Dog Years (12 page)

Two or three times the friends took this excursion through the sewer. The second time they emerged over the Radaune, they were seen by some old folks who were passing the time of day in the park, but not reported. The possibilities seemed exhausted -- for the Radaune is not the Vistula -- when under the gymnasium, but before the shaft leading to the municipal sewers, they came across a second bifurcation, crudely stopped up with bricks. Amsel's flashlight discovered it. They crawled through the new passageway. It sloped downward. The man-high sewer to which it led was not part of the municipal sewage system, but led crumbling dripping medieval under the hundred-percent Gothic Church of the Trinity. Sankt Trinitatis was next to the museum, not a hundred paces from the high school. One Saturday, when after four hours of school the two friends were free to leave, two hours before train time, they made the above-mentioned discovery which is recorded here not only because medieval passageways are fun to describe, but also because the discovery proved to be of interest to Eduard Amsel and gave Walter Matern an opportunity for play-acting and teeth grinding. Moreover Brauxel, who operates a mine, is able to express himself with particular virtuosity below ground.

So the Grinder -- Amsel invented the name, fellow students have taken it up -- so the Grinder goes first. In his left hand he holds an army flashlight, while in his right he holds a stick intended to frighten away or, as the case may be, destroy rats. There aren't many rats. The masonry is rough crumbly dry to the touch. The air cool but not glacial, more on the drafty side, though it is not clear where the draft is blowing from. Their steps do not echo as in the municipal sewers. Like the passageway leading to it, this man-high corridor slopes steeply downward. Walter Matern is wearing his own shoes, for Amsel's patent-leather shoes had suffered enough as they were crawling through the low passageways. So that's where the draft and ventilation were coming from: from that hole! They might almost have missed it if Amsel hadn't. It was on the left. Through the gap, seven bricks high, five bricks wide, Amsel pushes the Grinder. Amsel himself has a harder time of it. Holding his flashlight between his teeth, the Grinder tugs Amsel through the hole, helping to transform Amsel's almost new school clothes into the customary school rags. Both stand there for a moment panting. They are on the spacious floor of a round shaft. Their eyes are drawn upward, for a watery light is trickling down from above: the pierced, artfully forged grating on top of the shaft is inserted in the stone floor of the Church of the Trinity: they will investigate that another time. Four eyes follow the diminishing light back down the shaft, and at the bottom -- the flashlight points it out to them -- what lies in front of the tips of four shoes but a skeleton!

It lies doubled up, incomplete, with interchanged or telescoped details. The right shoulder blade has stove in four ribs. The sternum is driven into the right ribs. The left collar bone is missing. The spinal column is bent above the first lumbar vertebra. The arrangement of the arms and legs is exceedingly informal: a fallen man.

The Grinder stands rigid and allows himself to be relieved of the flashlight. Amsel begins to throw light on the skeleton. Without any intention on Amsel's part, effects of light and shadow are produced. With the tip of one patent-leather shoe -- soon Brauxel will have no need to speak of patent leather -- he draws a circle through the dry, only superficially crusted dust, circumscribing all the fallen members, moves back, lets the cone of electric light follow the line, screws up his eyes as he always does when he sees something likely to serve as a model, tilts his head, waggles his tongue, covers one eye, turns around, looks behind him over his shoulder, conjures up a pocket mirror from somewhere, juggles with light, skeleton, and mirror image, directs the flashlight behind him under a sharply bent arm, tips the mirror slightly, stands briefly on tiptoes in order to lengthen the radius, then squats by way of comparison, stands again facing his model without mirror, corrects the line here and there, exaggerates the fallen man's pose with sketching shoe, still with his shoe erases and draws new lines to undo the exaggeration, harmonizes, sharpens, softens, strives for dynamic balance ecstasy, concentrates all his powers on sketching the skeleton, preserving the sketch in his memory, and perpetuating it at home in his diary. Small wonder that after all his preliminary studies are concluded, Amsel is taken with the desire to pick up the skull from between the skeleton's incomplete collarbones, and quietly put it into his school satchel with his books and notebooks and Hedwig Lau's crumbling shoe. He wants to carry the skull to the Vistula and put it on one of his scarecrows that are still in the framework stage, or if possible on the scarecrow that he has just sketched in the dust. His hand with its five pudgy, ludicrously spread fingers is already hovering over the vestiges of collarbone; it is about to reach into the eye sockets, the safest way to lift a skull, when the Grinder, who has long stood rigid, giving little sign of his presence, begins to grind several of his teeth. In his usual way: from left to right. But the acoustics of the shaft magnify and multiply the sound so forebodingly that Amsel stops in the middle of his skulduggery, looks behind him over his rounded back, and turns the flashlight on his friend.

