Kruso Page 12

  Ed understood the purpose of his visit. It was for another session of instruction, like the ones in the dishwashing station or when they buried the amphibian, but this time it was a critical matter, a step forward from which there was no turning back.

  ‘They still have a bit time,’ Kruso continued, ‘until the first patrol, who are serious about border violations — at least that’s what they call it because from their point of view it’s the border that’s being harmed. A few know-it-alls sneak into the forest, but no one lasts there for long. The bunkers along the shore are inspected regularly. Experienced clandestine sleepers burrow into the sand with a handkerchief protecting their faces and a section of reed to breathe through in their mouths. If you ever go for walk there at night, it can’t hurt to keep them in mind … Of course, a few make friends on the waiters’ beach, but the majority of the lot, almost all of them, I mean, come to us over the concrete path or using the Capri-path along the bluffs all the way here, on the Dornbusch.’

  Ed knew that people liked to call Hiddensee the Capri of the North, but this was the first time he had heard the term ‘Capri-path’. Without a word, Kruso made a gesture that included everything: the paths, the bluffs, the sea, and even themselves standing in Kruso’s room at the window behind the net curtain.

  ‘They don’t know what to do next. First, the great sense of longing that only increases once they get here, and then they sit there and can neither go on nor turn back.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not just that,’ Ed replied, ‘some might simply have been curious and wanted to see the island. Travellers in a very small country.’

  ‘They are pilgrims on the longest route in the world, Ed.’

  ‘And then — they sit here?’

  ‘Where else? It’s a terrace with a view, you can look far out into the distance. On a clear day, you can see into the beyond. No one can forbid you from looking, no one can prohibit your longing, especially not at sunset.’

  Ed listened to Kruso’s voice, which had dropped to a barely audible whisper. A shimmering dark-red reflection filled the room, and they stepped back slightly from the curtains. It was strange to see how the previously splendid ball of fire had come to resemble a bent coin, a glowing coin that was gradually melting. ‘Paid up for the night’ — the phrase chugged through Ed’s brain, but in the end he had understood: according to an unspoken moratorium, the Klausner’s terrace served as a kind of reserve, a final refuge at the country’s furthest limit, paid for with Stralsunder. Stralsunder Helles was the watery beer that couriers from the barracks carried under the cover of darkness over the dunes in their aluminium mess kits or even in their helmets. Ed himself had seen the soldiers a few times as they scurried in full uniform up the steps to the bar and followed Rick down a flight of steps behind the counter into the basement. He did not have a more concrete image of them in his mind, just a kind of thermal image that captured the humility and friendliness in their postures. They arrived silently and remained almost transparent, or at least without definite contours. They were masters of camouflage. Most noticeable were their efforts, despite their waist belts, boots, and machine guns over their shoulders, to move as casually as the holiday-makers, as if they could escape their military appearance by ambling. Kruso called them the ‘island warriors’ and pointed out the counter-couple’s good rapport with specific soldiers: ‘they’ve got a kind of adoptive relationship — which still doesn’t change anything. Everyone has to clear the terrace by the time the midnight patrol arrives, they’ve simply got to be invisible. Ever since the escape last year, there are no pardons. That’s what we worry about, Ed.’

  The sun had disappeared. The cast-iron lanterns on the terrace were lit. A deep black stripe lay over the horizon like an imaginary continent with glowing edges. Or like a thoroughly charred piece of coal, Ed thought. The oven can now be turned off …

  Kruso touched his shoulder.

  ‘You know,’ Kruso said, ‘it’s your first allocation. That means you choose.’

  ‘I choose?’

  ‘You get to choose your own castaway.’

  TRAKL DECLAIMED

  Everything has its limit, Ed thought. A point up to which you were allowed to overlook things, a limit you cannot overstep.

  Two steps, then across the terrace through the central alley between the tables and the mangers. Kruso went outside carrying three glasses and a chilled bottle of white wine, and Ed followed. His mouth was dry. He was thirsty.

