by Michael Dean
This time Gershon’s evasions were given short shrift. Before they had gone to bed she had put it here with her own hands and now it was there. Draught excluders did not walk. They did not — and here Minnie soared with rare poetic inspiration — have feet. He had moved it, hadn’t he?
Gershon could feel himself beginning to cry, as he always did when Minnie was angry. He was terrified she would stop talking to him, saying only the bare minimum necessary for days, for weeks, on one occasion it had been for months. (The provoking incident, that time, was him breaking her jewellery box while trying to pass it to her.)
Under Minnie’s gimlet glare, Gershon apologised for moving the draught excluder. He said he would never do it again. He begged to be forgiven. He was, however, at a loss to give a reason for having moved it — because he hadn’t.
The next night was a sleepless one for Gershon. He wondered what his punishment would be if the draught excluder was not in place next morning. He crept down the stairs at five o’clock and wept with relief when it was. His face wet with tears, he picked up the draught excluder and hugged it in relief, before spending nearly half an hour agonisedly replacing it exactly where it had been before.
The draught excluder never moved again. And it did not once occur to Minnie and Gershon Himmelfahrt that on successive nights their home had been searched by the East German and then the West German intelligence services.
Well, it wouldn’t, would it?
28
Himmelfahrt came out of his conversation lesson with Dr Brenner pleased with himself. The new policy of stopping and correcting Dr Brenner every time he made a mistake was working well, even though Dr Brenner could not string more than three or four words together before he was stopped. Himmelfahrt thought Dr Brenner was in fine form, though: happy as a pig in muck, he told John.
Manfred Brenner left the lesson with Himmelfahrt and stepped into the winter night in utter, bleak despair. Love for his child had overwhelmed him, from the second she was born. The passion it had awakened in him this last eighteen years was more diffuse than sexual or romantic passion and different in kind but no less powerful. And now his darling, darling Katya, no longer loved him. And he did not know why.
He pictured Katya’s face, blank as it looked at him, looking through him. Again and again he yelled at her ‘Look at me!’ But she wouldn’t. And when he said ‘Speak to me,’ she would coolly, distantly say, ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘What have I done? What have I done?’ He had asked her, again and again. ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’ She was silent, her face a mask. She shrugged, she walked away from him.
Once, just once, he pulled her by the shoulder and she spun round. It was horrible. Her face … detestation and contempt for him. Not even hatred. He would have preferred hatred, hatred was more straightforward. He understood hatred.
He had discussed it with Beate. He had a good marriage; he still loved Beate very much. Not physically of course, not at their age. Well, Beate was actually fifteen years younger than him, but he hardly even thought about that. In any case they were both past all the physical stuff. But they were still the best of mates. He even called her ‘my mate’.
But Beate couldn’t get anything out of Katya either. Beate told him Katya would just shrug whenever she was asked what her Daddy had done to deserve this treatment. Her Daddy who had always loved her so totally, always put her first, was so utterly devoted to her.
Manfred Brenner glanced round the near deserted streets, dark in the pouring rain, checking that none of his patients were around. Then he let himself cry, really cry, for the first time since he saw his father’s humiliation on the Kehler Rheinbrücke when he was twelve. He turned his face to the rain to hide his tears and felt its coldness wash into his mouth.
He spoke his misery aloud as he trudged along, heading toward the railway station. In a kind of strangled howl he said words he could never say to her, they were so despairing and helpless: ‘Katya, stop it, I beg of you. You are killing me. Katya, please. Please!’
How could he go on living without her love? How could he even contemplate it?
*
After his lesson with Dr Brenner, Himmelfahrt, together with John de Launay and Naomi Plutznick, née Prince, ran through the evening rain in Arsenalplatz, as happy as Dr Brenner was sad. Although he still liked going out with the classes, Himmelfahrt was always pleased when it was just John and Naomi, because then he could relax completely and just be himself.
They were undecided between the Karpfen in Schorndorferstrasse, a bit of a favourite, or the Weinstube Bärle in Wernerstrasse, but at the last moment, on the run, they decided on another favourite, the Post-Canz in Eberhardstrasse. They dashed in, talking and laughing and flopped breathlessly down at a table.
