"Heidelberg: the mountain of shrubs" (a
novel)
by T.Wignesan
Chapter
None
A
dull gleam filled the room. A room, neither common as an oblong space nor
square as a found object. The ceiling, a patchwork of sloping and angular,
abrupt slabs. A lair. An unused womb even. Outside, the greyish slate-coloured
rooftops peeked in shiny patches. Overnight the snow must have melted in places
from fires raging in hearths. The sky looked dull and dense and heavy and thick
and spongy all the way to the Hauptbahnhof. The still transparent-looking
station glowed, seemingly dabbed in an aureole of fog. Beyond, all the area
enveloping the Eisenbahnwerkstatt, the American Army European Head Quarters
installations and the Wieblingen township and the riverside road to
Theson lifted the latch on his round porthole window sill and shifted
the creaking wooden frame a few inches to let in the chill and with it the only
blast of fresh air he got for over thirty hours. The single round pane had
filigreed overnight in the fast reducing centre; the fine nerve-like encrusted
shavings upon hard snow layers trembled with a burst, unlatching and slamming
the room’s only door shut.
Theson
turned his face to look, his hand still on the sturdy yet rusted iron latch.
“Hey, close that window, will ya,” she said
and turned over in the bed set alongside the full wall ending at the door. She
reached back and pulled the eiderdown trailing on the floor. Her legs trundled
the sheets under the blankets as she curled up. Only her flaxen hair lay
spilled on the long dark dented stuffed-sausage pillow.
Theson, distractedly, it seemed, watched
her movements. His eyes settled for a moment on the bulging mass in the middle.
The stale musty smells, he must have thought he breathed all night, the
previous day and the night before, receded from his nostrils. He dug his hands
in the striped dark blue trousers saddled over the highbacked pinewood chair
and retrieved a used handkerchief, looked for a clear patch and brought it up
to his nose. In one blast a twisted greenish yellow scab lay stuck to the
cloth; he gazed at it for a moment, folded the flap and stuck it back into his
pocket. He then – probably in disgust - withdrew the now dull yellow
handkerchief and left it on the sill. An icy gust draftshot through the
slightly opened window and slammed the door again. Melka groaned. Theson pulled
at the window latch. It resisted. He reached for a thick beige pullover lying
in a clump beside the washbasin on the marble top dresser and draped it over
his slightly concave torso; the shoulders appeared to fold slightly inward.
Once again the door came loose as someone four flights down pushed the front
street-door open. He hadn’t a stitch on apart from the pullover Brigitte had
knitted for him during the Christmas holidays.
He searched for a smoke. He looked through
his padded jungle green overcoat. Then through his trousers. He opened a drawer
and turned things over. On the chair in a pile were Melka’s things, her stained
pale white panties now on the floor. Theson picked it up with the tips of his
fore and middle fingers and dropped it on the top of the pile. He blinked at
the brownish red stain in the thin of the suspenders, turned it gently with one
finger; a shiver raked his slouching body, and he braced himself, and wrapped
his arms around his torso. He gazed askance at the rolled up figure gently
rising and falling under the covers. A steady throttled rhythm. Just once in a
while, it sounded like croaking, and the masked ball went back to an easy
pulling and thrusting melodious wheezing. Theson’s eyes darted from the bed to
the broad oakwood table on which lay an old Remington, its livid white letters
embossed on stark black keys. They looked so piteous, each separated by the
dark fathomless void in between. Did he wonder how his fingers found the
letters? They were like so many faces begging for love; so many
fingernail-indicator faces of the ineffable, indecipherable brain. His hands
automatically reached out and displaced a row of borrowed books stacked against
the sloping wall of the roof. He grabbed at a used Swan match box; on the
yellow grainy striking patch glared streaks of dark brown frantic scratches.
Traces of quarks. His hands turned paper and waste over in a metallic bin under
the table. Still no sign of a packet. A porcelain bowl used as an ashtray lay
on the floor at the head of the low sagging bed. He knelt down and poked at the
ash and butt mash. One butt riveted with lipstick stains, with the middle
hurriedly splashed open showed through. He picked it up and then stuck it back.
He poked at the ash. Some spilled over onto the floor. He rose, went to the
pile on the chair. Under Melka’s reeking pile of hurriedly shed outer shell– a
twisted heap of scent and sweat and semen – he found her light brown leather
handbag. He was about to flip the metal clasp open when the figure in the bed
groaned and turned towards the table. Theson put the bag where he had found it,
went back to the ashtray and retrieved the lipstick-stained butt. He pinched
free the butt where it had stuck to her lips and stuck the rest into his own.
He had difficulty lighting the remnants. When it finally lit up, it lit up in a
flare and ruffled his senses.
He paced up to the porthole and leant his
left elbow on the sill while he sucked at the butt. He held the smoke in his
lungs for as long as he could till he felt he was choking. He coughed. Melka
groaned and turned over again. Theson snubbed the butt on the outward sloping
grey tin outer sill caked in ice. The butt smudged, the ice fizzed. He breathed
the chill in and coughed again; this time rather loudly. He grabbed the
handkerchief and spat into it a glob of phlegm the size of a cherry. It shone
reddish-yellow. There was a rich yellow streak in it that looked like a live
embryo of sorts in the dull gleam around the porthole.
“Hey! What…What the hell are ya doin’
tha?” Melka poked her head over the covers, her eyes in a slit, her lusciously
leathery dishevelled hair enveloping her fine full forehead and skull. Theson
did not stir. He kept his looks outward in the chill. Like sticking one’s head
into the freezer. The sky grizzled over. Gusts of wind swirled down by the
river and up through bare branches with their myriad-studded inchoate buds. The
dark thrusting mass of a tug boat under low hugging fog hooted twice as it
approached the bridge. Another, bulkier, ringed with clotheslines, except for
massive rugs and tarpaulin flapping, ploughed up the
It seemed hours before Theson turned to
look. Melka’s full turgid breasts loomed over the sheets as she propped herself
up on her elbows. Even in sleep, even unkempt, even without a put-on smile, she
emitted an enveloping charismatic charm. She never ever seemed excited about
anything. Perhaps only in bed, but that was normal behaviour. Just once in a
rare while, she let out: “I think, the doctor said: it’s cancerous already down there!” Every feature on her head was
just rightly placed in relation to the others. Full forehead as it domed and
receded to the temples. Eyebrows cut evenly on the arches. A lusciously rich
but not so glowing crop of strawy ripe wheat-coloured hair. A hot shampoo spell
would no doubt bring the glow out, Theson felt. She knew Theson felt that about
her chevelure, for he always shied
from keeping his nose too close to her flowing cascades.
Evenly set-apart eyes, neither bulging nor
sunken. A small sharp nose-bridge, just the right length, firm nostrils closely
hugging the bridge. Firm upper lip that curled slightly outward from the deep and
spotless furrow under her nose were shaped like braces. Her lower lip, full and
rosy, lay like a tranche of
unsqueezed mandarin and only as wide as her nostrils were apart. Two tight
cheeks and a chiselled chin with little or no showy flesh. Only her neck
appeared thick and fleshy -- in bed. And when she opened her eyes, everything
else receded, as if she had two faces; two beautiful faces: her eyes and the
rest. Her eyes even when slightly closed emitted a conniving “you know me
bugger” gleam. Two veritable slightly hooded unpolished gems. Sounds corny to
say such a thing, but they were just that, and better still, I suppose: you
couldn’t wish to have them settled in another direction. And whether it were
her eyes or just something like an aura, or perhaps even a sort of nimbus-like
magnetism enveloping and accompanying her, you felt that distracted, placid
glow whenever she cared to look in your direction, right down and into your
guts. To hold her head in your hands while she rested on your chest and to run
your fingers through her lush slithering hair, with her humming in spurts of
satisfaction, left little else worth doing more. Yet one thing was lacking, you
felt. Her eyes were perhaps not too kindly; not ruthless, mind you, but just
with that amount of detachment to leave your bed without remorse without so
much as batting an eye, only to jump into another with as much feeling and
gusto with which she may have come to yours. The only complaint you felt she
made of herself, and that too once too often, which may have after all been
true, she was not quite tall. In fact, she was only five foot six. That gave
her a compact and stocky look but still luscious torso and limbs which were yet
to mature, though her body with age and use was bound to push in all directions
but inwards. But while the going was good at twenty-one, she was irreplaceable,
and she must have been aware of it. Her voice, never too hurried, never too
bubbly, always remained a tinkling but measured whisper.