  Kruso sauntered up to a full table. The greeting from the table was especially warm, as if they had been expecting Kruso or had met him before. They gladly made room. They all seemed to belong together somehow, to belong to a family that believed their deep affinity was established primarily by the fact that they were all here, that they had made it this far. As if the decisive border had already been crossed in a way that had nothing to do with geography. Candles were lit and bottles uncorked; an incandescent anticipation began to spread, and at some point Ed, too, was overcome.

  Some of the esskays who showed up on the terrace over the course of the evening had come long distances, as Ed gathered from the conversations. They seemed like emissaries, representatives of the three parts of the island, and their hotels had names like Hitthim, Dornbusch, Süderende, Enddorn, and so on, but there were also lifeguards, bird-banders, and staff from the island cinema, esskays of all kinds. Not one from this wide range of castes neglected to come up to their table.

  In any case, the custom seemed to be to press cheek against cheek, a childlike greeting. No one faked the motion or turned his or her head away, and so the esskays had to stretch their necks out, especially when there were differences in height. They had to reach their heads forward, as if to kiss each other, though in the end it never came to that.

  Ed noticed that Kruso used the closeness to communicate, in a whisper, not much more than a word or a sentence. Sometimes Ed was then given a glance. Ed began to feel a sense of pride, but after a while the scrutinising looks dispirited him. A few of the esskays placed bottles or a small package of food on their table, along with greetings and good wishes. According to Kruso’s almost imperceptible directions, the package made its way over the tables until it was eagerly and gratefully opened and its contents immediately devoured. They’re famished, why are they so hungry, Ed brooded, it must be the fresh air up here and they probably don’t have any money either, they probably don’t have anything at all. He himself had very little saved up, twenty, maybe thirty marks, but now money wasn’t at all important. He had a room, he had found a hideout on the island, and, whatever happened, it would be something to drink to.

  Ed turned his gaze out over the sea and tried to fix on one of the lights that glided past in slow motion … He couldn’t do it. He breathed in the sweetness of the sun-warmed body next to him, but where could that lead? The castaways sat pressed close together; the tables were completely full. The bare arms, bare legs, and skin that appeared stretched taut from too much wind and water, and the taste of salt on lips, a pleasant mask, and in addition, the stiff strands of hair that tickled the back of the neck. They inevitably touched, it was natural … Yes, something along those lines, but Ed was no longer used to physical contact (since it had happened). He tried to imagine it, held his breath, filled his glass, breathed again. More beer and wine were brought out; drinks and food, everything belonged to everyone once they had made it this far, to the terrace overlooking the sea in the garden of the Klausner, to the table of the chosen.

  A few castaways reached — half in jest and half defiantly — for the bottles Kruso had set on the table. Ed recognised the label now. It was Lindenblatt, a Hungarian wine that at the Klausner was reserved exclusively for the crew, who were all present but scattered at various tables. The waiters had taken off their black suits (it was a day off, after all) and they looked smaller in plainclothes, shrunken somehow and unfamiliar or like someone known a long time ago. There
was a raucous, obscene table to the right of the entrance, over which the ice-cream man presided. Unfortunately, little Monika sat there, too. She looked sad and seemed to become more and more invisible.

  At Rimbaud’s table to their left, books were passed gingerly from hand to hand, as if they might break if handled roughly. No one really opened any of the books, they just peeked in them while leafing through the pages, or felt the pages with fingers they had carefully wiped clean and dry on their shirts. There was one person who sniffed at the binding with his eyes closed. The readers looked rather ridiculous, and Ed did not want to see them at all. He only saw the verse hoard that threatened him; in some corner of his foggy brain, his powers of memorisation lurked with complete insatiability. Two quick glasses later, he felt himself drawn to them, to the readers, because they glowed. Rimbaud recited something in a deep voice, Cavallo assisted, and then they argued, but, once again, their arguments seemed to be a complete pleasure. Rimbaud spoke in bon mots, almost in verse, his sentences clipped, a strange staccato, as if engraved, without the slightest mistake although he was drinking enormous quantities non-stop. His moustache vibrated; he turned his head contemptuously, made asides, spat in the sand, and bared his teeth. For a moment, he looked like the man in the book, in the photograph Kruso had held up over the sink: the oval lenses of his glasses flashed.

