Kruso Read online

  That was enough. The verse hoard rumbled; Trakl surfaced, with his rustic appearance, his large, infantile face. Ed collapsed back onto the sand, reached for his notebook, and wrote. Line after line thudded out of the rushing compendium in his mind; metaphors wedged themselves together into barricades, chevaux de frise, and verses marched through the devastation of his trauma like an occupying army in a giant war. At night in his room, he wrote the scribblings out neatly by hand on quad-ruled paper. In the morning, even before he had turned on the boiler, he slipped the sheets of paper under Kruso’s door.

  It was a kind of Kamikaze action. It had something undignified about it, and Ed felt ashamed. He carefully piled briquettes into the fire. It is the only thing he has asked of me, Ed thought, the only thing I can do for him. He listened to the cracking of the wood, the dampness evaporating with a hiss.

  Kruso came around ten, and left half an hour before midnight at the latest. He did not wear a watch, but he always came at this time. Nothing could tempt him to stay longer. He took his poem and wished Ed a good night.

  ‘Your table is too low.’

  ‘I think the stool is too high.’

  ‘Sleep well, Ed.’

  ‘Good night, Losh.’

  Cheek against cheek. The usual way.

  As a three-year-old, Ed had believed that kissing was pressing your cheek against another’s. Maybe that was his very first memory: his father’s smell of tobacco. The black and yellow cardigan that was enormous. He had pressed his cheek against his father’s; he had climbed up his father’s arm, onto his shoulder, and up to his cheek. That was Ed’s goal, the place of most intimate tenderness.

  A KIND OF SMALL BOWER

  Kruso floated silently before him like a phantom, and Ed had trouble keeping up with him. Their way led through boggy terrain into a silvery thicket that rose over their heads and was signposted as a bird sanctuary. Ed was startled by the creatures hurtling past with hectically flapping wings. He heard the noise with excessive clarity — as if the birds’ fragile skeletons were shattering against the branches. He would have liked to urge the birds to fly more slowly, since there was no one walking through the thicket who wanted to hurt them, ‘truly no one,’ Ed whispered, upon which Kruso turned to look at him for the first time.

  After all that had happened, it would have been unthinkable not to accept Losh’s invitation (Losh, Ed now thought, Losh) to his summer cabin, which he referred to now and again as ‘a kind of small bower’ or as ‘our outpost’. Ed saw it as one more sign of trust, and a reward for the trouble he had gone to outside his fox’s den.

  Kruso wore a black shirt with the sleeves cut off, and a knapsack on his back. Ed wore a plaid shirt and, for the first time, his light linen trousers. The trousers were, in fact, cut too wide, and flapped wildly around his legs. They reminded him of the sailors’ trousers on the Bounty, or those worn by Wolf Larsen and Humphrey van Weydens, for example.

  In fact, again and again, they came across the bodies of dead birds, and various feathered bits, in the underbrush, hanging in the branches as if widely scattered. It was easy to see that the birds had lost their lives in battles. They found a beak without a head, as well as bird feet that had been bitten off and now stood to one side, as if they’d been dropped and were waiting to walk again. ‘Reineke, the little beast. He catches them when they’re asleep with their heads under their wings,’ Kruso explained. ‘But he disappeared a few weeks ago, offspring, maybe, fresh little poachers.’ With one swing of his knife, Kruso clipped the foot from a bird’s cadaver, pulled off the ring around its leg, and held the object up to the light. ‘These are good wares, Ed, the very best wares!’

  The sandy path turned into a jungle. There were stinging nettles as high as their faces, buckthorn bushes arched over the path, then elderberry and reeds. The reeds looked soft, but pricked and slashed their arms. Without comment, Kruso climbed over a cordon of barbed wire. As if on command, he put down his backpack, dropped into a push-up position, and crawled through the dense underbrush.

  The brush was hollowed out inside and lined with reeds, which gave off a smell of rot. For a moment, the dirt caves from Ed’s childhood flashed before his eyes, the caves in Charlottenburg, in which they’d made fires with stolen matches and were almost suffocated by the smoke. ‘The outpost was actually built for only one person,’ Kruso explained. Both had skin impregnated with the Klausner’s fumes. Smoked, Ed thought, we are being smoked … He was thinking in Kruso’s words and he was also thinking in Kruso’s tone, if that was possible. They were, in fact, lying very close to each other. Because of the thorns on the branches surrounding them, they could hardly shift away.

