Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  And the gorse. We walked past the gorse, the German broom, it was in full bloom; I couldn’t help but express my pleasure in its blue and yellow. – Gorse? you asked: Ginster, like the guy who wrote the novel written by himself? You got our gorse; we contest your ownership of it.

  And that we ever thought we had no need to take further precautions, and we could send you the collocation, a piece of the old homeland, a view of the Baltic: blue as blue can be. We’re confiscating that back.

  And that I expected my father to put up with you, when he had to say yes because he was trying to console me. If I was bringing him a stranger, I was vouching for that person too, was I not? So that he’d watch you as if you deserved his politeness, maybe offer you his hand, as a guest. How can I make that never have happened. I’m ashamed of it.

  If I have to choose between betraying my friend and betraying my country, I hope I shall have the guts to betray my country. —E. M. Forster

  You all gotta look at it dialectically, doncha. Well, then, be glad.

  And don’t worry. We’ll deny knowing you. We’ve never known you. Will that help you out? No, you’ve had nothing to do with us. We don’t care two figs about you. Will this assurance help you/give you a promotion/get you a lease on your apartment? Is your national variety of self-understanding, your identity, relieved of any possible offense? We’re strangers. Always have been. How could we sign off in the end if we’d ever been your acquaintances/coworkers/roommates. To other people, we say Bye or Take care or Mind where you’re going, sometimes by request À Dieu. To you we say Enough and Never and Finis.

  (Send a clean copy as a photocopy to be forwarded. Pretend to be covering a signature here.)

  Today The New York Times wants us to feel sympathy for a housewife (who herself prefers that her name not be mentioned). She comes into Manhattan from Long Island to do some shopping. Suddenly, hey, she decides why not meet her husband for lunch? Tries the phone booth on the southwest corner of Sixty-Second and Madison. Her dime comes back out—no dial tone. She marches twelve blocks north up Madison, trying seven more public phones; the eighth doesn’t even have a dial. She’s three dimes poorer now.

  But the phone in the bank obeys for once. Sam sends a warm ham sandwich straight up from the basement at her request, with tea, brought by a messenger, who as requested puts the paper bag down on the chair next to the door without a word. He understood the dime she’d left there likewise.

  Things are going reasonably well in international communication too. Around when we’re finishing our clean copy we get a call from the Stafford Hotel, London, will we accept the charges? Of course. And there at the other end of line, at an hour when the English should be asleep, is de Rosny, a vice president, checking up in person.

  – Working hard as always, my dear Mrs. Cresspahl? de Rosny pronounces. He is imitating an Englishman. No, he announces to a colleague: Just look how well trained my people are!

  – But of course: Employee Cresspahl replies from New York, shamelessly.

  – Desk still full then? de Rosny says, exaggerating the Etonian voice.

  – Almost empty. Just finishing up now. Sir.

  – Before the big trip, eh?

  Which we’d have preferred to forget.

  – Do I know this . . . person? Marie wants to know back on Riverside Drive. If she were older than her proud eleven, you would have to call her look solicitous. Is her mother ultimately hurting herself? True, she’s sitting there making the heraldic Mecklenburg ox-head—both fists on her temples. Isn’t her mother plucking out something that offends her, and in the end it’s a bit of her eye?

  – I forget the year. You were eight and a half. We were visiting . . . a Socialist country, planning to meet Anita, and instead we ran into this person and were glad that he was . . . at least able to take trips in an . . . easterly direction.

  – This was the person you sang in public with, right?

  – The wine was strong that night, Marie.

  – “Marble Breaks and Iron Bends”?

  – You were so ashamed of your mother.

  – I was jealous. Just bursting into song whenever you’re in the mood—that takes courage.

  – Which you did solely to keep New York clean.

  – “But our lo-ove will ne-ver end”?

  – That’s what he used to think, once, in 1955.

  – So this is the person you—

  – Careful now!

  – also went places with before my time?

  – We plead innocent, Your Honor.

  – And why is Socialism bad in privately printed matter from the Non-Socialist Economic Sphere?

  – Because its custodian has an unfortunate predilection for archives.