Outside, Siegfried Gruber opened his umbrella and waited patiently in the pouring rain.
Oskar Buhl himself, the owner, served them, beaming indulgently at the popular and polite English, who spoke German so well. While they were tucking into delicious Swabian specialities (Maultaschen, Schwäbischer Wurstsalat, Rostbraten mit Spätzle) Himmelfahrt shyly and with becoming modesty, confessed that he had written an obscene song about their employer.
John twinkled cautiously. The caution came from having heard the flat drone of Himmelfahrt’s tone-deaf singing.
Naomi was ready for fun (as ever). ‘Oh go on,’ she said, ‘sing it to us.’
Himmelfahrt took a swig of beer, swallowed the last of his beef with the local noodles — Spätzle — and with the shyness of the creator confessed that his ballad (as he called it) about Frau Stikuta had the sensitive title ‘Feeling Sticky’. He then took from his pocket a creased and grubby scrap of paper and intoned the song in the voice of Frau Stikuta:
Oh she’s been shagged in Dortmund
Been knocked up in Berlin
And there’s one thing they all say to her
As they groan and put it in
(chorus) I’m feeling Sticky
Yeah, yeah. I’m feeling Sticky
Yeah-yeah-yeah.
The song went on for four more verses, occasionally losing its rhythm. The other verses were even ruder than the first, but they all involved their employer having sex in various parts of the Federal Republic. Naomi clapped delightedly, laughing. John paid Himmelfahrt the highest de Launay compliment: his shoulders shaking with laughter, he shut his eyes for a second, then wordlessly took the lyrics from Himmelfahrt and put them in his pocket, intending to sing them to a guitar accompaniment in his room later.
Himmelfahrt had intoned the song quietly and the other guests at the Post-Canz (all locals, there were no tourists at this time of year) had the same indulgent expression at the English singing funny songs as Oskar Buhl had had when he served them.
That was also the evening when John locked Himmelfahrt in the bog. Himmelfahrt was by then on his second Halbe. He and John went to the toilet at the same time. John left first and on returning to the restaurant noticed that someone had left the key in the outside lock of the door to the Gents. John turned it, locking Himmelfahrt in.
Naomi laughed when John told her, but made him promise to let Mark out after five minutes, or so. John negotiated it up to ten minutes.
Without Himmelfahrt’s hysteria-inducing influence, there was a moment’s pause between John and Naomi. Sensing she wasn’t entirely happy, John said, quietly ‘How are things?’
It was his best confessional manner. John, who had never had a long relationship with a woman, was always being asked for advice about love matters. Neal and Liz Farraday were going through a rough patch in Mannheim, and John spent most of his weekends there as ‘marriage guidance counsellor’, as he wryly put it. He was good at it, too.
Naomi was still considering how far to confide in John. She lit up an HB. The truth was that her husband, Hartmut Plutznick, was starting to get rough. The playful punches on the arm during arguments were no longer quite so playful. Last weekend, when he had finally ar
rived back in their room, on a brief visit, he had given her an ‘accidental’ push that had sent her into the wall hard enough to bruise her back.
She decided to tell John everything. His blue, button eyes softened with concern under the carroty hair. She heard herself say, ‘Is there anything I can do, do you think?’
John thought seriously for a minute, toying with a nonexistent Balkan Sobranie and wishing he had enough of them to smoke them outside his bedsit. He gave a small sigh. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there is.’
Himmelfahrt, meanwhile, had finished peeing, found the door back to the restaurant locked and guessed John had locked it. He went back into one of the cubicles and stood on the bog, with the lid down. The windows were high and small, but he was agile, fit and slim. He jumped up, pushed a window open and wriggled out at the first attempt.
Outside, he dropped down into a courtyard where the beer and food lorries pulled up to deliver. It was pitch dark. He made his way to the street, turned the wrong way and got lost. Finally, he walked back the way he had come, crossing the road to try and get his bearings. It was still raining. He asked the only passer-by, a big bloke with an umbrella, where the Post-Canz was.