  Through a hole in the underbrush, they could survey a broad section of the beach. Kruso stared at the glassy surface of the water for a long time. He had maintained an almost military bearing the entire time, and so Ed preferred not to break the silence. In any case, the question Why? never occurred to him in Kruso’s presence. No one who was truly part of the island needed a ‘why’.

  Kruso took a small food container closed with metal clamps from a crate hidden in the reeds. He reached inside it and took out two slices of bread, a cutlet, and — an onion. He looked Ed in the eye for a second and then pressed two leaves of some herb onto his bread. Everything was cool and surprisingly fresh. While they ate, Ed was overcome with a deep sense of satisfaction and peace. Losh bent two branches aside and proudly showed Ed a small petroleum lamp. Then he reached his arm into the underbrush and pulled out a chest that held bird feathers and nuggets of amber along with a few handmade earrings — and a pair of nail scissors.

  ‘I could never do it with my left hand, no matter how hard I tried, it just didn’t work.’ Hesitantly, Ed took the hand that Losh held out to him, then went finger by finger.

  ‘Before, my mother used to do it, then my sister.’

  The broad crescent moons, bleached by dishwater, dropped between the rushes. Ed thought of G., again the small, grubby band-aids around her fingernails, and the fingertips that peeked out like tiny creatures, blinded by life, so precious that he wanted to kiss them. Kruso and Ed looked at the sea for an hour or more without a word. Ed understood it as a test, a trial. And, yes, he had the calmness, absolutely. He was suited, suited in every respect. He half wondered why Losh kept his nail scissors in this secluded spot. Surely he had several pairs, Ed thought, and kept one ready at every outpost. Dusk settled slowly over their small bower.

  The billiard players with photosensitive sunglasses had so overstretched the camel hide that you couldn’t see the edge of the playing field. The animal’s head must be somewhere, maybe hanging below the field. Somehow, the camel had turned back into the desert from which it had come. The wind moaned over the dunes. Ed heard the sound and woke.

  Kruso had begun speaking very softly but right into Ed’s ear, which is why Ed succumbed to a delusion at first — for a fraction of a second. He thought Kruso’s voice was coming from his own body.

  ‘In earlier times, when the monastery was closed,’ Kruso whispered, ‘many of the monks found it impossible to break with the island. It wasn’t because of their faith or their religious denomination, many even converted. It was about the freedom that had always adhered to things here, the freedom that hung in the air, the island’s ancient secret. Freedom attracts us, Ed, and it collects its helpers. The monks essentially had no choice, a paradox, but that’s how it is with freedom. They moved away from home as mendicant friars, relying on alms and a roof over their heads. At first, that’s all that it’s about: soup, a place to sleep, a bit of water to wash with, perhaps. These monks were ready to give up their place in the order, they were dropouts, castaways, homeless — they were ready to leave everything behind, just to be here, understand?’

  ‘When I was a child, I had a tree of truth,’ Ed replied, and turned his head to the side. In the fervour of his speech, Kruso’s tongue had brushed Ed’s e
ar unintentionally.

  ‘This underbrush, I mean, your summer cabin, the outpost here, reminds me of it, maybe just because of the leaves, because of the rustling leaves.’ Ed hesitated for a moment; his outer ear felt cold.

  ‘It was a tree with a raised stand, in the middle of a clearing. Years before, there had been a fire in the forest, and so the clearing was created. If you leaned far out of the window in our apartment, you could see the fire, then smoke, for days, from which the solitary tree emerged at the end; it had survived as if by a miracle. The forest was on the other side of the Elster Valley on a slope above the river. In the summer holidays, my friend Hagen — no, really, that’s what he was called, that was his name — so, Hagen, he joined our class at some point, he had to repeat a year, I don’t remember why, in any case that year he became my best friend. Back then, I always had a best friend, and other than him, none. First Torsten Schnöckel, then Thomas Schmalz, then Hagen Jenktner, and then Steffen Eismann …’

  Ed was surprised at how easy it was to talk about these things to Kruso. He thought about how he had not had a best friend for a long time, that he had had no one to help him, no one he could stay with after it happened.

