The Dark Room

by Rachel Seiffert

  In the cupboard in the small back toilet, under the bottles of developer and fixer, Helmut uncovers the American magazines that Gladigau has kept neatly folded in brown paper. The bolt has a screw missing, so Helmut sits with his boot wedged tight against the door. Black-and-white photos of women, draped in veils, in half-light. Helmut does not understand English, but he does understand the references to films, to f-stops, cameras, and lenses. German film and German cameras are the best, he knows, but these American women are very good, too. Rounded stomachs, small breasts, long, wide thighs. Some of the photos have been taken outside, and the women are swimming, their bodies rippling water and light.

  When he is not working, Helmut daydreams about his job. The subdued lighting, the running water, his rigid right leg. The white skin of the American women and the loose bolt on the toilet door. At night he conjures the images against his bedroom ceiling as the long, slow freight trains clatter below, a soothing rhythm of sleep.

  To the east, new land is found; old land is found again. So many things are better now: brighter, healthier, cleaner. Helmut sees it in his parents’ faces, knows it is enshrined in law. He feels it in his legs as he strides to the station; the freshness of spring and promise of summer tell him: larger, wider, stronger.

  He could be called and carried by it, and perhaps even cured.

  At eighteen, Helmut goes with three of the neighbors’ boys to the draft board. All of their faces tight, and eyes bright with the adventure that lies ahead. Despite his flushed cheeks, Helmut has a cloud in his belly which he cannot shift. The doctor is not unkind, and Helmut is glad of the private room, the two minutes’ grace he is given to blink back his boy’s tears. The other boys slap him hard on the back, tell him he’ll be in with them next time round. Perfect officer material. They don’t ask him to come and share a schnapps.

  He walks home, fast and by the back routes. Imagines each man he sees is on his way to the front, while he is going home to his mother. Helmut locks himself in his box room, stares out of the window, up at the sky over Berlin. He musn’t cry; that would be further humiliation. He knows Mutti is sitting tight and still in the next room, listening, guessing. His fists are balled tight in his blankets, and the windowpane swims shapes before his eyes.

  His father is silent for a long time. Helmut listens at the door and hears no sound from either of his parents, hands growing clammy in the dark. When Papi finally speaks, it is a relief. No more wasting time at the station, in daydreams. He is not a child now, not a girl, he needs to start earning his place in the world. Helmut’s father stopped exercising with his son a couple of years ago, and now he tells his wife to stop, too. The ritual has become embarrassing to mother and son. Too physical and too pointless. Mutti feels the loss of daily proximity, but repeats to herself that it is for the best, until she believes it.

  Helmut’s parents join the Party; the Führer joins the family portraits on the wall above the sofa. In the first days of war, Helmut’s father finds a well-paying job managing the floor of a new factory on the outskirts of Berlin. Helmut gets a full-time job with Gladigau.

  The last family portrait is taken. Helmut is now an adult, after all. Gladigau jokes with Mutti as he sets up the camera. The next pictures will be of a wedding, and the christenings which will follow. Mutti flushes, Papi says nothing, Helmut busies himself with shutting up the shop and closes his ears. The moment passes.

  For this last photo, both men stand, father and son, and their wife and mother sits proudly in front of them. Both have one hand on each of her shoulders, and Helmut has his left arm around his father’s back. The encircling warmth of the family.

  Since this is their final sitting, Gladigau also takes an individual portrait of Helmut. Captured from the chest up, left shoulder angled toward the camera, his gaze directed up and right of frame by Gladigau’s outstretched finger. Helmut has the trace of a smile around his slim lips, and the downward tilt of his chin makes him look shy, girlish. Though his hair is dark now and combed down with water and some of his father’s pomade, it still has a boy’s curl about it.

  Gladigau is pleased with this individual portrait. He props it up against the till as he takes his evening schnapps. Examines the heavy brows, and the pale eyes set deep in their sockets; remembers the boy with the sharp cheekbones and brittle-looking wrists; approves of the calm young man he sees in front of him now. Gladigau selects a plain frame, but one from the top price range, and wraps Helmut’s likeness for his mother to collect.

