"Don't fall asleep, boy!" Korneff interrupted my lovely reveries, laved by the sea, illuminated by fireworks. We turned left, and Section Eight, a new section with no trees and few gravestones, lay flat and hungry before us. Above the monotony of the other graves, all still too fresh to be tended, the most recent five rose clearly: moldering mounds of brown wreaths with faded, rain-soaked ribbons.
We quickly found Number Seventy-nine at the top of the fourth row, right by Section Seven, which boasted a few young, fast-growing trees, and was stocked with meter-high stones, mostly of Silesian marble, lined up with some regularity. We pulled up behind Seventy-nine, unloaded the tools, cement, gravel, sand, the pedestal and the travertine slab, with its slightly oily sheen. The three-wheeler sprang up as we rolled the load from the truck bed onto the crate with boards for tilting. Korneff pulled out the temporary wooden cross, with a crossbar bearing the names H. Webknecht and E. Webknecht, from the head of the grave, had me hand him the post-hole digger, and started digging two holes five feet three inches deep, one meter sixty by cemetery regulations, for the concrete posts, while I fetched water from Section Seven, then mixed the concrete, so it was ready by the time, having dug five feet, he said he was finished, and I could begin tamping in both holes while Korneff sat panting on the travertine slab and reached back to feel his boils. "Coming to a head. I can always feel when they're about to bust." I kept on tamping, my mind nearly blank. Coming from Section Seven, a Protestant funeral procession crawled across Section Eight to Section Nine. As they passed us, three rows away, Korneff slid off the travertine slab, and in compliance with cemetery regulations, we pulled off our caps for them, from the pastor through the next of kin. A solitary figure walked behind the coffin, a small, lopsided woman in black. Those who followed were all much taller and sturdier.
"God almighty, Katie bar the door!" Korneff groaned beside me. "I got a feeling they're going to bust before we get that slab up!"
Meanwhile the funeral procession arrived at Section Nine, rearranged itself, and gave birth to the rising and falling voice of the pastor. We could have placed the pedestal on the base, since the concrete was starting to set. But Korneff lay belly down across the travertine slab, shoved his cap between his forehead and the stone, and jerked back his jacket and collar, laying his neck bare, while details from the life of the dearly departed in Section Nine were announced to us in Section Eight. Not only did I have to clamber up on the travertine slab, I squatted on Korneff's lower back and took in the whole bag of tricks: there were two side by side. A straggler with an enormous wreath hurried toward Section Nine and the sermon that was slowly drawing to a close. After removing the tape with a single jerk, I wiped off the Ichthyol salve with a beech leaf and examined both indurations, tar-brown shading into yellow, and of approximately equal size. "Let us pray" drifted over from Section Nine. I took that as a sign, turned my head away, pressed and pulled at the beech leaves under my thumbs. "Our Father..." Korneff ground his teeth: "Pull, don't squeeze." I pulled. "...be Thy name." Korneff managed to join in the prayer: "...Thy kingdom come." Then I squeezed anyway, since pulling didn't work. "Will be done, on, as it is in." It was a miracle there was no explosion. And again: "Give us this day." Now Korneff had found his place in the text: "Trespasses and ... not into temptation..." There was more than I expected. "Kingdom, the power, and the glory." Squeezed out the last colorful remnants. "Forever and ever, amen." While I pulled again, Korneff: "Amen," and squeezed again: "Amen," while over in Section Nine they turned to their condolences, Korneff groaned another: "Amen," lying flat on the travertine slab heaved a sigh of relief: "Amen," and "Got any concrete left for the base?" I had, and he: "Amen."
I dumped the final shovelfuls as a binder between the two posts. Then Korneff slid off the polished, lettered surface and had Oskar show him the autumnal beech leaves with the similarly colored contents of his boils. We straightened our caps, took hold of the stone, and set the monument for Hermann Webknecht and Else Webknecht née Freytag in place as the funeral in Section Nine dispersed into thin air.
Fortuna North
Only people who left something of value behind on earth could afford gravestones back then. It didn't have to be a diamond or a yard-long string of pearls. Five sacks of potatoes would get you a full-fledged meter-high slab of shell limestone from Grenzheim. We took in enough cloth for two three-piece suits in exchange for a double-plot Belgian granite monument on a triple pedestal. The tailor's widow, who had the cloth and an apprentice, offered to make the suits for us if we would throw in a dolomite border.
