Knife Fight and Other Struggles (37 page)

In my head, I remember that terror so well. In my heart—it fades.

It was all done in an hour—more, or less.

Put it this way. The stars were fulsome when I could see again. The breeze had shifted, and was cooler on me. Below, the families had become boisterous, percussive—pounding with their fists on the outside of that plastic privy, it sounded like. They all howled like hounds.

In the kitchen, as I stole past, to the celebration outside: silence. Blessed, final silence.

An hour would be about right.

William caught me coming out. He was dangling a beer bottle between two fingers and wiping his face with a sleeve as he climbed the steps to the porch. He’d been into the meat.

“Good food,” he said, and I smiled at him, patted his arm. He wanted to ask me how the hen had gone over—how he
, we,
had fared. I could tell. But he wouldn’t ask. So we walked quietly down to the families, for the most part gathered under the fickle glow from the paper lanterns.

The meat was all out now, on rows of platters along three picnic tables pushed together. There were a half dozen of our folk lined up on both sides of it. Flesh drooled off their plates, and still they stacked more.

“They don’t know when they’re full,” said William.

“Oink oink,” I said, and he laughed. “I’d like some meat myself. I’m surely not full. Could you gather me a plate?”

I let go of his arm then and took charge of one of the lawn chairs. William scooted off to the tables, to do as he was told. I settled down on my own—I’m surely not so old, either—and I leaned back in the chair, tilted my head back to look up into the glow in the branches, from the lanterns. For a time—for a short time—they left me alone, to count the crooks in the branches of the maple tree here. When I’d come here first—the tree mustn’t have been more than a sapling. It would be fine to say I remembered that sapling, but really—I couldn’t say such a thing. Agatha’s Perch has so many trees on it. One’s liable to lose track.

“Thank you, Granny Ingrid.”

I brought my eyes back down, and looked at Liz. She had crept up on me. I made to smile. “Did you enjoy the meat?”

Liz shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes. “I guess,” she said. Her mouth was clean of grease—she hadn’t had that much, all things considered.

“You
guess
. Did your mother tell you to come over and thank me?”

“No,” she said. “Dad did.” When I didn’t answer, she went on: “Dad said you gave me a holy gift with this meal. He said you blessed all of us with this meal. He said I should say thank you.”

“And you have.”

I looked back up into the branches.

“Granny,” said Liz.

“Yes, child?”

“It seems like a lot of work to do what you do.”

“It is a lot of work.”

“Why do you do it for us?”

“Love,” I said. “I do it out of love.”

“Oh Granny!”

And before I could do anything to prevent her, the wretched child—the dear little
retard
—had grappled me around my shoulders, and pressed her face into my breast, and cried out: “I love you too!”

It took all the will I had—but I kept my peace.

William made me a modest plate. There was a thigh-bone from one of the ducks, and a glistening slice of pig belly—and the haunch of a rabbit. I took it, and set the plate on my lap.

“Is that all right?” he asked, and I said, “Just fine.”

He stood quiet a moment, rocking back and forth on his heels as I cut into the duck, and finally, he dared ask: “How’d the hen go down?”

I chewed the duck flesh carefully—wouldn’t do to choke on it. And then, since he’d asked. . . .

“Gudrun’s dead.”

He nodded. William couldn’t really do anything else—he had killed the hen and wrapped it up and tossed it into the belly of his own truck—the same truck he used to bring me here. He’d wished his own wishes, same as I’d wished mine.

“She’s in the kitchen,” I said.

“She was old,” said William, uncertainly.

“She was. The gathering’s a lot of work. Even with help.”

William started to work it out, and I pursed my lips and nodded.

“I should go in,” he said, and I said, “Yes. There’s cleaning to be done.”

“I should go,” William said again. He backed away and half-ran back to the porch. William is a good grandson. When the work becomes clear, William sees to it.

I didn’t finish the plate, but others finished theirs, and the night went on. Rainer went into the back of his truck and pulled out his twelve-string guitar, and the children gathered ’round him as he began to play. Rainer fancied himself a blues player, but what he really was, was undisciplined. Fifteen years ago, he had baked a cat into a pie-shell, and brought it to the gathering. I wouldn’t touch the filthy thing, but Gudrun carried it to the Perch, and set it out properly, and when the moth-wings were gone—so was the pie.

Rainer made two record albums and one of them was very popular with certain sorts. But he lacked the discipline to take it any further. So now, he shared his gift with the family, at the gathering, and that was all. Although it is not my cup of tea, I must admit it does have its effect.

