Kruso Read online

  The spring water tasted of soap and smelled fermented. He followed the delta back to the crevice that lay right next to where he had been sleeping. An animal was watching him. It was a fox. He was protecting the source and had probably been tracking Ed for a long time.

  ‘You gave me a start, you rascal,’ Ed whispered. The fox said nothing and did not move. It rested its head on its front paws, like a dog; its gaze was directed out towards the sea. An uprooted sea buckthorn bush threw a shadow over its fur, which looked very fresh and alive.

  ‘You’ve got a nice spot here, you old rascal, nice and hidden. No mosquitos, fresh water … You’re a clever one, aren’t you?’

  Ed spread his things out to dry on the rocks, but he felt uneasy and gathered them up again. He was hungry and had a bad taste in his mouth. The rolls he had bought in Kloster from the baker named Kasten had turned to mush. He squeezed a few of them, and out dripped a semen-like liquid. He chewed slowly and swallowed. The energy of his departure was used up, and he felt a tightness behind his eyes. It was not an ache, but a reminder of fingernails bitten to the quick. The inflamed nail beds and the frayed, ragged plaster — G.’s fingernails. He wondered how long he could keep this up. How long his strength would last. When would he have to turn back?

  ‘There’d be no point, you old rascal.’

  The high, gaunt coastline — he had never seen anything like it. There were outcrops and overhangs and a kind of glacier landscape, with huge meandering tongues of loam and clay heading out to the sea. Some sections were overgrown, some bare, cracked, and rutted, and there were grey, loamy walls from which, now and then, the head of a cyclops would protrude and look contemptuously down at Ed. But Ed hardly ever looked up. He wasn’t interested in cyclopses or whatever these rock formations resembled. He strode along the stony beach, his head lowered, and tried to keep the small fire of his monologue burning with encouragements and sound arguments. With his own words.

  Some distance further north, the coastal shrubbery suddenly opened up to reveal a flight of stairs. The cement blocks that were supposed to anchor the steel construction into the beach hung in the air about a metre from the ground. When Ed stepped onto the lowest step, there was a high, clear metallic sound. ‘The way the steel panels of sinking ships begin to sing,’ Ed whispered and stopped. The rusty iron seesawed threateningly. In the end, Ed counted almost three hundred steps (every third step rotten or broken), spread over various intervals and gaps up to the top of the fifty- or sixty-metre-high cliff.

  A light-coloured building, its gables trimmed with wood, shimmered through the pine trees. At first sight, it looked like a Mississippi steamboat, a beached paddle steamer that had tried to reach the sea by going through the forest. A few smaller log cabins were anchored around it like lifeboats encircling the mother ship.

  Ed kept his eyes firmly on the image so that it couldn’t evaporate: from the ship, a stone-flagged terrace with tables and beer garden chairs extended almost to the edge of the bluff. The outer rows of tables were covered, and looked like mangers for forest animals. Something was written in looping handwriting on the slate board near the front door, but Ed was still too far away to read it. To the left of the door, over a sash window in the wooden covered porch that formed part of the steamship’s paddlewheel case, hung a small, stiff flag with the word ‘ice-cream’. A handmade sign was screwed on to the front of the porch: ZUM KLAUSNER. The Hermit Inn.

  The ‘Z’ was elaborately embellished, and Ed briefly imagined the sign-painter; he saw him being assigned the job, saw him noting down the name of the ship and the date of its christening. Ed sensed to the nth degree the trouble this first letter must have given the sign-painter, and a sense of futility washed over him for a moment.