So one evening after work, Korneff and I boarded the Number Ten and headed toward Stockum, where we looked up the widow Lennert and had our measurements taken. Absurd as it sounds, Oskar was wearing an antitank gunner's uniform in those days, one Maria had altered for him, and even though the buttons on the jacket had been moved, given my unusual build, it proved impossible to button.
The apprentice, whom the widow Lennert called Anton, hand-tailored a suit for me from dark blue material with a pinstripe: single-breasted, lined in ash gray, the shoulders well padded but creating no false sense of size, my hump not concealed but handsomely emphasized, cuffs for the trousers but not too wide; Master Bebra remained my well-dressed ideal. Thus no loops for a belt, but buttons for suspenders instead, the vest shiny in back and matte in front, lined in antique rose. The whole thing took five fittings.
While the tailor's apprentice was still bent over Korneff's double-breasted suit and my single-breasted suit, a shoe salesman tried to get a meter-high stone for his wife, who had been killed in an air raid in forty-three. At first the man tried to palm off redeemable coupons on us, but we wanted to see real merchandise. For Silesian marble with a synthetic stone border plus installation Korneff obtained a pair of low, dark brown shoes and a pair of carpet slippers with leather soles. I received a pair of black shoes with laces, which, though old-fashioned, were wonderfully soft. European size thirty-five; they offered my weak ankles firm and elegant support.
I laid a bundle of Reichsmarks on the synthetic-honey scales for Maria, who handled the shirts: "Could you get me two white dress shirts, one with pinstripes, and a light gray tie and a chestnut-colored one? The rest is for little Kurt and for you, dear Maria, who never think of yourself but only of others."
In a burst of generosity, I also gave Guste an umbrella with a genuine bone handle and a deck of nearly new Altenburger skat cards, since she enjoyed laying them out but was reluctant to borrow a deck from the neighbors every time she wanted to find out when Köster was coming home.
Maria rushed off to carry out her commission, bought a raincoat for herself with the considerable remaining cash, and a school satchel of imitation leather for little Kurt, which, ugly as it was, would have to do for the time being. To my shirts and ties she added three pairs of gray socks, which I'd forgotten to ask for.
When Korneff and I picked up our suits, we stood in some embarrassment before the mirror in the tailor's workshop, yet quite impressed with each other. Korneff scarcely dared turn his neck, furrowed with the scars of his boils. He leaned forward, his arms dangling from his drooping shoulders, and tried to straighten his crooked legs. As for me, when I folded my arms across my chest, thereby enlarging the horizontal mass of my upper body, placed my weight on my feeble right leg and angled my left nonchalantly, my new clothes gave me a daemonic, intellectual look. Smiling at Korneff and enjoying his astonishment, I approached the mirror, stood so close to the surface dominated by my reversed image that I could have kissed it, but instead simply breathed on it and said, as if in passing, "Hey there, Oskar. You still need a tie pin."
When, on Sunday afternoon a week later, I entered City Hospital to visit my nurses and present my new, vain self in tiptop form, showing all my best sides, I was the proud owner of a silver tie pin, set with a pearl.
The dear girls were speechless when they saw me sitting in the nurses' ward. This was late in the summer of forty-seven. I folded the arms o
f my suit across my chest in my accustomed manner and played with my leather gloves. I had been a stonecutter's trainee and master of fluted grooves for over a year now. I placed one trouser leg over the other, being careful to maintain the crease. Our good Guste cared for my suit as though it had been tailor-made for Köster, who was going to make some changes when he returned. Sister Helmtrud asked to feel the cloth. In the spring of forty-seven I bought little Kurt a mouse-gray loden coat for his seventh birthday, which we celebrated with homemade eggnog and Madeira cake—recipe: add freely! I offered the nurses, Sister Gertrud now among them, some candy that, in addition to twenty pounds of brown sugar, we'd been given for a slab of diorite. It seemed to me little Kurt was enjoying school a bit too much. The young lady teacher, not yet worn down, and certainly no Spollenhauer, praised him, said he was bright but a trifle solemn. How gay nurses can be when you bring them sweets. When I was alone with Sister Gertrud for a moment in the nurses' ward, I inquired about her free Sundays.
