Dog Years (36 page)

Dear Cousin,

before summer vacation was over, it became known that Herr Sterneck, the ballet master of the Stadttheather, had admitted Jenny to the children's ballet. I heard she was going to dance in the Christmas play, that rehearsals had already begun. The play this year, I learned, was called
The Snow Queen
and Jenny, as one could read in the
Vorposten
and the
Neueste Nachrichten
as well, would be playing the part of the Snow Queen, for the Snow Queen was not a speaking part but a dancing part.

In addition to taking the Number 2 to Oliva, Jenny now took the Number 5 to Kohlenmarkt three times a week; there stood the Stadttheater, as Herr Matzerath, who looked down on it from the Stockturm, described it in his book.

I had to cut a lot of firewood and sell it in secret to raise the carfare for Tulla and myself. My father had strictly forbidden this business, but the machinist stood by me. Once -- I was late and made my heels clatter on the cobbles of Labesweg -- I caught up with the two girls just before Max-Halbe-Platz. Someone had usurped my place: sturdy and diminutive, the grocer's son was marching along, now beside Tulla, now beside Jenny. Occasionally he did what no one else ever dared to do: he thrust himself into the empty gap. Whether he was beside Tulla, beside Jenny, or between them, his tin drum hung down over his belly. And he pounded the drum louder than necessary to provide two slender girls with march time. His mother, so they said, had died recently. Of fish poisoning. A beautiful woman.

Dear Cousin,

it wasn't until late summer that I heard you talk to Jenny. All spring and summer dialogue had been replaced by Jenny's gym bag, passing from hand to hand. Or by cockchafers, avoided by Jenny, stepped on by you. Or in a pinch Felsner-Imbs or I would toss back a word or carry one to and fro.

When Jenny left the Aktienhaus, Tulla was standing in her path and said, more past Jenny than to Jenny: "May I carry your bag with the silver shoes in it?" Without a word Jenny gave Tulla the bag but looked just as far past Tulla as Tulla had spoken past Jenny. Tulla carried the bag. Not that she walked beside Jenny as she carried it; she kept her distance as before, and when we took the Number 2 to Oliva, she stood on the rear platform with Jenny's bag. I was allowed to pay and was superfluous just the same. Not until we were outside the ballet school in Rosengasse did Tulla return the bag with the word "thanks" to Jenny.

So it continued into the fall. I never saw her carry Jenny's school satchel, only her bag. Every afternoon she stood ready in knee socks. Through me she found out when Jenny had rehearsal, when she had ballet school. She stood outside the Aktienhaus, no longer asked, held out her hand with out a word, thrust her hand into the loop of the string, carried the bag after Jenny, and observed an unchanging distance.

Jenny possessed several gym bags: leek-green, dawn-red, air-blue, clove-brown, and pea-yellow. She changed colors without method. As Jenny was leaving the ballet school one October afternoon, Tulla, without looking past her, said to Jenny: "I'd like to look at the ballet slippers, to see if they're really silver." Felsner-Imbs was against, but Jenny nodded and pushed the pianist's hand aside with a gentle look. Tulla removed the slippers, which had been neatly packaged with the help of their silk ribbons, from the pea-yellow bag. She didn't open the package, she held it up to eye level on the palms of her hands, let her narrow-set eyes move along the slippers from the heels to the hard tips, tested the slippers for silver content and, though they were worn down and shabby-looking, found them silvery enough. Jenny held the bag open and Tulla let the ballet slippers vanish inside the yellow cloth.

At the end of November, three days before the first night, Jenny spoke to Tulla for the first time. In a gray loden coat she stepped out of the stage entrance of the Stadttheater, and Imbs was not escorting her. Right in front of Tulla she stopped; and while reaching into her leek-green gym bag, she said, without looking very far past Tulla: "Now I know what the iron man in Jäschkental Forest is called."

"His book said something different than what I said."

Jenny had to come out with her knowledge: "His name isn't Kuddenpech, it's Johannes Gutenberg."

"The book said that someday you're going to balley something terrific for thousands of people."

Jenny nodded: "That's very likely, but Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the city of Mainz."

"Sure. That's what I was trying to tell you. He knows everything."

Jenny knows even more: "And he died in fourteen hundred and sixty-eight."

