Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

By the time she gets to to jsou plané hrozby, “they’re only warning shots,” she can think calmly again and arrive at the idea that someone might have gone into her office and looked at the desk calendar. It’s written right there: the time, the name of the store. And what is this time, in which she is out and about? It is within the span of time she has rented to the bank. And what was she doing in said time? Buying luggage for a trip that the bank is sending her on, a trip she’ll moreover be compensated for. That’s what Anita would say. You see how docile a person gets once they’ve become an employee, Anita.

  V.

  The address was “good,” a nice place in the Thirties on Park Avenue, a lawyer’s office. We first met Mr. Josephberg at one of Countess Albert Seydlitz’s parties—a man you can go off into a corner and speak German with, about Kurt Tucholsky, one of his former clients in Germany; about Tilla Durieux, who alas kept marrying men other than Mr. Josephberg. “For the actor posterity weaves no wreaths”: these husbands were clearly the exceptions. Then D. E. heard me mention his name and gave us another connection to him: this man, ennobled by emigration at the very beginning, February 1933, is D. E.’s lawyer. And now he’s ours. Anyone D. E. trusts, we trust.

  – Is it ready?: Mrs. Cresspahl asks from a phone booth in the Grand Central post office, should she come right away? – Mr. Josephberg urgently requests your presence: his secretary confirms, formally, as if she’s forgotten all my appearances with Marie in her waiting room. Or is it supposed to be sarcastic? Because of course you need to be there in person to sign something? It’s a quick hop on the subway running under Lexington Avenue. And it’s a happy occasion. After Anita told me about an American school in the south part of West Berlin, we’ve added an addendum to the Cresspahl will.

  Anyone taking a trip should leave behind a last will and testament. I hereby bequeath everything I own to my daughter Marie Cresspahl, born July 21, 1957, in Düsseldorf, the daughter of railway inspector Jakob Wilhelm Joachim Abs. The life insurance policy number is. Marie is requested to keep until her twenty-fifth birthday all the Mecklenburg books with a date of printing before 1952. The child is to be brought up by Mrs. Efraim Blumenroth.

  That was right, and it was wrong. Mrs. Blumenroth lives on Riverside Drive, so Marie could keep her school, her homeland; children will survive with the Blumenroths, even if they lack a mother of Jewish descent. How could I dream that Anita would be prepared to do without trips, for Marie! So now we’ve worked it out this way: A lady in Berlin-Friedenau, tried and found true for twenty years, will be responsible for bringing up the child; the child’s legal guardian, however, will be D. E., who is required to go to Berlin in person four times a year and check whether everything is being arranged properly for the child. That’s what I was going to sign, and I was glad it was ready.

  VI.

  – How are you feeling today, Mrs. Cresspahl?

  – Fine, thanks, Mr. Josephberg.

  – Heart? Circulation?

  – I had no idea you were taking up medicine, Doctor! Yes, I’m all right. Maybe a little tired from work.

  – Please forgive me for not being able to talk to you today the same way I’ve so enjoyed in our earlier conversations.

  – Let’s get it over with, Doctor. Is someone suing me?

  – It’s worse than that, Mrs. Cresspahl. Please forgive an old man for making a personal remark, based on what he feels he knows about your life.

  – All right.

  – This is going to be the worst thing you’ll have heard since your father passed away.

  – All right!

  – The last will and testament of Dr. Dietrich Erichson states that you are to be the first person notified in the event of his death.

  – He’s dead.

  – He died in a plane crash near Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, Finland. On Saturday. At eight a.m.

  – What kind of plane was it.

  – A Cessna.

  – He’s licensed to fly a Cessna!

  – Both Finnish and American police have identified him beyond a doubt.

  – People are incinerated in plane crashes.

  – Indeed. The doctors estimate that Mr. Erichson may have lived for five minutes after the impact. Without regaining consciousness of his situation.

  – Consciousness of being smashed to bits and on fire!

  – Yes. Forgive me, Mrs. Cresspahl.

  – This is the kind of thing that The New York Times would report.

  – The government that employed the deceased voiced a wish to have the news suppressed.

  – How do they identify someone who’s been incinerated?

  – From the teeth.

