Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  – When are we up to now?

  – August 1946.

  – So now I’ll be your guide, through Staten Island, New York, as of May, nineteen sixty-eight.

  The Czechoslovak Communists have had to pay. To avoid having eleven thousand special forces in their country and a Cominform within the Warsaw Pact they are now to permit military exercises on their soil in June. The East Germans dismiss the stationing of allied troops in Czechoslovakia as West German provocation, and have the following information about the plan to move Socialism into the present: “The wheel of history cannot be turned back.” History as a winch that winds up the past, irrevocably, for eternity. Onward!

  May 26, 1968 Sunday

  The parts of Staten Island, borough and Richmond County, that Marie showed me yesterday. Now you know, Gesine. I won’t have to bring it up again.

  After the wasteland of single-story brick on the north coast of the island, finally some trees and landscape at Silver Lake Park—sheltering lines of trellises and windbreaks. Gentle rises and falls of the streets, uncomplaining, with the undulations of the land. Still some country houses from former times, ingenuously armed with columned porches, Greek antiquity in wood. Verandas in leafy shadow, windows dark in the heat, concealing quiet, creaking rooms. Boxes sheeted in bright Dutch brick with white frames precisely cut in. High branches stripped by the Atlantic’s breath, corpulent whispering clouds of green. A gathering of gulls on the leeward shingle roofs. Electrical lines on rough-hewn poles that are often tilted, from an age of modest technology. Grass growing in the cracks between slabs of the sidewalk, weeds and shrubs high and rampant around the stairs. Lawns sloping down to the street, cool, hedges wild. Neighborhoods. What would it be like to wait here by the window, in the hazy overcast air of early summer, and later warm in bare damp November. Here you’ll have a country life. Mecklenburg, California. Stay here, Gesine. I’ll buy you a house here as soon as I can.

  The trains of the SIRR crossing the island make less of a susurration than their name. They claim to be Staten Island’s Rapid Transit, an offshoot of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad—what they are is a jerky, rattling suburban line. Wobbly train cars from not long after the First World War, stopping every mile at narrow, barely roofed platforms. Nervous clanging at crossings; hollow howls when approaching stations; bravely onward drives the little train, as though heading straight to the Gulf of Mexico. A number, a year, catches the eye, engraved too formally in a concrete sill of one of the cramped little bridge houses: 1933. Ragged bushes right up next to the third rail. Start here, Gesine; stay here.

  The Verrazano Bridge sends wide lanes of traffic shooting to New Jersey above the railroad tracks cut into the landscape. From Oude Dorp and Arrochar on, tiny airplanes hang in the sky, boarders at the aircraft field near Richmond Avenue by the creeks flowing into Arthur Kill. You could get away here, and we could come visit you, by land, by sea, by air.

  The ferry building on the southern tip of the island is even more vacant now, the planks falling off it, walls of wooden pillars aslant in the putrid water. The water has burrowed right up next to Tottenville station, chewing on garbage, nourishing rust and sludge. Tottenville station was built to serve the ferry to Perth Amboy; that end of the station was now silent, wrapped tight in chicken wire, as though no boat had left for New Jersey in a very long time even though there’d been one since colonial days. The other shore lay there waiting, inert, with cranes, warehouses, a church, roofs flashing in the leaves, motionless in the midday heat. To the north, a bridge on stilts crossed Arthur Kill, frozen in midstride like a gouty cat. Construction rubble, oil barrels, junk on the beach, splintering posts in the water, and, farther out, backlit pleasure craft and fishing boats. Everywhere, vegetation reclaiming the sick land, covering the scars and wounds of the ground; the externals of vacation, Gesine.

  In Tottenville, death passed by. In the white light laid out by the sun, two black-clad couples walked toward a building that looked like a fancy dairy or private school. The two women’s skin was very warm beneath the transparent fabric. One man, in a business suit, shyly brought up the rear, as though embarrassed by the prospect of seeing the person lying there, or by the expectation that they would be carrying him in himself through the back door of the funeral parlor in a few years. (As though he were visiting his future home, with himself inside it, having not thought about his move at all.) When you’re dead, Gesine, I won’t let the embalmers get you.