The Grinder says nothing. His grinding is plain enough. It means: Amsel should not spread his little fingers. Amsel shouldn't take anything away. The skull is not to be removed. Don't disturb it. Don't touch it. Place of skulls. Golgotha. Barrow. Gnashing of teeth.

But Amsel, who is always at a loss for meaningful props and accessories, who is always short on what he needs most, is again preparing to dispatch his hand skullward and again -- for it isn't every day that you find a skull -- outspread fingers can be discerned amid the shimmering dust of the flashlight beam. At this point the stick which thus far had struck nothing but rats descends on him, once maybe twice. And the acoustics of the shaft amplify a word uttered between blow and blow: "Sheeny!" Walter Matern calls his friend "Sheeny!" and strikes. Amsel falls sideways beside the skeleton. Dust rises and takes its time about settling. Amsel picks himself up. Who can cry such fat, convulsively rolling tears? But even as the tears roll from both his eyes and turn to beads of dust on the floor of the shaft, Amsel manages to say with a grin somewhere between good-natured and mocking:
"Walter is a very silly boy."
Imitating the teacher's voice, he several times repeats this sentence from his first-year English book; for always, even when tears are flowing, he has to imitate somebody, himself if need be:
"Walter is a very silly boy."
And then in the idiom of the Island: "This here is my head. Didn't I find it? I just wanna try it out. Then I'll bring it back."

But the Grinder is in no mood to be spoken to. The sight of the haphazardly disposed bones makes his face shrink toward the inside corners of his eyebrows. He folds his arms, leans on his stick, freezes in contemplation. Whenever he sees anything dead: a drowned cat, rats he has slain with his own hand, gulls slit open with a throw of his knife, when he sees a bloated fish rolled in the sand by the lapping of the waves, or when he sees a skeleton which Amsel wants to deprive of its skull, his teeth start in from left to right. His bullish young face twists into a grimace. His gaze, ordinarily dull to stupid, becomes piercing, darkens, gives an intimation of directionless hatred: theatrical ambiance in the passages, dungeons, and shafts beneath the Gothic Church of the Trinity. Twice the Grinder pounds his own forehead with his fist, bends down, reaches out, raises the skull to himself and his thoughts, and contemplates it while Eduard Amsel squats down to one side.

Who is squatting there, obliged to relieve himself? Who is standing there, holding a stranger's skull far out in front of him? Who looks behind him with curiosity, examining his excrement? Who stares at a smooth skull, trying to recognize himself? Who has no worms, but did once from salad? Who holds the light skull and sees worms that will one day be his? Who, who? Two human beings, pensive and troubled. Each has his reasons. They are friends. Walter Matern puts the skull back down where he found it. Amsel is scratching again in the dirt with his shoe, looking and looking. Walter Matern declaims high-sounding words into the void: "Let's be going now. This is the kingdom of the dead. Maybe that's Jan Bobrowski or Materna that our family conies from." Amsel has no ear for words of conjecture. He is unable to believe that Bobrowski the great robber, or Materna, robber, incendiary, and ancestor, ever gave flesh to this skeleton. He picks up something metallic, scratches at it, spits on it, rubs it off, and exhibits a metal button, which he confidently identifies as the button of one of Napoleon's dragoons. He dates the button from the second siege and puts it in his pocket. The Grinder does not protest, he has scarcely been listening, he is still with the robber Bobrowski or his ancestor Materna. The cooling feces drive the friends through the hole in the wall. Walter Matern goes first. Amsel squeezes through the hole backwards, his flashlight turned upon the death's- head.

TWENTY-FIFTH MORNING SHIFT

Change of shifts at Brauxel & Co.: The friends had to hurry on the way back. The train in Niederstadt station never waited more than ten minutes.

Change of shifts at Brauxel & Co.: Today we are celebrating the two-hundred-fiftieth birthday of Frederick the Great; it might be a good idea for Brauxel to fill one of the stalls with relics from Frederick's times: a kingdom of Prussia below ground!

