Dog Years (29 page)

Thereupon Eddi Amsel detaches himself nimbly from the genuine Renaissance writing desk, but nevertheless, as the cocktail party amid the oak paneling turns to other topics, such as the Olympiad and its side effects, does not close Otto Weininger's standard work. He merely takes his distance and appraises the figures which, though possessed of only a framework existence, swagger and express opinions all the same. He reaches behind him into boxes, but not haphazardly, grasps, rejects, selects, and begins to dress up the motley company on the floor in very much the same way as he has done with the company hanging on chains and meathooks under the oak ceiling. Eddi Amsel covers them with old newspapers and vestiges of wallpaper obtained from renovated apartments. Discarded scraps of banners formerly be longing to the seaside resort fleet, rolls of toilet paper, empty tin cans, bicycle spokes, lamp shades, cast-off notions, and Christmas tree decorations set the style. With an ample pot of paste, with motheaten odds and ends picked up at auctions or simply picked up, he performs magic. But it has to be admitted that for all their aesthetic harmony, for all their refinement of detail and morbid elegance of line, these scarecrows or, as Amsel said, figures, were less impressive than the scarecrows which Eddi Amsel the village schoolboy seems to have built for many years in his native Schiewenhorst, exhibited on the Vistula dikes, and sold at a profit.

Amsel was the first to notice this loss of substance. Later, when Walter Matern left his own oak paneling and his pocket-sized paperbacks of dramatic works, he too, though remarking on Amsel's amazing talent, called attention to the undeniable absence of the old creative fury.

Amsel tried to show that his friend was mistaken; he placed one of his splendidly bedizened figures on the terrace outside the paneled room, shaded by the beech trees of Jäschkental Forest. The figure enjoyed a modicum of success, for the good old faithful sparrows shut their eyes to the artistic aspect and as usual allowed themselves to be scared a little; but no one could have said that a cloud of feathered beasts, thrown into panic by the sight, had risen screaming from the treetops and re-enacted a scene from Amsel's village childhood over the forest. His art was stagnant. Weininger's text remained paper. Perfection proved tedious. Sparrows were unmoved. Crows yawned. Wood pigeons refused to believe. Chaffinches, sparrows, crows, and wood pigeons took turns in sitting on Amsel's artistic figure -- a paradoxical sight which Eddi Amsel bore with a smile. But we, in the bushes behind the fence, heard him sigh.

Neither Tulla nor I could help him;

nature helped: in October Walter Matern had a fist fight with the platoon leader of a platoon of Hitler Cubs, who were putting on so-called war games in the nearby forest. A squad of uniformed Cubs moved into Amsel's garden with the pennant around which the operation revolved. From the open window Walter Matern dove head-first into the wet foliage; and undoubtedly I too would have come in for a licking if I like my squad leader had tried to stand by Heini Wasmuth our group leader.

The following night we were ordered to throw stones at the villa from the woods: we heard several windowpanes crash. That would have been the end of the affair if Amsel, who had remained on the terrace while blows were falling in the garden, had contented himself with looking on: but he sketched his observations on cheap paper and built models the size of upright cigar boxes: wrestling groups, a muddled shapeless free-for-all of scrawny Cubs, short-panted, knee-socked, shoulder-strapped, brown-tattered, pennant-maddened, rune-bepatched, dagger belts askew, Führer-vaccinated and hoarse with triumph -- the living image of our Cub squad fighting over the pennant in Amsel's garden. Amsel had found his way back to reality; from that day on he stopped wasting his talent on fashion plates, hothouse plants, studio art; avid with curiosity, he went out into the street.

He developed a mania for uniforms, especially black and brown ones, which were taking on a larger and larger part in the street scene. In a junkshop on Tagnetergasse he managed to scare up an old SA uniform dating back to the heroic period before the seizure of power. But one did not satisfy his needs. With considerable effort he abstained from putting an ad in the
Vorposten
under his own name: "Wanted: Old SA uniforms." In the stores specializing in uniforms the Party rig was obtainable only on presentation of a Party card. Because it was impossible for Eddi Amsel to join the Party or any of its organizations, Eddi Amsel set about, with coaxing, blasphemous, comical, and always adroit words, persuading his friend Walter Matern, who, though he had stopped distributing Communist leaflets, had a photograph of Rosa Luxemburg pinned to his oak paneling, to do what Amsel would have liked to do for the sake of the uniforms he needed, but couldn't.

