Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  Schumacher, Shoemaker, your shoe doesn’t fit,

  There’s no way Germany can walk in it.

  Adenauer, Adenauer, show us your hand,

  For thirty silver pieces you have sold out our land.

  This news item in musical form was sung at the Third World Youth Festival of the FDJ in Berlin, and the socialistically inclined English girls there, surrounding our H.-G. Knick in his knee pants, might well have thought that what he translated for them was awful:

  Germans taking Germans into custody,

  Just ’cause they’ve gone from Germany to Germany. . .

  Roadblocks and fencing,

  Why even try?

  Look at us dancing

  Merrily on by.

  We were crazy enough to suggest a performance of this choral work at Fritz Reuter High School in Gneez (Herrnburg being just a stone’s throw away, after all), thereby delighting Bettina S. (at her pedagogical success). Julie Westphal put a stop to that; she had an inkling of our puzzlement at a poet who could be outraged at West German police measures by virtue of being largely immune to East German ones. But the school had achieved its true pedagogical purpose. By only presenting Brecht’s hackwork to us, which had earned him the National Prize (a hundred thousand marks), the school kept us away from his One Hundred Poems, which came onto the market that same year, 1951—we had every reason to think they were equally maggoty.

  Anyone willing to part with a used copy of Bertolt Brecht’s One Hundred Poems, in any condition, preferably with dust jacket, is hereby requested to name their price to Mrs. Gesine Cresspahl, Address: . . . , c/o Státní Banka Československá, Prague 1.

  Bettina worked hard denouncing cosmopolitan enemies of the people. What she knew about Rainer Maria Rilke was that he was a lyric poet alien to the people; Stefan George she called a stylite. But what to say about Jean-Paul Sartre? The Cresspahl girl submitted that this individual had published a book named L’Être et le néant, aka Being and Nothingness, in Paris in 1943, under the Nazi-German occupation—enough for an A. Oh, how we missed Lockenvitz!

  He’d still been with us on our class trip to see Ernst Barlach’s works; he’d worn a suit to Güstrow, while Cresspahl wore her Sunday best because her father had suggested that this was proper when visiting a dead man. The Mecklenburgers, always under the leadership of Fiete Hildebrandt, had so plagued and tormented Barlach that he’d died in 1938, in Rostock, but he’d wanted to be buried in Ratzeburg, in the West. Here, before the hovering Angel in the Güstrow Cathedral, before The Doubter, the young woman from the terrible year of 1937, we listened to Bettina’s interpretive mush and then went back a second time to contemplate the sculptures in silence. (Lise Wollenberg managed to pin the nickname “Fettered Witch” on her former friend Cresspahl, due to an alleged resemblance en face to the statue in question; these days Lise was occasionally stared at, by boys, as if she were out of her mind.) It was with a set of reproductions of the “Frieze of the Listeners” that Gesine Cresspahl moved to Hesse, to the Rhineland, to Berlin, and to Riverside Drive in New York City.

  That trip had been in September 1951; in December, an exhibition of Barlach’s works opened in the German Academy of Arts in Berlin, NW 7; the following January, an instructor in German and Contemporary Studies used the SED’s newspaper, Neues Deutschland (New Germany), to teach us

  What are the circumstances in which we construct the genitive as “ des neuen Deutschland”?

  Why do we here say “an issue of des Neuen Deutschlands”?

  what Bettinikin had misinformed us about four months earlier. The SED had dispatched its official art expert to the Academy—one Girnus, well-versed in the practices of Formalism so inimical to the people—and Girnus was willing to concede that the Nazis had treated Barlach as someone inimical to their sort. But Barlach had been defending a lost position; Barlach had been, in essence, a retrograde artist. Taking no inspiration from the 1906 Russian Revolution. Wrapping a world of “the barefoot” in a halo of sanctity. What, in contrast, had Stalin said about this world of barefoot pilgrims in his opus Anarchism or Socialism? He had responded to it by saying: The truth is, rather, that . . . Barlach’s orientation toward a decaying social stratum had barred his access to the great progressive current of the German people, per Girnus. Insulated him from it. That was the whole secret of the growing isolation he had chosen for himself.

