Dog Years (71 page)

Matern sulks and drinks tea. Knotted in his entrails, twined round heart, spleen, and tortured kidneys, the rosary chatters: Opportunist! Potential Nazi! Phony! Opportunist! Potential Nazi! But over the teacup a sheepish voice: "Theater? Never again. Self-confidence gone? Possibly. There's also the leg injury. Hardly noticeable, yes I know, but on the stage? The rest is in good shape, organ of speech, energy, enthusiasm. Ah yes, everything but the opportunity."

Then, after three Empire clocks have been permitted to tick for a minute or two undisturbed, the redeeming words fall from Rolf Zander's mouth. The rather delicate little man paces the floor of the suitable room, speaking softly, sagely, sympathetically. Outside, in the park, trees drip a reminder of the short-lived August storm. As Dr. Zander talks, his hand caresses book spines on broad shelves, or he takes out a book, opens it, hesitates, imparts a quotation which fits easily into his monologue, puts the book away booklovingly. Outside, the dusk brings the trees closer together. Inside, Zander comes to rest among the fruits of a lifelong collec tor's passion -- Balinese dance masks, demonic Chinese marionettes, colored morris dancers -- without damming his flow of speech. Twice the housekeeper comes in with fresh tea and pastry; she too a rare piece like the Empire clocks, first editions, and musical instruments from Hindustan. Matern sprawls in the armchair. The standing lamp communicates with his polished skull. Pluto makes raiding sounds in his sleep: a dog as old as the trees outside. Inside, Zander speaks of his work on the radio. He takes care of the early morning hours and bedtime: children's program and late night program. No contradiction for Zander, on the contrary. He speaks of tensions, of building bridges between. We must find our way back if we are to. At one time Matern too was allowed to sound off on a children's radio program. He was Little Red Riding Hood's Wolf; he devoured the seven kids. "Splendid!" Zander joins the threads: "We need voices, voices like yours, Matern. Voices that stand up in space. Voices that resemble the elements. Voices that carry, voices that bend the bow. Voices that give resonance to our past. For instance, we've been working up a new program, thinking of calling it 'Discussion with the Past,' or better still, 'discussion with our past.' A young colleague of mine, a countryman of yours, incidentally -- talented, dangerously so, I'm almost inclined to think -- is trying to develop new forms of radio entertainment. I can easily imagine that in our station you, my dear Matern, you in particular, might work your way into a vocation commensurate with your talents. Urgent search for truth. The eternal question of man. Whence come we -- whither are we going? Silence has barred the way, but now speech will open the gate! -- What do you say?"

Thereupon the age-old dog awakens hesitantly, and Matern says yes. Shake on it? -- Shake on it. Day after tomorrow, 10 a.m. at the Radio Building? -- Day after tomorrow at ten. But be punctual. -- Punctual and sober. May I call you a cab? -- Dr. Rolf Zander is entitled to charge the West German Radio. All expenses are deductible. All risks are tax-exempt. Every Matern finds his Zander.

THE HUNDREDTH PUBLICLY DISCUSSED MATERNIAD

He speaks rumbles roars. His voice enters every home. Matern, the popular radio speaker. The children dream of him and his voice, which awakens all their terrors. It will go rumbling on and little children grown into shriveling old folks will say: "In my childhood we had a radio uncle, whose voice gave me, took away from me, inspired me, forced me, so that sometimes even now, but that's how it is with any number of Maternoids, who in those days." But right now adults, upon whom other voices have set their stamp, make use of Matern's voice as an aid in child rearing; when the kids act up, their mother threatens: "Do you want me to turn the radio on again and let the wicked uncle speak?"

Over medium wave and short wave, a bogeyman can be brought into the room. His voice is in demand. And other stations want Matern to speak, rumble, and roar in their broadcasting rooms. His colleagues, it is true, remark in private that his pronunciation is bad, that he lacks training, but they have to admit that his voice has a certain something: "That atmospheric quality, that barbaric uncouthness, that voracious na
ï
vet
é
is worth its weight in gold -- people are sick of perfection nowadays."