Siegfried Gruber told him he was almost opposite it. Himmelfahrt thanked him. Siegfried Gruber wondered whether to report that Himmelfahrt had obviously spotted that he was being followed and was playing games, with his English sense of humour. Gruber decided that would make him look bad. He would certainly be replaced as Hill-Himmelfahrt’s tail, and would have to go back to humping lignite and being shouted at in the familiar du form, as a sign of everybody’s contempt for him. So he wouldn’t. He watched Himmelfahrt go into the Post-Canz again.
Naomi cheered up the second Himmelfahrt bounced in from the rain. It was so nice to see him. It always was. This evening was so much fun. She hadn’t enjoyed an evening like this since before she was married.
Himmelfahrt sat down and dripped.
‘You’re soaking,’ sang out John. ‘How did you get out?’
‘Down the bog,’ Himmelfahrt replied. ‘It was difficult, but I managed it.’
At the end of the evening, Naomi and Himmelfahrt said goodbye to John in Schorndorferstrasse and continued walking along the wide boulevard back towards the neighbouring suburbs of Ossweil (where he lived) and Schlösslesfeld (where she lived). By then it had stopped raining, which was just as well because the last bus had gone ages ago. It was nearly midnight.
Naomi, in her short pink mac, and Himmelfahrt in his bum-hugging blue jacket were nattering away about the personality of novelists. Himmelfahrt was expounding his theory that Evelyn Waugh’s novels were underrated because Waugh the man was such a shit. Then they got on to D.H. Lawrence (The Novelist As Total Prat: Discuss).
Himmelfahrt was just about to launch into one of his set pieces on the great humanist Tolstoy losing whole villages, forests and serfs at cards when they reached the palace. Himmelfahrt was drunk. He had had three half-litres of beer and three schnapps chasers (Steinhἂger, great stuff, sapid as cream) and the night air was making him drunker, rather than sobering him up. But instead of getting silent and morose, as usual, he wanted to talk more. He didn’t want to go home. The silhouette of the imposing palace, the Residenzschloss, was black against the starry night. In outline, it was indistinguishable from its model, Versailles.
‘I’ve never been in there,’ said Himmelfahrt.
There was a place near the turnstile to the grounds where a gap in the railings made it easy to squeeze through into the park.
‘Come on,’ said Himmelfahrt. ‘Let’s get through there. I feel like talking.’
‘Mark, I don’t think that’s a very good idea.’
‘My name’s not Mark.’
‘Whaaat?’
‘That’s what I want to talk to you about. Come on I’ll help you.’
Himmelfahrt squeezed through the gap by the turnstile, created because a railing had had to be removed when the turnstile was put in place. He held his hand out to Naomi. She hesitated. Just for a second, there in the dark, she had felt scared when he said that about his name but that had passed. She didn’t know what all this was about but she wanted to see it through.
‘Do you think I can get through there?’
‘Course ya can. Breathe in deep. Mind your knockers!’
That did it. ‘Such a gentleman!’ She was laughing again. He’d noticed, then. But then she stopped. ‘Tell me your name first,’ she said. ‘I’m not going into a park at this time of night with a guy I don’t know the name of.’
‘My name is Marcus Himmelfahrt,’ said Himmelfahrt. He felt so much better he almost cried.
‘How do you do?’ said Naomi, squeezing through into the park. ‘Why did you change your name?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Himmelfahrt. ‘I’m just using another one. One that’s less Jewish.’
‘But why?’
‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’
They set off into the darkness, towards the palace. Behind them, Siegfried Gruber hauled himself up to the top of the turnstile.
Himmelfahrt and Naomi walked briskly through the dark gardens where there were now only rhododendron bushes and some roses. In May, there were forests of tulips and later, in summer, geraniums, African marigolds, begonias and dahlias.
They passed the side of the palace and went into the Fairy Tale Garden. Wax puppets showing the first scene of fairy stories and myths glowed dully as they passed each tableau in its glass box.
‘Could you slow down a bit,’ said Naomi. ‘I can’t keep up.’
She had been thinking: He had said he wanted a less Jewish name. Her experience of Jewish people was small. Some of her father’s business partners had been Jewish. There were a few children at school who were ‘excused assembly’. That was it.
