Dog Years (11 page)

For while the police were still investigating the scene of the fire, because arson was suspected, Eduard Amsel built his first, and in the ensuing spring when all snow had lost its meaning and it turned out that the Mennonite Simon Beister had set the Catholic postmill on fire on religious grounds, his second, mechanical scarecrow. He put a lot of money into it, the money from the little leather pouch. From sketches in his diary he fashioned a windmill knight and a windmill nun, made both of them, properly costumed in sails, sit on the jack and obey the wind; but though they soon found purchasers, neither windmill knight nor windmill nun did justice to the vision that snowy Candlemas night had given Eduard Amsel: the artist was dissatisfied; and it also seems unlikely that the firm of Brauxel & Co. will be able to complete its experimental series of mobiles and put them into mass production before mid-October.

TWENTY-SECOND MORNING SHIFT

After the mill had burned down, the ferry, followed by the Island narrow-gauge railway, brought the pocket and buttonless, in other words rough Mennonite Simon Beister, fisherman and small holder who had made a fire on religious grounds, to the city and then to the municipal prison of Schiesstange, situated in Neugarten at the foot of the Hagelsberg, which became Simon Beister's place of residence for the next few years.

Senta of Perkun's line, Senta who had whelped six puppies and whose blackness had always contrasted so strikingly with the white miller, showed signs of canine nervousness once the puppies were sold, and after the mill burned down went so destructively haywire -- tearing a sheep limb from limb like a wolf and attacking an agent from the fire insurance company -- that miller Matern was obliged to send his son Walter to see Erich Lau, mayor of Schiewenhorst, for Hedwig Lau's father owned a rifle.

The fire in the mill also brought the friends a certain amount of change. Destiny, or rather the village teacher, widow Amsel, and miller Matern, not to mention Dr. Battke the high school principal, transformed the ten-year-old Walter Matern and the ten-year-old Eduard Amsel into two high school students, who succeeded in being assigned to the same bench. While the new Matern windmill was still being built -- the project of a Dutch mill of masonry with a rotating cap had to be abandoned for fear of marring the historical profile of the mill where Queen Louise had passed the night -- Easter came around, accompanied by a moderate rise in the river, the first signs of a plague of mice, and a sudden bursting of pussy willows. Soon afterward Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel donned the green velvet caps of Sankt Johann High School. Their heads were the same size. They wore the same size shoes, but Amsel was much stouter, much much stouter. In addition Amsel had only one whorl in his hair. Walter Matern had two, which is said to betoken an early death.

The distance from the mouth of the Vistula to Sankt Johann High School made the friends into commuting school boys. Commuting schoolboys are rich in experience and great liars. Commuting schoolboys can sleep sitting up. Commuting schoolboys are students who do their homework in the train and so acquire a trembling script. Even in later years when there is no more homework to be done, their handwriting becomes hardly less cramped, at best it stops trembling. That is why the actor has to write his story directly on the machine; as a former commuting schoolboy, he still writes a cramped, illegible hand, jolted by imaginary joints in the rails.

The narrow-gauge train left from the Island station, which the city people call "Niederstadt Station." By way of Knüppelkrug and Gottswalde, it made its way to Schusterkrug, where it was ferried across the Dead Vistula, and Schiewenhorst, whence the steam ferry carried it across the so-called cut to Nickelswalde. Amsel got out in Schiewenhorst and Walter Matern in Nickelswalde. As soon as the locomotive had pulled each of the four cars separately up the dike, the train continued on to Pasewark, Junkeracker, Steegan, and Stutthof, which was the terminus of the narrow-gauge line.

All the commuting scholars took the first car, right behind the locomotive. Peter Illing and Arnold Mathrey were from Einlage. Gregor Knessin and Joachim Bertulek got on in Schusterkrug. In Schiewenhorst Hedwig Lau's mother brought her to the station on schooldays. Often the child had tonsilitis and didn't come. Was it not unseemly that the narrow-chested narrow-gauge locomotive should chug away regardless of Hedwig Lau's absence? Like Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel, the village mayor's daughter went into sixth after Easter. Later on, beginning in fourth, her health improved, her tonsils stopped acting up; and now that there was no further reason to fear for her days, she became such a bore that Brauxel will soon find it unnecessary to go on mentioning her in these papers. But at the time Amsel still had a glance or two to spare for a quiet to sluggish, pretty little girl, or perhaps she was pretty only by coastwise standards. She sat across from him with hair that was somewhat too blond, eyes that were somewhat too blue, an unreasonably fresh complexion, and an open English book.

