Kaltenburg (42 page)

T
HE INTERPRETER ALREADY
had her coat on when she announced she was now determined to read Proust's novel, about which, after a few failed attempts to tackle him, she was as ignorant as I was. And she knew in advance that when she was reading him she would always think back to our conversations over the past six months. Mind you, I warned her, as far as the hand-washing scenes were concerned, she shouldn't expect too much—they don't exist. If Katharina Fischer really does pick up her Proust and not put it down until she reaches the final sentences, she will find that at no point in the novel does a character close a window, say “Good morning,” or wash his hands. Klara had already revealed as much to me during our first boating trip in the Great Garden.

“Not once?”

Not once.

The interpreter laughed. We shook hands, she got into her car, I watched her go until the taillights disappeared around the corner. I cleared up. At exactly the moment, by the clock, when Klara must have been getting on the train in Berlin.

I can see myself again on an early mid-November morning sitting alone in an unheated carriage smelling of yesterday's cigarette smoke in a train standing at one of the outlying platforms of the Dresden main station. Feverish, still in my coat after being torn from a deep sleep, still barely conscious, I had left the house early and was now waiting endlessly for the train to set off for Berlin, on my way to an appointment about which I remember nothing except my half-sleep-drugged, half-impatient waiting while the sun rose over the city.

From the Ostragehege district dark spots are moving through the dawn light, the crows have left their roosting places and landed on a builder's crane, whose arm stretches far out across the roof of the main concourse. They're casting an early-morning eye over the inner city, more birds are constantly arriving, joining their fellows on the latticework of girders, they inspect the Wiener Platz and Petersburger Strasse, Fritz Löffler Strasse, Budapester, Strehlener and Prager Strasse, before work begins on the building site below. The crane operator doesn't disturb them as he climbs up the tower and into his cabin, shutting the door behind him. A circular saw swings on the suspension cable in the morning wind.

Not until the arm of the crane slowly sweeps to one side do the crows take to the air. I follow their flight across the roof of the station, the platforms, the November-dulled green of the park. The continuous breaking away from the formation, the little pursuits, the way individual crows drop out, wheel around, looking to slot in again, as though each morning they had to reassert that the skills they were practicing yesterday until the hour of sunset have not been lost overnight, as if they could shake off sleep only through their play.

Now a crow is heading toward the imposing building on the other side of the embankment, fluttering as it nears the dark stripe of crows marking off the clear composition of the facade, with its large windows, against the sky. At the instant the crow settles on the parapet, the black line is torn apart at one point, the bird's close-packed fellows become agitated, and I can hear somebody calling out, “We're not in Dresden here,” I can hear Ludwig Kaltenburg, laughing: “We're in Moscow, can't you see?”

There stands the professor on the roof of the Institute for Transport Studies, bending his knees, leaning over, spreading his arms, he begins to run, slowly straightening up and croaking at the same time. Most of the crows observe this performance without moving, just here and there a bird is infected by Kaltenburg's flying motions and follows him, as though to humor him. The crows commandeered the building shortly after it was completed, the city pest-control people didn't know what to do about it, even the Society for Sport and Technology turned out to be helpless, Kaltenburg was called in, offering to try to tempt the birds away from the building.

He's not going to pull it off. He makes another round of the roof, but he can't disperse them, the first crows are already returning inquisitively from the station, Kaltenburg is attracting the birds. He could see it as a defeat, but he regards it as a triumph, his last carefree winter in the city—“They're simply familiar with this architecture”—his breath clouding in front of his face—“and why would you want to chase them away when you know they come from the Soviet Union? We should welcome them every year, our feathered friends, and joyfully allow them whatever space they want.”

I have opened the window. Soon a taxi will pull up in front of the house, Klara will get out carrying her small suitcase, glance upward, and spot me up here. The air smells like snow.

With sluggish wingbeats a single crow moves through the light flurry of snowflakes.

They come from Siberia, from the Urals, the Baltic, and with the approaching cold once more this year they will gather in the Elbe valley. Hundreds of rooks, along with carrion crows, hooded crows, jackdaws, will form huge clouds of birds that will pulsate above us, fray at the edges, then reform as patches of black.

My thanks are due to the following bodies for supporting my work on this novel: the Fund for German Literature (
Deutscher Literaturfonds
), the Saxon Ministry for Art and Science, the Leuk Castle Foundation (
Stiftung Schloß Leuk
), and the Municipality of Leuk, Canton Valais.

Among the many people who have shared their knowledge, observations, and memories with me over the years, there are two in particular whom I wish to thank: Renate Glück, for a conversation continued since 1996 about a Dresden I could never have discovered without her; and Dr. Siegfried Eck, custodian until his death in September 2005 of the Ornithological Collection at the Museum of Zoology, State Natural History Collections Dresden, who awakened my interest in ornithology.