The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse (26 page)

He found his first words:

“Gunther, where did you come from? What has happened? Gunther! Gunther! Do speak, please, say just one word!”

No answer came.

Again he ran helplessly through his room—what ever should he do!—then knelt down before him again.

The boy lay there as if lifeless, his eyes closed.

Desperation gripped him.

He took him again in his arms, carried him to the sofa, covered him with all the blankets he could obtain, tore them off again, and began to undress him. First his shoes and socks. Water ran from them over his hands.

His feet were ice cold, like his hands, ice cold, frozen, bloody in spots.

He rubbed them, rubbed and rubbed.

He looked into his deathly pale face, into a gray, strange face.

“My God,” he thought, “if he dies here under my hands!”

He tried to consider. He drew him onto his breast, let him go again, breathed on him, and rubbed, rubbed again and again.

“Gunther, my Gunther, do speak, please, say just a word,” he whispered, “tell me that you still live!”

The boy, lying as if dead, let everything happen to him. His head fell again and again against the breast of his friend.

No, this won’t do! the latter thought.

It occurred to him that he must still have some cognac in the cabinet. He rushed there, grabbed the bottle, and filled the first glass he came to. He skimmed the yellow liquid between the bluish lips. Another sip—

He waited for the effect. The glass shook in his hand.

He waited anxiously. For a long time. Finally!

It seemed to help.

After about five minutes the boy opened his eyes and looked at him.

“Hermann!” he said softly. “Hermann!” Then he fell back again.

He lived! He lived!

“Yes, my darling, be still. Don’t talk. You are with me.”

Now yet another sip. The glass was almost empty.

What should he further do? He tried to consider.

Was it warm enough in the room? Yes, it was warm.

He must first get him out of his clothes, out of the wet, cold clothing.

As before with the torn, almost soleless shoes, the dripping socks, so now he began to undress him completely. Piece by piece he drew the rags and tatters from the body lying there motion-less—the jacket, the pants, the wool shirt—everything soaked through down to the last fiber.

A horrible smell arose from the bundle, which he rolled up and threw into a corner.

Again he rubbed his feet, his hands, his breast.

Now he lay there naked. He covered him anew in the blankets, up to his neck. His eyes were again closed fast, his lips lay pressed together.

He ran around in the room again: made hot water on the stove, fetched a pan from the bedroom, and his large sponge.

When the water was warm enough, he uncovered him again and began to wash him, infinitely carefully, as if he could hurt him with each light movement. But the boy appeared to feel nothing. He washed his legs, his breast, his neck, and his face. He stroked his hair smooth.

“Gunther! Gunther!” he whispered again and again, but the boy continued to lie there motionless.

Only now, when there was nothing more to do, did he look at him and a sob choked his throat.

My God, how emaciated he was! All the ribs of his slim, sunken-in breast stood out, his shoulder bones, the joints of his arms, everything so thin, so wasted, fleshless, and his skin so gray, so bloodless.

A horrible thought flashed through the man standing there. With as gentle a movement as possible, he took the body—light as a feather—and turned him over. No, on his back, from which the shoulder blades projected sharp and hard, there were no visible traces of mishandling—of beatings.

After he had drawn over him one of his own shirts, he let him sink down again and covered him anew—thick and tight, so that only his face still showed.

He did not know what to do now.

He sat beside him and looked at him anxiously.

His gaze never left the face on the pillow.

It was still gray and lifeless, but it did seem no longer so deathly pale.

He bent over to his mouth.

He was breathing. There was no doubt; he was breathing. He lived.

He shoved his hand under the cover and laid it over his heart. It appeared to beat. Weakly, but it was beating.

He considered again. No, he could do nothing now but wait, until life had returned.

He looked at him. Steadfastly. He was unable to think. He only felt how his own heart beat like mad and his knees trembled.

He sat and watched him, anxious, waiting. After a quarter of an hour, the cheeks there before him appeared lightly, quite lightly, to redden. His cracked lips, too, were no longer so bluish as before.

He reached for his hands. They were still cold, but no longer quite like ice.

Again he bent over him . His breath seemed to Graff to be coming stronger.

He listened. He appeared to be sleeping. But did he not just now speak?

What had he said? He had not understood it.

He listened, again closely bent over, tense. “Hungry!” It was only a whisper.

Hungry!

Hermann spoke close to his ear:

“Gunther, do you hear me? Are you hungry? Do you want to eat? What do you want to eat?”

Then he saw the boy open his eyes and stare at him.

Faintly but clearly he heard him speak again: “Eat!”

“Yes, eat! Of course. Whatever you want. What do you want to have, my boy?”

He looked around at a loss. He had almost nothing in the house. Nothing of what was necessary now.

Gunther was now awake. He lay motionless, looking at him with large and quite dark eyes. But he spoke not a word.

Graff pulled himself together.

He laid his arm around the pillow and said:

“Gunther can you hear me? Do you understand what I’m saying? Can you stay alone a moment? Only five minutes. You know no one will come. I’ll go around the corner quickly and buy something. Just for a very short time. I’ll be right back!”

The boy appeared to understand. He nodded wordlessly.

But Graff still hesitated. Should he leave him here alone? Surely. Who could come? Never did anyone come here to him. No one knew that he was here with him. What could happen to him in those couple of minutes!

