Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  The performance begins with an oration by the titular president. Mrs. Cresspahl has seen him so many times since the ceremony in which poor Gwendolyn Bates got a silver slap in the face for her excess zeal, and still she can’t keep enough of R. W. T. Wutheridge in her mind for her to remember him, even as a still picture. “Rustic” they like to call him. But he must be one of those meek peasants, humble, awkward, following in his ancestors’ footsteps, so fearful does he appear to her; his tailored suit looks too short on his little old body; seventy years have taken some of this blue-cheeked man’s hair but have given him no dignity in return. The program: First he gives a speech to his own taste. Back then it was the team spirit and what America wants from us; this time it’s the same thing, plus he wishes us well. Then the candidates are called up, they mount the carpet-covered wooden box and have to listen to a description of their services eye-to-eye with the Most Senior Spokesman. These speeches are written in de Rosny’s office, though, which is why the openings always seethe with distinctions:

  It is truly difficult to find the right words . . .

  Let the presentation of this award set a precedent in every respect . . .

  Not a single member of this firm, to my knowledge, has . . .

  It must have been twenty-five years ago that . . .

  One is unusually young; or she’s already helped conquer Arizona, “her shield on her back, without laying it aside”; or his family has been working in the banking business for three generations. That’s how Mr. Kennicott II is dispatched, another forgettable one. Now he performs an endless series of small bows, since “he will always be among the victors,” in the personnel department of all places, while the laudatio’s last sentence informs him that “he will be leaving us next year”; here de Rosny’s sidelong look is meant to remind his “young assistant” of something, was it the white pumps in a desk drawer? is he trying to make amends? Now it’s a young black woman’s turn, whom we’ve often noticed in the elevator—her large eyes full of desperation and forgiveness, her motherly demeanor toward the pink-skinned men—now she is identified as Blandine Roy and praised for her accomplishments in the mail room; we recall the serious problems there’ve been, only in the interoffice mail, and so here they’re honoring none other than a token black woman; we are all relieved along with her when she’s allowed to climb back down from the stage and disappear into her seat. After her, Amanda Williams’s name is called, giving her a nasty shock and prompting an angry look at Naomi sitting next to her. Because the aspirant is supposed to remain unsuspecting, and that means the bosses use an officemate or friend to tail the victim all day and make sure that they show up to the celebratory occasion. Now Amanda, before all our eyes, has to hear herself called lightning-sharp, but modest, and her candor makes the firm trust her commitment all the more. Suddenly Amanda looks awkward in her thin, washable dress, a yellow flower pattern that matches the walls; in her embarrassment she reaches her arm out to the CEO, so that he has to step over to shake her hand; but for the first time the whole auditorium claps, everyone is happy for her, and as Amanda returns to Naomi’s side she is already giving her a forgiving smile, realizing what these five hundred dollars will be useful for, given her pregnancy. The next name announced is a new one, never before pronounced like that in this building, with a North German articulation: Mrs. Ge’sine Cress’pahl!

  – Trick number 18!: Mrs. Cresspahl tells her daughter in the lobby of one of the fancy old movie theaters on Broadway, where they’ve taken refuge from the muggy blasts of heat on the street. They cared more about the air conditioning than either of the movies anyway, but Mrs. Cresspahl has a hard time thinking about anything but her public exhibition; she is almost unhappy with Marie’s indifferent answers. Unfortunately, Marie is anything but outraged.

  – What do you expect from de Rosny: she says.

  – He pulled a fast one on me!

  – To be dragged along somewhere by de Rosny his very own self is really like the English court. Dubbed a knight or something.

  – And when I was standing up there he raised his miserable paper cup of his miserable tea to me like he was toasting!

  – He was happy for you, Gesine.

  – Until now people knew my name if they needed to know it, or if I told them. Now the whole staff knows it. And the speech is going to show up on everyone’s desk on Friday, from the in-house print shop!

  – Gesine, I don’t like getting prizes in school either, but I need them. I’m standing all alone in the cathedral and wish I could run away.

  – But you’re trapped, by people and folding chairs, and the confinement makes you anxious.

  – Right. Because folding chairs are handy for throwing.

