Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  Not only is she happy with her citizenship papers, she has already acquired pride in this country. – The government sends out checks all over the place! she says, not forgetting her solemn gratification that the government doesn’t have to help her out with checks, only those whom God in truth has decreed must be poor: the Jews not deft enough to get by and the Negroes, every one alas doomed to blackness by Providence. And are we supposed to spoil her pleasure by arguing? Are we supposed to abandon her because she’s gained citizenship in a country that wants to exterminate another country in Southeast Asia?

  There’s no choice, she has to tell us about her test after all. In the middle of Ninety-Fifth Street, next to the ominous chicken-wire schoolyard fence, she has to show us how she placed one foot in front of the other when she was finally called up to the front. It seems she tried to hold her head high, and she would deny that her chin trembled. Quaking and dignified she entered the room, unaccompanied, defenseless as a lamb, holding on to herself with two fingers on either side of her dress until her nails pushed through the fabric into her flesh. No, she didn’t want it as a present, she wanted to pay for it with pain. Then the educated gentlemen in their dark suits realized that she was just an old Jewish lady, they wouldn’t hurt her, and they didn’t. She remembers only one question. Who becomes president if Mr. Johnson dies. – Gott ferbitt! she cried, and passed the test.

  She has celebrated the occasion by going home in a taxi instead of on the subway. As she tells the story we can picture her, stretching out her arm in a way suggesting more equal rights than she’d had the day before, waiting next to the taxi until the driver reached back and opened the door for her, she’s a citizen now isn’t she? Leaning almost all the way back in the taxi, hanging her wrist in the looped strap just like she’d seen other people do, driven home high above the Hudson, a little sad about the waste of money, a little afraid of when the pleasure would come to an end, but entirely determined to keep it alive by telling stories about it, and now weren’t the Cresspahls among the first to be told?

  We are so glad, Mrs. Ferwalter, and we duly offer our congratulations.

  This Czech film showing, The Fifth Horseman Is Fear, that’s probably not right for celebrating, is it? Something about fear, that’s not her thing anymore. On the other hand, if it’s something from olden times, with music. . .

  I don’t think so, Mrs. Ferwalter. It’s not from olden times, and the music is sometimes used to accentuate pangs of conscience and in most of the rest of the movie too.

  – And how are you, Mrs. Cresspahl?

  – Ještě deělám chyby. This is the sentence that’s as good as my Czech gets: I still make mistakes.

  – No! Never no! she insists. No friend of Mrs. Ferwalter’s can be having a bad time of things on a day like this, and for the first time we are invited into her apartment, for a “shenuine jewropean” cup of coffee and a look at her citizenship papers. And would Marie like her cup of milk hot or cold?

  So she has returned from her new status back to the bosom of her native land. She tells us the Jews in the western part of the Czechoslovakian Republic were assimilated, just like in Germany for instance. “Moritzes.” Still, in Mrs. Ferwalter’s village they lived apart, a separate group, but respected. What did they have to be afraid of under Thomas Masaryk? But that meant the Germans could avail themselves of a compartmentalized society, there was no place to hide. And she says she didn’t even try to flee the Germans, believing they’d long since caught everyone they wanted. You couldn’t trust the Hungarians. She will never go back to the Czechs, and never to the Slovaks, not even with an American passport.

  This reminded her that she is now entitled to an American passport. Since Marie happened to be sitting closest to her, it was she who was given an extravagant hug.

  – The joy: Mrs. Ferwalter said, almost in tears. – The joy!

  May 16, 1968 Thursday

  Last night FUCK THE JEWISH PIGS was still written on an advertising poster in the lowest walkway of the Ninety-Sixth Street subway station. Today the word JEWISH has been scratched off.

