Kaltenburg (30 page)

My parents conferred in my father's study, I listened at the door, there were the usual neatly addressed envelopes containing seed samples lying on the desk, my father was still working on his tests. I heard a rustling sound, my mother had picked up a packet of taiga grass seeds, she held a sample of a Siberian plant in her hand, either the two of them spoke in low voices or I preferred not to hear them, preferred to interpret a plan of escape as holiday planning.

For a good while my imagination had been gradually enlarging an Atlantic puffin or a razor-billed auk, in my mind the bird had taken on hitherto inconceivable dimensions, and I grouped a flock of great auks around the Steller's sea cow, a massive, heavy animal with a shimmering gray and green hide, resting on its short front flippers. In fact I assumed that the sea cow would be a mounted specimen, although I was sure my parents had not deliberately set out to mislead me. In my mind's eye flesh and muscle and skin spread themselves over the skeletal frame as though of their own accord. Perhaps I would have been disappointed if I really had got to see the animal in February 1945, and I can remember not being altogether able to believe it at first when a colleague later explained in passing that the Steller's sea cow in our collection was just a skeleton, not quite complete.

I
T WAS THE FIRST TIME
Klara had heard of sea cows and great auks, she heard the names with slight incredulity, let me describe to her the appearance of these creatures, the cold, deserted areas that were their home. Nor did Klara know anything about the razor-billed auks and Atlantic puffins that had loomed large for whole nights at a time in the mind's eye of a boy in distant Posen before the journey to Dresden. Until she met me there had been no strange seabirds in her life, not even in fantasy to help overcome fear of an uncertain future when lying in bed alone, unable to sleep. Nor had she ever been with her parents to the zoological museum, not that she could remember. When she was a child, she said, regretfully, she had no eye for bird life, for animal life in general.

There were a few she noticed, birds from the immediate neighborhood: she showed me the place on the roof where the redstart took up its post every evening to sing its dry, squeaky song. She was impressed by the bold blackbirds that build their open nests at eye level and seem to hope that their very vulnerability will dispose every enemy to treat them kindly. And she had always liked the great tits that flitted from one treetop to another in the Great Garden, picking off insects from leaves and bark. Their calls of surprise and delight, as though they were directing the girl down below toward a particular tasty find, letting her share their pleasure. In fact, for a long time she had believed it was the same individual bird that waited for her every Sunday in the Tiergartenstrasse to accompany her on her walk with her parents, until she realized that the tits stayed in touch by voice, they conversed with each other, and it was just that Klara could not distinguish one voice from another in the great conversation that ringed the whole park.

But her clearest memory was of the crows in the Wasaplatz, the flock that came back regularly in winter when the beech tree next to the house was leafless and the sisters could see across the square from their room. Perhaps the old spreading chestnut there had served as a landmark for countless generations of crows as they found their way between roosting and feeding places, perhaps a few birds had always detached themselves from the endless moving swarm of crows and landed on the bare branches to take a closer look at the Wasaplatz and search the ground for anything edible. But the first time Ulli and Klara noticed the crows was on a cold, dark morning in the winter before the war began.

Since the turn of the year Ulli had been suffering from a severe cough, which no doctor in Dresden knew how to treat. It came in waves, the attacks went on for a few nights and days, then she had some respite, but it seemed that it was not Ulli but the cough that was getting its strength together, ready to redouble its grip on her lungs, throat, and trachea. Even in the quiet intervals Ulli did not feel inclined to get up, whatever Klara suggested, and whatever lively dialogues she made up for the dolls to engage in on the bedspread—to Ulli it wasn't cheerful conversation but squabbling, and she sent Klara out of the room.

The parents saw their five-year-old daughter coming down the stairs with shoulders drooping. No, Ulli didn't want to play, she wanted to sleep. No, she didn't even want tea. Listless, Klara sat down at the dining table and scribbled around in a coloring book with her crayon.

“Have you noticed—it's snowing.”

“I know.”

“Would you like to go tobogganing with Dad in the Great Garden?”

“I'd rather stay here.”

