Dog Years (6 page)

Those fists belong to Walter Matern. Seven years old, he gazes gray-eyed over the sea as though it belonged to him. Senta, his young she-dog, barks at the short-winded Baltic waves. Perkun is gone, carried away by one of many canine diseases. Senta of Perkun's line will whelp Harras. Harras of Perkun's line will sire Prinz. Prinz of the Perkun-Senta-Harras line -- and at the very beginning the bark of a Lithuanian she-wolf -- will make history. . . but for the present Senta is barking at the helpless Baltic. And he stands barefoot in the sand. By sheer force of will and a slight vibration from his knees to the soles of his feet, he is able to dig deeper and deeper into the dune. Soon the sand will reach his rolled-up corduroy trousers stiffened with sea water: but now Walter Matern leaps out of the sand, flinging sand into the wind, and is gone from the dune. Senta forsakes the short-winded waves, both of them must have flaired something, they hurl themselves, he brown and green in corduroy and wool, she black and elongated, over the crest of the next dune into the beach grass, and -- after the sluggish sea has slapped the beach six times -- reappear, having gradually grown bored, in an entirely different place. It seems to have been nothing. Air dumplings. Wind soup. Not even a rabbit.

But up above, where from Putzig Bay clouds of roughly equal size against blue drape drift in the direction of the Haff, the birds persist in giving Amsel's near-finished scare crows the shrill and raucous recognition that any fully finished scarecrow would be proud of.

THIRTEENTH MORNING SHIFT

Fortunately the year ended peacefully at the mine. From the headframe the apprentices, under the supervision of Wernicke the head foreman, launched a few fine-looking rockets, which formed the company emblem, the well-known bird motif. Unfortunately the clouds hung so low that a good deal of the magic was lost.

This making of figures; this game played in the dunes, on top of the dike, or in a clearing rich in blueberries amid the scrub pine, took on new meaning late one afternoon when Kriwe the ferryman -- the ferry had stopped for the day -- took the Schiewenhorst village mayor with red-and-white-checked daughter to the edge of the woods where Eduard Amsel, guarded as usual by his friend Walter Matern and the dog Senta, had lined up six or seven of his most recent creations against the steeply rising wooded dunes, but not in military formation.

The sun let itself down behind Schiewenhorst. The friends cast long-drawn-out shadows. If Amsel's shadow was nevertheless more rotund, it was because the drooping sun bore witness to the little rascal's extraordinary fatness; he would grow still fatter in time to come.

Neither of them stirred a muscle when the lopsided Leather Kriwe and Lau, the disabled peasant, approached with a daughter in tow and two or three shadows. Senta adopted an attitude of wait and see, and uttered a short growl. The two boys gazed blankly -- they had had lots of practice -- from the top of the dune over the row of scarecrows, over the sloping meadow where moles had their dwellings, toward the Matern windmill. There it stood with pole on jack, raised windward by a little round hummock, but not running.

And who stood at the foot of the hummock with a sack bent over his right shoulder? The man beneath the sack was Matern, the white miller. He, too, like the sails of the mill, like the two boys on the crest of the dune, like Senta, stood motionless, though for different reasons.

Slowly Kriwe stretched out his left arm and a gnarled, leather-brown finger. Hedwig Lau, wearing her Sunday best on a weekday, dug a black and buckled patent-leather shoe into the sand. Kriwe's index finger pointed to Amsel's exhibition. "There you are, friend. See what I mean." And his finger pointed with slow thoroughness from scarecrow to scarecrow. Lau's approximately octagonal head followed the leathery finger, remaining two scarecrows behind -- there were seven scarecrows -- to the very end of the show.

"Them's fine scarecrows, friend; you won't have no more birds to worry about."