  To make sure the building had three dimensions, Ed slowly circled it. It was a ship built in the style of a forest dwelling. The gables had turned moss green, and saltpetre deposits bloomed on the foundation. Behind the first house was a second, somewhat-more-modern one. Between the two was a courtyard, and behind them a forest. The site consisted roughly of three concentric circles. In the innermost circle were the courtyard, the two main buildings, and another smaller terrace, populated by a horde of cast-iron coffee-house chairs, their white paint stained with rust. In the second circle were two log cabins with two sheds and a wood yard with a chopping block. To the north, the courtyard opened out onto a clearing, a sloping meadow that was covered with pine-tree roots and that rose gently towards the edge of the forest and onto a path, which no doubt led to the lighthouse, Ed’s old friend. A playground had been set up in the middle of the clearing with a mushroom-shaped jungle gym, a teeter-totter, a sandbox, and a concrete ping-pong table. Ed was surprised for a moment that the kind of playground found all over the country had made it into this fairytale place high above the surf. A small palisade marked the third, outermost circle, or, more exactly, a kind of deer fence made of deadwood, carefully woven between the nearest tree trunks at the forest’s edge. The entire compound was surrounded by a thick growth of pine and beech trees.

  Ed strolled across the clearing towards the coast, and looked out to sea. A soft, sweet current flowed through the morning damp, a captivating mixture of forest and sea. It was foggy, and you could breathe in the milky, washed out horizon if you inhaled deeply enough; it’s like being here and out there at the same time, Ed thought.

  A man lay motionless on the hill above the playground, dead or asleep. When Ed approached, the man heard him; he jumped heavenwards. Maybe a prayer, Ed thought, but it sounded as if it came from a snake, a kind of hissing, and at some point he understood it.

  ‘Piss-ant, piss off, piss off …’

  It was, in fact, only six o’clock in the morning. Ed sat down at one of the manger-tables and decided to wait. He was shivering, he was hungry, and he had hardly slept the past few nights. His leather Thälmann jacket was completely soaked, heavier than any armour. But the bench, the table, and the little roof offered solace — as if he had been gone for a week and was just coming in from the wilderness. He opened his bag to let the moisture escape. He pulled out a few things and several books and laid them out to dry.

  The windows of the porch, behind which must have been the restaurant, were covered with coarse, net-like curtains that moved noticeably several times after seven o’clock. Ed tried to sit up straight and look relaxed at the same time. The wind was blowing in off the sea. The door opened, and its two wings were fastened with hooks to the porch wall. The man who opened it paid no attention to Ed. He had a glowing white shirt. For a moment, Ed saw his oval, wire-rimmed glasses and a big, bushy black moustache. The man went up to the slate board and erased the previous day’s braised steak and wrote with chalk in the dark, still-damp spot the words ‘ox-tail soup’.

  ‘Rimbaud!’

  Someone had called and Ed had jumped up, ready to recite. He did it automatically, he couldn’t help it; in the very first moment, in any case, the verse hoard rumbled in his head: The Drunken Boat in Paul Zech’s free adaptation … ‘Rimbaud!’ someone called again from inside the Klausner, and Ed understood that they meant the moustachioed waiter.

  Almost an hour went by before another, shorter man appeared in the doorway and looked at Ed for a while without moving. His face remained in the shadows. Something in his posture made it clear he was not going to cross the threshold. After a time, he lifted his hand in an indefinable gesture, only halfway, as if he were waving hello or waving Ed away. Ed stood up and, although he was a few tables away from the door, the man began to speak as loud as if two-score or more people were gathered on the terrace, by whom he wanted to be understood clearly from the very first words.

  ‘My name is Krombach, Werner Krombach, manager of the company vacation home, Zum Klausner.’

  ‘My name is Edgar Bendler,’ Ed answered hurriedly. He called it out to the back of the manager, who had turned to rush away and now picked up his pace in respons
e. They crossed the dining room. The man looked athletic, stocky; the shining egg of a small, carefully groomed bald spot extended to the back of his head, while the hair on the sides was grey and cut short. Only half-aware, Ed took in the counter and the cast-iron cash register. They entered a tiny office. The manager deftly squeezed past his desk, took up position, and offered Ed his hand.

  ‘Please have a seat, Mr Bendler.’

  Nothing in his appearance betrayed the slightest mistrust or contempt. He took Ed’s passport, opened it up, and leafed through it, wiping his high forehead several times as he did so, as if what he was seeing in it were simply too much. The man finally asked him if he was healthy.