  In Tottenville, crippled houses huddled together, collapsing, draped with pieces of plastic. A little synagogue shack with a skin of asbestos shingles. Italian plaster figures on dried-out patches of lawn. A living cat, white, with deeply blackened eyes, wants to be noticed, there is something it knows. Children on porches, an old woman sitting with a book upstairs, watching. Swings and wading pools in the backyards. Hot wood smell, acacia blossom. One of D. E.’s love affairs, Wannsee, Berlin, 1949, long nights next to a girl leaning on the garden gate in the scent of acacias; by day the little white flowers stayed hidden in the green of the leaves; in 1949 what she wanted from a man with black-market connections was not chocolate or a phonograph record but a swim cap. Or go live with the poor, Gesine.

  An unexpected wide field of high grasses, wild shrubs growing everywhere. A steam freighter so close to the shore it seems grounded. A white gable outlined against the horizon of leafage, a canting roof set in front of an almost cube-shaped wooden box. Behind the dark windows, on the long porch facing the Atlantic, not a sign of movement. A steep, overgrown path for the mailman. Or that, if you want.

  On Raritan Bay. The Raritan Indians’ name for the island was Aquehonga Manacknong, “Place of the High Sandy Bank,” and they thrice succeeded in driving off, with fire, the invaders from the Delaware territories. Henry Hudson said he sighted land here on September 2, 1609, and at once named it in honor of his masters, the Dutch Staaten-General. Staaten Eylandt, lost to the British in 1664. Four years later, the Duke of York had a hankering for the islands in his bay, he wanted all of them that could be circumnavigated in twenty-four hours, and one Captain Christopher Billopp sailed around Staaten Eylandt end to end in the prescribed time, for which feat he was rewarded with 116 acres out of the roughly 37,000 he had procured for the king’s brother. He did not have Dido’s problem. In Billopp’s house, around the corner here, General Howe met with a delegation of rebels after the Battle of Long Island for the first peace conference of the Revolutionary War, to no avail. William Howe read the Declaration of Independence here for the first time, and said: This here has been signed by rather determined men. Your Mecklenburg was stolen land too, Gesine.

  On the sandy roads, covered with puddles of water, lonely cars drove as if cowed by field and thicket, so far from eight-lane highways and apartment buildings. Marshlands, no longer traversable due to broken bottles and rusty tin cans. A colony of summer houses falling apart. Children who stared at strangers walking by, giggled at the strange child’s city airs. Near the water, a married couple sat in a car, helpless, ready to drive away. Look, real reeds. This is plantain, good for cuts. We made soup out of goosefoot. Rabbits used to like to eat this. A red maple. Chicory. Ribwort. Shepherd’s purse, you could eat that. Nettles were good as spinach. Sunburn weather. Don’t forget why I showed you all this, Gesine.

  May 27, 1968 Monday

  Anyone who sent Ho Chi Minh, the President and Enlightened One, many happy returns on May 19 has now gotten something from him in the mail:

  At seventy-eight

  I don’t feel very old yet.

  Steadily on my shoulders still rests

  The country’s burden.

  Our people, in their resistance,

  Are winning tremendous victories.

  We march with our younger generation.

  Forward!

  © Viet Nam Press, Hanoi

  A testimonial to Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin. Premier of the Soviet Union. For our reading pleasure in The New York Times.

  A quiet a
nd retiring man of sixty-four, taking the waters in Karlovy Vary, seen going for walks with his granddaughter, cannot possibly mean the Czechs and Slovaks any harm. Hard currency from Moscow, that was the carrot. Military action, that was the stick. Both merely shown, for now.

  He gained: troop maneuvers, tightened censorship, a ban on legal opposition.

  If the generals continue to growl in the Red Star about an American finger in “internal affairs,” he will have to cut short his visit to the ČSSR and go see them, and yet he is forgiven.

