Dog Years (38 page)

And so my father had to cross the yard. He kept one hand in his pocket, and I am sure he was holding a chisel warm. He stopped behind Matern and laid his free hand momentously on Matern's shoulder. In a loud voice, meant to be heard by all the occupied windows of the apartment house and by the journeymen in the second-floor windows of the shop, he said: "Leave the dog alone. Right away. And get out of here. You're drunk. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Matern, whom my father had raised to his feet with his carpenter's grip, couldn't resist the temptation to look him menacingly, ominously in the eye in the worst ham actor tradition. My father had very blue, firmly rounded eyes, which blunted Matern's stare. "It won't do you any good to make eyes. There's the door." But Matern chose the route through the lilac garden to Felsner-Imbs' music room.

And once, when Matern did not leave our yard through the pianist's apartment, he said to my father from the doorway of the yard: "Your dog has distemper, hadn't you noticed?"

My father with the chisel in his pocket: "Let me worry about that. And the dog hasn't got distemper, but you're stewed and you'd better not show your face around here any more."

The journeymen made menacing noises behind him and brandished drills and spirit levels. Nevertheless my father sent for the veterinary: Harras didn't have distemper. No mucous discharge from his eyes or nose, no drowsy look, no vomiting after feeding. Even so, brewer's yeast was spooned into him: "You never can tell."

Dear Tulla,

then the theatrical season of 1937 to 1938 was over, and Jenny told us: "Now he's in the theater in Schwerin." He didn't stay in Schwerin long but went, this too we heard from Jenny, to Düsseldorf on the Rhine. But because he had been fired without notice in Schwerin, he was unable to find work in any other theater, either in Düsseldorf or else where. "Those things get around," said Jenny. As one might have expected, the next letter informed us that he was working on the radio, lending his voice to children's programs; the letter said he had become engaged but it wouldn't last long; that he still didn't know where Eddi Amsel was keeping himself, but he was sure he must be; that liquor was plaguing him less, he had gone back to sports: field hockey and even faustball, as in happier days; that he had a number of friends, all of them ex-Communists, who like him had their bellies full; but that Catholicism was a lot of shit, he'd got to know a few priests in Neuss and Maria Laach, they were revolting specimens; there'd probably be war soon; and Walter Matern wanted to know whether the beastly black dog was still alive -- but Felsner-Imbs didn't answer.

Dear Tulla,

then Matern in person took the train and turned up in Langfuhr to see whether our Harras was still alive. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if months hadn't passed since his last visit, he was suddenly standing in our yard, dressed fit to kill: English cloth, red carnation in button hole, short-haired, and stewed to the gills. He had left all caution in the train or somewhere else, he no longer went down on his knees in front of Harras, no longer hissed and ground the word, but bellowed it into the yard. He didn't mean only our Harras; the neighbors in the windows, our journeymen, the machinist, and my father were all sick. The word. The neighbors all vanished into their two-and-a-half-room apartments. The journeymen fastened hinges. The machinist unleashed the buzz saw. My father manned the lathe. Nobody wanted to have heard that. August Pokriefke stirred carpenter's glue.

For to our Harras who alone remained available Walter Matern was saying: "You black Catholic hog!" Hymnally he spewed up his guts: "You Catholic Nazi hog! I'm going to grind you up into dogballs. Dominican! Christian dog! I'm twenty-two dog years old, and I still haven't done any thing to earn immortality. . . just wait!"

Felsner-Imbs took the raving young man, who was breathless from roaring against lathe and buzz saw, by the sleeve and led him into the music room, where he served him tea.

In many apartments, on the second floor of our shop and in the machine shop, denunciations to the police were formulated; but no one turned him in.

Dear Tulla,

from May '39 to June 7, '39, Walter Matern was held for questioning in the cellar of police headquarters in Düsseldorf..

This was no theater gossip, passed on to us by Jenny; I sleuthed it out from the records.

For two weeks he was in the Marien Hospital in Düsseldorf, because they had cracked a few of his ribs in the cellar of police headquarters. For a long while he had to wear a bandage and wasn't allowed to laugh, which wasn't very hard on him. No teeth were knocked out.

