Dog Years (25 page)

After this speech, which I can repeat only in substance, Amsel, or so I heard, was almost exempted from teasing. On several occasions classmates came to see him and wanted to be taken along to Tischlergasse, a request which he, amiably and with Matern's support, turned down. One day, however, when Eddi Amsel -- as I was later told -- asked his friend to accompany him to Tischlergasse, he met with a rebuff. He, said Walter Matern with precocious assurance, had no wish to disappoint the poor girls. The professional aspect of the thing repelled him. He'd never be able to get a hard on. That would only make him behave like a brute, which in the end would be embarrassing for both parties. It had to be admitted that love was indispensable, or at least passion.

Amsel had no doubt listened to his friend's firm utterances with a shake of the head and, taking his portfolio and an attractive box of assorted candies, gone by himself to call on the girls across the street from Adler's Beer Hall. And yet -- if I am correctly informed -- he succeeded one wretched day in December in persuading his friend to celebrate the second or third Sunday of Advent with him and the girls. It was only on the fourth Sunday that Matern screwed up the courage. It turned out, however, that the professional aspect of the thing repelled him so attractively that despite his prognosis he did get a hard on, which he was able to lodge securely and discharge at student's prices with a girl of few words by the name of Elisabeth. Yet, I was told, the kindness that had been shown him did not prevent him on the way home, up Altstädtischer Graben and down Pfefferstadt, from grinding his teeth malignantly and lapsing into dark meditations about venal womanhood.

Dear Cousin,

with exactly the same chocolate-brown and egg-yellow tiger-striped portfolio that had made his visits to the ill-famed Tischlergasse into legitimate artistic excursions, Eddi Amsel, accompanied by Walter Matern, came to our apartment house. In Felsner-Imbs' music room we both saw him breathing sketches of the porcelain ballerina onto paper. And one brightly decked day in May I saw him step up to my father, point to his tiger-striped portfolio, and open the portfolio forthwith in an attempt to let his drawings speak for him. But my father, without further ado, gave him permission to draw our watchdog Harras. Only he advised him to station himself and his equipment outside the semi circle which demonstrated with ditch and wall the range of the dog's chain. "The dog is ferocious and I'm sure he doesn't think much of artists," said my father.

From the very first day our Harras heeded Eddie Amsel's slightest word. Amsel made Harras into a canine model. Amsel did not, for instance, say "Sit, Harras!" as Tulla said "Harras, sit!" when Harras was supposed to sit down. From the very first day Amsel ignored the name Harras and said to our dog when he wanted a change of pose: "Now, Pluto, would you kindly first stand on all four legs, then raise the right foreleg and bend it slightly, but make it relaxed, a little more relaxed. And now would you be so kind as to turn your noble shepherd's head half left, like that, that's good, now, Pluto, if you please, stay that way."

And Harras hearkened to the name of Pluto as if he had always been a hound of hell. The ungainly Amsel almost burst his gray-checked sports suit. His head was covered by a white linen visor cap, that gave him somewhat the look of an English reporter. But his clothes were not new: everything Eddi Amsel wore on his body made an impression of secondhandness and was indeed secondhand; for the story was that, although he received a fabulous allowance, he purchased only worn clothes, either from the pawnshop or from the junkshops on Tagnetergasse. His shoes must have belonged previously to a postman. He sat with broad posterior on a preposterous little camp chair, which proved however to be inexplicably stable. While on his left bulging thigh he supported the stiff cardboard to which his drawing paper was clamped and with his right hand, with remarkable ease, guided an always rich-black brush, which covered the drawing paper from the upper left to the lower right-hand corner with daintily skimming sketches, some unsuccessful, others excellent and strikingly fresh, of the watchdog Harras or the hellhound Pluto, our yard became each day a little more -- and Eddi Amsel spent about six afternoons drawing in our yard -- the scene of various tensions.

There stood Walter Matern in the background. Disreputably dressed; a costumed proletarian in a problem play, who has learned social indictments by heart, who in the third act will become an agitator and ringleader, and who nevertheless fell a victim to our buzz saw. Like our Harras, who time and time again, under certain weather conditions, accompanied the song of the buzz saw -- never that of the lathe -- with a rising and falling howl out of a vertically held head, so the gloomy young man from Nickelswalde reacted directly to the buzz saw. He did not, to be sure, move his head into a vertical position, he did not stammer anarchist manifestoes, but in his old familiar way underscored the sound of work with a dry grinding of the teeth.

