Dog Years (80 page)

With these modest desires he leaves the train. Along with him others, who doubtless have greater desires. Relatives welcome relatives, taking no notice of Matern, whom, as he reflects with a note of bitterness, no relatives are expecting. Nevertheless, a reception has been provided for Matern. Reception jumps up on him with forepaws. Reception licks him with long tongue. Glad barking, whimpering jubilation. Don't you remember me? Don't you love me any more? Did you want me to stay in that station mission forever, until dog-death? Haven't I a right to be faithful as a dog?

Of course of course! It's all right, Pluto. Now you've got your master back again. Let's have a look at you. It's him and it isn't him. An obviously black stud dog answers to the name of Pluto, but the scissors bite is gapless to the touch. Gone are the ice-gray islands over the stop, the eyes are no longer bleary. Why, at the most that dog can't be a day over eight. Rejuvenated and new. Only the dog tag is still the same. Dog lost, dog found again; and -- as usual in rail road stations -- here comes the honest finder: "Pardon me, is this your dog?"

He removes the Borsalino from his smoothly combed hair: a slim, affected stringbean, as hoarse as a grater, which doesn't prevent him from sucking a coffin nail: "The animal ran up to me and insisted on dragging me to Zoological Gardens Station; he pulled me right through the entrance hall and up these stairs to where the big expresses come in."

Is he after a reward or does he want to strike up an acquaintance? Still with hat in hand, he doesn't spare his vocal cords: "I don't wish to be obtrusive, but I am glad to have met you. Call me what you like. Here in Berlin most people call me Goldmouth. An allusion to my chronic hoarseness and the twenty-four-carat substitutes for teeth that I am obliged to wear in my mouth."

Thereupon Matern's internal cash drawer gets a checking over: coins of every kind jingle together. Inflamed with red only a moment before, his heart is now wrapped in gold leaf. Spleen and kidneys are heavy as ducats: "My, what a surprise! And in a railroad station of all places. I can't say what is more amazing, finding my Pluto again -- I lost the dog in Cologne -- or this momentous, I can't think of any other word, meeting."

"The pleasure is all mine!" -- "But haven't we friends in common?" -- "You think so?" -- "Why yes, the Sawatzkis. Wouldn't they be flabbergasted if they." -- "Why then I must be -- or can I be mistaken? -- talking to Herr Matern?" -- "As he lives and breathes. What a coincidence! We really have to drink on it." -- "Suits me." -- "Where do you suggest?" -- "Wherever you like." -- "I'm pretty much of a stranger around here." -- "Then let's start our little round at the Barfuss place." -- "Anything you say. But first I'd like -- my trip was unexpected -- to buy a change of shirts and a razor. Heel, Pluto! My, is he happy!"

THE HUNDRED AND SECOND FIREPROOF MATERNIAD

Here you see God's gigolo with his one and only prop! In between mincing pigeon steps, the guy is actually whirling an ebony cane with an ivory handle. In this station as in all others, familiar and welcomed: "Hi, Goldmouth. In town again? How's your love life?"

And smokes Navy Cut the whole time at high speed. While inside the station -- the shops here are open until late -- Matern buys his vital razor and the blades that go with it, the little fellow smokes without interruption and, when he runs out of matches, asks a policeman for a light: "Good evening, officer." And the officer salutes the idling smoker.

And everybody winks at Goldmouth and, so it seems to Matern, points to him and the rejuvenated dog: Among friends. Complicity. That's a hot one, Goldmouth. Some bird you've scared up.

Talk about birds! When Matern comes back with two pairs of woolen socks and a fresh shirt, five or six kids are surrounding his new friend. And what are they doing? Horsing around between the Heine Bookstore and the ticket windows of the "L," dancing around him while he offhandedly beats time with his cane, twittering like telegraph wires, cackling and chirping sound effects. They turn their jackets inside out; with the lining out they look like members of the scarecrow family that was staging a relay race on both sides of the just-arrived interzonal train, as though intending, even before the train pulled in at Berlin-Zoological Gardens, to make known, deliver, and loudly proclaim the tidings, message, watchword: "He's coming! He's coming! He'll be here in a minute and needs to buy a razor and socks and a change of shirts."