"Well, today, for instance, I get off at five. But nothing's happening in town," Sister Gertrud said with resignation.
I told her it was worth a try. At first she declined, she'd rather get a good night's sleep. Then I was more direct, came out with my invitation, and since she still couldn't make up her mind, concluded mysteriously with the words: "Show a little spirit, Sister Gertrud. You're only young once. There'll certainly be no lack of cake stamps." I illustrated this by giving the breast pocket of my jacket a slightly stylized tap, offered her another sweet, and, strangely enough, felt a mild wave of terror when I heard this strapping young Westphalian, who was not at all my type, turn away toward a small medicine cabinet and say, "All right then, if you think so. At six, let's say, but not here, at Corneliusplatz."
I would hardly have expected Sister Gertrud to meet me in the lobby or at the entrance to the hospital. At six o'clock I was waiting for her under the city clock on Corneliusplatz, which was still suffering the effects of war and could not tell time. She was punctual, as I could see from the relatively inexpensive pocket watch I had purchased a few weeks before. I almost didn't recognize her, and if I had seen her step off the tram in time, some fifty paces away say, at the tram stop across the street, before she noticed me, I would have slipped away, sidled off in disappointment; for Sister Gertrud did not arrive as Sister Gertrud, did not appear in white with her Red Cross pin, but as just another woman in civilian clothes of the poorest cut, just another Fräulein Gertrud Wilms from Hamm or Dortmund or some other place between Hamm and Dortmund.
She didn't notice my dismay, but said she'd almost been late because the head nurse had given her something to do shortly before five, just to be mean.
"Now, Fräulein Gertrud, may I offer a few suggestions? Perhaps we could go to a pastry shop first and relax a while, and whatever you want after that: a movie perhaps, I'm afraid it's too late for theater tickets, but how about a little dancing?"
"Oh, yes, let's go dancing!" she cried with enthusiasm, then realized too late, with a distress she could scarcely conceal, that although I was well dressed, I would cut an impossible figure as her dancing partner.
With mild schadenfreude—why hadn't she appeared in the nurse's uniform I so admired?—I seconded the plan, one she herself had approved, and, lacking any true power of imagination, she soon recovered from her shock and joined me in some cake that seemed filled with cement, one slice for me and three for her, and after I'd paid with cake stamps and cash, we boarded the Gerresheim tram at Koch am Wehrhahn, since, according to Korneff, there was a dance hall below Grafenberg.
The tram only went as far as the incline, so we made our way slowly up the last stretch on foot. A picture-perfect September evening. Gertrud's wooden sandals, no redeemable coupons necessary, clattered like the mill on the floss. That made me feel gay. People coming downhill turned around and stared at us. Fräulein Gertrud was embarrassed. I was used to it and took no notice: after all, my cake stamps had helped her to three slices of cement cake at Kürten's Pastry Shop.
The dance hall was called Wedig's and was subtitled Löwenburg, or The Lions' Den. The giggling started at the ticket window, and when we entered, heads began to turn. Sister Gertrud was ill at ease in her civilian clothes and almost tripped over a folding chair before a waiter and I caught her. The waiter led us to a table near the dance floor and I ordered two cold drinks, adding in an undertone, so only the waiter could hear, "And put a little something in them, please."
The Löwenburg consisted of one large room that might once have served as a riding academy. The upper regions of the room, including its heavily damaged ceiling, were festooned with paper streamers and garlands from last year's Carnival. Dim colored lights revolved overhead, casting reflections on the tightly slicked-back hair of young black marketers, some quite elegant, and on the taffeta blouses of the young women, who all seemed to know one another.
When the cold drinks with a little something in them were served, I bought ten Yankee cigarettes from the waiter, offered one to Sister Gertrud and another to the waiter, who stuck it behind his ear, and after giving my lady a light, pulled out Oskar's amber cigarette holder and smoked about half a Camel. The tables near us quieted down. Sister Gertrud dared look up. And when I crushed out the stately stub of the Camel in the ashtray and left it there, Sister Gertrud picked up the butt smoothly and tucked it away in a side pocket of her oilcloth handbag.
"For my fiancé in Dortmund," she said, "he smokes like crazy."