  We dutifully wrote an essay for German class about said whole secret, scrupulously distinguishing between what a certain N. Orlov had written in the newspaper of the occupying power, the Tägliche Rundschau

  Daily Review! Latest issue!

  Faily review, no one’ll miss you!

  and certain ideas of the sculptor Ernst Barlach (now promoted to the status of Formalist) about the connection between the three-dimensional world of ideas and “more solid ideas of the material involved: stone, metal, wood, firm matter.” We lied like troopers; we were working toward our final exams.

  Ever since their visit to Barlach’s lakeside house on Inselsee in Güstrow, the students Gantlik and Cresspahl had shared an agreement, a secret. Both of them had turned away from the art-critical tour-guiding on offer from their instructor, Selbich, and found themselves on the ridge of Heather Hill, at the top of a slope well known to the children of Güstrow as a sledding place but which also opened onto a sweeping view of the island in Inselsee and the gently rising land beyond the water, dotted with backdrops of trees and roofs, radiant since the sun had just managed to scatter some dark rainclouds—may this sight be before me in the hour of my

  We don’t give a damn if you think it’s a bit much, Comrade Writer! You write that down! We can still cancel this whole book of yours—today if we want to. The plans we’ve made for our death shouldn’t be beyond you.

  dying. We told each other our private thoughts about people’s essential need for the landscape they grew up in, learned about life in. We told each other how much we liked each other. For the rest of the school year we were still considered two people, strangers to each other, but in fact we were joined in friendship.

  Anita almost cost herself a diploma. She was a member of the Free German Youth and so she was expected to come out in favor of the resolution of the Fourth FDJ Parliament of May 29, 1952, stating that serving in the Barracked Volkspolizei was an honorable duty for all members. She, Anita, who had sworn only two years earlier that she would refuse any job, even just in a telegraph office, that was involved in any war effort, was now picked to march like the Leipzig FDJ girls with their rifles slung across their backs, the boys carrying theirs shouldered. A future was being prepared for Anita in which she too could acquire the FDJ sharpshooting badge, twenty-one rings in three shots for First Class. Anita sat in the class chapter meeting with her head lowered, neck tendons red and taut, stubbornly silent. Who knows if she was still even listening when Gabriel Manfras spoke up in a threatening way about a balance between academic achievement and the political consciousness required as an accessory to any assault on the citadel of scholarship.

  Student Cresspahl, presiding over the meeting, suddenly said, sounding very upset: I could slap myself! Here we are discussing the Stockholm Appeal and military service and not even noticing that Anita is sick. You’re not feeling well, are you, Anita? Go straight home. A vote on student Gantlik’s indisposition. For. Against. Abstentions: None.

  And so School Group Fritz Reuter, Gneez, could telegraph a unanimous endorsement of militarization to the FDJ central office in Berlin—unanimous approvals were in fashion. And Anita moved to West Berlin as soon as she had the piece of paper with her academic achievements in hand.

  Suitcases were prohibited on trains to East Berlin stations—this was meant to hinder citizens from fleeing the country. Anita deposited a suitcase at a station south of Teltow.

  She pinned the following onto her clothes for the trip: her Large Sports Badge, her Small Sports Badge, her Insignia of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship, her FDJ Insignia, her badge �
��For Correct Knowledge” (silver), and a membership badge for the German Socialist Unity Party that she’d been deft enough to pilfer from a Contemporary Studies teacher; she suffered under the cool, disparaging looks of the other passengers, especially since she also forced herself to shout “Friendship!” as a greeting to anyone in uniform. On her second day in West Berlin she left the Auto Hotel where a certain Mr. Cresspahl had put in a good word for her and took the train back across the national border to fetch her luggage, medals and insignia on her breast. The luggage wasn’t there. She put up a fight, as befit someone wearing all those party insignia (“The party seminar starts tomorrow, and here I am without a towel!”), and succeeded in getting her suitcase sent to East Station, against regulations (“You’ll be hearing from me whether it actually gets there, I promise you!”); she tried to transfer to a westbound tram. On the stairs leading to the platform for trains to Spandau, she saw a table across the way with Red Army soldiers. She dashed in comradely fashion over to the Russians. They were happy for the diversion and flirted with their German ally; considerate, watchful, they interrupted their conversation by crying: Run, Comrade, your train’s coming. Across the border her hardware attracted attention; she brought her left hand toward her shoulder several times, scratched a little through her overcoat, slipped one medal after another into the palm of her hand, and let go of it in her coat pocket.

