His friend—my lover—would be hiking down from Jena and Ingo would hike partway up; they would meet in a woodland east of Jägersdorf, on a hill called the Sommerberg. It was good orchid country, though before long, said Anton, the game-hunters would be out, there would be danger—es ist eine Schande, for the autumn anemones bloom into October here, and the asters by the roadside, you should see them! There is one nearly pure blue, very pale, like the sky after a rain.
So Ingo hung around the Leuchtenburg feeling restless, jangly, half bored, half insane with happiness. He stared for a while at the painted statue of an almost naked Saint Sebastian. He inspected the castle's collection of medieval armaments. Finally, in a hopeless failure of inspiration, he flipped through the hostel guest book, and it was during this time that Martina tracked him down. He could feel her presence in the room— she radiated that sort of intensity—even before she spoke. He pictured her standing there, wanting attention, steam rising from her ears. He smiled.
“What are you smirking about?” she demanded.
He looked up, feigning surprise. “Nothing, really. Some of these entries, they're just so…”
“So?”
“German.”
As if he was anything but German himself.
In the forest, a different order prevailed. To come here among the ancient trees was to confront a stirring, unsimplified, complexly evocative environment. Your mind opened to a richer frame of reference. Your body reawakened to its primordial genius, its beauty-in-usefulness. To trade the bonds of floor and walls and ceiling for the unbounded freedom of the woods was like putting aside a comic book and opening Faust. You might find it alarming, morally chaotic, incomprehensible. But you must also— unless it was already too late, your soul already narcotized by modernity— find it thrilling, pulsing, raw, authentic, writhing with life, infinitely to be preferred to what you had left behind. Here, your senses grew sharper. Your pleasures and agonies grew more acute. If you were happy, you became ecstatic. If sad, you became like young Werther, lost, without solace, foredoomed. And if you were in love, there were no rules to follow, no limits or precedents to contain you. Anything was possible, everything was permitted, but there was no way to anticipate where you were heading. The forest was a land without maps.
Anton's shoulders were so thin you could see how the bones were joined together, how his parts moved. His skin, where the sun had not changed it, had a subtle tawny undertone, in contrast to Ingo's pink. It was like the wood underneath the bark of certain trees—only smoother, warmer, softer, sweeter, a miracle of texture and scent stretched gently over his sternum, his ribs, his hips. His hair had a slight curl and would not stay for long out of his eyes. One of his upper bicuspids, slightly uneven, lent a funny asymmetry to his grin. His mouth was wide, full, exaggerated. His eyes were chocolate-brown. There was a tiny dark mole on his left cheek, another just off-center near his heart, one three-and-a-half centimeters below his navel and another, slightly larger, midway down the left thigh. When he closed his eyes, his lashes cast a lovely shadow. When he stared hard at something close, something small, like a flower's trembling pistil, his chin tensed into a knot and fleeting frown-lines ran from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth, and his long, seemingly awkward fingers became as steady and exact as precision instruments. When Ingo kissed him those fingers raked his back.
They found several interesting specimens that day. The grass pink orchid, Calopogon tuberosus, rare in Europe but an errant cousin of a genus still numerous in North America. A gentian, sadly past its blooming period, which Anton was able to identify by the structure of its withered reproductive parts as G. forsteriana or forester's gentian—” which makes,” as he put it, “a blue impression, but is yet not true blue.” And a striking plant with deep green leaves, as glossy as if they'd been spit-shined, that looked half vine and half shrub; it had hoisted itself up by clinging to the trunk of an oak tree and then—at a height of slightly less than two meters, just above where a grown deer could nibble its foliage—had spread widely, flowered, and now was covered in small black berries like those of privet.
Anton laughed when Ingo expressed an interest in this plant. “That's ivy,” he said. “Common ivy, Hedera helix, in its mature form. The seed probably flew here in some bird's gut. Maybe the parent lives in Jena, climbing the walls of my dormitory—who knows?”
