by Uwe Johnson
And the grown-ups kept Jakob all to themselves, a child never got the chance to talk to him! If there happened to be any children who wanted to. Jakob was like the house newspaper. When Jakob said that the Germans were allowed to use electricity in Lübeck again, even if only to listen to the radio, there was no point in doubting him. Maybe he’d been across the demarcation line. Jakob said: Stettin’s in ruins, and the Poles won’t let more than forty thousand Germans stay—and so Stettin was rubble with only forty thousand German inhabitants; a child asking, rather slyly, about the Haken Terrace was of no use, cause look, he knew it. He sat there looking a little sleepy, friendly enough, eyes a bit veiled, too much dark hair. You hardly noticed him at all. Clearly that’s how he got around so much. Or did he know all these things from the papers? He didn’t, there weren’t any.
Not long after that, Jakob was sitting at the table in Cresspahl’s house, which was where he belonged after all, and yet the man almost never came to Jerichow. Jakob said something about nuts. When walnuts turn ripe.
It’s a while before a girl can leave the kitchen without overturning the table or tearing the door off its hinges!
High up in the tree—the black market tree, not the other one—Gesine Cresspahl found a piece of paper tied to a branch. It wasn’t a piece of paper. It was a newspaper! The British Military Government news sheet, published in Lübeck by the Twenty-First Army. Really and truly, a newspaper, with a price on it even.
Gesine Cresspahl would have liked to think Jakob had swum the Trave Canal or Dassow Lake to Lübeck for her sake. But that was too much. He must have had business to do there.
Still, Cresspahl’s daughter now shared a secret with him, and she was the only one who knew. And that night, when Cresspahl said he wished he could read the news from Lübeck for once, she denied to his face that she’d ever heard of a Western newspaper.
And Jakob had betrayed her to the grown-ups again, because Cresspahl said: It was a secret, and can she keep a secret again, and the thing was in the right-hand walnut tree, fifth branch pointing east, top surface.
– That’s what being in love is like, Gesine?
– That’s what it was like for me.
– Is that something I’ll inherit?
– Are you ashamed of me, Marie!
– No. Really, I’m not. It’s just, I might do it differently.
– Go right ahead.
– Should I tell you when it happens?
– You won’t.
– So just because that’s what you were like as a child, I have to—
– No. That’s not why. You are free, independent, not subject to parental directives, all of that.
– Did the British news feel wet?
– It had never been in the water.
– Good. So what was in it?
– Not much. Things I’ve forgotten. And also that at the end of July 1945 an airplane crashed into the Empire State Building.
– A plane? Gesine!
– A B-35 bomber, and it rammed the seventy-ninth floor of a building that was the tallest in the world at that time. Empire State Building, 350 Fifth Avenue, between Thirty-Third and Thirty-Fourth Streets. Well known to every documented New Yorker.
– You want to link Jakob to New York somehow, even if it’s by newspaper.
– If I want him in New York, I always have you.
– Thank you for the information.
– About the B-35 bomber?
– That my father knew that New York State’s nickname was the Empire State. And that we have a 102-story building here.
– It’d be 101 in his way of counting.
– Right. And also, I wanted to say I’m sorry.
– No.
– Yes, I’ve been horrible since Saturday.
– No you haven’t.
– Yes I have. I’ve been sulking, I haven’t been answering you properly, I’ve been horrible unbearable, just because of this elected official, Lindsay.
– Forget it.
– And if I ever forget what my father was like, let me know.
April 30, 1968 Tuesday
Now what might Employee Cresspahl be looking for in one of the top drawers of Kennedy Airport, and with a child, too? The restaurant is called To the Golden Skies, if not even higher; the management prices in the triple-filtered cool air, the tables are covered in genuine linen and laid with stainless steel pricier than silver, the berth-like booths are widely separated and to hell with the exorbitant rent per square foot, each is an island unto itself, under lamps specially made in Italy, and the built-in music is so genteelly restrained that it’s almost silent in the room. It’s almost not an American restaurant. Whether European tourists preparing for their return or natives getting accustomed to the strange manners people have abroad, everyone here has to pay a stiff price, and at first the waitstaff, in brightly colored livery after the fashion of forgotten royal courts, view the mother and child at window table three as a risk.
The lady, thirty or thirty-five years old, is dressed appropriately for the establishment, although people have been known to dress up in such suits who in the end are nothing but typing-pool girls from midtown. She’s had her hair done by a professional but it’s still not much more than a negligent skullcap reaching down to her neck, practically a man’s cut, a salon in deepest Queens could have done it instead of one on Madison Avenue. She’s not wearing jewelry, thinks a long bare neck is good enough. Thirty-five years old. No accent, but a European handbag. No white shoes. Who knows, maybe she just came from the East Side Terminal by bus, she might never have enough money for a plane flight in her life, much less dinner at the Golden Skies, and she’ll pay for her dine-and-dash with a visit to the night court in southern Manhattan.