Hedwig Lau wears braids. Even as the train pulls in to the city, she smells of butter and whey. Amsel screws up his eyes and lets the coastwise blondness of her braids shimmer. Outside, the first frame saws come into view after Klein-Plehnendorf, and the timber port begins: swallows are replaced by gulls, the telegraph poles go on. Amsel opens his diary. Hedwig Lau's braids hang down, swaying gently just above the open English book. Amsel draws a sketch in his diary: lovely, lovely. From the loose braids which he rejects on formal grounds, he develops two spirals to cover the flaming redness of her ears. He doesn't say: Fix it this way, braids are dumb, you gotta wear spirals. Of course not, but while Kneipab passes outside, he thrusts his diary without a word over her open English book, and Hedwig Lau looks. Then with her eyelashes she nods in assent, almost obedience, although Amsel doesn't look like a boy whom schoolgirls would tend to obey.

TWENTY-THIRD MORNING SHIFT

Brauxel has an unblunting distaste for unused razor blades. A handy-man who formerly, in the days of the Burbach Potash Co. Inc., worked in the mine and opened up rich salt deposits, breaks in Brauksel's razor blades and delivers them to him after using them once. Thus Brauksel has no need to overcome a revulsion which, though not directed against razor blades, was equally innate and equally strong in Eduard Amsel. He had a thing about new, new-smelling clothes. The smell of fresh underwear compelled him to fight down incipient nausea. As long as he attended the village school, natural limits were imposed on his allergy, for the apparel in which the small fry of Schiewenhorst as well as Nickelswalde weighed down the school benches was baggy, worn, and much mended. Sankt Johann High School had higher vestimentary standards. His mother obliged him to put on new and new-smelling clothes: the green velvet cap has already been mentioned, in addition there were polo shirts, sand-gray knee breeches of expensive material, a blue blazer with mother-of-pearl buttons, and -- possibly at Amsel's request -- patent-leather shoes with buckles; for Amsel had no objection to buckles or patent leather, he had no objection to mother-of-pearl buttons or blazer, it was only the prospect of all these new things actually touching his skin, the skin, it should not be forgotten, of a scarecrow builder, that gave him the creeps, especially as Amsel reacted to fresh underwear and unworn clothes with an itching rash; just as Brauxel, if he shaves with a fresh blade, must fear the onset of the dread barber's itch.

Fortunately Walter Matern was in a position to help his friend. His school clothes were made of turned cloth, his high shoes had already been twice to the shoemaker's, Walter Matern's thrifty mother had bought his high school cap secondhand. And so for a good two weeks the trip in the narrow-gauge railway began with the same ceremony: in one of the freight cars, amid unsuspecting cattle on their way to the slaughterhouse, the friends changed clothes. The shoes and cap presented no problem, but though Walter Matern was hardly emaciated, his jacket, knee breeches, and shirt were too tight for his friend. Yet uncomfortable as they were, they were a blessed relief, because they had been worn and turned, because they smelled old and not new. Needless to say, Amsel's new clothes hung down limp and loose on his friend's frame, and patent leather and buckles, mother-of-pearl but tons, and the ridiculous blazer looked odd on him. Amsel, with his scarecrow builder's feet in rough, deeply furrowed clodhoppers, was nevertheless delighted at the sight of his patent-leather shoes on Walter Matern's feet. Walter Matern had to break them in until Amsel pronounced them worn and found them just as cracked as the cracked patent-leather shoe that lay in his school satchel and meant something.

To anticipate, this exchange of clothing was for years a component, though-not the cement, of the friendship between Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel. Even handkerchiefs, which his mother had slipped lovingly into his pocket, fresh and folded hem to hem, had to be initiated by his friend, and the same went for socks and stockings. And the exchange didn't stop at clothing; Amsel betrayed similar feelings about new pencils and pens: Walter Matern had to sharpen his pencils, take the shape off his new erasers, break in his Sütterlin pens -- he would assuredly, like Brauksel's handyman, have had to initiate Amsel's new razor blades if reddish down had already ripened on Amsel's freckleface.

