Dog Years (14 page)

And so on the following Monday Eduard Amsel and Walter Matern exchanged the green velvet caps of Sankt Johann for the red caps of the Conradinum. With the help of the narrow-gauge railway they and their suitcases left the Vistula estuary, Great Island, the dikes from horizon to horizon, Napoleon's poplars, the fish-smoking establishments, Kriwe's ferry, the new postmill, the eels between willows and cows, father and mother, poor Lorchen, the Mennonites rough and refined, Folchert, Kabrun, Lickfett, Lührmann, Karweise, schoolmaster Olschewski, and Grandmother Matern's ghost, which was haunting the house because they had forgotten to pour the water in which the corpse had been washed over the threshold in cross form.

TWENTY-SEVENTH MORNING SHIFT

The sons of rich peasants, the sons of landowners, the sons of West Prussian, slightly indebted country gentry, the sons of Kashubian brickworks owners, the son of the Neuteich druggist, the son of the pastor in Hohenstein, the son of the district president in Stüblau, Heini Kadlubek from Otroschken, little Probst from Schönwarling, the Dyck brothers from Ladekopp, Bobbe Ehlers from Quatschin, Rudi Kiesau from Straschin, Waldemar Burau from Prangschin, and Dirk Heinrich von Pelz-Stilowski from Kladau on the Kladau -- in short, the sons of rich man, poor man, beggar man, chief, not to mention the pastor, became, not all at once, but most of them shortly after Easter, boarders at the dormitory attached to the Conradinum. For many years the Conradinum had managed to keep afloat as a private institution thanks to an endowment, but by the time Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel became Conradinians, the city was making considerable contributions to its budget. Accordingly the Conradinum was looked upon as part of the municipal school system. Only the in-student facilities were not municipal, but still the private prerogative of the Conradinum and subject to an extra charge.

The sleeping quarters for students of sixth, fifth, and fourth, also called the small sleeping quarters, were situated on the ground floor, with their windows looking out on the school garden, that is to say, on gooseberries. There was always one bedwetter. The place smelled of him and seaweed mattresses. The two friends slept bed to bed under an oleograph showing the Crane Gate, the observatory, and the Long Bridge in winter with ice floes. The two friends never or seldom wet their beds. An attempt to initiate the newcomers, that is, to blacken Amsel's backside with shoe polish, was averted by Walter Matern before anybody could say Jack Robinson. In recreation period the two of them stood aloof under the same chestnut tree. At most little Probst and Heini Kadlubek, the son of a coal dealer, were privileged to listen while Walter Matern maintained a long dark staring silence and Eduard Amsel developed his secret language, giving new names to the new surroundings.

"I tnod ekil eht sdrib ereh."

I don't like the birds here.

"Sworraps ni eht ytic tnera sworraps ni eht yrtnuoc."

Sparrows in the city aren't sparrows in the country. "Draude Lesma sklat sdrawkcab."

With fluent ease he stood long and short sentences word for word on their heads and was even able to speak the new backward language with the broad accent of the Island: Dootendeetz (death's-head) became Zteednetood. With the help of a tongue molded to the Low German language, he smoothed out an awkard
c,
an unpronounceable
ps,
the difficult
sch,
and a tongue-twisting
nr,
and rendered "Liebarchen" (my friend) by the simplified "Nahkrabeil." Walter Matern caught his meaning and gave brief, equally reversed, and usually correct answers: "Good idea -- -doog aedi." And impatient of shillyshallying: "Sey ro on?" Little Probst was flabbergasted. But Heini Kadlubek, known as "Kebuldak," proved to be not at all backward at learning to talk backward.

Many inventions on a level with Amsel's linguistic arts have been made in the playgrounds of this world; subsequently forgotten, they have ultimately been unearthed and perfected by childish old people in city parks, which were conceived as extensions of school playgrounds. When God was a schoolboy, it occurred to him in the heavenly play ground, along with young Satan, his school friend, who was as bright as a button, to create the world. On the fourth of February of this year, as Brauxel has read in a number of newspaper articles, this world is expected to end; another decision arrived at in playgrounds.