She was spying Theson through the merest
of kept-open slits. The pullover went down his behind and halfway to the knees.
Melka had miscalculated. She let the sheets and disarrayed blankets slip
further down. Her downy bulbous abdomen rose to view as she adjusted her
buttocks under the sheets. She waited for Theson to turn. She must have known
he would. She didn’t say a word. She just kept watching him.
After a while, Theson turned, looked at
her, speechless. Their eyes strayed from eyes to exposed bottoms. It was always
like that with Theson. He said little. Long moments passed between them as the
cold stole under their skins. With her left hand, Melka gently let the
disarrayed bundle of blankets, sheets, and the puffy white German Federbett uncover her worth. The smell
of the woman’s private juices pricked his nostrils. Theson moved towards her.
“Wait, Theson, I…I’ve got to wee.” She
looked under the bed, her long flaxen hair streaming down to the floor.
“Where’s it?” she said. “Did ya empty the bowl last night?”
Theson reached under the foot of the bed and
came up with a chipped white enamel bowl with a curved mouth at the opposite
end to the handle in the shape of a question mark.
“Don’t look, you Peeping Piper” she said
and pissed voraciously for a full three minutes. She rose from her squatting
pose still dripping. She ran her hands under Theson’s pullover and lifted it
off his head. She tickled and pinched him in the process. Theson fell headlong
into the sunken bed, his head buried under the long pillow looking stained and
oily in parts. She thrust her forearms under his armpits and hugged him close.
“Gad, youae stone cold…” she said and
rubbed his chest and sides. Then she ran her fingernails on his back. There
were already other fingernail dents on his back. Theson stretched a hand out
back to stay her action in vain. She bit him on the clavicle, and again on the
shoulder blade. Then she brought her hands down in front and fondled his loins.
Theson twitched and tried to turn around. She held him fast. She brought her
left hand down back and touched his
balls. Theson’s thighs parted. Her fingers played with them, squeezing ever so
lightly the tight folds of bristly skin, while her right hand came round the front
and lassoed the by now distended member. Theson was helpless. He seemed to
protest, but it was of no use. She had him where she wanted. In her arms.
Without him being able to use his. She kissed him on the left ear once, twice,
thrice, and again and again and coated the hairy mid-ear well with saliva from
her swivelling tongue. Theson brought a hand up to push her away. Then, he
grabbed a portion of the sheets and quickly proceeded to dry his ear. It was of
no use. She began anew and practically chewed and tickled his ears and exposed
cheeks.
“Alright, Buster, now youae sizzling hot.
Start slogging, you…you mountain of a …a…fountain … mount…mounting buck,” she
said and turned Theson over in her lap and planted a fully drivelling mouth on
his. She steered him into her with as much dexterity as she got under him in a
matter of seconds. Theson seemed to weaken instantly at the initial thrust and
held his breath. He held himself back for a further few seconds. She wrapped
her thighs on his pulsating posterior and crossed her ankles under his
buttocks. Her heels kept bumping into him every time he rose and thrust into
her. She said, “Hai..gher… higher…Theson” and worked herself into a frenzy,
squeezing the lean torso in her grasp. She dug her fingernails again into his
back. It hurt. He stopped. “Don’t stop, man…go..go..gooo..” she screamed into
his ear. Theson let go. It was far too much hard work for him. He made an
attempt to revive himself and then flopped on her soft and heaving belly, his
face buried between her heaving slithery-rubbery tits.
For a long while neither of them said a
word as Theson ran down his breathless heaving and slumped into her warm
welcoming clasp.
She said, “Ne’er mind, Baby, yowae great
last night.” She fixed her eyes on his closed lids. She must have felt he
needed re-assuring, or maybe even convincing. “I sure mean it, Baby”, she said,
seeming a bit incredulous. She patted him on the back and soothed his dark
satiny skin. She held him in her clasp, drew the blankets and sheets up above
his shoulders and watched him snooze gently, rhythmically. Soon they were both
off.
They woke to loud knocking a little past
eleven. It was the landlady.
Frau Pfeiffer tried the previous day to no
avail, so she walked up and down the dark and dingy narrow corridor several
times, making as much noise as she could with her brooms and dusters and pails
until she planted herself squarely at Theson’s door. The other two occupants of
the corridor were away, working as usual. Only one side of the corridor opened
into rooms; the other had two cubicles from an older era: one wooden hole with
a lid connected to a coarse metallic funnel and another with a tap and a small
pig-iron half-moon basin. No bathroom facilities. The hardwood toilet cover
when lifted brought forth a rush of cavernous stench, the same stench that
stuck to the corridor. Occasionally the stench was replaced by what smelt like
caustic soda.
There was the Hallenbad, a public bath on Römerstrasse, the road leading to the Hauptbahnhof, a little way from the
Bismarck Platz, opposite the Universitäts-Kliniken.
The bathhouse reeked of fetid soap the
moment you pushed the front street door open. Steam always lingered choking the
air. There was no shortage of hot water though in there, but the row of
dilapidated showers hardly concealed their constantly worn and flooded drainage
system. Low slippery wooden frames sat awkwardly in the slimy, froth-edged
sloping floors, wet and weary and wallowing from the previous occupants’
passage. There was hardly room to turn around or lift a leg up for scrubbing.
The clothes one hung up on the door-peg though separated by another half
swing-door, soon carried a fresh-soap reek. From the left-over lingering scent
you could almost divine if the previous user-occupant was a man or woman, young
or old. The vast majority frequenting the place during the week however were
young and mostly appeared to be students. Friday evenings saw another breed:
workers, all noisy, calling out to their comrades and slapping their thighs and
chests to simulate their jokes. They, as regular customers, stayed longer than
the prescribed twenty minutes each.
A forty-ish handsome Latin-looking woman,
lithesome even for her age, with satin-smooth olive complexion occupied the
flat next to Theson’s; a fifty-odd old tall man who apparently lived elsewhere
with his family and commuted back and forth over the weekends and holidays
occupied the room at the top of the stairs where the door to the landlady’s
flat remained closed on the right. Since he left early and returned late, no
one ever really encountered him long enough for a chat. Only the usual “Guten
Tag”, more the “Tag” than the “Guten”, as one passed him up or down the
stairways leading out into an alleyway.
Theson’s immediate neighbour “Eva”, as she
was known to all in the building, hardly ever stepped out. She worked the same
hours as her Hausgast, a shortish
slightly pot-bellied man of about her age with dark unruly eyebrows and dark
piercing eyes. Struck one as an Andaluzan or even probably of Gypsy descent. He
never said a word either to her in public or to anyone; not to Theson in any
case. Once they were in, they stayed put for the night. They only went out for
beer and for würst, it seemed. They
spent the evenings drinking and what would seem like making much noisy lustful
love. Judging by the regularity of their departure and arrival times, they must
have been working in the same place. Perhaps she worked for him. Not the other
way round, surely. Though silent and sullen, there was no mistaking his
bossiness. No returning of wishes for him. Now and then, his barked yells could
be heard penetrating the walls, followed by some vase or glassware or wooden or
metal thing crashing on something or other. Eva or Evelyn’s whimpering voice would
then take over.