The management has nothing to do with such losses—the head waiter is responsible for them out of his own pocket. It wouldn’t be the first time. Anyone in the world can book a table from Washington, through the Scandinavian Airlines system, window view, two and a half hours, calling themselves Professor Erichson. This lady’s no professor.
The child, now. The young lady. Now that’s a child who belongs in restaurants. She’s in fourth or fifth grade, she’s not scared of the money she breathes in when she’s here, the money quietly watching her in the form of fine woods, sheep’s wool, waiters’ graceful footsteps. This is hardly the first time she has accepted a leather and vellum menu with an attentive smile and then laid it aside, as though time were not money. Orders water. But a pitcher full of water and mineral ice is standing right in front of her, so now she acts modest, lets her glass be turned right-side up and filled, like a present. Says “eh-hem,” not “thankyouverymuch”; samples the free sample; nods to a waiter like a vineyard owner. Maybe a foreigner, this child. They don’t wear their braids so long here, the clips might be from Tiffany instead of Woolworth’s, hair that white blond with sandy shadows in it probably came to Kennedy on Scandinavian Airlines, that’s for sure. The child doesn’t put her elbows on the table the way children do, she keeps her hands loosely folded, and not around her glass either, supported by her forearms, like they taught her in finishing school. She keeps talking and talking to the rather silent patron, in a fun-loving soprano voice she keeps low in pitch—only occasionally does the tone rise sharply. That sounds childish. Or British. You walk past them without a glance, and your glance is drawn to them anyway, and you pour the young miss another glass of her goddamn free water and get an acknowledging look in return, a nod, downright chummy. Gray-green eyes, not like her mother’s. Still, a lively face. Her lips aren’t her mother’s either. Doesn’t let the presence of the waitstaff interrupt her in the slightest, just keeps telling her story about a suitcase full of dolls. Clearly a story about some totally different child—one that’s just turned funny. She’s trying to cheer the woman up without annoying her; can the corners of her eyes be laughing at the same time, at a waiter who wants to finally take their order? No, a child like that doesn’t do such a thing, and
when the doubtful table at last orders a bottle of Beaujolais you can give the child a discreet wink, plausibly deniable. Because only one of the pair at the table is using her glass, and the party is still doubtful, isn’t it.
I was sitting that same way in the Düsseldorf airport eleven years ago, a month’s saved-up money in my pocket and even so the staff kept an eye on me, as someone unlikely to be able to pay. I just wanted to look at the planes departing for points farther west, where I wasn’t allowed to go. I wanted to go to England.
We were sitting that same way in early May seven years ago, at a picture window like this one, when the airport was still called Idlewild, and wishing we were in one of the planes scuttling into the air between us and the thickening ink of the sky—heading out over the Atlantic, away from here. We wanted to get out of New York, go back to Europe; Flushing, Queens, New York, 11356, had been too much for us. Marie let herself be talked into one last trip into Manhattan, since her toys were all back in the hotel. Seven years later here we are.
We’ve been back to Idlewild/Kennedy Airport, but when it was with luggage Marie always looked at the ticket to make sure it was good for a flight back home; since then we’ve picked up friends or cars or bosses here, once it was money to reinstate the constitutional rights of a certain Signor Karsch. And from year to year the child was ever more helpful, a credit to us. And now and then we come for a meal as if we’d missed our usual mealtime, but actually it’s a date with D. E.
Aka Professor Erichson. Suddenly, as soon as they see him, the waiters enlarge their temporary politeness into hospitality. They think they are faced with an older gentleman, what with his gray hair—he is only turning forty this year. The fat in his face, purplish more from burst blood vessels than a cold wind, makes him look older too. He sometimes has a truly gray, distant look, and however agile he may be in moving his heavily weighed-down bones, it can still look elderly. He stops in the door as if he doesn’t know what to do; he hands over his hat like a sacrifice; and yet they recognize him as someone who belongs here. It’s not the money. They won’t inspect his jacket—constructed especially for him, and in Dublin, and for more than three hundred; when they see his pipe they won’t guess that it cost what someone else might fork over for a small car, and anyway he keeps it hidden in his hand like a small sick bird. He is dressed 100 percent like an American on a trip. It’s not his habits: he doesn’t carry himself like a frequent honorary guest at D’Angleterre in Copenhagen or the banquet halls of the allied Western air forces. He doesn’t review the restaurant while standing in front of the maître d’, neither by gentle sniffing nor visual scrutiny—maybe the subtly cool air makes him shiver slightly. We can’t explain it and yet from the very first word and nod and footstep he is recognized as someone who knows his business. Restaurants such as this are run for him, and he takes it upon himself to dignify their labor, and to pay for it, with pleasure on both sides if possible. He’s acts like the waiter’s partner, and we believe it; we can’t prove anything except that the man with the serving trolley stops and looks at the new customer in an objective, almost physicianly way, smiling to his equal. Now D. E.’s here and immediately we look like a family of three who haven’t seen one another for a week or three, the type to observe one another without surprise, pleased, looking forward to later, and for now with wordless understanding. Maybe he’ll offer a compliment: Your wheat’s in bloom, Gesine.
