These trips were very embarrassing for me. Throughout my youth they were the constant source of what seemed to me then unsolvable problems.
I did not want my classmates to see my father delivering me at the school gates. Most of the students were from the town and arrived on foot. There was nothing I longed for more than literally to walk with them, not to be the exception.
I’ve heard it said more than once that grown-ups envy children their imagination, courage, and independence. I view this contention as romantic nonsense.
How often has my godchild, a charming if ordinary example of her species, asked her mother for the exact same doll that her friend has? How often during a dispute between mother and child is the final secret weapon drawn and driven home with power, namely that X is allowed to, so there can be no possible reason on earth for her not to be allowed to as well: and who gives a fig in these cases about the rules of logic or observes the natural claims of knowledge and experience? However forcefully the mother insists that what her daughter wants is unhealthy, dangerous, foolish, or expensive, she has to concede that if the friend is allowed to, it can’t harm her daughter either.
Yes, I strongly believe that it’s only with the passing of years that one discovers that in the course of a life, one has to cast off not only one’s own prejudices, but also those of one’s parents, aunts, uncles, as well, of course, as those of one’s time. It seems to me one of the greatest and perhaps most beautiful paradoxes that one only starts to grasp who one is and what life is about when death is nigh.
My father would not give up this daily routine. And since I would never have dared tell him the truth, because it would have hurt him, I fell back on lies. Back then I made up lots of lies: the weather, possible depressions or highs, was my favorite topic.
I was only an average student. My reports said the same thing every year, in a sort of leitmotif: is hardworking, but dreams too much.
I was bored in German class and hated Latin. I couldn’t retain the names of the various spears, lances, and pikes that were forever being talked about. I didn’t see the point.
Our teacher, a certain Mr. Schubert — names are often deceptive, he was no romantic — was one of those classicists who take their subject incredibly seriously. For seven years, the time required to drink in the great subject, he marched us briskly through the battlefields of Bellum Gallicum, rather than contenting himself with some risque poems by Catullus or Tibullus.
I was reasonably well liked by my classmates, though exactly why, I’m sure they could not have said. I was an inconspicuous sort of a boy, on friendly footing with everyone, but I didn’t form any particularly close friendships. When teams were picked for soccer I was always next to last to be chosen. It was my good fortune that there was another boy in the class who was not only short-sighted, but also pudgy. Throughout school he relieved me of the humiliation of being last.
It wasn’t that I was unathletic: I always had a real aptitude for running. Nor did I fear physical pain in any way. I just couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm for the game. Deep in thought, dreaming, I would stand slightly apart. From this distance the absurdity of it all struck me — twenty-two boys with almost religious humility, in short pants, racing after a little ball.
Yes, what I’m trying to say is that this place of knowledge didn’t overly stimulate me. I viewed the time at school as a duty one had to fulfill in one’s youth, from which one would be liberated on becoming an adult. And so it could have gone on right up to graduation had it not been for the arrival of a new biology teacher. He first ignited that passion that has remained with me throughout these years. This biology teacher was a religious man. He saw his belief in a higher realm confirmed in the conformity and diversity of creation. He was thrilled by the smallest, most banal elements of it. I’ve never known anybody who could recite the various methods of planting potatoes in such an excited and lively manner. His young listeners were swept along without his even trying. He led us on to previously unknown peaks of imagination. And so it actually seemed quite natural to me, when to my surprise I graduated with better results than expected, to devote myself to medicine.
In the meantime, Katharina had become engaged. During the summer vacation my mother and sisters had been working feverishly preparing for the wedding. A larger new table had to be bought, a menu concocted, wedding announcements printed and sent off.
I can still remember the quarrel that ensued because of the fabric and lace ordered for Katharina’s dress from a well-known textile trader in Berlin. The manufacturer named the silk Florentine Pollen. I can remember the name so well because as far as I could see there was nothing Italian about it nor anything that resembled pollen. With my youthful know-it-all attitude, I informed my sisters that a plant’s pollen is nothing other than small particles of masculine sex cells. My sisters looked at me with pity and compassion. How could I, a mere representative of the male sex, possible hope to understand that reality is of absolutely no interest where feelings and impressions are concerned?
At that moment, I really felt sorry for my sister’s future husband, ten years her senior and an employee of an insurance company in Danzig.
2.
How can I describe the impression Berlin made on me? The buses, the painted red lips of the women, the lighted advertisements urgently flashing the names of products: everything was astonishing and exciting for me.
I had spent my childhood dreaming of the city, filling in any blanks left by my father’s stories. Yet, as I paused during one of my lengthy walks and looked around at the blossoming trees, the cars driving by, I had to admit that the city wasn’t at all as I had imagined it as a child: it was more scintillating, noisier, it took me by surprise. The Berlin I had conjured up irrefutably resembled the little town on the Polish border where I had grown up. A little bigger perhaps, more beautiful, but a small town all the same. I had done nothing more than diversify, with a few strokes of variation, what I already knew. Yes, I had violently come up against the barriers of my world, for the unknown is always outside the realm of the imaginable.