Frau Pfeiffer occupied a spacious
apartment which gave onto the Bismarck Platz, the hub of the town where all the
tramways criss-crossed noisily. Steel wheels and brakes on steel rails grated
and screeched all day long. For some four hours in the wee hours, they remained
silent, but by five-twenty, the sound of electrically ignited motors suddenly
wailing and gratingly pulling at enormous weights would resume.
Frau Pfeiffer was always a bit blear-eyed
and a bit too jumpy. She was on high tension wires all day and probably at
night too. Lean and tall and wiry and yet stiffly erect when she had to
confront anyone. She always seemed to rush about. She had no time for herself,
she said, and she reminded every tenant in the house of this fact by
monopolising the conversation and putting an end to it by opening the corridor
door, after only a mere three minutes while getting the door, with her taut
hand on the white porcelain door knob drawing by well-managed stages, to close.
By the time she had finished her last sentence, there was only a two-inch
breach in the doorway between her and her interlocutor.
She lost her husband to the war effort on
the Russian front. There were pictures of him in uniform, little jaded framed
pictures looking like daguerrotypes with medals dangling down his tunics; they
were placed where everyone could see him: on the low round glass-topped tea
table on swan’s neck legs; on the huge bright brown ornate cupboard; on the
spotless walls opening out from the front door; on the grey-and-dullred-grained
marble fireplace. Her three daughters, two grown-ups and a school-leaver, were
never around. If they were, the tenants never really got to talking to them.
Every time there was a knock on the door coming from the tenants’ corridor to
the rear of the flat facing the Bismarck Platz – a door which was always under
lock and key – she must have bidden her daughters gain their quarters behind
the lounge doors. The side of the door facing the corridor was old streaky
wood, distempered from top to bottom, and the lock-casing looking rusted and
worn; indoors, the door looked solid, pale pink in colour, with a porcelain
knob; a curly polished iron coat hanger remained skewered at eye-level.
Occasionally another older well-dressed
woman loomed in sight. All the women in Frau Pfeiffer’s family wore glasses.
She must have been the mother-in-law or perhaps the landlady’s own. She just
simply said, if she was around, “Frau Inge”, so there was no way of finding
out, for from that moment onwards; it was she who held the conversation going
and at hundred an hour, until she virtually hovered over you and ushered you
past the corridor door.
The
landlady then tried the door handle, and it gave under her impulsive jerk.
She got a peek of the gently pulsating mass on the bed; she gazed in silence
for a while. She betrayed no abrupt movement. She kept the door slightly ajar,
her left hand on the rough rusted door handle. At the first signs of movement,
she quickly pulled the door firmly and silently back in place. Then, she
knocked with compulsive force, and after a pause, resumed with less ardour.
Melka groaned and turned over. Theson had
difficulty getting his legs out of the scrambled bedclothes. He shoved the mass
of intertwined blankets, sheets, and eiderdown with both his hands and legs and
slipped out; he grabbed a bright yellowish brown garberdine lying loosely over
the headboard of the bed and draped it over his body. It didn’t go right down and
just stayed about his thighs. It was Melka’s smock. She had brought it over
with her bundle on a stick when she trudged through the high border terrain
from
Frau
Waltz knocked ever so gently and pushed the door open with her right hand. In
her left she balanced a heavy blue-lined deep porcelain plate wallowing with
soup. A round of Bauernbrot sat on top of a lump of sauerkraut swimming in a
rich oily film of chicken broth.
“Morgen!” she said in her gentle warm and hardly audible voice. “Why?
Theson, what are you doing? Still in bed?”
Theson who was already up for hours and wondering in bed, managed a
surprised “Morgen” too which stuck to his palate; he tried sitting up in his light chocolate-coloured
pyjamas; the stuffed quilt in its white case lay lightly across his slightly
exposed torso. The bottom half of the pyjamas was somewhere in or under the
bed, or stuck against the wall and blankets. Frau Waltz put the soup plate down
on the table with as much tenderness as if it were a time-bomb ready to go off
at any moment then. She pulled the quilt over Theson’s exposed parts.
“You’ll catch the death of a cold, if you lie there with the window
open.” She went up to the porthole and pulled it close. Then
she stooped under the bed and reached as far as the wall and brought up
Theson’s other half of the pyjamas. She put it to her nose.
“Hmmm. So you’ve been up to things lately, I see.”
“Oh,
give it to me please.” Theson stretched out a hand.
“Now
I’m going to wash this. Let me have the other piece as well. No use washing the
bottom half only.” Theson knew better than to argue with his landlady. She was
more than a mother to him, she was his” nurse” as well. Thoughts as simple and
urgent as when he was going to be able to pay her long-overdue rent, already
three months gone, seemed to worry him.
“Frau Waltz, you know, you shouldn’t be doing these things for me. Karl
will not – does not - approve. Neither does your daughter.”
“Now, Theson, you stop worrying about all this and that about money. Get
a hold of yourself. Eat, get strong quick. Put some flesh back on those bones.”
“But…”
“There are no buts to worry about. You just eat and get some flesh back
upon your ribs.” She looked at him with her hand on the doorknob, her tired
looking round honey-coloured eyes and greying thin hair gracing her soft pallid
ears and cheeks.
“You, too, Frau Waltz. Look after yourself. You work too hard. You never
sleep, it seems. I hear you in the kitchen late every night.”
“There’s work to be done every day and for the next. Inge is always on
the early shift. Hospital work is urgent work. She must be there at seven in
the morning.” She looked at him and then at the soup on the table. “Now you get
up. The soup’s getting cold. Otherwise I’ll have to spoonfeed you…” and she
faked a movement with her right hand in the direction of the bed.
“Alright, Frau Waltz, I’ll be up the moment you close the door.” Theson
watched her as she turned, her slight stoop compensated by sturdy legs, now
bulging with varicose veins.
Where do you go when you feel your legs buckling under you? The head
reeling in thin air.
The eyes open and which see really nothing. The
voice weak, even inaudible. The mouth kept closed for so long no saliva loosens
the tongue. The throat dry. And when you swallow thin air, the Adam’s apple
gets stuck. Hurts. The cold quickly climbs up the toes and fingers. And makes
you feel like a zombie sans head, sans
hands, sans feet. The wind tears into the lungs and the tripes. You become a
papier-maché object fit for a Chinese
funereal procession.
You
might venture out and hope to knock into an acquaintance He might invite you to
his digs. And maybe to a bowl of thin pale tea. With sugar lumps if you care to
help yourself to more than you are invited to; the eyes of your host growing
wide watching your fingers absent-minded-like trundling the cubes into your
bowl. And maybe to a biscuit or two.
Better the bed. And the listlessness. For hours at a stretch.
You
can read. You can think. Or you can write. What? Poetry? All luxuries!
When
was the last time you passed motion?
“Aaah soooh!” she gasped. After an awkward
moment of being flustered, she resumed, “You should have more sense than
to…than to wear…” Frau Pfeiffer pointed to the smock and held back her
comments.
Theson stood still and scratched the back
of his neck.
“I have to clean the place now,” she said.
“It’s been three days since…”
Theson opened the door a little wider and
avoided her sharp eyes. Melka poked her head out of the bundle on the bed and
quickly withdrew it. She curled up further down the bed.
“I’m going to… I can’t keep coming back.”
