Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  Cresspahl told his commandant that he hoped none of his subordinates ever died under his command.

  – A mighty race, the Russians!: Pontiy confirmed in all seriousness. Maybe that wasn’t enough of a reward for the German’s compliment, so he gave him a nod too, overly exaggerated as if to a child.

  Cresspahl didn’t respond further for now, considering this another one of Pontiy’s passing whims. Admittedly he’d actually had a large flag with hammer and sickle flown on the post-office tower just because an officer was monitoring the telephone exchange there, but he’d forbidden the removal of the “German Reichpost” sign.

  Pontiy cleared his throat slightly. His throat certainly wasn’t sore. Maybe it was involuntary.

  It was early one evening toward the end of July. Cresspahl should have been out in the fields checking the day’s haul from his band of cripples, he had paperwork to do in Town Hall—and he was being ordered to take some time off, sitting down. Pontiy’s office with the south-facing windows was dry and cool now. Cresspahl could see his own roof over the edge of the green fence, and one of the walnut trees too, its crown swaying a little, even though there was no wind. The chimney was dramatically lit by the western sun, its smoke turning slightly yellow as it emerged from the weathered bricks. The air was so thickly laden with a sweet flavor that it couldn’t be coming from the lindens alone. Had the villa’s garden ever smelled of jasmine? Had Hilde Paepcke planted jasmine here? It wasn’t the golden rain. Now the top of the walnut tree twitched again. Like a cat’s sitting in it.

  What K. A. Pontiy wanted wasn’t some ordinary cemetery but a field of honor! But he was past being able to scare his German, who shifted his shoulders a little, as if collecting his thoughts from somewhere else. – And put it where? he asked, not paying extremely close attention but coming across as obedient enough.

  The Red Army, as represented by this commandant, had been thinking of Market Square.

  During his first years in Jerichow, Cresspahl had been constantly struck by how big the market square was in this small town. And its spacious expanse, between the colorfully gabled buildings, had been crowded and lively even as late in the day as now. At harvest time the farm wagons would start coming in starting in the morning, to be weighed on the town scales; the waiting drivers got water for their horses from the town pump, stood talking to one another, hired a boy to watch the horses and popped off for a glass at Peter Wulff’s pub. There were carriages on the square too, one- and two-horse hackneys and landaus for the ladies of the nobility when they came calling on the mayor’s or pastor’s wife. Once the wheat and turnips were unloaded, the carts would take a wide loop through Papenbrock’s yard onto narrow Station Street, where the drivers talked to the horses since the wheels of the now-empty carts were clattering louder, and they’d reappear on the other side of the square. The fishermen’s guild parked their little retail truck in the southwest corner, over the objections of Emma Senkpiel’s egg shop; that was where Papenbrock liked to take what he called offense. The Lübeck Court porter would come from the midday train with his luggage cart, tired summer tourists behind him like sheep. There had been a time when a car had stood outside practically every other building on the square, even if no one in the building, or in Jerichow, owned it. When Swenson, the owner of the transportation company, was feeling lazy he would park his bus on the square overnight, where it would be seen. The east side of Market Square was too nice for shops, that was the one on the postcards, along with St. Peter’s Church. Not at this time of day, but in an hour, the nobility’s carriages would be pulling up outside the Lübeck Court, if the men were avoiding Schwerin or arguing with the innkeepers in Schönberg. Plenty of room on Market Square, no doubt about that. When the air force had come marching into town, you could see it would have been big enough for drills. Now it was empty, and all that space not being put to any reasonable use had an almost hypnotic effect, a person got strange ideas just from standing there.

  – Khoroshó: the commandant said cheerfully, agreeing. It wasn’t clear whether he was pleased with the once and future economic bustle of Jerichow, or the available space. Cresspahl thought he’d led this Russian away from his idea, but in fact it had him firmly in its grip. Pontiy was looking forward to putting the surveying tripod to use again, having the middle of the square measured, and possibly regretting that the dignity of his office would prevent him from marching around alongside it with the compass. So, the obelisk in the middle—marble, with a red star on top and tablets on all four sides.