  Had there been any other funny business during the Abitur exams? Of course. There’s one legend about English texts hidden in a rotten bench in the assembly hall—but here we should, in all fairness, fall silent, since most of those involved (implicated) are still alive, and living where they acquired their certifications.

  My first Abitur had been my last encounter with Lockenvitz, on May 15, 1952.

  My second was dated June 25, and was accompanied by the general remarks:

  G. C. has been a conscientious, reliable student, who did her work thoroughly and independently. Her initiative has been a model for her classmates.

  Societal activities:

  G. C. has been a member of FDJ since 9/10/1949. She has performed good organizational work and consistently striven, successfully, to gain greater understanding in questions of ideological worldview.

  Certificate #: Zc 208-25 3 52 5961-D/V/4/59-FZ 501.

  There it was again: that banned word worldview. Mrs. Habelschwerdt had to pay for that misspeaking. New School, old words—you try to figure that one out, if you have to, or want to.

  My third Abitur took place in Jerichow.

  In the final days of June, Cresspahl’s daughter was biking home from a swim in the Baltic on the Rande country road at the strange time of about five o’clock, just when the retired senior secondary-school instructors in English and Latin stop working in the garden plots behind New Cemetery and head home to brew their tea, a habit acquired during their years at the universities of London and Birmingham. There he was, an old man in a torn shirt walking with rake and hoe over his shoulder, and his former student Cresspahl said hello as shyly as she felt. He replied just as he had two years ago, and pretended to be appalled when the child seemed about to dismount and accompany him part of the way. He wouldn’t hear of it; he begged the young lady to forgive his unseemly attire.

  To be quite sure she would no longer have to see it, he sent her up ahead into town with precise instructions about the croissants and crumb cakes and “Americans” she should buy in the former Papenbrock bakery. By the time she arrived at his two-room apartment on Jerichow’s market square, Kliefoth had shaved and put on a black suit; he was standing at the door like the young lady’s most obedient servant. It was the guest herself who then had to eat all the pastries, every last crumb, while making a confession that covered two years of school. He sat upright at the table, his gaze steady. He was quite at ease, you could see it from the way he held his cigar away in the air, benevolently observing her. The student herself was uncertain of a good outcome.

  – Iam scies, patrem tuum mercedes perdidisses: Kliefoth eventually said, challengingly.

  “You will soon know that your father has gotten nothing for his tuition money.” What they’ve taught you in that school, Miss Cresspahl, is poor equipment indeed for a life of study and learning.

  Cresspahl’s daughter spent only half the summer vacation of 1952 by the sea; every weekday, she had to go to Kliefoth’s apartment with a bag of pastries right after lunch and receive instruction by means of a book which included this maxim: It may be fairly said that English is among the easiest languages to speak badly, but the most difficult to use well (Prof. C. L. WRENN, Oxford University: The English Language, 1949, p. 49).

  And when she left for university she was given, as a present, Gustav Kirchner’s The Ten Main Verbs of the English Language: In British and American Forms (Halle/Saale: 1952), a reliable tool with which she would eventually move to the other side of the world.

  For as long as she still came back home to Mecklenburg, the student Cresspahl continued to visit this teacher. And every time, she had to eat pastries in his presence, because that was one of his notions about young ladies.

  He gets an update from us by letter every year, and as many as seven more, if we feel like it.