She lugged her pails and brushes and went straight into the annexe. The latter
had a sloping roof like a saltbox which culminated in a narrow window and which
could never be opened. Against the wall beside the window was an old heavy iron
stove. The latter was long out of use. On it though were two gas rings. The
only other furniture in there was a narrow but relatively long sturdy table on
which lay two basins, one filled with unwashed dishes, the other in which
wallowed three pairs of old socks in dirty soapy water. The rest of the space
was taken up by two strung up wires and on which dangled a dull white shirt, a
pair of khaki longs, and two short towels. Under the table lay empty beer
bottles with white swivelling tops, held in place by metal clasps. The air in
there remained the same all through the year. Dank, pungent, and musty.
“I told you Herr Theson so many times, you
can’t keep the dishes and clothes like that. You got to wash them immediately,”
she called out. “And look…look at this. What are you going to do with all these
bottles, uh, Theson?” As usual, Theson said nothing. She poked her head round
the open door and said, “You know you can get money back on these bottles?”
Theson sat on the bed, his head in his
hands, and waited. When she had finished sweeping, brushing and scraping, she
strode out, kept the corridor door open with her pails and rushed back into the
annexe. “I’m going to empty these basins.” She went all the way down to the
water cubicle and came back for the other basin. When she had finished, she
said, “I’m not doing the bed today.” She looked at Theson, stopping for a while
at the door. “You know, Theson, what you need is a wife, not a servant.” Theson
looked down at the floor and then rose in a gesture of deference to her. It was
obvious she was concerned about him and liked the idea of chiding him. “I’ll
come another time for the room. And keep the windows closed. Heavy snow, you
know. Also Tschüss, Herr Theson,”
she breathed out, sighing amply and pulled the door close behind her. It was
obvious she liked the idea Theson was keeping some kind of company, even if she
didn’t appear to much care for the outre-Atlantic
kind. She had even urged him several times to go out. “Go dancing, Theson.
Now’s the time. Fasching goes on for
a couple of weeks, three weeks or more, you know. Now’s the time to get to know
the Heidelberger folk! They come from all around.” Find himself a girl friend?
Now shouldn’t she be glad, after all?
Theson sat still for a while. The
porcelain jug and washbasin on the dresser needed filling up. Melka would soon
be up. He got into trousers, pulled the pullover over himself, and made his way
to the water closet once he heard the corridor door to Frau Pfeiffer’s flat
being pulled tight and locked.
Melka was up and dressed when Theson got
back with the jug now full. Melka grabbed
Theson from
the back while he was pouring freezing water into the porcelain wash basin.
“Brrrrr…RRRR” she cooed in his ear. “God,
you kept the window open all night?”
Theson put the jug down on the dressing
marble top and with Melka still hugging him from behind, he managed to shuffle
up to the window, opened it and slammed it back into place tightly. The panes
were dangerously perched on splintering wood. Theson rubbed a pane with his
pullover sleeve to peek out. Parts of the river bank seemed ice-ridden, the
underside of the bridge and eaves had icicles sticking down from them. All the
undulating roads and byways and houses and gardens on the hill on the opposite
bank appeared smothered in snow. The summit was clouded over.
Melka had by then unclasped Theson. She
pulled her woollen sleeves up and gingerly dug a few fingers in the washbasin
and shrieked.
“Boy, oh boy! I’m not goin’…what did ya
put in there? An iceberg?” She glanced at Theson. She seemed to be mocking at
him, or was it her way of excusing herself from a wash? She dashed to the
kitchen annexe and dashed back with a towel. She dipped one end of it in the
basin, squeezed it out and dabbed her cheeks and passed it over her eyes and
forehead. Then she mopped herself with the drier parts of the towel, and cried;
“That’s it, Baby! Thaa’s as far as I’m going with my ablutions.” With her
hair-clips in between her lips, she tied her hair up in a bun at the back,
buttoned her sleeves, and sat on the unmade bed. Her eyes strayed all around,
looking for her socks on the floor. She then leaned her bundled torso forward
and brought her head between her legs to look under the bed and managed to drag
out her beige woollen socks.
“Hey, Thesz, hows abou’ some tea?” She
looked at him with those fulsome and intelligent-looking cold-fire eyes of
hers. Now and then gold streaks gleamed out of her eyes.
Theson gave her a brief unsmiling gaze and
took himself to the annexe. Meanwhile Melka had gone down the corridor to the
water closet, and soon enough as the water boiled in a small dented aluminium
pan, he could hear her pull the rusted chain several times. There was a pause
and again he could hear her tussling with the chain. At long last, it gave, and
Theson could hear the rock like bundle of water, strips of newspaper and mush
thrust and shoot down the metal funnel down several floors with a clatter and
bang daba bang bang bangsooooossshhhhcchH. Melka was back and rubbing her hands
together and blowing into them. Theson poured out the vaporising water into two
mugs with tea bags.
“Hey, You…You bucking Buster! No milk?”
Theson shook his head. He went into the annexe and came back with an opened
packet of white sugar in grains and a long tea spoon. Melka stirred the sugar,
three spoonfuls. There was a half-eaten packet of three-day-old grainy
wholewheat biscuits on the table. They fell apart to the touch. Theson offered
the opened packet. She shook her head. Then she reached out and extracted a
couple and handed one to Theson. She sat on the chair sideways, her legs
doubled up, her back in a stoop, her busts crushed in her doubled-up lap, her
usually bulging
When she had finished, she jumped up. “I must go, Theszz. See ya at the pizza
joint”. She kissed him on his right ear and drew the door close behind her
while giving him a quick ambiguous concerned and/or worried look. She must have
felt he didn’t approve of her scant post-coital ablutions.
....where am i…shut in a riddle…or just a
pun on melka’s lips…and will her punning
make of me an enigma during her… her myein in somebody else’s… mystos…
mysterion… the puzzle of her laconic smile riddled in the conundrum of her
mystosed orgasm …will the problem persist every time I riddle her… myein to my
repeated states of mystos…me as my own enigma caught forever in a conundrum
from an unlived past…a past like a puzzle slowly falling into place…one
mysterious piece after another…constituting a lost body…a mysterious body…that
gave over to another bodiless body…
…the air in the island circulates… breezes
through the pong of ponds and landlocked rivers ploughed with sampans caving
blotched atap roofs mounted on junks tongkang with tongkan bringing in the opium from deepwater boats anchored
off-shore… stone one-storey shophouses laden with hoarse hawkers in the
pillared five-foot ways…children growing up in the sweat of steaming baked sex
sold for a sliver on the climb up a march to the sodden room without ceilings
or lockable doors dirty linen sarongs
kebayas cheongsams loose baggy handstitched underwear on bamboo poles stuck
out to dry in the stifling air…not long after in a room back to a window
opening out to a pockmarked tar road under the block shadow of the Cathay
building… the slightly lazy hazy light of the morning shut in the bare except
for a calendar hanging loose a wad of paper in the centre containing the
tear-off for each day of the year…with the richly garlanded Murukan on his
