The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse (27 page)

About two o’clock Gunther woke up. He had slept for twenty hours. He looked around astonished. Then a happy smile flew over his features.

He stretched out both his arms: “Hermann!”

They kissed one another in a first, long kiss.

He wanted to talk.

“First you must eat, my darling. You must be starved. Then you can tell me everything, everything.”

They ate and drank. He must have been starving. But his friend noticed how slowly he ate nonetheless, so different from earlier, as if he wanted to taste each bite like something long denied him.

“Should I get up or may I remain lying? I’m no longer sleepy, but still so tired.”

He pressed him back into the pillow.

Then they began to talk.

Hermann Graff drank in every word he heard.

*

This is what he learned in the long hours of this second afternoon, not in a connected story, naturally, but rather with questions in between, repetitions, and additions, which gradually formed into this picture:

On the same day that he had been here for the last time, about five weeks ago—an ugly, rainy day—in the house of one of those gentlemen whom he and other boys his age frequented, there had been a tremendous scene. The police, apparently on the denunciation of someone who lived in the house, had broken in and arrested everyone present.

The gentlemen and the other boys—their boys, that is, boys in secondary school and salesmen’s apprentices, not those from the street—had been let go (they wanted no new scandal; they had had enough scandals). Even the man who lived there was left unmolested. He was a man who was derisively called a “painter” and who made his atelier available for such gatherings (nothing at all had occurred—they had all sat around quietly and told stories). That is, he let them use his atelier (if not directly for money, then indeed for the occasional purchase of one of the pictures hanging around—which were not painted by him, to be sure, but by poor, young artists), and in these circles he was a quite well known pan-derer, who had already had countless clashes with the police, but had been declared in court to be mentally deficient and therefore not responsible, so that (as he constantly proudly stressed) “nothing could happen” to him.

The others got off cheaply.

Gunther, however, had been taken away.

At the central police station on Alexanderplatz it was determined that his papers were false and that he was not so unknown there as he had thought; from the Passage and the lounges he was only too well known to many an undercover agent. (He was also known as one of the many young friends of the vanished and un-discoverable Atze.)

After three days he had been transported to—there! But here nothing more could be got out of him. There—there it had been simply terrible! He began to cry and Hermann, who was seeing him cry for the first time and could not bear it, questioned him no more, but rather sought with all his might to calm him.

Further:

There was only one hope left there—that of escape.

This was agreed on for a long time with one of the older boys (with whom he had become intimate). Only the right opportunity never offered itself. Until the evening before yesterday—Christmas Eve. With the preparations for it and the following the holiday (which was celebrated even there), the watch was not so strict. Early in the afternoon (but it was already dark and the heavy snowfall favored their plan) they had stolen away, climbed over the wall, and—each with one piece of bread in his pocket—had made their way toward Berlin.

Then they had hiked hour after hour through the ever thicker falling snow, always along the highway, among the white trees, until he, the smaller, was too weak to go farther. By good luck, they were near a village and they found a hayloft, where they ate their bread and were able to rest for a couple of hours.

Then, long before morning broke, they were on the way again, through snow and cold, on and on, until he collapsed completely and the other had to carry him on his shoulders.

At daybreak they were still far from Berlin. Again he had to drag himself along. Farther! Always farther on!

Then the terrible snowstorm broke out, which made everything around them almost invisible. If his comrade had not known the way so well—and always found it again by certain guide marks—they would never have reached here, but rather would have sunk into the snow and frozen.

Finally, however, they did arrive about noon in Mariendorf Now just over Tempelhof and on to the Halle Gate. There his comrade had begged from a passerby and received twenty pennies, so that in the nearest coffee shop they were able to drink two cups of hot coffee.

After that they had separated: the other had gone to distant relatives, who would perhaps take him in and hide him; and he—he had come to him.

He had dragged himself as far as the wall. Then it was all over.

How long, then, had he stood there opposite? Hermann could scarcely bring the question out.

Gunther could not say. It might have been a half hour, but it could also have been an hour or two.

Why, then, had he not whistled, with their signal? Why had he not come on up?

Whistle? He was not able to whistle. And come up, that he had not dared. They had agreed that he was not to come up alone.

And then—Gunther looked straight ahead: “then I also didn’t know if you were angry with me, because I did stay away, and if you still wanted to have anything to do with me . . . you could also have another friend and he was perhaps up here with you right then.”

His listener could say nothing, ask nothing. What he heard constricted his throat. That was all so horrible, completely horrible. Only at the final words did he smile bitterly. Another! How little he knew him!

He could say nothing.

He only took him in his arms again. He kissed and caressed him, his hair, his slender cheeks, his hands. Then finally he found words too and gave them to him: the good, old, long-unaccustomed words of friendship and of love. All the while, the boy only looked at him with a begging, almost downcast look, as if to say, “You won’t send me away again, will you, now that I’m here with you again?”

This look shook him even more than everything heard.

No, he would not send him away.

*

They ate and drank again—there was more than enough of everything there—and this time the red wine, too. Then the boy slept again for an hour while his friend walked quietly around the room and, in this thoughts, did not get away from what he had heard.