  Cavallo, who behaved with much more reserve, said: ‘Well, maybe in, say, fifteen years, you’ll be …’ The rest was swallowed up in the noise. Ed liked his slightly flattened nose. Cavallo was tall, and of the Klausner’s three waiters he was the one with whom Ed had had the least contact so far. Cavallo had written a dissertation that was ‘more than rejected … wrong topic, wrong subject matter, probably everything about it was wrong’. Kruso had commented and explained his Latin name: ‘A strange passion for old horses, I mean for antiquity, the man loves antiquity and especially the old horses in ancient Rome, in a nutshell.’ Ed thought that Cavallo looked Roman with his sharply defined profile, his high forehead and brown, slightly wavy hair, his complete aloofness. For Cavallo, Ed simply didn’t exist.

  Compared to Rimbaud, Kruso seemed rather shy, almost self-conscious. He had crossed his legs and was leaning back, as much as was possible, on the desolate beer-garden chairs, whose white veneer gave the terrace a rather colonial air. Ed noticed that Kruso never blinked. Instead, he would shut his eyes for a second as if he were listening to a tune. When he opened them again, his left eyelid stuck halfway for a second before opening fully as it had before. A magical detail that fit the complete picture of his superiority. There was no doubt that he was in charge.

  Ed drank fast. What was going to happen? The castaways could drive you to drink. Ed could drown himself and the castaways in drink. The castaways seemed innocent (smelled innocent), they were jetsam, tanned wood sanded smooth. Ed thought of Vosskamp, with the messenger dogs, and understood what Kruso had been talking about with the binoculars, ‘as if they knew that the island and the sea were well-disposed and ready for a crossing, wherever they might be headed …’ Maybe Ed was already drunk. But he recognised their gracefulness and in it their humility, an all-inclusive readiness that seemed humiliating, almost indecent. Ed understood that he did not belong with them, the castaways, or to the honourable guild of the esskays. But now he could put an end to that, without a doubt; this evening seemed meant for that — with his help, Ed thought, looking at Kruso who was pouring the white wine and speaking softly, his head bowed … ‘Sentences no one understands,’ bubbled inaudibly in Ed’s throat.

  Yes, Ed had doubts. It was all too outlandish, shady, and he was much too nervous. Lord knows, he could leave the island again. Or not? The terrace on the bluff melted into a kind of upper deck. The ship slowly drew away from the coast, sailed slowly out to sea. The journey began … There were four women and three men at their table. Ed was being observed. Nice. He returned the looks. The woman with short hair and bare arms, the woman with slender, delicate hands resting flat on the table (as if she wanted to caress or calm it), then the woman across from him, with her foot — between his legs? No, impossible. And then the man with a face like Jesus’, and long hair. Then the other man, Peter perhaps, but now he looked like Dr Z. Then the women further down, younger and older women, younger and older men, wearing handmade jewellery, macramé necklaces with wooden beads. Ed saw armbands, headbands, braided from straw or buckskin. He saw adder stones. Some of the women wore loose batik dresses, and some wore their great-grandmother’s nightgowns, a recent fashion: thin knee-length cotton dresses with Plauen Lace over their chests, amateurishly dyed purple, burgundy, or blue … Some was speaking to him. Kruso. Ed only noticed now.

  ‘Look at them, Ed. This guy here or that woman there …’

  Ed lowered his head; he wanted to leave.

  ‘I know, Ed. In an hour or two, they realise and then they feel strong enough. And there are always some prepared to do anything. Whether the searchlight finds them or not, they don’t care. He won’t make it, he’ll only swallow a lot of saltwater somewhere out there, far out, and then it’s the end, and nobody’s there, his last moment completely alone — what an insult, Ed, what a goddamn insult it is to be utterly abandoned.’