peacock the vel at his side staring with those rounded eyes and following you
as you shifted…in the oblong unpapered room a rough wooden table two chairs on
either side face to face two dusky men one slightly rotund moustache glasses
spaced-out thinning hair in dark
chocolate longs a belt holding up the front where a plain silk slightly mauve
shirt… one tail loose… the other younger around mid-twenties or thirty athletic
tight some bones showing no belly like his colleague… in white a dull coarse
white for trousers and a silk plain Manilla shirt hanging loose…
…a self-proclaimed great poet acquaintance of his sent Theson to the man accompanied
by his office subordinates at the Employees Provident Fund Board…the up and
boiling new-local-grad PAP officer said: for
the life of me I’m not coming with you… he looked at me, eyes narrowing…was it a
trick? this fella’s as slippery as a well-head-to-foot-oiled Persian half-naked
loin-clothed wrestler I thought… or did I think that up? I’m dead scared of the guy. He sees everything, he sees through you…he
knows everything that’s going to happen to you…god…he scares the devil out of
me.…yet the man could have been in cohorts with the astrologer with the
local special branch…seen my secret files seen my life story unfolding in typed
order culled from notes wiled out of my family…my poor unsuspecting mother who
could not have guessed could not have divined the purpose of distant
schoolmates calling when I was away…away in other lands…who never called while
i was there…and who when they did… got caught unable to rightly say why they
were there…
…you are
dead you shouldn’t be alive…you have neither friends nor family…no one on your
side…
…why should he live…of what use is his life to
this world…where’s it going…who does it satisfy…who does it help…whose vengeance assuaged…he didn’t ask
to be born…if it only could have ended as it should have on the number of
life-threatening and endangered moments of his youthful days…now it’s too
late…he has to live…he’s the cause of at least one and perhaps another
life…call it an excuse call it what you like that’s the truth…if you think not…
what does it matter? who the devil are you to accuse anyone? He has no
past… no past worth knowing…no possible
future with meaning…is there a pain more
painful than the act of putting into this world a life marred by birth…what
karma demands it…isn’t the creation
of an un-willed un-thought-of-life the worst crime on earth…why…why did you you put me on this earth
says the child…the woman who cheats… the woman who thwarts thwarted by her
absent father thwarts her life to thwart her son’s…and you get caught in this
muddle this riddle this windowless boxed-in huit
clos …think your son’s your son…think of another life gone fart what matter
if yours works out… can it… must it work out…so you’d say his karma is tied to yours or rather it’s
your karma to exact his pound of
flesh…karma or no karma how do you justify this world if
your own blood and flesh or even somebody else’s says
why did you put me in this world
…there is
no present nor no past…only the future…we are all creators…creators of the
future…a future without a past…only an ever-present future that has come to
pass… past long long years ago… aeons
ago…a burgeoning future dead to the seer…he who sees ahead dies in the present
for he sees his death the death of all that is…look into the future and you
have modified it for yourself…have appropriated a universe all to yourself with
your modified future…the rest of the future other peoples’ futures goes on as
usual…how many futures and universes are there? shouldn’t there be countless
numbers in countless dimensions each a novel in his own handwriting in his own
blood…other lives to serve his own modified future…close your eyes and think
away all the other universes the other myriad dimensional universes…open your
eyes and drop into this static common unvarying universe the same sun the same
streets convoluting in and out of your pathless memory past the same signposts
past the same faces thinking ill of you wanting their bodies their love their
trust their support their joys
…give a child a mother any but a cheating
treacherous mother…no mother worth her juices will touch bathe kiss caress
dress feed breastfeed hug or sleep with her child after sucking a thieving
cowardly Graham-Greenish coot: “married
women are the easiest to get” date rope tryst and thrust in hotels after
waiting for the husband to leave for work for duty for the family’s keep after waiting for him to fall off to
sleep after waiting in the shadows to
lurk past when the cuckolded fool walks past thinking he’s some bold and
honourable king loved and respected by his kin oblivious to the many who shake
his hands even as his woman shakes trembles and thunders in their loins after men who look coolly in your eyes
with contempt and snigger at your innocence at your ignorance of the betrayal
of trust in the name of your child…she says all amused: my mother says any woman who cheats ought to be burnt alive with the
mattress soaked in kerosene…
Theson
turned left twice and found himself at the mouth of the Hauptstrasse. He was in
two minds. What! Yet once again down the
same road, the same glances alongside shop windows, the same ‘Hi! Hello!
Morgen! Wie Gehts! Tschüss! Bis später! See yea later! Buddy, Später!’ He
stopped for a while to look into a window. A shoe shop. A thick-boned but
sleek-looking woman in a dull cream-coloured two-piece suit was leaning against
a counter, an air of unresponsive expectation lying vacant in her unobtrusively
fixed gaze. She eyed him. Theson merely let his eyes wander over the
arrangement of jilted high-heels perched at different levels on the
precariously strung-out window display. Like trees shooting listlessly on a
Javanese stepped mountain rice cultivation slope. The stilettoes sleek and
tapering like shorn trunks. He looked
down the road. No one he saw wore high heels. Maybe they were meant for evening
wear, for a formal occasion; a dinner appointment, a cocktail…His mind strayed…he had no desire to proceed
along the same route his legs had led him. Wasn’t I walking down this very same
street years ago? With the same thoughts? Wasn’t it just there…he turned
his face and looked ahead of the new coffee place across the road where some
one or other of his acquaintances would be sipping hot, sour, black coffee in
shallow yellow cups standing around small round table tops on tall solitary
stilts against yellowish walls. All along one wall ran a sliver of a counter
with no seating arrangements nor mirrors…the waitresses in stiff yellowish
aprons brought together in front by darkish mauve buttons like pieces of
chocolate biscuits; behind a high long counter to the right, the coffee machine
belched, coughing every now and then; the clatter of cups in saucers as the
waitresses sauntered rapping the solid floor on squat sharp low heels, their blond swathes wrapped around their
heads…For long moments he stood and turned his head…the woman in the two-piece
suit now fixed him with her dark eyes, her expression changing from expectation
to curiosity and then a tinge of disapproval crept through her face and stayed
there…Was I peeping? Was I looking? Or
was I peeping? What right had I to look into her window-dressing? Was I
blocking from view her wares? Who was looking with me? Who among the passers-by
cast even a mere glance at the window?... Many among those passing though
shifted their pace, broke élan, even stopped to let others pass before they
avoided Theson in their hurry to lunch or…Theson could not/did not stir. His
eyes searched the patch of pavement past the coffee shop leading past the
department store whose doors opened into two streets, its neon lights bright
and chirpy in the brazing air.