It was surely not only the cold, it was his losing strength from hunger.

Eat—that was now the main thing.

Eat—he had just said so himself.

Yes, he might go calmly. But where could he get anything today? All the shops were closed today and tomorrow for Christmas.

The pub in the neighborhood, where he often ate, occurred to him. A kind old waiter was there. He would help.

Once more he glanced back at the room before he left. The lamp was burning peacefully on the table by the sofa. The boy lay there sleeping again, as it appeared. Nothing disturbed the quiet of the room.

He lived. He was rescued. He was breathing calmly.

He reached for his handbag. It was the same one that had accompanied the two of them that time to Potsdam and had not been used since.

He left hesitantly. But he would be right back.

*

He had hardly closed the apartment door behind him than light, inaudible steps glided over the corridor. They stopped before his room.

Then the latch was softly pressed down and two black, sparkling eyes looked into the room, glancing over the disorder in the room, the table, and, brightly lit by the lamp, the form of the sleeping boy in the pillows on the sofa.

She lit up with satisfaction.

Then the door closed again just as quietly, a tall, lean, black figure disappeared again, and the soundless steps glided back through the darkness of the hall.

*

Hermann had luck.

The old waiter in the pub, which still had very few customers at this early afternoon hour of the first day of the holiday, gave him everything he wanted: cold cuts, butter, sausage, a loaf of bread, a couple of eggs, and a bottle of red wine, more than his bag could contain and almost more than the pocket of his overcoat could hold.

When he returned to his room, he found everything unchanged.

Gunther was sleeping now and obviously soundly.

He could not bring himself to wake him. Food was necessary when he awoke, but sleep was now the best medicine. With sleep, warmth would return, and with it, strength and health.

He is not sick, he told himself. Only tired, dead tired.

He took the lamp away from the table and carried it to the desk, so that the sofa lay in half-darkness.

Then he arranged the things he had purchased on the table and brought plate, knife, and fork, so as to have everything ready when he awakened.

When everything was done, he sat down again beside him.

Color had now returned to the sleeping boy’s face, indeed it appeared as if he now had a fever. He felt his forehead—it was hot and sweaty. His hands were burning, and his body in the pillows was warm and moist.

He became calmer.

Only now, as he was sitting beside him again, listening to every breath of new life, there came to him for the first time in this hour (only one hour had gone by—not possible!), there came to him for the first time the thought that he had him again! It was not a joy, nor an ecstasy—it was something still incomprehensible.

He did not yet ask himself: What had happened? What had they done to him that he returned like this? Those people, those people!

He did not yet ask himself anything.

He only knew that he had him again! He was again with him! He was lying there! He—lived!

Gunther slept and slept. But Graff was glad to see it. It was the healthy sleep of recovery.

And in the long hours of the dying day, of this quiet evening, of this long night, in which he sat almost motionless beside him and hardly looked away from his face, he forgot what he had suffered for him, he forgot everything, everything, as if it had never been, in the one blissful thought:

He is again mine! I have him again!

He scarcely moved.

Only once did he lay his temple on his hot forehead, as if to make sure that he was not dreaming—that it was reality.

And then he continued to watch—calm and composed.

Gunther was sleeping and continued to sleep.

Morning broke, the lamp went out for lack of fuel, and from outside the white radiance of the light on the snow came into the room. The watching man could only indistinctly recognize the pale face in the blankets and pillows.

Graff would not have been able to sleep.

He spoke to himself.

This young man, who never had anyone with to whom he could pour out the joys and sufferings of his heart, no mother and no friend; who had always been alone with himself, with everything that lifted him up or depressed him, now softly spoke to the boy who was lying there, and who was the only one in the world he loved, to him who could not and did not hear him, spoke—softly to the small face in the pillow before him:

“I loved you when I saw you for the first time, on that spring day in which you fled from me in fright. I loved you in thought, weeks and weeks. I loved you when I saw you again and you were a stranger to me. I loved you when you disappeared, hated you and yet loved you all the more. I loved you in every trait when you came to me and became mine. I loved you when you were lost to me once more. I loved you when you laughed; when you sulked; when you were indifferent (to me and to everything). I love you today, as you lie here before me, so very much changed. I will always love you! Nothing in the world have I loved so much as you! Nothing will I ever love so much, nothing!”

Only in the morning, tired out after the sleepless night and from the terrible excitement of it and the previous hours, did he fall asleep, in his chair and in his clothes, and he only awoke toward noon, the noon of the second day of the holiday.

5

It was he who woke first.

For Gunther continued to sleep, calmly and soundly. Let him sleep, he thought.

Then the first thing he did was to renew the fire in the stove.

In this connection, too, he had made himself independent of his landlady. Next to the stove lay always a high pile of briquettes.

His coffee stood before the door, long grown cold. In the house the usual quiet reigned.

He wrote a note and laid it on the chair in front of the door:

“I am not going out today. Please wait until tomorrow to make the room.” An hour later the chair and note had been silently taken away. He was certain not to be disturbed today. By nothing.

After he had washed and changed clothes he began to put the room in order: he straightened up the chairs, opened the windows for a quarter of an hour, after convincing himself that the sleeping boy was well covered up, hung the discarded clothes between the windows to dry and air, finally ate something himself, and waited again.