  For what he explains to the Stalinist faction will shape Czechoslovakia’s future—and the world’s.

  Placed on record, today’s, in New York, Forty-Third Street, west of Times Square.

  The Communists in Prague are taking their first steps toward a law, to be passed in July or August. Relief is planned for a hundred thousand persons who have suffered penalties à la Pontiy, such as expulsion from their homes, removal from jobs, and the like. Forty thousand prisoners from between 1948 and 1956 are to receive 20,000 Czech crowns for each year spent in prison, with 25 percent to be paid immediately and the rest over a period of ten years.

  That would add up to about a billion crowns by the end of 1970. A dollar, the paper says, is worth seven crowns, or in special cases sixteen. Compare the exchange rate of the ruble. Factor in not only the $400 million from Moscow but the 20 million in overseas assets, plus the 5 million in pensions that US Social Security withholds from Czechoslovakian citizens. Will it be enough?

  So that was work today. In forty minutes we’ll be back on Riverside Drive, at home.

  Anyone could come.

  She just comes from Grand Central, lets the crowds push her toward the West Side line, finds her place where the third door of the first car stops.

  As if New York functioned properly every day. The subway as sunset.

  They didn’t announce anything at Grand Central!

  And you fell right into their trap, young lady.

  No trains running here.

  Even if they were, you couldn’t get on.

  That was always my place, where the third door stopped.

  Well that’s where we’re standing now, you Caucasian, you pink child.

  Oh, you big black man!

  At least let her stay on her feet. Don’t knock her down!

  Me? Knock over a lady? Theres just surges here underground.

  What’s the problem here?

  That we’re stuck standing here packed tight in the heat, as if they’re planning to spray water all over us. Then put the lid on.

  I’d sure like to move an arm.

  No electricity.

  Stay! You stay in your bag! Stop climbing on the nice lady.

  She brings you home and then what!

  None of us is ever going to get home.

  Where’s the problem?

  Look. She wants to know exactly too. With a diagram and everything.

  So, if you move my bag between your legs a little, there, you see what I mean?

  I can move my arm from the shoulder—

  If you block out this fat black man—

  Aha. Probably better for him too.

  There’s almost something you can do to help, y’ know?

  It’s an outrage, the subway system!

  We know. New York’ll always be New York.

  Don’t look at me like that! My hand’s on the outside of your bag, not the inside!

  Itchy?

  None of your business. I’ve got a job.

  And the two of us together?

  When the little one smiles, she means me, you foreigner.

  I’m not little.

  Here comes a train.

  Like a hobbling horse.

  A power station’s on fire in Brooklyn.

  Hey, they’re not getting out!

  This is our train. We’re not giving it up.

  It’s my train! I need to get home!

  And even if we need to take it to the Bronx, the thing does move.

  You can escape from the Bronx. Not from here.

  They’re looking at us like an enemy army.

  Well this is a reason for war, isn’t it? They’re cooped up in their train, we’re in this pit of a station.

  We look at them like an enemy army. And then they ride off into the darkness.

  If the train stops in the dark they won’t know where it is.

  Anybody else ready to give up? I’d be happy to give up, but not alone.

  No one here’s giving up.

  You’ll never make it up the stairs. More new people keep pouring down the stairs.

  They don’t know yet.

  Anyone can come.

  The place where the train’s broken! New York is falling apart!

  The system’s been bringing in money for sixty-four years, why should they fix it?

  For us?

  That’s how they treat us.

  Well, the thing is, in a taxi this time of day . . .

  If not I’ll just lie down next to the rail and be under one fan after another. It was nice being able to breathe.

  I bet I have money for a taxi.

  We won’t let anyone not with us through to the second row.

  You see the train on the opposite platform? The batteries under the cars are glowing.

  That won’t get far.

  None of us are getting anywhere.

  You’ve already got one foot on the edge of the platform. Next time—

  Push ’er in!

  Turn around! Shoulders out!

  Don’t move! She’s lost a shoe.

