Iron Gustav (46 page)

She looked at him with flashing eyes – they were standing in the glare of a wine bar – looked at him as if he were her enemy, one loving death and hating life. Then she saw the cut on his cheek.

‘Oh, so you got something? Look, a souvenir from one of your sisters! And you say they don't know what they're doing. I'd soon
teach them what I think of the way you go on here. And you can be certain we will teach you too.'

‘Come on, Tinette,' he implored. ‘Come home … Erich will be anxious.'

‘Home?' she said. ‘Do you think I'm going to be put off by that? Never!' Looking round she saw the wine bar. ‘Bar Napoli. We'll go in here! I'll go in bars every evening – just because!'

‘Do come home,' he begged. ‘What can we do there? It's only boring now the mood's gone. It's not because I'm afraid …'

‘Are you coming or not? I'll go by myself then.'

‘Please, Tinette …'

‘Are you coming?'

‘Be reasonable, Tinette. There's no sense …'

‘Then I'll go alone. But if you abandon me tonight, Henri, you need not come again, you understand?'

‘No. No. I can't …'

‘Go ahead! Stay with your soldiers. Be one yourself. Be dirty again and unkempt – then you'll be one of them.'

‘Tinette!'

But she had disappeared through the door.

Mechanically he took out his handkerchief and began to wipe the blood from his cheek, looking hesitatingly at the wine bar. Suddenly he noticed he was without hat and coat. It was cold, a January frost. He'd have to fetch his coat …

Turning round, he retraced his steps. Though they had left it barely a quarter of an hour before, the little square was already deserted and the bar lay in darkness. In front of the splintered door stood a policeman talking to a civilian.

‘Your things?' asked the policeman. ‘Oh, were you in there then? Bit young for such places, aren't you?' Civilian and policeman both looked at Heinz in disapproval.

‘I only want my things,' he said stubbornly. ‘If it can be managed.'

‘There's nobody in the place now, they've all gone home. Did you get much of a hiding?'

‘Enough to go on with.'

‘Give me a few marks,' the civilian suggested, ‘and I'll take you in
and get you your things. I'm a waiter here. Have you the cloakroom ticket?'

‘I have,' said Heinz, following the man.

‘There's also a lady's hat on this number,' said the waiter. ‘Must be some mistake.'

‘No, that's right,' declared Heinz, giving the man his money. He had taken only Tinette's coat from the peg when the trouble started. ‘Don't worry. I'll take it to the lady.'

‘Where is she then?' asked the waiter suspiciously.

‘Where should she be? In a bar.'

‘In a bar? What, already?' The waiter was indignant. ‘Well, that's a bit thick, you know. It's not surprising if people lose their tempers.'

Heinz, however, did not care what the waiter thought and he was equally indifferent to the policeman calling after him. Balancing Tinette's little hat on the tips of his fingers he returned to the Napoli Bar, gave up his coat at the cloakroom, handed in the hat too and approached Tinette, perched on a stool. He sat down beside her.

‘I've just fetched your hat,' he said.

She turned round and faced him. Her mouth smiled but her eyes remained hard. They weren't so much serious as angry, as she said, ‘So you've come back! I knew you would, Henri. You shouldn't give up until your side is totally defeated, should you? Come on, let's drink to the defeated, to their total defeat!' He clinked glasses with her, without saying a word, but he clinked.

Heinz went towards his destruction with open eyes, proceeding from defeat to defeat with a kind of stupid determination. Deaf to all warnings – from without and within – he shamelessly clung ever more strongly to Tinette, regardless of her abuse of him, and without paying any attention to the mounting mockery of his brother.

One evening Erich came home unusually early, bringing with him a girl in a black, high-necked dress. Her complexion was pale and unhealthy-looking and her dark hair was smoothly parted in the centre.

All
four had dinner together – little conversation but much drinking. Something was afoot. Something was being prepared which Heinz didn't know about, about which the three others seemed to be in agreement. Again and again Erich rose to give the servants directions which he subsequently reported to his guest in a low voice … ‘No, no upper light at all … Perhaps it would be better to have only the fire.' Or: ‘The violinist has just arrived; he'll sit in the gallery. No, he needs no light, he's blind.'

