Dog Years (82 page)

The friends clink their glasses, while the fire on the floor spreads and begins to lick the plank walls. Beer glass and lemonade glass meet and tinkle obediently, while in the increasing heat the chorus of martyred ballet slippers under the ceiling begins a little dance:
é
chapp
é
crois
é
,
é
chapp
é
effac
é
, assembl
é
assembl
é
, petits battements sur le cou-de-pied.
What an inspiring ballet master fire can be! But the truly applause-worthy miracle is wrought by the hot lemonade: Jenny's drops and the pinch of sparkling mica produce a miraculous effect: with a gentle voice, a trifle too high, rather too soft, so that whole words are drowned out by the ballet-directing work sounds of the fire, Goldmouth, who despite the flaming environment refuses to stop smoking, tells exciting schoolbook tales, with and without points. Not to be outdone, Matern tells stories of his own, which fill in certain gaps in Goldmouth's stories. And Jenny, too, knows stories. Around this quartet, busy entertaining each other -- for Pluto listens -- the fire tells a story which appeals to the hot-air ballet under the ceiling: the
corps de ballet
reacts with precise
pas de chat
and doesn't ever want to stop alternating feet:
pas de bourr
é
e, pas de bourr
é
e!
And while the photographs full of attitudes and arabesques turn brown at the lower edges; while at the bar the Goldmouth story, supported by Materniads, flows into a lemonade-hot Jenny story; while photographs curl, then shrivel, while stories find no end and the ballet unleashed above the fire executes daring glissades, outside the fire department begins to tell its hose-long story.

Presto! Goldmouth has to hurry through his scarecrow stories; Matern really ought to unwind his dog stories more quickly; Jenny would do well to hurry her mica-gneiss leg ends, in which forest hussars and Gypsies, tinkers and Tsiganes hunt hedgehogs, toward the final feast, the hedgehog banquet; for neither Goldmouth nor Jenny nor Matern, who takes a symbolic view of the dog, can narrate as fast as the blaze is devouring wood. Already attitudes and arabesques have left rigid photographed poses to join in the play of the fire. Already ingenious choreography mingles the
pas assembl
é
s
of the slipper-dancers with the sweeping
pas jet
é
s
of male flames. In a word, the whole shack, except for a small part of the story-obsessed bar, is going up in smoke. Quickly then the story about the scarecrows who turned the tables at the battle of Leuthen. And follow up with Matern's tale about how he poisoned a black dog with the help of the Virgin Mary. And Jenny -- how the fire becomes the withered Giselle, what fine fresh bloom the heat lends her -- in swift words set with tiny mica mirrors, a newly kindled beauty tells how a little seasoning transformed common hot lemonade into Goldmouth's elixir. With every new cigarette, Goldmouth lashes on the company, now huddled on top of the bar with dozing dog. "More stories. More stories. Keep going! As long as we're telling stories, we're alive. As long as stories keep coming, with or without a point, dog stories, eel stories, scarecrow stories, rat stories, flood stories, recipe stories, stories full of lies and schoolbook stories, as long as stories have power to entertain us, no hell can take us in. Your turn, Walter. Tell stories as long as you love your life."

Gone the ballet, replaced by crackling applause. Nine-tailed flames wag their tails and mate. Shanty wood goes to meet its destiny. The fire department does its duty. The heat would be oppressive if not for Matern's frost-crunching January stories: "Only in the East are winters that cold. And when it snowed up there, it snowed in earnest, for days and days. The snow covered everything over, everything. That's why the snow men in the East were always bigger than the snow men in the West, even way back. And when it began to thaw, we had our hands full, believe me. It was in January, when the sea was frozen over from Hela to Weichselmünde, that my ancestors, who still called themselves Materna, liked best to. . ."

