Dog Years (57 page)

So that's what they call the Rhine! Matern grew up by the Vistula. In recollection, every Vistula is wider than every Rhine. And it's only because the Materns must always live by rivers -- the everlasting parade of water gives them a sense of being alive -- that we've undertaken this crusade to Cologne. But also because Matern has been here before. And because his forebears, the brothers Simon and Gregor Materna, always came back mostly to wreak vengeance with fire and sword: that was how Drehergasse and Petersiliengasse went up in flames, how Langgarten and St. Barbara's burned down in the east wind; well, in this place others have had ample opportunity to try out their lighters. There's not much kindling left. "I come to judge with a black dog and a list of names incised in my heart, spleen, and kidneys. THAT DEMAND TO BE CROSSED OFF.

O acrid unglassed drafty holy Catholic Central Station of Cologne! Nations with suitcases and knapsacks come to see and smell you, disperse throughout the world, and can never again forget you: you and the double stone monstrosity across the way. Anyone who wants to understand humanity must kneel down in your waiting rooms; for here all are pious and confess to one another over watery beer. What ever they do, whether they sleep with open jaws, embrace their pathetic baggage, quote earthly prices for heavenly lighter flints and cigarettes, whatever they may omit and pass over in silence, whatever they may add and repeat, they are working on the great confession. At the ticket windows, in the paper-blown station hall -- two overcoats a plot, three overcoats in cahoots a riot! -- and similarly down below in the tiled toilets, where the beer flows off again, warmed. Men unbutton, stand silently as though deep in thought in white-enameled bays, whisper with prematurely worn-out cocks, seldom in a straight line, usually with a slight but calculated elevation. Urine comes-to-be. Pissing stallions stand for eternities with arched back on two legs in pants, forming a roof over their excrescences with right hands, mostly married, prop their hips with their left hands, look ahead with mournful eyes, and decipher inscriptions, dedications, confessions, prayers, outcries, rhymes, and names, scribbled in blue pencil scratched with nail scissors, leather punch, or nail.

So too Matern. Except that he doesn't prop his hip with his left hand, but holds behind him a leather leash, which cost two Camels in Essen and in Cologne joins him with Pluto. All men stand for eternities, but Matern's eternity is longer, even after his water has stopped leaning on enamel. Already he is fingering button after button, with pauses the length of a paternoster in between, into the corresponding buttonhole, his back no longer arched, but rather humped like that of a reader. Nearsighted people hold their eyes that close to printed matter or script. Thirst for knowledge. Reading room atmosphere. The student of Scripture. Don't disturb the reader. Knowledge is power. An angel passes through the enormous tiled warm sweetandpungentsmelling holy Catholic men's toilet of Cologne Central Station.

There it is written: "Deadhead, watch out." Recorded for all time: "Dobshe dobshe trallala -- Schnapps is good for cholera." A Lutheran nail has scratched: "And though the world were full of devils. . ." Hard to decipher: "Germany awaken!" Perpetuated in capitals: "ALL WOMEN ARE SLUTS." A poet has written: "In ice and flame -- we're still the same." And someone has stated tersely: "The Führer is alive." But another handwriting knew more and added: "Right, in Argentina." Brief ejaculations such as: "No! Count me out! Chin up!" are frequent. So are drawings, which over and over again have as their subject the indestructible Vienna roll with its hairy halo, as well as recumbent women viewed as Mantegna viewed the recumbent Christ, that is, by an eye situated between the soles of their feet. Finally, wedged in between the cry of rejoicing: "Happy New Year '46!" and the obsolete warning: "Caution! Enemy ears are listening!," Matern, buttoned below, open on top, reads a name and address without rhymed or prose commentary: "Jochen Sawatzki -- Fliesteden -- Bergheimer Strasse 32."

Instantly Matern -- with heart, spleen, and kidneys already on his way to Fliesteden -- has a nail in his pocket that wants to write. Significantly cutting across dedications, confessions, and prayers, across the strangely hairy Vienna rolls and the recumbent Mantegna ladies, the nail scratches the child's jingle: "DON'T TURN AROUND, THE GRINDER'S AROUND."

It's a village lined up along the highway between Cologne and Erft. The bus from the main post office to Grevenbroich by way of Müngersdorf, Lovenich, Brauweiler, stops there before Busdorf, where it turns off to Stommeln. Matern finds his way without having to ask. Sawatzki in rubber boots opens: "Man, Walter, you still alive? Ain't that a surprise? Come on in, or wasn't it us you was coming to see?"