  The New York Times is addressing economic need in Czechoslovakia, beginning with Moscow’s attack on the memory of Thomas G. Masaryk and calling it disgraceful. She says this not as news but explicitly as her own personal opinion—after all, somebody’s got to be the voice of manners and good breeding. She feels it’s unlikely that the United States will play a role in helping Czechoslovakia overcome its economic woes any time soon, but she may be wrong. The old lady suggests various substitute actions the government might take, relating to tariff privileges and the Czechoslovak gold in American hands. The moral case for using the gold to put pressure on Czechoslovakia has always been weak, she says. Now there is also a political case for a reversal of attitude, in fact an overwhelming one. Is she trying to give the government in Moscow even more reason to be suspicious?

  In August 1945, in the middle of the week, Dr. Kliefoth gave himself two days off. He had come to the office in Town Hall especially to do so. Cresspahl was sitting behind a mountain of paperwork, Kliefoth got his time off in passing, even Leslie Danzmann didn’t really give him a good look. Later they both remembered Kliefoth’s tiny moment of hesitation at the door, and then they realized what he’d wanted to say.

  Dr. Kliefoth didn’t have to go work in the fields. K. A. Pontiy had authorized a lifetime supply of food-ration cards, once and for all, without requiring proof of work. For Kliefoth had met the Red Army representative in the walking-out uniform of the German Army, wearing all his medals and decorations according to regulations, the same way he’d done for the British, only this time expecting to be arrested. The commandant didn’t even have this headstrong man brought in, he paid him a visit himself, accompanied by a large number of soldiers. It wasn’t an interrogation, more like a court of honor, and Kliefoth wouldn’t call it anything else. The gentlemen discussed the First World War, in which Kliefoth had been a lieutenant, and the Second, in which he had discharged nothing less than the duties of a 1C staff officer on the eastern front. It apparently ended in a handshake. Afterward, while Pontiy didn’t post an order of protection on Kliefoth’s apartment—looters had already removed far more than a coin collection that was a byword in professional circles—the city was ordered to continue paying his officer’s pension, and Cresspahl was not allowed to house refugees in Kliefoth’s apartment, Pontiy insisted. Mrs. Kliefoth had flown the swastika flag on the days required by law, like all the citizens of Jerichow; now their hopes had been dashed and of course it reached Pontiy’s ears. Pontiy threw out various anonymous letters too, and although they tried to convince him that Kliefoth had been a member of the Nazi Party, he trusted this adversary’s word. Pontiy spoke of the great honorable militarist in his territory not without pride, and asked after him. He shook his head when the upstanding militarist voluntarily took in homeless refugees, into three of his four rooms, and when he went out into the fields with everyone else too K. A. Pontiy brooded darkly, emitting vengeful noises with his tongue, because this pure-carat militarist scorned to accept mercy from his gallant foe.

  Dr. phil. Julius Kliefoth, high school teacher in English and geography, lieutenant colonel (retired) as well, reported to Cresspahl the third day after the scythe order. Cresspahl didn’t want to dismiss him. This scholar, well traveled in the capitals of England and France, former lecturer at the University of Berlin, put forward, in his depreciatory, too-brisk way, that when it came down to it he knew how to use a rake. That was supposed to be his excuse. Cresspahl wanted to think that the scholar had come for the partial payment in kind; he had heard vague rumors that the man’s wife lay sick in bed; he did need every hand he could get for the harvest. They kept the easiest work for Kliefoth, but the Malchow city boy was soon seen standing sheaves upright. Honing scythe blades with a hammer is something a person needs to learn how to do—he managed it. Then he did more than his work. The women had no idea that the use of a scythe didn’t come naturally
to him. He was almost sixty and they didn’t call him Grandpa. After a while it was he who divided the work up. They came to him with their arguments and accepted his curt decisions, even if they came out as “Nonsense.” They saw how exhausted he was lying in the shade of the sheaves, panting in the heat, they saw him struggling to force his bones to do this unaccustomed work; they let him say when their break time was over. He stalked from one end of the row to the other on his stiff legs, every now and then muttering something military to himself, it sounded encouraging, nothing to take exception to. Go on! Go on. Wherever Kliefoth was, work got done, and many a Red Army soldier retreated in surprise when an old man chewed him out, from above. He was a leader, and he brought up the end of the row in the evening, and he stood last in the line at the granary. He looked like a day laborer, gaunt, in baggy trousers hanging on stringy suspenders, a tatty collarless shirt stretched across his protruding shoulder blades—only his staccato stride didn’t fit the picture, and his slim wrists betrayed him. Fatigue pulled his wrinkled face into a sleepy expression, but he could still make a child snap awake at the end of a long dry day, with a quick look meant to suggest renewed surprise, so that the child felt found out, watched. He didn’t sweat, his whole face under his bristles of white hair was red, there was spittle drying on his thin lips—Cresspahl’s daughter thought he looked brave. She liked hearing how he talked to a woman about to give up, he was so helpful and concerned, it was a deep voice, a bit like a turkey gobbling. By evening he could hardly get his voice out of his throat, but Cresspahl’s daughter only showed him her water bottle, she didn’t offer it; to her he remained the teacher, just as, to others, his punctiliousness made him forever the Dr. phil. She always knew where he was in the field; the rakes near him were swinging, work came easier. Now he’d taken two days off.