  Mutti sits on the bed and holds the photo on her lap. Stays still like that for half the afternoon, heart beating unexpectedly fast. She covers her son’s right eye and looks only at the left, the eye nearest the camera, and finds the root of her uncertainty there. She thinks it might be the muscles of the lower eyelid, tightening slightly at the moment of exposure. Or perhaps just a trick of the light: the two sharp, white pinpoints in the eye, creating the illusion of pain. Closer inspection of the family picture reveals no such information, so it could simply be that her son, a shy young man, was nervous sitting by himself, for his employer. It was an extravagant gift, after all, and unexpected. And the frame.

  The picture is not displayed in the living room, where visitors might see it. His mother keeps it on her bedside table, and later lays it carefully away in a drawer.

  • • •

  War has everyone bound tight with purpose. Helmut’s mother and father spend long evenings talking on the landings with their neighbors. Coffee and schnapps, leaning against the doorpost. Voices raised and lowered again, opinions offered. What is to come, what might be.

  For Helmut, this is a lonely time. Not many young men have gone yet, but still he feels the shame of being at home. He keeps out of the way of neighbors whose sons are fighting, keeps to himself more and more, and his mother and father allow him his silence and his solitude.

  He still goes to the station, before and after work, and sometimes at lunchtime, too, but he no longer collects old tickets. The passengers’ charity is humiliating now, and the risk of abuse too great. Helmut hides his arm as best he can, folding it over his chest, or leaning his right side against a pillar. In place of the tickets, he notes times and destinations, arrivals and departures. He has a small leather-bound book, the kind Gladigau uses to note his exposures. The timetable has changed quite a few times since the war began, and Helmut uses this little book to keep track. At home, in his box room, he sticks his old ticket collection in a scrapbook and writes the prewar timetables out from memory.

  Gladigau has not used color film before. One of his regular clients has persuaded him to use it for her daughter’s forthcoming wedding, and the first samples have arrived in the early post. Employer and apprentice examine the accompanying leaflets over a morning cup of coffee. An hour later Gladigau steps into the darkroom, announces he will shut up shop at lunchtime, invites Helmut to go out with him to test the new stock.

  They take a tram to the heart of the city, Helmut gripping the tripod between his legs as they round corners, Gladigau peering out of the windows, looking for the most colorful street. It is a clear autumn day, crisp and fresh. Helmut watches the sun and shade on the buildings they pass, thinks the photos must surely turn out well with light this good and strong.

  Once in the center of town, they get out and walk until they come to a wide street lined with red banners. This is it; Gladigau is certain now, and Helmut can’t help but agree. Smiling, smiling, looking up and around: he has never been so far from home, and has never been in a street so broad and bright and long. The cold wind has weakened his fingers and so setting up the camera takes longer than usual. Gladigau is excited, fussing with his light meter. The banners beat like sails above their heads and to the horizon, and Helmut is dizzy with light and cold and color and joy.

  The slides come back in small cardboard frames from the lab. Alone in the shop, Helmut holds the last and best one up to the window. The luminous street held between finger and thumb. Bright swastikas
burning out against the sky, and the wind caught in the scarlet folds on the photo.

  Close inspection of his notebooks confirms Helmut’s suspicions. The station is being used more frequently. He imagines the whole country on the move: people, goods, street signs, and cities rushing by. At the same time he feels, fears, Berlin is emptying. He hasn’t seen any of the boys from school since he started work and so imagines them at the front. A sudden rush of deaths and departures shocks Helmut’s Mutti into pale silence, and her son absorbs her mood. Frau Biene on the next landing has lost both sons in Poland, and moves back to Bremen, taking Edda, Helmut’s onetime platform companion, with her. Herr Maas from downstairs leaves for the front; Frau Maas takes the children south to her sisters. Two weeks later, another neighbor, another soldier, is killed, and another of the shops next to Gladigau’s is boarded up, the owners gone without warning.