Tulla wanted to know: "Say, what's your weight?"

Jenny gave a precise answer: "Two days ago I weighed seventy-five pounds and two ounces. What's yours?"

Tulla lied: "Seventy-four pounds and eight ounces."

Jenny: "With your shoes on?"

Tulla: "In gym shoes."

Jenny: "Me without shoes, only in my jersey."

Tulla: "Then we're the same weight."

Jenny was delighted: "Very nearly. And I'm not afraid of Gutenberg any more. And here are two tickets for the first night, for Harry and you, if you'd like to come."

Tulla took the tickets. The car arrived. Jenny as usual gets on in front. Tulla gets on in front too. I too of course. At Max-Halbe-Platz Jenny gets out first, then Tulla, I last. Down Labesweg the two of them keep no interval, they walk side by side, looking like friends. I am allowed to carry the green gym bag behind them.

Dear Cousin,

you have to admit that as far as Jenny was concerned that first night was terrific. She turned two neat pirouettes and wasn't afraid to do the
grand pas de basque,
which makes even experienced ballet dancers tremble. She was marvelously turned out. Her "sparkle" made the stage too narrow. When she leapt, she leapt so slowly a pencil could follow, she had "balloon." And it was hardly noticeable that Jenny didn't have enough instep.

As the Snow Queen she wore a silver jersey, an icy silvery crown, and a veil that was supposed to symbolize the frost: everything Snow Queen Jenny touched froze fast instantly. With her came the winter. Icicle music announced her entrances. The
corps de ballet,
snow-flakes, and three funny-looking snow men obeyed her frost-chattering commands.

I don't remember the plot. But in all three acts there was a talking reindeer. He had to pull a sleigh full of mirrors, and in it, on snow cushions, sat the Snow Queen. The reindeer spoke in verse, ran faster than the wind, and rang silver bells off stage, announcing the Snow Queen's arrival.

This reindeer, as you could read in the program, was played by Walter Matern. It was his first part of any length. Shortly afterward, I heard, he obtained an engagement at the municipal theater in Schwerin. He did the reindeer very nicely and had a benevolent press next day. But the real discovery proclaimed in both papers was Jenny Brunies. One critic expressed the opinion that if Jenny had wanted to, the Snow Queen could have turned the orchestra and both balconies to ice for a thousand years.

My hands were hot from clapping. Tulla didn't clap when the performance was over. She had folded up the program very small and eaten it during the last act. Dr. Brunies, who was sitting between me and the other ballet fans in our class, sucked a whole bag of cough drops empty in the course of the three acts and the intermission after the second act.

After seventeen curtain calls Felsner-Imbs, Dr. Brunies, and I waited outside Jenny's dressing room. Tulla had already gone.

Dear Tulla,

the actor who played the reindeer and who could hit a schlagball into a fly and put a treacherous backspin on a faustball, that actor and athlete who played field hockey and was able to stay up for twelve minutes in a glider, that actor and glider pilot who always had a different lady on his arm -- they all looked ailing and afflicted -- that actor and lover, who had distributed red leaflets, who systematically read advertising prospectuses, mysteries, and introductions to metaphysics all in a jumble, whose father was a miller with the power of prophecy, whose medieval ancestors had gone by the name of Materna and been terrifying rebels, that well-built, moody, thick-set, tragic, short-haired, unmusical, poetry-loving, lonely, and healthy actor and SA man, that SA squad leader who after an action in January had been promoted platoon leader, that actor, athlete, lover, metaphysician, and platoon leader who on and without occasion could grind his teeth, that is, delve penetratingly and inescapably into last things, that grinder who would have liked to play Othello but had to play the reindeer when Jenny danced the Snow Queen, for one reason or another that SA man, grinder, and actor, even before leaving for the Schwerin Stadttheater where he had been engaged as
jeune premier,
took to drink.

Eddi Amsel, who went into the snow man and left it as Hermann Haseloff, did not become an alcoholic: he began to smoke.