  She can do this barefoot.

  Two upstanding citizens like us and still we can pry the subway doors open!

  Just stick the shoe in! Between their heads, they’ll notice that.

  Look, they actually put her shoe back in her hand.

  Usually a train comes every two minutes and bites off a piece of the line. Now they’re coming four minutes apart, and this one’s been sitting here an extra thirty seconds.

  We shouldn’t have pushed her in after all. She’s in and we’re looking at empty rails.

  Maybe she’ll be stuck in there when she wants to get out. Or just stay like that, in the dark, somewhere under Broadway.

  I don’t envy her.

  We don’t envy you.

  Have a nice trip!

  Have a nice trip!

  Did she thank you?

  Just wrinkled her nose, like this. Wouldn’t want to be pushy and actually give a smile, you know?

  I know what you mean.

  And there she goes. Hey, don’t mention it!

  See y’all tomorrow!

  Sounds good. Till tomorrow.

  May 28, 1968 Tuesday

  This morning the train stopped in the dark, past the Fiftieth St. station. It was hard to judge how far we were from the lit platform. My memory keeps reporting that there is a bright spot next to this stretch of track, a hundred feet wide, two hundred feet wide, seen just the day before yesterday, an opening into the light, a staircase to the surface. The ever-returning search for a way out marked time, took up space, pushed thought aside. Fear of every additional minute grew and grew in the motionless silent crush of people until the train jolting into motion was unbelievable. On the stairs beneath Times Square the policemen were standing around, in a good mood, hands comfortably clasped on the billy club behind their back, and they looked at the scared passengers as if to say: Are they after you? Did they let you go this time? You’re running like there’s a prize at the end.

  After Cresspahl disappeared, Jakob reluctantly took over his household.

  His mother had tried to do it alone. The refugees in the rear of the house kept to the rules she’d introduced, both in the kitchen and taking turns to keep the halls and stairs clean; maybe they thought Cresspahl had given some last-minute instructions, but Mrs. Abs felt that this was dishonest since she hadn’t been given any such authority. If Gesine and Hanna Ohlerich weren’t there she would
probably have packed up her things and sought refuge where Jakob was working, two hours from Jerichow, where she wasn’t known as the housekeeper of a mayor the Russians had arrested. She wasn’t afraid of being arrested herself, but she expected nothing good from any authorities, and she clung to that opinion until the day she died. She had difficulty dealing with the envoys from Warnemünde or Lübeck who showed up at the door in the middle of the night with business only Cresspahl could make heads or tails of. But there were the children. She had to organize Gesine’s mornings and evenings like she had before her father’s disappearance. She took Gesine to the Gneez train in the morning, took Hanna to school in Jerichow, and in the evening had to keep them both busy, in the kitchen, with mending clothes, with homework, and, not trusting herself as a storyteller, she relied heavily on the deeds of the famous medieval Wendish king. On one such evening, sitting around the kerosene lamp on Cresspahl’s desk, the first squad that turned up to search the house came bursting through the door—two Soviets they didn’t know, with Mayor Schenk and Gantlik as witnesses, a purposeful whirlwind that was soon gone again without leaving even an overturned chair in its wake. Still, she was so shaken that she spent the night on a chair next to the girls’ bed. She left the chaos in Cresspahl’s room alone until Jakob had been fetched. Jakob wouldn’t do what she wanted. These arrests weren’t only happening around his mother, he knew about some day laborers, and about the Lübeck Court. The wind was blowing the same way everywhere in Mecklenburg, and the border to the new Western Poland had been closed on November 19. His mother let him give all his reasonable arguments and he realized she needed an unreasonable one. He stabled his horses with his business partners at the border and stayed in Jerichow. For him it was the wrong arrangement. He still had a credit of grain from his wages but the sorrel and the tottery old gelding were eating it up. He got nothing but money for his work repairing the gasworks—out in the country he could have earned potatoes. It wasn’t even that he owed this Cresspahl anything. He wanted to do him a favor.