Change of shifts at Brauxel & Co.: In the locker room of the gymnasium in the Sankt Johann High School Walter Matern fitted the rectangular lid back into the floorboards. They beat the dust from each other's clothes.

Change of shifts at Brauxel & Co.: What will the great conjunction of February 4-5 bring us? In the sign of Aquarius Uranus will enter into opposition, but not exactly, while Neptune completes the square. Two critical aspects, more than critical! -- Shall we, will Brauxel, come through the Great Conjunction unscathed? Will it be possible to carry this book, dealing with Walter Matern, the dog Senta, the Vistula, Eduard Amsel, and his scarecrows, to a conclusion? Despite the critical aspects Brauxel, the present writer, wishes to avoid an apocalyptic tone and record the following events with equanimity, even though there is every reason to expect an auto-da-f
é
of the lesser apocalypse.

Change of shifts at Brauxel & Co.: After Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel had beaten the medieval dust from one another, they started out: down Katergasse, up the Lastadie. They follow Ankerschmiedgasse. Behind the Postal Savings Bank lies the new boathouse of the school oarsmen's association: boats are being put up on chocks. They wait for the open Cow's Bridge to close and crossing it spit several times into the Mottlau. Cries of gulls. Horse-drawn vehicles over wooden planks. Beer barrels are rolled. A drunken long shoreman is supporting himself on a sober longshoreman, he has designs on a salt herring, skin, bones, and. . . "You want to bet? You want to bet?" Across the Speicherinsel: Erich Karkutsch, flour, seed, dried peas, and beans; Fischer & Nickel -- conveyor belts, asbestos goods; across the railroad tracks, shreds of cabbage, flocks of kapok. They stop outside the establishment of Eugen Flakowski, saddlers' and upholsterers' supplies: bales of seaweed, hemp, jute, horsehair, reels of awning string, porcelain rings and tassels, notions, notions! Through the puddles of horse piss in Münchengasse, across the New Mottlau. Up Mattenbuden. Then climb into the trailer of the Heubude streetcar, but only ride as far as Langgart Gate, and arrive at the station on time for the narrow-gauge train, which smells of butter and whey, which rings fast as it slowly rounds the bend, and which goes to the Island. Eduard Amsel is still holding Napoleon's dragoon's button hot in his pocket.

The friends -- and they remain inseparable blood brothers in spite of the death's-head and the word "Sheeny" -- spoke no more of the skeleton under the Church of the Trinity. Only once, on Milchkannengasse, between Deutschendorff's sporting goods store and a branch of the Valtinat dairy chain, outside a window displaying stuffed squirrels, martens, and owls, displaying mountain cocks and a stuffed eagle with out spread wings and a lamb in its claws, outside a window with shelves in the form of a grandstand that stopped just before the plate-glass pane, in the presence of rat traps, fox traps, packages of insect powder, little bags of moth flakes, in the presence of gnat bane, roaches' nemesis, and rough-on-rats, in the presence of exterminator's equipment, bird food, dog biscuit, empty fish bowls, tins full of dehydrated flies and waterbugs, in the presence of frogs, salamanders, and snakes in jars and alcohol, of incredible butterflies under glass, of beetles with antlers, hairy spiders, and the usual sea horses, in the presence of the human skeleton -- to the right beside the shelf -- in the presence of the chimpanzee's skeleton -- to the left beside the grandstand --, and the skeleton of a running cat at the feet of the smaller chimpanzee, in the presence of the uppermost shelf of the grandstand, upon which stood instructively the skulls of man, woman, aged person, child, premature infant, and abortions, outside this world-embracing shop window -- inside the store you could buy puppies or have kittens drowned by an officially licensed hand -- , outside glass polished twice weekly, Walter Matern abruptly suggested to his friend that with the rest of the money in the leather pouch they might buy one or another of these skulls and use it in the construction of a scarecrow. Amsel made a negative gesture and said tersely, not with the terseness of one who is offended but with a lofty kind of terseness, that though the topic of death's-heads was not exactly dead or superseded, it was not urgent enough to justify a purchase with their last remaining funds; if they were going to buy anything, they could buy goose, duck, and chicken feathers of inferior quality cheap and by the pound from the peasants and poultry farmers of the Island; he, Amsel, was planning something paradoxical: he was going to create a scarecrow in the form of a giant bird -- the shop window on Milchkannengasse full of stuffed zoological items had inspired him, especially the eagle above the lamb.