  – Who delivers mail like this for you? Anita? Günter Niebuhr?

  – I’m afraid we can’t answer that, Your Honor.

  – That’s how you kick people out of your life?

  – That’s how I send them off, and wish them bon voyage.

  – You want me to learn that.

  – I want you to know. And since when does our apartment smell of roast cauliflower in the early evening, with the windows open? Were you cooking? The breadcrumbs are out, there’s parmesan in the air.

  – I . . . It’s a secret, Gesine. I’ll tell you tomorrow.

  – I’m much too tired to eat anyway. Is it all right with you if I go to bed now? If you let me sleep till ten tomorrow morning?

  – Sleep as late you want, Gesine.

  July 27, 1968 Saturday

  Woken by the silence: it was roomy, it contained birdsong. All through the night sleep knew that the alarm clock was muzzled, and wake-up time it set for when the cars are deployed on Riverside Drive, the first children taken to the park. The dream showed a wood thrush, showcased a red-breasted thrush, went as far as to offer a tanager—all discarded. For all these are busy by this time of year remodeling their nests, raising their progeny. The one singing here was a wren, a Zaunkönig—king of the fence. A cheerful little monarch perched on the park’s chain-link, beyond the hot still road, in the warmed shadows of the magnificent hickories . . . the walnut trees, present in the dream as an oil print in Pagenkopf’s hallway. I woke myself up.

  Quarter to ten; greeted by a staging of breakfast: tea waiting on the hot plate, two places set, two eggs waiting under their little caps; only the napkins are still empty of rolls. The New York Times is there, and what’s not there is Marie or even a note from her. The young lady is out for a mysterious morning walk.

  Edward G. Ash Jr. of Willingboro, NJ, US Army, and David A. Person of Tonawanda, NY, US Navy firefighter, are reported as killed in Vietnam.

  The British Communists are avoiding any hint of reproach of their great Soviet brothers, but they nonetheless stand there and find it just swell how the Czechoslovak party is tackling “the wrong of the past,” insisting on Socialist democracy, and what do they serve for dessert? “Only the Czech people and their Communist party can decide how to deal with their internal problems.” These number 32,562 people in Great Britain (not counting abstentions).

  Antonio (Tony Ducks) Corallo, of the Mafia, got what was coming to him in the Federal Court on Foley Square. For attempted bribery of a Water Department official: three years in prison. But the maximum sentence would have been five years and a $10,000 fine. Now, assuming good behavior . . .

  Yesterday a thirty-four-year-old man from Astoria (we almost lived there), Vladimir Vorlicek, walked into the gun department of Abercrombie & Fitch, bought shotgun shells for $5.50, surreptitiously loaded a shotgun—apparently such things are just lying around unsecured there—and shot himself in the head. He had arrived within the past year as a refugee, from Czechoslovakia. He would have made one more.

  – Good morning, Marie! Look what we have here—such a beautiful child! Out visiting friends? What an elegant dress you have on, blue and white stripes, perfect with your blond braids, and silk ribbons on your bare shoulders too! Perfectly gellegant!r />
  – Good morning, Gesine.

  – Is something troubling you, young lady?

  – Obviously.

  – But today’s not a day when anyone should feel troubled! It’s the weekend, the sun is out, we could go right to the South Ferry, just say the word, Marie!

  – It’s that . . . Sometimes you like hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, Gesine. When they’ve been left to cool overnight.

  – I do indeed! But I don’t need any today.

  – I wanted to make you some last night, but when they’d been on the stove for a while I started reading, then went off to my room with my nose in the book. There was a bang, and I thought of Eagle-Eye Robinson’s old jalopy and its busted muffler. When I finally noticed the smell, the saucepan on the gas was black and warped and the eggs had exploded all over. Up to the ceiling.

  – You sure did a good job cleaning up.

  – Danke.

  – German’s the language of the day, then?

  – Okay.

  – In that case you need to call it a Stielkasserolle, a handle-pot, even if the people here somehow imagine it’s a pan. Oh, sorry! Sowwy.