  Business at Gladigau’s is not so brisk. Some of their regular customers have become irregular, and there are fewer occasional jobs coming in. There is enough to keep Gladigau busy, but Helmut has more idle time. While his boss is working, he goes through the order books, making lists of people he hasn’t seen for more than four weeks, crossing them off again if they return to the shop. Every week new names are added. Helmut is worried. He decides to keep a rough tally of arrivals and departures at the station. To monitor comings and goings, keep a check on the slow drain of people out of Berlin.

  Evening at the station. Helmut stands with his notepad, and a troop of soldiers hurry past him to the platform, a sudden wash of gray. Most of them are older than he is, but Helmut is acutely aware of each young soldier, youthful faces passing his own. He steps back three, four paces, stands with his weak shoulder against the tiled station wall. Ashamed of his own lack of uniform, ashamed that he is standing still, going nowhere, he buries himself in his notebook and scribbles numbers that mean nothing, names of cities without reference to trains.

  His notebook is snatched, his arm pinned to the wall. He is asked questions, but sees only the uniform he lacks. The voice and the shock blend with the soldier’s gray coat, and Helmut is confused. Passengers stare in silence, and he thinks perhaps he should stay quiet, too. He looks away from the shouting face, turns to the tiles on the wall he was leaning against, is being pressed against now.

  The guard is there. The shouting stops. He is explaining to the officer about Helmut’s hobby, the officer is loosening his grip on Helmut’s arm.

  Helmut apologizes, though he isn’t sure what for. The officer lets him go, but keeps hold of his notebook, and Helmut keeps his hot cheek pressed to the cool tile wall. The guard whispers something to the officer as he walks away, pointing at Helmut. The officer stops and turns back, explains to Helmut loudly and slowly that his notes would be dangerous in the wrong hands, and the passengers watch the scene. Some are drifting now that the officer has finished shouting, but Helmut feels their eyes still fixed on him, combined with the officer’s glare. In the silence, he braces himself for the slap, kick, punch which never comes. The officer walks away along the platform, with Helmut’s notebook in the pocket of his uniform coat. The guard pats Helmut gently on his crooked arm, still aching from the officer’s grip. The passengers disperse as silently as they stared. Helmut walks home across the back court, down the alley, up the stairs, and writes everything he can remember of his notes into his scrapbook before it is too late.

  After this he tries to work from memory. It isn’t difficult for him to make mental notes of train times, arrivals and departures. He knows the timetable patterns so well that alterations are memorable. The difficulty comes in tallying the people. He knows he will never get exact numbers, but even rough estimates are impossible without making notes. He begins carrying a scrap of paper in his sleeve and a pencil stub in the palm of his hand. He can jot notes quickly, concealed behind the mail sacks, or even slip into the bathroom between trains and add up his scrawled columns. The problem with these hasty notes is accuracy. Helmut doesn’t trust them. The figures reveal an increase, if anything, in the numbers arriving in Berlin. He reasons that some of them might move on from other stations, or may only be visiting, but still, they do not concur with Helmut’s impression of an ever emptier city. Frau Steglitz and Frau Dorn both have husbands and sons in the army now. Their flats are empty, lonely, so they move out of the city, nearer the munitions factories, where there is work. The lawyer who handles Gladigau’s unpaid accounts has also gone, without leaving a forwarding address.

  The first spring of wartime. Helmut’s birthday has come and gone again, with a kiss and a cake from Mutti, after Papi has left for work. Helmut has not been back to the recruitment office, and has received no letter requesting him to return. His father sorts through any post that comes in the morning, and Helmut always feels a twinge of guilt that there is nothing for him. Sons in every block around them are leaving or preparing to leave. Fathers, too, if they are young enough and not doing essential work. Helmut starts doing exercises again.

  Alone in his box room, he lifts his arm out in front of him, as high as it will go: just below shoulder height now. He steps forward and presses his palm against the wall. Steps forward again, pushing his hand up the wall with his good arm, and so on and so on, forcing his arm up above his shoulder. The ligaments in his elbow and shoulder strain, the skin around his shoulder blade burns. Everything resists. Without the wall, without his good arm, he gets no farther than his shoulder. There is no pain, it is simply as if the air is too heavy.