The rain caught them under the ivy. They huddled there while lightning flashed and thunder echoed off the Sommerberg. For a while the glossy leaves held the water off. But after half an hour of steady downpour everything became saturated and the leaves drooped, spilling an accumulation of heavy drops that landed with a splatter. The water was not cold and at first it was welcome, washing the sweat off, making their bodies feel sinuous. The chill set in by the time it was over. They laughed through chattering teeth as they pulled their clothes on—the clothes they'd hoped to keep dry by tucking them in compact bundles at the base of the oak, failing to appreciate how water would channel down indentations in the bark like tiny vertical rivers, soaking the material and matting it with forest debris. Anton's skin was slick, his nipples contracted; he smelled like a warm loaf out of the oven, like grass, like sea-salt. Ingo needed him one more time. And then it was hopeless, they would die of chill, his heart would explode in bliss. They set off for the Leuchtenburg together.
“You,” said the blond boy, “broke a fellow's nose”— pointing at Ingo—” and you”— at Isaac—” something far worse. You took his honor. To have been bested by a Jew! An American Jew! And all this”— swinging his head around to stare at Käthe—” over a scheme you Socialists cooked up. A political intrigue. A piece of paper.”
It was impossible to know how the boy felt about what he was saying. His tone was lacking in rancor: give him that. Lacking in everything, from what Ingo could tell. But then, something had impelled him to journey here from the Höhe Meissner, dragging along some left-wing journalist whom Ingo detested on sight. Where was he this morning? And where the hell was Marty?
Anton at least was accounted for: outdoors, inspecting the castle grounds on the theory that there might be plants left over from some forgotten garden—native herbs, uncommon today, once cultivated for medicinal or dye-making purposes. It would keep him busy all morning.
“Should you ask my advice,” the boy said, with precocious gravitas, “I would urge you to leave this place at once and go far away, out of Germany, even.”
“Is that so?” said Isaac, in New York English that was more or less self-translating. “Well, nobody asked you.”
So: an impasse. The four of them were in the woodworking shop on the second floor of the castle, surrounded by half-finished toys. Old lathes, operated by foot pumps, were mounted on work benches, and an assortment of hand tools lay amid piles of sawdust where the Young Socialist Workers had left them. It was Sunday. A row of jointed wooden clowns hung from strings in the window while their paint dried. Body parts of a dozen hobbyhorses were piled in stacks, awaiting assembly. Isaac lounged on the floor with his back propped against a pile of wooden torsos, Ingo sat sensibly on a bench, Käthe paced and—slipping out of character— puffed inexpertly at one of Isaac's cigarettes. The German boy, Hagen, stood at ease with one hand resting on a large open vise.
“You will just wait here, then,” he said, “until they come looking for you.”
Nobody answered him but he didn't seem to care. Ingo couldn't figure this kid out. It was hard even to decide whether to look at him or not. There was something a little frightening, even repellent, about his aloofness and his perfect, icy beauty. And yet there was that beauty: a breathing artistry. Hagen was like a statue that you could speak to and it would speak back. It would turn and move so you could examine it from varying angles. You could touch it. That might be interesting. It might also be dangerous.
“They will find you, of course.” The boy was looking down at Isaac. “Many of the Jungdo live in Saxony, they know this part of the country well. T
hey know the habits of their political enemies. For them this is not a single incident, a thing that happened once, they shrug and forget about it. No, they are fighting a war, and this is a battle. There have been other battles, there will be many more to come. Some they will lose—it does not matter. They are prepared to accept casualties, so long as in the end they are victorious. But this, this is a battle they can win. So they will choose to win it. This is how simple the matter is.”
He turned to Käthe; he seemed to be calculating. “Perhaps I should add one thing more. To win this particular battle, they will need to get blood on their hands. That one”— gesturing toward Isaac—” almost certainly they will kill. The other one, perhaps not. He fought like a man, there is no shame in having faced such an opponent. But that one, the Jew …”
“His name is Isaac,” Käthe said. Her voice matched his in coldness. “Around here we don't go calling people the Jew, the Catholic, the Saxon. Here we are all human beings.”