  – And for beating a person with.

  – All you have to do is stand up straight for a while and keep your belly sucked in—

  – Right.

  – And breathe deeply and think about anything but your hair, which maybe isn’t tied properly, and the next breath you take will make it come loose—

  – I managed not to raise my hand to feel it!

  – Then there’s the president’s medal and a check for more than eight hundred dollars.

  – But everything they said about me was a lie!

  – For you to hide behind.

  – “Her studies at European and American universities.” Two semesters in Saxony and a little economics at Columbia!

  – De Rosny needs an educated assistant for his business, right?

  – “Her origins in the Communist sphere have contributed decisively. . .”

  – I was there for that, Gesine. They did.

  – “to our ability to abandon our passive position in the Eastern European credit business.”

  – That was the official announcement. Now it’s happening. We’re on our way to Prague.

  – And then I couldn’t get away from the cold buffet afterward either, you know. Champagne and zakuski.

  – You’d have expected an apology from me.

  – Sowwy, Marie.

  – Still, everyone could see that your suit’s from Rome. It must have looked great on you there too.

  – Thank you very much.

  – Is that thing genuine silver?

  – It is. We’ll give it to the old lady out on Ninety-Seventh Street, begging. On the theater steps, I mean.

  – D. E. should get that medal.

  – He won’t like the five-line symbol on it any more than I do.

  – Still, you’re engaged, Gesine.

  – What do you mean I’m engaged?

  – You’ve agreed to marry him. You need to give him something.

  – You’re right.

  – Silver can be melted down.

  – Yes.

  – Then D. E. will get a silver ring from you.

  – Yes.

  July 17, 1968 Wednesday

  Since Cresspahl’s dumb Gesine balked at life in England, he had to take steps to help her get through one in the Mecklenburg of twenty years ago. As was right and proper, he asked his guild master for an interview. So quickly, so readily did Willi Böttcher agree to come to Jerichow for a visit that we could only think he was trying to keep the former prisoner out of his house, out of sight of the people of Gneez. He came on a Sunday, in a black suit, not sweating in the September heat, and sat down hesitantly, preferring to discuss the weather for a while. His good-natured devious face looked crumpled. When I came in with coffee and he humbly asked me to stay—a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl—I knew: he wants to confess something, and for that he needs someone Cresspahl won’t use rough language in front of.

  – Heinrich: he said heavily, and sighed. What was the good of pleading for nice weather now?

  Cresspahl had asked him here to discuss his professional prospects as a tradesman, but if Willi had something on his mind then sure they could talk about that first.

  Then it was Gesine Böttcher turned to, called on as witness; her visits to his workshop shou
ld let what he had such a hard time bringing out go without saying. But Gesine had watched him at work because she didn’t have a father; all she saw was a lot of business. Revenue.

  – Never mind revenue!: Böttcher suddenly cursed, as though it were bad luck and trouble too. It was back when—

  he looked at me, I passed the look along to Cresspahl, and he gave Böttcher a nod, sparing him from having to say: when they’d nabbed Cresspahl—

  that Böttcher’s firm had had to keep its head above water with its share of the confiscated furniture that the Red Army kept stored there, as reparations, and then decided it would rather barter back to the locals (for material assets); that and the mechanical production of wood cubes for producing automobile gas had been their bread and butter. Their butter, to be precise. He couldn’t exactly count on the reputation that stretched all the way into Brandenburg, which he’d earned with his bedroom sets and other standardized furniture—he stayed with mass production. Through early 1947 it was the watchtowers that the Soviets were ordering for their new prison camps; he’d delivered some all the way to the Polish border. Ptichniki. It was easy work, since the Soviets didn’t need to see designs first—both parties had a pretty clear picture of what these towers should look like. Since it was good honest Mecklenburg work, it came at a price; every roof was done with beveled siding, for instance, solid enough to last a lifetime. They were worth 900 marks apiece but had to be billed at 2,400, the money had to be divided up so many ways. Of course the Soviets knew that Böttcher had to get his share of the profit and they got this price through the pricing authorities, the finance office, the Gneez commandant. Gesine had seen one.