Meanwhile Ulli had already missed six weeks of schoolwork, as her teacher informed them by letter. The girl was in danger of falling badly behind. Her parents didn't read the letter out to her, they simply said, “Fräulein Weber wants you to know that the whole class can hardly wait for you to get better.”

The Hagemanns pulled out all the stops. Friends in Berlin fixed up an appointment at the Charité hospital there. An acquaintance was prepared to drive Frau Hagemann and Ulli to Berlin.

Klara woke up in her parents' bedroom, alone. She ran to the window, scratched ice flowers from the glass: there was a car standing outside the house, two men were talking, their breath condensing, her father and the driver. There was no snow on the ground, you could see a few white patches around the Wasaplatz, with a bluish shimmer in the early-morning light. Klara got dressed as quickly as she could, and by the time she reached the foot of the stairs she was wide awake. Icy air seeped into the house through the swing doors, her father came in, his tired, dog-tired look. He hadn't taken Klara into account, he was about to say something—she jumped in ahead of him: “Where is Ulli?”

Herr Hagemann pushed Klara into the kitchen, “Hush,” her mother was standing by the table in the fine dress kept specially for trips to Berlin: “Ulli is still in bed, she only settled down about two hours ago.”

Klara remembered the agitated footsteps yesterday, the voices from downstairs, until she had fallen asleep. The fire in the kitchen stove had been burning all night. While Klara put on her shoes, cap, scarf, and coat, her parents carried Ulli downstairs, and like Klara she was in her coat and scarf, but her parents had added an eiderdown to her winter gear. Ulli as if sleeping in bed, Ulli as if about to go on a morning trek. It didn't fit together. Klara was scared.

“Could you hold the door open?”

Ulli began to cough, awake now. Then Klara heard the crows above the Wasaplatz. She saw crows on the ground, not far from the car. Ulli saw them too. For a moment, while the adults were talking, the two sisters were alone. Alone with the crows. Klara pointed at the sky, the silent procession of birds, they flew from the Elbe with steady, sluggish wingbeats, as if they hadn't awakened yet, now and again they called to each other in muted tones. Klara pointed at the top of the chestnut tree, pointed to the birds by the frozen puddle, the birds had turned away from the leftover snow, were observing the two girls with interest, one sister standing with both feet on the ground, the other held up in the air by her father. Klara didn't know whether she felt disturbed, whether she would like the crows to come closer, whether she should hold out her hand. But she knew that at this moment Ulli would not have been able to say either. Then Ulli was bedded down on the back seat, Frau Hagemann got in on the other side, Klara waved, the car vanished into Caspar David Friedrich Strasse.

“Come on, let's go in,” said their father.

He had not noticed the crows. One of them had almost reached the front door with Klara. It would soon be light.
Maybe crows will land in the Wasaplatz tomorrow too,
thought Klara.

It was already dark when her mother and sister returned from Berlin. Ulli, who had been asleep on the back seat, was carried straight up to bed. The doctor had reassured Frau Hagemann that there was nothing to worry about, which was all Klara wanted to know, and all her mother wanted to tell her at supper. She nearly fell asleep at the table, and “Yes, we did have a bite to eat before we set off for home”; she said, “I'll sit in the armchair for a moment”; she asked, “And you two? How did you get through the day?”

Herr Hagemann buttered another slice of bread for Klara, he put his finger to his lips, his wife had fallen asleep. Father and daughter cleared the table, and then for the first time in a long time Herr Hagemann slept through the night. No coughing fits, no footsteps on the tiled floor, no concerned voices in the hall. Next morning Klara heard her sister calling from their room: “There they are.”

