything was in order, and the people standing at the windows laughed and laughed, because he didn’t realize that the tiny child was walking behind him with her hands clasped thoughtfully behind her back, just like him. And in cold cold May the patch of land was a garden. That was something he started, meant to last.
The other thing came from the guild in Gneez. They had promised they’d cut him in, and they did. What they’d foreseen was the arrival of an order from the Reichswehr, which was now called the Wehrmacht, and written on that order was construction and road-building and jobs for carpenters and plumbers and glaziers and roofers and chimney makers and gardeners on dozens of acres north of Jerichow, halfway between the town and the sea, where the elevation is high above the water. Before they cut Cresspahl in, there was one last detail that had to be taken care of.
I hear you have ten thousand marks in the credit union, Cresspahl.
If you say so, Böttcher. Im not sayin that.
Even fifteen, Cresspahl. That’s not what Im saying.
Aha.
Jå. Cant have that. Take it outta there and put it in Wismar, Lübeck, wherever you want. I need to be able to say: Cresspahl has no more than eight hundred in the credit union. I need to be able to say that in good faith.
Well thats what we’ll do then, Böttcher. And thanks.
Then they cut him in and asked him into the guild master’s living room and divided out the batches of work, because the Mecklenburg Reichswehr was known to prefer dealing with small tradesmen over big companies and the Gneez guild wanted the whole contract. The tradesmen in Gneez district did in fact keep the construction of Jerichow-North almost entirely for themselves. Specialist firms were brought in from Berlin and Hamburg only for the concrete work and the steel construction. And that meant there was something for the hotels too. There was something for almost everyone. There was something in the air, there was something you could feel, and more than one person said it out loud: Here we go. Köpcke the building contractor had so much reason to be happy that he started greeting Cresspahl on the streets again, even though Cresspahl hadn’t sent him a penny of work on his own renovations. Now there were pennies enough for all, and no one had any complaints about the marks either. Not that everyone got exactly what they were angling for. Cresspahl, for instance, had especially wanted the officers’ mess. He’d had his heart set on it. A lot of people go to the officers’ mess, and they talk. People with money. What Cresspahl wanted to put on display there were massive brazilwood bays on three walls. He pictured three tables for the middle, easy to push together so people could gather around a large table, easy to remove to make a dance floor. That was how it used to be, there was dancing in the officers’ mess. But the interior design of the mess went to someone else, and Cresspahl couldn’t push for it, because the man who got it was Wilhelm Böttcher, master of the guild, since he’d landed the big one. In the end Wilhelm Böttcher wasn’t to be envied for it, because the Reichswehr, or Wehrmacht as they called themselves now, sent him some guy who scribbled all over his drawings like he owned them. So Cresspahl made do with the beds, the closets, the sentry boxes, and the duckboards sentries need so their feet won’t get cold. And now he had almost more assistants and untrained workers than he had room for in his house, he had to quickly convert the old fodder room in the barn into a dormitory. And when Elsa Pienagel came over and wanted a dining-room chair fixed up as nice as her sewing chest had been, he couldn’t say for sure when it would be ready, and she’d have to come pick it up, since he didn’t have time for home deliveries anymore. And there was something to show for it all, some real money coming in. By the time 1935 was over, he’d been able to buy another belt sander and a chain mortiser and a veneer router and a corner finisher, and say what you want about the German Labor Front and that drunken pig Robert Ley, but Dr. Erdamer wasn’t too good for a high post with them, and Dr. Erdamer had worked out an arrangement for Cresspahl to buy new machines from the German Woodworking Co. in Schwerin, and the whole lot cost him just 9,500 reichsmarks. They’d’ve been a good 11,000 otherwise. Not rentenmarks anymore, reichsmarks. And Lisbeth had so much to do, with cooking for all the workmen and the house and the child. She did have two girls helping out now, learning how to run a
real Mecklenburg household, and even so it was sometimes late in the evening when she stopped working, because it was often she who had to go to Gneez and get forms from the Army Construction Office on Station Street.
You can’t ask me to do that, Cresspahl.
What can’t I ask you to do, Lisbeth.
Go get the forms.
I certainly can. The maids dont need to know everything thats in em, and the child cant take the train by herself yet.
But then I’ll be guilty too, Heinrich!
Guilty of what.
Of the war! The barracks are for war.