  Cresspahl reluctantly emerged from his dreamy recollections. Shouldn’t the dead be amongst themselves, undisturbed by the gaze of foreign eyes?

  On the contrary, every foreign eye only adds to the dignity and honor of the Red Army! Pontiy said it to be nice, to explain. He did not yet suspect what Cresspahl would be forced to tell him; for him this was still an enjoyable conversation, because it was going somewhere practical.

  Cresspahl suggested the square outside the train station. They could remove the monument to the victors of the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War while they were at it, and of course no one would be putting up any monuments to this war. Not as big a space as Market Square, obviously, but enough for a dozen graves. Cresspahl was in command of his thoughts again by this point, and added: Everyone in Jerichow has to go to the station sometimes, and would thus have to walk past the heroes’ memorial.

  This was one of the rare occasions that Pontiy did not let out a sigh. He had to give vent to his distress, and he was still rubbing his hand over his sweating bald head. Clearly he was very deeply committed to someone. It was also possible that he had not yet been notified of the official Red Army policy toward the dead of the Franco-Prussian War.

  Cresspahl put forward a number of other sites—the Rifle Club grounds, a section in the new Main Cemetery, a gentle rise along the Rande country road with a view of the sea. Pontiy patiently rejected them all. Then they both realized that Cresspahl wanted to hide the dead away, Pontiy to put them on display. The question was who had more power.

  Cresspahl had worked out that the Red Army dead would have to be brought in from the countryside around Jerichow, if there were to be enough of them to give their place of rest the necessary dignity. Cresspahl mentioned the cemeteries used by the nobility, and by the villages.

  Now he’d made Pontiy mad, but good. He’d turned redder in the face, and his voice came from farther forward in his throat. He brought up things like craftiness, deceit. Again and again he had tried to trust this mayor of his and now he wanted single graves for geroyam Krasnoy Armii on the side of the road even! That was how dead Fascists were buried in Soviet Union, by stick with helmet on, like dogs!

  Cresspahl gave the Russian credit for trying to convince him, not simply issuing orders. He didn’t want their discussion to get to the point where Pontiy would leap to his feet, put his cap on his head, and start shouting—not in this breezeless heat. He asked when the first burial was to take place.

  Pontiy ordered him, in a voice monotone with contempt, to have four workmen and a stonemason report to Market Square on the morning after next. Five would be better, since after all the cobblestones would have to be taken up before the digging could start. None of them should be forced laborers, forced to pay for their Nazi connections with more menial tasks—they should be real, genuine, honest workers.

  Cresspahl thought about Pontiy’s order to bring in the harvest and said nothing more. He would have to ask women to help with the burying, since there weren’t any workmen who fit Pontiy’s criteria; he would have to drop by Kliefoth’s this very evening, and go with him to see Alwin Mecklenburg Gravestones & Ornamental Masonry (now run by his widow), and tell them how to go about building an obelisk . . . but he gave up. He’d wanted to keep this Russian from being tripped up by local customs, he’d tried often enough to give him a sense of the area he now commanded, but tonight he couldn’t do it anymore. And it wasn’t just weariness.

  Pontiy had h
im read through a well-worn mimeographed copy of a memo. The memorial tablets for soldiers must be made of granite, those for officers of marble. Inscriptions in enamel, crimson red. The rear echelon had evidently caught up to their K. A. Pontiy.

  The commandant felt watched, and knew that reaching for the vodka that night would not be taken amiss. The two men had often shared a wordless understanding of one another. This time Pontiy was mistaken. He ascribed to Cresspahl a hostility toward the Red Army. He invited neither the mayor nor the townspeople to take part in the ceremony.

  It was a young man who was driven down Town Street in an open coffin, nineteen years old. He had died on the Rammin estate, no word as to how. His face had a vague, uncertain look above the collar of his uniform. He looked like he’d stumbled upon some secret, too much for his young brow, his totally inexperienced lips. Gesine had accidentally caught sight of him outside the commandant’s villa.

  When five people dig a hole on Market Square in Jerichow early in the morning, and two officers with eight men are standing there watching, a square of that size can seem pretty empty.