I had no need to sleuth out these details, they were written black on white -- though without mention of the police cellar -- on a picture postcard, the picture side of which disclosed the Church of St. Lambert in Düsseldorf. The addressee was not the pianist Felsner-Imbs but Dr. Oswald Brunies.

Who had sent Walter Matern to the police cellar? The director of the Schwerin Stadttheater had not reported him. He had not been dismissed for political unreliability; it was because of continuous drunkenness that he was no longer allowed to act in Schwerin. This information didn't fall in my lap, it had to be painstakingly sleuthed out.

But why did Walter Matern remain in custody for only five weeks? Why only a few ribs and no teeth? He would not have been released from the police cellar if he had not volunteered for the Army: his Free City of Danzig passport saved him. In civilian clothes but with an induction order over still painful ribs he was sent to his home city. There he reported to the Langfuhr-Hochstriess police barracks. Until they were permitted to don uniforms, Walter Matern and several hundred civilians from the Reich had to spoon up one-dish meals for a good eight weeks: the war wasn't quite ripe.

Dear Tulla,

in August 1939 -- the two battleships had already anchored off the Westerplatte; in our carpentry shop finished parts for army barracks and double- and triple-decker beds were being hammered together -- on the twenty-seventh of August our Harras breathed his last.

Somebody poisoned him; for Harras did not have distemper. Walter Matern, who had said: "The dog has distemper," gave him As
₂
O
₃
: rat poison.

Dear Tulla,

you and I could have testified against him.

It was a Saturday night: we're sitting in the lumber shed, in your hiding place. How did you arrange, what with the constant coming and going of logs, planks, and plywood, to have your nest spared?

Probably August Pokriefke knows his daughter's hiding place. When shipments of lumber come in, he alone sits in the shed, directs the piling of the planks, and sees to it that Tulla's hiding place is not buried. No one, not even he, dares to touch the furnishings of her hide-out. No one puts on her wood-shaving wigs, lies in her wood-shaving bed, and covers himself with plaited shavings.

After supper we removed to the shed. Actually we wanted to take Jenny with us, but Jenny was tired; and we understand: after an afternoon of ballet practice and rehearsal, she has to go to bed early, for she has a rehearsal even on Sunday: they are working up
The Bartered Bride,
with all those Bohemian dances.

So the two of us are huddled in the dark, playing silence. Tulla wins four times. Outside, August Pokriefke lets Harras off his chain. For a long while he scratches at the shed walls, whimpers softly, and wants to come in with us: but we want to be alone. Tulla lights a candle and puts on one of her wood-shaving wigs. Her hands around the flame are parchment. She sits behind the candle tailor fashion and moves her head with its dangling fringe of wood shavings over the flame. Several times I say "Cut it out, Tulla!" so she can continue her little tinder-dry game. Once a crisp shaving crackles, but no lumber shed goes up sky-high in flames, contributing an item to the local papers: Langfuhr carpenter shop a total loss.

Now Tulla removes the wig with both hands and I have to lie down in the wood-shaving bed. With the plaited blanket -- extra-long shavings that journeyman carpenter Wischnewski planes from long planks -- she covers me up. I am the patient and have to feel sick. Actually I'm too old for this game. But Tulla likes to be a doctor and sometimes I get fun out of being sick. I speak in a hoarse voice: "Doctor, I feel sick."

"I don't believe you."

"Oh yes, Doctor, all over."

"All over where?"

"All over, Doctor, all over."

"Maybe it's the spleen this time."

"The spleen, the heart, and the kidneys."

Tulla with her hand under the wood-shaving blanket: "Then you've got diabetes."

Now I have to say: "And I've got hose fever too."

She pinches my watering can. "Is that it? Is that where it hurts?"

