by Uwe Johnson
– Ididn likem: he said. He hadn’t liked them.
They tried again around Christmas and offered him a job in the burial squad,
a chance
to demonstrate
a change of heart and
atonement as well as
the forgiveness
of the community
with additional rations and a change of clothing. Since it was work, which involved physical movement, the prospect nagged at him. Why shouldn’t he be able to do what other people could do? The bodies looked bloated, they no longer weighed much. Most often there were only a few to pick up each week, always two bearers per stretcher. It came down to the fact that he’d survive the day when they had to clear out the corpses from the storage cellar and lug them onto the truck; he’d have time to recover during the drive to the cemetery on the Fuchsberg. He didn’t dread the task of undressing the bodies before dumping them into the mass graves, if anything he doubted he’d be able to dig the graves, at first. He didn’t want to do it for the dead, nor to get a couple of extra potatoes in his soup, nor to survive—he wanted to have something to do. Some career military men who had appointed themselves the illegal German leadership of the camp around that time talked him out of accepting, making mild threats. They couldn’t rely on him to remember the correct numbers, and for a while they firmly held on to him in the back row during roll call until the kapos gave up. The job went to a prisoner considered worthier of the extra rations and the drives outside the camp, and who wanted to be transferred to Sachsenhausen just because it was closer to Berlin. For the men in the burial squads were suspected of keeping count, and so were often replaced or sent off to other camps, that way the lists of the dead could only be put together out of approximate fragments. The number for Fünfeichen was 8,500, not always documented by names. And so Cresspahl lost a chance to escape before he even knew it, the kapos didn’t get him out of the camp and still had to remove the two conspirators from the old bunkhouse; Cresspahl was compensated with a month’s priority in getting a shave and owed thanks to nobody. Was this one of the things he was supposed to learn?
It had been a long time since he’d even thought about escape. He’d seen one though. The march to Fünfeichen had passed through the town of Goldberg, and as the column rounded a corner one of the prisoners stepped out of it onto the sidewalk, grabbed a thoroughly startled housewife by the elbow, and made her keep walking with him, loudly marveling at their reunion: – Elli, my goodness! he cried in excitement. The scene had apparently looked plausible enough for the Soviet guards; as they left town they replaced the runaway with a civilian who happened to be digging in his garden. For a while Cresspahl had held on to this example of Red Army principles of order, as something to tell Gesine; then the yarn had been told a few too many times in Fünfeichen and the gardener ended up getting shot for his unreasonably horrified reaction two miles past Goldberg, or else he was still in N22 today without any idea, sometimes the woman was named Herta and sometimes the man leaving the column had shouted: Hey, Aunt Frieda! Eventually Cresspahl himself doubted he’d ever seen it happen.
Flight, revolt, liberation—he was no longer susceptible to these things. The piece of land near Ratzeburg that the Soviets had traded to the British had grown in the Fünfeichen rumors to the whole strip west of a line from Dassow through Schönberg to Schaal Lake, and if American paratroopers weren’t expected outside the Fünfeichen gates the next day then it would at least be the Red Cross from Sweden. Cresspahl recognized in others the feverish, frenzied effects of latrine gossip and feared them for himself, for he was in such a state often enough already, when his thoughts ran at such an unnerving distance from the talk around him. He had never read the warning sign on the camp fence from the front but he was perfectly certain that Western military commissions, even in Burg Stargard and Neubrandenburg, were being kept at a distance by multilingual prohibitions. He couldn’t understand what the other prisoners expected from their former enemies. The camp workforce was shoveled in and out so regularly that informers were not immediately detected, however thickly larded with them the barracks were—any plot with more than one person involved was as good as blown. For himself he couldn’t even envision an escape. Once he’d made it to the other shore of Tollense Lake he might be able to get to the fabled new border of Mecklenburg in nine days, but the Soviets would be waiting for him where he’d need to go to fetch the children, and as soon as his escape became known they’d arrest them. That meant he was less separated from them in Fünfeichen. And anyway escape from Fünfeichen was impossible.
Fünfeichen had become the world. Life outside the camp never entered it.
There were a few possible changes. These were: Deportation to the Mühlberg, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, or Bautzen concentration camps, all well known from new arrivals’ reports. These were eternities like Fünfeichen—time did not pass there. You could also decide to die, voluntarily by starvation, voluntarily at the fence.
Fünfeichen offered any number of ontologies.
Still, Cresspahl would have preferred a trial and sentence.
June 5, 1968 Wednesday
– Where were you, Marie? Tell me where you were!
– It’s a quarter to six p.m. and I’m here at home. Those are your rules.
– Where were you all day?
– What about you, Mrs. Cresspahl, you’re not home a minute earlier than usual either.
– Should I have come home? Is that an accusation?
– You have a job, you’re not allowed to leave work. Maybe if it’s raining, or if there’s a subway strike, but not for private matters.
– Marie. How did you hear?
– In the park.
– That’s not your usual walk to school.
– Okay.
– We’d agreed—
– on West End Avenue. Like the police are lining the streets there! People have come up and talked to me there, again and again. I can take care of myself in Riverside Park too, on bright sunny mornings. I’m not a child anymore, Gesine!
