by Uwe Johnson
P. We must avoid any weakening of the party. But your case is different. You’ve still got to found a local branch!
H. Register it, you mean. Inform on ourselves, that’s what you mean.
P. So you already have a local branch? And you’re it?
L. None of your fucking business.
H. You’d like that, wouldn’t you. Something to report.
P. Children, children. I’ve worked my way north from Ludwigslust to Gneez. Local branches of the SPD hard at work everywhere. We hear about everything that goes on in the administrations, from the state level down to the districts!
S. Then they can have a nice little chat with the Communist comrades about us being Socialist Fascists. What we meant by that coalition with the Nazis. What happened to the Social Democrats who emigrated to Russia.
K. And will we have the pleasure, perchance, of hearing a word from headquarters to clear this up?
P. Maybe you won’t have to unify at all. All the more reason for you to be here as a branch!
A. Anyway, it’s only the Soviets who want a Unity Party. That doesn’t matter.
P. Children, children. You have no idea what’s happening in the world.
B. If you call us children one more time. Just one more time!
P. But you have no idea! Oh, how the Communists lost ground in Austria on November 25! And how well the Social Democrats did! In the Soviet Zone in Austria! Four seats for them, seventy-six for us!
K. Next you’ll be comparing the Social Democrat wins in the local Hungarian elections with the defeat of the Communists.
P. I almost forgot about that! Yes! That’s how you’ll do, too!
A. Go ahead, help the Soviets.
P. Only an independent SPD in the Western Zone of Germany will be in a position to support you.
B. How on earth did Cresspahl ever come to it. A high opinion of you, I mean.
L. None of his fucking business! None of his fucking business!
W. The minutes have been read and approved. We will now proceed to the vote. For. Against. Abstain.
H. Every time someone’s cover gets blown we’re going to hold it against you. In twenty minutes, next year, doesn’t matter.
S. You wanted something to report, didn’t you. There it is.
W. It is hereby resolved that there are no minutes. This meeting is adjourned. There was no meeting.
– So, what do you have today that you don’t want to tell me about?
– A casualty. “Stop”?
– You’re emptying your Jerichow out. Soon no one I know’ll be left.
– Paul Warning wasn’t in Jerichow. Because he’d helped out on Griem’s land for a while he was allowed to call himself an agricultural worker and take part in drawing slips of paper out of a hat Gerd Schumann had obtained from the von Zelck manor especially for the occasion and was passing around. Warning drew four hectares of moderately good land, an hour from town by wagon, almost uncultivated. He couldn’t live on that this fall with his wife and two young sons but next year he just might. But his work in the fields hadn’t taught him much more than how to follow orders. When he’d gotten back from Dreibergen prison he’d been in charge of minding the town’s cows, a job he’d been given for his wife’s sake. He told no more stories of any kind anymore, leaning comfortably on his pitchfork handle as a cow lowed next to him, and no one discussed their stories with him anymore either. He had turned hardworking, eager, obedient, afraid of another trip to Dreibergen. After the war his wife became set on having a plot of land of their own, but he would’ve done better with someone to supervise him. The Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del picked him up on Christmas 1945, no one paid much attention. He was still under a cloud because of that business with Our Lisbeth, so neither his arrest nor his release aroused much comment around town.
– If he gets shot, you’re all to blame.
– Peter Wulff took the blame. He was only trying to help get the browbeaten fellow back onto his feet when he brought him along to a meeting of former Social Democrats with Erwin Plath; he regretted it right away, because Warning thanked him so effusively for the show of confidence, for taking him back into the party, he actually spoke of happiness. That was no way to talk. It hadn’t been meant like that. He’d only been trying to help.
– They’d needed him as a stopgap.
– Exactly. Still, Wulff would’ve enrolled him in the party again, no, welcomed him as a comrade, because he’d been unobtrusive at the meeting, levelheaded, and above all kept his mouth shut. Wulff wasn’t the only one to feel that way after Warning refused to say a word about his interrogation by the Soviets, neither high nor to heaven—maybe the guy really had firmed up, at least in one spot. Wulff trusted Warning, all the more when Warning assured him, with a twisted smile and a painfully solemn handshake: Nothingll happen to you lot. On New Year’s Day, Warning went and hanged himself.