  – Here you go. The closest . . . handle-pot I could find on Broadway. Aluminum too. With my own money.

  – The old one was old, we should’ve thrown it out a long time ago. Amortized for four years. Tell me, classmate, are you in the mood for a quick lesson on amortization law? The keeper of the household budget deliberates, approves, and authorizes the expenditure.

  – Make it halfsies.

  – Half and half! Done! So now smile! I’m the one to blame, with my sense of smell! Roast cauliflower!

  – I fear, Madame, that this, Mrs. Cresspahl, is a sign of advancing age.

  – Is today a South Ferry day, Marie?

  – I’d rather have brunch. The tape recorder is saddled up, toast’s on its way, and a lemon for the tea.

  – Supposing, posito, we had a guest with us from the ignorant Wildernis—from, let’s say, Düsseldorf: how would we translate that for him?

  – Breakfast and lunch in einem. A big . . . midday breakfast. Gabelfrühstück! Breakfast with a fork!

  – Instead of fish with a spoon and scrambled eggs with tongs.

  – What do you charge for an hour of German lessons?

  – An hour of “Contemporary Studies,” you mean. I’ll take one insalata di pomodori e cipolle. Puoi condirla?

  – Coming right up! Coming right up!

  – Contemporary Studies: that was a New Subject, insofar as the Nazis would’ve called it “Ideological Weltanschauung Inculcation,” and also insofar as there would be a new instructor at the Fritz Reuter High School teaching it to class 10-A-II in 1949–50. Her name was Selbich—not much older than twenty, we’d heard, and the principal pro tem. Teaching this kind of subject would be seen as quite useful probation if she was out to get her promotion made permanent.

  – Selbich. . .Selbich. . .

  – Principal replacing Dr. Kliefoth.

  – Oh boy. His successor was an outsider, and young, and female. That’s not easy.

  – And that is precisely why the seventeen-year-olds decided to give her the benefit of the doubt: it must have been the dignity of her office that kept the new principal from shutting the classroom door behind her herself, and give the nod for the task to the lowest in the room, Mrs. Lindsetter’s niece, Monika (“Peter”). We were perfectly ready to make allowances for her teetering along as if her feet hurt (– Not like any woman alive: Pius whispered), standing up stiff and straight as a commanding officer reviewing soldiers on parade, and surely she couldn’t keep her grown-out blond hair from hanging down so stringily unless she brushed it for half an hour every morning. The students of 10-A-II rise to their feet and stare at the new Contemporary Studies teacher’s shirt. For she was wearing, with a brown skirt, the blue FDJ shirt, complete with epaulettes and an emblem on the sleeve. At this point Kliefoth would have made a hand gesture to release us, sure of having the whole class’s attention; this person inspected us at length before saying: Sit down! And since when do I like quince jam?

  – Since D. E. sent us some from Lenzburg, Switzerland, Gesine.

  – All right, I’ll let that go. Less edified (than I by this jam) was 10-A-II by this instructor’s first question. She asked in a sharp voice: why were we all, without exception, in civilian garb rather than sporting the proud blue shirt of the Free German Youth? Pius looked at me as if wanting some kind of cue or advice. I gave my head a little twitch, meaning: Go for it! By this point our quick precise silent communication system ran practically perfectly, eluding the pedagogue’s eye or at least not being provable. I knew Pius would needle her, and now that I’d recognized her I was hoping she’d join in our game. Pius raised his hand, received a stiff nod, stood up, and said in exaggerated Mecklenburgish: The blue shirt, our garment o’ honor it is, ma’am. It’s only on festive occasions we’d wear that. Lise Wollenberg made a similar false move, which she too would’ve known better than to try if she hadn’t recognized this Mrs. Selbich. She blurted, unasked, without standing up to speak, familiarly, quoting from the dress regulations: Plus a course a girl don’ often have a black dress to wear every day now (her eyes clearly on Madame Principal’s brown-clad hips). But Bettina had changed more than her name—she’d lost her sense of humor, and spoke differently, in a hard voice, as if wanting to threaten us, as if we were dirt—

  – Bettina Riepschläger?! It was her?