  Student Cresspahl once asked him, in passing, what life was like for a ten-year-old child in 1898 in Malchow am See, Mecklenburg; he sent her thirty pages in a handwriting like embroidery:

  “I myself might have been the ten-year-old country lad of ’98, but we city boys kept our distance from these post numerando coeval ‘country Moritzes’ (local corruption of ‘local militias’). In M. the average pediatrician would chuckle in amusement because the teacher always went around in ‘Mählspich’ (shirtfront and high stiff collar) while the townsmen and tradesmen put on theirs, ‘Kreditspitzen,’ only for important walks through town—heard in passing and relayed without comment: ‘Didja hear, Heinrich? Fritz A. gotanother assfull this morning.’ Now how did our ten-year-old get from the countryside to the city? Via bicycle, then still called velocipede, Plattd. Vilitzipeh, I know of only one case and only in dry weather. Out of all the estate boys only a coachman’s son and the district governor’s walked with me, the latter having already covered the three miles from his estate on foot. Residents of lakeside municipalities (Petersdorf, Göhren, Nossentin) came to the city (on Sundays) mainly by rowboat. To be cont’d. 9/20/63. Kl.”

  All because I was curious how my father might have grown up. But what does Kliefoth have to complain about—he can devote a whole week to Robert Burns’s poems when he wants, and sometimes even discovers one he’d forgotten.

  We send him, via Anita, the cigars and tobacco that are his due according to his need and his merit (the same way Brecht wanted to supply a fresh rose every day, in East Germany, for the poet Oscar Wilde); as a result, his letters invariably begin: Admonishing finger raised at the spoiling of a useless old man . . .

  He signs his letters with a teacher’s siglum, as though grading a paper.

  He starts them with the words: Dear honored lady and friend Miss Cresspahl.

  If only we deserved them.

  My third Abitur: that one counts.

  August 15, 1968 Thursday

  At JFK N PODGORNI, a ticket agent, or at any rate someone required to wear a nametag to that effect on his uniformed chest, so he must be used to outlandish incidents, and maybe he’s been working for this same airline for six years: anyway, this morning he looks doubtfully at two ladies named Cresspahl wishing to travel to California with no luggage apart from whatever they have in their coat pockets, possibly including a firearm; if it were up to him he’d have frisked them both. Life’s dealt you lemons, Mr. Podgorni; good day, sir.

  What makes us want to go to San Francisco for the day? We want to fly in over the bay with the Golden Gate. Marie should see the giant wheel that pulls the cables hauling cable cars up over the city’s hills. The boxy Spanish-style houses on the hills, shining white in the earth’s vegetation burnt brown. Maybe at the mai
n post office we’ll run into the same beggar who thanked us for a quarter there six years ago by informing us: You’re a real lady, that’s for sure. We’ll need a window seat at Fisherman’s Wharf. And why are we allowed to do this? Because Marie expects a return flight to New York City at nine p.m. or thereabouts. Because we want to reacclimate ourselves to long-distance flights. And why do we want to do this? Because there are strangers’ voices arriving over the phone lines in New York, Italian as well as American, asking about one Professor Erichson. Because a telegram from Helsinki could arrive there at any moment, informing us that someone is unable to speak. Would the two ladies with the name starting with C. please be the first to board the aircraft? We would like to welcome the C. sisters on board our 707 for this morning’s flight to San Francisco.

  – To get used to goodbyes: the younger of the traveling C.’s guesses after the climb during which she surveyed her earthly belongings, namely the island of Manhattan and the two-story orange ships in the harbor. – I’m never going to leave my home for good!

  – Easy for you to say, with so many institutions of higher learning there, and the likes of Columbia right around the corner.

  – Gesine, do you think I should go to college?

  – If you want to learn how to see all the sides and corners of things, and how they fit together with other things, or even just how to look at a thought and arrange all its interconnections simultaneously in your head. If you want to train your mind until it takes over everything you think and remember and want to forget. If you want to become more sensitive to pain. If you plan to work with your head.