Dog Years (34 page)

Then I was drawn back up the Erbsberg. While he was looking, finding, and holding out into the moonlight, I coasted safely downhill, found my beech tree, and hoped to find the old familiar roly-poly Jenny in Gutenberg's clearing. But still it was the whippety line, hung with Jenny's shrunken coat, that cast a narrow shadow as soon as moonlight broke against it. But the line had meanwhile moved its arms sideways and turned out its feet, heel to heel. In other words, the line stood in the ballet dancer's first position and embarked forth with, though without any visible exercise bar, on a difficult bar exercise:
grand pli
é
--
demie-pointe
--
é
quilibre, bras en couronne,
twice each in the first, second, and fifth positions. Next eight
d
é
gag
é
s
outstretched and eight
d
é
gag
é
s en l'air
with closed
pli
é
.
Sixteen
battements d
é
gag
é
s
limbered the line up. In the
rond de jambes
à
la seconde,
ending in
é
quilibre en attitude ferm
é
e,
and in the
grand port de bras en avant, puts en arri
è
re,
the line showed suppleness. Softer and softer grew the line. Marionettelike arm movements changed to fluid arm movements: already Jenny's coat slipped from shoulders no broader than a hand. Exercise under lateral floodlight: eight
grands battements en croix:
long legs, not quite enough instep, but a line as if Victor Gsovsky had dreamed the line and the line's line:
Finir en arabesque crois
é
e!

When again I was drawn up the Erbsberg, the hard-working line was reeling off
petits battements sur le cou-de-pied:
fine sweeping arm movements that sprinkled innumerable classical dots on the soft thawing air.

And the other side of the Erbsberg? With the moon looking on for a moment, I was ready to believe that the young man in Amsel's garden not only had Amsel's white muffler, but also Amsel's red hair. But it didn't stand up in flaming stubbles, it lay flat. Now he was standing to one side of a crumbling pile of snow. He had his back turned to the scarecrow group in burlap and brown rags, standing in the shadow of the woods: broad shoulders, narrow hips. Who had given him such ideal proportions? In the hollow of his right hand, held out to one side, lay something that was worth looking at. Supporting leg at a slant. Unweighted leg negligent. Bent neck line, part line, dotted line between eyes and the hollow of his hand: spellbound, ecstatic, photographed: Narcissus! I was already thinking of going up the mountain to watch the low
pli
é
s
of the hard-working line, for nothing worth looking at was shown me in the hollow hand, when the young man acted: what he threw behind him glistened perhaps twenty or thirty-two times in the moonlight before raining down in the hazelnut bushes, in my gorse. I groped for it, especially as he had hit me with something that felt like pebbles. I found two teeth: small, well cared for, with healthy roots; worth saving. Human teeth cast away with a gesture. He didn't look behind him but strode springily across the garden. He took the steps to the terrace in one jump: gone with the moon. But a moment later a small light bulb, possibly veiled in cloth, showed him bustling about Amsel's villa. A glimmer of light in one window, then in the next. Swift comings and goings. Something being carried, something else: the young man was packing Amsel's suitcase and was in a hurry.

I too in a hurry, climbing the Erbsberg for the last time. O everlasting two hundred and seventy-five feet above sea level. For to this day every third dream, I need only have eaten something heavy for dinner, makes me climb the Erbsberg over and over again until I wake: painfully up, wildly down, and then again, for ever and ever.

From my beech tree I saw the line dancing. No more bar exercises, but a soundless adagio: solemnly arms are moved, rest on the air. Steps secure on insecure ground. One leg is enough, the other has been given away. Scales that tip slightly and go back to sleep, weightless. Turning, but not fast, in slow motion, a pencil could follow. It's not the clearing that's turning, but the line, turning two neat pirouettes. No lilting, no balloon flights through the air; Gutenberg should come out of his temple and play the partner. But he as I: audience, while lightfoot the line measures the clearing. Speechless the crows. The beeches weep.
Pas de bourr
é
e, pas de bourr
é
e.
Changing feet. Allegro now, because an allegro has to follow an adagio. Swift little feet.
É
chapp
é
é
chapp
é
.
And out of the
demi-pli
é
burgeon the
pas assembl
é
s.
What Jenny couldn't quite manage: the merry
pas de chat;
the line wouldn't want to stop on that, it leaps, lingers in the air and manages, while persevering in weightlessness, to bend its knees and touch toe to toe. Is it Gutenberg who, after the bright allegro, whistles an adagio as a finale? What a tender line. The line keeps listening. An accommodating line. Line can grow longer or shorter. A dash, drawn in one line. Line can do a curtsy. Applause. That's the crows, the beeches, the thawtide wind.