Inside it smells of boiling sugarbeets. Up from the cellar, head in kerchief, comes a doll who smells no better. "See, we're cooking syrup. Then we peddle it. It's rough work, but it pays. This here's my little wife. Her name's Inge, she's a native of Frechen. Inge, this here's a friend of mine, a buddy, kind of. We were in the same sturm for a while. My, oh my, haven't we been screwed: Shoilem boil 'em! remember, the two of us in the Kleinhammerpark, lights out -- knives out! Get in there and fight. Christ, what a brawl! You remember Gustav Dau and Lothar Budczinski? Franzchen Wollschläger and the Dulleck brothers? And Willy Eggers, man! And Otto Warnke, hell, and little Bublitz? Rough customers one and all, but good as gold, except they drank too much and you can say that again. -- So there you are again. Man, I'm kind of scared of that mutt. Couldn't you lock him up in the other room? -- All right, let him stay here. So give: where did you run off to at exactly the right time? Because once you left the sturm, we were through. Oh, it's easy to say when it's all over that we were damn fools to throw you out for nothing. It didn't amount to a hill of beans. But that's how they wanted it, especially the Dulleck brothers and Wollschläger too: Court of honor! An SA man don't steal! Robbing his comrades! -- I really cried -- honest to God, Inge -- when he had to go. Well, here you are. You can take it easy in here or come into the laundry where the beets are cooking. You can flop in the deck chair and watch. Man, you old rascal. You can't lose a bad penny is what I always say to Inge, eh, Inge? I'm mighty glad."

In the cozy laundry room the sugarbeets cook away, spreading sweetness. Matern sprawls in the deck chair and has something between his teeth that can't come out because the two of them are so pleased and besides they're cooking syrup with four hands. She stirs the washtub with a shovel handle: pretty strong, though she's only a handful; he keeps the fire burning evenly: they have piles of briquettes, black gold. She's a regular Rhenish type: doll face with goo-goo eyes and can't stop googooing; he has hardly changed, maybe a little stouter. She just makes eyes and doesn't say boo; he bullshits about old times: "The storm troops march with firm and tranquil tread. . . Remember? Shoilem, boil 'em!" Why can't she stop making eyes? The bone I have to pick is with him, not with Ingewife. Cooking. What a racket! Out in the fields at night, stealing beets, peeling them, cutting them up, and so on. You won't see the last of Walter Matern so soon, because Walter has come to judge you with a black dog and a list of names incised in his heart, spleen, and kidneys, one of them exhibited for all to read in the Cologne Central Station, in the piss-warm part with the tiled floor and the cozy enameled bays: Sturmführer Jochen Sawatzki led the popular and notorious 84th SA Sturm, Langfuhr-North, through hell and high water. His terse but spirited speeches. His boyish charm when he spoke of the Führer and Germany's future. His favorite songs and favorite liquor: The Argonne Forest at midnight and for steady drinking gin with or without a plum. A good worker all the same. Energetic and trustworthy. Thoroughly disillusioned with the Commies, which is what made him so staunch a believer in the new idea. His operations against the Sozis Brill and Wichmann; the brawl at the Cafe Woike, the Polish student hangout; the eight-man action on Steffensweg. . .

"Say," says Matern across the dog reclining at his feet and through the sugarbeet mist. "What ever became of Amsel? You know whom I mean. The guy that made the funny figures. The one you beat up on Steffensweg, remember, that's where he lived."

This gets no rise out of the dog, but provokes a brief lull in the beet corner. "Man, whatcha asking me for? That little visit was your idea. I never could get it straight, seeing he was a friend of yours, wasn't he."

The deck chair answers through the steam: "There were certain reasons, private reasons that I won't go into. But this is what I want to know: What did you do with him afterwards, I mean after the eight of you on Steffensweg. . ."

Inge wife makes googoo eyes and stirs. Sawatzki doesn't forget to put briquettes on the fire: "Whassat? We din't do nothing else. And whatcha asking questions for anyway, when there wasn't eight of us but nine, including you. And you were the one that really pasted him so there wasn't much left. Anyway, he wasn't the worst. Too bad we never caught Dr. Citron. He cleared out for Sweden. What am I saying, too bad? To hell with the final solution and final victory routine. It's finished and good riddance. Forget it. Forget all that crap, and don't try to put the finger on me or I'll get mad. Because, sonny boy, you and I were tarred with the same brush, and neither of us is any cleaner than the other, right?"

