Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  “Ya kolokoychik” isn’t crossed out, so it was nothing to be ashamed of at the time. But if Ya, “Yes” in German, Ja, could also be “I” in Russian, Я, as the Cyrillic letter here suggests, then it might also be a clever abbreviation. What did Jakob (Ja-kob, Я-kob) have to do with kolokoychik, a little bell? A sleigh bell, Schlittenklingel, maybe? Was that supposed to be a nickname for Anne-Dörte, who still hadn’t taken him away (Schleswig-Holstein, Schlittenklingel)? No, let’s hope not. She wouldn’t have wanted to pick a fight, especially by name-calling, with a girl Jakob liked better than her. So was it the diarist herself? Was she the bell that was too small?

  “Rips.” An entry for black market dealings—ribbed fabric, Rips—or tears in that fabric, the English word rips? Not pain in her ribs (Rippen): her unavoidable daily dealings with Jakob hurt elsewhere. No, “Rips” was Bettina Riepschläger, the acting German instructor at the Bridge School in Gneez, not much older than the students in 7-B but entrusted, right after her own graduation and a two-month teacher-training course, with providing a classical humanistic education. A cheerful girl, never insisting upon professional dignity. We did whatever we wanted in her class; she did too. It often seemed like she was talking out of turn. The Cresspahl girl wanted to show her that she had no intention of taking advantage of a certain shared experience they’d had in the lobby of Alma Witte’s hotel; what she liked best was just looking at her. Bettina had had her fine pale hair cut fashionably short and tousled; she would comb it with her fingers, coming away with strands of hair an inch or two long. Blond, experience had taught, was Jakob’s color. As opposed to darker shades. Today she too will know that this fashion came from the movie based on a Hemingway novel, where the Spanish terrorists chopped off a girl’s hair, but that Maria was supposed to be a brunette. Best not to mention to Jakob that cornflower-blue dress, hanging so perfectly, or those beautiful full-grown legs, that carefree bright voice able to switch from a tone of camaraderie to a firm one conveying rebuke yet nonetheless safety. It sometimes happened that Bettina acted her age, which was nineteen. She might say: “Kinnings . . .,” and then we would be, for a little while, children. Lise Wollenberg cried once, she was so afraid that Bettina might take a walk in the yard with someone other than her; Lise was now trying to place her feet the way Miss Riepschläger did. She was from Ludwigslust. She didn’t often speak in the roundabout phrases Dr. Kramritz used, the anti-Fascist democratic constitution or the leading role of the party of the working class just came up as though they were self-evident, because they were ready to hand. For this teacher we wrote essays like “My Best Friend.” Cresspahl from Jerichow had slipped even more deeply into an unshakable need for secrecy so she didn’t want to admit to any best friend, falling back on a dog. There was no dog, it was neither the one from the Kommandatura nor Käthe Klupsch’s chow chow, she just made it up, body shape to behavior. She went so far as to claim that this Ajax would stay at the edge of the military pool, unafraid, no matter how much she splashed him as she swam by. For this and many other reasons: he was Schoolgirl Cresspahl’s best friend. As a grade she received the question, in diplomatic red handwriting: “A bit sentimental, no?” She was very pleased. She now considered this Bettina one of the most reasonable and rational teachers she’d ever had in her life, and that was something about her she wanted to tell Cresspahl about. Rips.