And after the final curtain -- the moon rang it down -- the line began with tiny little steps to look for something in the dance-furrowed clearing. But it wasn't looking for lost teeth, its mouth wasn't drawn with pain like the young man's to Amselward of the Erbsberg, but rather with the ghost of a frozen smile, which didn't expand or grow warmer when the line found what it was looking for: with Jenny's new sled the line moved across the clearing, no longer a dancer but a somewhat hesitant child, picked up Jenny's fallen fuzzy coat, threw it over its shoulders, and -- Gutenberg raised no objection -- vanished in the woods, in the direction of J
ä
schkentaler Weg.

Instantly, now that the clearing was deserted, terror was back again with cast iron and murmuring trees. Turning my back on the deserted clearing, I hurried through the beeches, and when the woods stopped and the street-lamp-studded Jäschkentaler Weg welcomed me, my hopping and hurrying did not abate. I didn't stop till I was on Hauptstrasse, outside Sternfeld's department store.

Across the square the clock outside the optician's indicated a few minutes after eight. The street was full of people. Moviegoers were hurrying into the movie house. A picture with Luis Trenker was being shown, I think. And then, probably after the picture had started, the young man came along, ambling and yet tense, with a suitcase. It couldn't have held much. Which of Amsel's spacious garments could the young man have taken with him? The streetcar came from Oliva, meaning to continue toward the main railroad station. He got into the trailer and stayed on the platform. When the car began to move, he lighted a cigarette. Sorrowfully sunken lips had to hold the cigarette. I'd never seen Eddi Amsel smoke.

And no sooner was he gone than primly, step by little step, the line came along with Jenny's sled. I followed it down Baumbachallee. We were going the same way. Behind the Church of the Sacred Heart I speeded up till I was beside the line, keeping step. I spoke more or less as follows: "Good evening, Jenny."

The line wasn't surprised: "Good evening, Harry."

I, to be saying something: "Have you been coasting?"

The line nodded: "You can pull my sled if you like."

"You're late getting home."

"I'm good and tired, too."

"Have you seen Tulla?"

"Tulla and the others left before seven."

The new Jenny had just as long eyelashes as the other: "I left a little before seven too. But I didn't see you." Jenny informed me politely: "I can see why you didn't see me. I was inside a snow man."

Elsenstrasse grew shorter and shorter: "What was it like in there?"

On the bridge over the Striessbach the new Jenny said: "It was awfully hot in there."

My solicitude, I think, was sincere: "I hope you didn't catch cold in there."

Outside the Aktienhaus, where Dr. Brunies lived with Jenny, the new Jenny said: "Before I go to bed, I'll take a hot lemonade as a precaution."

Many more questions occurred to me: "How did you get out of the snow man?"

The new Jenny said good-by in the entrance: "It began to thaw. But now I'm tired. Because I danced a little. For the first time I did two successful pirouettes. Cross my heart. Good night, Harry."

And then the door closed. I was hungry. I hoped there was something left in the kitchen. It seems, incidentally, that the young man took the train at ten o'clock. He and Amsel's suit case rode away. It seems that they crossed both borders without any trouble.

Dear Tulla,

Jenny didn't catch cold inside the snow man but on the way home: the ballet in the clearing must have overheated her. She had to stay in bed for a week.

Dear Tulla,

you already know that a young man slipped out of the corpulent Amsel. With a light step, carrying Amsel's suit case, he hurried through the station and took the train to Berlin. What you don't know yet: in his suitcase the light-footed young man has a passport, and it's forged. A certain "Hütchen," a piano maker by trade, manufactured the passport some weeks before the double miracle in the snow. The forger's hand thought of everything: for strange to say, the passport is graced with a photograph reproducing the tense, somewhat rigid features of the young man with the painful lips. Moreover, Herr Huth didn't issue this passport in the name of Eduard Amsel: he named the owner of the pass port Hermann Haseloff, born in Riga on February 24, 1917.

