Dog Years (46 page)

Dear Tulla,

in the Jenny letter whose contents I have tried to reproduce, as in all other Jenny letters, it was written how very much she loved me now and forever, even though Haseloff was making up to her -- with restraint and ever so ironically. But I mustn't worry about that. Incidentally, she would be coming to Langfuhr, though only for two days: "The apartment after all has to be vacated. And so we've decided to move the furniture and the stone collection to a safe place. You can imagine all the red tape it took to get permission to move the things. But Haseloff knows how to handle people. But he thinks the furniture will be safer in Langfuhr, because Berlin is being bombed more and more. Just the same he wants to move the mica stones to Lower Saxony, where he knows some peasants and the manager of a mine."

Dear Tulla,

first a moving van drove up across the street. Fifteen families occupied the windows of our house. Then, soundlessly, the Mercedes pulled up behind the moving van, but left room for loading. The chauffeur stood promptly at the door with lifted cap: in a black fur coat, possibly mole, her face ensconced in the turned-up collar, Jenny stood on the side walk, and raised her eyes for a moment to our windows: a lady who isn't allowed to catch cold. In a black ulster with a brown fur collar, nutria, Haseloff took Jenny's arm. The switchman, the great impresario, half a head shorter than Jenny: Hermann Haseloff, his mouth full of gold teeth. But he didn't laugh, didn't look at our house. Elsenstrasse didn't exist.

My father said from behind his newspaper: "There's no reason why you shouldn't help with the moving as long as you're always writing each other."

I almost missed Jenny's hand in the wide sleeve of her fur coat. She introduced me. Haseloff had only an eighth of a glance available. "Hm," he said, and "Nice-looking stopper." Then he directed the moving men like a
corps de ballet.
I wasn't allowed to help or even to go up to the apartment. The loading of the furniture, heavy pieces, dark brown for the most part, all oak, was exciting, because under Haseloff's direction a bookcase as wide as a wall became weightless. When Jenny's room left the Aktienhaus -- Biedermeier in light birch -- the pieces hovered over the cubical men and had "balloon." Between the coat rack and the Flemish chest Haseloff half turned to me. Without leaving the movers to their own strength he invited Jenny and me to dinner at the Hotel Eden by the Main Station, where they were staying. Heavy open crates were piled on the sidewalk in among the last kitchen chairs. I accepted: "At half past seven." All at once, as though Haseloff had staged it, the sun broke through up above, awakening sparkle in open crates. The smell of the absent teacher revived too: cold pipe smoke joined in the moving; but some of the mica gneiss had to stay behind. Eight or nine crates walled up the moving van, for two there was no room. That gave me my entrance in Haseloff's moving-man's ballet, for I offered to make room in our cellar for mica gneiss and mica granite, for biotite and muscovite.

My father, whom I asked for permission in the machine room, surprised me by calmly consenting: "That's a good idea, my son. There's plenty of room in the second cellar next to the window frames. Put Dr. Brunies' crates in there. If the old gentleman collected stones all his life, he must have had his reasons."

Dear Tulla,

the crates were moved to our cellar and in the evening I sat beside Jenny, across from Haseloff, in the dining room of the Hotel Eden. Allegedly you had met Jenny in town that afternoon, without Haseloff. Why? Because. We hardly spoke, and Haseloff looked between Jenny and me. You had met, so I heard, at the Caf
é
Weitzke on Wollwebergasse. What did you have to talk about? All sorts of things! Jenny's little finger had meanwhile hooked itself to my little finger under the table. I'm sure Haseloff noticed. What had there been to eat at the Caf
é
Weitzke? Bad cake and watery ice cream for Jenny. At the Hotel Eden there was turtle soup, breaded veal cutlet with canned asparagus, and for dessert, at Jenny's request, frozen pudding. Maybe I rode after you as far as Kohlenmarkt and saw you in the Caf
é
Weitzke: sitting, talking, laughing, saying nothing, crying. Why? Because. After dinner I noticed a thousand and more ice-gray freckles on Haseloff's tense or rigid face. Eddi Amsel, when he still existed, had fewer but larger freckles in his fat face, brownish and genuine. You spent at least two hours chattering away in the Caf
é
Weitzke. At half past nine I had to speak: "I used to know somebody who looked like you, but he had a different name."