Or: ‘Some more roast beef, my dear Fräulein?'

‘No thanks, I eat hardly anything … before.'

‘I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking.'

Heinz heard all this, considered it fleetingly, and thought about it no longer. He sat there in a pitiable condition. Tinette had ignored him all afternoon. For hours on end he had been alone in the study, had picked up a book, glanced at it, then put it down … Going into the hall he had listened, and two or three times he had knocked on her door but each time she had sent him away.

He then did what he had never done before – he went to Erich's cocktail cabinet and drank in quick succession several brandies. He didn't do it for the taste, but to get senseless. During the dreary hours of that afternoon his chronic state of living in unfulfilled desire became unbearable. It can't go on like this, he said to himself over and over again. Rather an end with terror than terror without end.

At last he went to the telephone and ordered a taxi, and was about to leave when Tinette barred his way.

‘You can't go now, Henri. I need you.'

‘It hasn't looked like it all afternoon.'

‘You've been drinking! How disgusting! Minna, give the taxi man a tip. Herr Henri's not going.'

‘I am – you stay here!'

‘You're not – send the taxi away at once.'

‘Well, I'm off. Goodbye, Tinette.'

Suddenly she laughed. ‘Au revoir, you bad boy. But come back this evening, won't you? I have a surprise for you.'

She had run after him and put her arms round his neck. And – what she had never done before – she kissed him on the lips. ‘Be off, you bad boy. But come back, won't you, Henri?' He had almost not
gone; had she again asked him to stay he would have done so but she turned away immediately.

And so he had got into the taxi, still conscious of the blissful sensation of those arms seeking to retain him, of those lips on his mouth. It was as though she had clanked the chain on seeing her slave about to escape – that chain that seemed to truss his feet together, so that he would never be able to escape from her. It was shameful to be kissed like that; she had stirred up his senses to revolt against his brain. And yet …

The taxi stopped. Heinz slowly got out. Although it was dusk no light burned within the little shop; only with difficulty could he distinguish the dusty paper flags commemorating victories long since forgotten. The pile of boxes with letters from the Front was still upright. As always, the shop bell seemed to tinkle for ever and, as always, nobody came even then until he had twice shouted out ‘Hello!' And when at last Frau Quaas did come, he could hardly see her in the darkness.

It was so odd to stand there again, at the home of his first girlfriend, after all that had happened to him, all that he'd experienced, and from where he now came. Many lights were now shining in the Dahlem villa, all radiantly bright. But he stood there in obscurity. Why had he come? What did he expect from the young girl who understood nothing? Help … ? But he knew that help could only come from within, never from outside.

Then he was gripped by the memory of that kiss at the city gate. It came to him as if from far away – a memory of purity, youth, her moist mouth. Not all the fires were burnt out, the trees still had their leaves. Was that why he was here?

‘Frau Quaas,' he said doubtfully, ‘I would like two nibs, Bremen-Change,
EF, very pointed. My name is Heinz Hackendahl.'

The woman did not move or make any attempt to reply or serve him.

‘Well, Frau Quaas,' said Heinz, a little embarrassed. ‘Won't you give me my nibs?'

No reply.

‘I would like to speak to Irma. I'm Heinz Hackendahl. You know!'
Suddenly, there in the dark, he felt quite uncertain whether she'd even understood that.

‘Leave my shop,' said Frau Quaas suddenly. She spoke in her old plaintive voice and yet resolutely. ‘Please leave my shop at once.'

He was taken aback. ‘But, Frau Quaas … I only want to have a few words with Irma.'

‘You're to leave my shop,' she insisted. ‘I can call the police if you continue to molest me, you know that. I don't want you in my shop. You're wicked.'

Heinz groped for a chair. He knew where it ought to stand, for Frau Quaas needed it to take down the cardboard box with coloured paper for the children. And find the chair he did. But in every other respect things had changed … ‘I'm sitting down, Frau Quaas,' he said. ‘I shan't go until I've spoken with Irma.'