Matern buys a date book, for every day, sometimes here sometimes there and at specified hours, his voice is recorded. He speaks rumbles roars mostly over the West German Radio, sometimes over the Hessian Radio, never over the Bavarian, occasionally on the North German, with alacrity and in Low German on the Bremen Station, very recently on the South German Radio in Stuttgart, and, when time permits, on the Southwestern Radio. He steers clear of trips to West Berlin. Consequently, RIAS and the Free Berlin Radio have had to drop their plans for live broadcasts that would rely on the very special character of Matern's voice, but within the exchange program they relay Matern's children's broadcasts from the West German Radio Station in Cologne, where his precious voice is at home.

He has set up housekeeping, he has an address: new building, two rooms, incinerator, kitchenette, built-in cupboards, bar, wide couch; for over the weekend inalienable Ingewife turns up, alone or with Walli. Sawatzki, the gentlemen's outfitter, sends his best. The dog is in the way. It's high time they had a little privacy. The mutt is a nuisance -- like a grandmother who can't contain her water. Though still alert and well trained. How can there be any domestic wellbeing with this animal on the scene? Bleary-eyed, gone to fat in places, and even so, the skin sags on his neck. Still, no one says: "He ought to be done away with." On the contrary, Matern, Ingewife, and Wallichild are agreed: "Let him enjoy his pittance. Our Pluto won't be with us very long anyway. While there's enough for us, there'll always be enough for him." And Matern remembers at his shaving mirror: "He was always a friend in need. Stuck by me in hard times, when I was restless and unstable, when I was chasing a phantom that had many names and yet refused to be captured. The dragon. Evil. Leviathan. The Nothing. Errancy."

Yet occasionally, for all his fine-checked vests, Matern sighs over his omelet. At such times his hunter's eye excepts Ingewife and searches the wall for wallpaper script. But the Bauhaus pattern is unequivocal, and despite their ambivalent modernism the framed prints disclose no secrets. Or there's a pounding in the radiators, Matern pricks up an ear, Pluto stirs, the signals stop, and once again sighs blow copious bubbles. Not until early spring, when the first flies begin to stir, does he find an avocation that makes him forget to sigh for hours on end. Even the doughty little tailor started out with a flyswatter and went on to capture the unicorn. No one will ever know the names he gives to what he catches on the panes, what names he cracks between fingers, the names of his transmigrated enemies, from whom he plucks flyleg after flyleg and lastly the wings, without regret. The sighing persists, wakes up with Matern, goes to bed with him, sits with him at tables in the Radio Building canteen, while he is rehearsing his scoundrelly lines for the last time. Because he'll be going on the air in a minute. Matern will have to speak rumble roar. He will have to abandon this half glass of beer. Around him the ladies of the forthcoming programs: the woman's touch. The farmer's voice. Music in the afternoon. The good word for Sunday. Band music. Fifteen minutes of meditation. Our sisters and brothers behind the Iron Curtain. Sports news and racetrack news. Poetry before midnight. Water-level report. Jazz. The Gürzenich Orchestra. The children's program. Colleagues and their colleagues: that one over there, or that one, or the one in the checked shirt without a tie. You know him. Or you might know him. Wasn't he the one who in '43 on the Mius front? Or the one in black and white with the milkshake? Didn't he once? Or wouldn't he have? The whole lot of them! Checked flies, black-and-white flies. Fat blue-bottles over skat chess crosswordpuzzles. Interchangeable. Keep cropping up. O Matern, slowly cicatrizing names are still itching you. There he sighs in serenely bored broadcasting room, and a colleague who hears Matern's heavily laden sigh rising from the center of the earth, pats him on the back: "Man, Matern. What have you got to sigh about? You have every reason to be pleased. You're working full time. Happened to turn on the agony box yesterday, and whom do I hear? This morning I look into the children's room. They've moved the box in there. The kids are sitting there with their tongues hanging out, and whose voice do I hear? You lucky bastard!"

Matern, the booming radio pedagogue, speaks rumbles roars as a permanent robber, wolf, rabble rouser, or Judas. Hoarse as a polar explorer in a snowstorm. Louder than wind velocity 12. As a coughing prisoner with rattling radio chains. As a grumbling miner just before the awful explosion. As the ragingly ambitious mountain climber on the inadequately organized Himalaya expedition. As the gold prospector, the refugee from the East zone, the martinet, the SS guard, the Foreign Legionary, the blasphemer, the slave overseer, and a reindeer in a Christmas play; this last role he has played once before, on the stage as a matter of fact, in his dramatic school days.