– It was a crime to expect someone like that to keep silent.
– Warning hadn’t told the Soviets a thing about the mood of the Jerichow Social Democrats. He’d withstood even his own family—his wife knew not a thing about the arrest except that it’d lasted four days. He didn’t even tell her, or leave her a note saying, why he could no longer face life. All she had was the slip of paper in his breast pocket, a new summons to the Gneez Kommandatura “due to a formality.”
– He hanged himself where the meeting had happened. So they’d believe him.
– Right. In the brickworks shed.
– But if he didn’t snitch on anyone then someone must’ve snitched on him!
– Right. So he did leave a legacy after all. In his way.
June 15, 1968 Saturday, South Ferry day
Public Library day
Sometimes you need to look at it scientifically, as the man says. Before a fight starts the public is given details about the boxers, weight, earlier victories, etc. So,
In the Prague corner:
ČESTMIR CISAŘ, b. 1920. Known for his very short hair and candid way of speaking. Note: wears glasses. Graduated with a degree in philosophy from Charles University in Prague. No injuries from the Soviet purges! Served in 1956 as secretary of the Czech Communist Party regional committee, Plzeň; came back to Prague in 1957 as deputy editor of its newspaper, Rudé Právo; and in 1961 was put in charge of its monthly journal Nová Mysl, well known to sports fans as New Thought. Joined the secretariat of the CCP in May 1963, demoted that same September for an inclination toward cultural dialogue and listening to other points of view. In his new post as minister of education and culture, he began to reform the Czechoslovakian school system while remaining fundamentally true to the Soviet-designed Education Law of 1953, yet he loosened up the curriculum, reduced instruction in party matters, and did not station a watchdog to look over every teacher’s shoulder. Too popular with both students and professors, he received from St. Novotný not the highest punishment but the post of ambassador to Romania, in other words, training in Romanian cultural policies. After Novotný stepped down, he was called to be the Secretariat of the Central Committee’s man in charge of education, science, and culture, was mentioned as a possible new president of the country, and has recently been entrusted with delicate missions for the party chairman, e.g.: persuading the press to deal gently with the Soviet brothers. Stated occupation: journalist and philosopher.
In the Moscow corner:
FYODOR VASSILYEVIČ KONSTANTINOV, b. 1901. In leading positions in the Communist Party of the USSR since 1952. Author of the textbook Historical Materialism. Allowed to celebrate the second anniversary of the Stalin’s death with an article, “J. V. Stalin and Questions of Communist Superstructure,” in—but not on the front page of—Pravda, known to sports fans as Truth. Author of the sentence: “The forces of production continue to develop even under the conditions of Imperialism” (Voprossy Filosofii, No. 2 [1955]). Since December 1955 head of the Division of Agitation and Propaganda in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, results negative. Since 1962 director of the Institute for Philosophy in the Academy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Stated occupation: Professor. Philosopher.
A-a-a-a-nd Cisař comes out swinging in the first round with a speech at a public meeting in Prague. The occasion is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, and in his speech Cisař casually describes Leninism as a monopolistic interpretation of Marx’s views. That was on May 5.
Konstantinov is in fine form, quick in his wit, fast on his feet, and he counters as early as June 14, raining massive blows down on his opponent, which can be gleaned from Truth as follows:
Cisař’s criticisms put him into the ranks of a Menshevik such as Yuliy Ossipovič Martov (Tsederbaum), 1873–1923, Russian socialist, cofounder of Iskra (The Spark). That’s right, Tsederbaum.
It has become fashionable among contemporary revisionists to attempt to give a different, non-Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Marxist philosophy, Marxist political economy, and scientific Communism.
With the industrial and economic successes of the Soviet Union, Leninism has become the banner of the world’s Communist movement.
Revisionist exponents of reform seek to discredit Leninism and demagogically preach a “rebirth” of Marxism without Leninism.
Communists have always considered, and still consider, Leninism as not a purely Russian, but rather an international Marxist doctrine. And this is the reason that Marxist parties of all countries have originated and developed on its basis.
Now turn your attention to the finish, as the man says, but don’t lose sight of the timing!