Rainer had two young sons, and one of them joined him on harmonica, while the other—little Peter, just five years old—pounded on a tambourine. His daughter Freya sang along. Lizzie and Mandy hung close—the older boy, James, would be a handsome specimen in a few years. At twelve, he already had his two young cousins hypnotized.

If they were my daughters, I would have just pulled them away.

But their mother, Janet, scarcely noticed them.

She hung at the very edge of the lantern light. Her shoulders were slumped—her head bowed into one hand.

I might have wondered if she hadn’t just heard about Gudrun—if she hadn’t some reason for mourning my elder sister. She seemed like a woman grieving. I might have gone to her, and put my hand on her shoulder, and said,
there there, dear
, the way that people are wont.

As I watched, she stepped back from the circle, and moved off. At this, I pushed myself from my chair, and make to follow her. And as I did so—I did wonder.

Could she have heard of Gudrun’s fate? Could someone else have seen my sister, slipped past the quiet kitchen as did I—and told Janet?

Was that how it was to be? In spite of myself, I drew a breath, sharply. She climbed the steps to the porch, and cast about, as though looking for someone—as though making certain someone was
not
there.

I should not have been there. I should have let matters unfold as they were laid out. A watched pot never boils, yes? But of course that’s not true. A flame will heat water, whether it’s eyeballed or not.

She walked along the porch—peered into a dark window—ran her hands through her hair, as though making up her mind. As if it hadn’t already been made up, for her.

I might have joined her on the porch. I might have told her how well she had planned the gathering—how beautiful the lanterns were, how the picnic tables were just right . . . how wonderful a touch were the privies, set so far from the old house that old Agatha had bequeathed us, when we all came here those hundred years past—with nothing but bad luck and worse debts.

I might have told her how so very
worthy
she was.

But I didn’t. I held back as she went back to the screen door, pulled it open, and went inside.

I stood still on the dark lawn, as Rainer finished his song and a cheer went up. “Another one!” cried a child, and Rainer laughed and said, “Well, one more,” and started to pick at his guitar again, and a light went on in the window. Was William finished? It was difficult to tell, for there was no commotion that followed, as more lights went on—as Janet explored her new home . . . met her new master.

I found myself humming along with Rainer’s song. It was a French song and I don’t speak French, but it had a happy tune. It was time to turn from the house, and I continued down the path—until I stood at the lookout. The music grew quieter, and I heard birdsong—the cool breeze rattling the branches of the trees down the deep slope.

The wall here was high. It wasn’t meant to be easy to go over it . . . you had to really mean to clamber up, and launch yourself into the air off Agatha’s Perch. By the time you were up, you’d know whether you had reason to stay.

I drew a deep lungful of the night air, and placed my hands on the round river rocks that made the wall, and I held that breath. It wasn’t long, although it seemed an eternity.

When I exhaled, I turned and saw Gunnar. He stood tall, and shirtless—smeared with congealing grease and sweat, and gristle. The moonlight made hollows of his eyes. His mouth hung open.

I opened my arms for him, and dutifully, he came to me. And he kissed me, my favourite grandson did, as I had always dreamed and wished and hoped.

“Was he beautiful?”

As though he had just registered his own nakedness at that instant, Gottlieb blinked and covered himself.

“Beautiful? No. He was compelling. Huge. Very muscular.”

“And you were sexually attracted to him.”

“Of course I was.”

The doctor allowed a dozen beats of the metronome before he spoke the obvious: “He was not like you.”

“No.”

Gottlieb was grasping at his penis. The doctor made no attempt to disguise his observation of that fact and noted with satisfaction that Gottlieb didn’t seem to care. He was as guileless as a babe then. Could a metronome tick triumphantly? The doctor let it, twice more.

“Describe to me the ways he was like you.”

Gottlieb drew a deep breath and turned to the windows. They were open a crack to clear the air from the morning’s session, and the sweet smell of apple blossom wafted in. The doctor was used to the smell—this was a room in which he spent a great deal of time—but he noted it, along with the flaring of Gottlieb’s delicate nostrils.

“How was he like you?” asked the doctor again.

“I don’t really know,” said Gottlieb. “I didn’t know him for very long.”

“Anything.”

“All right. He was German like me. And he was my age.”

“How old were you then?”

The slightest frown. “Twenty-two.”

The doctor looked again to the window. A conversation was drifting in along with the apple blossom scent. Two of the girls—Heidi and Anna? Yes. He recognized Anna’s lisp, and she and Heidi were inseparable. Ergo. . . .

They weren’t too distracting—they would barely register on the recording. If they lingered, or became silly, he would have to stand and shut the window, and risk disturbing Gottlieb. But the pair were on their way somewhere, and within four ticks of the metronome were gone. The doctor settled back.