  – Why couldn’t it be a bullet in the chest? An injection? A stabbing!

  – Clearly the deceased had been instructed to leave a copy of his dental records where it would be readily available.

  – Why am I hearing about this only today.

  – Because the American board of inquiry had to fly from Washington to Helsinki.

  – That’s ten hours!

  – Because the gentlemen in question preferred to release the news of his death only today.

  – A photograph!

  – There are no photographs of the site of the accident.

  – There are official photographs, taken by the board of inquiry.

  – If you make a formal request, I can contact the authorities responsible and. . .

  – Now I believe it.

  – Mr. Erichson left everything to you, Mrs. Cresspahl. His mother has the right to live in the house until she passes away. Aside from the real estate and monetary assets, there are various copyrights—

  – No.

  – If you’d prefer it, I can inform Mrs. Erichson.

  – No.

  – My deepest sympathies, Mrs. Cresspahl. Please be assured that anything you need in the coming weeks—

  – Could you ask Mrs. Gottlieb to walk me to my office? Without telling her what . . .what you’ve just told me?

  VII.

  The office—the only place in New York where you can be alone, behind a locked door. When someone dies, whatever you do or were doing turns into a reproach; playing in the water and flirting at Jones Beach. In a storm Jakob’s mother used to set a lit candle on the table and pray. We were in such a hurry when we were hunting through Minneapolis that we assumed the edge of the wall frayed by the broad noonday light, the surface of light beyond it, was the famous river and we didn’t look closer. And that was fine, because we were definitely going to take a trip to Finland together next year. He wanted to fly over the Alps with us; we had a date in Rome. According to Protestant belief, God can see what’s written on airplanes. The aggressive honking of horns on the streets of Manhattan—how could we ever have felt homesick for sounds that just come from rudeness. Also, the planes rising along a diagonal offend an eye accustomed to order, to the perpendicular. A child is sitting comfortably on the floor, leaning a shoulder against the wall, raising and lowering something while making two connected sounds, almost like a melody. A rhythm in which a tired body unwillingly feels itself as nothing but a firing of nerves in the brain, with a feeling of complete despair, keening helplessly with those two sounds each pulling the other behind it. A heavy pendulum, blocked in its swing just before it snaps, the pauses lengthening ever so indiscernibly slightly. In my day it took eight hours to fly to New York. Sometimes, when I arrived in Hamburg from Copenhagen on summer afternoons, the blocked light in the passport room felt like home. When I like something, D. E.’s glad. Guh-ZEE-neh! people say, with a pleading tone in the second syllable, like they’re trying to trap me with the name; D. E. does it differently, I like hearing him. Big Maries dead, lil Maries a-waitin for D. E. He said “My daughter”; once. – Gimme another, Mr. Pharmacist, he said. An she did. And the white ball, like a cherry bomb, dangerously heading straight for a closed eye, cheating the gaze, making the brain echo, but sometimes nice, like birds flying, white midsize birds, maybe seagulls. Th
ere are people who don’t mind flying only because the situation includes the possibility of an unexpected crash, yes look out and that’s it your life’s over, and so the moment, like arguably every other moment, contains a demand that you organize and settle your personal affairs once and for all, including your death. Those who adopt such an attitude cite philosophical reasons. D. E. was flying to Athens, way down below a tiny little patch of prepared ground amid a boundless body of water, – Will we hit the target? I can see what they mean about helicopters; we’d want to at least hear our own crash. Comes back from a trip and suddenly knows, on top of everything else, about the Gothic origins of the churches of Prague buried under the Jesuit Baroque. He was definitely there. Took a look around as a favor to me. “Jan Hus and the Symbolic Function of the Chalice for the Utraquists.” Imagining: being on a flight over JFK and never leaving the airport; the child that I was. I expect to die very soon; would you permit me to make arrangements that would keep you cared for? At least on behalf of the child? Lying down, seeing the white sky lagging behind, swept by the dry branches of the treetops. You’re bad at suffering, D. E.! You turn everything into cause and responsibility and pay what you owe accordingly, then forget people. – Why should I suffer, Gesine? A bus has a long breath. Airplanes grind the air, don’t they? Today I’m the cat waiting for the host who’ll disappear someday—scabby, tunneled through with pus, limping, blind in one eye. DOES THE AIR OVER MANHATTAN MAKE YOU UNHAPPY? IT MAKES US TWICE AS UNHAPPY. A year ago the old dial tone in the telephone gave up the ghost—since April 1967 there’s been a bell-like, purring, plump tone after the 9. The variations for Goldberg on Saturday night, they were already D. E.’s dirge.