But all the boys evaporate as soon as Matern steps up to Goldmouth with parcels and rejuvenated dog: "O.K. Let's go."

It's not far. The place is no longer in existence, but at the time when the trio is crossing Hardenbergstrasse is situated across the way from the Newsreel Theater, which today is projecting the news somewhere else. Not into the Bilka department store, but across Joachimstaler on the green light, and a few steps up Kanstrasse. After the Ski Hut sporting goods store, an electric sign over the usual Berlin pub makes it clear that ANNA HELENE BARFUSS -- who by now must be rinsing glasses behind the heavenly bar -- -- still reigns behind an earthly cash register as our trio is approaching. The place used to be a coachmen's hangout. Today traffic cops gather there after hours. Also teachers of art from Steinplatz and couples who are ahead of time for their movie. And now and then the kind who are often between jobs. They stand at the bar shifting their weight from leg to leg between glasses. For good measure one might mention a flighty old biddy who, always under the same hat, is enjoying a free lunch, in return for which she has to tell Anna Helene about the repertory at the Volksbühne from the latest Adamov to the last time Elsa Wagner brought the house down; for Anna Helene's cash register rings so steadily that she can never get out to the theater.

Here too Goldmouth is a familiar figure. His order: "A hot lemonade, please!" surprises no one but Matern. "For your throat, I suppose. That's a bad cold you've got. No, it must be smoker's cough. You sure smoke like a chimney."

Goldmouth listens attentively to the voice. He connects himself with the hot lemonade by means of a straw. But listening to Matern and sucking lemonade are only two activities; in addition, he smokes cigarettes, lights the fresh smoke-stick with the last third of the old one, and throws the burning butt behind him, whereupon la Barfuss, deep in retrospective theatricals at the free-lunch counter, motions the waiter with her eyebrows to stamp out the butt. The gentlemen pay for two beers, a hot lemonade, and three meatballs. Dutch, except that Matern pays for the dog.

But Goldmouth and Matern with newly found Pluto haven't far to go: up Joachimstaler, across Kurfürstendamm on the zebra stripes, and at the corner of Augsburger into the White Moor. There Matern consumes two beers and two schnapps; Goldmouth drains a hot lemonade to the sweet dregs; the dog is served a portion of fresh blood sausage -- homemade! The waiter has to stamp out four butts in all behind the smoker's back. This time they don't cling to the bar but stand at a small table. Each becomes the other's opposite. And Matern counts as the waiter reduces to silence what Goldmouth flips smoking behind him. "You ought to quit smoking so much. It doesn't make sense when you're as hoarse as a grater."

But the several times admonished smoker expresses, as though in passing, the opinion that his constant smoking is not the cause of his chronic hoarseness, but that, thinking much further back, to a time when he was still a nonsmoker submitting to athletic discipline, something, a certain some one, had roughed up his vocal cords: "Hm, you surely remember. It happened early in January."

But strenuously as Matern swirls the remnant of beer in his glass, he can't seem to remember: "What am I supposed to? Are you trying to pull? But joking aside, you really ought to cut out the chain smoking. You won't have any voice left. Waiter, the check. Where do we go now?"

This time Goldmouth pays for everything, including the blood sausage for the newly found dog. Obviously their legs need no more stretching. A stone's throw up Augsburger. Scenes of welcome in the springtime air that has a hard time preserving its balminess against the curry vapors of nearby snack bars. Unaccompanied ladies are glad to see him, but not obtrusive: "Goldmouth here, Goldmouth there!" And the same song and dance at Paul's Taproom, where they sit on bar stools, because the circular sofa around the big table is fully occupied: trucking men with ladies and interminable stories which even Goldmouth's feted arrival can interrupt only briefly, and that because they feel obliged to say some thing about the dog. "Mine -- sit, Hasso -- is a good ten years old." Dog talk and curiosity: "That's a purebred. Where'd you get him?" As if the dog belonged not to Matern but to this smoker who, rising above all the questions, gives the order: "Hey, Hannchen. A beer for the gentleman. For me the usual. And a schnapps too for the gentleman, if it's all right."

