Dog Years (61 page)

They go on board: mother and child -- master and dog. The well-fed sun cooks Mülheim's ruins and Mulheim's meagerly fed consumers in the same pot. Never has Germany been so beautiful. Never has Germany been so healthy. Never have there been more expressive faces in Germany than in the days of the thousand and thirty-two calories. But Inge Sawatzki declares while the Mulheim ferry is docking: "Well be getting new money pretty soon. Goldmouth even knows when. What, you don't know him? Everybody that knows which way is up around here knows him. Take my word for it, he's got a finger in everything. The whole black market, from Trankgasse to the Amis in Bremerhaven, takes its cue from Goldmouth. But he says it's on the way out. He says we should reconvert. The new money won't be worthless paper; it'll be rare and precious, you'll have to work for it. He came to the christening. Hardly anybody knows his real name. Jochen says he's not a pure Aryan. I couldn't care less. Anyway he didn't come into the church, but gave us two sets of baby clothes and piles of gin. He himself doesn't touch it, he only smokes. My goodness, he doesn't smoke them, he eats them. Right now he's out of town. They say he has his headquarters near Düren. Other people say it's somewhere near Hanover. But with Goldmouth you never know. This is where we live. You get used to the view."

Staying with good old friends, Matern witnesses X-Day, the currency reform. This is the time to take stock of the situation. Sawatzki walks straight out of the C.P. For his money it stinks anyway. Everybody gets his quota. They don't drink it up. Certainly not: "This here is our investment capital. We'll live on our reserves. The syrup'll do us for twelve months at least. By the time we've worn out all the shirts and underwear, Walli will be going to school. 'Cause we haven't been sitting on our stocks, we saw what was coming, we unloaded. That was Goldmouth's advice. A tip like that is worth its weight in gold. He let Inge in on a way of getting care packages, just to be obliging, because he likes us. He's always asking about you, because we told him about you. Where you been keeping yourself all this time?"

With leaden pauses in between, Matern, who is slowly regaining his strength, lists German countrysides: East Frisia, the rugged Alb, Upper Franconia, charming Bergstrasse, Sauerland, the Hunsrück, the Eifel, the Saar, Lüneburg Heath, Thuringia or the green heart of Germany. He describes the Black Forest where it is highest and blackest. And his vivid geography lesson is enriched with the names of cities: "On my way from Celle to Bückeburg. Aachen, the ancient city founded by the Romans, where the Holy Roman emperors were crowned. Passau, where the Inn and the Ilz flow into the Danube. Of course I went to see the Goethe house in Weimar. Munich was a disappointment but Stade, the country behind the Elbe dikes, is a highly developed fruit-growing region."

Sawatzki's question "AND NOW WHAT?" ought to be embroidered, given a border, and hung up over the couch. Matern wants to sleep, eat, read the paper, sleep, look out the window, commune with himself, and look at Matern in the shaving mirror: Gone the bleary eyes. The hollows under the cheekbones excellently filled in. But there's no holding the hair, it's emigrating. His forehead grows, lengthening his character-actor's phiz, molded by thirty-one dog years. "And what now?" Eat humble pie? Go dogless into business now that things are starting up? Go back to acting, leave the dog in the checkroom? Grind teeth no longer on the open hunting ground, but only on the stage? Franz Moor? Danton? Faust in Oberhausen? Sergeant Beckmann in Trier? Hamlet in the experimental theater? No. Never! Not yet. His accounts aren't settled yet. Matern's X-Day hasn't dawned yet, Matern wants to pay his debts in the old currency, that's why he raises hell in Sawatzki's two-and-a-half-room apartment. With heavy hand he crushes a celluloid rattle and expresses doubts that Walli stems from the stem of Walter. Matern also wipes all the sure-fire tips grown in Goldmouth's garden off the breakfast table with the sugar bowl. He takes his cue from himself, from his heart, spleen, and kidneys. He and Sawatzki aren't calling each other by their first names any more, but denounce each other, according to mood and time of day, as "Trotzkyite, Nazi, you traitor, you crumby little fellow traveler!" But only when Matern boxes Inge's ears in the middle of the living room -- let the reason lie buried in Matern's attic room -- does Jochen Sawatzki throw his guest with dog out of the two-and-a-half-room apartment. Instantly Inge wants to be thrown out too with child. But Sawatzki brings a flat hand down on the oilclothed tabletop: "The kid stays here with me. She ain't going to be mixed up in this. Go where you please, go to the dogs. But not with the kid, I'll take care of her."