…there she goes…i wonder…could i…maybe she’d
look back…anyway if it’s not she…it’s got to be her…that brown plaited skirt
spreading below the knees…black long stockings tightly drawn over thick fleshy
but vollschlang legs…oh yes that
wilfull bounce in her step…flat brown canvass-cum-leather shoes…loose woollen
cardigan hanging down over what-looked-like a shirt…light-blue furling out and
around her stiff long thick pale neck…her dark streams of tough hair tied in a
chignon and bobbing at every step…her expressionless face…dead cool eyes…wan
complexion…broad forehead and almost flabby cheeks…the blood hardly coursed
through her China livid paleness… she must have come out of some shop…she was gaining ground threading
her way nimbly through the charging crowd on the pavement…can’t keep up with
her…got to run…giv’er chase boy…go …go..it’s now or never…semester’s at an
end…the summer’s hotting up…lads and lassies are teaming up for the holidays…
…I just simply got to thank her…can’t leave
things as they are…yes i did make her look cheap that day standing in the alley
opposite the church beside the corner ice-cum-coffee place…she had her leg up
on the wall…i had just hailed her when she was on her way up so late at ten to
the West African chappie’s place on the first floor…she always said she went
there to type up something or other for him…
my eye… at that hour…who’s she kidding…what, it
was going up to ten…ten-thirty…or am i exaggerating…no, it was late …at the
earliest…not earlier than nine-thirty…it was always so with her…she could spend
a night in some place and it was only for this or for that… not for anything
intimate…sodomy for her was not sex…it was not part of love-making…besides
there was no need for protection…it was a way for her to preserve her lesbian
tendencies… if asked if she had ever had sex…she’d say she was a virgin…and she
would clam up…that put an end to the interrogation… remember the time she was
up a whole night with Eckhardt who lived in a first floor corner-house in a
huge room with windows opening onto both the Kettengasse and Merianstrasse…the
spacious dimly-lit double-room… constantly damp but with entrances announcing a
big set-up wood-carving bannistered broad stairways leading up to a huge thick
castle door fixed to the outer wall but the lavatory was on the landing the
place smelt of a trysting demeurre
probably the block itself belonging to some noble with livery stables not far
away…Eckhardt too looked the part… erect lean elegantly bootstrapped… an air of
good times gone by…perhaps a hint of the spoilt child…a profligate prodigal son
now on the mend the gentle wistful pose as of a time wet-nursed by fussing
ladies of the court and in his voice the reminders of un-chastised breeding by
example…he was always glad of the knock on the door… there were never girls in
his company if ever a girl lurked in the casual remark it was only to excuse
his immediate contact conversation and he was back again all ears all attention
a glass of tea without sugar nor milk the record player always open ready for
the demonstration of Bertolt Brecht’s The
Three-Penny Opera which he explained after every line, lifting the
needle-head ever so deftly every time the explanations followed by translations
called for it…you should pick up all the German you can, you know, Mein Herr you are missing a whole world
a whole world of wit and satire caricature and repartee…
Sabina said: I didn’t sleep with him he’s
dreaming imagining those things he’s been listening to those penny ha’penny
records day in day out he must think he’s in the opera himself or maybe he has
re-written the opera with me in his bed…but he says you spent the night in his
bed…but that’s because he wouldn’t letgo of me…i brought him back from that Fasching party all but drunk unable to
find his way back…didn’t you think some boy was best fitted for the task…anyway
what’s so far from anywhere in these darkly lighted up alleyways one couldn’t
hold on to walls and be back all safe…she was stuck…she said: no i wanted to
leave as well it was late he was heading in the same direction as the Anlage… i
had merely to cross the Uni-Platz to get back home…i thought we could hold each
other up, i mean keep each other company…there was that guy that Canadian fella
and then that Ghanaian who was eyeing me all evening getting too close in
jiving touching me in the wrong places breathing down my neck i thought the
best i could do was to hook up with Eckhardt so we left together…did he tell
you that…did he say i went up to his place to sleep with him...wait till i see
him…wait just a bit i’ll go and catch him right now and slap him right in the
face…no…no..that won’t be necessary…so now you believe me…but what did he tell
you…did he say i got into bed with him…i held my silence i could see she meant
business she was going to make this a big enough case to rile my relations with
one man someone who did no harm to me someone who practised a form of total
hospitality on the level friendship someone i liked someone of the kind from
another age from another world of decorum open respectful always willing to
instruct with his sense of courtesy and enthusiasm his culture his knowledge
his admiration for the creative spirit a refined and evenly reserved sensible fellow
feeling i couldn’t find it in me to hurt in any way and even if he was
confronted face to face with Sabina he was bound to play the noble part and
aver his lack of consciousness of his possibly self-induced state of
drunkenness or fantasy of a sleepful night to excuse her from blame…what’s the
use you can’t beat her in this surnoiserie…she
always had an answer and if she didn’t she’d clam up and that was it you’d have
no way of prising open her obstinacy and who knows what other phobias
obsessions psychic barriers she rolled out of or hid behind…you either gave up
and continued as if nothing had happened while quietly letting her win… letting
her have her way… letting her believe she was right above all… letting her set up her own truth as the unverifiable
but only truth…in any case she was not going to drag you to Eckhardt’s place
right away for the confrontation right away to clear up the goings-on of the
night when she was up there…she was merely playing her game and if you agreed
then and there to go up to Eckhardt’s she would draw out her sabres and carving
knives and would be willing to lay her reputation on the chopping block with
such denials as would make the poor man relent and break down unable to come
between us unable but willing to remember whatever it was that happened as she
would have wanted it…even if the fact was that she really did accompany him…
she admitted it… to his apartment undressed him put him to bed and because he
wouldn’t let go of her went to bed with him and left the next day while he was
still asleep…this she didn’t dispute…what she disputed was having sex with
him…how curious for if he was so drunk as to not know what he was doing he
could have done what he said he had and not remember what he did…likewise she
could deny what he did knowing he was drunk and wouldn’t remember what he did
so that she could deny it to his face…in any case she had no answer to the
question: do you go around sleeping with naked young men in their own beds just
because they happen to be drunk and wanted you in bed as well...
… she had her foot up on the step in the rough
thick grainy stained centuries-old stone wall…a wall like a church’s back
standing sturdy through the ages…she was in black tights and black décolletage…black ballerina shoes...her
thick black hair hanging loose in cascades about her shoulders…a head of snow
on a charred bumpy twisted terrain… the temptation was great because she was
willing to talk…to wait…to listen…so i let my hand touch her knee…she didn’t
retract her thrust-up leg…i was encouraged…my hand almost became balladeuse…then she let her leg drop…no…she wasn’t really offended she seemed to
say…but she said she had to go upstairs and as if she was excusing herself for
the lateness of the hour and the visit asked if i wanted to come up as well…he
was the secretary of the Ausländer african students body of sorts…she had
business with him…she worked with the university’s Auslandsamt… how convenient i thought…and followed her up the two
flights of stairs unable to take my eyes off her butt and the flapping instep
flesh of her thighs…
… a drab bare large room with a huge table a
little apart from the main door…he wasn’t by any guess expecting anybody else
but the girl…he had done the necessary ménage…dressed
in a pale white shirt and silky-looking trousers held up by a flashy leather
belt with a golden-looking buckle…medical textbooks arranged on a shelf… the
narrow bulging bed draped and neat near the window…in fact two windows one
beside the other opening into the Wergasse…you could reach out with a broom and
hit the opposite wall, except that it was bare…a window or two well-barred
closed…seemed like no-one lived in there…perhaps an office during the day…in
any case it blocked the light of day and at night - as then - only the street
lights from the Hauptstrasse the decorative tourist shine from the Heiliggeistkirche the lights from moving
traffic and the lights and obstreperous blasts from the corner student coffee
joint above the Cave… a night club
where ripping jazz music bee-bop and blues struggled to break through the
basement door as it opened or closed letting in callers, mostly Germans come to
be thrilled by the Blacks from the nearby Kaiserslautern American camp…
…The man
was light-skinned, broad-breasted and patently broad of manner…affectedly
expansive, mocking…difficult to say whether he was of
“Got only
tea. That alright?”
“O.K. with me if it’s O.K. with her.”
“Just fine”, she said, as if preparing to
settle in for the night.
By the time
he had poured out the hot water into the fragile-looking Japanese red pot of
leaves, he had already sized up his potential rival through well-placed
questions: name, country of origin, subject studied, under whom, living where, who i knew and so forth and so on and the
greater was his desire to see the back of me, i felt…in the meantime the
girl helped in giving half of the answers like who was the prof in philo…, who
taught Eng-Lit., the Englishmen on the staff…she appeared rather caught in a
monkey wrench between the two stark brown men, both with apparent designs on
her, both set by the woman the task of having to tussle it out for the prize
she became. She looked rather pleased with herself. As though she knew she
would have to be won. As though the two men would have to sprout horns and lock
them then and there till blood poured or brains were gashed. She tried to avert
her eyes from Theson, sensing the African’s animosity. The latter kept darting looks at her to see if she was looking at me. The
evening wearing on, she, a native German, nineteen, already three years of
semesters under her corsette, knocking around with foreign students all the
time, no thesis nor dissertation in view, no thought of the future yet. She had
a stipend. Made up the rest by the few hours she kept at the Auslandsamt at the Uni-Platz, each morning. No father to answer to. He had another
family with grown-up daughters of the same age; worked in the same town as her
mother, a domestic science teacher at a primary establishment, which she
elevated – whenever asked – to as much as a full-blown secondary school
qualified teacher. Her father too whom she never wanted to see was shackled to
pay up alimony, after the blood test, all her non-adult life. ‘You know, he has two daughters. I saw them a
couple of times. They look like me. You’d say I was born to their mother.’
