I am damned to stew in my own juice. I will happily cook in my own secretion, singing all the while at the top of my voice a song to the devil. Take heed, I do not accept your message. It ricochets off my body, and however often it strikes me I will not weaken.
Take heed, I will not have the devil driven out of me. Because your cruel angels have been struck down by decay. Solemnly I raise my arm. Here you have my German salutation:
Hail, you betrayers!
Hail, you murderers!
Good health and happiness to the angels of death!
Night is spreading over the land. Man is delivered into the hands of others. They mock him, they flagellate him, they kill him. And you stay silent, and no one talks about what they have seen.
And the father hands over his son, and the son betrays his mother, and the mother lives in indecency. Houses are torn apart. And the compassion one was taught is thrown out to be gobbled up by dogs.
They urge the hounds onward. They round up the hounds with whistles. So that they set upon the human. They rip his tongue from his mouth, they gulp down his testicles, and you say nothing.
Floundering along all the paths of your making, you sacrifice him who rejects your words. And abandon him in his time of need. You believe you have heard his voice, he who reveals himself from heaven. He shall grant you the promise. I tremble with fear. He wants to redeem you and to carry the sin.
Ah, you are easy prey. Your hearts heavy with theft and evil, you stand eagerly on the threshold and divide up the property of your brother, whose blood is still warm. Hatred, contempt, and murder is your trinity. Hatred, contempt, and murder your creed.
I stand here and proclaim my own sentence.
I stand here and wait for you to rid your circle of me.
4.
Let’s finish what we have begun: I have been chosen to realize the racial biological points of the program. And to help the doctor perform his duty.
The doctor is a conscientious fellow, he will take all this to great heights. He knows what an important role he has to play. With his aid the world will become more beautiful some day. He is doing it for his children. Things should be better for them. And the few worries that come to him at night — could it be the case that the gentlemen from the Authority on Racial Biology have erred? — they will be overcome by a raise in salary.
I am racially an extremely unfavorable manifestation. Father, hereditary disease. Seventy-year-old mother, hereditary disease, and me: a pitiful bastard. Who would want to marry me?
Ladies and gentlemen, with this piece of meat, myself I mean, I will try to entice you. Grant me your queasiness if sympathy is out of the question. Three more days, I hold the summons in my hand, then I have to report. And if I do not report, the police will come for me. They want to take my secretion, my milk from me. Is that fair?
Ladies and gentlemen, my scrotum: although it neglected its duty, I am most fond of it. Garnered no respect from women. It did not serve the Fatherland. And never compensated for its limited capacities with particular ardor. But nonetheless I like it. There are more handsome ones, bigger ones, younger ones, but I am content with it.
May it not be left to me for my further use? To soothe my distress? To while away the idle hours? What else is left to me? It does not harm anyone, after all. I cannot help it, I have grown very attached to it.
Dear old friend, we have not done great business. You were thrifty with my secretion. And now? We have spent years together, and it is to end like this?
Ladies and gentlemen, please forgive me for placing myself and my sexual organ so much in the foreground. I know that as I speak sad things are happening. It is hardly a time for complaining, when murder is rife. I know that I am a self-pitying oaf. Believe me, I am a moral person, wary of attracting attention, and I avoid talking of things that could offend my fellow human beings. But I must stress once more, my scrotum is not an unnecessary organ.
You have heard enough. Your patience is running thin. Just try for a moment to put yourself in my place. Would you not do the same thing? Struggle with the same zeal to preserve your best friend? True enough, convention prevents dedicating too much time to the scrotum. There is so much to discuss, that one must not get caught up in unimportant details. And yet, I cannot so meekly hand a friend over to the hangman. Nor do I want to play down its worth. It is at the top of my list of sight-seeing attractions. Therefore I suggest you take my sphincter instead. I would also sacrifice my urethra without batting an eyelid.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am unwilling to part with it. I will lock myself in the pantry. No one will find me there. And if you do find me, then I will scream. Come on, gag me. The neighbors are looking out of their windows. In its place I will give you my colon, my appendix, my kidney. The neighbors are whispering to one another. Now the old boozer is getting what he deserves. My mother is ashamed. She has asked the priest to be with her, and he makes the sign of the cross over me. The trial is heaven-sent. In a letter it was declared that I should be redeemed. Now here is my salvation. My mother is weeping, the old whore. A little snip, it cannot be so bad. I should behave myself. Should think about the family’s reputation. I should be sensible and take it like a man. Does he also know fear? Can he not sleep at night either? I start to whimper. The policeman hits the son of the bitch, that is me, encouragingly on the back. It can’t be that bad. In my distress, I even shit in my pants. Then, it drips onto the floor. Now he starts beating me in earnest. I fall at his feet. He kicks me in the spleen. I shout out: Why can’t you love me? Why can’t you love yourself? Why can’t you love me within yourself? Why can’t you love yourself within me?
Does he not see the similarities? My life line goes right down to my wrist. My heart line is cut through — no luck with women — my head line is pronounced. Do I not have any right to dream? No right at all?