On awakening Gunther was fresh, as he said, but he did still prefer to remain lying—”if he might.”

It was already late in the afternoon and the street lay in darkness. But they did not yet light the freshly filled lamp. They both felt so much at ease in the twilight.

Only once did Hermann ask, “Would you prefer to go out? Will it not be too boring for you to stay alone with me the whole day like this?”

(He was thinking about earlier—how restless the boy had always been, unwilling to stay long in the same spot.)

No, stay here, stay here! “It’s really so nice and comfortable here. And so warm.” And again with the light smile of the wiser one for his impractical friend:

“I can’t go out. I just can’t go out in the street any more in these rags, and with you at that.”

That was true and the other had just not thought about it.

Now they talked again together, in a way they had never talked together before. It was as if they had only today really found one another, as if every barrier, each last one between them, had fallen. They talked together as friends—in deep trust and understanding, and one word led to another.

Everything had become so entirely different from earlier.

*

Always, when Hermann looked at him—and he did nothing else—he appeared so changed, so much quieter, so much—

When he was full and had laid aside knife and fork, had he not said, “Thank you, Hermann.”

He thanked him. When had he ever said thanks to him? And now as he again drew him to himself and looked at him with a long gaze, he heard him say:

“You know, Hermann, you don’t look at all well either. You have not been sick, have you?”

He had to turn away. When had the boy ever asked about him, about his health? (No, he was not sick. Only,
how
he had suffered for his sake, he could not tell him. And he, his darling, would even now still not understand.)

*

They smoked, the boy in his pillows, the other in his deep chair, and smiled again and again at one another happily. And repeatedly Hermann had to stand up and walk over to him, as if to convince himself that he was with him again—that it was not a dream, this new happiness!

Finally, however—it was already evening—they also talked about what should be done now.

Gunther had already figured everything out in his fashion.

“You know, Hermann, naturally I’m gong to stay in Berlin now and with you. For where else am I to go? I’ll look for work, so that I won’t be a bother to you, and will surely find something.”

Hermann was astonished. Work? He was talking about work. How he had changed! He was surprised and believed him.

But was he also safe in Berlin?

Safe—oh, he was surely safe, Gunther explained, as long as he walked the streets no more, nor went to the lounges, which he would no longer do, of course. He would now only associate with him and not with any other man. He was finished with that. If they no longer saw him anywhere, he was entirely safe. No one would ask for him anymore. There were already so many who had run away and were never found again. The people there were only glad when some were gone. About the two of them—Hermann and himself—nobody knew anything at all. He had never, but never, talked about him.

Then he brought out a very curious story, which he himself had heard from one of the boys in the summer, a boy from Hanover:

The boy had run away from a state institution he had been sent to in Westphalia (also in winter, the one before). He hiked three days and three nights, and when he reached Hanover his own mother did not recognize him, the way he looked. He was left in peace there, for fourteen days. Then he was brought back, but the next spring he was out and away again, this time here to Berlin. For he had an earlier friend here, a gardener who had a small apartment (a small room and a tiny kitchen, but isolated). He had lived with him a half year without registering and everything had gone well: When the gardener came home from his work in the evening, the boy spent the night out; when he returned in the morning, it was time for the gardener to go to work and the boy lay down in the bed and slept till evening. The bed always stayed nice and warm, and never cooled off. That lasted, as was said, the whole summer.

And then? That he didn’t know. But it did go well for so long. He, Gunther, unfortunately, had no such friend, with whom he could have a similar arrangement.

They both sat and considered. Some way out must be found. But what?

First, however, the most immediate things:

Tomorrow—tomorrow, Gunther stated, he must help him once more: to get another outfit and find work. And then tomorrow too he must once more—but only this one more time—see and speak with the boy with whom he had escaped. He had promised him, and he did really want to see how it was going for him and whether he had been well received by his relatives. Perhaps he could also help him find work, alone or together with him. For going back—he would not go back, not at any cost!

To have to go back—that was the one constant fear that now controlled the boy.

He trembled when he merely pronounced the word “institution.” Anything, but not go back! Not in there again!

This fear, Hermann thought, alone will guard him from sinking back into his earlier life, if he should ever again feel a desire for it. But Gunther seemed to attach no more importance to all that which had once charmed and attracted him.

For he now talked about that life entirely differently than before.

As if it lay forever behind him, finished and forgotten.

Repeatedly he said that now everything must and was to be different.

Thus they talked and talked, considered, and went over every detail.

His clothes—well, he had to wear them again early tomorrow, but only for a half hour, until new ones were obtained. They were brought from the window, to be dried out on the stove.

The hours ran by and Gunther became almost cheerful, while over his friend there came a peace such as he had not known for an eternity, as it seemed to him. While his darling lay there, chatted and smoked and let himself be served and waited on, he had to think again and again how changed he was.

Not only outwardly: his shorter-cut hair and his frightful leanness (how he would feed him!). No, he seemed to him inwardly transformed too. Even the tone of his voice had become different: no longer so bright and loud, but rather much more subdued and affectionate. His movements were no longer so violent and impetuous as earlier, but so much more tender and snuggling when he drew him close. And his kiss, his kiss rested longer and more intimately on his lips than ever before.