Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  On her head a mountain of thick ringlets, falling over her ears. The evidence of hair curlers is clearly visible.

  A chubby person, judging by the round shoulders draped in a black knit wool cape with a few stitches that have come apart, or going by the more and more bulging dress whose lower expanse forms a long narrow bell with the upper. (We’d imagined her as rather more lean.)

  The clothes are dignified: a white dress with a geometric pattern and wide ornamental trim down the middle and at the ankle-length hem, although some isolated threads are hanging down loose there. (We were sure she’d be more smartly dressed.)

  There she stands, her bulky body stiff and straight, her little feet turned neatly outward in their high-heeled ankle boots. Her limbs may seem gaunt with age, thin and brittle, but her left hand keeps a firm grip on a heavy roll of paper, although her right hand, with a splayed middle finger, rests on the carved handle of a cane, which she doesn’t need for support since she’s planted it at an angle in front of her, almost coquettishly, unlike what we’d expected. That’s how she stands there.

  That’s how she looks, as shown to us by herself.

  Hi, Auntie Times!

  July 8, 1968 Monday

  For more than a week, apparently, workers at thousands of Soviet factories and farms have been holding rallies, right in the middle of the harvest, and condemning, or so we hear, “anti-Socialist and anti-Soviet elements” in Czechoslovakia. The Prague paper Young Front declares itself bewildered. Precisely this, cries the Truth from Moscow right back at them, demonstrates that the Mladá Fronta journalists are among the “irresponsible.” The chairman of the National Assembly of the ČSSR has also received letters from Moscow, Poland, and East Germany. Josef Smrkovský has kept their exact wording to himself; first he has to discuss it with the governing presidium of his Communist Party; still, he has acknowledged receipt by insisting that Czechoslovakia would not tolerate interference by other countries in her internal affairs. “Interference.” That’s all it is.

  In May 1948 Cresspahl lay stark naked in a water trough in Johnny Schlegel’s flower garden. Johnny was sitting on the bench next to the trough as idle as if the workday were over. It was early in the morning. The cats had sense enough to avoid the site of this spectacle; the stupid chickens kept their heads down and wondered why they were so often mispecking. Most of the time the chickens were the only ones keeping up a conversation. Every hour or so Johnny would knock on the sill of the open window behind him, and Inge Paap née Schlegel would come out with a bucket of hot water and put it down at the corner of the house, keeping her back to the two men, not once turning to look. Johnny, with his one arm, could not only carry the heavy bucket but handle it so well that the water poured over Cresspahl’s body in a gentle rush, only a little spray reaching his head.

  Since Johnny was no less flustered than his guest, he had a hard time keeping silent. He didn’t care so much about the time—he’d assigned the work to be done on the farm, he wasn’t needed there. He must be getting on in years for his mouth to be itching like that. And for now this Cresspahl knew only that his daughter was still living in Jerichow, with the Abses, in their own house. Couldn’t he come up with any questions to ask after all those years with the Soviets? Johnny cast dignity to the winds and said, as if making some kind of calculation: Now that must have been a long trip Cresspahl’d just taken, all right.

  That was probably a bit too close to sentimental for Cresspahl, and he put Johnny in his place by answering: Yeah, bout the same as the one from Jerichow to the Damshagen pub. This was a local story from the old days when people used to take trips only when a ship’d been wrecked on the beach. Fritz Mahler the cobbler and Fritz Reink the blacksmith were supposed to report to the soldiers but took a bye in Grems and annoyed the people there. Then they realized they’d been dummies and really should see the world a bit. Fritz goes right, to Damshagen, a mile from Jerichow; Fritzie keeps left until he, too, gets to Damshagen. They run into each other in the pub, and cry, Fritz! Fritz! Imagine meeting you here halfway round the world! In fact Schlegel’s farm was near Damshagen too. Johnny admitted it.

  But Cresspahl wasn’t trying to snub him. Since both these world travelers had been from Klütz, he admitted in turn that on the long trek here from Wismar he’d been at the north end of Wohlenberg Cove and there, with the west wind blowing, had heard the bells of Klütz. How was it they’d kept their bells in Klütz?