She was born in a southern light-industries town that now boasts of a ballet
troupe and an American camp in its outskirts. And she was proud of the fact
that her mother could prove her
father’s paternity, a soldier in the army who took his fun as it came or as it
was offered – in haste. She made light of her sister’s paternity, by another
man, single this time, but had gone to pots, so there was no possibility of a
surrogate father either lurking in the wings. All she had of “fatherly”
presence was the occasional Hausgast
who came to stay a week or two before returning to some one else. Somewhere in
her, vengeance rankled. Vengeance writhed like a pre-historic animal waking to
a thaw under fifty feet of ice after the meteor burst in the bowels of the
Siberian wastes. She, a woman in her eyes, had a woman for a mother, a woman
for a half-sister, a woman for a grandmother – all having made good without a
man around the place. This was achievement. This was sanctity. This was glory.
Whither comes the lamb for the slaughter.
…yes, I have to thank
her…can’t leave things as they are…
before I knew it she was gone past a bunch of
summer-clad youths in paper hats trumpets in hand waving handkerchiefs and silk
scarves shouting in unison some fraternity motto announcing their colours
announcing their age-old insignia a tasseled penant or two rattling in the
breeze lifting and whipping the dry air into a whirl of noisome colours their
calves in green tight high stockings their brand of fraternity garters in
striped colours their torsos flapping with opened foresters’ green gilets
embossed by crests in white and red their eager faces red with beer and wurst
now to be washed down by tankards over tankards of frothy beer at the Studenten
Prinz near the Karl’s Gate, past the Rathaus where blared student songs…
Ich hab’ mein Herz in
In einer lauen Sommernacht.
Ich war verliebt bis über beide Ohren
Und wie ein Röselein hat ihr Mund gelacht….
round dark brown massively timbered tables and
worn down by elbows and thumping tankards backs to wall arms interlocked and
swaying side to side while booted feet stomped in unison the monotonous beat of
every song the manly brazen company of either sex
Theson made way for the group as they passed in
formation in front of the cinema entrance and by the time he searched with his
eyes peeled and frantic, she was gone from view. He had no idea if she
traversed the narrow Hauptstrasse and entered some shop, so he continued on his
way, thinking, well, maybe, it’s a good thing I never meet her even to say
thank you; could drop her a line, could leave a word with Eckhardt saying thank
you thank you for the parcel of victuals: one tin of ovaltine, or was it
horlicks? Two packets of cracker biscuits, jam – homemade perhaps – sugar
cubes, salt, Bauernbrot, two apples,
mauve with some green showing through, somewhat awkward in shape like the
tortured sketches in Omar Khayyam’s Kuza
Nama… pots all askew, and was there also a tranche of salami looking formidably knobbly… an unused virile
member? But then he doubted if he wasn’t exaggerating the fare. Could all these
go into a small brown box? What does it matter? he thought; the important thing
was that someone who would not declare his or her name made it a point of
letting him have something to eat when he had nothing to eat, that is, before
Frau Waltz realised he was starving for over a
couple of months already and decided to serve him soup or rather broth.
What he didn’t know was that the “she” who remained anonymous until Theson
tracked her down through insisting vehemently with Eckhardt – the go-between
who handed him the carton of victuals – to the point of even severing all his
ties with Eckhardt (for whatever they were worth: Eckhardt lay much store by
honour, friendship, and goodwill, especially with foreigners) – for the identity
of the “giver”, actually later she confessed that she had no need of extra fat;
her mother made it a point of sending a similar carton every week or so and she made it a practice
of conferring her pleasure on needy cases, or just those she invited for a
nibble up at her five-floor Anlage attic flat whose only broad and high window
opening onto the fresh bare-back steeply rising Riesenstein and Gaisberg. On
summer Sundays certain picnickers or rather “Pick-Nickers” set down their
baskets and serviettes on the hump on Gaisberg at her window level – hardly
twenty yards away – to watch her take her cat-lick from a basin of water with
her hand-towel while the gusty wind lifted the loosely-hanging blue bands of
cloth which served as blinds. Her only dream was that she could have been born
slim and tight, so that she might shine on stage with the lights focussed on
her. As things stood, she was too plumpy and willowy for her liking; even her
bones displayed stockiness from within the shell of billowy flesh; besides, she
was “attracted” to slim and lithesome women. The Indian damsels of Bollywood
make thrilled her; though even less than the girlish prudish lilt in Latha
Mangeshkar’s lilting poignant sung melodies. Was she inclined that-a-way? Yes,
she said. Yes, she felt so thrilled by being with that kind of a girl even if
the other didn’t suspect it or didn’t react to her warm, cool coveting glares.
She confessed to Theson in a moment of abandon, as though she wanted honour
showered upon her for risking such confidence on the man she had finally
grabbed for herself. Theson listened, amused, half in unbelief and half
wondering at her boldness.
“I
would sit next to such a one in the lecture hall and find my heart skip in a
flurry, beating a bit faster than usual; find my loins getting wet when I was
about to shower.”
How’s that? Asked Theson. D‘you shower
between classes?
Sabina looked at Theson, a blankness all of a
sudden covering her face. She heard his question, the interruption, but her
sights were fixed elsewhere, in a private reverie. She could have been all by
herself, or perhaps at a therapeutic session in some cabinet.
“After rehearsing…
that was at the Stadtbühne. All the
girls stringy and springy.”
Once she even secretly selected one such chick
for herself, and always strained to be at her side, and when she saw her
undress and make her way to the shower, she was in a dither: she wanted to
reach out and hug her, reach out and caress her; reach out and cradle her head
on her bosom, in her lap. She felt these feelings growing on her naturally. She
neither felt guilty nor ashamed about her secret sentiments. She felt it was
after all just right; she tall, broad of stature and bulkier, sullen and grave
with unwavering eyes, and the chick of her choice bubbly, gay, lithesome and
cuddlesome, and so innocent-looking, she never even once suspected Sabina’s
designs, Sabina’s overwhelming concerns for her every need, overwhelming
enveloping glances in her direction, and constant patience at waiting on her
carefree, joyous prances.
But Liselotte had an admirer, too; one who
parleyed words with her on stage and had
to for the part take her in his arms and kiss her longingly and then she would
have to unclasp herself in mock anger, but she couldn’t; she couldn’t feign
being indifferent. The kiss was a real kiss, lovingly placed on her lips and
cheeks and temples, ruffling her stagelight-kissed burnished locks in the
process. Every time he had to kiss her, and that amounted to many times, as the
producer wasn’t quite satisfied with her feigning anger, and even disgust, she
fell more and more under Wolfgang’s quiet dignity and aplomb. He never said
much to her when they adjourned after rehearsals to the Konditorei for an ice cream, and Liselotte didn’t have the heart to
refuse Sabina tagging along; neither did Wolfgang, for she played her best part
when she was with them: concealing her inner sentiments even when Wolfgang put
his arms around Liselotte’s shoulders or lit her cigarette with his, or brought
his free hand down on her lap when making a point about the way the producer
directed the play. Sabina betrayed none of her private feelings for Liselotte,
not even when she really didn’t agree with Wolfgang’s critique of the way the
rehearsals were going. She even tried overly to please Wolfgang, sometimes
prodding in an indirect way Liselotte’s incipient feelings of jealousy. And
when they were together alone, she would say to her:
“You know the trick with kissing. I know you
don’t feel at ease there.”
“Ach sooo! That! He kisses and I melt. I tell
you, I don’t even know where I am. After the third time, I have a feeling we
are in bed, naked.”
“There’s a way, you know. You don’t have to
really kiss him. If it bothers you that much, just put your faces side by side,
you know, mouth past mouth, and the audience will think you’re kissing.”
“But you don’t see, I want to kiss him. I want
him to kiss me. Three times, ten times, a million times, hard, strong, lolling
his tongue on mine, uuuuhh…forever and ever.”