  On Krombach’s desk stood an antediluvian typewriter, a Torpedo, and next to it a grey telephone and a photograph of him standing before the entrance of an enormous, shining, copper-plated building. It was the legendary Palace Hotel — built by the Swedes. Whenever and wherever it was mentioned in this country, there was always someone who whispered to the group, ‘by the Swedes …’ The photograph showed the manager surrounded by an entire regiment of women and men in hotel or wait-staff uniforms, only Krombach wore almost the same outfit that he had on that very day: a light-pink summer shirt with burgundy cufflinks, a light-weight, light-brown checked jacket, and a scarf around his neck, probably silk. The only thing missing was a tie.

  ‘No ailments at all?’ Ed looked up, and Krombach gave him a serious, penetrating look.

  Maybe he simply didn’t understand the question properly. Ed had no idea what Krombach was getting at and so, to be on the safe side, didn’t answer. He had decided to be suitable for each and every occasion. Where had Ed come from and what had he done previously — Krombach’s questions were asked casually and in passing, as if they were part of some routine that didn’t particularly interest him. Ed’s professional experience included being trained as a mason, and he mentioned this. ‘Skilled tradesman, then,’ Krombach corrected him. ‘Plastering, masonry construction, concrete and formwork, etc., then your studies, German literature and history, teacher training, I assume, the usual path, and then the usual?’

  Before Ed could answer, Krombach spoke about the island and his restaurant. His voice changed; it grew soft and distracted. ‘We have a special location up here, special conditions, in every respect, but you’re surely aware of this, I believe, Mr Bendler, or else you wouldn’t be here. First, the flow conditions. The constant breaking off and slow drift of the coastline on which this restaurant was built, almost eighty years ago now, on the stones of the old hermitage, the foundations the hermits left us …’

  As the manager changed topics from the gradual, inexorable disappearance of the island into the expanse of the Baltic Sea to the history of Zum Klausner, he seemed to forget that Ed was sitting before him. He talked for a long time about a man named Ettersberg or Ettenburg, whom he spoke of warmly as the Ur-hermit, a man in a long cassock ‘always moving between gymnastics apparatuses and Tusculum editions of the classics, shower baths and shelves of books …’

  Ed absent-mindedly relished the soporific music in Krombach’s talk. The manager obviously enjoyed using nautical expressions; his co-workers were part of the ‘crew’, and now and then he was called ‘the captain’. ‘So you noticed then? Chunk after chunk is breaking off the coast and sliding into that beautiful gorge, true natural drama, and at some point the Klausner, too, our ark, will be sent on its way one night, maybe even in the next storm or the one after that, it will sail out to sea, and with it, its passengers and crew, then we’ll really depend on it, you understand?’

  The office was, in fact, nothing more than a cubbyhole, and the ceiling sloped sharply behind Krombach’s back so that the room, at the end, was no more than a good metre high. A day bed was set up in that space and covered with a counterpane. To Ed’s left was a wardrobe. In its open, upper section were piled metal boxes with Dannemann Brasil cigarillos; on the shelf underneath were twenty or thirty small dark bottles. Ed couldn’t make out their labels. A porthole dominated the wall over the wardrobe with a view of the light-brown striped wallpaper. Only then did Ed notice: the office had no windows. To judge by the sounds, the office was built under a staircase that led to the upper floor. Without a doubt, it was a place usually reserved for storerooms or broom closets. Next to the porthole hung a row of small square display cases with complicated sailing knots that looked like hearts that had turned grey behind the glass, their twists like eternal puzzles —

  ‘… and Iphigenia?’ the manager asked. Ed stammered, but his memory hoard sprang to attention, his little survival dynamo.

  ‘Exactly, that play, precisely!’