  – They say what theyve always said: Johnny confirmed, suddenly a bit uncomfortable, probably giving a sigh. Cresspahl at once took it personally. Because what the bells of Klütz say is:

  It’s true-ue, it’s true-ue,

  the ’prentice boy is dead.

  He’s lyin in the Piglet Pond,

  the ’prentice boy is dead.

  He never used to steal nor lie

  and never a cheat was he.

  Our Lord God, on high-igh,

  have mer-cy, mer-cy, mer-cy!

  and even if it’s true that Cresspahl had been that apprentice boy for the past two and a half years, falsely accused, now lying at the bottom of a pond without any prospect for rehabilitation by any Lord God, he wouldn’t stand for the slightest expression of pity, let’s get that clear. That’s why Cresspahl said, a little maliciously, that it sure did stink here in Johnny’s yard.

  Johnny promptly took a deep breath and let out a roar. For the boy Axel Ohr had been busy behind the barn for an hour already, trying to burn, with some old straw, a pair of men’s underpants, a kind of undershirt, and a pair of felt boots along with a black rubber raincoat. So far he had managed only billows of smoke, no fire, and Johnny gave him a hell of an earful, effortlessly spanning the several hundred feet separating them. Now Axel Ohr had to carry the fire, such as it was, on his pitchfork around the corner to where the wind would scatter the smoke. Axel came slinking across the yard, shyly approached the corner of the house, and asked to be allowed to bury the things instead of burning them. The naked man as well as the clothed one just stared at him, in amazement, almost contempt, so that he turned back, shoulders slumped helplessly, and ashamed at having tried to quibble with an order from Johnny. Terrible dictator, Johnny was. Unpredictable too. Axel Ohr wasn’t allowed to do any more serious work all day, for instance. Out came Inge with a fresh bucket.

  Johnny’s sigh had escaped him more because of the generally prevailing circumstances than anything; he felt a bit unjustly punished. So he just said: He didn’t have any beer on the farm but he could manage a shot of liquor. That put Cresspahl in his place. His head had actually shrunk down into his shoulders at the memory of the sip he’d had to take earlier, as a proper greeting. – Or maybe a cigar? Johnny generously followed up, quite the master of the house making up for a bad odor with a good one. Cresspahl made an indecisive movement with his head, so Johnny left his nobly rolled tobacco on the outermost plank of the bench and stepped away for a moment, to see to things in the kitchen and bring Axel Ohr the kindling, which of course the boy wouldn’t have thought of on his own. When he came back the cigar was sitting in more or less the same place, barely wet, but Cresspahl was even paler in the face than before, if that were possible. What was wrong with that man’s stomach, he couldn’t eat!

  Then they poured out the broth and moved the tub, following the sun, which by that time had left the living-room windows. The chickens made a terrible fuss. Now there were three buckets of fresh water by the corner.

  Johnny came over with the bench under his arm and mentioned in passing his obligations to Cresspahl. He spoke of Cresspahl’s Gesine and her remarkable abilities as a farmworker, in the realm of wheat as well as that of potatoes. He still owed her two sacks of wheat but was planning to send her part of it in the form of smoked meat. What did Cresspahl, as legal guardian, say to that? Cresspahl asked what the date was. Because there’d been such a rush about signing the papers the previous morning in the Schwerin prison, plus he couldn’t read the small print too well yet. Johnny left and c
ame back with his schoolteacher glasses on his nose, holding Cresspahl’s release papers in his hand, from which he read first the date and then all the rest. The naked man now wanted to take another stab at the cigar. Johnny Schlegel told him about the head of the Cresspahl household, Jakob. He was learning how to couple up freight cars at the Gneez station, but he didn’t want to sell his sorrel horse. Maybe Cresspahl could have a word with him about that, man to man. Jakob was a man of the world in other ways, after all, with grown-up love affairs, including one on the farm with a certain Anne-Dörte until she decided she preferred her titled relatives in Schleswig-Holstein. Johnny was perfectly capable of going on to tell quite other tragic love stories that had taken place before his eyes—men are like that. But he had failed to notice—men are like that—Gesine’s suffering during Jakob’s visits, and Cresspahl would spend several years suspecting Jakob of a certain dislike, in private you might say, of the nobility. Now Johnny produced some lie about a canister of kerosene he was supposedly keeping for Gesine too. They had sworn one or one and a half false oaths before, on the other’s behalf, these two; clearly one more wouldn’t matter.

