Dog Years (65 page)

So far he had always managed to steer clear of this pest hole. Gone through on the train, never got out. Cologne? Sure. And Neuss with knitting needle. A week in Benrath. The coalfields, from Dortmund to Duisburg. Two days in Kaiserswerth one time. Aachen, a pleasant memory. A few nights in Büderich, but never at Hans' Flophouse. Christmas in the Sauerland, but not at the Acrobats' Hostel. Never in Düsseldorf. Krefeld, Düren, Gladbach, the country between Viersen and Dülken, where Papa worked wonders with mealworms, all that was bad enough, but nothing compared to this abscess taped over with bull's-eye panes, this insult to a nonexistent God, this half-dried blob of mustard between Düssel and Rhine, this stories-high tub of stale, bitter beer, this monster that had come into the world after Jan Wellem straddled the Lorelei. City of art, they call it, city of expositions, city of gardens. Petit-bourgeois Babel. Fogbowl of the Lower Rhine and provincial capital. Godfather to the city of Danzig. Here Grabbe suffered and struggled. "He put up with the place. That makes us even. But in the end he cleared out." For even Christian Dietrich Grabbe refused to conk out in this hole, and preferred Detmold. Grabbe laughter: "I could laugh Rome to death, why not Düsseldorf!" Grabbe tears. Hannibal's ancient eye complaint: "It will do you good to cry, ye
aficionados!
At the most convenient time, when you've won all there is to win!" But without laugh-itch or bugs in his eyes, sober with black dog at heel, Matern comes to haunt the fair city of Düsseldorf, which at carnival time is governed by the blue-and-white Prince's guard, where money burgeons, beer blooms, art foams, a city good to live in from cradle to grave: merry merry!

But even at the Sawatzkis' the trend is dull. Inge says: "Boy, are you bald!" They live on Schadowstrasse over the store, in five rooms at once, furnished in style. Standing beside the medium-sized built-in aquarium, Jochen speaks correct German now, isn't it amazing? From the good old days in Mülheim -- "Do you remember, Walter?" -- they still have the encyclopedia in thirty-two volumes, which way back in Fliesteden the three of them never wearied of leafing through:
A
as in "Army." -- They don't want you guys.
B
as in "Business." -- We started small in Bedburg, but then.
C
as in "Currency." -- Nowadays the mark isn't worth fifty pfennigs.
D
as in "Dinner." -- Why don't you have a bite with us? No trouble. We'll just open a few cans.
E
as in "Easter." -- Just think of it. Walli will be going to school after Easter. It's been a long time.
F
as in "Fanatic." -- Like you. They never get anywhere in life.
G
as in "Goods." -- Just feel it. No, it's not Scotch. We make it ourselves. That's why we can sell cheaper than.
H
as in "Harpsichord." -- This one's Italian-made. We picked it up in Amsterdam. Pretty good buy.
I
as in "Igloo." -- We're as snug as a bug in a rug.
J
as in "Journey." -- Last year we went to Austria. Burgenland. You need a change now and then. It's dirt cheap and still so unspoiled.
K
as in "Kennel." -- When are you going to get rid of that dog?
L
as in "Life." -- This is the only one we've got.
M
as in "Maid." -- The one before last got fresh before the first week was out.
N
as in "Nature." -- The grounds include two acres of woods and a duck pond.
O
as in "Oskar." -- He's from Danzig, too, he was putting on a show in the Onion Cellar for a while.
P
as in "Pearls." -- Jochen gave me these for our anniversary.
Q
as in "Qualm." -- At first the Chamber of Commerce had qualms about us, but when Jochen showed them our credentials.
R
as in "Raspberries." -- Raspberry jelly and yoghurt, that's what we eat for breakfast now.
T
as in "Textiles." -- Goldmouth tipped us off.
U
as in "Underground." -- No, no idea where he is.
V
as in "Vanished." -- Oh well, maybe he'll turn up one of these days.
W
as in "Walli." -- She's our child, Walter. Don't go making any claims.
X
as in "Xylophone." -- Or cymbal, that's what they play at the Czikos. Should we drop in for a little while?
Y
as in "Yucat
á
n." -- That's another place we could go. Just been opened.
Z
as in "Zombie." -- No, that's no good any more. Let's go to the Morgue. You've really got to see it. It'll shake you. Absolutely wild. The limit. Downright crazy. You'll love it. Well, anyway it's fun. You'lllaughyourselfsick. Medicalsotospeak. Nakednoofcoursenot. Everythingontop. Andsohighclass. Cutthroughthemiddle. Makesyouwanttothrowup. Sadistic bestial weird. Theyoughttocloseitdown. Buttheydon't. We've been there millionsoftimes. Theygiveyouyamstoeat. It'sJochen'streat.