  Ed nodded every time the manager’s eyes met his. He had trouble following the monologue, which must have been Krombach’s hobbyhorse harangue. Perhaps he had repeated these sentences too often already. Despite their unusual subjects, there was something second-hand about them, but also something warming, cozy, and so the cubbyhole suited them. Four days after his leap (no, he hadn’t jumped), it seemed to Ed that sitting in this tiny office and listening to the manager was only good. Yes, he had wanted to be gone, to disappear, to be on his own, but he didn’t want to be alone anymore. Krombach’s soft, murmuring voice was enough. Ed felt snug. This also had something to do with the smell that filled the cubbyhole, the smell of an earlier time, sharp and biting; it seemed to emanate from Krombach himself, from the smooth skin that stretched over his skull as if freshly oiled, but it might also be coming from the bottles in the wardrobe …

  ‘Very well. Why are you here, Mr Bendler?’

  I leaned too far out the window, flashed through Ed’s mind. Only with great effort did he manage to say his prepared sentence, but accidently in the old, ineffective way: ‘I’m looking for work, however, I’d also need a room.’

  Krombach took a deep breath, swivelled in his chair with his profile to Ed and looked at the grey hearts.

  ‘Don’t worry. In this chair, no one has ever had to apologise for that, on the contrary, it is, to a certain extent a requirement. Believe me, my crew includes all sorts of people who have trod all sorts of paths, but all those paths led to this office, and not one of them has been badly treated just because the mainland spit them out. All sorts of paths, but in the end it’s the same everywhere. Everyone has seen it, everyone knows, sooner or later there comes a time. The island took us in. We found our place here and among us esskays, we’re here for each other, when push comes to shove. In this crew, however,’ his hand waved in a wide arc over his desk and almost brushed the cubbyhole’s walls, ‘it’s about more than that, and we are all of one mind on this …’

  The manager swivelled back to face Ed, and stuck his finger in the telephone dial. He kept his eyes fixed on Ed, as if he were waiting for Ed to give him his number.

  Without a doubt, this was the time for Ed to add something of his own. Something that showed he could fulfil all the (for the most part, unspoken) requirements, a statement about his life until now, about his own past, that did not, in fact, have anything to do with trouble or being spat out, but rather with a trolley car.

  The manager’s finger twitched in the dial, impatiently — a small rattling noise.

  ‘So, you’re healthy?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I think so, at least, as far as I know …’ The question embarrassed him.

  ‘Healthy, but no certificate of health?’

  ‘Certificate of health?’ Ed had never heard of the necessity of having such a document.

  ‘Healthy, but no proof of residency or registration form?’

  ‘No, I wanted …’

  ‘Healthy and freed from the past, like the rest of us up here?’

  Krombach laughed softly and threw a quick glance at the greying hearts; he seemed to be on especially close terms with them. His sudden straightforwardness made Ed uncomfortable.

  ‘I mean, no real serious illness in the past, righ
t?’

  ‘No. I broke my arm once, my left wrist, it was complicated. I fell while climbing, I was nine years old and was supposed to go to summer camp, but that morning …’

  Krombach looked at him blankly and silently, and Ed stopped talking.

  ‘No one knows you’re here?’

  ‘No,’ Ed answered quickly. He noted that Krombach had addressed him informally, and took it as a sign of progress.

  ‘You didn’t tell anyone, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You came alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long could you stay?’

  ‘The summer … ?’ Ed had briefly pictured his diary in front of him with the registration date for the autumn semester — he almost felt ashamed. He heard the clattering of dishes from outside. To judge by the footsteps and the voices, breakfast was being cleared; it sounded crude and provoking. Strangeness wafted towards him, the fear before entering into the unknown.

  ‘For the summer, then. Maybe autumn, too?’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’

  ‘Maybe, hunh? We had difficulties here during last year’s season, “problems” would not be an exaggeration. We lost people, in various ways, our last ice-cream seller, for example …’ Krombach’s breathing was strained.

  ‘Why did you sneak up here?’

  ‘Sneak?’

  ‘You came from the back, over the bluffs, that’s a long, arduous path, two hours along the rocky beach, with luggage!’

  ‘I …’

  ‘It’s fine.’ The manager suddenly looked exhausted. He bent Ed’s pass with its damaged plastic cover back against the binding, until the paper was about to tear. Then he just let the passbook drop from the tips of his fingers into a bureau drawer Ed could not see.