  Axel Ohr took up position ten paces away and reported successful incineration. He’d washed himself too, to Johnny’s lengthy surprise. Axel Ohr wanted to leave now. He was the boy on the farm, wasn’t he. Though he had his doubts sometimes about whether what Johnny imposed on him in such a threatening tone were really punishments. This runaway city boy, sixteen years old, really should’ve realized that he’d been as good as adopted by the Schlegels and had, without really trying, learned practically everything Friedrich Aereboe had put in his book on general agricultural business management, even a bit more. Need to finesse the calculation of total deliverables, just ask Axel! Now he stood there waiting to hear his next repulsive assignment. He was to go meet the noon train at the Jerichow station. – With Jakob’s sorrel . . . ? he repeated, blushing, afraid he might have misheard. Thats right, on Jakobs horse. Johnny gave his ears a good thorough washing out while Axel waited for the catch. – M’boy! Johnny said, serious, looming. He could be so horribly High German sometimes. The catch was that Axel had to pick up a girl there, even if just a fifteen-year-old. She’d probably hold on to him on the horse. Axel didn’t really know his way around girls too good, though he’d known one for years as Cresspahl’s daughter. That’s how Johnny was, always spoiling your fun. The boy resentfully went and saddled up.

  Now Johnny gave Cresspahl a crash course in what he’d missed since the fall of 1945, from the creation of Soviet joint-stock companies in Germany to the regional elections to the Gneez principal who in May had been sent to jail for two years, for writing recommendation letters for schools in West Berlin: Piepenkopp showed firm character as a student, that kind of thing. Associating with the enemy of peace. Driving young men and women into the clutches of the enemy of world peace! Johnny’d had Richard Maass make him a book of blank pages, some good rapeseed oil it cost him too, and he wrote something in it almost every day. He read some to Cresspahl: about the Communist coup in Prague; the SED wished the Germans would do the same. People like you and me. Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovak foreign minister, had jumped out the window of his own free will, they said. Cresspahl didn’t happen to know anyone around here, or somewhere in Mecklenburg at least, who wanted to jump out a window so things here could go like there? Then Johnny explained what “spare peaks” were. That was the new name for surplus harvest yields after delivering the target quota, which you were free to sell to the Economic Commission at a higher price. Cresspahl was inclined to see this innovation as permission to conduct an agricultural business for profit again. Yes. Well. Theoretically, sure. But since Johnny’d had to say goodbye to patrons like Colonel Golubinin, the PSC had been paying quite a few visits to the farm. People’s Supervisory Committee. They would hand around slips of paper about “monitoring production and commodity whereabouts” and then raise the target quota to what they saw fit. What did a post-office guy like Berthold Knever have to do with Triticum vulgare, much less Triticum aestivum? Now some farmers had to buy back wheat at spare-peak prices so they could sell it at quota prices. Naah—not Johnny. He was running the business with the other people on the farm commune-style, remember? It was precisely these progressive, youd hafta say advanced features of Johnny’s business organization that were a thorn in the Gneez district attorney’s side. Men live longer than cows an learn somethin new every day. Cresspahl showed that he’d learned something too by that point, whatever else he’d missed. – Izzat book well hid? he asked. Johnny nodded, proud, unconcerned. Five years later that book wasn’t well enough hidden after all, and since he had the nerve to pretend it was a novel he didn’t get out of jail till 1957. For now he was sitting on a bench next to a naked friend and gently refilling his tub with fresh water.