I put it down to my youth that places of entertainment and diversion made the greatest impression on me. The cafés. Still today I think of them with such wistfulness. They have gone.
Of course there were cafés in our little town too. But what a difference between the snug rooms smelling of fresh baking that you go to in the afternoon to eat cake, and those huge noisy buildings.
Whereas there you admire the wide choice of cakes with their delicate icing — the central focus of such a cozy café is always the glass display cases through which the carefully arranged goodies can be viewed — in the coffeehouses of the city it is not the cakes but the guests who are on display. If any remnant of the afternoon cake culture clings on there, it is only in the guise of an already slightly misshapen slice of apple strudel past its prime. But that didn’t bother anyone.
Armed with my friendly disposition and my monthly allowance from my father, I had soon settled into a routine at the café five minutes from the building where I had a room. As soon as I arrived a tray appeared in front of me with a cup of tea, a small milk jug, a glass of water, and two buttered halved rolls topped with ham. I always ordered another two of those later on. I wholeheartedly enjoyed this.
I would sit there for about an hour, reading the paper, chatting with some of the other locals, or with the waiter: toward eleven, when the breakfast guests had gone and before the lunch customers started to arrive, he took a short break and often stood next to my table. Afterward I either went home, or made a short detour to the university. If nothing else seduced me, there were always the morning screenings at the movie theater.
At first glance, these theaters were just like those in any small town in which the same films were shown two weeks later. They had display cases with photographs, a box office, someone who checked the tickets at the entrance, and an usher: usually a middle-aged woman, who, just before the lights went down, sold rai
sins, nuts, and chocolate.
No, what made these theaters so different from the others, whether provincial theaters or the luxuriously decorated theaters on the avenues, were not any architectural details but rather the expressions on the faces of the moviegoers. I saw more careworn and disillusioned faces in those matinees than in any railway station or hospital. The people who went to the movies in the mornings did not go for pleasure, nor because the film interested them — any other film would have done just as well. It was seldom that one would see, as one did on the weekend, a boy bursting with anticipation clutching his week’s pocket money in his sweaty palm to hand over in exchange for a ticket to see his favorite hero riding through the black and white prairie.
The morning showing was the domain of the unemployed. They bought the reduced price tickets because they had nothing better to do. They didn’t enjoy this pastime. They were aware of their lack of usefulness. I think that very little has changed on this front, in spite of the great progress that’s been made in most areas today. It’s not going too far out on a limb to suppose that in order to enjoy doing nothing, you’ve got to have money.
Starting out wasn’t as easy as I’d imagined. First, I had to transport my few belongings, then a furnished room had to be found. Back then people were streaming into Berlin. The city attracted not only youngsters from the provinces like myself, but also Poles, Russians, and Eastern Jews hoping to find happiness there. The property owners made the most of this state of affairs. Their hands weren’t tied by any law and they often asked for unashamedly high prices.
I searched for three whole weeks. As my hopes sank, so too did my criteria. I viewed so-called artist’s studios the size of dog kennels, rooms that were so damp that the wallpaper was sprouting greenish flora and fauna, and, curiously, plenty of basement rooms. Where were the airy and bright brothers of these gloomy stepchildren? I never set eyes on them. Instead, I became acquainted with the innards of the city, traversed Berlin’s colon and intestines, into which I’d been sucked along with the masses of other newcomers.
Finally I found it. My first room. It was rented out by a respectable lady, who looked like a red-cheeked Mother Goose. I passed the cross-examination, and moved in that very day. I was to live there until shortly after graduation, which was all to my good.
The landlady, complete in starched white collar, was an old-fashioned but generous person. No expense was spared to make the small family as comfortable as possible. She had made us her responsibility. We were never cold in winter, could wash whenever we wished. There was warm water all day long, and electricity was not rationed. Our bedclothes and towels were changed once a week. We could, should we be in the mood, join our head of the house and her two cats in the sitting room. Yes, this place could have seemed a bourgeois Arcadia, if one thing, as is the case in any paradise, had not been prohibited. We weren’t allowed to invite any member of the opposite sex into our rooms. Our landlady did not take any risks. The apartment was locked up at night. If two charming young women hadn’t lived there too, I’d have been hard pressed to have all the precious experiences you shouldn’t miss out on in your youth, since they are of overriding importance for the healthy development of all the senses. One was a student, the other a salesgirl. We quickly became friendly, and they often visited me at night.
I soon felt at home, got into the habit of smoking along with some other vices, and started university in the fall as the first signs of excess were making themselves visible.
3.
Although I wasn’t too turned on by the subject matter to begin with, still, looking back wistfully at those long lazy days, I was a conscientious student. I received good grades and was given an assistant’s position. First of all I sterilized the bone chisels, the extraction pliers, the mouth mirror, and all the other instruments, the very sight of which make some patients think unjustly of torture instruments — dentists who get any joy out of hurting helpless patients are few and far between. Soon, though, my professor trusted me enough to let me perform the straightforward checkups.