  Ed was drunk. He could feel the loneliness. The conversations formed a melody, an up-and-down sound that fit the noise of the sea perfectly. Maybe he could just lean back, sink down, and disappear into the dawn. Music came from the half-opened ice-cream hatch, a tinny noise that seemed to come straight from the vats Ed scrubbed and loathed, a hauntingly sad song, maybe from one of Chef Mike’s cassettes, playing on his Stern-Recorder, but it was simply too loud on the terrace to understand anything. Someone was rolling a toy over the table and humming, first gear, second gear, third, but then it was just Kruso speaking in his ear again, pushing a glass towards him in an endless motion as slowly as the ship on the horizon, the slow-ly-mov-ing, slow-ly-mov-ing light. Ed hummed to the music’s beat. The gesture with the glass was completely ridiculous, but no one laughed, everyone had grown serious, they were taking the glass seriously and taking Ed seriously and were all looking at him.

  ‘What do you think, Ed? What’s your choice?’ Kruso whispered so softly that surely no one at the table could hear it, even Ed couldn’t hear.

  Ed reached for the glass and lifted it as if he were checking the weight of its contents, then pushed it back. He mumbled something as he did, and the car turned into a small, red, rattling tram, without a gearshift, without brakes, with only a crank for the power supply, and he was the driver, he was drunk — but he was the driver! On the long straight track before the terminal loop, he started asking the question. Softly at first, then louder.

  ‘Where is the … the … the, the, the … ?’

  He was asking about the brakes, but he had forgotten the word and so he had to yell.

  ‘Where is that ritch-ratch, the ritch-ratch you have to pull hard several times, dammit!’

  His right arm paddled in the air, his left one was trying to crank away the electrical supply, away and ritch-ratch, ritch-ratch … Ed leapt up, the glass fell to the ground, his heart missed a beat.

  Then all was quiet.

  Final station.

  Off the tram.

  Lots of people again.

  Now Ed could see clearly.

  He had almost arrived too late. Dr Z. was there and the seminar had just begun. Without faltering even once, he recited Georg Trakl’s poem ‘The Cursed’, then the poem ‘Psalm’ (second version). Then ‘Sonya’, a poem he had always particularly liked, and then ‘On a Journey’, again a long poem, but the attention surrounding him proved he was right to incorporate it into his presentation at this point. Of course, he could skip a few lines here and there, reluctantly, but he wanted to include ‘O the Dwelling’ and ‘The Blue Night’ …

  While giving his recitation, Ed stood as if turned to stone. He spoke in a very loud voice. He was trembling.
Others joined the seminar, probably from the neighbouring classrooms, and everyone stared at him. In the middle of ‘O the Dwelling’, Dr Z., who now was Kruso, took him by the arm. He pulled Ed away from the table and led him across the terrace, then through the dimly lit Klausner and into the dishwashing station. Without explanation, he dunked Ed’s head in the scrubbing sink. Ed recoiled, but Kruso was strong and his grip was relentless. Ed thought ‘swallow’ and ‘completely alone’. The water was as cold as ice on his head.

  Then it was over.

  Kruso took Ed in his arms and said something like ‘Thank you, my friend’ and ‘I knew it’. Then he pushed Ed through the swinging door into the kitchen, sat him on a stool under the radio, and started looking for some kind of medication. Ed was freezing. Viola was playing Haydn, a concerto, and Kruso spoke to Ed. Ed knew that Kruso was talking about the poems, maybe critiquing his recitation, but he did not understand if he should have stopped or continued reciting. ‘At the sound of the last pip, the time will be eleven o’clock,’ Viola said, and for a moment everything was completely quiet.

  In Ed’s room, the day’s heat enveloped them. Ed sank onto his bed and closed his eyes. Kruso had insisted on bringing him ‘home’, but strangely was not ready to leave. He stood in the dark without moving. Then he sat on the bed and pulled a buckskin neck pouch out from under his shirt. He carefully fished something out — it took a while — and pressed it into Ed’s hand. It was a photograph in a plastic envelope. Ed wanted to hold the gift up to his eyes, but — quick as a flash — Kruso laid his hand over it, and so, hand on hand, they paused for a moment.

  ‘It’s just so that you can sleep. I’m lending it to you. It will stay here. It will watch over you, take care of you. Look at it in the morning.’

  The thin plastic sheet between their hands, withered from dishwashing, grew warm and sticky, or perhaps it was already warm in Kruso’s pouch, against Kruso’s chest.