  He must have gone from Town Hall to the Old Cemetery: Pastor Brüshaver saw him. (Cresspahl and Brüshaver had learned how to talk to each other by that point.) Kliefoth owned a grave site even though he had no one buried there—it was included with the house. He stood in the middle of the main cemetery path, to gauge the view of the gate and the commandant’s villa from there. It looked like a strategic reconnaissance. Brüshaver stood at a window looking out onto Town Street, to catch him when he left; he didn’t pass by there, as in fact he had never once come to the church for anything since he’d lived in Jerichow.

  The next morning, before the birds started singing, he was pushing a rubber-wheeled cart out his front gate; the cart was half as long as the coffin it carried. He had a boy with him to do half the pushing so that Kliefoth could keep the load from slipping.

  It was an imposing coffin, dramatically vaulted and fluted, with wrought-iron garlands, three bronze handles on each side, six feet, like a piece of furniture. He had unscrewed the crucifix figure from the lid and now the box was harder to keep control of. Miss Emma Senkpiel had wanted to pass over into another life under that cross herself, she had been very reluctant to give Kliefoth this piece from her stock. Moreover he’d had nothing to offer in return. She wouldn’t take a can of oil, not even a pound of tobacco, and she didn’t want Mrs. Kliefoth’s clothes. So she took a couple of cooking pots and ownership of one of the cabinets with seven doors. She needed neither the cupboard nor the pots, it was only to give the appearance of an exchange, he was so timid. And the old maid was worried about suddenly standing naked before death. Her coffin was not one that Kliefoth would have chosen voluntarily.

  They reached Market Square and the boy stopped pushing. Kliefoth looked south across the square. There was the Old Cemetery. The sun was much too high, he would not be able to reach the Kliefoth grave site in secret anymore. – Go on! Kliefoth said. He steered the coffin a little to the left, aimed it at the country road to Rande. The boy started pushing again and spit into his hands.

  It took half an hour to get to the New Cemetery. Kliefoth had to wear his last intact suit, of course, even though it was a bit too light a gray, with a black armband at least, those were hardly clothes to work hard in, and soon he was gasping. The road was uphill. The boy didn’t look at him when he stopped for a break. Twelve years old maybe. It was Gabriel Manfras, who never talked much, and even if he later described this morning as nothing unusual, at the time he’d almost dropped dead of fear. Kliefoth really was acting like he was out of his mind.

  At that time the New Cemetery was just an open field. There were individual grave mounds here and there, most of them sprawling, not neatly defined, certainly not covered with flowers. They stopped at one such wide hole, still half open. It had been dug in advance, but for a body without a coffin. New mourners would have to extend the end of the hole with a spade. Kliefoth had forgotten his spade. The boy was happy to run back for it.