  VIII.

  – Please free the line, Mrs. Cresspahl. We have an international person-to-person call for you.

  – This is a test. This is a test.

  – Anita! You’re calling me at the bank, you know.

  – There’s something we need to talk about. It’d be too risky with Marie around.

  – Indicative, Anita. It is too risky.

  – Helsinki airport, indicative?

  – So I’m told.

  – Was it yours?

  – If I can believe it, it was mine.

  – Do you want me to go to Helsinki?

  – There are no remains.

  – But there is a death.

  – Anita, he had a piece of paper on him whenever he traveled that said in the four major world languages: To be cremated at the place or location of death with no music speeches flowers or any religious or other service whatsoever. You know, so he wouldn’t put me to any unnecessary trouble when he died.

  – Tell me what I can do.

  – Come to Prague in two weeks. My vacation.

  – Ty znayesh'.

  – Tell me what to do.

  – Does Marie know?

  – When I tell her it’ll destroy her.

  – Let me think about it until tomorrow morning. Can you hold out till then?

  IX.

  – Well, Mrs. Erickssen!

  – Evening, Wes.

  – How’s Mr. Erickssen?

  – He’s fine. Away, I’m afraid. But fine.

  – What can I do for you, Mrs. Erickssen?

  – A drink.

  – Most certainly. But what kind of drink, that is the question.

  – Something to pick me up, Wes.

  – Mrs. Erickssen, with all due respect: could it be that you need something different to pick you up?

  – Anything.

  – I’ll get you a taxi, Mrs. Erickssen.

  X.

  Waiting at Riverside Drive, of course, is airmail from Finland. A map of Meklenburg Ducatus, Auctore Ioanne Blaeuw excudit, excusably a bit naive in its geography, with Muritz Lacus blithely combined with Calpin Lacus, but Fleesen Lake still awaits discovery; a friendly yellow griffon appears on the coat of arms instead of the Mecklenburg oxhead. Still, there’s no doubt about the Mare Balticum: two jaunty galleons sail the sea and right by the brightly colored gold-rimmed windrose above the Bay of Wismar you can read what in truth it really should be called: Oost Zee. Above to the right you can picture Finland.

  If you put on your makeup until Marie gets home and then sit looking out the window the whole time—maybe you can get through it.

  We’re in time, just barely. On WRVR, 106.7 on your radio dial, “Just Jazz” is starting. D. E. asked us to tape it for him. How could we forget.

  August 7, 1968 Wednesday

  It’s done. We’ve deceived Marie.

  The child sleeps through the night while at two a.m. her mother goes shopping on Broadway; there was everything—hashish, heroin, hits, but no sleeping pills. This too has been known to happen: instead of helping make breakfast, the mother stays hidden behind closed doors, Marie saying goodbye in a cheerful voice: Walk, don’t run! A fall is no fun!

  Eagle-Eye Robinson steps out of the elevator with a letter in his hand—airmail, special delivery, stamps from Suomi. The text begins: Dear Ilona! Then the “Ilona” was crossed out and replaced with: Gesine. Oh, your jokes, D. E.

  At the bank, the room for the young gods Wendell, Milo, and Gelliston has been cleared out, down to the floorboards. In Cresspahl’s office, the furniture has been stacked into a tower and covered with a tarp. The telephone, complete with its connection box, has disappeared.

  – We sent you a telegram: the girls in de Rosny’s lobby claim. – Here’s the carbon!

  Dear Mrs. Cresspahl due to damaged cables your section of the sixteenth floor is closed stop we will inform you as soon as you can return to work stop this will not count against your vacation time stop have a good time

  Employee Cresspahl requests an appointment with Mr. de Rosny. On the spot. At once!