  “Škola.” School. This was where our diarist had her concerns, worries even. For there were not many teachers like Bettina, who was “free” after school hours like we were. Teachers like Dr. Kramritz believed they were respected, even venerated, just because it was quiet during their classes; almost no one talked about him. Everyone knew that life in Gneez was very different from his exposition of the Mecklenburg state constitution. He had picked up his stiff knee in precisely the war he now described as the nation’s guilt, not his own. But it didn’t look right when he pressed his wire-rimmed glasses even more firmly down on the bridge of his nose—he seemed to be taking up arms. His punishments were all permissible under school rules; he enjoyed being obeyed. The refugee children were scared of him. Gesine Cresspahl found the trace of a scar on his nose revolting. Still, he was able to force the class to recite what he wanted them to. This was not the case with Miss Pohl, math and geography, one of the women called “Miss” throughout her whole career even though she was over fifty and not an inch of her body possessed delicate grace. Intensely red-brown hair in a crew cut, jet-black eyes, full cheeks, full chin. Always wearing her one green hunting suit, sometimes with matching hat. We called her breasts “the outwork”—in Mecklenburg the tenant farm at the edge of a manor estate, but she didn’t know the term, being a refugee from Silesia. She was mad at the world over her share in the German losses—you could see it behind her even, sullen expression. She didn’t care. Once a child had failed to understand an arithmetic problem after the second repetition, that child simply lacked a head for mathematics as far as this lady was concerned and was just given up on, even if she couldn’t pass with that D+. (Gesine Cresspahl was seen as possessing a head for geography, due to an essay she’d written on the soil properties and economy of China; this mistake persisted into the following spring.) Mrs. Pohl, Miss Pohl may have practiced her profession like a chosen vocation at some time in the past; now it was just a job, the prerequisite of a residence permit and ration card—she would do everything the job required and no more. Student Cresspahl still believed in escape through learning, but with this kind of teaching, time seemed to trickle away and she often had the feeling that something was being missed. The part of this she wanted to tell Cresspahl about came from her memory of his having helped her once, in 1944, with school. In school. Against school.

  “Antif.” Now that was one of Jakob’s tougher evenings. For Cresspahl’s daughter didn’t come running to him with trifles—certainly not every trifle, and definitely not running; she might be younger than countesses named Anne-Dörte but she’d long since stopped being a child. Jakob might think she was taking what she deserved from him as the man of the house; the fact was she didn’t have anyone else to ask the questions she had learned in school as answers. She had a hard time with the word “anti-Fascism.” Fascism was something Italian, after all. Jakob had been handed the same word as her, in his own retraining course; he looked deeply resigned now that he had to set it in motion again behind his broad hard brow. They often used to sit on the steps outside Cresspahl’s door, with a view of the boarded-up headquarters, seeing little of the guard marching around or the picture of Stalin in the triumphal arch. Jakob, like Cresspahl, knew how to set his eyes to a faraway look. It struck her once again, unfailingly, that his temples looked so solid, his forehead curving so seamlessly into his skull. Why did he get his hair cut so short, so high on his head, when a few days later it would look like a pelt again. If you like a horse’s coat, you. . . . She also couldn’t stop thinking about the slight displacement of the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes—they looked so taut, so alive, like he was conscious of his every movement. She hadn’t been listening very closely. Jakob was well into an explanation that the Nazis, with their “National Socialism,” had stolen a word from the Socialists, maybe two, and that was why a word like “anti-” couldn’t possibly turn up near “Socialism,” but there was no reason not to say “anti-Nazism” if she thought people would understand her. – Okay. . . . No: the Cresspahl child said. It was shocking how suddenly a conversation could be over. She thought that was an ugly word. – A shitty word for a shitty situation: Jakob said. She didn’t know where to go from there. She’d known the whole time that he was about to stand up, give a nice stretch above her, and say goodbye down from his great height—smiling, solicitous, like an adult to a child. – Don’ forget bedtime: he said, his Platt already pretty Mecklenburgish, and before she knew it he was past the walnut trees and on the way to town. She took it badly, she wrote it down in her diary. “Antif.”?

  “One leg, bike.” She’d seen a man who could manage a b
ike with one leg.

  “A. in Gneez.” She hadn’t been able to let go of her—in dreams Alexandra came back to life, came back (and looked nothing like Hanna Ohlerich, who’d spent weeks sleeping next to her, in the same fever). Alexandra in a foreign country, wearing a head scarf so that two bright arcs stood out above her forehead, said in Ukrainian: Here, Gesine. Hold this little guy for a second. And then Gesine really had Fat Eberhardt Paepcke in her arm, he wasn’t dead either, just asleep, and dreaming, like her. (In March a freight train had come through Gneez full of people from Pommern who’d been kicked out by the Poles. Gesine had caught half an hour of the train’s stopover and run from car to car, plaguing the tired, dirty people on the straw with her questions about Paepckes from Podejuch. Just like in the dream, she knew that they’d died two years ago in April, and as in a dream she couldn’t stop herself, running to the next sliding door, her brain a blur of shame and hope, almost crying, her speech slurry.)