‘Then you must go on sitting,' she called out sarcastically – for such a timid woman she seemed unusually courageous. Then the door slammed and he was sitting alone.

Well, what was the good of staying? There was nothing to be done there. And what had he wanted to do, anyway? Exchange a few words with Irma? See his childhood friend and convince himself that she had no hold on him, that he had to return to the other woman, the beautiful, the evil one? Sunken garden of childhood – for ever sunken – you can still hear the rustling of its leaves in your ear, and feel on your cheeks the warmth of its sun, which will never again set with such purity and strength.

No, it was useless waiting there any longer. Irma was certainly not at home, he sensed it. And yet he remained. However brightly the Dahlem villa was lit, however attractive the beautiful woman was, he stayed where he was. He sat in the cold, dark, dusty shop.

It was as if a hand slowly turned the pages of his youth, an impoverished youth, without ideals, full of hunger for everything with which body and soul can be nourished. And to every page he spoke the words: ‘Stay a while – you are so beautiful.'

Nothing stays. There was an impatient hoot from the taxi outside. We are not put into this world to look back. We've got to be on our way, to our destination, or upwards – or down. What we can't do
is stay put. Heinz got up, said a few words to the impatient chauffeur, handed him some money, then went back into the shop.

Frau Quaas was back in her shop and standing on a chair with a lit match in her hand to light the gas lamp. As soon as Heinz entered, she dropped the match, which glowed for a moment on the ground, then went out. Frau Quaas, still standing on the chair, moaned: ‘Oh, please, please go away! This is torture … Please go.'

‘Me torturing you …' he said uncertainly. Then quickly after: ‘Where's Irma? I just want to say a few words to her.'

‘She's not here, she's staying with relatives. It's true, Heinz, really.'

‘Please tell me where Irma is, Frau Quaas. I must speak to her.'

‘You can't. She's in the country near Hamburg … No, I'm not giving you her address. You nearly killed her once and—'

‘Nearly killed her,' he repeated. The words seemed to him meaningless.

He stood, Frau Quaas still above him on her chair – it was almost completely dark now. From time to time she struck a match mechanically and dropped it before she could light the gas.

‘Sneer if you dare!' she cried indignantly. ‘You must have known my daughter was in love with you. You kissed each other, didn't you? She almost died when you didn't come all this long time.'

‘Frau Quaas …' he begged.

She wouldn't listen. ‘That night when it all started she came home at four o'clock in the morning, she'd walked all the way from Dahlem. When I got her to bed she was shaking so and her teeth chattering I thought she'd caught a chill and I got her a hot-water bottle. But she said: “It isn't that, Mother, he loves someone else, and that's the end of me!” ' On her chair the old woman was weeping.

‘I'm very sorry. I didn't know, Frau Quaas, that Irma took it so seriously.'

She stopped weeping. ‘No, of course you didn't know, Herr Hackendahl! You never thought about it at all. You kissed Irma, she told me so herself, but then someone else came on the scene and you forgot her at once. Was she serious? You couldn't care less! You're only interested in what's serious to you. Just as I said – you're a bad lot!'

‘Good evening, Frau Quaas,' said Heinz Hackendahl. ‘If you write to Irma, tell her I'm very sorry.'

For
a moment he hesitated, his hand on the door latch. Then he said it after all. ‘I'm not wicked, Frau Quaas, only weak – for the present at any rate.'

Before she could reply he had gone.

And yet here he was back again in the villa, in the dining room, eating roast beef with fresh vegetables. However, the pale girl with the black Madonna coiffure did not eat roast beef, because she never ate ‘before', whatever that meant. Hardly a word was being spoken. Sometimes a spoon clinked against a plate – otherwise there was silence.

We're like conspirators, he thought. But what are we conspiring about? He looked at Tinette. She was twirling her wine glass so that the wine danced round inside it, and she was watching this with a soft, enigmatic smile. Then he glanced over at the strange Fräulein. Her face, he noticed, was thickly powdered and the painted lips shone like blood; he felt as if he were sitting opposite a woman who had risen from her grave.

‘I went to Irma's this afternoon, Tinette,' he said loudly, to break the spell.