  Kliefoth sat next to his coffin for a while. No one could see him from the road. He started poking around in the earth. Apparently he wanted to dig a private hole. When the boy returned with the spade he could still see the tracks of the rubber wheels. They led back to the Rande country road. There wasn’t a cemetery for quite a ways on it.

  The detachment of Soviets guarding the gates to the former air base stopped him and asked for his identification, propusk. Yesterday Kliefoth hadn’t had to think about that. But now he was halfway to Rande, and this was the right place to go. Gabriel Manfras had caught up to him. To the boy, the teacher seemed feverish. Kliefoth put his hand flat on the coffin lid, right before the sentry’s eyes, and feebly turned it palm up. This officer had never seen such transport on this road before and sighed at the crazy German. He pointed back to town, at the New Cemetery. Kliefoth indicated the way to Rande, toward the sea. Now the boy talked for a bit, just so they could get out of there quicker. He was afraid the Soviets would open the coffin and he didn’t want to see that. The Soviets let Kliefoth go, with the comment that he should go fuck his mother, and the officer clapped him on the shoulder several times.

  In Rande the boy sat next to the coffin for half the day, on a side road near the landing. They had taken the coffin down, since it wouldn’t stay on the tippy cart, and put it in the shade of the hedge. It sat there in the sand like a forgotten piece of furniture.

  Meanwhile Kliefoth was talking to one fisherman after the other. All he wanted was a crossing to Poel Island, to Kirchdorf, they could make it Timmendorf if necessary. He’d keep going from there. The fishermen didn’t ask him about that. They wanted to know what Kliefoth could offer them.

  Kliefoth had nothing he could offer them at the moment.

  They knew him of course, he’d been a big fish in the army and a school principal in Gneez, sure. They knew his wife too—he’d gone for walks with her on the Rande promenade, sat with her at the outdoor tables of the Archduke Hotel. It wasn’t that. But the Baltic, so smooth, just slightly ruffled, was a dangerous body of water nowadays. There were Soviet guards along the beach who wanted to see a propusk. Kliefoth didn’t have one. What if they ran into a Soviet patrol boat on the water, with a coffin on board. With a German lieutenant colonel on board. And it could take four hours to get to Kirchdorf. And a boat would have to pass right by the Wismar harbor. Where cutters from elsewhere were being confiscated. Sorry, Mr. Kliefoth, meanwhile no hard feelings.

  When Kliefoth got to the head of the Fishermen’s Association, it occurred to him that he did have something to offer: the rubber-wheeled cart.

  Ilse Grossjohann first let him finish his argument that a woman born in Kirchdorf on the island of Poel needed to be buried in Kirchdorf on the island of Poel. She agreed about everything. Then she offered him a cemetery plot in Rande. She could, she’d been head of the congregation since May.

  She was the mayor too, but found no man willing to help Kliefoth bury his wife; ever since she’d led the work unit burying drowned bodies from the Cap Arcona floating concentration camp, the association hadn’t been happy with her. It was two o’clock in the afternoon before they’d dug the hole. The woman and the boy were worried about lowering the coffin evenly,
so Kliefoth went into the hole first. He caught the foot end, inched his back slowly along the wall below ground level. He had to tip the coffin diagonally after all, if he wanted to get out from under it. Then the woman and the boy pulled him up with the rope because he didn’t want to step on the box. When the hole was covered, Ilse Grossjohann left alone; Kliefoth refused to listen to anything. Well, if he didn’t want anything to eat, her children needed something. After a while, the boy left the Rande cemetery too. Again Kliefoth couldn’t be seen from the gate, in his summer suit, between the bright hedgerows.

  That evening Kliefoth was back in Jerichow. He didn’t have his key with him; usually the refugees would have let him in. But they weren’t there. Two Red Army men with their families were there. Kliefoth walked farther into his apartment so oblivious to their presence that one of them held his machine gun diagonally across his chest. Kliefoth had just realized that his wife wasn’t in the apartment anymore, and walked meekly back out to the stairs.