  “White bread.” Three exclamation points. This was Dr. Schürenberg’s stalwart resistance to the Communist occupation. Since officially there was no white bread, he would put it on prescriptions.

  “R. P.” A little line between the two letters had turned it into the formula for Requiescat In Pace. This didn’t help lay the incident to rest very much, and it was something she’d actually done, not just something that had happened; the memory of it would come back so sharp and painful that she’d flinch, as if from a pinprick. Jakob’s mother tried to talk her into letting that evening go; she would speak so softly, so comfortingly, until the child fell asleep, and the next morning there it still was, unforgotten. How can something that started as clear and cold and clean as the feel of a wet-honed knife turn into fear of guilt?

  R. P. had shown up in Cresspahl’s kitchen one evening. Gesine came home from the despised dancing class that was so indispensable for her education in finer matters, and by then she had progressed so far in higher etiquette that a sixteen-year-old cavalier was standing outside her door, the boy from the pharmacy, waiting to talk further with her about tango steps and the graduation ball. A stranger was sitting at the table in the kitchen. Since Cresspahl had disappeared there were so few strangers in the house, so rarely visitors; she desperately hoped this might be Cresspahl. That wish was ground to dust by a series of miniscule glimpses, faster than anything can turn into words in the mind. The man’s shoulders, averted, were round not from age but from laziness. His whole body was too tall; even from behind she knew he would have a ruddy, healthy-looking face. Also, Cresspahl would surely have stood up at the sound of her footsteps, or turned around, said in Platt: Look a that . . . .

  She was barefoot at this point—no one had heard her steps on the tiles. Sitting at the table with the stranger were Jakob and his mother, not acting familiar but polite enough, a little uncertain, as if for all their right to be there they still had to justify themselves. The man looked up when she stepped to the table, just casually, seeing nothing there but a child. – Hey there: he said, condescendingly, intrusive with his claim to being family, entirely at ease. – Get out: said Cresspahl’s daughter, fourteen years old.

  This was weeks ago and she was still trying to convince herself that it hadn’t been hate. She’d just looked at him. She’d memorized his face: round skull, Mecklenburg type, a bit meaty. Big eyes, the blue that’s supposed to mean honesty and that flickers so rapidly. Full, spoiled lips. So respectable, so well-fed. In a suit of re-dyed army fabric that fit as if custom-tailored. The rubber boots didn’t go with the rest of the grandeur, but he probably planned to pick up leather shoes here. He still hadn’t stood up. – Out! she screamed. – You get outta here!

  She’d used the informal pronoun and felt bad about that once he’d left; she hadn’t really had the right to speak so familiarly. Then it finally dawned on Jakob that this was her uncle, her mother’s brother, Louise Papenbrock’s favorite child that she didn’t want in Cresspahl’s house. Bah, he hadn’t even gotten a beating. With a crooked grin and a shrug like someone found out, Robert Papenbrock had ducked out of the kitchen, afraid of a younger man who was simply stronger than him. He’d threatened to burn the house down. That was the one time their visitor had had a little stumble, Jakob saw to that, his face landing on the back door’s sharp stone stoop. Then she hadn’t even wanted to turn him in to the Kommandatura, plus she was too cowardly to; anyway, the cavalier from dancing class was still standing next to the house. The eldest of the Papenbrock line had moved off slowly, across the fields to the southwest, in a dignified saunter, until Jakob, at her urgent request, threw a rock after him. The high green grass was so like peacetime, the low sunlight so peaceful. The rock didn’t hit the target, just the left kidney.

