Dog Years (17 page)

"Are you a hussar?"

"Part hussar, part tinker."

"What's your name, anyway?"

"Bi-dan-den-gero. Have no tooth left."

"And the hedgehogs?"

"To cook in clay."

"And the bundle up front?"

"Estersweh, little Estersweh."

"And the bundle in back? And what are you looking for here? And how do you catch the hedgehogs? And where do you live? And have you really got such a funny name? And suppose the forester catches you? And is it true that the Gypsies? And the ring on your little finger? And the bundle up front?"

Por -- that was the magpie calling from deep within the mixed forest. Bidandengero was in a hurry. He had, so he said, to go to the factory without windows. The schoolmaster was there. He was waiting for wild honey for his candy. He also wanted to bring the schoolmaster sparklers, and another little present too.

Walter Matern stood with the ball and didn't know what to do, in what direction. Finally he decided to climb back across the fence to the schlagball field -- for the game was proceeding -- when Amsel came rolling out of the bushes, asked no questions, had heard everything, and knew of only one direction: Bidandengero. . . He pulled his friend after him. They followed the man with the dead hedgehogs, and when they lost him, they found bright hedgehog blood from three hedgehog snouts on the ferns. They read the trace. And when the hedgehogs on Bidandengero's string were dry and silent, the magpie screamed in their stead: Por -- Ketterle's feather -- flew ahead. The forest grew denser, more crowded. Branches struck Amsel's face. Walter Matern stepped on the white and red mushroom, fell in the moss, and bit into the cushion. Trees made faces. A fox froze. Faces through spider-webs. Fingers full of resin. Bark tasted sour. The woods thinned out. Downstairs went the sun as far as the teacher's mound of stones. Afternoon concert: gneisses, some augite, hornblende, slate, mica, Mozart, twittering eunuchs from the
Kyrie
to the chorale
Dona nobis:
polyphonic peeping -- but no sign of a teacher under a Bismarck hat.

Only the cold fireplace. Gone was the greased paper. And only when the beeches came together again behind the clearing and screened off the sun, did they overtake the paper: it was black with ants and on its way. Like Bidandengero with his hedgehogs, the ants wished to make off across the border with their prey. They marched in single file, just as Walter Matern and his friend trotted along in single file, following the magpie's lure: here here here. Through knee-high ferns. Through neatly ordered beech trees. Through green church light. Swallowed up again, far away, here again: Bidandengero. But no longer alone. Ketterle had called the Gakkos. Gashpari and Hite, Leopold and Kite's bibi, Aunt Bibi and Leopold's bibi, all the Gypsies, tinkers, and forest hussars had gathered under beech trees in the hushed ferns around Bidandengero. Gashpari's bibi was pulling Bartmann, the goat.

And when the forest thinned out again, eight or nine Gakkos left the woods with Bartmann the goat. Until they reached the trees on the other side, they were hidden by the tall grass of the trough-shaped treeless meadow spreading southward: and in the open meadow stands the factory, shimmering.

An elongated one-story building, gutted. Untrimmed brick, empty window holes blackened with soot. From the ground to mid-height the chimney yawns, a brick maw with teeth missing. All the same it stands upright, probably just topping the beeches huddled close at the far end of the clearing. But it isn't the chimney of a brickworks, although there are plenty of those in the region. Formerly it evacuated the smoke of a distillery, and now that the factory is dead and the chimney cold, it houses a jutting stork's nest. But the nest too is dead. Blackish rotting straw covers the cracked chimney and shimmers emptily.

They approach the factory in fan formation. No more magpie calling. Gakkos swimming in the tall grass. Butterflies staggering over the meadow. Amsel and Walter Matern reach the edge of the woods, lie flat, peer out over the trembling spikes, and see all the Gakkos climbing simultaneously but through different window holes into the dead factory. Gashpari's bibi has tied Bartmann to a hook in the wall.

A white long-haired goat. The factory is not alone in shimmering; the blackish straw on the cracked chimney and the meadow shimmer too, and Bartmann is dissolved in light. It's dangerous to watch staggering butterflies. They have a plan but it has no meaning.