  ‘So, in summer holidays we often roamed through the forest, and at some point we discovered this clearing with the tree. Naturally, we climbed it, and up there, as we loafed around and kept a lookout, something happened to us, maybe because of the desolation of the burned-out area, or because the tree had been made immortal by the fire and the rustling of its leaves was able to do something to us, who knows. At any rate, everything around it was charred, and we suddenly started telling each other the truth. No idea which of us started it. I admitted to Hagen that I loved Heike — I had idolised Heike Burgold since first grade but never dared tell anyone, especially not her. She never learned about it, not even later, like I said, never. In return, Hagen told me his fantasies — just like that, I mean I was thirteen and he was fourteen, and he talked about sex without laughing. I’ve always considered my best friends stronger than I am, I was always ready to learn something from them, but this surpassed everything. Hagen had a film-star calendar in his room, one with real colour photographs. One of the pictures was of Claudia Cardinale in Fire’s Share. Hagen described for me how she looked, in complete detail, her hair, her nose, her ears, her cleavage, but above all her lips, which were slightly parted, her unbelievably white teeth, and then he grabbed himself, but more as if he simply had to hold on to something when he said things like …’

  Kruso pressed his hand over Ed’s mouth, bumping his nose painfully. Two soldiers were walking up the beach. One of them reached into a buckthorn bush and pulled a telephone receiver from the branches. At first, Ed thought he was telephoning the bush.

  ‘Not unusual,’ Kruso whispered. The soldiers sat down and smoked. The muzzles of their guns poked out over their shoulders, clearly outlined in the last light of the day.

  After a short while, Kruso started moving cautiously. That he had pulled a bottle out of his backpack was something Ed had seen or felt in the darkness. But Kruso’s leaping to his feet, his winding up, the flash in the branches — how could he have seen that?

  The soldiers spun around as if they had been shot at, and one of them tore the rifle from his shoulder.

  ‘Stop-who’s-there!’

  His shout was more of a screech, a pitiful sound of fear.

  ‘Stop-or-I’ll-shoot!’

  ‘I’ll-shoot.’

  Now it was a cry of rage. Rage at the crack of a bottle, a glass grenade. Rage at the fright, at fear, perhaps. With rapid steps, the soldier marched towards their brush, ready to fire, before the other soldier overtook him and spun him around.

  ‘A recruit, a smooth one, a goddamn fresh one,’ Kruso whispered, still out of breath, although his voice sounded calm, as if he were commenting on an experiment.

  ‘Heiko, hey, c’mon, man, Heiko!’ the second soldier repeated without a break, stroking his comrade’s machine gun, which was now pointed directly at him. Starting at the barrel, he felt his way, left hand over right, pushing the weapon slowly away as he did so. Finally, he carefully, almost tenderly, loosened the other’s finger from the trigger.

  ‘Hey, man, Heiko.’

  The sea was now a softly murmuring screen. A touch of moonlight outlined their actions, all of it without music, just the constant rolling of the sea. The shrill cry of a bird twitched sporadically through the night.

  ‘It takes so little for them to lose their composure,’ Kruso whispered, ‘so goddamn little. The entire system is made up only of men, Ed. I mean, those guys, there, that’s us, in earlier times, that’s us before freedom, understand?’

  A nightmare, Ed thought. He had a headache, and there was a metallic taste in his mouth. The soldier named Heiko was still standing there, as if turned to stone halfway to their brush. The other soldier pushed Heiko’s gun over his shoulder and grabbed him by the collar with both hands. Heiko. Then he let go and strode down the rocky coast with quick steps. After a few seconds, Heiko woke from his trance and started to trot in an awkward gait, as if he were shackled, his helmet banging against his waist belt. For a while, they could still hear the dull, metallic noise.