– You’re not understanding me.
– I’m not understanding you!
– When I got to Broadway they were sold out of The New York Times.– I went to school through the park because on Wednesdays I have first-period gym. At the playground. In Riverside Park, on the corner of 107th Street and—
– Right.
– When I left for school it was like I was wearing an invisibility cloak. Eagle-Eye Robinson was up and about on the stairs with his back to me. The elevator door was open, Esmeralda’s swanky purse was on the stool, totally unguarded, she was nowhere in sight. No neighbors, no bus drivers on the street. So the news would hit me without warning. There was a guy sitting on the bench by the memorial fountain for the firemen, all alone. Young guy, nineteen. Not a college student, more like an off-duty shift worker. Baseball sweatshirt, long pants, thick white wool socks, not a tourist. Crew cut. He was leaning back on the bench, all comfortable, arms stretched out, not a care in the world. Radio next to him, steamer trunk, flustered voices. That’s where I heard. Kennedy’d been killed.
– Angeschossen, not erschossen, Marie. Erschossen is more final than “shot.”
– It’s because I have to talk your damn German with you! He was shot. He wasn’t dead.
– You don’t have to use German if you don’t want to.
– The guy was sitting there doing nothing, so relaxed, nothing to do, he was perfectly happy to let me listen without looking at me. Like everything had gone as planned. Like he was glad.
– What did you know at that point?
– The senator from New York had won the California primary. He was giving a victory speech at the Hotel Ambassador in Los Angeles. On the way to the press conference, in a kitchen corridor, he was shot in the head from behind. 1:17 California daylight saving time. When it was quarter past three here. I know, I know, you say viertel fünf in German, not viertel vier! He was lying on the ground, his wife
kneeling by his side. The thing with the rosary. The last rites. Unconscious in the hospital. Then again, from the top: Robert Francis Kennedy, the senator from New York—
– You could tell in the subway that something had happened, but maybe not. Maybe the reason everyone was so gloomy, not looking at anyone, not saying anything, was because it was the hottest day of the year we’ve had so far. There wasn’t necessarily anything worse going on than the usual tragedy that life sometimes is for some New Yorkers. Then, at Grand Central, I saw a TV in a window, something filling the screen, nothing from the loudspeakers. There was just one word on the screen the whole time, crooked, like it was written in dust with a finger: Shame.
– Schande in German, “a scandal”?
– Also that they felt shame.
– Yes.
– I tried calling the school as soon as I got to the bank.
– Gesine, would you have gone to school on a day like this?
– You’ll get your note for Sister Magdalena.
– For tomorrow too.
– Do you want the rest of the week off?
– You’re not a bad mother, Gesine.
– Am too. I was probably being ridiculous. I thought I had to talk to you.
– You were right, you did. I needed to talk to you. First I got super mad at the bank, for not allowing private phone calls, then at you because you follow their rules. Now I feel better. You tried.
– I tried calling home too.
– I was already in Times Square. There were so many people there, craning their necks, reading the line of news running around the building. Whenever anyone left he pushed his way out past the others, so depressed, so angry. One time I was almost knocked off my feet.
– You know, I saw so much politeness underneath Times Square that it must have thrown everything off schedule. A young black man, black leather jacket, Afro, wanted to let a fat white accountant go first. – After you, go ahead! he said to the befuddled white, who was expecting to be cursed at. – After you, brother: the black man said. In the subway! “Brother”!
– I didn’t see any of that. In Central Park the middle class were out playing holiday. I heard: nice weather, Tonya’s varicose veins she’s so young!, summer clearance sale at Macy’s, the intrigues on New York’s baseball teams. It was the same on Broadway. Music playing in the supermarket like any other day. My cashier was griping about the customers without small change.
– I’d have been mad too.
– I was mad at you, Gesine! Because you told me that this was normal for America—John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King—and now you were right again. Robert Francis Kennedy.
– The Ferwalters didn’t know where you were either.
– I was walking around, alone in the city.
– Buying newspapers, one after the other.
– Not as classy as you, though. I also got New York’s Picture Newspaper, The Daily News.
– Can I give you the money for them?
– I used my pocket money. Pocket money’s for personal needs, right?
– I didn’t stay in the bank at lunch, I went across the street. Two more times in the afternoon. I kept going downstairs, I was sure you were standing outside the building, waiting.
– I was!
– Mrs. Lazar just looks so strict, doesn’t she. That doesn’t work with children. She’d have brought you upstairs to me.
– I wasn’t embarrassed! I was mad at you, because you’d expect me to do that too! I spent ten minutes admiring your beautiful lobby and then I left, so that you and your ideas wouldn’t get me.
– Ideas about myself?
– Ideas about yourself! Who can possibly console me except Mother! And that I needed consoling at all! What if I wanted to be alone? As if you know me inside and out!
– I don’t even know what you’ve decided on for dinner.
– Nothing! Not for me. There’s a T-bone steak for you. And green beans.
– I’m not hungry.
– Gesine, you’ve been working, you need to eat. Tomorrow you need to go back to the bank. Eat. Or can you stay home tomorrow?