This grinding had its effect on Harras: it drew his lips above his scissors bite. He drooled at the lips. The holes on either side of his nose dilated. The bridge of his nose puckered up to the stop. The noted shepherd ears, erect but pointing slightly forward, became uncertain, tilted. Harras drew in his tail, rounded his back from withers to crown to cringing hump, in short he cringed like a dog. And several times Eddi Amsel produced a painful likeness of these shameful positions with dashing rich-black brush, with scratching spread-foot pen, with gushing and gifted bamboo quill. Our buzz saw, Walter Matern's grinding teeth, and our Harras, whom the buzz saw and the grinding teeth turned into a mongrel, played into the artist's hand of Eddi Amsel; taken together, the buzz saw, Matern, the dog, and Amsel formed as productive a work team as Herr Brauxel's authors' consortium: he, I, and yet another are writing simultaneously and are supposed to be finished when the apple sauce with the stars begins on the fourth of February.

But my cousin Tulla,

who stood by, more furious from day to day, refused to stand aside any longer. Amsel's power over Pluto the hell hound became for her a loss of power over our Harras. Not that the dog stopped obeying her -- just as before he sat when Tulla said "Harras, sit!" -- but he carried out her commands, which she snapped out more and more sternly, in a manner so absent and mechanical that neither could Tulla conceal it from herself nor I from myself and Tulla that this Amsel was ruining our dog.

Tulla,

blind with rage, started out by throwing pebbles, and several times hit Amsel's round back and the blubbery back of his head. He, however, gave it to be understood by a graceful shrug of the shoulders and a lazy turn of the head that though aware of the blow, he did not acknowledge it.

Tulla,

with tiny white face, tipped over his bottle of India ink. A black puddle with a metallic sheen stood on the sand in our yard and took a long time to seep away. Amsel took a fresh bottle of India ink from his coat pocket and nonchalantly showed that he had a third bottle in reserve.

When Tulla,

storming up from behind, threw a handful of sawdust that settled in the drive belt casing of the buzz saw at an almost finished, still damp and freshly glistening picture, Eddi Amsel, only briefly astonished, gave a partly annoyed, partly good-natured laugh, sedately shook a sausagelike fore finger at Tulla, who watched the effect of her performance from a distance, and then began, more and more interested in the new technique, to work the sawdust clinging to the paper and to give the drawing what is nowadays known as structure. He developed the amusing but short-lived method of making capital of chance. Reaching into the drive belt casing of the buzz saw, he made a mixture in his handkerchief of sawdust, of the knotty shavings from the lathe, the short curls of the power plane, the fine-grained droppings of the band saw, and with his own hand and no need of an assault from Tulla gave his brush drawings a pimply relief, the charm of which was further enhanced when a part of the superficially blackened wood particles fell off, revealing the white paper ground in mysterious islands. Once -- probably dissatisfied with his overly conscious strewings and sawdust groundings -- he asked Tulla to storm up from behind and to fling sawdust, shavings, or even sand as though at random. He expected a good deal from Tulla's collaboration; but Tulla declined and made "bashed-in windows."

My cousin Tulla was unable

to get the better of Eddi Amsel, artist and dog tamer. It took August Pokriefke to trip him up. Several times, laden with sawhorses, he stood beside the artist, accompanied words of criticism or praise with crackling glue fingers, spoke in elaborate detail about a painter who had used to come to Koshnavia summer after summer and had painted Osterwick Lake, the church at Schlangenthin, made oil portraits of a few Koshnavian types, such as Joseph Butt from Annafeld, Musolf the tailor from Damerau, and the widow Wanda Jentak. He too had been painted while cutting peat and then been exhibited in Konitz as a peat cutter. Eddi Amsel expressed interest in his colleague but did not interrupt his deft sketching. August Pokriefke left Koshnavia and began to speak about our watchdog's political career. He explained in great detail how the Führer on the Obersalzberg had come by the shepherd Prinz. He told about the signed photograph that hung in our parlor over a pear-wood miniature and figured up how often his daughter Tulla had been snapshot and printed in the papers with or in between long articles about Harras. Amsel voiced gratification at Tulla's early triumphs and began to sketch a seated Harras or Pluto. August Pokriefke expressed the opinion that the Führer would set everything to rights, you could bank on that, he knew more than all the rest of them lumped to gether, and he could draw too. What was more, the Führer wasn't one of those people who always want to act big. "When the Führer rides in a car, he sits next to the driver and not in back like a bigshot." Amsel found words of praise for the Führer's homespun modesty and made the hell hound's ears stand exaggeratedly erect on his paper. August Pokriefke asked whether Amsel was still in the Hitler Youth or already a Party member; for he, Amsel -- that was his name, wasn't it? -- must be in the movement somewhere.