Out of friendship -- the two of them were said to have been blood brothers -- half for the hell of it and half out of curiosity, but especially in order that Amsel might obtain those intensely brown uniforms for which he and the skeletons of future scarecrows were thirsting, Walter Matern, step by little step, gave in: he put aside his pocket-sized paperbacks and filled out an application in which he made no secret of the fact that he had been a member of the Red Falcons and later of the C.P.

Laughing, shaking his head, grinding, no longer outwardly but deep within, every tooth in his head, he joined a Langfuhr SA sturm, whose headquarters and meeting place was the Kleinhammerpark Beer Hall, a spacious establishment with a park by the same name, with dance hall, bowling alley, and home cooking, situated between the Aktien Brewery and the Langfuhr railroad station.

Students from the engineering school made up the bulk of this largely petit-bourgeois sturm. At demonstrations on the Maiwiese beside the Sports Palace the sturm performed guard duty. For years its main function was to start fights on Heeresanger, near the Polish student house, with members of the "Bratnia Pomoc" student organization, and to wreck the Polish clubhouse. At first Walter Matern had difficulties, because his Red past and even the leaflet incident were known. But since he was not the only former Communist in SA Sturm 84, Langfuhr-North, and since the former Communists began to exchange Red Front salutes as soon as they had a few drinks under their belts, he soon felt at home, especially as the group leader took him under his wing: before '33 Sturmführer Jochen Sawatzki had made speeches as a Red Front Fighter and had read strike proclamations to the shipyard workers in the Schichau housing development: Sawatzki was loyal to his past and said when making his brief and popular speeches in the Kleinhammerpark: "Take it from me, boys, if I know anything about the Führer, he'd get a bigger kick about one Communist that joins the SA than about ten Center Party big shots, that only join the Party because they're scared shitless and not because they realize the new day has dawned, yep, believe you me, she's dawned all right. And the only ones that haven't caught on is the big shots, because all they do is saw wood."

When early in November a delegation from the trusty sturm was sent to the Party congress in Munich and consequently put into new uniforms, Walter Matern succeeded in diverting the old rags that had weathered full many a beer-hall battle, to Steffensweg. Actually Matern, whom Sturmführer Sawatzki had soon appointed squad leader, should have taken the whole kit and boodle including boots and harness to Tiegenhof, where they were just organizing a new SA sturm, which was short on funds. But Eddi Amsel gave his friend a check that had zeroes enough on it to put twenty men into new-smelling togs. Between Amsel's oak panels brown tatters piled up: beer spots, grease spots, blood spots, tar and sweat spots gave the rags additional value in his eyes. He began at once to take measurements. He sorted, counted, piled, took his distance, dreamed of marching columns, let them march by, salute, march by, salute, looked on with screwed-up eyes: beer-hall battles, movement, tumult, men against men, bones and table edges, eyes and thumbs, beer bottles and teeth, screams, crashing pianos, potted plants, chandeliers, and more than two hundred and fifty well-tempered knives; and yet, apart from the piled-up rags there was no one between the oak panels but Walter Matern. He was drinking a bottle of seltzer and didn't see what Eddi Amsel saw.

My cousin Tulla,

of whom I am writing, to whom I am writing, although if Brauxel had his way, I should be writing of nothing but Eddi Amsel, Tulla arranged for our watchdog Harras to attack Felsner-Imbs, the piano teacher and ballet pianist, a second time. On the open street, on Kastanienweg, Tulla let the dog off the leash. Imbs and Jenny -- she in a yellowish fluffy coat -- were probably on their way from the ballet school, for the laces of her ballet slippers were dangling pink and silky out of a gym bag that Jenny was carrying. Tulla let Harras loose, and the rain was slanting down from all sides because the wind kept shifting. Over rilled and bubbling puddles leapt Harras, whom Tulla had let loose. Felsner-Imbs was holding an umbrella over himself and Jenny. Harras made no detours and knew whom Tulla meant when she released him. This time it was the pianist's umbrella my father had to replace, for Imbs defended himself when the black beast, rain-smooth and distended, sprang at him and his pupil, withdrawing the umbrella from its rain-combating function and wielding it, transformed into a shield with a point in the middle, against the dog. Naturally the umbrella gave way. But the metal stays, radiating toward the star-shaped edge of the umbrella, remained. A few of them bent and broke through the cloth; but they confronted our Harras with a painful obstacle. Both his forepaws became entangled in the forbidding spokes; a couple of passers-by and a butcher, who dashed out of his shop in spotted apron, were able to hold him in check. The umbrella was done for. Harras panted. Tulla wouldn't let me run for it. The butcher and the pianist got wet. Harras was put on the leash. The pianist's inspired mane was reduced to matted strands: diluted hair powder dripped on dark cloth. Jenny, the roly-poly, lay in a gutter which gushed Novemberly, gurgled, and secreted gray bubbles.