Because where are the first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and the prime minister during this fight? They are off in Budapest negotiating a twenty-year friendship pact. What else are they saying? They are emphasizing the enormous importance of their alliance with the Soviet Union.
Referee to the phone!
Where, in contrast, one might well ask, are the delegates to the Czech National Assembly? They, with their president, Smrkovský, are off with the head of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid I. Brezhnev, and even if every last one of them has the Truth with Mr. Konstantinov in his jacket pocket, the Soviet press agency is only allowed to report a “warm and friendly talk” and everyone’s confidence that the visit “will help further strengthen the fraternal friendship and cooperation between our countries.”
Is there any way Fyodor Vassilyevič Konstantinov’s not going to lose? That his trainer won’t throw in the towel? Or on points?
They need to look at it scientifically, too.
June 16, 1968 Sunday, Father’s Day
The third Sunday in June, set aside in honor of fathers.
Der dritte Sonntag im Juni, vorgesehen zur Ehrung von Vätern.
Because someone’s a father.
Equipped as usual by nature, they take credit for such an exception.
Proud of their procreation.
If there’s any guilt involved, it wasn’t theirs.
There have to be children.
So that a father can pass himself down, even just part of himself, into a future.
That they neither know nor need fear.
They just want to be in it.
That’s how much fathers love themselves.
And their possessions shouldn’t be left just lying around, so they make someone to keep an eye on them.
A name should remain, a rank, a right to power.
As always: inheritance.
The hope of being looked after in old age.
Fear of being alone.
Dying with someone there to see.
Such a child, a gage of marriage.
See the Civil Code.
Hunting around in the sacrificial victims to make sure that they are truly contained in them. Being like them.
They want to be the measure, whether filled or broken: the type is to be theirs.
Children should have it better than their fathers.
What fathers do for the better.
And if the children don’t want to have anything?
Not the place of consciousness that knows its end to be the goal, not even themselves?
In Europe, fathers stagger along in the gutter, wearing paper hats, tooting horns, yelling, beer in their throats, to honor themselves.
Vatertag. Father’s Day.
Boys go with them who haven’t yet made a baby with a girl, but they will. Father’s honor.
Nature’s wisdom.
Continuation of the human race.
Fathers know why.
June 17, 1968 Monday
The US wants to release some Czechoslovakian money. No, not the gold worth $20 million that belongs to them and that the US wants counted toward the compensation owed for property nationalized in 1948. This is only $5 million—annuity payments in the form of social security, railroad retirement, and veterans’ benefits to which some ten thousand Czechoslovak residents are entitled by virtue of contributions they made while here, as long as their new government gave written assurances that the sums would actually reach their recipients, at a fair rate of exchange. – We are not thieves: the Czechoslovak Communists need to say.
Once again a Soviet poet has given voice to his feelings. This one’s name is Voznesensky. He does it not for the sixty-six-year-old doctor shot and killed and robbed on Friday night in Brooklyn during a house call, no, he does it on the occasion of a less mundane death:
Wild swans. Wild swans. Wild swans.
Northward. Northward. Northward!
Kennedy . . . Kennedy . . .
and he laments the loneliness of the roots of the apple trees on Kennedy’s balcony on the thirtieth floor, availing himself of poetic license, in the opinion of The New York Times, due to his failure to remember that Mrs. Kennedy lives on the fifteenth floor. The poet had also been struck by the dead senator’s resemblance to Sergei Yesenin, a Soviet poet.
– You’re right, it’s been a week: Marie says: But do you mind not bringing up that name for a while more?
– Sowwy. I mean, Sorry.
– You wanted to try and see. That’s fine. I would’ve done the same thing.
– You know, in the IRT the fans are mounted in pairs, and now they’ve taken out one of each pair. It makes everyone start sweating as if their whole body was cr—
– I know, Gesine, I’m being silly. It’ll heal. Someday it won’t matter at all.
– If only you’d have a good cry!
– You also hold it against me that I got over MLK’s death in a couple of days. I didn’t know as much about him, you know.
– How was it on the South Ferry on Saturday? First time on your own!
– Calm, gray water. I wanted to punish you. And I did.