I loved fashioning bridges for my professor, who then placed them against the patient’s dark red gum. What I enjoyed most was the minutely detailed work, matching the color and shape of the porcelain teeth.
Never were patients so joyful and full of anticipation as just before being fitted with dentures. They had survived the agony, the tooth chiseled down to a stump and other teeth taken. The opening of the mouth heralded the moment in which the dentist would liberate the patient from his humiliating situation: he would no longer look like an old man. He would be able to smile the smile he used to: broad, flashing, displaying all the new teeth. At such moments, I stood behind my professor to catch a glimpse of the dark throat. Some of the gratitude that filled the room also settled rightfully on my shoulders.
If only the daily routine of the dentist consisted solely of such experiences, I would have been absolutely satisfied with my chosen profession. But one also had to drill, to pull, to fill. All of these little maneuvers, truly child’s play from the medical perspective, left me a wreck for several hours afterward.
The patients’ inhibition knocked me off balance. I couldn’t find the right words to comfort them, I didn’t know what to do or say to win their full confidence. I was sure that the pain I would cause them was bearable. And yet, I could not approach that unscalable wall of fear that formed between the patient and me as soon as I leaned over him. It was noticeable through the hunched shoulders, the hands clamped tightly either on to the chair arms or over the chest, and, most unpleasantly, through the excessive saliva.
I was and remain a theorist. I much prefer writing articles about transplants to carrying them out, and thus am in no way suited to the dental profession. But I had started studying, and couldn’t just give it up halfway through, so I kept going. I spent some pleasant, interesting years and graduated in 1932. I wasn’t going to put my diploma to great use, incidentally, opening as I did an antiquarian bookshop a few months later.
4.
In order to graduate I not only had to pass successfully the written exams, I had to perform successfully three forms of dental treatment. I had the two dreaded ones, filling and root work, behind me. But with, of all things, my hobby — dentures — I made no progress. I couldn’t find any suitable patient. The people who came to the university to be handled seemed to prefer their old, rotten teeth to a set of new replacements, practically impossible to damage. They clung to their teeth as a child to its misshapen one-eyed teddy bear. The child wouldn’t trade it in for the world, certainly not for a new doll. The mother can only surreptitiously wash it quickly at night when the child has fallen asleep, since he won’t stand for the briefest separation from his beloved companion.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. I was not, of course, the only student. Along with me, a hundred other students were on the hunt for the patient, who, once caught, would be led under the envious eyes of the classmates through the large treatment room to the chair. He wouldn’t be allowed up before he’d been fitted with dentures or at least a bridge, which the professor would then examine.
Rumor had spread that extraction was the name of the game at the university: beware fresh-faced dentists clad in white coats with an eager expression, coming your way.
What was I to do? I didn’t have an aunt whose premolar should be ground down to a stump, no sister-in-law or cousin to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the family. I was an independent bachelor whose family lived in a little town on the Polish border. In spite of being sociable, my circle of acquaintances was mostly made up of classmates and fleeting female acquaintances. I had to think of something. And because I had to, I found a solution.
Following my intuition, I went to the Herbert Gertler Foundation. It was a Sunday afternoon. I was not let in right away: the seminar nurse had forgotten to mention my visit and so I had to wait in the reception area while the concierge looked for her in vain.
Impatiently, I went for a wa
lk along the corridor. When I was almost at the end, I heard music coming from behind wooden double doors. Hesitantly, I opened the door and saw a hall painted green. At the end of the hall twenty inmates of the foundation were sitting at a long table. They were looking at a trolley piled high with plates of cake. A nurse was pouring drinks into the cups. She had a tired, bored face.
A woman of around fifty with a muscular body and red-dyed hair was dancing through the rows of empty tables, singing folk tunes. She had a beautiful voice. Although she tapped affably on the shoulders of some of the old folks, no one took any notice of her.
The nurse handed the cake out. Now the remaining two members of the singer’s audience turned away to follow the emptying process of the cake trolley. The singer stopped singing and, shrugging her shoulders, came over to me. I offered her a cigarette, and smoking we contemplated the patients. I remember this informative scene in precise detail. The greedy, joyless way the old folks shoveled in their cake conveyed a sense of hopelessness that I could not relate to.
After an eternity I was led to the staff nurse. She promised to relay my unusual request and we went up to the second floor. It turned out that there was indeed a sprightly old lady, eighty-four years of age, who needed new dentures urgently.
Berta Kurzig was an exceptionally stubborn woman, not unfriendly, but exhausting. She was of the opinion that nothing in life is free and greeted me with suspicion. She kept looking for the catch, the small print that she had overlooked. She kept waiting for me to give something away, to see a dishonest gleam in my eye. When a week had passed and nothing of that sort had occurred, I remaining polite and determined, she sent her granddaughter to me. This young lady was no less contrary. She stared at me with green cat’s eyes, and the large tortoiseshell glasses couldn’t disguise their distrustful glint.
The Inventory: A Novel Page 12