Playgrounds, it might also be noted, have something in common with poultry yards: the strutting of the officiating rooster resembles the strutting of the teacher in charge. Roosters also stride about with their hands behind their backs, turn unexpectedly, and cast menacing looks about them.

Dr. Oswald Brunies, who is supervising at the moment -- the authors' consortium is planning to build him a monument -- does his best to oblige the inventor of the poultry-yard simile: every nine paces he scratches with the tip of his left shoe in the gravel of the school yard; moreover, he crooks his professorial leg -- a habit not without significance. Dr. Brunies is looking for something: not for gold, not for a heart or for happiness God fame; he is looking for unusual pebbles. The playground is asparkle with pebbles.

Small wonder if singly, or sometimes two at a time, students come up to him and call his attention, in earnest or animated by the usual schoolboy whimsy, to perfectly ordinary pebbles they have just picked up. But Dr. Oswald Brunies takes each one, even the most contemptible run of the millstream, between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, holds it away from, then up to light, takes a magnifying glass secured by an elastic band from the breast pocket of his peat-brown and partly threadbare jacket, moves the glass on stretching elastic slowly and expertly into place between pebble and eye, then, elegantly and with full confidence in the elastic, lets the glass spring back into his breast pocket. An instant later he has the pebble in the cup of his left hand, lets it roll about in a small radius at first, then circle more boldly as far as the rim of the cup, and finally rejects it by tapping his left hand with his free right hand. "Pretty but superfluous!" says Dr. Brunies and digs the same hand into a bag which, always and as often as we shall speak of Oswald Brunies here, juts brown and rumpled from his side pocket. By ornamental detours, such as those made by priests in the course of Mass, he guides a cough drop from the bag to his mouth: celebrates, licks, sucks, diminishes, swirls juice between tobacco-stained teeth, shifts lump from cheek to cheek, while the intermission dwindles, while dread of intermission's end mounts in the muddled interiors of many children, while sparrows in chestnut trees yearn for the end of recreation, while he struts, scratches in the gravel of the playground, and causes the cough drop to become smaller and more vitreous.

Short intermission, long intermission. Intermission games, whisperings, sandwiches, and distress: anxiety, says Brauxel: in a moment the bell. . .

Empty playgrounds that belong to the sparrows. A thousand times seen and filmed, as the wind blows a sandwich paper through a deserted, melancholy, Prussian, humanistic, gravel-strewn playground.

The playground of the Conradinum consisted of a small rectangular playground, shaded irregularly by chestnut trees, and to the left of it with no fence intervening, an elongated Big Playground framed by young linden trees propped on poles and standing at regular intervals. The Neo-Gothic gymnasium, the Neo-Gothic urinal, and the Neo-Gothic old-brick-red, ivy-covered school building with its bell-less belfry bounded the Small Playground on three sides and sheltered it from the winds, which sent funnels of dust over the Big Playground from its southeast corner; for here nothing stood up to the wind but the low-lying school garden with its close-meshed wire fence and the two-storied, likewise Neo-Gothic dormitory. Until later, when a modern athletic field with cinder track and turf was laid out beneath the southern gable of the gymnasium, the Big Playground had to serve as an athletic field during gym classes. Also worth mentioning is a tarred wooden shed, some fifty feet in length, which stood between the young lindens and the school garden. Bicycles could be stored in it, front wheel upward. A little game: as soon as the upended front wheels were set in motion with strokes of the flat hand, the gravel that had stuck to the tires after the short ride through the Big Playground flew off and rained down on the gooseberry bushes in the school garden behind the wire network fence.

Anyone who has ever been obliged to play handball, football, volkerball, or faustball, let alone schlagball, in a field strewn with gravel will always, whenever he steps on gravel in later life, be forced to remember all the scraped knees, all those bruises which take forever to heal, which develop crusty scabs, and which transform all gravel-strewn playgrounds into blood-soaked playgrounds. Few things in the world make so lasting an impression as gravel.