Because the patent-leather shoe was digging, its movement was transmitted to the hem of the little girl's dress and to her hair ribbons of like material. Lau scratched himself under his cap and once again, now slowly and solemnly, passed the seven scarecrows in review, this time in reverse order. Amsel and Walter Matern sat on the crest of the dune, dangling their legs unevenly, and kept their eyes on the motionless sails of the windmill. The elastic of Amsel's knee socks cut into his plump calves below the knee, leaving a bulge of doll-like pink flesh. The white miller remained frozen at the foot of the hummock, his right shoulder digging into the hundredweight sack. The miller was in plain sight, but far away. "If you want me to, I can ask the kid what one of them scarecrows costs if it costs anything." No one will ever nod more slowly than Erich Lau, the peasant and village mayor, nodded. For his little daughter every day was Sunday. Head cocked to one side, Senta followed every movement but usually got there first, for she was so young she couldn't help getting ahead of unhurried intimations. When Amsel was baptized and the birds gave the first sign, Hedwig Lau had still been swimming in amniotic fluid. Sea sand is bad for patent-leather shoes. Kriwe in wooden shoes made a half turn toward the crest of the dune and from the corner of his mouth spat brown juice that formed a ball in the sand: "Listen, kid, we'd like to know what one of them scarecrows would cost for the garden if it costs something."

The distant white miller with the bent sack did not drop the sack, Hedwig Lau did not remove her buckled patent-leather shoe from the sand, but Senta gave a short, dust-scattering leap as Eduard Amsel let himself drop from the crest of the dune. Twice he rolled. A moment later, propelled by the two rolls, he stood between the two men in woolen jackets, not far from Hedwig Lau's digging patent-leather shoe.

Step by step, the white miller began to climb the hummock. The patent-leather shoe stopped digging and a giggle dry as bread crumbs began to stir the red-and-white-checked dress and the red-and-white-checked hair ribbons. A deal was in the making. Amsel pointed an inverted thumb at the patent-leather shoes. A stubborn shaking of Lau's head made the shoes into a commodity that was not for sale, leastways not for the present. In response to the offer of barter, hard currency was jingled. While Amsel and Kriwe, but only infrequently Erich Lau the village mayor, figured and in so doing pressed fingers down and let them rise again, Walter Matern was still sitting on the crest of the dune. To judge by the sound his teeth were making, he harbored objections to the negotiations, which he later described as "haggling."

Kriwe and Eduard Amsel arrived at an agreement more quickly than Lau could nod. The daughter was digging again with her shoe. The price of a scarecrow was set at fifty pfennigs. The miller was gone. The mill was milling. Senta was heeling. For three scarecrows Amsel was asking one gulden. In addition and not without reason, for he was planning to expand his business, three rags per scarecrow and as a special premium Hedwig Lau's buckled patent-leather shoes as soon as they could be qualified as worn out.

Oh sober solemn day when a first deal is closed! Next morning the village mayor had the three scarecrows ferried across the river to Schiewenhorst and planted in his wheat behind the railroad. Since Lau, like many peasants on the Island, grew either the Epp or the Kujave variety, both beardless and consequently an easy prey for birds, the scarecrows had ample opportunity to prove their worth. With their coffee cozies, straw-bundle helmets, and crossed straps, they may well have passed for the last three grenadiers of the First Guards Regiment at the battle of Torgau, which, as Schlieffen tells us, was murderous. Already Amsel had given form to his penchant for Prussian precision; in any event the three soldiers were effective; a deathly stillness prevailed amid the ripening summer wheat, over the previously bird-winged and vociferously pillaged field.

Word got around. Soon peasants came from both shores, from Junkeracker and Pasewark, from Einlage and Schnakenburg, from deep in the interior of the Island: from Jungfer, Scharpau, and Ladekopp. Kriwe acted as go-between; but for the present Amsel did not raise his prices and, after remonstrances on the part of Walter Matern, took to accepting only every second and later every third offer. To himself and all his customers he said that he didn't want to botch his work and could turn out only one scarecrow a day, or two at the very most. He declined assistance. Only Walter Matern was permitted to help, to bring raw materials from both banks of the river and to continue guarding the artist and his work with two fists and a black dog.

Brauxel might also relate how Amsel soon had the wherewithal to rent Folchert's decrepit but still lockable barn for a small fee. In this wooden shelter, which had a reputation for spookiness because someone for some reason had hanged himself from one of its rafters, under a roof which would accordingly have inspired any artist, Amsel stored the materials that would subsequently come to life as scarecrows. In rainy weather the barn became his work shop. It was a regular shop, for Amsel let his capital work for him and had purchased in his mother's store, hence at cost price, hammers, two handsaws, drills, pliers, chisels, and the pocketknife equipped with three blades, a leather punch, a corkscrew, and a saw. This last article he gave to Walter Matern. And two years later when he couldn't find a stone on the Nickelswalde dike, Walter Matern had thrown it, in place of a stone, into the rising Vistula. We have heard about that.

