Iron Gustav (43 page)

Of course he dreamed about her. At first he couldn't get to sleep. The memory of a part of her leg, which she had carelessly allowed him to see, and of the soft swelling of her breast, which he, behind her as she sat, had seen half reluctantly, all confused, tortured and disturbed him. But these visions, once he had fallen asleep, would lose their reality and he was led by dreams into a world where everything seemed to hide behind its first aspect a second, an evil, one. The wounds and deformities of trees became obscene; from the flower arose the pistil, intent on fertilization; the outstretched finger of a signpost seemed to point at his loins.

This he hated – without being religious he felt it sinful. To be obsessed thus by his brother's mistress humiliated him. I don't love her like that, he repeated to himself a hundred times. I don't want to steal her from Erich. I'm not a thief … And rage overcame him when he realized more and more often, and ever more clearly, how much his body was cheating him, inflicting greater and greater defeats. I won't think of Tinette in that way, he decided. It's loathsome; it degrades both of us. And he resisted. He fought himself.

Then, in the midst of his struggles, he quite suddenly gave up all resistance – he surrendered.

He would perhaps be sitting with Tinette and Erich, with the enigmatic Erich who seemed to regard his brother's daily visits as a matter of course; though even more enigmatic was the woman herself – he could never make out why she always wanted him around – him, who wasn't particularly clever, who wasn't particularly good-looking, and who was unkempt and badly dressed. And out of the corner of his eye he would watch Erich sitting there with his whisky and retailing the latest news … On one occasion it became too much for him and he rose, busying himself with the fire; then, straightening up, he stood behind her looking down into her low-cut blouse, watching with an insolent despair the rise and fall of her breasts and staring across at his brother challengingly. I'm not ashamed, his eyes said. On the contrary! I look and look and look!

Or he made one of his rare appearances at school. There sat the other boys looking frightfully honourable and boring while the
voice of Schneider, the senior master, jarred the ear. It smelled of schoolroom dust, the great unwashed, ink and paper. And deliberately he set about visualizing Tinette as he had seen her the evening before, Tinette kneeling in front of a chest, Tinette with her skirt so tight over her hips that he could see the line of her slender thighs and between them that mysterious triangle, the eternal object of all dreams …

Full of contempt, he looked at his schoolfellows. There they sat, leading their stupid lives, thinking of homework and examinations and collecting firearms – childish pursuits. He, however, was a man and went every day to a beautiful woman. His life was a life of vice, of secrets, of transgressions; all they ever did was to scribble in their exercise books. Schneider said: ‘Good, Porzig!' and Porzig was happy. Such children were they, such a man he.

Another time, in the midst of a conversation with his brother and Tinette, he had run out of the hall and crept up to her bedroom, where he had knelt by her turned-down bed and buried his face in her pyjamas … inhaling a subtle fragrance, the very fragrance it seemed of the primeval mysteries of life – seduction and sin, source and action, life's eternal secret, and inexhaustible wellspring.

This, however, happened not at the beginning but later, when he had fallen still deeper under her spell, for he became more and more her plaything, her minion, her slave. He gave way, at first, open-eyed, then closed his eyes and threw himself into the abyss. He was masculine (though not yet a man) and she feminine (and very much a woman). It did not lie in his nature to quarrel day after day about the same things; they wearied him and when he had repeated his point of view five times he was loath to utter it a sixth. Her willingness to argue, however, remained unimpaired. She could start again every day, and say the same thing. Every day? Every hour, every minute. Nor would she yield an inch. So often did she tell him to manicure his nails that in the end he began to cut and clean his nails, and scrape off the dead skin – do all those little things which had up till then seemed so boring, so unnecessary, and such a waste of time.

And finally even took pleasure in it. He gave way not only for the sake of peace and so as not to hear over and over again the same nonsense, but also because it was such pleasure to sit with her, half an
hour – an hour – she manicuring her nails, he manicuring his. And they talked – there was something almost comradely about it – she giving advice, taking his hand in hers, cutting a nail more expertly, speaking of these matters with extreme seriousness. Gradually he came to understand how important all this can be to certain women and that a fastidious woman finds it almost impossible to care for an unfastidious man or even to bear him near her.

