Life Embitters (67 page)

At this point Frau Berends was quite upbeat. Every day she was visited by a man they said was a retired army lieutenant. He was small, stocky, fair, pink, and featureless, and spoke with a quiet, nasal twang. They would shut themselves in the kitchen and mumble for hours on end. As it was hard to
imagine they were talking about anything of any importance, it was most likely they simply kept each other company opposite an empty sink and rows of dishes. He’d often come after supper and they always stayed in the kitchen except for the odd day when they sat in the sitting room listening to a military march on the phonograph. They’d switch off the electricity. A long gas flame burned under the jug of water for the tea. A dull fluorescent glow flitted over things, and, seated opposite each other, their loose skin drooped. They looked deflated. No one bothered to find out who he was or why those two met. Frau Berends had visibly changed and one could say that she lived her life as if we didn’t exist. We’d pass in the corridor and I’d have a pleasant word for her but she never deigned to reply. She was absentminded and remote. I noticed how they would go out after lunch on days where there was a sunny spell. She dressed up: a heavy black dress and a hat strewn with tiny purple flowers. They looked like a family portrait from twenty years ago. Generally they strolled across a park, and their favorite spot seemed to be a distant park in Wilmersdorf. The lieutenant had a friend who was its lifelong concierge. They’d walk slowly back at dusk holding a sprig of fir. They crossed large, undeveloped areas, dotted with tin huts and cabbage and radish patches over which wet imperial flags flapped. Then they’d go down various dark, solitary streets and arrive home on their last legs. Even so one day the lieutenant suspended his visits. The postman started to leave letters and postcards. It was a short excursion, probably a family tragedy. In effect the letters had mourning edges. Frau Berends read them anxiously; her back to the door, she ripped the envelopes open in a tizzy.

Roby, Frau Berend’s son, was completely neglected. By day, he was never in the house. He played on street corners or roamed. When he came back, he was a chloride yellow, as stiff as a brush, and his big wooden shoe clattered over the floorboards. After his supper of a slice of smoked herring
and a slice of bread and greasy margarine, he’d call the cat and they’d go off to play. I sometimes looked him up and down: his spotty face, his pigeon chest, his pointy shoulders piercing his jacket like over-long stakes, his large round blue eyes, almost always blank and gawping, his fraught, faded fair hair, and skin covered in rough down. Tattered long underwear poked out from the legs of his pants. The huge hard black shoe hung off the rickety spindle of a leg, making his whole body look lopsided. You couldn’t look at it without your hair standing on end: it seemed a monstrous artifact that might snap at any second. His life went in fits and starts: he was sometimes swept up in frantic activity, he blanched and shook and beads of sweat dotted his forehead and nose. Then he seemed driven by a mixture of fear, anguish, and daring. His ears glowed while his hands felt icy cold. That phase passed and he sank into docile torpor. He couldn’t take his dreary eyes off the shiny things he could see and his mouth sagged blissfully. From my bedroom I heard him play with the cat. Now and then an incoherent word reached me. However, I never heard him laugh. I’d hear his wooden shoe clump intermittently over the wooden floor when he stumbled down the passage. The bangs echoed morosely. Yet again I thought the bone in his leg must have broken. But you’d suddenly hear his short, croaky coughs, see his translucent chest, or hear the cat’s furious squeals and Roby’s cruel, perverse gleeful whoopees. That’s how they whiled away their time.

One night I caught them playing with paper balls. I suspected they were the lieutenant’s letters and thought it didn’t augur well. By this time the lieutenant had returned. He now wore a blue suit and, in contrast, his hat was such a sour chemical green it brought the taste of acid to one’s lips. I wasn’t mistaken: the paper I’d see in Roby’s fist was from the letters edged in black. The next morning they were strewn along the passage in the shape of balls and scraps of paper. Frau Berends let out a frightful howl the moment she
set eyes on them, a tragic silence filled the house. Roby was out all day. The cat disappeared and was nowhere to be seen. Frau Berends had bounced it off the wall in the morning with a massive kick. I heard it: the sound of a slightly deflated ball being booted with gusto and encountering an obstacle in its path. The cat meowed miserably for a time and was never seen again. That evening Roby hobbled through the door, whistling. The lieutenant was at home and had been shut up in the kitchen with Frau Berends for ages. When I heard the boy come in, I switched off my bedroom light and half-opened my door to watch what was inevitably going to happen – without being noticed. Roby hadn’t taken a couple of steps down the passage when I heard the kitchen door swing open – Roby was in the rectangle of light in the dark passage, a sudden swath of light that hit me like a bolt of lightning – and a hand grabbed his shoulder. Taken by surprise, Roby turned his head, a look of unspeakable terror on his face. He had no time to do anything else. A brutal thwack lifted his body up and sent it flying through the door as if blasted by a gust of wind. Then the door shut silently and for the moment I heard nothing more. Nonetheless, I tiptoed down the passage, scared stiff. I soon heard words being whispered and the clatter of a chair falling over. A second later a muffled crash shook my whole body. It was obvious something had smashed against the wall – probably the boy’s head. I heard other blows. Anguish took my breath away. They were blows in concert and on target. I walked to the kitchen door, put my hand on the handle, set to go in. I didn’t dare. My legs were shaking and I had to keep my head up to stop myself from falling. It was horrific! I don’t remember how long I stayed like that by the door, full of indignation and pity.