It's all right. So long as he doesn't mix his drinks. Better be careful, keep a clear head and a steady hand in case of trouble. You never can tell.

Matern's refreshments are served. Goldmouth sucks the usual with a straw. The newly found dog, described as a purebred by one of the trucking men, receives a hard-boiled egg, which Hannchen in person peels for him behind the counter. A free and easy atmosphere: questions, answers, and some what ambiguous remarks are exchanged between tables. A three-lady table near the ventilator is curious to know whether Goldmouth is in town for business or pleasure. The round table -- against a background adorned with photographs of wrestlers and boxers waiting, most of them at the vertical, for the next full nelson or left hook -- inquires, without so much as a lull in its internal conversation, how Goldmouth's business is doing. Trouble with the Internal Revenue Service is mentioned. Goldmouth complains of slow deliveries. The circular sofa counters: "What would you expect, with your export orders?" Hannchen wants to know how his love life is prospering. A question which was already asked by the bustling Zoological Gardens Station and which in both cases Goldmouth answers with a suggestive smoke line in the air.

But here again, in this pub, where everybody is in the know except for the hick Matern, the smoker insists on flipping his cigarette butts behind him every time Matern pushes up the ash tray: "Some manners you have, I must say. Oh well, these people are used to your routine. Why don't you try a filter for a change? Or try to fight it off with chewing gum? It's sheer nervousness. And that throat of yours. It's none of my business. But if I were you, I'd cut it out completely for two weeks. I'm really worried."

Goldmouth is pleased to hear Matern's concern expressed so prolixly. Though it keeps reminding him that his chronic hoarseness doesn't come from immoderate smoking, but can be dated with precision: "One January afternoon, years ago. You surely remember, my dear Matern. There was a lot of snow on the ground."

Matern counters that there's usually a lot of snow on the ground in January, that all this is a silly subterfuge to distract attention from his cigarette consumption, because the root of his throat trouble is coffin nails and not any perfectly normal winter cold he caught many years ago.

The next round is stood by the trucking men, whereupon Matern feels called upon to order seven slugs of gin -- "because where it comes from is where I come from" -- for the occupants of the round table. "From Nickelswalde, and Tiegenhof was our county seat." But despite rising spirits, Goldmouth, Matern, and newly found dog gather little moss at Paul's Taproom. Despite urgent pleas to hang around from the three-lady table -- whose occupants change frequently -- from the social stability of the trucking men's table, and from the universally popular Hannchen: "You're always dropping in for half a second; and you haven't told us a story in ages" -- the gentlemen prefer to ask for the check, which doesn't mean that Goldmouth -- he's already standing by the ventilator with Matern and dog -- has no story up his sleeve.

"Tell us about the ballets you used to put on."

"Or when you were a so-called cultural-affairs officer in the occupation."

"The one about the worms is good too."

But this time Goldmouth's mood is running in a very different direction. Facing the round table, grazing the three-lady table, and taking in Hannchen, he hoarsely whispers words which the trucking men, nodding weightily weightily, load up.

"Just a very short story, because we're all so cozy here together. Once upon a time there were two little boys. One of them, out of friendship, gave the other a lovely pocketknife. With this gift the other boy did all sorts of things, and once, with that very same pocketknife, he scored his own arm and the arm of his friend whom friendship had made generous. And so the two little boys became blood brothers. But one day when the boy to whom the pocketknife had been given wanted to throw a stone in the river, but found no stone for throwingintheriver, he threw the pocketknife in the river. And it was gone forever."

The story makes Matern pensive. They're out in the street again: up Augsburger, across Nürnberger. The smoker is on the point of turning right to pay a visit to Rankestrasse and somebody he calls Prince Alexander, when he notices Matern's somber thoughtfulness and decides that he himself, Matern, and the newly found dog need a little exercise: up Fuggerstrasse, across Nollendorfplatz, and then to the left down Bülowstrasse.

"See here." That's Matern. "That story about the pocket-knife sounds mighty familiar to me."

"That's perfectly natural, my friend," Goldmouth croaks. "It's a story out of a German schoolbook, so to speak. Every body knows it. Even the men at the round table nodded in the right places, because they knew the story."