Your Czechoslovakia’s shedding its skin, Gesine.
Are all the dead the same to you, D. E.?
Not the ones from 1952. But when someone hangs himself in 1968 because he was a prison doctor in Ruzyně, Prague, in 1952, he is making a statement.
But twenty-six people in the ČSSR have hung or poisoned themselves this month just for having obeyed Stalin about torture and executions back in the day.
Were they forced to?
No. Maybe then.
They had the same choice then that they have today.
The Republic should do it.
Kill them?
Punish them.
Arrest them for their murders before they commit suicide?
Yes D. E., yes. Fair trials and all that.
For that the Communists first have to take power in Czechoslovakia.
You see. But a Stalinist, the former minister for national security, gets up and tells a Slovak newspaper: It was Stalin’s orders.
It’s not going quickly enough for him, Gesine.
But the Czech papers act like he’d been talking about the weather!
Your Mr. Dubček, he can’t alienate his Soviet friends, even with the truth.
But the Soviets’ve sent shipments of wheat to Czechoslovakia for twenty years and now they’re suspending delivery.
They’ll pin another medal on that Stalinist for having spoken of Stalin’s crimes.
These homemade dialectics.
You’re going to have to learn them again, Gesine.
Okay. So we’ll negotiate Canadian wheat for Prague.
It’s just a detour, Gesine.
There’s something I want to say about these detours. When Marie’s ready.
Marie’s saying something.
– John Vliet Lindsay’s a –—: Marie says. She’s waited until the reunion was safely underway—she’s been watching her D. E. and not wanting to bother him in the brooding he’s been stuck in since February, which he can refuse to discuss but can’t conceal. Still, D. E. has to be notified of changes in the family situation. For her latest information about Mayor Lindsay, she really and truly sat up straight and took a deep breath and still her voice cracked.
– John Vliet Lindsay’s a –—: D. E. says, overtrumping her bad word with one even worse, which not everyone knows in New York, which certainly isn’t meant for the ears around this table and never, ever, for the mouth of a child. But it makes Marie feel better. She has watched D. E.’s mouth and looked into his eyes and mentally compared what D. E. used to say about her now abandoned friend, and she believes him. She laughs to herself, a little embarrassed at the unexpected word but delighted to have been answered like a grown-up. Now we can start.
– Your wheat’s sure in bloom, Gesine: D. E. says: Your Canadian socialist wheat: he says.
This is how we should be, together. That’s what he wants. It is too bad that he has to keep an ear out for the gently squealing sounds of the engines outside the dark window, listening for a plane that will take him away, and definitely not a commercial flight to Scandinavia. Another hour and half, maybe, and the waiter will bring him a slip of paper with a telephone number on it, or bring a telephone to the table, and it really is too bad. It would be different if we agreed to live with him. Marie would agree. He won’t bring it up. All that’s missing is one word, spoken out loud. Why can’t I say it?
May 1, 1968 Wednesday
How’s it going back in the West German homeland?
In Stuttgart, after 144 sessions and one and a half years, a court has sentenced some SS soldiers who kept the Jewish population of Lemberg (Lvov) as slaves before finally killing them in the Belzec death camp. (When someone didn’t feel like shooting prisoners, his superiors did nothing to him.) In Lemberg some 160,000 people died of the Germans, in Belzec one and a half million, and now one of the guilty is going to spend life in prison. The other, according to the court, spent most of his time drunk and so he’s getting just ten years, since mercy must prevail.
In Baden-Württemberg the New Nazis won 9.8 percent of the vote in the state election, which is 12 of 127 seats in the state parliament. Every tenth person on the streets of Baden-Württemberg . . .
The federation of West Germany has eleven states and in seven of them the New Nazis have representatives in the legislature. Chancellor Kiesinger is purportedly embarrassed, Nazi that he was himself, and Brandt, his partner the anti-Fascist, is said to regret the loss of trust. So they say.
A stiff price—that’s what The New York Times calls what the Social Democrats are paying over there
for joining the right-wing governing coalition. But she stays true to her principles, our staid aunt, and blames the restless left-wing students too. If they’d only kept their mouths shut after the shooting of their leader, the voting public wouldn’t have gone over to the side of those who promise New Violence and severity. It should’ve been a happy Easter!
– What does that have to do with you! You only used to live there once!: Marie says.
– I only used to live there once.
– But we’ve got a revolution right here, twenty blocks from our front door!
– Did you see it?
– Today’s the fifth afternoon! Even you should know that, from your newspaper. Your aunt must have told you something.
– She didn’t say anything about a foreign child running around Columbia with the policemen and the students.
– Not running. I stood there and watched, like other people. To make sure the police wouldn’t start beating people when they started arresting them.
– Then they’ll beat them in their paddy wagons.
– You really are a spoilsport, Gesine.
– But at least the students saw that a girl was watching, and that she agreed with them.
– It’s not much, I admit it. But maybe I’m learning how to do it.
– For when you’re nineteen.
– So tell me what the problem is! You’re responsible for my upbringing.