Dog Years (20 page)

Now, because contrary to all expectation the Columbus song has a last verse, they are singing a harvest song: "I'veloadedmywagonfull." Now, although such things are best sung in the evening: "Nolovelierlandatthishour." Eddi Amsel lets his fat-boy soprano stand on its head. Brunies sucks ostentatiously and turns on irony lights. Matern darkens under a cloudless sky. The baby carriage casts a solitary shadow. . .

Where is Tulla?

Her cousin has joined in six stanzas of the Columbus song. During the seventh stanza he has erased himself. Only sea air, no more glue smell; for August Pokriefke is standing with his wife and the deaf-mute Konrad on the west side of the triangle at the end of the pier, and the wind has shifted from northeast to east. The Pokriefkes have their backs turned to the sea. They are singing. Even Konrad is opening his mouth in the right places, pursing his lips soundlessly, and he doesn't miss an entrance when the canon Meisterjakobmeisterjakob is attempted with little luck.

Where is Tulla?

Her brothers Siegesmund and Alexander have beat it. Their cousin Harry sees them both on the breakwater. They are diving. Siegesmund is practicing flips and handstand dives. The brothers' clothes are lying, weighted down by shoes, on the windy spur of the pier. Tulla isn't with them. From the direction of the Glettkau pier -- even the big Zoppot pier can be made out in the distance -- the excursion steamer is approaching on schedule.-- It is white with a big black smoke trail, like the steamers in children's drawings. Those who wish to take the steamer from Brösen to Neufahrwasser are crowding onto the left side of the pier end. Where is Tulla? The Cubs are still singing, but no one is listening any more, because the steamer is getting bigger and bigger. Eddi Amsel has also withdrawn his high soprano. The tin drum has abandoned the song rhythm and succumbed to the pounding of the engine. It's the
Pike.
But the
Swan
looks exactly the same. Only the side-wheeler, the
Paul Beneke,
looks different. In the first place it has side wheels; in the second place it is bigger, much bigger; and in the third place its run is from Danzig-Langebrücke to Zoppot, Gdingen, and Hela and back -- it doesn't come to Glettkau and Brösen at all. Where is Tulla? At first it looks as if the
Pike
had no intention of putting in to the Brösen pier, then she heaves to and is alongside quicker than anyone expected. She chuirns up foam and not only at bow and stern. She hesitates, marks time, and whips up the sea. Lines are cast: bollards grind. Tobacco-brown cushions on the starboard side muffle the shock. All the children and some of the women are scared because the
Pike
is going to toot in a minute. Children stop their ears, open their mouths, tremble in advance: there she toots with the dark voice that goes hoarse at the end, and is made fast. Ice-cream cones are being licked again, but a few children on board the steamer and on the pier are crying, still stopping their ears and staring at the smokestack, because they know that before casting off the
Pike
will toot again and let off white steam that smells of rotten eggs.

Where is Tulla?