Do you know why he called himself Haseloff and not Thrush, Finch, or Starling? For a whole year, while the two of you, Jenny and you, were keeping your distance, this question plagued me hermeneutically and even in my sleep. Before I suspected that Amsel now had another name, I paid perhaps a real, in any event an imagined visit to the empty villa on Steffensweg, which is conceivably still standing empty for Amsel on the strength of a long lease. Possibly Walter Matern, his faithful -- one would think -- subtenant, had just left the house -- he probably had a show -- when I made my way, let us suppose, from the garden across the terrace into Amsel's former studio. I pushed in approximately two windowpanes. In all likelihood I owned a flashlight. What I was looking for I could only find, and actually did find, in the Renaissance desk: important papers. Above me Amsel's scarecrow production of the previous year was still hanging. As I know myself, I wasn't afraid of weird shadows, or only tolerably afraid. The papers were slips of foolscap covered, in big letters, with chains of association and names, as though put there expressly for me. On one scrap of paper Amsel had tried to work himself up a name out of Steppenhuhn (moor hen): Stephun, Steppuh, Steputat, Stepius, Steppat, Stopoteit, Stappanowski, Stoppka, Steffen. When he dropped Steppenhuhn because it had brought him back so quickly and treacherously to the vicinity of the hastily abandoned Steffensweg, he tried the birds Sperling, Specht, and Sperber (sparrow, woodpecker, sparrow hawk) in combination: Sperla, Sperlinski, Sperluch, Spekun, Sperballa, Spercherling, Spechling. This unsuccessful series was followed by an original development on Sonntag, the Sabbath day: Sonntau, Sonntowski, Sonatowski, Sopalla, Sorau, Sosath, Sowert, Sorge. He abandoned it. He carried the series Rosin, Rossinna, Rosenoth no further. Probably he was looking for a counter part to the
A
in Amsel when he began with Zoch, wrote Zocholl after Zuchel, squeezed Zuphat from Zuber, and lost interest with the attractive name of Zylinski; for outcries such as "New names and teeth are worth their weight in gold" or "A name is as good as teeth" told me, the at least conceivable spy, how hard a time he had finding a name that was different and yet right. Finally, between two half-developed series deriving from Krisun-Krisin and Krupat-Krupkat, I found a name all by itself and underlined. No series had spawned it. It had sprung from the air and landed on paper. It stood there meaningless and self-evident. Original and yet to be found in every telephone directory. More readily traceable to the circuitous rabbit than to the lunging hawk. The double
f
justified a Russian, or if need be Baltic, twitter. An artist's name. A secret agent's name. An alias. Names cling. Names are worn. Everybody has a name.

I left Eddi Amsel's oak-paneled studio with the name of Haseloff in my heart. I am willing to swear that no one had got wind of it before I came and pushed windowpanes in. All the scarecrows under the ceiling must have had moth balls in their pockets. Had Walter Matern played the house wife and insured Amsel's legacy against decay?

I ought to have taken some papers with me as proof for later.

Dear Tulla,

that actor who even in school and later consistently in his SA sturm was referred to as the "Grinder" -- "Where's the Grinder? I want the Grinder to take three men and guard the Feldstrasse car stop, while we comb Mirchauerweg on the other side of the synagogue. I want the Grinder to give three loud grinds as soon as he leaves the town hall" -- that enormously busy Grinder was to perfect the art of tooth-grinding very considerably when he took to boozing not off and on but regularly: he barely took time to pour the stuff into a glass; his breakfast began with juniper juice.

Thereupon he was thrown out of the SA. But they didn't bounce him out for drinking -- they all tippled -- they threw him out because he had stolen when drunk. At first Sturmführer Sawatzki covered him, for the two of them were close friends, they stood shoulder to shoulder at the bar, soaking themselves in the same liquid. It was only when SA Sturm 84 became restive that Sawatzki set up a court of honor. The seven men, all experienced platoon leaders, proved that Matern -- only once -- had dipped into the Section treasury. Witnesses reported that he had boasted about it when sozzled. The sum spoken of was fifty-three gulden. Matern had spent it buying rounds of gin. Sawatzki argued that the bilge people talked under the influence couldn't be accepted as proof. Matern protested vehemently: weren't they satisfied with him? -- "Without me you'd never have caught Brill in Kahlbude." -- What was more, he took full responsibility for whatever he had done -- "Besides, you all helped me sop it up, every man jack of you. That's not stealing, it's boosting morale."