The deck chair grumbles. The dog Pluto looks up, faithfulasadog. Chunks of sugarbeet boil unthinking: Don't cook beets, or you'll smell of beets. Too late, by this time all smell in unison: Fireman Sawatzki, Ingewife with eyes in her head, the inactive Matern -- even the dog has ceased to smell of dog alone. The washtub has begun to glug heavily: Syrup syrup thick and sweet is -- flies are dying of diabetes. Ingewife's stirring shovel handle meets with resistance: Never when syrup is being stirred, stir up the past with a single word. Sawatzki puts on the last briquettes: Sugarbeets need husbandry -- God has sugar in his pee!

Then Sawatzki decides it's done and sets up a double row of pot-bellied two-quart bottles. Matern wants to help but they won't let him: "No, my boy. When the bottles are full, we'll go upstairs and pour a little something under our belts. An occasion like this needs to be celebrated, whatcha say, Ingemouse?"

They do it with potato schnapps. Eggnog liqueur is on hand for Ingemouse. Considering their circumstances, the Sawatzkis have set themselves up pretty nicely. A large oil paint ing, "Goats," two grandfather clocks, three club chairs, a Persian carpet under their feet, the "people's radio" turned down low, and a glassed-in heavy-oak bookcase, containing an encyclopedia in thirty-two volumes:
A
as in "After birth." -- Aw, don't cry, maybe you'll get another sometime.
B
as in "Beerhouse brawl." -- I've been through maybe fifty of them, ten for the Commies and at least twenty for the Nazis, but do you think I can even keep the places straight, Ohra Riding Academy, Caf
é
Derra, Bürgerwiese, Kleinhammerpark.
C
as in "Cuckold." -- Hell no, nobody's jealous around here.
D
as in "Danzig." -- In the East it was nicer, but in the West it's better.
E
as in "Eau de Cologne." -- Believe you me. The Russians used to lap it up like water.
F
as in "Father." -- They sent mine down with the
Gustlow.
What about yours? --
G
as in "Gunsight." -- I took a bead on him, ping ping. Out like a light.
H
as in "Hard feelings." -- Aw, stop stirring up the old shit.
I
as in "Inge." -- Go on, give us a little dance, something oriental.
J
as in "Jacket." -- Take your coat off, man.
K
as in
"Kabale und Liebe."
-- You used to be an actor, whyn't you do something for us?
L
as in "Laughing gas." -- Cut the giggling, Inge. He's doing Franz Moor.
M
as in "Merriment." -- If you ask me, we should crack another bottle.
N
as in "Neutral." -- Matern's steam has subsided.
O
as in "Oasis." -- Here let us settle down.
P
as in "Palestine." -- That's where they should of sent them, or Madagascar.
Q
as in "Question mark." -- What's on your mind, man?
R
as in "Rabbi." -- And he wrote on the paper that I'd treated him decently. His name was Dr. Weiss and he lived at Mattenbuden 25.
S
as in "Square." -- Take it from me, three is more fun than four.
T
as in "Tobacco." -- For twelve Lucky Streeks we got the whole dinner set with the cups thrown in.
U
as in "U-boat." -- A hell of a lot of good they did us.
V
as in "Victory." -- Well, that's for the birds.
W
as in "Walter." -- So go sit on his lap instead of wearing your eyes out.
X
as in "Xanthippe." -- That was a dame for you, but I'll settle for Ingemouse.
Y
as in "Yankee." -- No Ami ever got his mitts on her, or any Tommy either.
Z
as in "Zero hour." -- And now let's all go beddy-by together. Bottoms up! The night is young. Me on the right, you on the left, and Ingemouse snug as a bug in a rug in the middle. But not the dog. He can stay in the kitchen. We'll give him something to eat to make it nice for him too. If you feel like washing, Walter boy, here's the soap."

And after drinking potato schnapps and eggnog liqueur out of coffee cups, after Ingemouse has done a solo dance and Matern some solo acting and Sawatzki has told them both stories from times past and present, after making up a bed for the dog in the kitchen and washing themselves sketchily but with soap, three lie in the broad seaworthy marriage bed, which the Sawatzkis call their marriage fortress, purchase price: seven two-quart bottles of syrup brewed from sugarbeets. NEVER SLEEP THREE IN A BED -- OR YOU'LL WAKE UP THREE IN A BED."