Finally, after a long, depressed silence, I heard the familiar mumble of muffled words. I leaned against the wall and eased myself along the passage. I’d taken very few steps when the kitchen door swung open and Roby
came out in despair. His cap was tilted over one ear and his clothes were rumpled; he seemed dead to the world, but his eyes were wide-open in terror, and his face was contorted by a kind of rage as if he wanted to cry and couldn’t. Blood was streaming from his temple and down his cheek. He stood by the door, shell-shocked. Before the door closed I glanced into the kitchen: the retired lieutenant was grinning and wiping a handkerchief over his forehead. At that point the boy must have seen something strange – my shadow perhaps – because I saw him take a leap and grab the key to the staircase door.

I hurried into my room to collect my hat and coat. I instinctively felt something disastrous would happen that night. I rushed into the street to catch sight of Roby turning the first corner. I decided to follow completely at random. I hadn’t been out of the house for a couple of weeks, and when the first rush of excitement was over and the cold hit me, I felt my eyes go on the blink and my legs struggle. There was a bitter chill in the air, snowflakes were falling and the black mud in the street had frozen. Roby was walking at a pace. Because of his huge shoe I sometimes thought he must be hopping along. My weakened state made me think for a second that I couldn’t possibly pursue him: my eyes glazed over, my head was in a spin, my whole body in a sweat – I almost fainted. I made a real effort because I thought I should go wherever it was necessary. Roby was thirty steps ahead of me. I don’t know what streets we walked down. The dark houses had a short strip of front garden. A crack of light shone in the odd window. Streets were empty and badly lit. For a second I thought I should call out. I soon desisted, thinking it would be counterproductive. As soon as he heard his name, I decided, he’d be off like a flash. We walked like that for perhaps a quarter of an hour. We finally came out onto a street with more life. There was a lurid ball of light – like the eye of a dragon – in a pharmacist’s. Roby was visibly
tired and slowed down. Then he did something shocking: he looked round several times – perhaps to see if anyone was following him – and stopped in front of a shop window. It was the tawdry glitter from a cheap jewelry shop. Fifteen paces behind I saw his face light up. I saw him in profile: one hand in a pocket, the other holding a handkerchief over his wrist. His cap hung round the nape of his neck; he was shivering and his shoe hung limply on that wretchedly livid bone. He seemed to have got over his previous attack of rage, and if his eyes had glistened, you might have thought he’d calmed down. He gawped at the shop window. Then he began to walk more slowly. The few people in the street looked black. In the light from the streetlamps the snow rained down like confetti. The black lines of the trees against the glowering sky seemed straight out of a child’s drawing. The yellow trams, with their misted windows, left a pink spongy glow in their wake. We were in Berlinerstrasse, near Bayerischer Platz. Roby had just entered the square and I saw him linger for a moment by the deserted entry to the subway. Some windows gave off those blurred purple-mauve pumpkin hues that suggest a touch of domestic sensuality. Inside those tepid goldfish bowls everything must be a single color and the inmates must navigate between feather pillows, soft mattresses, bird wings, and sweaty morbid acts.