Dear Tulla,

when Jenny was well again, I showed her the two teeth that the young man had flung into my gorse.

Jenny was delighted. "Oh," she said, "why, those are Herr Amsel's teeth. Will you give me one?" I kept the other tooth and still carry it on me; for Herr Brauxel, who could claim the tooth, leaves it in my purse.

Dear Tulla,

what did Herr Haseloff do when he arrived in Berlin-Stettin Station? He moved into a hotel room and went next day to a dental clinic where he had his sunken mouth filled with gold in exchange for good, erstwhile Amselian, now Haseloffian money. In the new passport Herr Huth had to note, after "Distinguishing Marks": "Artificial denture. Gold crowns." Henceforth when Herr Haseloff laughs, he will be seen laughing with thirty-two gold teeth; but Haseloff seldom laughs.

Dear Tulla,

those gold teeth became famous; they still are. Yesterday as I was sitting in Paul's Taproom with some associates, I made an experiment to prove that Haseloff's gold teeth are not a myth. This bar on Augsburger Strasse is frequented mostly by wrestlers, shippers, and unaccompanied ladies. The upholstered bench around our table -- the one we always occupied -- offered the possibility of arguing hard on a soft foundation. We talked about things people talk about in Berlin. The wall behind us was papered helter-skelter with the photographs of famous boxers, six-day bicycle racers, and track stars. Signatures and dedications offered reading matter; but we weren't reading, we were pondering, as we often do between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, where we could go when we had to leave. Then we joked about the impending fourth of February. The end of the world over beer and gin. I told them about Herr Brauxel, my eccentric employer; and that brought us to Haseloff and his gold teeth, which I called genuine whereas my colleagues refused to believe they were anything more than a myth.

So I called over to the bar: "Hannchen, have you seen Herr Haseloff lately?"

Over her rinsing of glasses Hannchen called back: "Naw. When Goldmouth's in town, he's been going someplace else lately, he's been going to Diener's."

Dear Tulla,

so it's true about the false teeth. Haseloff was and is known as Goldmouth; and the new Jenny, when she was allowed to get up after her bad cold, was given a pair of toe-dancing slippers covered with glittering silvery silk. Dr. Brunies wanted to see her standing on silver points. From then on she danced in Madame Lara's ballet room: Little Swans. The pianist Felsner-Imbs, whose dog bite was healing, poured out Chopin. And I, at Herr Brauxel's request, dismiss Goldmouth and listen to the scraping of silvery exercising ballet slippers: Jenny is holding the bar, embarking on a career.

Dear Tulla,

at that time we were all transferred to different schools: I was sent to the Conradinum; you and Jenny became pupils at the Helene Lange School, which soon had its name changed to the Gudrun School. My father, the master carpenter, had suggested sending you to high school: "The child is bright but unsteady. Why not give it a try?"

From sixth on Dr. Brunies signed our report cards. He taught us German and history. From the start I was conscientious but no grind and nevertheless first in my class: I allowed others to copy from me. Brunies was a lenient teacher. It was easy to divert him from strict insistence on his actual subject: someone only had to bring a piece of mica gneiss to class and ask him to talk about this kind of gneiss or all kinds of gneiss, about his collection of mica gneiss specimens, and instantly Brunies would drop the Cimbri and the Teutons to lecture about his science. But he didn't restrict himself to his hobby; he reeled off his whole litany of minerals: plutonite and pyroxenite; amorphous and crystal line rocks; it is from him that I have the words: multi-faceted, tabular, and needle-shaped; the colors: leek-green, air-blue, pea-yellow, silver-white, clove-brown, smoke-gray, iron-black, and dawn-red are from his palette; he taught me tender words: rose quartz, moonstone, lapis lazuli; I adopted little words of reproach: "You tufahead, you hornblender, you nagelfluh!" But even now I couldn't distinguish agate from opal, malachite from labradorite, biotite from muscovite.