Haseloff summoned the waiter: "A glass of hot lemonade, please."

I had my lines ready: "First he was called Stephuhn, then he was called Sperballa, then Sperlinski. Do you know him?"

Haseloff, who had a cold, received his hot lemonade: "Thank you. Check please."

Behind me the waiter added up the bill: "For a few minutes the man I knew was even called Zocholl. Then he was called Zylinski. And then he found a name that he still goes by. Would you like to know what it is, or would you, Jenny?"

Haseloff let two white tablets dissolve in a teaspoon and paid with bank notes hidden under the check: "Keep the change."

When I wanted to tell them the man's name, Haseloff swallowed the tablets and took a long drink from the lemonade glass. Then it was too late. And Jenny was tired. Only in the hotel lobby, after Jenny had been allowed to give me a kiss, Haseloff showed a few of his gold teeth and said in a hoarse voice: "You're talented. You know lots of names. I'll help you, today or the day after tomorrow, and now let me tell you one more name: Brauxel written with an x; or Brauksel written like Häksel; or Rrauchsel, written like Weichsel. Remember that name and the three ways of spelling it."

Then they both, elegantly and with unnatural slowness, climbed the stairs. Jenny looked round and round and round; even when I wasn't in the hotel lobby any more with three times Brauxel in my head.

Dear Tulla,

he exists. I found him while I was looking for you. He tells me how to write when I write to you. He sends me money so I can write you without having to worry. He owns a mine between Hildesheim and Sarstedt. Or maybe he only manages it. Or holds the biggest block of shares. Or maybe the whole thing is sculduggery camouflage fifth column, even if his name is Brauxel Brauksel Brauchsel. Brauksel's mine produces no ore, no salt, no coal. Brauksel's mine produces something else. I am not allowed to name it. All I am allowed and ordered to say is Tulla, over and over again. And I have to keep the deadline, the fourth of February. And I have to heap up the pile of bones. And I have to start on the last story, for Brauchsel has sent me an urgent telegram: "Aquarius conjunction approaching stop heap up bone pile stop start miscarriage stop let dog loose and finish on time."

There was once a girl, her name was Tulla,

and she had the pure forehead of a child. But nothing is pure. Not even the snow is pure. No virgin is pure. Even a pig isn't pure. The Devil never entirely pure. No note rises pure. Every violin knows that. Every star chimes that. Every knife peels it: even a potato isn't pure: it has eyes, they have to be scooped out.

But what about salt? Salt is pure! Nothing, not even salt, is pure. It's only on boxes that it says: Salt is pure. After all, it keeps. What keeps with it? But it's washed. Nothing can be washed clean. But the elements: pure? They are sterile but not pure. The idea? Isn't it always pure? Even in the beginning not pure. Jesus Christ not pure. Marx Engels not pure. Ashes not pure. And the host not pure. No idea stays pure. Even the flowering of art isn't pure. And the sun has spots. All geniuses menstruate. On sorrow floats laughter. In the heart of roaring lurks silence. In angles lean compasses. -- But the circle, the circle is pure!

No closing of the circle is pure. For if the circle is pure, then the snow is pure, the virgin is, the pigs are, Jesus Christ, Marx and Engels, white ashes, all sorrows, laughter, to the left roaring, to the right silence, ideas immaculate, wafers no longer bleeders and geniuses without efflux, all angles pure angles, piously compasses would describe circles: pure and human, dirty, salty, diabolical, Christian and Marxist, laughing and roaring, ruminant, silent, holy, round pure angular. And the bones, white mounds that were recently heaped up, would grow immaculately without crows: pyramids of glory. But the crows, which are not pure, were creaking unoiled, even yesterday: nothing is pure, no circle, no bone. And piles of bones, heaped up for the sake of purity, will melt cook boil in order that soap, pure and cheap; but even soap can not wash pure.