I then noticed Roby enter some gardens behind the station, walk over to a lamppost and start to pee peacefully. The light shone on his face and I thought he smiled, as he watched his piss steaming in the cold. I found his smile soothing and took heart. Then I watched him wander round the gardens as if he were searching for something while he did up his flies. In the end he went into the square and turned down Martin Luther Strasse. The street cut a sudden right angle against the sky: huge, black, interminable, and unbelievably monotonous. Then the snow started to drive harder, the dirty slush in the street disappeared and cornices and landings were edged
in white. An icy breeze blew making the snowflakes swirl and the white flock in nooks and crannies dance. The gusts left wandering spirals of snow over the ground. Soon there wasn’t a soul on the street. An onerous peace – similar to the one you imagine at the end of time – hung over everything. A handful of people walked silently past. The headlights of the odd automobile turned the flakes iridescent and for a moment the air, a cadaverous, luminous yellow. Roby kept on down the street. I thought I detected a determination in his step that yet again made me foresee disaster. He was less than fifteen paces in front. Hands in pockets, nose poking up, hopping along on his big black shoe. It was a horrendous night and perhaps he found pleasure in plunging his bruised body deep into it. Again I thought I should draw level and speak to him. However, other people were still in the street. I watched anxiously in case he turned down a side street. Then I’d be able to draw level. But he never did … 
If he doesn’t want to see you
, I thought considering all the eventualities,
if he starts to shout or is frightened and starts running, it could get unpleasant. A policeman might intervene, will ask what’s going on, and you’ll have a problem
. Besides, I was exhausted. My teeth chattered with cold. Walking over snow exhausted and hurt my legs. Whenever the snow crunched and slipped under my shoes the pain in the joints in my feet was unbearable. We continued down that tedious, interminable road. The houses, all the same, never ended. Everything was shut and no dingy tavern imprinted a patch of grimy yellow on the snow. Passersby became increasingly rare. Roby continued to walk with that determined air and my instinctive fear grew. Where was that child heading?

He looked so small, wretched, and dark – a blob of black mud – in that vast and horrible night: I wanted to weep. Snow was still falling … The distant vistas had disappeared. The wind corkscrewed up flurries of flakes. People on the other side of the road were like blurry, walking statues. Everything
was a struggle. The individuals we passed, under their white umbrellas, advanced slowly, stooping behind puffs of white breath. A church with steep spires emerged from the haze at the bottom of a kind of cul-de-sac. In the murk its huge carcass seemed unreal, suspended between heaven and earth, its spires inordinately tall and white. A carriage trundled past: the horse pounded its hoofs and the wheels turned. Silently. It was strange and ghostly. The string of streetlamps burned with a dying glow and tongues of hazy light stretched and shrank as the wind gusted and died … I saw the soda bottle green of another tavern door before me; a delicious taste of hot toddy filled my mouth! If only I could have stopped for a toddy! If I hadn’t been afraid of losing Roby … he was six or seven steps in front. I could see a white line of snow on his shoulders. His garments hung wet and limp on his body. I accelerated to catch up with him. At that very moment, I thought I glimpsed a policeman’s helmet in a staircase entrance. I slowed down thinking of possible headaches. Oh, if only I hadn’t … Perhaps Roby would have been spared. Then I saw arcades the somber atmosphere transmuted into a giant building blacking out the horizon at the end of the street.

We were approaching Bülow-Strasse and the building was the outside of the subway. Each arcade had areas of light and shadow. I saw Roby lengthen his stride and enter the arches; he removed his cap and dusted it, knocked off the damp snow encrusted on his clothes, and pulled his stockings up to his knees. He must have found a dry rock, because he sat down and, resting his elbows on his knees, sank his head into his hands. It was late in the night and I knew the area had a bad reputation. A band of dubious women and inverts with painted faces lurked in the dense evening shadows of the arcades. There were taverns around full of monsters and angels I’d visited by chance now and then. The street lighting had dimmed. The last subway train had just rolled by and the lights over the line had been switched off.
So as not to lose sight of Roby and taking the opportunity to close in on him I also went under the railway arches. I made a detour up the street so he wouldn’t see me. The reinforced concrete porches made for good shelter: even so the ground was covered in hard, frosted mud between pools of frozen water. The snow never stopped and the occasional soul still walked miserably by. Keeping in the swath of shadows under the arches I inched closer to Roby. He was still sitting in that same spot, his head between his hands. His handkerchief was draped over his forehead. I couldn’t see his face. He was motionless. Perhaps he was in horrible pain or perhaps fatigue had broken him and he was sleeping the sleep of the weary. I felt incredibly weak: anguish parched my mouth and a powerful headache kept me on edge. I couldn’t decide what to do next and indecision was exhausting. Who had given me a candle at that funeral? Roby barely knew who I was. The hatred he felt towards everyone living in that flat of people who mistreated him must surely extend to me.
If you approach him
, I thought,
what will he say, think, or do?
I leaned back on a column turning these things over that seemed a huge dilemma at the time. My inner monologue was a mixture of reality and dream, a confused sequence of melodramatic images and surges of wistful tenderness.