  – Bettina Riepschläger, married name Selbich, divorced name Selbich too. She demanded “Silence!” in a voice as imperious as it was clumsy, and also demanded to know who the 10-A-II FDJ class president was. That was Pius again, and while she made every effort to intimidate us by announcing that shameful conditions had been permitted to spread unchecked in our class, our whole basic attitude was in need of serious reassessment—

  – Were you “a bunch of pigs”?

  – she was derailed by Pius’s lengthy explanation of the enormous sums of money we’d paid at the district office for a mere one shirt each, which we certainly wore for rallies, street marches, and year-end meetings, but which was too good even for potato harvest work details,

  Our blue shirts black with the sweat of toil . . .

  and as for the girls in our class, every last one had had complaints about the ungainly footwear that went with the uniform. – I reserve the right to return to this matter again: this new Bettina announced, as if about to hand out punishments. The old Bettina would’ve made it back safe to shore with a smile, telling us we must think of every moment as a festive occasion. It all could’ve still turned out fine.

  – The things a teacher training course can do to a person!

  – And a failed marriage too. And having applied to be a party member. And who knows what else.

  – Had she . . .

  – She’d thrown in the towel. Upset the apple cart. And this was the first time Pius shook his head when I told him something: that in middle school she’d been friendly, fun, someone you could trust, someone you studied hard for just to make her happy. Pius made a face as if now he had to start all over again if he wanted to get me; his brow was furrowed with concern, even.

  – But I bet Lise Wollenberg showed up to Selbich’s Contemporary Studies class the next day in a blue FDJ shirt.

  – Black skirt, too. Civilian shoes though. It didn’t take long before it was all tripping off Lise’s tongue: that the employers in capitalist West Germany are atremble at the sight of the freedoms that the workers have won in the German Democratic Republic and will someday bring with them to the West.

  – Kliefoth had had to make predictions like that too.

  – A Julius Kliefoth says whatever he feels like saying. He’d translated cognitive therapy into his own terms and decided that teachers should put at children’s disposal whatever the contemporary moment actually contains. If Austria gets a peace treaty all for itself, or Indonesia independence, he would in the first
case assign an essay on economic geography, in the second expect us to know at least the country’s population. When the Bulgarian politician Traicho Kostov admitted to planning to assassinate Dimitrov and join his country to Yugoslavia, then denied both charges, and then was executed anyway in December 1949, Kliefoth passed that information on to us as news. He held press conferences with us; we were allowed to be like reporters and ask him: Is it true that . . . ? (that England has diplomatically recognized China? We could have set him up so many times; the thought of his astonished reaction, those drawn smacking lips, was enough to dissuade us. We had an agreement with him.) From the newspaper principle he transitioned to the newspapers he’d actually been allowed to subscribe to before the war—three months each one, from various French départements and English counties in turn. How beneficial this practice was for fluency in a foreign language, he said; how it nourished one’s awareness of contemporary events. (Sitting in front of him were children getting a vague sense of what he had learned to do without, children who already knew that possessing a West German paper meant censure in school, while showing it to anyone else meant jail.) When Zaychik insisted on wanting to learn a foreign word for Düsenjäger, Dr. Kliefoth wrote to his academic friends in St. Andrews or Birmingham; he defined jet to us as best he could in technical terms as the Düse, and we learned that a fighter was a battle plane, a weapon at the ready. We could hear in his voice the staff officer well acquainted with airplanes from the eastern front when he added: Frightful thing, that.

  – Did Bettina believe the things she wanted to hear back from you in Contemporary Studies?

  – I hope so, for her sake. How terrible for her if she didn’t! If that was part of her burden, she must have seen in our silence the mocking sympathy we felt for Dieter Lockenvitz when he stood up by the map stand in the front corner and had to report tidings of joy with respect to the imminent demise of the West German economic system, as a result of more than two million unemployed. He writhed, shuffled his feet, tried to hold tight to the map stand, and Bettina critiqued: The concept is correct in itself but you’re getting stuck in it; you’re twisting it around like you’re trying to look at a ball from all sides!