  The Abses said yes to everything, until midnight. It took her that long to get her stories from the life of Robert Papenbrock straightened out—from deserting the country in the first World War, all the way across the Atlantic, to the fact that he’d been sitting at this very kitchen table. Her own vehemence tripped her up quite a bit: Cresspahl hadn’t immediately said he’d throw him out, the elder bushes had still been there, but there was barbed wire in them, before that he’d sent Lisbeth to court, that was my fathers wife she was, speaker for the party, recruited Nazis in America, burned down whole villages, SS Sonderführer in Ukraine, kidnapped Slata and her arrest was his fault, beat Voss to death in Rande with steel bars, no, I need to ask Cresspahl about that! – Yes: Mrs. Abs said. – Ida done the same thing: Jakob said. – Yes.

  That lasted one whole evening. The next day she woke up with an icy doubt impervious to anything she could think of.

  She didn’t need to stay afraid of this relative. He didn’t set fire to the house. He was in too much of a hurry. That was how he ended up in a Red Army guard post by Dassow Lake and had to swim for several hours with a relatively severe flesh wound in one of his fat legs. In his letter from the other side of the zone border, from Lübeck, he called himself “crippled by gunshots” and testified to the genteel bourgeois breeding of the house of Papenbrock by solemnly adding: So I hereby disinherit you.

  Maybe it was the right thing to do. But she’d kept this person from seeing his mother again. True, he hadn’t tried to see his mother, he seemed to prefer entering Jerichow through a back door. True. She’d been in the right. There were arguments on the other side too. Whatever Cresspahl would decide about it, she needed to be the first to tell him about it. R. P. R.I.P.

  But Cresspahl didn’t send word, didn’t come, was in “Siberia” or dead. His daughter was well prepared for the man who’d been in prison with him, for the woman to whom he’d shouted to send greetings to a house in Jerichow. It was for them that she always carried with her, in her coat as well as her dress pockets, a sheet of paper and an envelope. She would know when the moment came what the first, the most important thing was to tell him.

  July 3, 1968 Wednesday

  The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has returned to the USA the plane that on Sunday it forced to land on the Kuril Islands, along with all the servicemen on board, the soldiers. The White House has somewhat apologized for the navigational error. The great and peace-loving Soviet Union gave the soldiers of imperialism red tins of Russian-made cigarettes as a present, too, before sending the death specialists onward to the Vietnamese. Not even three days later and the 214 killers are already on the front, fighting their allies, the bosom friends of every Soviet citizen.

  A skilled and eager Communist would be capable of discussing the art of diplomacy here without missing a beat—how negotiations over reciprocal disarmament have been saved; children in my year who went to my school would have taken that as part of their job. I can’t do it. I can force myself to, I can do it intellectually, but I can’t in my dream! There I’m an honorary citizen of Sigh-da-mono.

  Cydamonoe. The Marie of today refuses to believe it.

  The other child, in April 1961 and through the summer, peering apprehensively out from under her bonnet at the c
ity of New York, is who found it. That was a child whose hand in mine tightened into a vise grip when a rumbling line of metal boxes came thundering towards us underground, becoming a rolling prison, with dangerous sliding doors, and only gradually the subway, and hers. Marie was three and a half, four in July; she avoided the litter like everyone else on Broadway. She insisted on dressing for others in dresses, girls’ suits; she thought pants, never mind jeans, were to wear in the apartment, and she accepted them, for Riverside Park at least, only when she started to see their advantages, financially. It might have been the New York weather too—the sweat-stifling heat and humidity that even our decorous Auntie Times calls “unspeakable” today, and she’s right, and the suggestion of a curse only redounds to her credit!—that Marie was afraid of when she lay in bed at night and anxiously awaited what this incomprehensible city would send into her sleep. But fear is precisely what it now can’t possibly have been, not in a Marie who plans to live in New York forever and always! In 1961, she lay in her room, the door ajar, unimaginably small, unbelievably chubby, staring at the “safe place” on the ceiling and talking to herself. Even if it wasn’t about pushing away her fear, it was Cydamonoe.