Oh, Matern knows how to evoke the remote past when the lighting is right. The fire serves up its second course, spits out bone gnawed soft and red-hot nails, gobbles loudly, laps up rivers of beer, makes rows of bottles burst: Stobbe's Juniper, jugs of Steinh
ä
ger, Double Juniper, rot-gut schnapps and fine spirits, framboise and mild Bisquit, blended brandy and genuine arrack, Mampe's Half and Half, White Horse, sherry, blackberry brandy, chartreuse and gin, slender kümmel, cura
ç
ao so sweet, Hussar's Coffee. . . spirits! what a lovely, transcendence-caressing word. Spirit kindles spirit while Matern, thinking back to the past, sets up a row of Materniads: "There were two of them, brothers. And the story begins with Gregor Materna in the year 1408. In that year he went from Danzig to London, where he was given short weight of salt, a mortal insult. Paid back in blood, by God! And he went back home and demanded justice, but didn't get it. And he raised hell outside the Artushof, where no one was allowed to bear arms, but he did, and used them. Whereupon they outlawed him, yes, outlawed him! But he didn't let the grass grow under his feet, he gathered henchmen: what was left of the dispersed band, once led by Hans Briger, the journeyman butcher, which had set fires such as this one and committed murders: Bobrowski joined him and Hildebrand Berwald, to mention only a few. To make a long story short: One thing happened near Subkau, something else was swung in Elbing; in January frost he raided the length and breadth of the Knights' country, cut the throat of the councillor Martin Rabenwald and filled him chock-full of lead. Then, because the cold refused to subside, he specialized in arson: Langgarten, along with the Church of St. Barbara and the howling Hospital of St. Barbara, went up in flames. He razed the beautiful, gaily painted Breitgasse. Finally Zantor, the voivod in Posen, caught him and hanged him. On September 14th, that's it, 1502. But if you think that was the end of it you're mistaken and doomed to burn. For now comes his brother, Simon Materna, avenges Gregor Materna, and regardless of the seasons sets fire to timber-frame houses and proud-gabled granaries. He maintains a storehouse for pitch, tar, and sulphur on Putzig Bay, and employs over three hundred maids, who all have to be maidens, winding tinder matches. He supplies the monasteries of Oliva and Karthaus with funds, and zealous monks make him pitch torches. Thus equipped, he sets Petersiliengasse and Drehergasse flaming to high heaven. In this fire, laid especially for the purpose, he roasts twelve thousand pork sausages, a hundred and three sheep, and seventeen oxen to a fine crisp -- not to mention the poultry, Island geese and Kashubian ducks -- and feeds, yes by God, feeds the city's poor, the beggars from the suburbs, the cripples from Holy Ghost Hospital, and all those who come hobbling from Mattenbuden and the New City. And the houses of the patricians sizzle and sputter in rooster-red fire. Pepper sacks season the blaze, while food is roasted for the sick and hungry. Oh, Simon Materna -- if they hadn't caught him and hanged him, he'd have set the world on fire to provide all the downtrodden with juicy roasts from the spit. And from him, the first class-conscious pyrotechnist, I am descended, yes, by God. And socialism will triumph, yes, by God."

This uproar, soon followed by endless gales of laughter -- Goldmouth has launched a merry schoolbook story or two -- lends the shanty fire, seen from outside, a touch of fiendish terror; for not only are the usual onlookers, an easy prey for anything that smacks of ghosts, gripped with dread; but even the fire fighters of West Berlin, though good Protestants by birth and upbringing, have no thought but to cross themselves. The next wave of diabolical laughter sweeps away all four fire brigades. The helmeted men barely take time to roll up valuable hoses. Leaving the shanty fire to its own resources -- strange to say, it shows no inclination to spread and consume the whole row of sheds -- the fire fighters drive off with the well-known din. And not even a fire warden comes forward to hold vigil by the fire, for all ears are plugged with horror: in the heart of the furnace, diabolical guests are carousing; by turn they roar Communist slogans and burst into bestial laughter, after which the stage is taken over by a tenor, who sings higher than darting flames and fiery glow can sing: Latin, as sung in Catholic churches, desecrates Potsdamer Strasse from the Control Commission Building past Bülowstrasse.