There was once a girl, her name was Tulla,

and she let numerous pimples, big and little, bloom and fade on her childlike forehead. Her cousin Harry long combated pimples of his own. Tulla never tried tinctures and remedies. Neither ground almonds nor stinky sulphur nor cucumber milk nor zinc ointment found a place on her forehead. Untroubled, she strode through the world pimples first, for she still had the jutting forehead of a child, and dragged sergeants and ensigns into night-black parks: for she wanted to have a baby, but didn't.

After Tulla had vainly tried every rank and branch of service, Harry advised her to try uniformed high school students. He had lately been wearing attractive Air Force blue and living no longer in Elsenstrasse but, in tiptop bathing weather, in the barracks of the Brösen-Glettkau shore battery, a large battery strung out behind the dunes, equipped with twelve 88-millimeter guns and a whole raft of 40-millimeter AA-guns.

At the very start Harry was assigned as Number 6 to an 88-millimeter gun with outriggers. The Number 6 had to adjust the fuze setter with the aid of two cranks. This Harry did throughout his term as an Air Force auxiliary. A priviledged job, for the Number 6 alone of nine cannoneers was entitled to sit on a little stool attached to the gun; when the gun was rotated quickly, he traveled along free of charge and didn't bash his shins against the iron of the outriggers. During gunnery practice Harry sat with his back to the muzzle of the cannon and while with his cranks he made two mechanical pointers hurry after two electrical pointers, he pounded back and forth between Tulla and Jenny. This he did rather adroitly: the mechanical pointer chased the electrical pointer, Tulla chased Jenny, and as far as Harry Liebenau was concerned, the fuze setter was operated to the complete satisfaction of the tech sergeant in charge of training.

Once there was a tech sergeant,

who could grind his teeth loudly. Along with other decorations he wore the silver wound insignia. Accordingly he limped slightly but obviously between the shacks of the Brösen-Glettkau shore battery. He was looked upon as strict but fair, admired, and superficially imitated. When he went out to the dunes to hunt dune rabbits, he chose as his companion an Air Force auxiliary whom the others called Störtebeker. While hunting dune rabbits the tech sergeant either didn't say a single word or he uttered quotations, interspersed by ponderous pauses, from one and the same philosopher. Störtebeker repeated his quotations and created a philosophical schoolboy language that was soon prattled by many, with varying success.

Störtebeker prefixed most of his sentences with "I, as a pre-Socratic." Anyone who looked on as he mounted guard could see him drawing in the sand with a stick. With a superiorly guided stick he plotted the advent of the still unuttered essence of unconcealment, or to put it more bluntly, of Being. But if Harry said: "Being," Störtebeker corrected him impatiently: "There you go again. What you really mean is essents -- things that are."

Even in everyday matters philosophical tongues made pre-Socratic leaps, appraising every commonplace incident or object with the tech sergeant's painstakingly acquired knowledge. Underdone potatoes in their jackets -- the kitchen was poorly supplied and even more poorly run -- were called "spuds forgetful of Being." If someone reminded someone of something that had been borrowed, promised, or asserted days before, the answer came prompt and absolute: "Who thinks about thoughts any more," or, analogically, about the borrowed, the promised, or the asserted? The daily facts of life in an AA battery, such as semi-serious disciplinary drill, tedious practice alerts, or greasy-messy rifle cleaning, were disposed of with an expression overheard from the tech sergeant: "After all, the essence of being-there is its existence."

The word "existence" and its collaterals met all requirments: "Would you exist me a cigarette? Who feels like existing a movie with me? Shut your trap or I'll exist you one."

To go on sick call was to plug for a sack existence. And anybody who had hooked a girl -- as Störtebeker had hooked Harry's cousin Tulla -- boasted after taps how often he had bucked the girl's existence.

And existence itself -- Störtebeker tried to draw it in the sand with a stick: it looked different each time.

There was once an Air Force auxiliary

named Störtebeker, who was supposed to get Harry's cousin with child and probably did his best. On Sundays when the Brösen-Glettkau battery was open to visitors, Tulla came out in high-heeled shoes and took her nostrils and pimply forehead for a stroll amid 88-millimeter guns. Or she hobbled into the dunes between the tech sergeant and Air Force auxiliary Störtebeker, in the hope that they would both make her a baby; but tech sergeant and Air Force auxiliary preferred to indulge in other proofs of existence: they shot dune rabbits.

There was once a cousin,