“Perhaps. But not all Germans. And certainly not all patriots, not in the eyes of the Jungdo.”
“Not all Germans? Not all patriots?” Käthe's eyes were on a tableful of sharpened tools and Ingo wondered if she was selecting one.
“Don't shoot the messenger,” Ingo advised her. “Or stab him either. What I wonder is, why has he gone to all this trouble? Why come here in the first place? Why betray his friends?”
Obviously the questions were for Hagen, but Ingo was still having trouble turning his eyes that way.
The boy understood; he looked at Käthe while replying. “I cannot explain, except to say that it is a question of …” Ingo expected honor, that singular German obsession, but Hagen concluded, “of fair play.” Now he looked at Ingo, gesturing with a hand. “It is as a hunt. There are ways of choosing the prey, ways of making the kill. It is necessary that there should be a balance. One does not bomb a stag from an airplane. One does not set out with a party of twelve to corner a rabbit. This is the rule: One must grant the beast one hunts its own nobility. Each animal has a kind of nobility, so does each person. Even a Jew possesses nobility of a kind.”
“Did you just say”— Käthe's voice seemed to teeter between outrage and hilarity—” that even a Jew possesses nobility of a kind?”
“Yes.” Hagen looked at her blankly. “That is just what I said. This is what I believe.”
“What a champ,” said Isaac from the floor. “I love this putz, don't you?”
The two boys, roughly the same age, different in every other way, sized each other up. Isaac pulled a comical face. He was dexterous in this regard—somehow he managed to stretch out his features as if they'd been shoved against a pane of glass. At the German's mouth, for the very first time, Ingo discerned the tentative sketching-in of a smile.
“You know actually,” said Käthe, lighting another cigarette—she alone displaying an intensity of feeling appropriate to the circumstances—” there is a place, in the East. Which would be safe, I think. It is…we call it the Model Hamlet. A kind of experimental community. In the German-speaking part of Poland, the old province of Silesia—Isaac knows it already, his aunt and uncle live there. Near a rail stop called Auschwitz, just short of Kraków.”
He caught Martina sneaking down from one of the castle towers, nominally off-limits on account of safety concerns. Safety concerns, that was a laugh. Trailing a few steps behind her new pal Butler, she looked—in Ingo's newly expert opinion—like she'd been fucking all night.
He felt two distinct categories of disbelief. One, that she had done such a thing. Two, that he hadn't seen it coming. It was so obvious, now that he thought about it. The pair of them acting last night like they were sharing God knew what manner of secrets. The strange looks she'd thrown Ingo's way at the bonfire. Now it all made sense. Anyway, what was it to him?
“Hiya, Marty,” he said with what he imagined to be a sly and knowing smile.
“Hi, Ingo”— same smile, right back at him.
Butler himself they managed for the moment to ignore.
“Sleep well?” Ingo said solicitously. “I hear they have bats up there.”
“Really? I didn't notice any. How about you? I hope you found somewhere to put Anton, there's hardly an extra bed in the house.”
He couldn't penetrate her expression. Their stares crossed like swords. They'd come an incredible distance from their shady street in Brookland.
She laughed. He was not expecting that. She stepped over quickly and gave him a hug—a thing she'd never done before, not that he could remember.
“Oh, Ingo,” she said, “I'm so happy. Really, I am.”
She let him go, scampered after Butler. She never explained, then or later, what she was so damned happy about.
The most wretched day of his life began with a glorious sunrise. The light had a stabbing quality, as he imagined it might if he'd woken up with a hangover. (Ingo had never known a night of excessive drinking, though he began to suspect one might be coming.) Are there paeans in Deutsch, he wondered, to the breaking of day? None that he could think of. Your German poet is nocturnal, first stirring at the Dämmerung; if ever he sees the sun come up he must have been awake all night, weathering the usual torments. German literary sunrises are alarming developments, pregnant with ill omen. Flecks of cloud flutter, weakly struggling, as red flames steal among them—one of countless disheartening moments in Schubert's Winterreise. George of course is more Gothic.