  His look was so pleading. For a moment, as if in a dream, I was sure I’d seen a watchtower in Böttcher’s workshop, complete with guard and Kalashnikov. Then, as if waking from a nightmare, I remembered the tower I’d crawled under in the Countess Woods, and nothing could happen to me there because I was with Jakob. It was Cresspahl who’d had to live beneath such towers.

  You wouldna built them things for the Russians, Cresspahl? Honest?

  Not if they were keepin you locked up, Böttcher. Honest.

  The two of them had a drink to this article of Böttcher’s production—one schnapps. The bottle stayed standing between them, a monument to the part Böttcher had played in Cresspahl’s imprisonment. But it was settled; he sat on a bit more of his chair than the edge, and eventually leaned back. It was true—to his chagrin, he was minting money. His workers were happy about the incoming orders; he let them have the scraps for home heating before they stole them, and continued to negotiate on their behalf for night-work bonus pay, ration cards for heavy labor too. Then came the picket fences for Heringsdorf and other penny-ante stuff; in 1947 he undertook the interiors for the Russian ships in the Wismar and Rostock dockyards. They are still bravely plying the seas, his cabins and berths—shoddy work’s not in Willi’s repertoire!—but he’d added a hundred-percent surcharge to cover wastage. (Thirty to fifty percent would have been reasonable.) Under these circumstances a complete child’s bedroom for the director authorizing billings was handled with a handshake, not an invoice. Then, when the time came to enlarge the dockyard buildings to handle ship provisions, especially the “bazaars,” he ran into temporary difficulties, not knowing his way around hustling food supplies as well as his various other areas of expertise. Then Emil Knoop returned to Gneez and helped him out in his hour of need.

  What followed was the kind of aria to Emil Knoop’s ability to draw profits out of thin air, one that Cresspahl’s child could have joined in on. It did make her mad to recall the 1946–47 Hunger Winter when milk and honey were flowing on Böttcher’s table. But what did it profit Böttcher, really, that he drove a Mercedes, that the Soviet guards at the free port of Stralsund raised the barrier because his sad frazzled face was ID enough, what good did all that high living with canned goods from Denmark do him? For one thing, he constantly had one foot in jail (– Ive made my peace with that: said Willi, gloomily, but still as if somehow looking forward to it). For another, the meetings with the Soviet gentlemen always ended up so terribly booze-soaked. In Stralsund a waiter felt for him and always served him water instead of Richtenberger kümmel (– You c’n have the money fer it: said Willi, dolefully—a dignified man with bitter religious disappointments in his past). He couldn’t bribe all the waiters on the Mecklenburg coast, though, so it happened once that when stopping to take a leak between Rostock and Gneez he slipped and fell down a steep embankment and his Soviet business partners forgetfully drove off without him, in his Mercedes. All night on the wet ground. No. All of Gneez knew it as well as Cresspahl: Willi Böttcher didn’t know how to drink. Not his forte. Lay in bed half a week afterward, every time. And then the wife! The old lady! The ol’ bat!

  All true. Böttcher’s got his row to hoe: Cresspahl said, being friendly. His daughter was livid at Böttcher’s geniality, but grown-ups were incomprehensible. Now we’ve told each other some stories, let’s bury the hatchet. As if Cresspahl had told stories about Fünfeichen!

  But for every line of Böttcher’s business, Emil Knoop held an end of it in his hand; if Knoop balked, something went south. Willi had made some wall paneling for the Gneez Kommandatura. The invoice was approved by the pricing authorities, the finance office—Triple-J probably would’ve paid it by Whitsunday 1948 but there was a deputy sitting in his chair, behind him the 40" x 40" Goethe from the Gneez high school, refusing to pay at all. Willi went to the waiting room outside Emil Knoop’s office so early that he was second in line. Emil was about to leave on a trip to Oostende; he had just enough time to give him a little information on his way out the door: the deputy commandant had managed to get only a sewing machine with a damaged base at a furniture distribution but was interested in a young lady on Rosengarten Street and wanted to give her a token of his affection. Willi Böttcher cast his mind back to medieval techniques and made the deputy a new sewing machine base with all the care an aspirant gives his journeyman’s piece, complete with inlaid centimeter ruler and other intarsia. So then the deputy paid for the two hundred square feet of wainscoting, had Böttcher sign for it, swept the money off the table back into the cashbox, pointedly locked it, pulled a new receipt out of his drawer, requested a second signature, and handed over the money. . . By evening the negotiations had moved to Böttcher’s shop, where the deputy sat on the planer with him, only slightly drunk, rattling off words of wisdom: You Germans, you think we’re all dumb . . . (Oh, no, Mr. Deputy! Please! How could you even think . . . ?) We’re better cheaters than you, though.