The butcher didn't go back to his blood sausage; exactly as he had dashed out of his shop, as bald and hatless and porcine as a heel of bologna, he delivered me and Harras to the master carpenter. He described the incident in terms unfavorable to me, representing Tulla as a timid little girl who had run away in terror when I had been unable to hold the dog on the leash; when the truth of the matter is that Tulla had looked on to the end and beaten it only after I had taken the leash away from her.

The butcher took his leave with a shake of a large hairy hand. I got my licking, this time not with a rectangular roofing lath but with a flat woodworking hand. My father promised Dr. Brunies to pay for cleaning the fluffy yellowish coat: fortunately Jenny's gym bag with the pink silk ballet slippers hadn't been carried away in the gutter, for the gutter flowed into the Striessbach, and the Striessbach flowed into Aktien Pond, and the Striessbach flowed out the other end of Aktien Pond and made its way through the whole of Langfuhr, under Elsenstrasse, Hertastrasse, Luisenstrasse, past Neuschottland, up Leegstriess, and emptied near Broschken-weg, opposite Weichselmünde, into the Dead Vistula, whence, mingled with Vistula water and Mottlau water, it passed through the harbor channel between Neufahrwasser and Westerplatte to merge with the Baltic Sea.

Tulla and I were present

when in the first week of Advent, at 13 Marienstrasse, in Langfuhr's largest and finest garden restaurant, the Kleinhammerpark, Manager August Koschinski, Tel. 41-09-40 -- fresh waffles every Tuesday -- one thing and another led to a brawl that was quelled only an hour and a half later by the police detachment which during Party meetings was always on standby duty in the small Hunt Room: Sergeant Burau put in a call for reinforcements: One one eight, whereupon sixteen policemen drove up and restored order with beauty doctors.

The meeting, held under the motto "Home to the Reich -- Down with the tyranny of Versailles!," was well attended. Two hundred and fifty people had crowded into the Green Room.

According to the agenda one speaker followed another at the speaker's desk between the potted plants: first Sturmführer Jochen Sawatzki spoke tersely huskily vigorously. Then Local Group Leader Sellke spoke of his impressions at the Reich Party Congress in Nuremberg. The spades of the Labor Service, thousands upon thousands, had particularly impressed him, because sunshine had kissed the blades of Labor Service spades: "I can only tell you, dear citizens of Langfuhr, who have turned out in such gratifying numbers that was unique, absolutely unique. It's something a man won't forget as long as he lives, how they glittered, thousands upon thousands of them. A shout went up as from thousands upon thousands of throats: our hearts were full to overflowing, dear citizens of Langfuhr, and many a hardened fighter had tears in his eyes. But that's nothing to be ashamed of, not on such an occasion. And I thought to myself, dear citizens of Langfuhr, when I go home, I'll tell all those who could not be present what it's like when thousands upon thousands of Reich Labor Service spades. . ." Then Kreisleiter Kampe spoke of his impressions at the harvest thanksgiving festival in Buckeburg and of the projected new apartments in the projected Albert Forster Housing Development. Then SA Sturmführer Sawatzki, supported by two hundred and fifty citizens of Langfuhr, shouted a triple
Siegheil
for the Führer and Chancellor. Both anthems, one too slow and one too fast, were sung too low by the men, too high by the women, and by the children off-key and out of time. This concluded the official part of the program and Local Group Leader Sellke informed the citizens of Langfuhr that the second part would now begin, a friendly informal get-together in the course of which useful and tasty products would be raffled off for the benefit of Winter Aid. The prizes had been donated by: Valtinat Dairy Products, Amada Margarine, Anglas Chocolates, Kanold Candies, Kiesau Wines, Haubold & Lanser Wholesalers, the Kühne Mustard Co., the Danzig Glass Works, and the Aktien Brewery of Langfuhr, which had donated beer, two cases to be raffled off and an extra keg for SA Sturm 84, Langfuhr-North; for the boys of Langfuhr SA Sturm 84; for our storm troopers, of whom we are proud; a triple hip-hip-hurray for our storm troopers of Sturm 84 -- hurray, hurray!"