I was glad I wasn't her fiancé, and that the music had started up.
The five-man band played "Don't Fence Me In." Young men in crêpe soles dashed diagonally across the dance floor without colliding and angled for young ladies who entrusted their handbags to friends as they rose.
Some couples danced with a smoothness born of long practice. Quantities of chewing gum in motion, a few fellows stopped dancing for several beats, held their partners, who continued impatiently bobbing up and down in place, by the arm—scraps of English now leavened the stock of Rhenish words. Before the couples returned to their dance, small items had been passed on: true black marketers never have a night off.
We sat out that dance, and the next foxtrot as well. Now and then Oskar glanced at the men's feet and, as the band struck up "Rosamunde," asked Gertrud, who reacted with dismay, to dance.
Recalling Jan Bronski's choreographic skills, realizing I was nearly two heads shorter than Sister Gertrud, well aware that our alliance offered a note of the grotesque and even wishing to emphasize it, I tried a one-step: placing my hand on her bottom, I turned my palm outward, felt thirty percent wool, and with my cheek on her blouse as she gave in to my lead, shoved a strong Sister Gertrud back lock, stock, and barrel, followed hard on her heels, cleared the way to our left with arms stretched out, and crossed the dance floor from corner to corner. It went better than I had dared hope. I allowed myself a few fancy steps, clung to her blouse above and her hips below, to the hold that they offered, left and right, dancing about her, maintaining the classical one-step position, where the lady looks as if she were falling, and the gentleman pushing her over seems ready to fall right on top of her; yet because they're such good dancers, they never fall.
We soon had an audience. I heard cries like: "Didn't I tell you he could dance! Look at 'im go! A real Jimmy the Tiger. Come on, Jimmy! Let's go, crazylegs! Go, man, go!"
Unfortunately I couldn't see Sister Gertrud's face and could only hope that she was accepting this youthful ovation with proud composure, having resigned herself to their applause, just as she resigned herself as a nurse to the often awkward flattery of her patients.
They were still clapping when we sat down. The five-man band gave a flourish, their drummer leading the way, then another and yet a third. "Hey you, Jimmy!" they called out, and "Did you see those two?" Then Sister Gertrud rose, mumbled something about the ladies' room, picked up the handbag with the cigarette butt for her fiancé in Dortmund, and, blushing furiously, pushed her way out,
knocking into chairs and tables on every side, heading toward the ladies' room near the ticket window.
She never came back. From the fact that she'd downed her drink in one gulp before leaving I gathered that draining a glass signaled farewell: Sister Gertrud had jilted me.
And Oskar? A Yankee cigarette in his amber holder, he ordered a straight schnapps from the waiter, who was discreetly removing the nurse's glass, drained to the dregs. Oskar forced a smile. Painfully, it's true, but he smiled, crossed his arms above, his legs below, wagged his delicate black shoe, size thirty-five European, and enjoyed the moral superiority of the abandoned.
The young people, regular guests at the Löwenburg, were kind, waved to me as they swung by on the dance floor. "Hey, there!" the fellows yelled, and the girls, "Take it easy!" I thanked these representatives of true humanity by waving my cigarette holder and grinned indulgently as the percussionist gave an elaborate drumroll, reminding me of my good old days in the grandstands, launched into a solo on snare, bass drum, cymbals, and triangle, and announced a ladies' choice.
The band played a hot number, "Jimmy the Tiger." This was meant for me, no doubt, though no one in the Löwenburg could possibly have known of my career as a drummer under grandstands. At any rate the young quicksilvery thing with a mop of henna-red curls who'd singled me out as the man of her choice whispered tobacco hoarse and chewing-gum wide into my ear, "Jimmy the Tiger." And while we danced a fast Jimmy, conjuring up the jungle and all its dangers, the tiger prowled on tiger paws for almost ten minutes. Again a flourish, applause, and another flourish, because I had a well-dressed hump, was nimble on my feet, and didn't cut a bad figure at all as Jimmy the Tiger. I invited the young lady so favorably disposed toward me to sit at my table, and Helma—that was her name—asked if her friend Hannelore could join us. Hannelore was silent, sedentary, and hard drinking. Helma in turn had a thing for Yankee cigarettes, and I had to order more from the waiter.