  May 11, 1968 Saturday

  From the life of D. E., aka Professor Erichson. In response to questions from Marie.

  He resists giving these responses; he is almost ashamed, were he capable of it. The thing is that he considers his life an ordinary one, following the rules, a standard product die-stamped in overlapping punches by the machine known as Society. He has no stories. But he can’t just sit here with us, the morning sun coming through the windows, playing at family life, and refuse to give information to a member of that family—a fact he recognizes with pained looks from under his sparse eyebrows, staring into the bowl of his pipe as if down into an abyss. At least it’s only the Cresspahl child who wants a sample, the other Cresspahl has raised her newspaper in front of her face. She’s reading. She’s hiding her secret pleasure at the trap our crafty old fox has been caught in. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh.

  As a child D. E. had to wear his hair in a side part.

  It’s not much, but Marie kneels on her chair and grabs him by the hair and divides the gray mass into a thick cloud and a tiny little narrow strip over one ear. Like that? He nods, unhappily. They both shoot quick looks at the edge of the newspaper at the other end of the table, but it hasn’t moved an inch.

  Here we have a child from Mecklenburg just coming into view and already he’s started almost everything differently from how we did.

  Born in 1928, grew up in Wendisch Burg. Yes, Wendisch Burg, who doesn’t know where that is? Near Jerichow. People nod too hastily and start looking around the area near Genthin, west of Berlin, not up by the Baltic near Lübeck. Never one of Mecklenburg’s fore-cities, but on the other hand not under the thumbs of the Dukes of Strelitz or other nobility—Wendisch Burg was part of the Hanseatic League from the beginning. Express trains used to stop there through the end of the war!

  From your life, D. E. You can’t put us off with the railway.

  Northeast of Wendisch Burg the railway had torn up the countryside to make a switching yard for the freight-train connections with other countries. The cars with ore for the war from Sweden arrived to the very end and were routed west, around Berlin. International arrivals came in on the Königsberg–Stettin line, too—later it was booty from Poland and the northern Soviet Union as well as prisoners for the camps near Berlin. A high narrow bridge with a narrow walkway spanned the wide field crisscrossed with tracks. A boy used to stand on it, losing himself in the heavy clouds of coal smoke, the panting of the Doppler effect coming up from under the bridge. A lively child, his head rather thin, not easy to get a handle on. His hair in a part (blond). Light-colored sailor suit (Bleyle), dark-brown knee socks. With a special talent for squinting in family photos.

  Son of a barber, scion of the established firm of Erichson, Quality Hair Salon for Gentlemen and Ladies, on Old Street in Wendisch Burg, next to the Three Ravens inn. (On Adolf-Hitler-Street.) The child didn’t want to sweep up the hair on the green linoleum floor after he’d finished his homework, not even once it became material essential to the war effort—that’s what a younger sister is for. Erichson senior wanted to be in charge of more than just one family and pushed to be taken into the army right away, in 1939; in 1940 they took him. The boy didn’t like being told what to do. Would go up onto his railway bridge, or down to Bottom Lake.

  Mother from the country, distantly related to the fisherman-Babendererdes in Wendisch Burg. They wanted to keep the child from any middle-class pretensions above his station, they cut their own hair, and the boy’s too, so that Ol’ Erichson could huff and puff over the blemish on his professional reputation. First escape from home, from the snooty town house: to the thatched lakeside cottages. Even as an adult D. E. is grateful to his relatives who taught him not to look down his nose at them just because he was forced to go to school; he studied his Latin by day and went fishing with them by night. Learned how to boil tar. How to coat a rowboat with the hot acrid tar. Sadness over a pike found floating in the reeds, white belly up. Freeing a finch from the fish traps left on shore to dry. A bucket of eels tipping over. Rowing into a west wind in the rain, working. But the fishermen also posed one another by the shore in the summer to have their picture taken, and the male children were given the grown-ups’ brown caps, the SA caps, with the swastika, maybe because this band of robbers was going to break the shackles of high-interest loans. It was here that D. E. achieved his best squint, under the visor of the cap hanging down over his thirteen-year-old ears. The war with the Soviet Union had started already.