  Cresspahl looked long and hard at his guild master, whose word had once been law in the craft and the bookkeeping of their trade all around Gneez and who now had to make a double entry of every receipt if he didn’t want to be hauled off to jail by the tax investigators. He decided to try another angle. He asked where Emil’s power and glory had its limits. – Nowhere nohow! Willi declared glumly. Although their conversation once again managed to steer clear of the painful topic of Cresspahl’s absence, it still sounded for all the world as if he, Böttcher, were complaining to his younger colleague. The latest about Emil Knoop was the saluting practice he’d conducted with a Soviet guard outside the green fence around Barbara Street in Gneez, in full view of German passersby, Soviet military personnel, even the commandant, J. J. Jenudkidse, who looked expertly on from the comfort of his private villa’s upper floor. Emil (Emile) corrected the amenable Red Army man’s hand position, pushed and shoved at the man’s feet, and was saluted by the Soviet ever more briskly, almost up to the old Greater German standards—crowing vigorously, he rooted out aesthetic errors: No! Like that! Look: Chock! Chockchock! Chock! until the present-arms was solid and Emil, with a salute of his own, strode past the guard to his meeting with Triple-J. Nothing happened without Knoop. The people who said Knoop must have a twin may’ve been right. Because how could he be on trial in Hanover over a mislaid delivery of blue basalt and at the same time
cutting a deal in Jerichow about demolishing the brickworks at the town’s expense? Seriously. You cant catch that guy. He’s off to Moscow, and not with a delegation, alone! As a guest of honor!

  I think its time to catch im.

  Hes got enough double receipts at the finance office, mine ’re sheepdroppings fer him!

  Willi—what if he had to help you?

  Don’ take it the wrong way, Cresspahl. Youve been away a long time.

  He has a friend, doesn he?

  Hes got lots a friends.

  One friend: Klaus. Your boy Klaus.

  Jå, Klaas. We think about im all the time. The old lady won’ stop weepin and wailin. If hes still with the Russians, is he dead? Is he still alive there? If it wasn for him Id throw in the towel.

  Then think of him!

  Cresspahl, you’re not . . .

  Hes got a friend in Gneez whos in good with the Russians and now hes goin for a visit . . .

  Emil! Emil Knoop!

  If he cant get his friend out a Moscow—

  Cresspahl I wont ever forget this. Come and see me, day or night, youll have whatever you want. Whatever you ask for, Hinrich!

  If he cant pull it off then hes useless. Then hes through in Gneez.

  Ive done nothing to deserve this from you. I wont ever forget it.

  I’d rather you forgot it right now.

  What?

  You dont know nothin, you keep your trap shut, Willi.

  This was the kind of operation Cresspahl was capable of by that time. His daughter took it as a sign of recovery, it was fine with her. He was casually picking a fight with the business tycoon of the district, and she was happy to do her part with comments about an Emil Knoop without the power or the glory to get his friend back from the Russians, until Mrs. Lindsetter, the judge’s wife, started talking and Dr. Schürenberg’s wife and Mrs. Bell and all the rest of the ladies in their ladiness. The Knoop firm delivered a batch of Finnish timber to Cresspahl, from which he built a workshop behind his house—a large room on stilts at a right angle to Lisbeth’s bedroom—and when the Schwerin State Museum inquired into whether he did restoration work it was Knoop who’d in all innocence written him a letter. Then the people from the antiques shop started coming by. Cresspahl had realized the fate of fine handicrafts in Mecklenburg but he thought he’d do well enough to live out his time there. It was his last retreat. From then on he only ever worked alone.