Amsel isn't sure whether or not this is Polish territory. Walter Matern thinks he has recognized Bidandengero's head in a window hole: oily braids hussar style, brass in ear, gone again.

Amsel thinks he has seen the Bismarck hat first in one, then briefly in the next window hole.

Neither of them sees the border. Only bantering white butterflies. And above the variously pitched bumbling of the bumblebees a rising and falling garble. Not a distinct howling, cursing, or screaming. More like a crescendo of blubbering and squeaking. Bartmann the goat bleats two three volleys heavenward.

Then from the fourth window hole on the left leaps the first Gakko: Hite with Kite's bibi in tow. She unties Bartmann. Then another, and then two more in dappled Gypsy tatters: Gashpari and Leopold, his bibi, in numerous skirts. None through the open door, all the Gypsies through window holes, head-first, last of all Bidandengero.

For all Gypsies have sworn by the Virgin Mashari: never through doors, only through windows.

Fanwise as they have come, the Gakkos swim through the quaking grass to the woods that swallow them up. Once again the white goat. Ketterle does not call. Por, her feather, does not fly. Silence, until the clearing begins to buzz again: bantering butterflies. Bumblebees like double deckers, dragon-flies pray, sumptuous flies, wasps, and such-like vagabonds.

And who shut the picture book? Who dripped lemon on homemade June clouds? Who let the milk clabber? How did Amsel's skin and Walter Matern's skin get that porous look, as though bombarded with sleet?

The little bundle. The snugglebunny. The toothless mite. From the dead factory Estersweh screamed over the living meadow. Not the dark window holes but the black gate spat the Bismarck hat into the open air. The scrag, schoolie, brain buster, teacher, Oswald Brunies, stood under the sun with the screaming bundle and didn't know how to hold it. "Bidandengero," he called, "Bidandengero!" But the woods didn't answer. Neither Amsel nor Walter Matern, who were picked up by the outcry and tugged step by step through the hissing grass to the factory, neither Dr. Brunies with the strident little bundle nor the picture-book meadow showed surprise when again something miraculous happened: from the south, from Poland, storks came flying over the meadow with measured wingbeat. Two of them described ceremonious loops and dropped, first one, then the other, into the blackened and disheveled nest on the cracked chimney.

Instantly they began to clatter. All eyes, the schoolmaster's under the Bismarck hat and the schoolboys' eyes as well, climbed up the chimney. The snugglebunny broke off its cries. Adebar Adebar the Stork. Oswald Brunies found a piece of mica gneiss, or was it double spar, in his pocket. Let the baby have it to play with. Adebar Adebar the Stork. Walter Matern wanted to give the little bundle the leather schlagball which had come with them so far, with which the whole thing had started. Adebar Adebar the Stork. But the six-months-old baby girl already has something to ringer and play with: Angustri, Bidandengero's silver ring.

Quite possibly Jenny Brunies is wearing it to this day.

LAST MORNING SHIFT

It seems to have been nothing. No world has come discernibly to an end. Brauxel can write above ground again. Still, the date, February 4, has had something to show for itself: all three manuscripts have been punctually delivered, Brauchsel is able to set young Harry Liebenau's love letters down on his package of morning shifts; and on "morning shifts" and "love letters" he will pile the actor's confessions. Should a postscript seem desirable, Brauksel will write it, because he is in charge both of the mine and of the author's consortium, it is he who pays out the advances, sets the delivery dates, and will read the proof.

What happened when young Harry Liebenau came to us and applied for the job of authoring the second book? Brauxel examined him. To date he had written and published lyric poetry. His radio plays have all been on the air. He was able to show flattering and encouraging reviews. His style was termed gripping, refreshing, and uneven. Brauchsel began by questioning him about Danzig: "What, young man, were the names of the streets connecting Hopfengasse with the New Mottlau?"

Harry Liebenau rattled them off: "Kiebitzgasse, Stützengasse, Mausegasse, Brandgasse, Adebargasse, Münchengasse, Judengasse, Milchkannengasse, Schleifengasse, Turmgasse, and Leitergasse."

"How, young man," Brauksel inquired, "will you kindly explain, did Portechaisengasse gets its delightful name?"