With animals, castration happens for economic reasons. To tame them and to fatten them up. I am washed. The sponge is cold. Soon I will get something warm to eat everyday. The doctor comforts me. It won’t hurt in the least. I will also get a few cigarettes afterward if I want. I want to talk, but I have to be quiet. He is busy. He will be happy to listen to me later. What good is his understanding to me afterward? I start to cry. A pitiful human being. A nurse pats my head. I will sleep in a moment. I have so much to say. So many words — have I used them all up? She takes the sheet. Give me speech. She pulls the sheet up over my head. Now I mustn’t move anymore, and if I am not quiet they’ll remove my heart. I won’t be distracted. Let me speak about the Fatherland. I’m singing. Soon I’ll be in the choir of the Holy Ghost, and its representatives on earth. I sing a song.
A hymn to my testicles
And to my children:
You have cast out love
Now it must roam.
Does no one want it?
It’s my turn to talk.
Will no one listen to me?
Death will lend me his ear.
He caressed my head.
He was godfather to my children.
Then he had to go.
He leaned against my bed.
He held the white sheet.
Death sings me a song.
Mother, is there really something horrific,
Something horrific going on inside me?
Am I the vessel,
Am I the vessel of illness?
Does danger lurk within me?
Mother,
With the knife,
With the hunting knife,
The man rips me open.
Here I lie and listen to Death.
He sings a song to my testicles.
It is my turn to pronounce Fatherland.
It holds the sheet over me.
Will no one listen to me?
Then I must wander.
And listen to Death.
The Lighter
1.
It came at about eight o’clock. We had just finished eating and my mother was clearing the tabl
e. I was sitting next to my father, who was drinking schnapps. Because I have impeccable hearing, I heard the knock first. It was more of a scratching, like a cat weakened by hunger trying to claw through the bars of a cage. I told my father that someone had knocked, and followed him out to the hall in spite of the fat stain on my right trouser leg, which had only spread during my attempt to clean it.
He ran past us, into the kitchen. He had buttoned his jacket up wrong. A brown corner hung lopsidedly over the waistband of his trousers.
“They are coming today,” he said, taking no notice of the steaming cup of ersatz coffee placed in front of him, along with the sugar bowl, as is our family’s custom. My father asked him how he knew.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Know what?” I wanted to know, and looked up at my father. He motioned me to be quiet. I pulled Herr Rößner’s coffee cup over to me, and listened attentively.
“Did anyone see you?”
The neighbor shook his head. I carefully took three sugar cubes out of the sugar bowl and dropped one of them into my cup.
“But you can never know for sure,” he said.
With a muffled plop it disappeared into the brown liquid. I fished it out with my spoon and sucked it with a slurping noise.
My father got out his pipe case. Either he will drink his schnapps now, or things are really serious, I thought. When I saw his face I decided that now was not the hour of repose: he would clean the pipe, and fill it, but not smoke it.
“We can’t take any risks,” said Father.
I dropped my second sugar cube into the cup. The coffee slopped over the side, leaving a ring on the saucer.
“You’ll bring her here.”
Mother looked at me with disapproval and removed the sugar bowl from the table. That did not bother me in the least, for I still had another cube hidden in my fist. The sugar had started to melt, becoming sticky.
My father scraped out his pipe, knocked it twice against his hand, opened the pouch, and started to fill it.
“Just for a couple of nights,” the neighbor said, “until I have got everything ready.”
“As long as you like,” said my father and closed the pouch again, “you can count on me one hundred percent.”
I stood up and went over to the shelf where the cigarette lighter was. I had just filled it up yesterday. I had also changed the wick and polished the silver.
Herr Rößner held out his hand to my father.
“I will never forget this, Gerhard,” he said, “as long as I live, I will never forget this.”
My father shook his head.
“Not at all, not at all,” he said, feeling in his pocket for the lighter. I eventually fished it out from underneath the fruit bowl.
After shutting the door behind our neighbor, who went racing down the stairs, I sat back down, finished the coffee, now lukewarm and bitter, and asked my mother for a piece of cake. She had baked it for tomorrow’s guests, but we would have to cancel them now that my father had decided to help our neighbor out of his fix.
“You may as well cut it now, rather than leave it in the oven,” I said.
My mother shook her head like a disgruntled cat.
“You will not get any cake,” she said, “nor will your father, and as for celebrating, there has been no reason for that in a long time,” she added, furiously jabbing at the pot in which the potatoes from dinner had burned: nothing good would come of it, my father was leading us to ruin, the household could consider asking her opinion once in a while, for besides just doing all the cleaning and cooking she did in fact bring in a third of the household money….
I quietly slipped away to my room.
I had just washed my sticky hands and was lying back refreshed on my bed when my father came in. I shifted a little to the side to make room for him. He sat down on the edge of my bed and puffed his pipe.
“We are having a visitor,” he said.
I nodded, and stared at the end of his pipe.
“Just for a few days,” he said.
“Yes, yes,” I said, “I already know that.” I was not stupid or anything. Why was he repeating what I had just heard with my own ears in the kitchen?