It was like a kingfisher hammering away on
Sabina’s temples, these words, so unexpected. She held her breath as they
walked past three sleek African students in flannels and dark pullovers over
bright open-necked shirts; they came out of the poorly-lit enclosure of St.
Peter’s Church as they turned left into the Anlage. They looked at the two or
rather they fixed them with their shiny, yellowy-livid eyes from a distance and
didn’t shift them until Sabina recognising one of them said, “Tschüss!” The
tall savvy-looking gentleman breathed out heavily, and stumbled out an
“Afffwiedershen!” as he and his companions turned to look at their backs as
they hurriedly crossed the road. It was late and there were very few people on
this quieter but dreary-looking back street, running parallel to the main
street. It looked as desolate at ten-thirty as at eight, but strangely came
alive in the wee hours when the one or two nightclubs serving American soldiers
emptied out. Huge road-filling Cadillacs and self-inturned Volkswagens whirred
as their occupants shouted, calling out to some one or other on foot. The
residential and official buildings set against the slope of the steeply rising
back of the Schloss hills lay covered
in a mire of mist, in deep retreat from all signs of confrontation. Something
in the air lay beaten down and heavy. Even Gothic. Transylvanian.
…just when Theson felt he had passed up the
opportunity of thanking the woman, just
when the student fraternity group threaded its way past him, she shot out of
the long, lean superstore, with entrances and exits on the Hauptstrasse and the
Landfriedstrasse, her face sullen and pensive, yet receptive, as though she had
been stalking Theson for hours and expecting, well, wanting, the encounter to
take place. The truth is, no such plan could have been hatched. She knew him
alright by sight and hearsay. She had received him at the Auslandsamt. She had
recorded his name and address down for temporary student employment. She had
even accompanied him to the Dolmetscher Institut to get him a false certificate
about his proficiency in German in order to get him enrolled at the
Philosophisches Fakultät. He needed the student card to obtain permission to
reside in the country from the local police headquarters. But ever since the
encounter at Kettengasse when they went up to the African student-leader’s
place, she affected stand-offishness; her head held far back on the stretched
spine which gave her a full-grown swan’s stiffness and coldness.
Theson
was caught unawares, unable to deal with surprise, unable to react with
sobriety for the pent-up feeling built in him for over a couple of hundred
yards, balanced by a feeling of remorse for his behaviour with his “balladeuse”
hand hardly a month after his arrival in the place – accidentally – with Bob
Boyd , the American air force lieutenant stationed at Kassel and whom he had
met on a Tottenham Court Road junction beside Foyle’s bookshop in London
while listening to a street jazz band
playing bee-bop…yes they had met the very first day when Bob decided to attend
a yoga performance at the student recreation centre given by a travelling
Indian “yogi” where due to a back pain earned from a weeklong hitch-hiking
tramp from London via den Haag through Aachen-Giessen to Kassel, Theson sat up
stiff with his back against the wall for support, all through the evening in
the midst of a whispering and giggling
disinterested crowd – Sabina being one of them who was most amused, Theson
fought sleep from his eyes and limbs till hunger gnawed his insides out…yes,
they had already met or rather they had already crossed eyes: he as usual
attracted by luscious-looking women, she hardly registering even liking or
other kind of attraction; perhaps because of Bob who always wherever he was
occupied centre stage, not because of his effeminate looks, chicken-chest and
formless thin lips but invariably because of his self-assurance, birdy voice,
always unafraid to express his opinions aloud while cracking a joke or two that
none of the Germans understood but admired for the way he delivered it – head
held high, deadpan face, and ending with the spoilt brat pout and bubbly
laughter that he cultivated in order to conceal his less than manly un-American
and un-soldierly posture and pose
So they met. They could so easily not have met.
What’s a thankyou? Considering what each one of them was dragged into for the
rest of their lives, and the unconscionable pain of having added yet one more
totally inept life to this world, a life doomed right from the start, a life by
its very existence reduced either of them to the depths of horror and disgust,
enmity and mutual destruction, and in Theson’s case, almost every member of his
far-flung family paid the price of having to endure all sorts of slights, deep
want, broken careers, unpaid dowries and the abuses his sisters endured all
their lives and a mother distraught with shame and abandon…none could have
foreseen the devastation that lay in store, none could have – even if they had
known the truth awaiting them in the years to come –none could have foresworn the pain and humiliation
that awaited them with jaws wide open.
He said: Thank you very much for the parcel.
She said: What parcel?
He said: The parcel of victuals you let me have.
Through Eckhardt.
She said: I didn’t give Eckhardt anything for you.
He said: Yes, I know. You didn’t give Eckhardt the
parcel – directly, but you gave it to someone else and she gave it to Eckhardt.
She said
nothing.
He said: Thank you all the same.
He looked
at her. She wasn’t even interested in listening, he thought.
So he said: I’m leaving
She said
nothing and hurried her steps.
He said: I’m leaving this weekend.
She had already gone on. She might have heard
him, and then again, she mightn’t have.
She walked on and turned into an alley. He
tried to catch up with her in the first burst of steps; then desisted. He felt
flattened, unburdened. He had done his bit. He got it off his chest.
It had
taken him some three weeks to track the unknown “giver” of victuals, some Santa
Claus, indeed. It took a lot of persuasion and insistence, overall a sort of
threatening insistence for Eckhardt, the go-between, to even let the mastodon
out of its kennel.
He said as
though he was vomiting the frog that blocked the passage until then: Go see … but you must promise me right now
you won’t tell her I told you. I don’t want trouble with people…you know, women
coming screaming out here.
So, it’s a woman?
I didn’t say, it’s a woman.
Eckhardt
appeared strained by the conversation.
Okay, I promise.
Go see… He paused to look Theson in the face, but his
eyes seemed to see other faces more frightening and foreboding. Go see
Annemarie. She works weekends at the nightclub tending the bar. You know,
the bar right behind the Rektorat.
You mean, it’s Annamarie?
Nein, I didn’t say that. I just said, go see
Annemarie. She must know. She’s the one who gave me the parcel with a message
to hand it to you.
You mean, the …yes, I think I know the place. Will
she tell me?
I don’t know. That’s up to her.
I tell you, I already feel bad about the whole
thing. I gave her my word not to tell. If ever she finds out, she’d come
shrieking here like the fiendish harpy she is.
Eckhardt
looked like he had got the wind up alright. Theson must have wondered what made
him fear women so much. Yet he had a girl or at least it looked like that, a
small teen-looking girl with flaxen pleats. She never said a word whenever
Theson was around. And he couldn’t quite remember if he was ever introduced to
her properly. Perhaps a mere gesture: Here’s
Annelore… They had perhaps nodded at each other, he couldn’t say.
Theson was
thinking. Why? What’s the mystery? Why
should a small thing…I mean, an act of giving some food to someone in need be
such a crime.
Eckhardt
shook his head and prepared to leave. Theson’s visits even if they pleased him,
for they were occasions for laying out one example after another of German arts
and culture to a foreigner, had with this incident grown too harassing for his
gentle, reflective inclinations. They descended the wide and worn wooden
creaking stairs in silence. Eckhardt appeared worried as he threw his muffler
across his shoulders. The night didn’t threaten to turn chilly though. Only a
slight breeze slided down from the Schloss.
They shook hands and parted, each with his own balance sheet of gain and loss.
Theson felt
elated as he passed by the bar front of the nightclub. He stopped to read
through the menu in a glass case. The place looked dreary on the outside. The
façade dipped low. Looked macabre without the lights. Inside, dim coloured
lights showed black and white aproned figures moving about the tables and long
broad bar-counter.
Sabina had turned down some lane, and Theson was feeling relieved. So, I was right from the start. I don’t know why, but I knew it was her.