  – Heres yer big seal in the water! Johnny Schlegel said as he led Cresspahl’s daughter to the trough, which was now covered with two big wooden breakfast boards. This was totally wrong. Cresspahl didn’t have a beard, his skull was long and high, and in Mecklenburg a seal was someone who gaily got away with risky pranks. Cresspahl sure hadn’t gotten out of his intact. It did fit a little, because of the man’s blank gaze from an indeterminate, unknowable distance. – ’E wont bite: Johnny said, and the Cresspahl child desperately hoped that he wouldn’t leave her alone with this person. First she only saw the ears, which looked so wrong next to his thin haggard face. They’d shaved him bald so his stubble looked dirty. The head between the edge of the trough and the start of the first board looked decapitated, especially since his arms were hidden. She didn’t know where to look, she felt more ashamed than she’d ever felt, she was about to start crying. By that point Johnny had long since left his own garden.

  – Ive brought you summing: the stranger said with her father’s voice.

  Johnny was staging quite the scene with Axel in the hall—it was about Axel having let the sorrel out into the pasture. So thoughtless. It dawned on Axel that he needed to get the sorrel again, and the rubber-tired cart, to take this Cresspahl to Jerichow. The valuable cart, which horses had so much fun with that it drove itself in front. He’d be driving like a young king. Well, a viceroy. Not on the way there. Any man with eyes in his head, if not a girl like Cresspahl’s daughter, could see that she’d gotten her father back shattered, truly not a well man—you’d have to drive him at a walk. But Axel Ohr could already picture the rush of the return trip, whip planted picturesquely on his left thigh, road swirling with dust behind him between the choppy waters of the green wheat on the left, the sea on the right. Axel Ohr convinced himself to believe his luck, at least for that day.

  You didnt cry, Cresspahl.

  ’Fonly I coulda cried, Gesine.

  July 9, 1968 Tuesday

  It’s a normal American thing—for that reason alone Mrs. Cresspahl should have seen it coming. But she’d never imagined that de Rosny would expect this from her, even with apologies. The stockholders on the board must have pushed it through: this proceeding as medieval as it is futuristic. De Rosny did expect it from his Mrs. Cresspahl and informed her by mere interoffice memo, like she was a cog in a machine and the person renting the machine could request an adjustment, a depth control, whenever he wanted. Only in Westerns do civilized murderers announce what they’re doing (you won’t be going anywhere tomorrow), while it’s the villains who shoot without warning, from ambush. Mrs. Cresspahl is sitting in a soft deep faux-leather chair with her back to an older technician. She can remember only his bluish smock; she forgot his face at once in her rage. She’s in a room with no windows anywhere so she feels short of breath. The walls are painted in yellowing ivory as you’d expect in a hospital. A rubber loop is coiled high around her chest, a band interwoven with wires is stretched tight across her right upper arm, she has a metal plate affixed to each wrist. Heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure, skin moisture. It’s the polygraph, the lie detector that no one believes in except the police, the mi
litary, and the business world. The empathetic voice behind her seems to be putting out bad breath. She has already been answering for a long time, heedlessly, tripped up by the question of whether or not she should lie. The walls are so thick that out of all the noise of New York she can only hear the humming of the fluorescent lights somewhere above her head.

  ANSWER Refuse? When my job depends on it?

  QUESTION Now the rules of this game are that you can only answer Yes or No from now on.

  ANSWER Yes.

  QUESTION Again, your birthday. March 3, 1933, was that right?

  ANSWER Yes.

  QUESTION In Jerichow, Mecklenburg, the Baltic.

  ANSWER Yes.

  QUESTION You said before what you were doing at six thirty last night.

  ANSWER Yes.

  QUESTION You said: “I was on the promenade by the Hudson. Since the river was so calm, my daughter thought it must be ebb tide.”

  ANSWER Yes.

  QUESTION “I looked at the time so I could check the tide table in The New York Times.”

  ANSWER Yes.

  QUESTION Did you do that?

  ANSWER No. Being invited into this nice room here made me forget.

  QUESTION Mrs. . . . Cress-pahl. You’re getting agitated.

  ANSWER Sorry. No. Yes.

  QUESTION I have questions that I’m required to ask, along with others from the client. I’m not making them up. This is my job. You mean nothing to me as a person, so I have no interest in hurting your feelings, or in—

  ANSWER Yes.

  QUESTION It’s also not true that I’m drawing any personal conclusions from your answers. The measuring instruments, oscillating in front of me or tracing out curves on the paper drum, take care of that.