But to him, the cock-of-the-playground, Dr. Oswald Brunies, the strutting, candy-sucking teacher -- a monument will be erected to him -- to him with magnifying glass on elastic, with sticky bag in sticky coat pocket, to him who collected big stones and little stones, rare pebbles, preferably mica gneiss -- muscovy biotite -- quartz, feldspar, and hornblende, who picked up pebbles, examined them, rejected or kept them, to him the Big Playground of the Conradinum was not an abrasive stumbling block but a lasting invitation to scratch about with the tip of his shoe after nine rooster steps. For Oswald Brunies, who taught just about everything -- geography, history, German, Latin, and when necessary religion -- was not one of your universally dreaded gym teachers with shaggy black chest, bristling black legs, a policeman's whistle, and the key to the equipment room. Never did Brunies make a boy tremble under the horizontal bar, suffer on the parallel bars, or weep on hot climbing ropes. Never did he ask Amsel to do a front vault, not to mention a side vault over the long horse that is always too long. Never did he drive Amsel's fleshy knees across mordant gravel.

A man in his fifties with a cigar-singed mustache. The tip of every hair in his mustache sweet from ever-renewed cough drops. On his round head a gray felt hat, to which, often for a whole morning, clung burrs tossed on by his charges. From both ears swirling clumps of hair. A face seamed with wrinkles produced by laughing, giggling, grinning. Romantic poetry nestled in his tousled eyebrows. Schubert songs revolved around never-resting nostrils. Only in the corners of his mouth and on the bridge of his nose, a few blackheads: Heine's pungent
Winter's Tale
and Raabe's abrasive novel
Stopfkuchen.
Well liked and not taken seriously. A bachelor with a Bismarck hat and class director of the sixth, including Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel, the friends from the Vistula delta. By now the two of them smell only mildly of cow barn, curdled milk, and smoked fish; gone too is the smell of fire that clung to their hair and clothing after the public burning behind Folchert's barn.

TWENTY-EIGHTH MORNING SHIFT

After a punctual change of shifts, and business worries -- the Brussels agricultural agreements are going to create marketing difficulties for the firm of Brauxel & Co. -- back to the gravel in the playground. School life promised to be gay for the two friends. Scarcely had they been moved from Sankt Johann to the Conradinum, scarcely had they grown accustomed to the musty dormitory with its smell of nasty little boys -- who doesn't know a few stories about dormitories? -- scarcely had the gravel in the Big Playground impressed itself upon them, when word went around that in a few days the sixth would be going to Saskoschin for two weeks. They would be supervised by Dr. Brunies and by Dr. Mallenbrand the gym teacher.

Saskoschin! What a tender word!

The country school annex was situated in Saskoschin Forest. The nearest village was called Meisterswalde. Thither the class and two teachers were conveyed by bus via Sch
ü
ddelkau, Straschin-Prengschin, and Gross-Salau. A village built around a market. The sandy market place big enough for a cattle fair, consequently surrounded by wooden stakes with worn iron rings. Shining puddles, ruffled by every gust of wind: there had been a violent shower shortly before the bus arrived. No cow dung or horse droppings, but several bevies of sparrows, which kept regrouping and raised their hubbub to the third power when Amsel alit from the bus. The market place was bordered by low peasant houses with small windows, some roofed with thatch. There was one new, unfinished two-story structure, Hirsch's emporium. Brand-new plows, harrows, tedders were asking to be bought. Wagon shafts rose skyward. Directly across the way a brick-red factory, deserted, with boarded-up windows. Not until the end of October would the sugar-beet harvest bring life, stench, and profit. The inevitable branch of the Danzig Savings Bank, two churches, the milk pool, a spot of color: the mailbox. And outside the barbershop a second spot of color: the honey-yellow brass disk hung slantwise, sending out light signals as the clouds shifted. A cold treeless village.

Like the entire region to the south of the city, Meisterswalde was part of the Danzig Heights district. Compared to the marshland of the Vistula estuary, the soil was wretched. Beets, potatoes, Polish beardless oats, vitreous stunted rye. At every step the foot struck a stone. Peasants crossing their fields would bend down between steps, pick up one out of a nation of many, and hurl it in a blind rage: it would fall on someone else's field. Such gestures even on Sunday: holding umbrellas in their left hands, peasants in black caps with shiny patent-leather visors walk through the beet fields, bend down, pick things up, throw them in every direction. The stones fall: petrified sparrows, and no one, not even Eduard Amsel, could devise any kind of scarestone.