Authors: Steve Sem-Sandberg
ra-tat-tat-tatt-tatt-ta!
… sounds of explosions followed his flight path and, one after another, they would all burn in the flames, all the idiots and children and doctors and nurses and tutors, and the horrible female guards they called
Aufseherinnen
, and the psychologists too – every single one would be blown up, even the hateful Mrs Rohrbach who would be incinerated in an especially intense, sparking ball of fire.
However, Miseryguts was less intrigued by the fighter pilot angle and more by the facsimile signature below the portrait and the way it could be seen as composed of two parts. First, the name
Adolf
with its
A
sticking up skywards while the
f
pushed off downwards like a slanting flash of lighting. And then, for some reason several centimetres further along the line, the surname started off with a complex spiral twirl that could, on a good day, be taken to be an
H
-curl but which then whirled off downwards into an ever denser (and ever more undecipherable) cyclone. If only one could have a signature like that! Miseryguts muttered wistfully to himself. Unlike most of the Spiegelgrund boys, Miseryguts didn’t come from an ordinary children’s home but from the Juchgasse reform school where they placed many of the children who had at first been held in police cells. In other words, Miseryguts was a real thief. Perhaps all this had something to do with how critical he always was about everything, not only his signature but the Spiegelgrund food (what was served up at Juchgasse had been much better) and Mr Hackl’s ideas about what to teach them, and every time he expressed his displeasure with something, he grimaced and rolled his shoulders as if shaking off some hugely uncomfortable sensation;
can’t you sit still?
Nurse Mutsch kept saying to him but it was a fact that he couldn’t. He moaned about Mutsch as well, called her a pig and, true enough, there was something pig-like about her broad face and large, blank, nearly transparent eyes that looked like the glass eyes on stuffed animals; unblinking eyes that seemed to grow larger the longer they were fixed on you and were always full of grudges and a wish to hurt. Anyway, Miseryguts convinced Hannes that the two of them should try to imitate the Führer’s signature. He reasoned that in the mail deliveries to the institution, many letters arrived daily that required children for various purposes and Miseryguts was pretty sure that, while some of the letters would be typed and some written by hand, all would be finished off with large, flamboyant signatures like the Führer’s. If only they could put together a letter like that, of course best of all a letter signed by
A. Hitler
himself, Miseryguts fancied they would be allowed to leave immediately or, at least, to reunite with their parents. Walter Schiebeler was stupid, stuttered and shrugged for no reason, and couldn’t write a single syllable if you tied the pen to his hand. Hannes knew all this and, besides, he wasn’t even sure if Schiebeler truly believed in these insane notions of his or if the handwriting exercise was only an attempt to get a grip on the enormous restlessness that plagued him. Even so, Hannes and Miseryguts, an unlikely pair, joined forces in a two-man forgery gang. Mr Hackl handed out pens and paper but because paper was scarce they were told to write on both sides and the sheets were soon used up. Mutsch and Demeter would also dole out paper during the quiet hour if the boys were meant to write or draw something but the results were collected afterwards and, according to Miseryguts, went to the psychologists who studied the children’s work for hours on end to try to figure out where their souls were located (
… where is the soul really?
Jockerl asked because he had listened
and wanted to join the discussion but
pinheads like you have got no souls…!
Miseryguts told Jockerl and slapped the back of his neck). Anyway, Miseryguts had somehow managed to get hold of a few pieces of torn card and they shared these and settled down to work. During the quiet hour, they obediently busied themselves with what looked like their homework, but everyone noticed that they quickly swapped papers with each other the moment Nurse Mutsch turned her back. Julius Becker saw it (he couldn’t help noticing because he sat between them) and let out an unmistakable, quite loud whimper. Nurse Mutsch turned round. As usual, her wide-open, always disgruntled, glass-ball eyes swivelled Becker’s way:
Willst du noch einmal aufs Klo?
(Do you need the loo again?)
‘Needing to go to the toilet’ had by now grown into something like a joke between them. Every time Mutsch asked Julius that question, a sarcastic grin spread over her lips and Julius did not dare to say no. Every time, he obediently got up and Mutsch, sighing heavily, would tear off two bits of toilet paper, no more than about ten centimetres each, from the roll under the table and they disappeared out into the corridor (one could still hear their voices), giving the pair of prospective forgers a chance to carry on handing bits of paper to each other, if possible with even greater intensity. But then it happened that Nurse Mutsch came back to the day room sooner than expected and, because Hannes couldn’t stop himself from saying the first thing that came into his head, he uttered the two words
Julius Becker
,
and Mutsch (who stopped in the doorway),
what’s it with Becker?