Harry Liebenau, his countryman, who directs the children's program under Dr. R. Zander's guidance, says to him: "I'm rather inclined to think that was my first meeting with you. Stadttheater. Children's show. The little Brunies girl, you remember, danced the part of the Snow Queen, and you did the talking reindeer. Made an enormous impression on me, a lasting impression. A fixed point in my development, so to speak. Decisive childhood experience. All sorts of things can be traced back to it."

That shithead with his file-card memory. Wherever he goes stands sits, always shuffling cards. Nothing he hasn't got the dope on: Proust and Henry Miller; Dylan Thomas and Karl Kraus; quotations from Adorno and sales figures; collector of details and tracker down of references; objective onlooker and layer-bare of cores; archive hound and connoisseur of environments; knows who thinks left and who has written right; writes asthmatic stuff about the difficulty of writing; flashbacker and time-juggler; caller-into-question and wise guy; but no writers' congress can dispense with his gift of formulation, his urge to recapitulate, his memory. And the way he looks at me: Interesting case! He thinks I'm grist for his mill. He pinpoints me, closely written, on file cards. Seems to think he knows all about me, because he saw me that time as a talking reindeer and maybe twice in uniform. He was much too young to. When Eddi and I. He couldn't have been more than. But his kind think they know. That capacity for patient listening, for playing the gumshoes with a knowing smile: "Never mind, Matern, I know. If I'd been born a couple of years sooner, I'd have fallen for it just like you. I'm certainly the last one to moralize. My generation, you know, has seen a thing or two. Besides, you adequately demonstrated that you could also. Someday we ought to go over the whole thing objectively and without the usual resentment. Maybe in the 'Discussion' series we've been planning. How does it appeal to you? These children's programs may be useful, but they can't satisfy us in the. Noises, to help people put their children to bed. When you come right down to it, they're nothing but ground-out hokum. The beep-beep between programs is more meaningful. Why not put some life on the air? What we need is facts. How about really spilling your guts? Unburdening your heart. Stuff that hits you in the kidneys!"

Only the spleen is missing. And what the asshole will wear! English custom-made shoes and ski sweater. Maybe a homo too. If I could only remember the guy. Goes on the whole time about his cousin and blinks at me: suggestively. Says his father was the carpenter with the dog -- "Hm, you know!" -- "And my cousin Tulla -- her real name was Ursula -- was crazy about you, back in the shore battery, remember, and later on in Kaiserhafen." He even claims that I was his gunnery instructor -- "The Number 6 mans the fuze setter" -- and that I introduced him to Heidegger's calendar mottoes -- "Being withdraws, losing itself in the. . ." The guy has collected more facts on the subject of Matern than Matern himself could dream up. Yet smooth and affable on the surface. Just thirty, going fat around the chin, and always ready for a joke. He'd have done fine as a Gestapo dick. He dropped in on me recently -- ostensibly to go over a part with me -- and what does he do? He grabs Pluto by the muzzle and feels his teeth or what's left of them. Like a vet. And with an air of mystery: "Strange, very strange. The stop too, and the line between withers and croup. Old as the animal is -- my guess is twenty or more dog years -- it's obvious from the structure of the forequarters and the excellent carriage of the ears. Tell me, Matern, where did you dig up that dog? No, better still, we'll discuss the question publicly. In my opinion this is a situation -- I've told you about my pet idea -- that ought to be developed dynamically and in public. But not in a dull naturalistic vein. The subject calls for formal ingenuity. If you want to hold an audience, you've got to stand your intellect on its head but still let it declaim. A kind of classical drama. Boiled down to one act, but keeping the good old structure: exposition peripeteia castastrophe. Here's how I visualize the set: a clearing in the woods, beeches if you like, birds twittering. You remember Jäschkental Forest, don't you? Well then: the clearing around the Gutenberg monument. We'll throw out old Gutenberg. But we'll keep the temple. And where the father of the printed book used to be, we'll put you. That's right, you, for a starter we drop you, the phenotype Matern, into the temple. So you're standing there under the roof, looking toward the Erbsberg, two hundred and fifty feet above sea level. On the other side of the Erbsberg there's Steffensweg, villa after villa, but we won't show that, only one set, the clearing. Facing the former Gutenberg monument, we'll put up a grandstand for the public, big enough for, well, in round numbers, thirty-two persons. All children and young people between the ages of ten and twenty-one. To the left we might have a small platform for the discussion leader. And Pluto -- amazing animal, troubling resemblance -- the dog can sit beside his master."