Inge's idea is that Pluto should stay with the maid in the five-room apartment to guard the sleeping Walli, but Matern insists that Pluto come along to the Morgue. Sawatzki suggests: "Hadn't we better go to the Czikos?" But Inge is dead set on the Morgue. The three of them with dog push off. Up Flingerstrasse, down Bolkertstrasse. Naturally the Morgue, like all authentic Düsseldorf nightclubs, is in the Old City. Who owns the place is uncertain. Some speak of F. Schmuh, owner of the Onion Cellar. Otto Schuster of the Czikos is also mentioned. Right now Film-Mattner, owner of the Choo-Choo and the Dacha, which they had first wanted to call the "Troika," is the coming man; just recently he opened a new joint, the Fleamarket. But at the time when Matern went out on the town with dog and Sawatzkis, he was only starting out. Along Mertenstrasse, before they venture into the Morgue, Inge Sawatzki racks her brains behind her doll's face that has grown five years older: "I really wonder who hit on the idea. Somebody had to think of it, didn't they? Goldmouth used to say such funny things sometimes. Of course we never believed the line he spills. In business matters you can trust him, but in other things? For instance, he tried to make us believe that he'd owned a whole ballet. And all that tripe about the Front Line Theater during the war and so on. And he's certainly not a pure Aryan. They'd have noticed that in those days. I asked him a couple of times: Tell me, Goldmouth, where do you actually come from? Once he said Riga, another time: They call it Swibno today. What it was called before he didn't say. But there must be some truth in the ballet business. Maybe they really didn't notice. They say Schmuh's one too. He's the one with the Onion Cellar. They say he was some kind of an air-raid warden the whole time. But they're the only ones I. And they're both typical. That's why I say that an idea like the Morgue could only have been thought up by somebody like Goldmouth who. You'll see. I'm not exaggerating. Am I, Jochen? It's right after Andreasgasse, across from the Magistrate's Court."

There it is -- in white letters on a black tombstone: THE MORGUE. And yet, if you don't look too closely, it could be a plain funeral parlor. In the window there's even an ivory-colored child's coffin -- empty. And the usual: wax lilies and unusually attractive coffin mountings. Pedestals fitted with white velvet support photographs of first-class funerals. Wreaths as round as life preservers lean against them. In the foreground stands an impressive stone urn of the bronze age, found, as a small plaque informs one, in Coesfeld near Minister.

Inside, the guests find equally gentle reminders of human transcience. Although they have made no reservations, the Sawatzkis, with Matern and dog, are shown to a table not far from the Swedish movie actress killed in an automobile accident and now lying in state. She is under glass and naturally made of wax. A white quilt, showing no contours, the welted edges attenuated by clouds of lace, covers the actress to the navel; but from the softly wavy black hair to the waist, the left half of her, the cheek, the chin, the gently sloping neck, the barely delineated collarbone, the steeply rising bosom are of waxen, yet pink-and-yellow-skinned flesh; to the right, however, as seen by Matern and the Sawatzkis, the illusion is created that a surgeon's scalpel has laid her bare; also modeled in wax, but true to life: heart, spleen, and the left kidney. The prize package is the heart, which beats exactly as it should, and a few of the Morgue's customers are always standing around the glass case, trying to see how it works.

Hesitantly, Inge Sawatzki last, they sit down. In indirectly lighted wall niches the roving eye distinguishes various parts of the human skeleton, the arm with radius and ulna, the inevitable death's-head, but also clearly displayed in large labeled flasks, as though for purposes of instruction, the lobe of a lung, a cerebrum, a cerebellum, and a placenta. There is even a library offering book after book, not glassed in but ready at hand: volumes on general physiology, richly illustrated, and more exacting works for the specialist -- an account, for example, of experiments in the grafting of organs and a two-volume study of the pituitary gland. And between the niches, all of the same format and framed in good taste, photographs and engravings of celebrated physicians: Paracelsus, Virchow, Sauerbruch, and the Greek god of medicine leaning on a snake-entwined staff watch the guests at dinner.

