Iron Gustav (60 page)

Today he threw only a fleeting glance at the window. Since his last visit, only a new picture postcard series had been added – part sugar, part sour. The pictures were sweet, the text … contemporary smut. One rhyme Widow Quaas had not put in the window – it was a bit too crude for her.

Heinz turned round, looked up and down the empty street and started to play with the little whip. A fine whip, this of Father's. Swish! With a proper whiplash, too, and a nickel-silver handle through which the brass already dimly glimmered. Heinz hadn't held a whip for a long time, and soon he would have to demonstrate with it before his nephews – would he be able to crack it properly? He tried. The street was empty; besides, what did he care what people thought of him? But perhaps he did care a little, for his first attempt was indeed feeble – the crack might have been a dying sigh …

With a frown he looked at the window. No one was watching him, however; his failure had no witness. So this time he lashed out properly, a crack like a pistol shot.

And as if this had been a signal, a girl's head popped out of the
shop door and an angry voice shouted: ‘You seem to have gone quite mad! Will you go away at once? You probably imagine—'

‘Irma!' Heinz was taken completely aback. ‘Listen, Irma …'

‘Oh, bother you! It's finished with us, you stupid boy. I wrote that in my letter.' And the shop door banged to, making the wretched bell tinkle madly. Then he heard the key turn in the lock.

With a bound he was at the door. But once a key has been turned it is too late to press down the latch.

‘Irma!' cried Heinz imploringly to the glass panel entirely obscured by picture postcards. ‘Irma, do open! I only want to explain to you.' This was the first time he had seen Irma for five years and already there was a fresh misunderstanding. ‘Irma,' he implored, glaring at the rubbishy postcards.

A white hand pushed the cards aside. It hung up a notice – a printed notice, the sort of thing Frau Quaas kept in stock for customers – hung up the notice, pushed it straight and disappeared.

Heinz stared. Stupidly. Till he suddenly grew conscious of his ridiculous position – he outside, she probably watching through some slit and laughing at the silly figure he cut. Turning about, he cracked the whip three times in challenge and marched off.

Thank heavens, he thought, that Father gave me the whip. If I hadn't had it! Well, you wait.

A deep, eerie, almost alarming silence reigned in the kitchen of Gertrud Hackendahl, née Gudde. The eleven-year-old Gustav sat, almost motionless, under the light, reading his school book. Now and then he gave a quick glance at his mother, who sat at the table opposite him, sewing. His look returned immediately to his book, and he continued to read, concerned only not to draw his mother's attention.

And
the six-year-old Otto was no different. How often – after he had reorganized his coloured building blocks on the floorboards in front of the hearth – had he been about to shout: ‘Mother! Look at my puffer train!', or ‘Mother, do billy goats have tails?' But even he, who so easily forgot things, swallowed his own words, looked at his mother, and was silent.

On other days, Gertrud Hackendahl would never have tolerated such worrying silence. Of course she was all in favour of accommodation; any handicapped person living with children has from the very beginning to see that disorder does not descend, otherwise their authority will be lost for ever. But there is a big difference between obeying and creeping. On other days, Gertrud would immediately have noticed the children's careful looks and unnatural quiet, and it would not have pleased her. Today, however …

Today, however, she wasn't thinking of the children at all. She sat there and sewed, a deep furrow between her eyebrows, her thin lips pressed hard together. She was completely alone. She had never again felt so lonely since the news of Otto's death reached her. No, now it was perhaps more painful, because she had been so horribly betrayed! Otto had never betrayed her. Otto was always open and honest, never deceitful.

She sewed away at her material as if her needle were red-hot. She tried to recall the pleasure she experienced when the postman had brought her the registered letter that morning, with the news that she had come into an inheritance – that she had become the owner of a house, and on the special island of Hiddensee. She would have her own house, her own boat, her own fields, her own stables, by the sea, where the air never stagnates as it does in this urban wasteland, and where every breath tastes strongly of salty expanse.

A dream expectation had been fulfilled, an accidental inheritance, from some old uncle whom she had hardly ever seen. ‘In the absence of the Testator's last wishes, as the closest known heir …'

A dream had come true – and a mass of faces and of new dreams bombarded her: first, when should she go to look at it all? How she could organize things with the boat and the fishing nets. Whom would she rent the land to – naturally only until Gustav is old enough to deal with it all himself. How she would chat with the people. Oh,
how she had longed for years to speak the local
Plattdeutsch
! She had never liked the Berlin dialect – even in her husband's mouth and in the mouths of her own children it had remained a foreign language to her. Otto will learn fast – Gustav will at first be thoroughly teased at school. These island children are a rough lot!

There were a thousand thoughts and considerations. What will the house look like? She is bound to have been in it, but she can't remember. She tries, and for one moment sees before her the darkness of a brick entrance hall, strewn with white sand, which crackles under her feet. There is a big built-in hearth with an open chimney above it, through which even at midday you could see the stars in the sky – a never-ending miracle of her childhood. But, it is her parents' house she is thinking of! There, in its dark casing, the wall clock is ticking, with painted flowers on its face. However, it was not her parents' house that she had inherited.

She looked at the kitchen clock, a hideous object with a stoneware face. Suddenly she could bear it no longer. Heinz must be told straight away about this inheritance. He must know about it before the children.

She took her coat, locked up the flat, gave the neighbour the key for the children and went on her way. It was a very long way for the fragile woman she was; it was also a difficult one. The paving stones were packed smooth with snow, and the house-owners were not very conscientious about their duty to clear the snow away. Still more important duties were neglected at this time. ‘Oh well – best of luck!' says a Berliner laughing, if someone falls flat on his backside on the pavement.