Therefore, when she asked with a laugh: ‘Well, Henri, silly boy, wasn't I right about your nails? Don't you look smarter now?' he laughingly admitted that she had been right, and that he was now smart – dead smart. He gave way, no longer tested if she really was right, whether or not manicured nails were really necessary for him. He was now sitting next to her. In that case, she must be right!

And when she repeated for the thirtieth time that he must put on the new suit, that he must go and be fitted, that no man who valued himself could go around looking as he did, that it was impossible for a woman to be seen with him and that there was nobody else with whom she could go for a walk – then he finally gave way here also.

‘But only that suit he left,' said Heinz.

She was agreeable.

But it turned out that the suit didn't fit; it bulged at the back. She placed Heinz between two mirrors and pointed it out till he could see for himself … No, it was impossible. He couldn't go about like that. He would have to visit the tailor.

And since he was going to the tailor anyhow, he might just as well try on his overcoat – it was wintertime now. All right, the Germans didn't call it winter, then! But for her it was, and in any case she couldn't go out with him unless he wore an overcoat. They were going to go out together, weren't they? For long walks? Well then—

‘But it's impossible, Tinette. I can never pay for it.'

‘Don't be silly, Henri! The tailor won't send in the bill for six months – you may be a rich man by then.'

‘But, Tinette, that's quite impossible.'

‘Why should it be? Look at Erich! He'll be rich in a year's time. Surely you can do what your brother can.'

‘But you're quite wrong, Tinette. I believe Erich is fearfully worried about money.'

‘Erich?
Worried about money?' She was thunderstruck. Such an idea had never occurred to her.

‘He counted on Father being a rich man, you know.'

She laughed, laughed in his face. ‘Oh, Henri, you unworldly creature, you! Things have changed since then. Erich's rolling in money, I tell you, rolling in it! Only a few days ago he bought this villa, paid for it, paid ready cash – I don't remember how much. It was a fat gentleman who got the money. And you – you won't even let your brother give you a couple of suits?'

He looked suspiciously at her, convinced that she lied. ‘But where would Erich have got so much money? He must have borrowed it then.'

‘Oh, you mustn't say that. Erich's really smart. He's got some kind of contract …'

‘Contract? For what?' It seemed less and less credible. Erich, only twenty-one, fresh from the army, in the Reichstag security service, and then no longer in it – and suddenly a wealthy contractor! ‘What kind of contract?'

‘It's true. And I consider it only right his friends should do something for him. He's very useful to them.'

‘But, Tinette, do listen … What can he contract for? He's got nothing.'

‘Well, he buys things. They've commissioned him to supply some regiment or other. They say he's so capable. A friend of his was here recently and said that Erich has produced a surprising amount of butter in spite of the blockade – Danish butter. Or was it Russian? I've forgotten. In any case …'

‘So my dear Erich's become a profiteer. I think it's …'

‘Oh, do be quiet, Henri! For a fortnight you've made my life a misery with those suits.'

‘I? The other way round, you mean.'

‘First you say you don't know how you're going to pay for them, then I tell you that Erich's giving them to you. I discussed it with him a long time ago.'

Again something quite fresh. So Erich knew about it. But she was lying, he was certain she was lying …

‘Then
you say Erich hasn't the money for such presents. I tell you he has, he earns a lot of money. And so you call him a profiteer. Yes, my dear boy, you're demanding that Erich earns his money in a way you approve of.'

‘I demand nothing,' he burst out. ‘I don't want to hear anything more about it. I—'

‘Very well then, that's settled at last. And please remember that it's settled. You've no idea how sick I am of that shiny suit of yours. Come along, I've got you some shirts and underclothing.'

Heinz fled. He ran out of the house, desperate, furious.