– You did. No you didn’t. You had to do it alone for the first time someday.
– Gesine, is it because I’m from Mecklenburg that I can’t make up with someone just by trying?
– Let’s wait a little more.
– Okay. So tell me something that’s got nothing to do with me.
– Louise Papenbrock?
– Good. She’s got nothing to do with me.
– With trap or without?
– Without.
– Your great-grandmother’s new political importance made her uncomfortable. Sometimes the only thing she could use as a crutch was spite against her fractious son-in-law, Cresspahl, who’d warned other people besides her off all this government nonsense. Going against that didn’t turn out quite right either, and it didn’t help her sleep any easier. This was the first time in her life she’d joined a party, and she suspected tricks while thinking herself too good to ask questions. How happy she’d have been to follow Pastor Brüshaver in everything! When it was precisely he who was causing her more annoyance than anyone, enough to make her shudder in secret. She’d joined this Christian Democratic Union for her husband Papenbrock’s sake, following the command she imagined he’d have given;
she was only trying to keep him a place in it. But Papenbrock, it seemed to her at least vaguely, had kept business and politics strictly separate, even at the office, certainly at the dinner table, and now she’d brought politics into the home! Pontiy’s unit had beaten an ignominious retreat, she was rid of Wassergahn’s parties (she didn’t see Second Lieutenant Vassarion as a political figure); secretly she was trying to get the large ground-floor parlor back into Papenbrock’s property, and might well have earned a few square feet of it once she’d spent four days on her knees scrubbing it clean. To her it seemed that the room would be easy to conceal, as unsuitable for housing refugees in, she meant, and the current Kommandatura wasn’t set on amusements involving dancing. Oh how tart she could look when she had to pretend to be kindhearted, pretend to be making a sacrifice willingly! Her smile slipped off her face quite often when she had to reopen the double doors for her friends from the Union so soon. These friends had known, even children had known, about this magnificent great hall, three-foot-high oak paneling with von Lassewitz fauns and nymphs above it, the plaster-relief hunting scenes, the deep bay of plate-glass doors at the back, the green light from the garden everywhere. (One child had wondered why the grown-ups used a room like this only for special occasions.) There would be few meetings of the Jerichow CDU for long stretches, and still Louise’s ego would take a hit every time. Here was that Klupsch woman, the party chair, that old biddy; Louise begrudged her not the job but the place at the front, she would have liked to bang on the table herself. That Klupsch had more fat on her bones than those bones wanted to carry, still it reminded Louise of her own fullness of form amid all these shabby, emaciated figures around her. So few people realized that you could get fat from grief and sorrow, you could! Then this Klupsch was allowed to read the newspaper, the New Era, to the group—every now and then a copy made it all the way from Schwerin to Jerichow. This Klupsch could decide whose turn it was to talk. Kägebein, her own employee, might think of something he had to say about the temporary allocation of town land as garden allotments for refugees, without even asking her permission first. Then Mrs. Maass, to suit her husband, would say something about the injustices that had occurred in the expropriation of large landholdings, and Louise too had felt that some compensation was called for but now she could only nod. She’d only been trying to remind everyone she was there when she cosigned the telegram that the Jerichow local branch of the CDU sent to Colonel Tulpanov in late December 1945, informing him that he couldn’t simply replace the chairman of their party on a whim, and now a certain Colonel Tulpanov, Soviet Military Administration, Berlin, had had his attention called to a certain Louise Papenbrock and the fact that she was causing trouble. She couldn’t lean on Brüshaver for support; he just sat there, and in the front row too, like a visitor. He did speak up sometimes, of course, but only about German mistakes, about honest efforts at improvement. Louise was inclined to forgive him, he must have come up with these ideas in the Nazi camp, but why did she keep feeling like he meant her? Would he dare? It was exactly like when he would stand in the pulpit and preach about virtues like friendship that meant nothing unless they were turned into action. Did he mean . . . Louise’s reserve in her dealings with the von Haases? He couldn’t know about that. He had no right to tell her that. It often happened that she wanted to shout at every last one of the seventeen people present at the party meeting: What about me?! What am I getting out of this? Are you even paying me rent?