So without child but with dog and little of the new currency. Matern still has Wollschläger's pocket watch, Budczinski's gold cuff links, and two Canadian dollars. Between Cologne's cathedral and Cologne's Central Station they make merry on the proceeds of the watch. There's just enough left over for a week in a hotel in Benrath, offering a view of the castle with round pond and square garden.

"And what now?" she says.

He massages his scalp at the wardrobe mirror.

She points her thumb in the direction of the curtains: "It seems to me if you want work the Henkel works are over there, and over there on the right Demag is starting up again. We could look for a place to live in Wersten or right in Düsseldorf."

But at the mirror and later, out in the wet cold, Matern doesn't feel like working; he wants to wander. After all, he comes of a miller's family, and millers, says the poet, delight in wandering. Besides, the dog needs exercise. And before he raises a finger for those capitalist swine, he'll. . . "Henkel, Demag, Mannesmann! Don't make me laugh!"

Two with dog along the Trippelsberg, across the Rhine meadows to Himmelgeist. There they find an inn that has a room available and doesn't bother about marriage certificates and manandwife. A restless night, for from Mülheim Inge Sawatzki has brought not hiking shoes but an ornamental coverlet with the embroidered question "And what now?" Won't let him sleep. Always in the same groove. Pillow-whispering: "Do something. Anything. Goldmouth says: invest, invest, and invest some more, it'll pay off in three years at the latest. Sawatzki, for instance, is going to quit his job in Leverkusen and go into business for himself in some small town. Goldmouth suggested men's coats and suits. Wouldn't you like to try something, anything? You're educated, after all, as you're always saying. A consultant's bureau, for instance, or a horoscope magazine, something serious-looking. Goldmouth says there's a future in that kind of thing. People have simply stopped believing in the old baloney. They want something different, really reliable information about what's written in the stars. . . You're Capricorn, for instance, and I'm Cancer. You can do whatever you please with me."

Obligingly Matern does for her next day. They have barely enough money left for the Rhine ferry from Himmelgeist to Udesheim. The rain is free of charge. O wet cold bondage! In sopping shoes they hike in single file, the dog in the lead, to Grimlinghausen. There hunger is waiting but nothing to eat. They can't even change sides and ferry to Volmerswerth on the right bank. He does for her on the left bank of the Rhine, under the eyes of St. Quirinus, who was burned in Moscow under the name of Kuhlmann and nevertheless was powerless to protect the city of Neuss from bombs.

Where do you sleep without a penny to your name, but with a pious sinful heart? You get yourself locked up in a church, more precisely in an only true, unheated, namely, Catholic church. Familiar environment. Restless night. For a long time they lie, each in his own pew, until only she is lying and he with dog and dragging leg is roaming about the nave: everywhere scaffoldings and pails of whitewash. A cockeyed kind of place. A little of everything. Typical Transition style. Romanesquely begun when it was already too late, later pasted over with baroque, the dome for example. Damp plaster steams. With floating plaster dust is mingled the smell of elaborate pontifical offices from the dog years of the thirties. Still hovering indecisively and refusing to settle. Matern has been here before, in the days when he carried on conversations with the Virgin Mary. Today Ingewife does the talking: "And what now?" is her ever-ready question. "It's cold," she says. And: "Can't you sit down?" And: "Should we get a rug?" And: "If it weren't a church, I'd say come on, would you like to too?" And then in the somnolent three-quarters darkness: "Say, look. There's a confessional. You think it's closed?"

It isn't closed but ready at all times. In a confessional he does for her. Something new for a change. In there it's a safe bet that nobody ever. So the dog has to go in where ordinarily the priest has his ear. For Pluto joins in the game. Matern with her enters the adjacent cubicle. And as she kneels, he bucks her uncomfortably from behind, while she has to blabber through the grating behind which Pluto is playing the father confessor. And he presses her fuckedout doll's face against the sinfully ornate wooden grille: baroque, masterly, Rhenish woodcarving outlives the centuries, doesn't break, but squashes the doll face's nose. Every sin counts. Works of penance are imposed. A prayer for intercession is offered up. Not, St. Quirinus, help! But: "Sawatzki, come and help me. Oh oh oh!"