At this point Amsel slowly let his hand and brush drop, glanced once again with tilted head at the drawing of the seated Harras or Pluto, then turned his full, shining, and freckle-strewn face toward the inquirer, and answered with alacrity that, he was sorry to say, he was a member of neither nor, that this was the first time he had heard of the man -- what was his name again? -- but that he would be glad to inquire who the gentleman was, where he came from, and what plans he had for the future.

Tulla

made Eddi Amsel pay for his ignorance the following afternoon. No sooner was he seated on his stable camp chair, no sooner was he holding cardboard and drawing paper on his bursting left thigh, no sooner had Harras as Pluto taken up his new pose, lying with outstretched forepaws and sharply alert neck, no sooner had Amsel's brush steeped itself in India ink, than the door to the yard spat out first August Pokriefke, the glue cook, then the glue stirrer's daughter.

He stands with Tulla in the doorway, whispers, casts side long glances at the heavily laden camp chair, vaccinates his daughter with orders: and there she comes, first lazily and by sauntering detours, holding thin arms interlocked across the back of her dirndl dress, flings bare legs aimlessly, then describes quick, narrowing semicircles around the brush-guiding Eddi Amsel, is now to the left, now to the right of him: "Hey!" and then from the left: "Hey, you!" again from the left: "What are you doing around here anyway?" Spoken from the left: "I'm asking you what you're doing around here" and from the right: "You got no business here!" Spoken from the left: " 'Cause you're. . ." and from close up on the right: "Do you know what you are?" Then from the left into his ear: "Want me to tell you?" Now, threaded into the right ear: "You're a sheeny. A sheeny. That's right, a sheeny. Or if you're not a sheeny, what do you come around here for drawing pictures of our dog if you're not a sheeny?" Amsel's brush stops. Tulla at a distance but inexorably: "Sheeny." Eddi Amsel with rigid brush. Tulla: "Sheeny." The word flung into the yard, first only for Amsel, then loud enough to make Matern withdraw his ear from the buzz saw that is just starting up. He reaches out for the thing that's screaming sheeny. Matern fails to catch Tulla: "Sheeny!" The cardboard with the first still moist India ink entries has fallen, sketch down, into the sand. "Sheeny!" Upstairs, on the fourth, fifth, then the second floor, windows are thrust open: Housewives cool their faces. From Tulla's mouth: "Sheeny!" Above the sound of the buzz saw. Matern grabs but misses. Tulla's tongue. Swift legs. Amsel stands beside the camp chair. The word. Matern picks up cardboard and drawing. Tulla bounces up and down on planks laid over sawhorses: "Sheeny, sheeny!" Matern screws the top on the India ink bottle. Tulla bounces off the plank -- "Sheeny!" -- rolls in the sand: "Sheeny!" Now all windows occupied and carpenters at the windows on the second floor. The word, three times in succession the word. Amsel's face, overheated while he was sketching, cools off. A smile refuses to fade. Sweat, but now cold and clammy, runs over fat and freckles. Matern lays his hand on Amsel's shoulder. Freckles turn gray. The word. Always the same one word. Matern's hand is heavy. Now from the stairs leading to the second floor. Tulla giddily jumping about: "Sheenysheenysheeny!" On his right Matern leads Amsel by the arm. Eddi Amsel is trembling. To the left, Matern, already charged with the portfolio, picks up the camp chair. Released from constraint, Harras relinquishes his pose. He sniffs, understands. Already his chain is taut: The dog's voice. Tulla's voice. The buzz saw bites into a sixteen-foot plank. The finishing machine is still silent. Now it too. Now the lathe. Long twenty-seven steps to the yard door. Harras tries to move the lumber shed to which he is chained. Tulla, dancing wildly, over and over again the word. And by the yard door, where August Pokriefke with crackling fingers stands in wooden shoes, the smell of glue battles with the smell from the little garden outside the piano teacher's windows: the scent of lilacs strikes and wins. It's the month of May after all. The word stops coming but it's still in the air. August Pokriefke wants to spit out what he's been storing up in the hollow of his mouth for some minutes. But he doesn't spit, because Matern is looking at him with clamoring teeth.