In accordance with the rules and because it really hurts, I let out a scream. Now we play the game again, the other way around. Tulla crawls under the wood shavings and I, because she is sick, have to take her temperature with my little finger in her aperture. That too comes to an end. Twice we play stare and don't blink. Tulla wins again. Then, because we can't think of any other game, we play silence again. Once Tulla wins, and then I win, because in the middle of her silence Tulla explodes: out of her frozen face lit up from below, she hisses through ten bright-red paper fingers: "Somebody's crawling on the roof, d'you hear?"

She blows out the candle. I hear the crackling of the tar paper on the roof of the lumber shed. Somebody, possibly with rubber soles, is taking steps, pausing in between. Harras has started to growl. The rubber soles follow the tar paper to the end of the roof. We, Tulla in the lead, creep over the logs in the same direction. He's standing right over the dog kennel. Under him there's barely room for us between roof and piled logs. He's sitting down, with his legs dangling over the gutter. Harras keeps growling, always in the same low register. We peer through the ventilation slit between the roof and the edge of the shed. Tulla's little hand could slip through the slit if she liked and pinch him in either leg. Now he whispers: "Good boy, Harras, good boy." We can't see whoever is whispering "Good boy, Harras" and "Mum's the word," all we can see is his pants; but I bet the shadow he casts on the yard with the half-moon behind him is Walter Matern's shadow.

And what Matern throws into the yard is meat. I breathe in Tulla's ear: "It's poisoned for sure." But Tulla doesn't stir. Now Harras is nuzzling the chunk of meat while Matern on the roof encourages him: "Go on, eat. Eat, will you?" Harras tugs at the chunk of meat, tosses it up in the air. He doesn't feel like eating, he wants to play, although he's an old dog: thirteen dog years and a few months.

Then Tulla says, not even quietly, but with just about her usual voice: "Harras!" through the slit between the roof and the wall of the shed: "Take it, Harras, take it." And our Harras first tilts his head, then devours the meat, scrap by scrap.

Above us rubber soles squeak hastily over the tar paper: heading for adjoining yards. I bet it's him. Today I know it was he.

Dear Tulla,

we let ourselves into the house with your key. Harras was still busy with the meat and didn't come bounding after us, as he usually did. In the stair well I brushed the sawdust and shavings off my clothes and asked you urgently: "Why did you let Harras eat it, why?"

You were up the stairs before me: "Well, he wouldn't have done it for him, would he?"

I, ten steps behind you: "And suppose there was poison in it?"

You, a landing higher: "Well, then he'll kick off."

I over the rising banister: "But why?"

"Because!" Tulla laughed through her nose and was gone.

Dear Tulla,

next morning -- I slept heartlessly without any particular dreams -- my father woke me. He was really crying and he said: "Our good Harras is dead." And I was able to cry and dressed quickly. The vet came and wrote out a certificate: "The dog would certainly have lived another three years. Too bad."

My mother said it: "I wonder if it wasn't the actor, that used to be a Communist and that's always hollering in the yard." Of course she was crying too. Somebody suspected Felsner-Imbs.

Harras was buried in the police cemetery for dogs between Pelonken and Brennau, and his grave received regular visits. My father filed a complaint. He mentioned Walter Matern and the pianist. Imbs was questioned, but he had spent the evening playing chess with Dr. Brunies, looking at mica stones and drinking two bottles of Moselle. The proceedings against Walter Matern, who also had an alibi handy, bogged down: two days later the war began in Danzig, in Langfuhr, and in other localities as well. Walter Matern marched into Poland.

Not you, Tulla,

but I almost got to see the Führer. He announced his coming with crashing and pounding. On the first of September cannon were firing in just about every direction. Two of the carpenters took me up on the roof of our house. They had borrowed a spyglass from Semrau the optician: the war looked phony and disappointing. All I could ever see was shells being fired -- Oliva Forest sent up little cottony clouds -- I never saw them landing. Only when the dive bombers began to do acrobatics over Neufahrwasser, showing the spy glass luxuriant smoke trails where the Westerplatte must have been, did I believe that they weren't playing. But as soon as I peered down from the roof into Elsenstrasse and on all ten fingers counted out housewives shopping and loafing kids and cats in the sunshine, I wasn't so sure: Maybe they're only playing and school will start again tomorrow.