A white steamer is lovely if it has no rust spots. The
Pike
hasn't a single one, though the Danzig Free State flag at the stern and the pennant of the "Vistula" shipyard are washed out and frayed. Some land -- some go aboard. Tulla? Her cousin looks behind him: on the right side of the pier stands solely and eternally the baby carriage on four high wheels. It casts a crooked eleven-o'clock shadow, which merges seamlessly with the shadow of the pier railing. A thin unramified shadow approaches this tangle of shadows: Tulla coming up from below. She had been with the waving beards of seaweed, the spellbound fishermen, the exercising sticklebacks. Bony in short dress, she mounts the steps. Her knees kick against the crocheted hem. From the top of the stairs she heads directly for the carriage. The last passengers go aboard the
Pike. A
few children are still crying or have started up again. Tulla has hooked her arms behind her back. Although her skin is bluish-white in the winter, she turns quickly brown. A dry yellow-brown, the carpenter's glue has missed her vaccination marks: one two three four cherry-size islands on her left arm remain conspicuously ashen. Every steamer brings gulls with it -- takes gulls away. The starboard side of the steamer exchanges words with the left side of the pier end: "And drop in again. And take the film to be developed, we can't wait. And give everybody our best regards, hear?" Tulla stands beside the empty baby carriage. The steamer toots high low and its voice cracks. Tulla doesn't stop her ears. Her cousin would like to stop his ears but doesn't. The deaf-mute Konrad, between Erna and August Pokriefke, watches the steamer's wake and holds both ears. The bag lies rumpled wrapping-paper-brown at the foot end. Tulla doesn't take a candy. On the breakwater two boys are fighting with one boy: two fall in the water, reappear: all three laugh. Dr. Brunies has picked up Jenny after all. Jenny doesn't know whether she should cry because the steamer has tooted. The teacher and his pupils advise her not to cry. Eddi Amsel has made four knots in his handkerchief and pulled the head covering thus produced over his flaming red hair. Because he looks comical to begin with, the knotted handkerchief makes him look no more comical. Walter Matern stares darkly at the white steamer as it detaches itself trembling from the pier. On board men, women, children, Hitler Cubs with their black pennant wave laugh shout. The gulls circle, fall, rise, and ogle out of heads screwed slantwise. Tulla Pokriefke gives the right hind wheel of the baby carriage a gentle kick: the carriage shadow is scarcely moved. Men, women, and children move slowly away from the left flank of the pier end. The
Pike
sends up a scrawl of black smoke, stamps, puts about, and, growing quickly smaller, takes a course for the Neufahrwasser harbor mouth. Through the calm sea she digs a foaming furrow which is quickly effaced. Not all the gulls follow her. Tulla acts; she throws back her head with its pigtails, lets it snap forward, and spits. Her cousin blushes to kingdom come. He looks around to see if anyone was looking when Tulla spat into the baby carriage. By the left-hand rail of the pier stands a three-year-old in a sailor suit. His sailor cap is encased in a silk ribbon with a gold-embroidered inscription: "HMS Seydlitz." The ends of the ribbon flutter in the northeast wind. At his side hangs a child's tin drum. From his fists grow battered wooden drumsticks. He doesn't drum, has blue eyes, and watches as Tulla spits a second time into the empty baby carriage. A multitude of summer shoes, canvas shoes, sandals, canes, and parasols approach from the end of the pier as Tulla takes aim a third time.

I don't know whether there was any other witness besides me and the grocer's son when my cousin spat three times in quick succession into Jenny's empty baby carriage and then shuffled off skinny angry slowly in the direction of the casino.

Dear Cousin,

I still can't stop putting you on the shimmering boards of the Brösen pier: One Sunday in the following year, but in the same month, to wit, the stormy month of August crawling with jellyfish, when once again men, women, and children with beach bags and rubber animals left the dusty suburb of Langfuhr and rode to Brösen, for the most part to station themselves on the free beach and in the bathing establishment, in lesser part to promenade on the pier, on a day when eight flags of Baltic cities and four swastika flags flapped sluggishly on twelve flagpoles, when out at sea a storm was piling up over Oxhoft, when the red jellyfish were stinging and the nonstinging bluish-white jellyfish were blossoming in the lukewarm sea -- one Sunday, then, in August Jenny got lost.

Dr. Brunies had nodded assent. Walter Matern had picked Jenny up out of the baby carriage and Eddi Amsel had failed to take notice when Jenny wandered off in the dominically attired throng. The storm over Oxhoft put on an extra story. Walter Matern didn't find Jenny. Eddi Amsel didn't. I found her, because I was looking for my cousin Tulla: I was always looking for you and found mostly Jenny Brunies.

That time, as the storm built up from the west, I found both of them, and Tulla was holding our Harras, whom I had taken along with my father's permission, by the collar.

On one of the runways that ran lengthwise and cross wise under the pier, at the end of a blind runway, or alley if you will, I found them both. Concealed by beams and struts, huddled in a white dress in green changing light traversed by shadow -- above her the scraping of light summer shoes, below her, licking lapping glugging sighing -- Jenny Brunies, plump dismayed tearful. Tulla was scaring her. Tulla commanded our Harras to lick Jenny's face. And Harras obeyed Tulla.

"Say shit," said Tulla, and Jenny said it.

"Say: my father farts all the time," said Tulla, and Jenny admitted what Dr. Brunies sometimes did.

"Say: my brother is always swiping things," said Tulla.

But Jenny said: "I haven't got any brother, honest I haven't."

Thereupon Tulla fished under the runway with a long arm and brought up a wobbling nonstinging jellyfish. It took both her hands to hold the whitish glassy pudding, in whose soft center violet-blue veins and knots converged.

