The Dance by the Canal

by Kerstin Hensel

  – Did you like it?

  Samuel began to visit our family a lot. He played the Archangel Gabriel at the theatre. Father was proud of him, even though he only went to the theatre for prestige. The word prestige belonged to my father, but Samuel’s body belonged to my mother. When Father was at the clinic and I was playing hopscotch in the garden, I sometimes saw Samuel through the gaps in the blinds. On those days Mother was especially kind and generous.

  – You can play in the street today if you like, Ehlchen.

  Samuel always left the house via the veranda stairs, and it was only when he was officially invited that he would step, gallant and debonair, out of the front door. Father would boast about their friendship and Mother would smile. Whenever he saw me he collapsed heart-stricken to the floor or rammed into a wall. I was always shocked, as if for the very first time.

  The parties became more frequent. Guests would fill our villa every fortnight. A written invitation was soon no longer necessary to visit the doctor. Assistant doctors, nurses and other people without prestige didn’t dare show up anyway. Leibnitz worshipped us, and gossiped about us too. My parents lost track of the guests. Every party brought someone new and guests would bring others with them: an artist from Berlin, a writer from Dresden, a circus director, even a neurologist from Hamburg. Men entered and introduced themselves as someone, nice men from the fields of art and medicine, they ate and drank and talked. They talked with me too – a Dr Schneider or Professor Müller or Herr Labuhn or whatever they were called. All of them led wild, urgent conversations. Late in the evenings, when I would be trying to go to sleep, I heard the word state and the word nonetheless, and wild dreams followed me well into the next day. The parties of Obermedizinalrat von Haßlau were the talk of the town.

  A voice called me from the garden. The party was in full swing. I snuck out of the house thinking a guest couldn’t find the entrance. Katka was waiting for me in the garden, wrapped in a dark coat.

  – You going to let me in?

  – Are you crazy? It’s already late, your mother will…

  – I ran away.

  – For goodness’ sake, Katka.

  – You letting me in or what?

  I smuggled Katka in through the veranda. We hid in the playroom. Katka gawped.

  – Look at all the stuff you’ve got.

  – There’s loads more, I added.

  I fetched pâté and a bottle of beer for Katka. We giggled, drank beer and played dressing up. I fetched my mother’s wedding dress from her wardrobe and put it on.

  – Oh, my princess, bowed Katka, lifting the seam of her grubby knitted dress.

  I demanded nasally:

  – Katka, the smelling salts! I’m going to faint!

  Katka brought me the bottle of beer and I took a deep swig.

  – Come on, come on, now clean my shoes!

  Katka spat on my slippers. Then she lost interest. I continued to boss her around.

  – Comb my hair!

  Katka didn’t want to listen. I pushed her against the wall.

  – I let you in.

  We were intoxicated from the beer and my mother’s wedding dress. Katka wanted to be the princess. I wouldn’t allow it. Don’t know what it was that made me treat her so harshly – a cool rage, disgust at Katka’s insignificance, or the secret longing to run away. Like Katka. Katka left the villa before midnight. I had no idea where she slept that night. We met again at school the next day. Fräulein Brinkmann wanted to know if we’d been crying. Our faces were red, puffy, like we’d gone a couple of rounds in a fight.

  Day in, day out: dripstone shelter apricot brandy writing sleeping dripstone… I reject whatever the welfare office offers me: work in a launderette or delivering the post. I can’t, won’t. My story captivates me. I wake up one night; I jolt out of a dream, the shock breaks the illusion: where am I? I scream, shaking, the unimaginable: underneath a bridge. Under a blanket, on cardboard, like a tramp. Total, utter scum. I’m dreaming, I’ve lost my mind – ha! Neither. I reel, bang my forehead against the slick stone of the bridge vault; I’ve known this canal since my childhood – it stinks of malt and slurry. I gather my things together, I climb up the canal bank trembling with fear and dismay. The moss house – now just a ruin. I leave it behind and run through the Leibnitz night. Home! Where? Wherever you want, says a voice. I’ve gone mad. They’re after me, searching for me. How long have I been sleeping under a bridge? Where did this scratchy grey blanket come from? Where did this cardboard, these bags, this toilet paper come from? I’m sick, insane – in this moment I see it clearly.