“His hair was brown,” said Gottlieb. “Like mine too.”

Three ticks.

“And he was homosexual,” said Gottlieb.

Four more ticks now.

“But not like me.”

“Tell me how he is not like you.”

“As to his homosexuality?”

“If you like. Yes.”

“He is a masculine force. He looks at me and causes me to feel as if . . . as if I am not. Not masculine.”

The doctor smiled. The last time Gottlieb had spoken of this moment, he’d immediately denied his homosexuality. They were progressing very well, at least as measured against their stated objective of delving into Gottlieb’s neurosis. The doctor started to reach for a pencil where his breast pocket would have been, but stopped himself and settled his hands back in his lap. He spoke quietly, calmly, in rhythm. Like a lullaby. “He is looking at you now,” he said.

Tick. Tick.

Gottlieb flushed and, as his hand came away from his penis, the doctor was pleased to see it was flushed too.

“In the beer hall, yes?” said the doctor.

Gottlieb stretched his slender legs on the chaise longue, and his eyelids fluttered shut. A breeze from the window lifted the drapes, and raised gooseflesh as it passed. The air in the beer hall would not have been so fresh as this alpine breath.

“In the Bürgerbräukeller,” said Gottlieb.

“What does it smell like?”

“Many things. Food . . . there is a basket of schnitzel nearby. There is some smoke. I mean from tobacco. And the whole place stinks of old beer. Of course. Men have been drinking beer all day.”

The doctor waited until it seemed as though Gottlieb might drift off to sleep, before prodding:

“Where is he?”

Gottlieb smiled. “He is leaned against a pillar. By himself, across the hall from me. He is a very ugly man—his eyebrows meet in the middle of his forehead, so it seems he is scowling into his beer mug.”

The doctor shifted in his chair. The towel he’d placed on the leather cushioning had moved, and in the warmth of the day the bare skin of his buttocks was sticking there. But he fought to contain his discomfort, his growing impatience. The metronome ticked seven times more before Gottlieb was ready to continue.

“My friends are sitting with me at one of the round tables in the middle of the great room. There is Gunther and Alex and Haydn. Gunther is getting fat, somehow. His hair is still blond, but is starting to go up front, and in a patch at his crown. Alex is a little fellow—smaller than me. His moustache is long, and covered in foam from his mug. Black hair. Haydn? Always licking his lips. No foam there. Otherwise handsome enough. He works in a warehouse by the Isar. Keeps him strong and from fat.

“Are they properly my friends? Gunther maybe: we fought alongside in the War and he liked me well enough to have me at his wedding when it was done. Alex and Haydn were Gunther’s boyhood friends from Augsberg. They were good fellows and they tolerated me, but they preferred to reminisce with Gunther about this or that when they were all bachelors. They never had much to say to me. I didn’t mind.

“We are drinking a round of lagers and Gunther is telling his story about the end of the War—set after Armistice, but just a few days. It is a little true, but for the most part a lie: he talks about how we met a company of British soldiers in No Man’s Land. We shared our rations with them because they were so pitiable . . . nearly starving . . . literally begging for our aid.

“Gunther tells it boastfully, so as to illustrate his honourable nature. I remember the night differently—that we were all cold and hungry, and we all ate our own rations. It was still a good night—we refrained from slaughtering one another, kept our insults to ourselves. But no one begged. There was no . . . undue generosity. Not a whiff of charity, from Gunther or any of us.

“But I don’t correct his lie. We are all becoming a little drunk, and this talk is preferable to political talk. Or, yes, a brawl.

“And yes. I am distracted.

“What is he wearing now? It is . . . a grey shirt, yes, open-necked over a white undershirt. He has a cap but he is not wearing it. It is stuffed into the belt of his trousers. I don’t know what kind of trousers. Brown? Brown. A dark brown. I cannot see his boots, but later, I remember—

“All right. In the moment I cannot see his boots. There is a table of men in front of him, I think they are veterans too—two of them have helmets from the War, on the table before them. They are emptying their mugs quickly and having a very serious talk. I cannot hear what they are saying. But he is smiling at it, looking from one to the other as they argue among themselves.

“I imagine they are talking politics. Probably about the Weimar and the Jews, because of course later—

“Quite right, doctor. In the moment. In the moment.

“He looks up and sees me looking. But he doesn’t seem surprised. I think he has known that I am looking at him for a long time. Maybe since I started. Maybe he saw me even before.

“He grants me a little wink, then takes a deep drink from his mug. And he is gone.