TWENTY-FOURTH MORNING SHIFT

Who, having relieved himself after breakfast, is standing here contemplating his excrement? A thoughtful, anxious man in search of the past. Why keep ogling a smooth and weightless death's-head? Theatrical ambiance, Hamletlike maunderings, histrionic gestures! Brauxel, the present writer, raises his eyes and pulls the chain; while contemplating, he has remembered a situation that gave the two friends, Amsel rather matter-of-factly, Walter Matern histrionically, an opportunity to meditate and to conjure up a theatrical ambiance.

The layout of the high school on Fleischergasse, was a fantastic jumble -- the building had formerly been a Franciscan monastery. This prehistory made it an ideal establishment for the two friends, for the former monastery contained any number of passageways and hiding places known neither to the teachers nor to the caretaker.

Brauksel, who is running a mine that produces neither pot ash nor iron nor coal but is nevertheless functioning down to the twenty-five-hundred-foot floor, would also have taken pleasure in that subterranean confusion, for under all the classrooms, under the gymnasium and the urinals, under the auditorium, even under the board room there were low narrow corridors which, if you followed them, led to dungeons and shafts, but also in circles and astray. When school began after Easter, Amsel was first to enter the ground-floor classroom. Short-legged and wearing Walter Matern's shoes, he took little steps over oiled flooring and sniffed a little with pink nostrils -- musty cellar air, theatrical ambiance -- stopped still, interlocked his plump little fingers, took a bounce or two on the tips of his toes, and after bouncing and sniffing here and there, drew a cross on one of the floorboards with the tip of his right-hand shoe. When there was no whistle of understanding in response to his mark, he looked behind him with a rotation of his well-padded neck: there stood Walter Matern in Amsel's patent-leather shoes, presenting an obstinately uncommunicative face, but then he caught on from the bridge of his nose up and finally whistled understandingly through his teeth. Because there was a hollow spooky sound under the floorboards, they both felt immediately at home in this classroom assigned to the sixth, even though there was no Vistula flowing broad-shouldered between dikes outside the windows.

But after a week of high school, the two of them, who, as it happened, had rivers in their blood, found access to a little river, to take the place, however inadequately, of the Vistula. A lid had to be lifted in the locker room of the gymnasium, which in Franciscan days had been a library. The cracks around the small rectangle were caulked with the sweepings of many years, but for Amsel's eye that was no camouflage. Walter Matern lifted the lid: musty cellar air, theatrical ambiance! They had found the entrance to a dry musty passageway, which was distinguished from the other passageways beneath other classrooms by the fact that it led to the municipal sewage system and by way of the sewers to the Radaune. The little river with the mysterious name had its source in the Radaune Lakes in the district of Berent, flowed, rich in fish and prawns, past Petershagen, and entered the city to one side of the New Market. Sometimes visible, sometimes underground, it twined its way through the Old City, often bridged over and made picturesque by swans and weeping willows, and emptied into the Mottlau between Karpfenseigen and Barbank, shortly before the confluence of the Mottlau and the Dead Vistula.

As soon as the locker room emptied of witnesses, Amsel and his friend were able to lift the rectangle out of the floor boards -- and so they did --, crawl through a low passage way -- they crawled --, climb down -- making use of the climbing irons inserted in the masonry at regular intervals -- into a shaft that couldn't have been far from the urinal -- Walter Matern went down first -- , easily open a rusty iron door at the bottom of the shaft -- Walter Matern opened it -- , and pass through a dry, foul-smelling sewer alive with rats -- each in the other's shoes they passed through it. To be precise, the sewer led under the Wiebenwall, under the Karrenwall, where stood the Provincial Insurance Company building, under the city park, and under the railroad tracks between Petershagen and the Main Station, and then into the Radaune. Across from Sankt Salvator cemetery, which was situated between Grenadiergasse and the Mennonite church at the foot of the Bischofsberg, the sewer fanned out and emptied. To one side of the opening more climbing irons led up a steeply sloping masonry wall to an ornate wrought-iron railing. Behind them lay a view known to Brauxel from numerous engravings: out of the fresh, spring-green park rises brick-red the panorama of the city: from Oliva Gate to Leege Gate, from St. Catherine's to St. Peter's on the Poggenpfuhl, the divergent height and girth of numerous towers bear witness to the fact that they are not of the same age.