  The policeman asks me for my identification card and place of residence.

  – I went out into the wide world to learn fear.

  – You’ll learn about it very soon, says the policeman.

  Takes me down the cop shop. It’s bright and warm there, the officers on duty smoke and type on their old typewriters. They’re tired, while I’ve never been so awake.

  – Blimey! a peanut-shaped face snaps at me. Name, address, offence.

  – Offence? My name is Gabriela von Haßlau.

  The peanut makes a call.

  – A fffon Haßlau. Yeah, fffon, that’s what she said! the policeman yaps into the mouthpiece.

  I find myself in the admissions of the psychiatric department of the state hospital. Here again, I think. I hear words like bag lady and cuckoo.

  – NO! I say. I don’t want any of this. I’m a writer.

  Every answer is a mistake. They lock me in the dormitory, where I can finally get some rest among raving lunatics, exhausted after hours of questioning. The next day I’m free again. They couldn’t find anything pathologically wrong with me. Find myself back on the streets where I’ve been living for weeks, remember my mission. Writing, just writing. The summer is warm, almost motionless. There’s only one place that I live. I steal a poster from an advertising pillar. On the front it says: ‘David Dreamer, greatest magician of all time’. The back is white, empty, good enough to continue my story.

  My husband has lost his prestige, I heard Mother tell Frau Schramm while she helped her slice beans in the kitchen. I guessed that it meant a lot to Father, and I secretly began searching for his prestige at home and in the street. If only I knew what prestige looked like. I felt no particular love for my father; instead I observed him, like I would a wild animal. Sometimes I was allowed to sit on his lap and smell the clouds of Napoléon, other times I would get a slap for no reason, mostly when the Napoléon was empty or if he and my mother had had another argument about the word state. I asked Mother about Father’s prestige, where I could find it. Mother smiled sadly and said:

  – She who eavesdrops gets big ears.

  Frau Schramm simply sighed and pointed to the empty bottles of schnapps in the bin.

  – It’s none of my business, but Herr Doktor…

  I’d just come in from the garden when I heard a crash in the villa. Father must have fallen down the stairs drunk. I rushed into the house. It wasn’t Father but Samuel. The blond angel lay in the hallway without his shirt and trousers, both of his legs bloody. Mother came out of the bedroom pleading, wrapped in a bed sheet. Father stood before Samuel in his doctor’s coat, pulled his stethoscope out of his bag and started whipping him. Samuel whimpered and the rubber tubing hissed. Father made the stethoscope swish, swish, swish. I threw myself between them.

  – What do you all want from me! Father howled.

  Samuel pulled himself up. He’d been caught this time and I wondered why he didn’t seem ashamed. Samuel hobbled out of the villa, but not without blowing Mother a mischievous kiss. Exhausted after this scene, Father fell asleep in his armchair. He’d been sent home early from the clinic. Prestige, I thought to myself, and began to fear my father.

  My parents’ divorce took place in the summer. I was thirteen years old and it seemed to me that I hadn’t been present in the world until this day. I crawled underneath the veranda stairs looking for anything, found spiders
and earthworms. Only semi-conscious, I walked up the stairs to the attic. It was hot with the batten doors closed. Beams, boxes and junk gave off a strong smell of wood. A thumb’s width of dust had settled on the floor. It reeked of marten muck. Threads from old grey spider’s webs hung from the wooden beams. In the webs, as if caught in a snare, were the white husks of skinned cross spiders. I rummaged around in the clutter, broke open boxes, ransacked baskets. I tried to cry. My parents’ divorce was being played out downstairs in the music room. I sat on a heap of rags and waited among the creaking of the summer-heavy woodwork for tears. Next to me, in a trunk eaten by woodworm, I found books. I lined up everything this trunk offered: eight volumes of Goldköpfchen, six volumes of Nesthäkchen, a number of hiking and nature stories – my grandmother’s books. I opened the first one, began to spell my way through the old typeface, and soon I had grown accustomed to it. The whole day and half the night I read stories. I was now grateful that the tears had failed to come, that a world had opened up to me. I read book after book. When school was over for the day I would climb up into the attic. At school I remained an average, introverted student, withdrawn, insignificant. Father had forbidden me to join the Young Pioneers. Farce! He babbled something about the church and went straight to the school director. Only Katka Lorenz with her boundless enthusiasm succeeded in motivating me every now and again to do something wild. That’s how she persuaded me to turn up at the flag ceremony wearing an enormous Pioneer scarf. She got hold of a blue sheet about the size of a tablecloth and wrapped it around my neck and shoulders. The ends hung to the ground and the knot was the size of a head of kohlrabi!