Again, Hannes looked blank so it was up to Miseryguts to think of something:
… he’s spying in the nurses’ room!
Mutsch said nothing, turned at once and shot back out into the corridor:
BEE-EEECKER!
They heard her powerful shout outside, her rapid footsteps and then what sounded like a massive thump followed by a scream, and in a little while she reappeared, dragging Julius and intoning
I knew it I knew it I knew it …!
She didn’t tell them exactly what she knew, but from then on Julius was not allowed to go to the toilet. They were sitting opposite each other for hours and Nurse Mutsch didn’t take her eyes off him for a second. Julius looked nowhere, not down at his work, not around; he seemed to have no gaze of his own at all. Everyone knew that this was the end for Julius. Adrian knew it, and Hannes and Miseryguts knew. Even Jockerl knew it thanks to the strangely intuitive sense that made him aware of everything that went on in the section and, because he was kind, Jockerl did his best at least to ease Julius’s fall from grace. In the mornings, when Julius as usual would stand helplessly holding his blanket and sheet, Jockerl would run up to him and say
come on, I’ll help you make the bed
and since he had already finished his own bed-making, his fingers would dance over Julius’s things, tucking the coverlet under the mattress just so, and turning the blanket back with the fold precisely where it should be. The part of the blanket that was folded back over the coverlet and in under the mattress was to be exactly fifty centimetres wide in order that the name on the blanket –
SPIEGELGRUND
– should be easily visible from the passage between the beds where Mrs Rohrbach paraded up and down during her daily inspection. Naturally, Mrs Rohrbach was never taken in by Jockerl’s smart handiwork. She pretended not to notice for a couple of days, possibly to get a better insight into what was going on behind her back, and so the beat of her rhythmic counting
seemingly
continued unchanged …
one two three four
… and Jockerl’s hands also continued to flit skilfully over the bedclothes while
Julius found himself just standing by, ever more at a loss; until, one day, Mrs Rohrbach struck:
It would appear Becker thinks he’ll be allowed to keep servants!
She had already grabbed Julius’s ear. Next, with her free hand, she pulled the sheets and blankets out of Jockerl’s arms and not only from Jockerl’s bed but all the beds on that side, including the ones she had already passed by, no matter if they had been properly made or not. Ruthlessly, sheets, blankets and mattresses were pulled apart until the air suddenly filled with a blizzard of small and large pieces of paper, whirling like confetti. I had never before seen Mrs Rohrbach so taken aback, Adrian Ziegler said a long time later. But that morning, with all those small pieces of card and cardboard adrift and floating down onto her alarmed face, for once she had no idea of what to say or do. Instead, Nurse Mutsch was the one to step in and, with her hand against the small of her back, which was always sore, she bent to pick up the bits one by one. Soon, all became clear. Not only did she recognise the wrapping that had contained Julius’s treats from home, all the paper and cardboard that, after guzzling the contents of the boy’s parcel, she had stored in the nurses’ room in the certain expectation that, sooner or later, such tough, good-quality items would come in handy one day; she also recognised, of course, the signature that had been multiplied every which way on each piece of paper:
Adolf Hitler
with the front leg of the
A
slung like a spear towards the upper edge of the paper, followed by the flashing descent of the
f
with its hissing hook, followed in turn by the whirlwind of the surname that began like a huge lasso at the top only to drill down into a darkening jumble of pen-strokes. And once these elements had become clear, the rest was easy to work out. Julius’s obvious nervousness during quiet hour, his incessant requests to go to the toilet and then Walter Schiebeler’s unprovoked admission
that Becker had used his toilet trips to snoop in her private room. Nurse Mutsch cupped her hands to hold the scattered fragments, then held out her makeshift bowl to show them to Mrs Rohrbach at the same time as she straightened to whisper something. Mrs Rohrbach looked up from the papers to Julius Becker. She already held one of his prominent ears in a firm grip. Her face paled slightly but she didn’t lose her composure. She steered the crying Julius out between the beds with determined movements and, as the two of them came past Jockerl’s, she reached out and grabbed him as well, in the passing, or so it seemed. The other boys were left standing guard helplessly by their untidy beds. When the dormitory door slammed shut behind Nurse Mutsch, they heard her ask if she was to call the office. What Rohrbach replied, they couldn’t hear. But the group must have stopped in front of the portrait of the Führer, because they suddenly heard Mrs Rohrbach say in an almost tearful voice:
Now you shall have to confess to the director what you’ve gone and done!