He took another draw on his pipe and blew the bluish smoke over to the shelves he had attached securely to the wall over my desk. They housed my model airplanes. I had built them with him and, following a diagram, had painted them true to life.
“Your mother does not want her in the living room. …”
“No no,” I said, “Oh, no.”
“So her fate is in your hands,” said Father. And although I knew that he just wanted to flatter me by saying that, that this was a cheap trick to garner my approval — a trick that I would not fall for — I was flattered in spite of myself, and agreed to it.
“Just a few days?” I asked.
“I give you my word,” said Father.
Then together we poured over a brochure that I happened to have in my pocket. It had pictures of an airplane used for businesspeople and tourists, with two motors. Its parts were available from the model shop.
I carried my bedclothes into the living room. The wool blanket slid out of my grasp and landed in the hallway, looking like a small flowery knoll. Mother, who had been watching my industrious activity from the kitchen doorway, shouted to me that I should not make a mess when we were expecting guests any minute.
“If they were not coming,” I retorted, “I would not have to vacate my room, and my blanket would not be lying on the floor.”
“For goodness’ sake!” said Mother, shrugging her shoulders, and went back to her pot, which she was now rubbing dry with a cloth.
I was proud to have used a sentence with three conditionals in it, done correctly. I fetched my exercise book from the desk drawer, and was about to write it down, then stopped. I remembered I had promised to be as silent as the grave. That sentence contained everything that would ignite my classmates’ curiosity. I certainly would have been asked who was coming, and which blanket we were talking about.
You win some, you lose some, I thought, and read through the fifteen sentences again that I had already noted down. I rubbed out the last one with my special eraser, now quite round from being rubbed so vigorously against the wooden bench, and shutting the book decided to bravely face the punishment exercise that was hanging over my head like a sword of Damocles. I would not have time to construct the thirty-five other conditional sentences tonight, for the night promised to be an exciting one. Nor did I have a good excuse at hand for this deficiency. As was often the case, the truth would have made the best excuse, but I could not betray my father, for I was tough, silent, and loyal.
There was a knock at the door.
“Shut the curtains,” said Father, and hurried through the hall.
There was a grumbling from the kitchen. I pulled together my mother’s pride and joy. They were actually only meant as decoration, and so they did not shut completely.
“There is a gap in the middle,” I measured it with my fingers, “about fifteen centimeters wide.”
My father took the guests into the living room.
“Sit down,” he said to the neighbor’s daughter. She stared at him stupidly.
“Perhaps it is better if you stay for a little while, until she gets used to us.”
Herr Rößner nodded. “Do you see, Anna,” he said, “these are Daddy’s friends, and you are going to stay with them for a few days, so that Daddy can prepare everything for the holiday.”
She clapped her hands. “Pony, pony.”
“That’s right,” said Herr Rößner, “what does a pony say?”
“Yippee, yippee.”
“Anna says yippee,” said the neighbor, stroking his daughter’s hair, “because she is sitting on the pony. The pony whinnies.” He whinnied.
“Do you think it is safe in the country?” asked Father, while Anna pulled at the neighbor’s sleeve.
“Brr, brr,” he said and tried once a
gain to imitate what he took to be the whinnying of a horse. “Safer than in the city.”
Anna laughed and clapped her hands. “Brr, brr,” she said now too, “brr, brr.”
Now my mother came out of the kitchen. She had taken off her apron. At last, I thought, for I could not take any more. Now she will read them the riot act.
Mother rolled down her sleeves, buttoned the cuffs, and looked at my father and at the neighbor with her “everything is under control” look that she always had after baking a particularly good apple strudel. She smilingly turned to the neighbor’s daughter.
“They also have ducklings there,” she said, “quack, quack, and cows, moo, moo….”
Had everyone gone crazy? I dropped down on the sofa, and stared at my parents in distress.
“That is Peter,” said Father, pointing his pipe at me.
Anna nodded over at me. She had big, heavy breasts that bounced up and down as she pretended to ride a horse. I nodded back.
“Peter,” said my father, “show Anna her room.”
Mine, I thought, not hers, mine, mine, and mine again. I took the hand she stretched out to me: it was soft and warm and made me think of a pot of vanilla pudding that had been put on the windowsill to cool with a skin forming on its surface. I led Anna into the room.
“Oh, nice,” she said, blinking.
“If you touch those,” I said pointing to my model airplanes, “I will beat you to a pulp.”
“Anna, Aannaa,” came a voice from the living room. She let go my hand and stomped off. More like a raccoon, I thought, looking at her buttocks, which were leading an active life of their own beneath her skirt. I slowly followed.
Anna was crying.
“My little girl,” said the neighbor, and looked helplessly at my mother, who was trying to loosen the girl’s hold on the collar of her father’s coat, “I will be back tomorrow, and then I will take you with me to the farm, and you will ride the little pony.”
“Come,” said Mother, giving me a warning look, “Peter will show you his airplanes.”
I tapped my finger against my forehead. Anna sobbed. I realized to my relief that she had not heard my mother’s suggestion.
The Inventory: A Novel Page 18