  – Just stand in the first row.

  She promised me a surprise if I dared to do it. I accepted the dare. It was the final ceremony the Pioneers had to attend before they were old enough to become members of the Free German Youth. So, having never had to attend any ceremonies before, I stood in the front row. The giant blue cloth glowed and the semicircle of students spluttered with suppressed laughter. Then the director spotted me. He stopped speaking halfway through his address, stepped towards me – I held my breath – he walked passed me, waded through the rows, grabbed Fräulein Brinkmann, dragged the chicken to the front, into the middle of the semicircle. She got what I deserved.

  The same evening she came to see my father in tears. His roaring laughter must have been the final straw. Fräulein Brinkmann was off sick for two weeks. As a reward for the successful prank, Katka Lorenz took me into the bathroom with her.

  – I’ll show you something.

  A pair of dark-red blots in the toilet bowl. They belonged to Katka. And they frightened me. Katka’s time had come.

  Mother moved in with Samuel. When she said goodbye, she kissed me and said with feigned cheerfulness:

  – You can visit us anytime you want, Dresdner Straße 8 – you hear, Dresdner 8, fourth floor!

  She squeezed my hand, Samuel did his usual ‘Murder victim staggers out of the bathroom’ number – then I was standing there alone. In the days and weeks that followed I kept mostly to the kitchen with Frau Schramm. Father had night duty more often than before, but would come home early from the clinic more often too. All parties were cancelled. Father barely spoke any more. He sat in his chair and slept, or drank Napoléon. He hardly ate anything any more. And one Sunday when I came across him in the bathroom he had white hair.

  – Do you see, Ehlchen, he said very quietly, this is what I’ve earned.

  His moustache had stayed dark. I gave him some awkward compliments.

  – It doesn’t look awful.

  – Fucking state! Father cursed.

  He threw a vase against the glass cabinet in the living room. Both shattered. He hammered wildly on the piano, shredded the bedclothes and curtains in a senseless rage. He wasn’t chief medical officer any more. Without the practical Frau Schramm, Father would have fallen apart in no time at all. As Father got into the worst scraps with Napoléon and Consorts, as he lay helplessly paralysed on the floor and an ambulance had to be called, as he was banned from working and offered rehab, as I wanted to move in with Samuel, as Frau Popiol crossed my path, here, there, in distressing dreams, as I—

  – Your father has to have a long rest in hospital. A shock from the booze like that takes a while to get over. He has to get it all out of his system. But, Ehlchen, when he comes back, all that stuff will be gone!

  Frau Schramm destroyed Father’s stash of alcohol and swore to watch him like a hawk from now on.

  – Not a drop more, nope. The Herr Doktor…

  Father returned from the hospital and swallowed whatever he could find: aftershave and Klarofix window cleaner, eau de cologne, hair tonic, Fagusan cough drops. He drank the rum food essence, begged Frau Schramm for a glass of beer or a teeny little glass of Napoléon. Just a tiny one. Frau Schramm stood firm and locked all the doors and windows so Father couldn’t escape. He was signed off sick. I found Frau Schramm’s behaviour cruel. Still, I was grateful to her. Every day Father’s shakes got worse.

  – Cold turkey! Frau Schramm diagnosed.

  Father grew softer and more and more helpless. He sat in his chair for hours on end, listening to the radio. He would reach out to me sometimes – his hands cold and fluttering, as if he wanted to say something. He drank a lot of coffee, feasted on bags of sweets. Once he said:

  – I’m going to leave this place.