Well, when it's all over, the confessional is undamaged. But she lies for a long while on cold flags and lets her nose bleed in the dusk. He goes roaming again, dog at heel, wordless. And back again at the indestructible confessional after two lonely echoing rounds, he snaps open his good old lighter with a view to lighting a comforting pipe; the lighter accomplishes more than he expected: first, it helps the pipe, second it proves that Inge's nose blood is red, and third it lights up a little card pinned to the confessional, and on the card something is written: a name in black and white: Joseph Knopf. Without further address, for at the moment the name is residing right here and has no need, like other names, to indicate street and number in Cologne's holy men's toilet; daily, for half an hour, from nine forty-five to ten fifteen this Knopf inhabits the indestructible confessional, making his certified ear available to each and all. O leit- and murder motives! O revenge, syrup-sweet! O justice plying the rails in all directions! O names crossed off and still to be crossed off: Joseph Knopf -- or the Eighty-sixth Materniad!

Matern crosses him off on the dot of ten, solo and in person. Meanwhile he has tied Pluto -- parting is sweet sorrow -- to a bicycle stand still intact amid the ruins of Neuss. Still weeping, Inge slips away without a word shortly before early Mass and with squashed nose tramps back in the direction of Cologne. Some truck will pick her up -- but he stays; on Batteriestrasse, almost exactly halfway between Münsterplatz and the industrial port, he doesn't seek but finds ten pfennigs in one piece. Wealth! St. Quirinus has put it there especially for him; with it you can buy a butt; or the
Rheinische Post,
fresh off the press; it's the price of a box of matches or a stick of chewing gum; you could put it in a slot and, if you stood on the scales, out into the world would come a little card: your weight! But Matern smokes a pipe and when necessary snaps open his lighter. Matern reads newspapers in showcases. Matern has plenty to chew on. Matern doesn't need to be weighed. For ten found pfennigs Matern buys a beautiful long smooth chaste knitting needle -- for what?

Don't turn around, knitting needle's going round. This knitting needle is for the priest's ear and is intended to enter the ear of Joseph Knopf. With malice aforethought Matern, at nine forty-five, walks into the asymmetrical church of St. Quirinus to judge with a long knitting needle alienated from its function.

Ahead of him two old women confess briefly and meagerly. Now in the somnolent church night he kneels down in the very place where Inge, having been put into position, was going to confess to the dog. Anyone looking for evidence could probably find Ingeblood on the wooden grille and bear witness to a case of martyrdom. He takes aim and whispers. Joseph Knopf's ear is large and fleshy and doesn't quiver. There's room for the whole confession, sins checked off on fingers, and bang in the midst of it an old old story that happened in the dog years of the late thirties, involving a former SA man, then a Neo-Catholic, and a professional Old-Catholic who, on the strength of the so-called resolutions of Maria Laach, advised the Neo-Catholic to get back into a regular SA sturm in spite of everything and with the help of the Blessed Virgin to reinforce the Catholic wing of the inherently godless SA. A complicated story that turns cartwheels on thin ice. But the priest's ear doesn't quiver. Matern whispers names, dates, and quotations. He breathes: his name was Soandso, the other one's name was Soandso. No fly molests the priest's ear. Matern is still as busy as a bee: And the one whose name was Soandso said to the other one after devotions, that was in May of the year. . . The priest's ear is still hewn of marble. And from time to time substantial words issue from the other side: "My son, do you repent with all your heart? You know that Jesus Christ, who died for us on the cross, knows of every sin, even the most venial, and is watching us, whatever we do. Be contrite. Keep nothing back, my son."

Such precisely were Matern's intentions. Once again he reels off the whole story. From an ingenious music box emerge the carved figures: Kaas, the prelate, Pacelli, the nunzio, the former SA man, the repentant Neo-Catholic, the crafty Old-Catholic, and the representative of the Catholic wing of the SA. All, lastly the merciful Virgin Mary, do their little dance and exit; but Matern still hasn't unreeled the whole of his whispered spool: "And it was you, you and no one else, who said that, get back into the SA. A lot of rubbish about the concordat and anecdotes from Maria Laach. They even secretly blessed a banner and whined out prayers for the Führer. You Dominican! You black shitbag. And to me, Matern, you said: My son, resume the brown garment of honor. Jesus Christ, who died on the cross and watches us in all our works, has sent us the Führer to stamp out the seed of the godless with your help and mine. That's right. Stamp out!" But the priest's ear, mentioned several times by name, is still the ingenious product of a Gothic stonecutter. When the knitting needle, retail price ten pfennigs, is put in motion, when the instrument of vengeance rests on the ornate grille of the confessional and is aimed knittingneedle-sharp at the priest's ear, nothing quivers in alarm for the eardrum; only the old man's voice, thinking the penitent has finished, drones out wearily and with routine mildness the everlasting words:
"Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen."
The penance imposed consists of nine Paternosters and thirty-two Ave Marias.