Lisbeth, I cant help you.
Can’t we . . . can’t you get out of the contract?
Whatll we live on, Lisbeth?
Ach, Heinrich. Live. What about the guilt!
You wanna go to England?
No!
Then I dont know what you want, Lisbeth.
Cresspahl.
Can’t you hear the child crying?
And the roads in Jerichow-North were built strangely wide in various places. And behind the wall of barracks buildings there was more land fenced off than you’d need for a drill grounds. The fences ran for miles to the west. And the wide roads went on and on, they never stopped. And for a long time the children of Jerichow would learn the wrong word for airplane, they learned: fighter, and they learned: bomber.
December 18, 1967 Monday
In 1935, at the German Reichsbahn booth at the end of the steamship dock in Rande-Baltic, you could still buy rail tickets to anywhere, to Lübeck, to London. Maybe Cresspahl had stopped thinking about it because the government of His Majesty George V had disappointed him. The Austrian had gone ahead and reintroduced universal military service and every soldier had to swear an oath of personal allegiance to him, but did the English have to help him out with permission to expand the German fleet to up to 35 percent the strength of the British? They were in for a surprise from the twelve German U-boats put into operation in late June 1935, that’s for sure, and from the ones to come too. And maybe he thought he’d no longer be welcome.
Brüshaver’s church wouldn’t have let him flee the country, and Brüshaver apparently didn’t mind the son from his first marriage serving as a pilot in the air force of the Austrian who was trying to dissolve the church. Brüshaver probably asked how work was going in Jerichow-North because he wanted to try to get his son transferred there. As the commander maybe.
No one could expect the old Papenbrocks to go anywhere at this point. As ever, Papenbrock found in every suspect act of the Führer and Reich chancellor something that wasn’t so suspect after all. It may have been a bitter pill that the guy had banned the Mecklenburg flag, along with the flags of all the other German states, but then again the two Mecklenburgs were once again united, for the first time in three hundred years, even those snooty Lübeckers with their Free Hanseatic City included. And the re-incorporation of the Saarland into the Reich, that was a stroke of genius. It was still annoying that he called himself a writer, of course, and that he hadn’t stuck it out as a member of the Braunschweig delegation to Berlin a little longer, for appearances’ sake if nothing else. But he, Papenbrock, hadn’t had anything taken away or destroyed by the Austrian yet.
– Actually, why did Papenbrock go to Stelling’s memorial service? Had he been in Papenbrock’s party too?
– Johannes Stelling had been a Social Democrat, but in 1920, as minister of the interior for Mecklenburg-Schwerin, he hadn’t lifted a finger against the Freikorps, safe in their Mecklenburg estates and going after the workers. If it weren’t for him, Papenbrock could easily have lost his Vietsen lease a lot sooner. Stelling had been governor of the state from 1921 to 1924. And a Reichstag representative. Papenbrock probably wanted to pay his respects to him, even if they were his last.
And in late 1935 Arthur Semig was still in his tasteful house on the Bäk in Jerichow, continuing to receive his official pension, and he thought that was only proper. True, it was no longer even legal for him to hire a maid for Dora, there was no longer anyone in Jerichow he would legally be permitted to marry or conduct extramarital relations with, and his German citizenship had been revoked as well. In exchange, he had the right to fly the Jewish colors on his flagpole, and the municipal police would have been obligated to protect this flag from damage or defacement. Arthur simply couldn’t bring himself to leave a country where everyone spoke like him, even if in many respects they didn’t think like him.
And Peter Niebuhr was serving in the Eiche school for NCOs near Potsdam, and he’d been in the Berlin-Friedenau Communist Party! Was he trying to take revenge on Comrade Stalin, who now had his dead friend Kirov just like Hitler had Röhm, and who was taking his sweet time putting down the putsch while continuing his liquidations? Did he disapprove of the USA itself finally entering into diplomatic relations with Stalin’s state, and of that state joining the League of Nations in these circumstances, albeit over Swiss objections? Peter’s relatives didn’t understand him. Ever since Peter had gone to university in Berlin, he’d become very hard to understand.
And even Martin Niebuhr realized by now that the Department of Waterways would never offer him anything bigger than the sluice at Wendisch Burg. And Gertrud Niebuhr would have wanted to adopt a child at least. And Lisbeth had had to promise her to come visit the lock for at least two weeks every year, with the child, Gesine.