Harry Liebenau explained rather pedantically that it had taken its name from the litters, the taxis of the day, which had stood there in the eighteenth century and in which patricians and their ladies could be carried through muck and pestilence without fear for their costly attire.

In response to Brauxel's question as to who in the year 1936 had introduced the modern Italian rubber truncheon in the Danzig police force, Harry Liebenau spoke up like a recruit: "That was done by Police President Friboess!" But I was not yet satisfied: "Who, my young friend -- I doubt if you remember -- was the last chairman of the Center Party in Danzig? What was the honorable man's name?" Harry Liebenau had boned up very thoroughly, even Brauxel learned a thing or two: "Richard Stachnik, D.D., clergyman and schoolteacher, became chairman of the Center Party and member of the provincial diet in 1933. In 1937, after dissolution of the Center Party, he was imprisoned for six months: in 1944 he was deported to Stutthof concentration camp, but soon released. All his life Dr. Stachnik was active in behalf of the canonization of the Blessed Dorothea of Montau, who in the year 1392 had caused herself to be immured beside the cathedral of Marienwerder."

I still had a raft of tricky questions on hand. I asked him the course of the Striessbach, the names of all the chocolate factories in Langfuhr, the altitude of the Erbsberg in J
ä
schkental Forest, and obtained satisfactory answers. When in answer to the question: What well-known actors began their careers at the Danzig Stadttheater? -- Harry Liebenau replied without hesitation Renate Muller, who died young, and Hans S
ö
hnker, the movie star, I, in my easy chair, gave him to understand that the examination was over and that he had passed.

And so, after three work sessions, we agreed to link up Brauxe'ls "morning shifts" and Harry Liebenau's "love letters" with a transitional passage. Here it is:

Tulla Pokriefke was born on June 11, 1927.

When Tulla was born, the weather was variable, mostly cloudy, with a possibility of showers. Light gyratory winds fluttered the chestnut trees in Kleinhammer Park.

When Tulla was born, Dr. Luther, the former chancellor, coming from Königsberg and on his way to Berlin, landed at the Danzig-Langfuhr airfield. In Königsberg he had spoken at a meeting of former German colonials; in Langfuhr he took a snack at the airport restaurant.

When Tulla was born, the Danzig police band, conducted by chief bandmaster Ernst Stieberitz, gave a concert in the gardens of the Zoppot casino.

When Tulla was born, Lindbergh, the transatlantic flier, boarded the cruiser
Memphis.

When Tulla was born, the police, as their records for the eleventh of the month inform us, arrested seventeen persons.

When Tulla was born, the Danzig delegation to the forty-fifth session of the League of Nations council arrived in Geneva.

When Tulla was born, the Berlin stock exchange reported foreign buying of rayon and electrical industry stocks. Prices were generally firmer: Essen Anthracite: four and one-half points; Ilse and Stolberger Zinc: three points. Certain special securities also advanced. Glanzstoff opened at four points, Bemberg at two points above previous quotations.

When Tulla was born, the Odeon Cinema was showing
His Biggest Bluff
with Harry Piel in his dual and most brilliant role.

When Tulla was born, the NSDAP, Gau Danzig, called a monster mass meeting in the Sankt Josephshaus on T
ö
pfergasse from five to eight. Party Comrade Heinz Haake of Cologne was to speak on the topic of "German workers of brawn and brain, unite!" On the day following Tulla's birth the meeting was to be repeated in the Red Room of the Zoppot casino under the motto: "Nation in distress: who will save it?" The poster was signed by a Herr Hohenfeld, member of the provincial diet, who called upon his fellow citizens to "Come in droves!"

When Tulla was born, the rediscount rate of the Bank of Danzig was unchanged at five and one-half per cent. At the grain exchange rye debentures brought nine gulden sixty a hundredweight: money.

When Tulla was born, the book
Being and Time
had not yet appeared, but had been written and announced.

When Tulla was born, Dr. Citron still had his practice in Langfuhr; later he was obliged to take refuge in Sweden.

When Tulla was born, the chimes in the City Hall tower played "Glory alone to God on high" when even hours were to be struck and "Heavenly Host of Angels" for the odd hours. The chimes of St. Catherine's played "Lord Jesus Christ, hear our prayer" every half hour.