The Sports Palace has never' heard anything like it: a
Kyrie
that strikes sparks, a
Gloria in excelsis Deo
that teaches long-fingered flames to fold their hands. The arias are Goldmouth's offering. With mica-spiked, lemon-slim voice and childlike, forthright faith, he -- the fire has finished the third course and is still nibbling hungrily at the dessert -- believes:
in unum Deum.
The tenderly clinging
Sanctus
is followed by a
Hosanna
to which Goldmouth manages to lend an echo-like polyphony. But when, in the velvety andante, the
Benedictus
breaks all altitude records, Matern, whose eyes have withstood all the smoke, can no longer hold back the tears: "Spare us the
Agnus Dei!"
But it's the jubilant round that pours Matern's emotion, which is threatening to spread to Jenny and Pluto, into a silk handkerchief: Goldmouth goes on singing
Dona nobis
until the grateful listeners have regained their composure and the flames, tongues, and sparks have all gone to sleep. The volutes of a pianissimo
amen
are spread like a blanket over the charred beams, molten glass, and the hot-air ballet that has sunk dead-tired to ashes.

Themselves tired, they crawl over the unharmed bar and leave the slumbering scene of the fire. Cautiously, step by little step, the dog in the lead, they reach the deserted Potsdamer Strasse, guarded only by street lamps. Jenny says how tired she is, and wants to go right off to bed. The drinks still have to be paid for. Goldmouth appoints himself host. Jenny wants to go home alone: "Nobody is interested in me." But the gentlemen insist on lending their protection. In Mansteinstrasse, across from Leydicke's, they say good night. At the house door Jenny, poor creature who is always being left behind, says: "You'd better go beddy-by too. You old night owls. Tomorrow's another day."

But for the two others, who are more likely to leave than to be left behind, the night is still young. And nature's immortal creation also stands fresh and attentive on four legs: "Heel, Pluto."

For there is still a leftover that wants to be tasted. On the one hand a leftover of cigarettes, lighted one from an other, wish to go their way up Yorckstrasse past the Memorial Library, on the other hand an insubstantial leftover demands to be spoken of; it lodges between teeth and sets them on edge, all thirty-two of them.

But Goldmouth dotes on music such as this: "How happy it makes me, dear Walter, to hear you grind your teeth as in the blessed days of Amsel."

Matern, however, doesn't like to hear himself. In his in nermost being -- for the Grinder has an innermost being -- he is staging wrestling bouts. Across Zossen Bridge, along Urban Harbor, the wrestlers grunt and groan. Lord knows who's trying to throw whom. Probably the whole Materna tribe is in there fighting: all conquering heroes on the look out for worthy opponents. Is Goldmouth, for instance, fit for the ring? There he goes again with cynical talk, cynically smoking cigarettes that call everything into question. What in the fiery furnace was a jubilant credo without ambiguity, degenerates, not far from Admiral Bridge, into hoarse and cacophonous ifs and buts. Nothing in him is pure. Always standing values on their heads, so the pants slip down to the knees. His favorite theme: "The Prussians in general and the Germans in particular." Words of insidious praise for this people, among which he was doomed to suffer before and after the snow man. That won't do, Goldmouth! Even if it's May and the buds are popping: how can a man be in love with his murderers!

But even his love of Germany, when you listen carefully, is a twining of cynical laurel, taken from wax funeral wreaths. For instance, Goldmouth strews professions of faith across the Landwehr Canal: "I have found out, and you can take it from me, that the best and most long-lasting stamp pads are manufactured and utilized in the area bounded -- as the song puts it -- by the Adige and the Belt, the Meuse and the Memel."

With voice gone hoarse again, the smoker tosses sententious utterances into the claw-studded air along Maybach-Quay. His coffin nail participates in his remarks, shuttling from corner to corner of his mouth: "No, my dear Walter, you may still feel bitterness toward your great fatherland -- but I love the Germans. Ah, how mysterious they are, how full of the forgetfulness which is pleasing to God! Not giving it a thought, they cook their pea soup on blue gas flames. And another thing: what other country in the world can boast such brown, velvety gravies?"

The scarcely flowing canal runs straight as a die. But then comes a fork: the left prong heads for the eastern port; up ahead lies the border of the Soviet sector; the right prong develops into the Neuk
ö
lln Ship Canal. As the two of them with faithful dog stand on this memorable spot -- across from them lies Treptow: everybody has heard of the war memorial -- Goldmouth indulges in words which, though worthy of the fork in the canal, carry noxious flotsam in their flow: "Of course you may say that every man is a potential scarecrow; for after all, this should never be forgotten, the scarecrow was created in man's image. All nations are arsenals of scarecrows. But among them all it is the Germans, first and foremost, even more so than the Jews, who have it in them to give the world the archetypal scarecrow someday."