– I have to go to work.
In the end there wasn’t much left standing of that knowledge inside and out. Where Mother wanted to make up, Marie wanted a deal. She showed signs of strain, the same as when she has to make herself speak nice about purchases, or doing the dishes; she would have been happy to go off into her room behind the curtained double doors. But she needed her mother for one more thing. She listened for the clicking of the elevator cable and was standing at the door at the first ring or the bell. And what were two furniture movers bringing this late at night into the Cresspahl apartment, which for seven years had been immunized against American television? What now overrode all educational, economic, and maternal considerations? The muscular men rolled a TV set over the threshold, and a mother was needed to sign the rental contract. Marie had the TV moved to her room and paid the $19.50 herself. Pocket money is for personal needs.
She must be embarrassed at having broken another agreement—she makes a point of turning the volume down whenever the ads interrupt the news. It’ll be a long time before she believes me when I tell her that her love for a politician is starting to look from the outside a lot like how I fall in love.
June 6, 1968 Thursday
“Marie H. Cresspahl, Class 6B
Teacher: Sister Magdalena
Subject: Science? History? Social Studies?
Preliminary Notes for Optional Essay
ROBERT FRANCIS KENNEDY
Outline? Later as Table of Contents
Biography
1925 born November 20. Father a banker, shipping executive, speculator.
1 million for each child. Isolationist.
Education: Catholic, in Rhode Island. Private prep school near Boston. Classmates’ impression: K bad at small talk, bad at parties. Marines training program while at Harvard University. Served on a destroyer. Back to college without making contact with the enemy. Liked football but too small to play
1946 $1,000.00 from his father as a reward: No smoking, no drinking, not much going with girls
1948 B.A. from Harvard. Correspondent for The Boston Post in the Arab-Jewish War. Studies law in Virginia
1950 marries Ethel Skakel: a Great Lakes coal company, Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart. Children: Kathleen Hartington, Joseph Patrick, Robert Francis, David Anthony, Mary Courtney, Michael L., Mary K., Christopher, Matthew, Douglas. Dog: Freckles
1951 Bachelor of Laws degree. Job in the Department of Justice. Internal Security division. $4,200.00 a year. Roots out homosexuals, then learns all about corruption in the Criminal division (under the Truman administration)
1952 Campaign manager for John F., wins him the job of senator. Then in McCarthy’s House Unamerican Activities Committee. And so what if Gesine was right about that. Joe McCarthy godfather of his oldest child
1955 Supreme Court attorney. Trip through the Soviet Union. If a Russian doctor saves his life, Communism can’t be that bad
1957 Fights crime in the unions, using investigations and interrogations. Said he’d jump off the Capitol Building if he couldn’t get Hoffa (Teamsters). Hoffa is acquitted. Kennedy doesn’t jump. Refuses offered parachute.
Guest at Joe McCarthy’s funeral
1960 Campaign manager for John F., wins him the presidency. “Jack works as hard as any mortal man can, Bobby goes a little further.” Votes bought in West Virginia? Bobby is Attorney General and starting in
1961 Adviser to the president. Civil rights for Negroes. Attack on the Republic of Cuba
1962 Travels all over the world. Bali, Tokyo. Stood at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin with just the tips of his toes on the white line, flowers in one hand and waving at the East German guards with the other
1963 John F. shot. Bobby head of the family. Fights with Lyndon Johnson. But gets Hoffa, eight years prison
1964 Resigns as Attorney General. Elect
ed senator for New York. We’d been here three years. I was seven years old
1967 Calls for negotiations with the South Vietnamese Liberation Front. Role model for draft dodgers
1968 January 30: “I will not oppose Lyndon Johnson under any foreseeable circumstances.”
March 17: “I am announcing today my candidacy for the presidency of the United States.” Takes advantage of (Eugene) McCarthy’s campaign
June 5: Wins the California primary, wounded by two bullets
June 6: Dies in Los Angeles, 4:44 AM Eastern Daylight Time.
Don’t mention time of death. Looks too private.
Shorten the biography. Unfortunately this is the length Sister M. wants.
Fill it out with other material.
Honorary doctorates from:
Assumption College, 1957
Mount St. Mary’s College, 1958
Tufts University, 1958
Fordham University, 1961
Nihon University, 1962
Manhattan College, 1962
Philippines, 1964
Marquette University, 1964
Berlin Free University, 1964
Books written: 2. The Enemy Within
4. “How I Would End the War”
(DER SPIEGEL, April 8, 1968)
1. ?
3. ?
Justification for the importance of the topic:
The news announcers sometimes say “President Kennedy” by mistake. Possible future and all that
Death in America (Gesine)
Presence at a historical event via television. Historic
Senator from New York
SIRHAN BISHARA SIRHAN
1944 born March 19 in the Armenian quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, under the British Mandate. Father Greek Orthodox, waterworks supervisor
1948 Arab-Jewish War. Sirhan watches as Israeli soldiers kill relatives and family friends. The Sirhans move many times in the Arab Quarter. After the British withdrawal East Jerusalem comes under Jordanian rule, father working as a plumber for the new government