FOURTEENTH MORNING SHIFT

Those characters ought to take Amsel's diary as an example and learn to keep their books properly. How many times has Brauchsel described the working method of both coauthors? Two trips at the expense of the firm brought us together and, at a time when those eminent citizens were leading a pampered existence, gave them an opportunity to take notes and to draw up a work plan as well as a few diagrams. Instead, they keep checking back: When does the manuscript have to be delivered? Should a manuscript page have thirty or thirty-four lines? Are you really satisfied with the letter form, or wouldn't something more modern be preferable, along the lines of the new French school, for instance? Is it sufficient for me to describe the Striessbach as a brook between Hochstriess and Langstriess? Or should historical references, such as the boundary dispute between the city of Danzig and the Cistercian monastery in Oliva, be brought in? And what about the letter of ratification written in 1235 by Duke Swantopolk, grandson of Subislaw I, who had founded the monastery? In it the Striessbach is mentioned in connection with Saspe Lake,
"Locum Saspi usque in rivulum Strieza. . ."
Or the ratifying document issued by Mestwin II in 1283, in which the Striessbach, which constituted the border, is spelled as follows:
"Praefatum rivulum Striesz usque in Vislam. . ."?
Or the letter of 1291 confirming the monasteries of Oliva and Sarnowitz in all their possessions? Here Striessbach is written "Stricze" in one place, while elsewhere we read: ". . .
praefatum fluuium Strycze cum utroque littore a lacu Colpin unde scaturit descendendo in Wislam. . ."

The other coauthor is no more backward about checking back and seasons all his letters with requests for an advance: ". . . perhaps be permitted to point out that according to our verbal agreement each coauthor, on starting work on his manuscript, was to receive. . ." That's the actor. All right, let him have his advance. But let Amsel's diary, a photostat if not the original, be his Bible.

The log must have inspired him. A log has to be kept on all ships, even a ferry. Kriwe: a cracked, lean chunk of leather with March-gray, lashless, and slightly crossed eyes, which nevertheless permitted him to guide the steam ferry diagonally, or it might be more apt to say crosswise, against the current from landing to landing. Vehicles, fisherwomen with flounder baskets, the pastor, school-children, travelers in transit, salesmen with sample cases, the coaches and freight cars of the Island narrow-gauge railway, cattle for slaughter or breeding, weddings and funerals with coffins and wreaths were squinted across the river by ferryman Kriwe, who entered all happenings in his log. So snugly and unjoltingly did Kriwe put in to his berth that a pfening could not have been inserted between the sheet metal sheathing on the bow of his ferryboat and the piles of the landing. Moreover he had long served the friends Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel as the most reliable of business agents, asking no commission for the deals he transacted and barely accepting tobacco. When the ferry wasn't operating, he took the two of them to places known only to Kriwe. He urged Amsel to study the terror-inspiring qualities of a willow tree, for the artistic theories of Kriwe and Amsel, which were later recorded in the diary, amounted to this: "Models should be taken primarily from nature." Years later, under the name of Haseloff, Amsel, in the same diary, amplified this dictum as follows: "Everything that can be stuffed should be classified as nature: dolls, for instance."

But the hollow willow tree to which Kriwe led the friends shook itself and had not yet been stuffed. Flat in the background, the mill milled. Slowly the last narrow-gauge train rounded the bend, ringing faster than it ran. Butter melted away. Milk turned sour. Four bare feet, two oiled boots. First grass and nettles, then clover. Over two fences, through three open stiles, then another fence to climb. On both sides of the brook the willows took a step forward, a step back, turned, had hips, navels; and one willow -- for even among willows there is the one willow -- was hollow hollow hollow, until three days later Amsel filled it in: squats there plump and friendly on both heels, studies the inside of a willow, because Kriwe said. . . and out of the willow in which he is sitting with his curiosity, he attentively examines the willows to the right and left of the brook; as a model Amsel especially prizes a three-headed one that has one foot on dry land but is cooling the other in the brook because the giant Miligedo, the one with the lead club, stepped on its willow foot long long ago. And the willow tree holds still, though to all appearances it would like to run away, especially as the ground fog -- for it is very early, a century before school time -- is creeping across the meadows from the river and eating away the trunks of the willows by the brook: soon only the three-headed head of the posing willow will be floating on the fog, carrying on a dialogue.