  Helmut picks stones from the back court and hangs them in a canvas bag from his outstretched arm. Each day another stone, each day for two, three, four turns of the egg timer. Still the air is too heavy. Still he cannot face going back to the recruitment office. Still he cannot look his father in the eye.

  Papi brings wine home, has a surprise. A promotion; more responsibility; better pay. He fills his pipe after dinner, explains his news to wife and son. The eastern expansion, he says, has been swift. Helmut watches as the smoke climbs over their heads, waits for the blue-soft smell, and hears his father tell of the new workers, come to the factory from all over Europe. Papi is to have a week’s holiday before he starts his new post. Helmut is to ask Gladigau for leave. They are to go to the coast as a family for the first time ever.

  Helmut refuses to take off his shirt on the beach. The most he will do is roll up his trouser legs and walk in the shallows. He has become fat. Soft and white. His right arm and shoulder are strong from his exercises, but he knows the rest of his body is weak. The extra layers of flesh do not fill out his chest. They hang in shameful, dimpled creases around his armpit, no muscle to give them shape.

  It is a hot spring, and sweat shines in his hairline, on his eyelids and his neck. He is always flushed, and the sweat quickly turns stale in the armpits of his shirts. His mother washes them each night, but the smell lies deep in the weave and the seams, and Helmut is ashamed.

  Gladigau has lent Helmut one of the new folding cameras: About time, he said to Papi, that the boy learned to take photos. Privately, over his evening schnapps, Gladigau imagines Helmut a suitable heir to his modest business empire. In the light of day, he does not entertain such fantasies, but he still lends the boy the camera, and in so doing, he saves Helmut’s holiday. His parents take walks, and he struggles behind them, damp and pink. Taking photos gives him an excuse to stop and rest. It absorbs him, distracts him. Logging exposures by light meter and by instinct. Views, grasses and shells. He tries alternative framings, keeps the sun behind him, and strives always to maximize depth of field.

  Helmut is happy, the holiday a success, his parent’s worries about his usefulness eased: he could be a photographer like his boss.

  Helmut returns to the news that the station is to be rebuilt. Gladigau is pleased with his apprentice’s holiday photos, and sets him the task of capturing the construction work on the station. Gladigau hopes to be able to sell these photos as postcards.

  Helmut is nervous under the
weight of his first assignment, and feels conspicuous setting up his tripod on the corner opposite the station gates. Trams jangle past, and he imagines the passengers’ eyes on him. Pedestrians seem to linger, casting their eyes in the same direction as the lens. Helmut cloaks himself in activity, busying himself with exposure calculations and adjustments, squinting and frowning as he has watched Gladigau do so many times before. He holds the light meter in his left hand, his right jammed onto his hip to prevent it from hanging in front of his chest.

  Nerves give rise to miscalculations, and Helmut’s first set of professional photos are underexposed. No great tragedy, Gladigau consoles his protégé: under is better than over; they can coax the detail out in the printing; he will show him how. Helmut, however, winces at the grain in his prints and begs his employer to let him have another go. Gladigau is pleased by this enthusiasm and allows him one hour’s photography two afternoons a week until the station is finished.

  Progress is swift and by midsummer a new platform has been added and the expansion of the station house has begun. Helmut becomes bolder, taking photos openly, and with a variety of cameras and stocks. He also begins to take photos inside the station. The guard grumbles at first and reminds him of the angry soldier, but Helmut promises he won’t focus on trains, only construction work and people. He begins to explain his project, but the guard quickly loses interest. Helmut doesn’t tell him the full story. This he keeps to himself. In his photos he is documenting the expansion of the station, but he is also monitoring the exodus. His method is simple: he remembers the sequence of trains in an afternoon and memorizes how many exposures he has taken of each arrival and each departure. Then he counts the people on the prints. The complicated equations he calculates in his room at night confirm his deepest suspicions. Berlin is slowly losing people.