Group Portrait with Lady (44 page)

And indeed the Au. did enter the rather dilapidated little chapel, observing with some concern the crumbling sentimental frescoes in the charming (architecturally speaking) shell-shaped niches. It was dirty inside the chapel, cold and damp, and in order to have a good look at the altar, which had been robbed of all its metal ornamentation, the Au. indulged in a few matches (whether he can charge them to his income tax has not yet been determined; since he is a heavy smoker his consumption of matches is considerable, and an audit—by highly paid public and private experts—has still to be made to decide whether some thirteen to sixteen matches can be written off to expenses). Behind the altar the Au. found some dust of vegetable origin that still had a strangely reddish-purple tinge and could unquestionably have derived from decomposed
heather; the nature of the female garment normally worn under a dress or sweater on the upper part of the body was explained to him, as he left the chapel in a daze, by Grundtsch as the latter puffed away at his pipe. “Oh well, I guess they go in there sometimes, a few couples wandering off this way and desperate for somewhere to go, no doorway, no money for a room, ones who aren’t scared of the dead.”

It turned out to be a nice long walk in the nippy air, the evening just right to be rounded off with a kirsch at Grundtsch’s place.

“What happened was,” Grundtsch went on, “that I simply lost my nerve when I heard there was all that heavy fighting going on back home, and I wanted to go back and see my mother again and be there if she needed me. She was getting on for eighty after all, and it was twenty-five years since I’d been to see her, and though she’d spent her life running after the priests that wasn’t her fault, it was the fault of certain” (chuckle) “structures. It was crazy, but off I went, much too late, relying on my knowledge of the countryside. After all, as a kid I used to herd the cows there, and sometimes I’d go through the forest and along the edge of the forest as far as the White Wehe and Red Wehe rivers. But as luck would have it those donkeys caught me just beyond Düren, stuck a rifle in my hand, gave me an armband, and sent me off with a party of half-grown youths into the forest. Well, what I did was simulate a scout party—I remembered all that crap from the last war—and took those few lads along—but my knowledge of the countryside was no use to me now, it wasn’t countryside any more, it was nothing but craters, tree stumps, mines, and if the Yanks hadn’t picked us up pretty soon we’d have had it—they were the ones, of course, who knew which paths weren’t mined.

“Luckily at least those lads came through, so did I, though it was quite a while before they let me go, four months of empty
stomachs and tents, muck and cold, well, it wasn’t exactly a picnic with the Yanks, I’ve had rheumatism ever since and I never saw my mother again. Some German blockhead shot her dead for running up a white flag—the little place lay between the lines, sometimes the Yanks, sometimes the Germans, and my old woman didn’t want to leave. And the Germans actually let my old mum have it with a machine pistol though she was nearly eighty, most likely the same bastards who’re now getting monuments put up to them. And still the priests are doing damn all about stopping those fucking monuments from being put up. I tell you, I’d just about had it when the Yanks finally let me go in June, with the agricultural workers. I had quite a time getting out, what’s more, though I genuinely did belong in that category. The word about agricultural workers, see, had been kept dark in camp by members of the Catholic Guild, and they passed it on as a tip to their buddies. Well, I made like old Father Kolping himself, like a Christian worker, rattled off a few pious sayings, and that way I got out by June.

“When I got back here I found a nice little business, all cleaned up and running properly and duly handed over to me by Mrs. Hölthohne, together with the lease. I’ve never forgotten that, and to this day she still gets her flowers from me at cost. Sonny Boy never asked
me
for a reference—I’d have let him sweat it out for a few months at least, I don’t mind telling you, seeing as how he came through all those bad times without a scratch. Just as a kind of therapy of course, a bit of squirming wouldn’t have done him any harm. Well, he treated me right too, he worked out my share of the business and gave me a loan so I could finally start up my own business. We divided up the accounts between us, the ones for perpetual grave care, and he was generous, I must say, in helping me out
with seed, but I still say that six months or so locked up some place would’ve done that fellow good.”

The Au. stayed on a while (about an hour and a half) at Grundtsch’s, the latter giving not the least sign of tearfulness and from then on maintaining a soothing silence. It was nice and cozy at his place, there was beer and kirsch, and here in Grundtsch’s quarters the Au. was permitted something that Grundtsch had forbidden him to do while in the cemetery (“You can see a cigarette for miles.”): to smoke.

As Grundtsch accompanied the Au. outside, again guiding him past the slippery rubbish, Grundtsch said, in a voice full, if not of tears, of emotion: “Something drastic must be done to get Leni’s boy out of the clink. All he did was make a fool of himself, after all. He was only trying to get some kind of personal restitution from that Hoyser gang. He’s a fine lad, just like his mother, like his father too, and don’t forget he was born right where I live and he worked for me for three years before going to work for the cemetery and then becoming a street cleaner. A fine lad, and not nearly as close-mouthed as his mother. We have to do something for that lad. He used to play here as a kid, when Leni came to help Pelzer out, and later myself, during the busy season. If necessary I’d hide him here in this very cemetery where his father was hidden. Not a soul would ever find him here, besides, he doesn’t have my fear of vaults and cellars.”

The Au. bid him a cordial farewell and promised—a promise he intends to keep—to come again; he also promised to give young Gruyten, if he managed to escape from jail, what Grundtsch called the “tip about the cemetery.” “And what’s more,” Grundtsch called out after the Au., “tell him there’ll always be a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup and a smoke for him at my place. No matter what.”