"You're going to eat it till there's nothing left," Tulla commanded. "It hasn't any taste, go ahead." Jenny remained frozen and Tulla showed her how you eat jellyfish. She sucked in two soupspoonfuls, swished the gelatinous mass between her teeth, and from the gap between her two upper incisors spat a jet of gook that barely missed Jenny's face. High over the pier the storm front had begun to nibble at the sun.

"You saw me do it. Now do it yourself."

Jenny's face was getting ready to cry. Tulla theatened: "Should I tell the dog?" Before Tulla could sick our Harras on Jenny -- I'm sure he wouldn't have hurt her -- I whistled Harras to heel. He didn't obey right away, but he turned his head and collar toward me. I had him. But up above, though still at a distance, it was thundering. Tulla, right next to me, smacked the rest of the jellyfish against my shirt, pushed by, and was gone. Harras wanted to follow her. Twice I had to call: "Stay!" With my left hand I held the dog, with my right I took Jenny's hand and led her up to the storm-anticipating pier, where Dr. Brunies and his students were looking for Jenny amid the scurrying bathers, crying "Jenny!" and fearing the worst.

Even before the first gust of wind the caretakers brought in eight different and four identical flags. Papa Brunies held the baby carriage by the handle: the carriage trembled. The first drops broke loose overhead. Walter Matern lifted Jenny into the baby carriage: the trembling did not subside. Even when we had taken shelter and Dr. Brunies with trembling fingers had given me three cough drops, the baby carriage was still trembling. The storm, a traveling theater, passed quickly by with a great to-do.

My Cousin Tulla

had to scream at the top of her lungs on the same pier. By then we were able to write our names. Jenny was no longer being wheeled in a baby carriage, but like us went step by little step to the Pestalozzi School. Punctually vacation came with special fares for school-children, bathing weather, and ever new Brösen pier. On the twelve flagpoles of the pier there now blew, when it was windy, six Free State flags and six swastika flags, which were no longer the property of the resort management, but of the Brösen Party group. And before vacation was over, one morning shortly after eleven o'clock, Konrad Pokriefke drowned.

Your brother, the curlyhead. Who laughed soundlessly, joined in the singing, understood everything. Never again to talk with hands, elbows, forehead, lower eyelid, fingers crossed beside right ear, two fingers cheek to cheek: Tulla and Konrad. Now one small finger pressed down, because under the breakwater. . .

The winter was to blame. With ice, thaws, pack ice, and February storms it had severely battered the pier. The management, to be sure, had had the pier repaired more or less; painted white and equipped with new flagpoles, it had the right holiday sparkle, but some of the old piles; which pack ice and heavy breakers had broken off deep under the surface of the water, still protruded treacherously from the bottom, spelling disaster for Tulla's little brother.

Although bathing off the breakwater was forbidden that year, there were plenty of kids who, starting from the free beach, swam out to the breakwater and used it as a diving board. Siegesmund and Alexander Pokriefke hadn't taken their brother with them; he swam after them dog paddle, arms and legs flailing, and managed to swim, though not in any recognized style. All three together dove perhaps fifty times from the breakwater and came up fifty times. Then they dove together another seventeen times and came up together only sixteen times. No one would have noticed so quickly that Konrad had failed to come up if our Harras hadn't acted like he'd gone crazy. From the pier he had joined in their counting and now he ran up and down the breakwater, yelping uncertainly here and there, and finally stood still, keening at the high heavens.

The steamer
Swan
was just docking; but all the people crowded onto the right side of the pier. Only the ice-cream vendor, who never caught on to anything, continued to call out his flavors: "Vanilla, lemon, woodruff, strawberry, vanilla, lemon. . ."

Walter Matern slipped off only his shoes and dove head-first from the rail of the pier. He dove exactly across from the spot which our Harras indicated, first whimpering, then scratching with both forepaws. Eddi Amsel held his friend's shoes. He came up, but dove again. Fortunately Jenny didn't have to watch this: Dr. Brunies and she were sitting under the trees in the casino park. Only when Siegesmund Pokriefke and a man, who however was not a lifeguard, took turns in helping, was the deaf-mute Konrad, whose head had been wedged between two poles that had snapped close to the bottom, finally dislodged.