Through storm and grisly portents of dawn
He harries his flock to the day's work
And plants the New Reich.
Anton had said: It's only a question of timing.
Now Ingo stood before a slit window in the Gunpowder Tower, known during certain centuries as the Martyr Tower—he had not learned why. But he knew the story, everyone did, about the discovery during a nineteenth-century renovation of a tiny skeleton underneath one of the cornerstones: a Bauopfer or “builder's sacrifice,” once apparently common all over Europe. In one version, the skeleton belonged to a cat. In the much preferred telling, however, it was the remains of a human infant. Dead babies would not have been hard to come by in those times, but in order to be effective, the Masonic rite required an actual killing. Everyone loved this story, it was one of the first things you heard when you signed in— right up there with the Black Death of 1506, during which people throughout the Saale Valley had sought refuge in the castle, bringing, need it be said, the plague along with them. Hence, half-naked Sebastian, protector against pestilence. And you were shown the ash tree, of course, from which some scant eighty years ago a peasant woman had been hanged, after having murdered her five, or was it six, innocent children. (Always innocent—as though surviving past childhood implicated you in some unnamed sin.)
Ingo supposed that old castles naturally inspired such legends. How many schoolboy nightmares had been spawned by Meyer's ballad about those two feet writhing in the fire? He wondered, on this particular morning, whether something about these places encouraged terrible things to happen. An architecture of calamity. Designed with a view toward violence, built at excruciating cost in labor and gold, attacked and defended with bloody-minded tenacity for hundreds of years—how could these stones not have absorbed some part of the anguish and battle ardor that had raged here? And now, to turn the place into a youth hostel! It was insane. But so was the world nowadays. Insane, needlessly cruel, remorseless.
Ingo felt like bellowing in his misery. His feelings had nothing to do with sinister Masonic rituals or the bacterium Yersinia pestis, borne by fleas—he understood that much. He was heartbroken, not stupid.
It's only a question of timing.
One decision having been taken—to leave here, to hike across the Iron Mountains into the Sudetenland, thence to the Polish border around Ostrava, and into Silesia—other decisions became necessary. The least of these, to rebook a liner passage with Hamburg-Amerika. Next, to notify Catholic U. of an unavoidable delay in their return for the autumn semester. He
alth problems could be cited, Butler suggested. An outbreak of Carpathian flu. More like a vampire attack, Ingo thought, eyeing Hagen with a surge of distaste.
Come on, Ingo—Martina never would take “no”—it'll be worth it, you know it will. A real adventure! He did not disagree. He imagined with hallucinogenic clarity just what kind of adventure it would be.
Only then, Anton. Forced to a decision of his own. Classes would start in a week, he noted with odd dispassion. The journey out and back must take at least twice that, even if the return were made by train. Those first lectures would be crucial: Anatomical Structure, with the well-known Professor Doktor Sippewitz—to miss the beginning is to lose the foundation for everything that follows. And the Theory of Eugenics, a recent offering, scandalous and popular, there was a danger of losing one's place on the class roster. No, it could not be avoided, emotions have no place in this matter, it's only a question of timing.
Hagen had said: This is how simple the matter is. And so it was, and there was no use in arguing. Nor in trying to sleep. Better to stand guard in the tower against the coming of dawn.
Nach irren nächten sind die morgen schlimm. George's deathly pentameter, precise as a scalpel. After nights of madness, mornings are grim.
One feature of being Ingo—ein Eigene, a singular being, for lack of a more helpful term—was that you were denied many of the ordinary opportunities for emotional display. Unless you happened to find yourself in an enchanted spot like Frau-Holle-Quell, where rules were magically suspended, you were advised to keep your feelings pretty damned close to your chest. Of course he was quite good at this, having spent half his lifetime honing a talent that already came naturally; but that was not the same as finding it easy to do. He remembered reading of a famous actor, a lion of the theater, who became violently ill from stage fright before every performance. Ingo felt sick now—not Carpathian flu, this was far worse— as the little band of hikers, making ready to depart, sorted itself out from those who were staying behind.
Another Green World Page 31