  THE MAP OF TRUTH

  9 JULY

  Drive fishing with Kruso and other esskays, without weapons, just with pots and sticks. Afterwards, there was pike-perch for everyone, roasted on the beach in garlic and sea-buckthorn sauce. The fish was still alive. Chef Mike says you have to grab him by the eyes so he won’t bite. Rimbaud and the counter-couple sang battle songs, through valleys and over hills … Rick and his stories. He says that people like Hauptmann hurt the island. Karola treated Cavallo’s sunburn with curd cheese. She is the medicine woman here, a pretty herb witch. Every day, she brings us fresh tea in the dishwashing station, and yesterday she was suddenly standing behind me. Then ice and her fingertips along my spine, up and down — a kind of ice-cube massage, perfect for my back pain, amazing! Since it’s been so hot, we’ve had even more cockroaches. I kill four or five every morning, sometimes even more.

  On the waiters’ beach, they met other esskays: Tille, Spurtefix, Sylke, the tall girl with lots of freckles, Antilopé, Rimbaud’s girlfriend, and Santiago from the Island Bar, who seemed to be close friends with Kruso. As a rule, everyone met naked. When burying the amphibian, Ed had already sensed it: an almost sibling-like closeness that came from this natural nudity and not from any particular cause. Ed had never experienced something like this before, a special closeness that people reached this way, a kind of casual bond — a collegial intimacy, if there was such a thing. As if nakedness were a seal, a kind of reward, Ed thought, for a collective overcoming of shame, but in any case it wasn’t shamelessness. Modesty wasn’t lessened at the heart of the confederation, which made it much easier to understand the esskays greeting (touching cheek against cheek). This was the first thing Ed truly understood about the island caste and the clannishness within their circle, which extended far beyond the island.

  At the end of their foray, Kruso had suggested a detour on the Schwedenhagen — ‘to my home’, as he said with contempt. Until then, it had not occurred to Ed that Kruso might have another home than the Klausner.

  A smaller path forked off towards the bodden from the concrete path. On one of the moraines, there was a light-coloured, two-storey building almost hidden by poplars. The hill, the house, and the trees that looked like cypresses from a distance reminded Ed of southern landscapes in the museums.

  Radiation Institute — the sign hung crookedly behind the chain-link fence near the entrance. It was almost completely faded; only the letters remained stuck to it, or else someone had taken the trouble to repaint them. Kruso walked past the door. After a few metres, he dropped in his usual, half-military way to a push-up position and slid under the fence. They came to a tall, narrow brick building, the lower half of which was surrounded by
a grass-covered bank of dirt like a protective mantle. With its steel door and skull-and-crossbones sign, it looked like an old transformer house, but without any cables.

  ‘This is the tower,’ Kruso explained.

  The room had no windows, but blankets had been draped over everything as if to hide something, and they gave off the dry, sweetish smell of old wool. Kruso’s steps on an old metal ladder, then silence. Ed breathed in the dust, and his mucous membranes began to swell. He slowly felt his way through the labyrinth of wool, but could not find the way up. ‘Not so easy!’ Kruso yelled down. He seemed very pleased.

  The room hidden in the tower reminded him of a boy’s room. The bare light bulb that hung from the ceiling on a wire dimly illuminated a puzzle of snapshots, typewritten pages, and drawings, along with a Che Guevara poster and a dusty brochure for a metallic-brown Volvo station wagon. The photographs were all covered with tiny black spots, as if infected with some disease. Ed thought he was going to suffocate. Kruso pulled a few bricks from the wall, and fresh sea air flowed into the room. At the same time, something moved in the corner across the room where there was a bed and an armoire. Probably a cat, Ed thought. Sleeping bags and pieces of clothing were strewn about the room.

  To the right of the embrasure-like opening hung a large, childlike drawing. The rough paper, perhaps the back of a strip of wallpaper, was buckling and was pinned to the wall with small nails. Kruso pulled the wire with the bare bulb in front of the picture and fastened it to a hook hanging from the ceiling.

  The drawing consisted of three overlapping fields of colour. Faint, expressionless watercolours that briefly reminded Ed of the dreary paint boxes from his school years, with the always half-fossilised paints you had to stir tediously until you lost patience, grabbed your paintbrush (there were always too few paintbrushes, yes, most often only a single one worked), and jabbed it at the round, coloured stones they called a palette, rendering the artistic tool completely useless. Ed’s entire childhood had been a battle with shoddy supplies and outdated materials, a struggle full of grumbling and swearing and yet fought in complete innocence. Never in those early years did it occur to Ed that he himself was not inferior, that he was not inadequate. Who else was to blame for such misfortune?