“Disappeared into thin air? No. There is a commotion around him—nothing serious. A gang of men arrive—more veterans, I think. They crowd into the discussion, grabbing the shoulders of the men in the midst of talk. One of them has a platter of sausages and sets it down on the table, and by the time they’ve moved out of the way, he is lost in the commotion.

“Now Gunther claps me on the shoulder.

“‘Hey, Markus,’ he says, ‘you look pale. Don’t tell me you’re done drinking.’

“On the other side of me, Alex empties his cup and grins at me. His moustache is dripping beer.

“I finish my drink. There is not much left anyway. ‘Another round?’ asks Gunther. It is his turn to buy. ‘Fine,’ I say, ‘but I need to return some of this round first.’

“‘Don’t take too long,’ Gunther says. ‘Little Alex is thirsty. He’ll drink his and your beer too if you dawdle.’

“I laugh at that and so does Haydn. Alex smiles but I don’t think he likes being called little. Or maybe he sees through my ruse. Because yes, maybe it is a ruse. I don’t have to piss or I don’t have to piss very much. I get up and go all the same.

“I cross the room. It feels as though the men here are looking at me as I go, but that is rot. Why would they? I become a little fearful, I admit, as I move through here, slip beneath the shadow of the balcony, past the pillars, thinking that I. . . .

“I. . . .

“I am outside now. In the beer garden. What is the weather? What kind of question is that? It is November. Just before six. It will get colder, much colder but right now the air is pleasant enough—I can feel the gooseflesh on my arms, which are bare, but that is fine, because the cool air is just what I need. I could probably use a splash of ice water, come to that. I have had too much to drink, maybe, after all. And part of it—a state of arousal, yes, that is part of it.

“The wind gusts now. It is coming from the southwest. A winter wind. From the mountains. The few that are outside getting air like me look for shelter from it, back in the hall. Not me. Not him either.

“He is sitting on one of the tables, feet propped on the bench, spread apart, forearms resting on his knees. His forefingers and thumbs are rubbing together, as though to make warmth. His cap is on his head.

“Oh—I can see his boots now. They are old army boots. Laced up high. He has tucked his trousers into them. He is looking right at me. I look away but only for a moment because I cannot look away for long.

“‘You are a Jew?’ he asks me.

“I tell him I am not.

He points back at the hall with one hand. ‘Your friends. Jews?’

“‘None of us are Jews.’

“‘Are you certain?’ he asks. ‘Have you sucked all their uncircumcised cocks?’

“How does that make me feel?

“Fearful.

“Angry.

“And helpless.

“And no, I do not care for any of those feelings. What sort would enjoy that? What a question. But I also know it for what it is: a crude flirtation such as men make with one another. I despise this part, the beginning. But there is no other way.

“I tell him a joke: that they are all too busy sucking one another’s cocks, and I must wait my turn. I laugh at it, my own joke, but he remains serious.

“‘Come here.’ That is what he says, then turns one great hand up and beckons me over. He might mean it as a command. I take it as permission.

“I am sitting on the bench where he is resting his feet, leaning back against the table where he is perched. He is saying something, but there’s some kind of commotion from the street. . . . It sounds like a flock of great birds taking off. But that can’t be right. . . . I cannot hear what he says because of it whatever the sound is. His hand comes down on my shoulder and squeezes. He is looking down at me. I tell him my name, because maybe he was asking that. I think he was asking that.

“‘Good enough,’ he says. ‘What town?’ I tell him. ‘Then what are you doing here in Munich?’ And I tell him about the book that I am writing. He wonders why I could not write that book at home, and I tell him some of that story. He doesn’t say anything to that, but his hand doesn’t leave my shoulder. Aah, his grip is so tight.

“‘I sometimes write,’ he tells me finally. ‘Is your book true?’ I tell him it is not true. It is a novel. ‘Writing books that are not true is easy,’ he says to me. ‘True books are more difficult.’ That is not my experience, I tell him. Fabrication is more difficult than just saying what’s so.

“A group of men are walking past us, toward the beer hall. There are . . . maybe a dozen of them? Maybe less. They are dressed well. He loosens his grip on my shoulder, sits up as he looks over at them, but they don’t seem to pay us any heed. Who are they? I ask.

“‘Who knows?’ he says. ‘I don’t like them, though.’ He slides off the table then, and slaps my back.

“‘Inside,’ he says. ‘Not good to be outdoors right now.’

“We are walking back to the beer hall. He is opening another door than the one from which we came. It is an exterior door that goes directly to the cellars. We are at the top of a wooden staircase. There is one bare bulb lighting the way down, set in the wall. We are climbing down the stairs. I am first. He is. . . .

“He is. . . .”