Will she never understand anything, he thought. I can say ‘No' a hundred times, I can shout it into her ears, all it means to her is ‘Yes'. I won't stand it any more. I won't come here again, and if I ever do, I swear never to wear this wretched suit. She ordered underwear for me. But I'll never … I'm going to stay at home. I must study anyway, otherwise I'll mess up the exams too. (What else he'd messed up he didn't say, but he had a pretty clear feeling that just about everything was a mess.)

No, I'll go regularly to school for at least a week and swot terrifically. I'll show her!

And he imagined what she would see … How at first she would be surprised, then worried that he no longer came at all and stayed away without saying a word.

She'll just have to miss me. Even if she doesn't love me, she's used to me. She can't be on her own … And to break it all up because of a couple of stupid suits! She understands, she must understand, that it's impossible.

At home, his parents had a visitor. But visitor wasn't exactly the right word; a daughter had returned home. After four years of absence Sophie was back from her field hospital on the Eastern Front – a senior nurse now, sitting there in her blue-grey uniform, a Red Cross badge on her fully rounded breast and with some order or decoration
pinned a little to one side of it – Sophie, Heinz's sister, eldest daughter of the Hackendahl family, completely familiar and yet completely transformed!

The Sophie of former days had been a sharp-nosed, rather ill-humoured creature, thin and pale. The senior nurse was fat, with a flabby face, as if appearing up from the miasma of the sickroom. After saying something she would shut her mouth and compress her lips as though tasting something.

My, she's certainly become revolting, thought Heinz, a sort of cross between a nun and amateur whore. And she's learned how to be bossy all right.

Without getting up, she had extended a plump hand to him. ‘So you're Bubi. I suppose you have to be called Heinz now. Well, well. I need hardly tell you that you've grown very tall. Yes … yes. And at school? Are you getting on there? Are you at the top?'

‘Thanks,' said Heinz dryly and sat down. An absolutely unbearable female! She was behaving as if he were some very small boy and she an affectionate maiden aunt. It was funny, but why was he especially chosen to have exclusively unbearable siblings? (That they found him equally unbearable didn't occur to him.)

Sophie continued: ‘And everything's all right at home? Yes, I can see of course that your circumstances are reduced somewhat. Well, we've all had to make our sacrifices, in our purses or our persons. Poor Otto also fell. Yes, yes.' She shut her mouth tightly. It was as if she were closing Otto's coffin lid.

‘An' what'll you do now, Sophie?' asked old Hackendahl. ‘You c'n see for yourself that we haven't enough grub for you too. Bubi's already got his notice to quit at Easter.' He laughed.

Heinz thought his father had changed tremendously of late. Not that he had fallen farther than the general decline. It was rather as if recent times had brought him to himself with a jolt. He seemed to be secretly amused at everything, making fun both of the world and his children.

‘No,' answered Senior Sister Sophie slowly, ‘I don't think I shall become a burden to you. The Senior Staff Surgeon, Herr Schwenke, has offered me a post as theatre sister. There's only too much to do at home, unfortunately – instead of uniting in the hour of trouble
we assist our enemies by killing one another. Sad! Yes, yes.' She lowered her pale eyelids. All she said was undeniably true, but she said it in a manner which Heinz considered loathsome.

‘There are also other plans for me … Well, we shall see, there's no hurry. But it's very unlikely that I shall ever be a burden on you.' Her lips closed.

‘That's fine, my girl,' said Hackendahl. ‘I c'n quite see you've feathered your nest all right. Well, you've bin a lot smarter than your poor ole dad. He's only a common cabby again.'

She evaded commenting on this. ‘I haven't been in Berlin for a long time,' she said, ‘and perhaps I may be mistaken – but you used not to speak in such a … a local way, did you, Father?'

‘You notice everythin', girl,' grinned Hackendahl. ‘No. When I had a proper business I did me best to speak refined like but now, as a common cabby … it don't pay. See?'

‘I see. Yes, yes. I understand, Father.' The nun lowered her eyelids. ‘Previously you used to play the part of – what did they call you? – of Iron Gustav! And now it's the jolly Berliner. Original, Father! Really very original.'