Himmelfahrt, meanwhile, was feeling headily drunk but not at all out of control. Everything he saw and imagined had clear lines and colours. He was thinking about Petra Weiss’s visit to his room.
Naomi could see he was upset. She made up her mind to go gently in her attempt to understand what was going on.
‘What shall I call you?’ she asked, as much to break the silence as anything. ‘Shall I call you Mark or Marcus?’
They were opposite the tableau of the ‘Three Musicians of Bremen’. Himmelfahrt stared at wax puppets of a dog, a cat and a donkey on their way to Bremen to be musicians. There were sound effects and speech when the tableau was operational, but it was silent and dark in its glass box now.
It took Himmelfahrt so long to reply she thought he hadn’t heard. Naomi had never seen him like this before. He was usually lively, manic at times.
‘Call me Marcus when we’re on our own. And Mark when there’s somebody else around,’ he finally said.
On our own? She took a deep breath. ‘OK. Does that include John? I mean is he included in “somebody else”?’
‘Oh yes! Yes, John is somebody else, alright.’
Himmelfahrt had marched on and now stood in front of the story of Dr Allwissend, who really knows nothing but by luck finds a rich man’s lost gold and everybody believes he knows everything. The first tableau showed the poor peasant who became Dr Allwissend meeting a doctor at an inn.
Naomi thought she heard something behind them but she wasn’t particularly concerned. Germany was pretty safe. She often walked home alone late at night. Anyway, she badly wanted Himmelfahrt to talk to her, regardless of distractions.
‘Why did you try to hide being Jewish?’ she said, softly.
Himmelfahrt turned his back on the tableau and faced her. They were close together in the dark. ‘Why? Why? Because I don’t want it. Because it’s too difficult. Who wants to schlepp that history on your back the whole time? Like a … I dunno, like a bloody rucksack tied on your back the whole time. We’re like hunchbacks with the weight of it. I mean, look what’s happened to us. God’s bloody chosen people! I mean, what happened to the ones He didn’t choose, for Christ
’s sake?’
Naomi nearly laughed but just shook her head, puzzled.
Himmelfahrt threw his head back, arched his back steeply, took in a breath of cold air and bellowed in rage to the black sky in a voice that floated over the palace: ‘Bloody choose someone else next time,’ he yelled to God. And then, still yelling, ‘How about the Assyrians? Terrific wall friezes. Or the Babylonians. The Philistines. The Seventh Day bloody Adventists if You like. Whatever turns You on. Bloody anybody but bloody us.’
Naomi laughed.
Himmelfahrt yelled again, head tilted back. ‘Hey! God! Why have You done this to me, eh? Why? What did I ever do to You?’
He strode on, she followed, past the tableau of the ‘Fisherman and His Wife’. The tableau showed the fisherman and his wife in the modest residence they started off in and to which they would return in the end, after the illusion of wordly prosperity.
‘Naomi, I’m a bloody mess.’ Himmelfahrt was breathing heavily. ‘My life’s a mess. And I blame being Jewish for that. I always have. But I shouldn’t. It’s wrong. It’s me. It’s just me. It’s my fault. I’m a sort of cripple.’
Naomi shook her head. ‘I don’t recognise this person you are talking about. Mark, Marcus, tell me something. Did you enjoy this evening?’
‘I had a bloody great time this evening. I enjoyed every bloody second of this evening. Why?’
‘So did I. And … and I enjoyed John’s company. I always do. And yours. Your company. The company of a witty, clever …’ — she hesitated because she wanted to say ‘attractive’ but thought better of it — ‘nice young man,’ she finished. ‘Where did all this self-hatred come from?’
‘From history,’ said Himmelfahrt. ‘You know, this is horrible, I’m going to say something horrible now, but I’ll tell you this: Even when I was a kid I wanted to many a shiksa, you know, a non-jewish woman. I wanted it all diluted, wanted all that Jewishness diluted, for the kids. The angst, the lack of confidence, the fear, the bloody worry, the insecurity, the aggressive-defensive syndrome, being out of step, saying the wrong thing, being different, getting attacked, the whole fucking schtick. It’s too difficult. It’s too difficult. I can’t do it.’