Afterwards, there were blows and slaps, Jockerl’s screams, the sound of keys that rattled and a key that turned in a lock and a door that opened on screeching hinges and shut again with a bang. Then something else: a hard, hollow thumping noise that at first seemed never to stop and, when it finally did, was replaced by nothing but silence.
*
Decursus
Everything within is a world, growing blindly and without hope. The grass that grows inside your chest already reaches the sky. It must not stay like that. Growths must be removed. All that is left must be suitable for writing down on a sheet of paper, a single sheet or perhaps a half, a febrile membrane, nothing. Then the nurse wipes your forehead with the same movement as when one clears a
windowpane of condensation in order to see out. But you cannot see out into that darkness and, if you did, you would disappear into it yourself. It is that kind of darkness.
*
The Boy and the Mountain
Hannes Neubauer would explain later how all that about the scissors came about. But he spoke about the Mountain first. The Mountain is something inside your head but it also exists outside of you. When you’re in the Mountain, they can do anything they like with you. They might beat you up, kick you, try to strangle you. You won’t notice because you’re inside the Mountain. There’s no time inside the Mountain, Hannes said. That’s why there’s no pain either. Even so, the Mountain is a dangerous place to stay because, without time or pain, you don’t notice that you’re there. Everyone who enters the Mountain must be prepared to die in there. That’s why you’ve got to try to be inside and outside it at the same time. Or perhaps you should sit very close to the entrance, Hannes said, and then he sat down in his special way, on top of his bed, like an Indian, with his legs crossed under him and his eyes looking straight ahead. What Hannes didn’t say, not then and not later either, was that he had owned a doll when he was about four or five years old. A girl in the house next door had lent it to him but he had come to regard it as his. So, when he was told to hand it back, he gouged its eyes out with scissors, cut off the dolly’s curly black hair and stuck it onto his own head with some glue he had found. Then he went off to ask his father: do I look like Mum now? It had made his father furious. He ripped the bits of hair off his son’s head, glue and all, put the gluey curls in a large ashtray, set fire to it and then turned the ashtray upside down on top of Hannes’s head. Like a potty. A burning potty. Seems I’d better teach you a thing or two, he had said and laughed. Ever since, Hannes’s head bore the
scars of his scalp being on fire. Only tufts of hair ever grew back on his round head. Shortly after the scalp-burning episode, Hannes had to move. The war had begun and the Führer had given his father, the high-up Wehrmacht officer, a secret task so grand and so dangerous that no one must know about it or even mention anything about it. Hannes had to go and stay with a strange woman who said she was his father’s sister although that didn’t make any sense. She was dark-haired and ugly and didn’t look anything like a proper Aryan, not at all like Hannes’s father. Besides, she spoke very odd German that kept getting snarled up. Are you a brave warrior? she would ask in her weird, lumpy voice, and Hannes would say that he was. In that case, she mumbled, you will find there is a great big mountain where all the brave warriors are gathered, waiting for the day when they will be called, one by one, to defend the nation by fire and sword until the last man has fallen. And Hannes had asked: how will I know when it’s time for me to come outside? When your father comes and gives you the secret password, that’s when you will walk out of the mountain, his aunt had replied. But, until then, you must be more patient than most. But though he was supposed to be patient, his aunt was not. All the time while he was staying with her, she was on the phone, speaking away in her own strange language and, in the end, she said that she didn’t dare to keep him any longer, he had to go for his own sake, and then they came for him in a car and brought him to Spiegelgrund. But the Mountain she had told him about remained with him. He made himself believe that because it existed inside his head, he could take it along wherever he went. And so Hannes sat at the entrance to his Mountain and waited for his father, wondering what that password might be. All the while, the Mountain inside his head grew larger and larger and, inside it, the darkness closed in ever more densely. The rhymes he muttered under
his breath were the only spells he knew that could disperse the darkness. A boy went into the Mountain, and what did he bring inside? He brought a pair of scissors. The boy went into the Mountain, and what else did he bring? He brought his mother’s lovely dark hair with him inside. A boy sat at the entrance to the great Mountain and outside his father waited, saying
I’ll teach I’ll teach you I’ll teach you
.