She mustn't risk falling over. She's convinced that if she did, she would indeed at least break a leg. She walked apprehensively and carefully. Once, she looked with yearning at the electric tram, but a possible inheritance was not to make her light-headed. A return journey would cost half a day's wages – impossible.

She went with furrowed brow, preoccupied by her journey, but equally preoccupied by her visit to the bank. She didn't like to have Heinz called away from his work; she knew that would not go down well. In any case, she wanted to speak to Heinz, so she said, ‘It's an urgent family matter.'

The
doorman carefully folded the list, put it in a drawer, removed his pince-nez from his nose, cleaned it, put it back on, looked penetratingly at Gertrud, and said, ‘Herr Hackendahl is not in the office.'

He then removed the list from the drawer he had just placed it in.

For a moment Gertrud was totally confused. She knew nothing but that Heinz spent his whole working day in this building in a certain room, busy with something called statistics. And now he was not there.

‘Oh, if you please … !' she said to the doorman.

He raised his eyes from the list and looked at her through his pince-nez.

‘Can I please wait here?'

‘As far as I'm concerned,' he replied, and watched her sit in an armchair, looking towards the entrance, so that she could speak to Heinz as soon as he returned. The doorman had first to deal with three or four other visitors. With some he was very polite, whereas to a small messenger boy, who looked freezing cold, he was even more impolite than he had been to her.

Eventually he had time, so he looked over to her and shouted, ‘You there!'

She gave a start, jumped up and went to him. ‘Yes, please?'

‘Have you time to wait?' he asked.

‘Will it be very long?' she replied.

He appeared to be thinking hard and fast. Then he said, ‘Until early the day after tomorrow!' And before she could say anything in return: ‘Because Herr Hackendahl has just taken a three-day holiday.' And then, to destroy her completely: ‘Shouldn't you have known that, if he lives with you?'

She was convinced that she had been messed about. He merely wanted to protect a relative from family matters, leaving the bank's working time unmolested. Or else there had been a mistake …

However, the doorman, who had shown her ample proof of his power and glory, suddenly became human when he saw how upset she was. He got out the holiday list and she saw with her own eyes that Heinz Hackendahl had already gone on holiday yesterday, was on holiday today, and would still be on holiday tomorrow – and Heinz hadn't mentioned it to her!

She
had detached herself from the now very worried doorman and had gone home. She was in such a hurry. She was sure the explanation would be at home. But there was nothing there.

Later the children came. They had eaten, and told her what they had done, and although she only ever answered with ‘Yes' and ‘No' and ‘Really', at first they didn't notice at all that their mother hadn't been there for them all day, until in the end she shouted angrily: ‘For goodness sake be quiet and leave me in peace! Go away and do something!'

Now she was sitting undisturbed and could grumble again. The morning's great pleasure was over. Already when she had gone to Heinz, that pleasure was no longer unadulterated and complete. She had thought that she would have to leave her brother-in-law, her only friend.

But they were already apart; he was no longer her friend. She simply did not know it. She had thought they had everything in common; at least she had never hidden anything from him. But for him it had been different. He had deceived her. If she hadn't happened to have gone to the bank – perhaps such things had often happened and she simply hadn't noticed!

Thoughts of the inheritance returned – and suddenly she greeted it as a redemption. Yes, it meant separation from Heinz. And it was good that the separation came for such understandable reasons. Now she could never live with him again – once mistrust is awoken, it never sleeps again.

No, it was all over.

She tried to imagine life on her island farm – a life with children, animals, wind and water. But it would be so empty … She is so used to him, to someone bright, dependable, when he first came to her. Back then, in summer 1919, when he moved in with her, he was still like a hunted man, restless, without aim.

Then he became steadier. He found an aim: with her to feed the children from the most wretched, often worthless, income. Patient work, day by day, work without glory or thanks – work for work's sake, perhaps, for the sake of a future which neither he, she nor anyone else would know.

She
couldn't remember that he ever lost courage, that he ever slowed down. She recalled no failures.

Oh, Heinz! She thought …

And suddenly she was overwhelmed by a thick, all-enveloping pall of sadness – that sadness that everyone experiences again and again, and that separates a person from the rest of us. Life runs irretrievably through our fingers, and what we once held onto is already gone.

Irretrievable.

‘Mother's crying,' the children whisper, and little Otto is the brave one this time and is with her first. She holds the children and presses them to her. Life flows, runs away. You too will one day leave me and go away – irretrievable.

She didn't look up when he came in. Already outside in the corridor, he whistled contentedly to himself. The children threw themselves at him; she was pleased that she was busy with his meal and didn't have to speak to him. It was exactly the time when he was used to returning from the bank, exactly to the nearest five minutes. What a torment life sometimes is! All the courage to resist disappears; the worst is tolerated simply through weariness.

‘Heinz, Mummy cried!' And ‘Mummy, he brought us a whip!'

Children's sadness and children's joy, mixed together. But the sadness is already almost forgotten. They've got a whip. Mummy will surely be pleased? The older, Gustav, glanced at his mother.

‘Mummy cried, Heinz!' he repeated emphatically. And now that he had done his duty, leaving grown-up tears to grown-up comfort, he devoted himself with his brother entirely to the investigation of the whip.

‘What is it?' asked Heinz. ‘Did you cry? What happened, Tutti?'

‘Nothing. Really nothing. Go to the yard, Gustav. Little Otto, you can't play with the whip here. No, stay here!' She realized that it was better to have the children there. However, she then thought it
cowardly to hide behind them, and said irritably: ‘Oh, go out then! You'll break something up here. Just don't crack it at me!'

‘Stop!' said Heinz to the children who wanted to go out. ‘Where does the whip come from?'

‘Impossible to say,' declared Otto.

‘Let the children go – your meal's getting cold.'

‘One moment, Tutti – you'll be pleased. So where did it come from? Try!'

‘If you came from the bank …'