The menu is nothing unusual: wiener schnitzel, beef brisket with horseradish, calves' brains on toast, beef tongue in Madeira, lamb kidneys flambd, even common pig's knuckles, and the usual roast chicken with French-fried potatoes. At most the cutlery and china are deserving of mention: Matern and the Sawatzkis eat calves' knuckles with sterile dissecting instruments; around the plates runs the inscription: "Academy of Medicine -- Autopsy"; the beer, common D
ü
sseldorf brew, foams in Erlenmeyer flasks; but otherwise there is no exaggeration. The average restaurant owner or proponent of the Düsseldorf modern style, the now-prominent Film-Mattner and his interior decorators, for instance, would have made too much of a good thing. They might, for example, have run off tape recordings of operating-room sounds: the slow, chewinggum-sluggish counting before the anesthetic takes effect, whispered or sharp instructions, metal touches metal, a saw functions, something buzzes on one note, something else pumps more and more slowly, then faster, staccato instructions, heart sounds, heart sounds. . . Nothing of the kind. Not even muffled dinner music fills the Morgue with irrelevant sound. Softly the dissecting instruments tinkle over the main course. Evenly sprinkled conversation at every table; but the tables again, apart from the damask tablecloths, are authentic: operating-room tables, elongated, on rollers, adjustable, are not mercilessly illuminated by powerful operating-room lamps, but watched over and bathed in a warm, personal light by charmingly old-fashioned, definitely Biedermeier lampshades. Nor are the guests doctors in civilian clothes, but, like the Sawatzkis and Matern, business people with friends, an occasional member of the provincial diet, a sprinkling of foreigners whose hosts want to show them something special, rarely young couples, and in every case consumers who wish to spend money on their evening out; for the Morgue -- originally it was to be called the "Mortuary" -- isn't exactly cheap, and besides, it's full of temptations. At the bar sit none of the usual hostesses, encouraging liquor consumption, no such sexy tactics as at the Rififi or the Taboo; instead, conservatively dressed young men, in a word, graduate physicians, are prepared, over a glass of champagne, well, perhaps not to provide final diagnoses, but to tell instructive and yet generally intelligible tales out of school. Here, far from his overkindly family doctor, many a guest has been made aware for the first time that his ailment bears this or that name, arteriosclerosis, for instance. Deposits of a fatty substance, cholesterol for example, have caused a hardening of the blood vessels. Amiably, but without the familiarity characteristic of most barroom conversation, the learned employee of the Morgue calls attention to possible consequences, coronary thrombosis, apoplexy, or what have you, then beckons a colleague, sitting nearby over a drink, to come over: The colleague, a biochemist and authority on the metabolism of fats, enlightens the guest -- they stick to champagne -- about animal fats and vegetable fats: "You needn't worry, the only fats used in our establishment are those containing acids that reduce cholesterol: our calves' brains on toast are prepared with pure corn oil. We also use sunflower oil and, you may be surprised to learn, even whale oil, but never lard or butter."

The Sawatzkis, especially Inge Sawatzki, try to persuade Matern, who has been troubled by kidney stones of late, to join one of the "B-doctors," as Inge calls them, at the bar. But Matern dislikes the idea of crossing the room, and so Sawatzki with a gesture summons one of the young men, who introduces himself as a urologist. No sooner has the word "kidney stones" been dropped than the young man insists on ordering the juice of two lemons: "You see, we used to be glad if we could eliminate small stones with a long and troublesome treatment; our lemon cure brings better results and all in all it's less expensive. We simply dissolve the stones, but only the so-called urate stones, I have to admit. Generally speaking, our guests' urine is normal at the end of two months. On one condition, I'm sorry to say: absolutely no liquor."

Matern puts down the beer he has just picked up. Not wishing to outstay his welcome, the urologist -- it has come out that he studied under big men in Berlin and Vienna -- takes his leave: "Against oxalate stones -- you can see them over there, in the second case from the left -- we are still powerless. But our lemon cure -- perhaps you'd like me to leave you a prospectus -- is the simplest thing in the world. Herodotus tells us that the Babylonians were curing kidney stones with lemon juice more than two thousand years ago; of course when he speaks of stones the size of an infant's head, we have to bear in mind that Herodotus was sometimes given to exaggeration."