  He stayed. Over time he became fat, two of his incisors fell out. That’s how I saw him every day. It was as if I had nothing to do with him, and he didn’t mind. I skulked around as if only half alive. I enjoyed school less and less, the word state came up in lessons more and more, I was tired for no apparent reason. It was worst in civic education. Once I even fell asleep. Herr Wanzke, our teacher for civics and geography, sent bits of chalk and board rubbers flying from his desk, lecturing all the while:

  – The sovereignty of the working people, internalized within the foundation of democratic centralism, is the basic principle of state-building.

  Wanzke snitched on me to the director. The director: I was a special case, I couldn’t be easily classified. But careful, colleague! – referencing the red ‘I’ in the register. Fräulein Brinkmann was form tutor of a first-year class again. Ours, class 8c, had shed their Pioneer scarves and had received new blue Free German Youth shirts. Once again, I wasn’t allowed to join. Father was against it.

  Time: a board rubber plump with water. Father said he was dry. Only the books in the attic made me feel better. I didn’t know any other way to pass the time. Visits to my mother and Samuel became more and more boring. They only talked about theatre, and my mother had lately started talking about clothes and hairstyles. She slipped me money: buy something pretty. Samuel ran against the wall and I laughed without laughing. I tried to become close with Katka again, but Katka didn’t want to shoplift in the cooperative any more, or revel in our childish canal dancing. Since showing me her period blood she had become dedicated to art. Katka was constantly doodling during lessons: mad geometric figures, wild things, grotesque faces – she painted over everything, crossed out, erased.

  – Art, she said proudly.

  Break time. The classroom emptied. Katka stuck two dozen of her artworks on the classroom walls. When Wanzke saw this he shouted:

  – Volunteers!

  No one knew what he meant, no one stood up from their desk.

  – Grumert, Dreyer, Haßlau – to the front!

  We obeyed. Wanzke dunked the board rubber in water and put it in Grumert’s hand.

  – Throw it! Whoever hits the most pictures in Katka’s gallery gets a One in civics.

  Grumert threw, the wet rubber clattered against the wall. No one laughed. Wanzke repeated the process, plunged the rubber in water. Petra Dreyer let it fall to the floor.

  – I won’t do it.

  – Five! Wanzke’s voice snapped. He soaked the rubber for a third time.

  – You could use a One, Fräulein von Haßlau, Wanzke s
aid, grinning.

  Then I threw the rubber and hit one first time. It sprayed out from all sides, colour streamed over the walls – fetch the rubber, back to the front, aim and – splat! Another one of Katka’s dumb pictures. Still no laughter from the class. I kept throwing. The room was dripping from the slaughter, even Wanzke was uneasy about it: how was he ever going to get the walls clean again? When all the pictures were sodden and had fallen to the floor, I left the room. I felt sick and hung my head over the sink in the toilets. Nothing came out. So I washed and scrubbed myself, saw a stupid face in the mirror and all I could think was: You get your black hair from your father. I began to cry. The floodgates opened and I wailed, shaking from convulsions, disorientated, helpless.

  – Give it a rest, someone said. Katka. She gave me a huge man’s handkerchief.

  – It’s not that clean.

  I blew my nose and immediately started wailing again. Katka explained that it was still art, even if the pictures were now wet and torn. I fell into Katka’s arms, she patted me on my back. I’d wailed myself wide awake. Awakened. Katka Lorenz and I went back into the classroom hand in hand. Wanzke didn’t say a word when I crossed out the One in the register.

  My sickness is called awakening. Every time I stop writing it threatens to clear my head. It’s the only thing I’m afraid of. In September the once-in-a-century summer draws to a close. I’m starting to freeze at night. The goldenrod withered long ago and the canal rhubarb’s gone brown and limp. The regulars from the Green Bridge and the Sunday Bridge close ranks. They decide when it’s time for bed in the Three Roses. The end of the day recedes further and further. I go along with it: cola and apricot brandy. I don’t like following what the old soaks are talking about. I keep shtum in their warm midst. They keep telling the same stories, prison anecdotes, their women troubles. They insult me so often it’s unbearable. I only put up with it because I’ve got no other option. There are times when one of them doesn’t show up. We raise a glass in his honour. Semmelweis-Märrie makes another sale.