From that day on, over several winters, the two of them observed the activity in the Wasaplatz. On one occasion very early in the morning an acquaintance of the Hagemanns' rang the doorbell frantically, she had just left her husband. Whispering, sobbing, silence, the girls didn't dare to venture out of their room, lay awake, until they heard the first subdued cries of the crows in the distance. Once a long military convoy crossed the Wasaplatz, the penetrating, endless drone of the engines made Ulli and Klara uneasy, they cowered by the windowsill, there wasn't a soul around except for a few soldiers posted at the crossing to direct the traffic, which was practically nonexistent at that time of day. Truck after truck went past, but none of them announced the load under the tightly stretched canvas covers. A soldier on a motorbike stopped at the curb, dismounted, and lit a cigarette, his bored gaze ranging over the trucks, the square, the house fronts. Paused. Looked at the Hagemanns' house. Took his binoculars out of their case. The girls held their breath. But it was only the crows, crows on the roof, which now swooped down, gained height again, and disappeared toward the northeast, as if the combination of binoculars and shouldered rifle had made them nervous.

Quite ordinary crows. No great auk for the sisters, no rare, long-extinct museum bird to stimulate their childish imaginations. Just these mundane birds that hardly anybody noticed, appearing on the Wasaplatz every morning from nowhere. It wasn't easy to tell them apart, in a flock, and always on the move, but after a while the sisters thought they recognized a few birds in the crowd, half a dozen perhaps, representing something like an advance guard, always landing first and always staying longer. At the heart of the group was a hooded crow which soon became Ulli and Klara's favorite. The way it strode through the grass looking for acorns and beechnuts, rooted among leaves at the curbside. The way it grew alert when someone passed by but had no intention of jumping out of the way to safety. Mistrustful, certainly. But also proud: Look at me strolling around the Wasaplatz.

In the war years Ulli and Klara lost sight of the hooded crow. After a second, then a third hooded crow had turned up one morning, the sisters couldn't agree whether it was their favorite bird that was perched on the eaves opposite or the one close to the house, on the path to the stream—though they were able to rule the third bird out completely, the one on the street lamp, because of its noticeably spiky black breast feathers. Before they could decide, the birds left the Wasaplatz along with their uniformly coal-black comrades and joined the great, never-ending stream of birds over Strehlen.

Once Klara thought she had been woken up by the hooded crow calling, it was still dark, Ulli was talking in her sleep, it was much too early for the morning influx of crows. All the same, Klara went to the window to take a look. On the opposite side of the square stood a car with its engine running. No animals, no other signs of life. If the bird had been in the square, it would have trotted back and forth, now taking a few steps on the pavement, then disappearing behind a bare shrub. Inquisitive or fearful, spiteful or serene: the sisters could never agree how to interpret the hooded crow's behavior whenever something untoward happened in the street, when people started brawling and cursing loudly, when a drunk was yelling or a child beginning to cry. It's cowardly, said Ulli, it wants to stay out of harm's way but not miss anything either. Intimidated, said Klara, it's more afraid for the human beings than for itself. And the noise that Klara thought was a crow calling? Some banging. Voices. Now she could see that the black car was partially concealing an open front door, she saw the light in the rectangle, then the silhouettes. A neighbor in his pajamas, and two men in leather coats.

It would be hours yet before the first crows moved in over the Wasaplatz and settled in the big chestnut, the oak, the beech in front of the window, on the rooftop. Hours before they started eyeing the grass verge, the road, the pavement, looking for food and weighing up the passersby, as if nothing had happened between yesterday and this morning.

D
ID YOU KNOW
they were not even allowed to keep pet animals?” asked Klara one evening as we sat in Knut's garage. A late, rainy evening in autumn, I think it was the year I had hand-reared five fledglings for Knut's film about the woodpecker. The curtains were drawn, I was sitting next to Klara on the bed. In the dim light the heavy Mongolian bedspread with the pattern of light and dark brown stripes looked like a wine-red, hilly landscape crossed by snow trails.

“No Sunday bike rides. No public transport. No telephone, no radio, and no tobacco products. No walks in the Great Garden. I knew about that kind of prohibition.”

Opposite us sat Knut, at his feet and on the desk were piles of firewood. Martin was right by the door on an angler's chair. We sat there with our coats on. There was tea on the iron stove.

“But what a criminal idea, to forbid someone to keep a pet bird—did you know that? No waxbill, no tame robin, and no sparrow taken from the nest. Nothing.”

Martin leaned back cautiously against the door. “I did once hear about it, but I thought it was a malicious rumor.”