  And the famous love affairs, D. E.?

  First things first, his sister, five years younger. Heike would come with when he went ice skating with the fisher children. Hand in hand with a girl of eleven, yes, but they didn’t say anything and now she’s married to the head of the Wendisch Burg taxi cooperative. Nothing more than that? That was it.

  But there was nothing wrong with D. E.’s eyes, and his father’s fondest wish was for him to be trained in one of the Nazi Ordensburgs, as one of the Austrian’s future generals or executioners. Mrs. Erichson mislaid the honorable invitation and the boy had no choice but to serve in the naval Hitler Youth, nothing more. There he learned how to row in a crew; he’d rather have been alone in his sailing canoe. That summer an H-Jolle dinghy was known to cross the two lakes, when not docked at the sluice. I never knew the Niebuhrs, Marie—never spoke a word with them. The troop leader received a report: Squad Leader Erichson seen handing out food at the Sedenbohms’ (mixed marriage, no privileges, yellow stars).

  Photos torn up, cut to pieces, burned. One may have been kept, in a drawer near the bottom of a small dresser in Fürstenberg. It showed the winter of 1943 and four young people standing in it, around sixteen years old, in a field north of Oranienburg with a thin copse of pine trees behind them, in the fog, in the dirty snow. Three were boys, dressed in the Air Defense Hitler Youth uniform, blue gray. They didn’t have the large swastika armband on their arms, as required by regulations, but they did have them in their breast pockets, in case crazy superiors turned up. All three have managed to get hold of air force belt buckles, now that as soldiers they are so superior to the regular Hitler Youth, and they wear the shirts of their uniforms belted over their pants, like how soldiers wear their tunics, not tucked in like children do. The fourth young person in the picture was a girl. Maybe it was she who saved the photo.

  D. E., famous for his string of brilliant love affairs. It was only a week before the picture was taken that the searchlight battery had had to assemble behind a village tavern to receive instruction from their leader, a lieutenant, Iron Cross 2nd Class, suspected of sexual intercourse with a Polish forced laborer on the estate. He’d ordered the boys to “clean themselves” immediately after every such act, and this was how D. E. first heard of such diseases. He’d never gotten further than shy or overly bold letters sent via the air force postal service, Berlin office.

  It c
ertainly wasn’t his steelworks he was guarding, he’d realized that much.

  It’s just that he’d only worked hard at two subjects in school, and he attracted attention in the antiaircraft course with his knowledge of the speed of sound at various temperatures and how machines function. He was withdrawn from his searchlight course and served during the Battle of Berlin as a flight observer at an antiaircraft telescope. Despite such perks, they hadn’t forgotten the Sedenbohm affair; he was neither popular nor envied. “People from the capital of the Duchy walk like they’ve got a stick up their ass” (alluding to his birthplace, Neustrelitz). He sometimes forgot who he was working for—the B-24 Liberators floated in the viewfinder close enough to touch, narrow wings, thick bodies, large oval stabilizers on the tailplane, perfect machines. It had turned out that his eyes were more useful than other people’s. The other people “helping” the air force were groggy when roused from sleep, despite the dim red light; he had good night vision and was quickly made “senior helper.” He’d already learned how to use an RRH acoustic tracking device when he was moved to the latest “Fu-MG” short-range tracking device that Telefunken had built, the 41 T. They’d never heard the word radar. This device located enemy bombers from almost fifteen miles away and automatically relayed the changing altitudes to the artillery and missile launchers via a directional device—the guns adjusted with violent lurches as though operated by invisible men. The machine did the killing, there was no need to touch it. But there were some officers who had tried to kill Hitler, and since then the high-power battery had been fenced in, barricaded off, a prison camp. No matter how many men and airplanes they blasted into tiny pieces, they came down onto the field like hot hard rain. After all, Berlin was burning. In January 1945 they exchanged his red antiaircraft gunner’s collar tabs for black ones and ordered him to the Oder; on the way there, he deserted.