  It’s her own fault. She should’ve realized that the telephone exchange keeps a list of all international calls. Has to keep a list. Someone heard Anita and me, a second person translated it, a third person put us in their files, a fourth person explained us to three more people at a meeting. Hrozebný, hrozivý, hrozící! Threatening, menacing, impending! Hrozím se toho, it terrifies me! Hrozba trestem, threat of punishment!

  De Rosny sends word that he is very busy at the moment. During her stubborn two-hour wait, Employee Cresspahl realizes that, all the same, her lapse of discretion has resulted in a thoughtful gesture. De Rosny has invested in this employee. It truly would be a little loss for him if she broke down. A machine is overloaded so he turns it off for a while. Dům hrozí sesutím, and we hope it does! The house is threatening to collapse!

  Before lunchtime, de Rosny coughs up an appointment: Monday, August 19, at nine a.m.

  Hrozný?, python! Hrozitánský, monster!

  – My best regards to the vice president: Employee Cresspahl says. She can see that he’s gone to a lot of trouble. At least six movers hauling desks at the crack of dawn. If it’s a game, she’ll play along. She won’t set foot in this building before August 19! Hrozná doba.

  We need to apologize to Wes. Wes sells alcoholic drinks. Drunks disgust him. Mrs. Cresspahl may have looked that way yesterday.

  – Wes, I just want to say, about—

  – My dear Mrs. Erickssen! Don’t mention it! All bartenders hand out medicine; you needed a taxi, you needed to go to bed, I could see that with the naked eye!

  – Send me the bill, doctor.

  – I’ll send it to the professor, Erickssen. A sweet man. The kind of husband a woman can only dream of.

  – Goodbye, Wes. Thank you kindly.

  – Allow me the honor, Mrs. Erickssen.

  – In the middle of the day? Unaccompanied by a man?

  – Today I am the man accompanying you, Mrs. Erickssen.

  D. E. spent parts of his life here—parts he liked. We were together here. This is the best place to reread the letter from Finland.

  Even on rereading it’s news of a trip. Finnish neutrality. The Port of Helsinki. What professional business brought D. E. there?


  Eventually “Ilona” sticks out—not a woman, an abbreviation, a hint at a code. With just a pencil from Wes and the back of an Irish betting slip it’s tricky business. A machine would crack it in five minutes but Mrs. Cresspahl spends two hours deciphering D. E.’s ILoNa.

  D. E. has been to Prague many times. (But never with a passport that had my name in it, Gesine.) So the best thing for us to do at passport control in Ruzyně Airport is act like we have all the time in the world, since the young men behind the bulletproof glass are going to read our documents the way other people read poetry. D. E. recommends that we keep a car while we’re there—it’s a hassle to take the 22 to the Czernin Palace, the Foreign Ministry, especially when the streetcar bangs into the loose rails in the city center or is driven downhill in Mediterranean style.

  – Does he always write such tricky letters?: Wes says, refilling his friend Erickssen’s wife’s glass after half an hour. And does she want to take Erickssen’s ticket for Ireland now? It’s ready for him.

  Once at the Czernin Palace, D. E. recommends a wine bar called u Loretu, with outdoor tables. Diagonally across from a café where an uncle will inquire, in a doctorly manner, into the condition of our shoes, at which point he will adjust Marie’s sandals and repair at most a torn strap. He will offer us wine as if we were in Italy.

  The best thing to do, then, would be to find an apartment on Paris Street in Prague. After the opening of the ČSSR to capitalist tourism in 1963, our money will make us welcome. We should be careful of young men who come talk to us without looking at us—they just want our foreign currency.

  So we might be an irresistible object of interest to craftsmen, but as for turning up any paint, Gesine, a faucet, a windowpane—God help you. You’ll probably take frequent trips to Frankfurt, on a commuter flight that rarely runs. If you need onions, for instance. But if we know you, you’ll have friends in a village somewhere within a month, Gesine. And all the better to eat you with in Frankfurt, Gesine. À dieu, yours, truly—

  – Give my regards to Professor Erickssen!: Wes requests when I get up to leave, and he walks alongside Mrs. Cresspahl behind his forty-foot-long bar until she gets to the door, feeling the awed looks of the remaining gentlemen on her back. A guest of honor, that lady. Food and drinks on the house. Wife of an aerospace engineer or something.