And Horst Papenbrock had not only come back from “Rio de Janeiro,” he had actually brought back his brother, Robert. Jerichow didn’t see much of Robert, he’d been living in Schwerin for some time. And there was still almost no military presence in Jerichow, but Pahl was doing well with his made-to-measure uniforms for officers. The trades complained a bit louder, and they were doing well. The urgent demand for building material for Jerichow-North had even made a businessman out of Alexander Paepcke, who spent his days in the brickworks, in the office, not on the Gneez tennis courts. And the Paepckes had their second child in August 1935, a boy, Eberhardt Paepcke, Paepcke Junior. The brickworks still hadn’t burned down.
And only Methfessel hadn’t found his footing again. Methfessel had had to give up the business, to his oldest assistant, his sons were still children. It was disgraceful, seeing that big strong man wandering the streets of Jerichow and looking for children and asking them: Do you want to be a lion? That was supposed to be funny! And Dr. Avenarius Kollmorgen had closed his practice, he was showing his face outdoors more rarely now, and only asked very few people these days if all were well. And Dr. Hauschildt had developed into a well nigh capable veterinarian, ever since he’d had a sharp eye kept on him. And Methling had laid down in Gneez and died, having done his part for race and Reich, and he wanted to be buried in Jerichow, and had actually managed to force Schultz the state bishop to put on a more nationalist ceremony. A flag with a swastika was draped on his coffin, and six SA men carried it out of St. Peter’s Church, and the schoolchildren were given a day off so that they could sing. Dr. Berling had found relatives living in Sweden, while off looking for his Aryan ancestry there, and now spent vacations in Scania. Swenson was operating two taxis now and an omnibus line from the Jerichow train station to Jerichow-North, and battling the German post office for the concession for a public bus line to Rande. Erich Schulz had not come back for the Jerichow expansion—he was said to be in the navy. The von Plessens and the von Bothmers and their peers had let themselves be absorbed, along with their whole equestrian clubs, into the SS. And Friedrich Jansen had been the mayor and Nazi Party district leader of Jerichow for almost two years now and had learned to listen to Kleineschulte and old Papenbrock. There were still a couple of people he hadn’t quite taken care of yet. Johs. Schmidt was still asking for money when the party requested the use of his Musikhaus loudspeakers for national and National Socialist events; he’d soon learn. Another one was this Englishman, this Heinrich Cresspahl behind the church. Came to Town Hall and asked for a party membership form and didn’t bring it back and claimed th
e form was for one of his assistants. The assistant had gone to Wismar, he’d actually been a party member since June 1934, Friedrich Jansen had figured out that much, something fishy was going on there. This Cresspahl didn’t admit he’d had second thoughts when the Führer had cleansed his SA of traitors and bastards, he only said: He was still thinking it over. And then said it again, and again. There still wasn’t anything you could hang on him, and still no way to get past old Papenbrock. But one of these days this Cresspahl would fall into a trap laid by Nordic cunning. Or into an open grave.
Cresspahl had taken out a second life insurance policy, with Allianz. Cresspahl could now be reached by phone, JErichow-209. It was always his wife who answered, though, he probably didn’t have time for the twenty steps from the workshop to the house. Now it was 1935, and they still didn’t have their second child, or a third. You wouldn’t have guessed that of Lisbeth Papenbrock to look at her. The thing about the walnut trees had turned out to be true, their oils really did keep mosquitoes away. They had only the one child, Gesine, who by Christmas 1935 was a little older than two and a half. She still didn’t talk much, but she kept her eyes wide open.
Hang on to your fence, don’t reach for the moon.
December 19, 1967 Tuesday
Oh, The New York Times when she really lets loose! It wasn’t anything exceptional, just the city’s commissioner of the Department of Water Supply, Gas and Electricity resigning last week because he and Antonio (“Tony Ducks”) Corallo from the Mafia had been running a scheme involving the private distribution of, for example, an $835,000 city contract. Two articles, starting on the front page and filling all of page 52. And another article on page 1! continued on page 53! And she does not neglect to offer in addition “A Glimpse at City’s Corruption Over the Last Century.” And in the commentary on the editorial page you can hear her voice shaking, and still she doesn’t lose control of herself—she advises us to see the situation in its proper context and instructs us how to do so.