The following is a summary of the few extant quotations direct from Leni:

“to walk the streets” (to save her piano from seizure)

“creatures with souls” (in the universe)

“impromptu little dance” (with E.K.)

“when the time comes, to be buried in it” (in her bathrobe)

“Come on now, tell me! What’s all this stuff coming out of me?” (Leni as a little girl, referring to her excrements)

“spread-eagled and in total surrender”; “opened up”; “taken”; “given” (experience in the heather)

“Please, please give me this Bread of Life! Why must I wait so long?” (statement that led to her being refused First Communion)

“And then that pale, fragile, dry tasteless thing was placed on my tongue—I almost spat it out again!” (referring to her actual First Communion)

“muscle business” (referring to her “paperless status” in connection with bowel movements)

“whom I mean to love, to whom I can give myself unreservedly”; “dream up daring caresses”; “he is to find joy in me and I in him” (referring to “the right man”)

“The fellow” (does not have) “tender hands” (first rendezvous)

“so I could have a little cry in peace” (visits to the movies)

“so sweet, so terribly sweet and nice” (her brother Heinrich)

“scared of him because he was so terribly well educated” (her brother Heinrich)

“then surprised because he was so awfully, awfully nice” (her brother Heinrich)

“managed quite well to keep his head above water”; “wrecker” (referring to her father after 1945)

“even in those days probably represented a genuine temptation for Father, by which I don’t mean she was a
temptress”
(referring to Lotte H.)

“awful, awful, awful” (referring to the family coffee gatherings with her brother H.)

“Our poets never flinched from cleaning out a john” (after
she
had cleaned out Margret’s plugged john, referring to H. and E.)

“It (mustn’t and shouldn’t happen) in bed.” “In the open, in the open. This whole business of going to bed together is not what I’m looking for” (speculations in Margret’s presence regarding an activity commonly known as intercourse)

“as far as I was concerned (he) was dead before he was killed” (referring to her husband A.P., after he had forced her to the above-described activity)

“too embarrassing for words” (referring to the escapade with A.)

“She wasted away there, starved to death, although toward the end I always took her some food, and then when she was dead they buried her in the garden, just in shallow earth, with no gravestone or anything; as soon as I got there I sensed that she had gone, and Scheukens said to me: ‘No use now, Miss, no use—unless you want to scratch open the ground?’ So then I went to the mother superior and asked very determinedly for Rahel, and they told me she had gone away, and when I asked where to the mother superior got nervous and said: ‘But child, have your wits deserted you?’ “ (re Rahel’s death)

(nauseating) “sight of those stacks of freshly printed money” (re her office job during the war)

“revenge” (motive assumed by Leni for her father’s Dead Souls manipulation)

“instantly on fire” (laying her hand on Boris)

“much more wonderful than that heather business I once told you about” (see above)

“just then those damned salvos came to a climax” (the moment when Boris declared his love)

“lying together” (Leni to Margret re an otherwise more crudely described activity)

“You know, everywhere I go, on all sides, I see a big sign: Danger!” (re her situation after they had first lain together)

“Why did I have to know it any sooner, there were more important things to talk about, and I told him my name was Gruyten and not Pfeiffer as on the papers” (Leni to Margret re a conversation with Boris)

(that the Americans were) “such slowpokes”

“It’s less than sixty miles, why ever are they taking so long?” (see above)

“Why don’t they come during the day, when are they going to come again during the day, why are the Americans such slowpokes, why is it taking them so long to get here, it’s not that far, is it?” (re the American air raids and their—to Leni—dilatory advance)

“month of the glorious rosary” (re October ’44, during which there were many daylight raids permitting Leni to lie with Boris)

“I have Rahel and the Virgin Mary to thank for that, they’ve neither of them forgotten my devotion to them” (referring to the glorious month)

“Both of them were poets, if you ask me, both of them” (re Boris and Erhard)

“At last, at last, what ages they’ve taken!” (again re the American advance)

(lying together) “was now simply out of the question” (Leni in her pregnant condition)

The Au. would have been only too glad to skip a period in Leni’s life already touched upon by some of the informants: her brief political activity after 1945. He finds himself deserted here not by his visionary powers, merely by his credulity. Is he nevertheless to give credence to what is reported with such credibility? Here the theme of the author’s dilemma, beloved of professionals and nonprofessionals alike, rears its head with a vengeance!

The fact that Leni is not uninterested in politics has been attested to by Hans and Grete Helzen, who have been sharing many an hour before the television set with her, in a manner that would prompt neither a notary nor a reporter to withhold his verification. Leni prefers (and this has been specifically confirmed by both Helzens after almost two years of joint viewing in front of Leni’s black-and-white set) “to watch the faces of the people who talk about politics” (one of the few direct Leniquotes!). Her opinions of Barzel, Kiesinger, and Strauss cannot be reproduced here: it would prove too costly for the Au. He cannot afford it, and he finds himself, as regards those three gentlemen, in a situation similar to that regarding Mr. Exalted.
He—the Au.—could invoke his journalistic responsibility, quote Leni, lay the burden of proof upon her, drag her into court, and, although convinced that she would let neither him nor the Helzens down, he still prefers to hint rather than quote. For one simple reason: he would be sorry to see Leni haled into court. Leni has enough problems, he feels: her one and only, dearly beloved son in jail, now even her piano threatened with seizure; her fear or apprehension—her uncertainty as to whether she has “conceived” from the Turk (Leni according to Hans and Grete H.); whereby a biological detail is confirmed: she is still subject to the conditions of womanhood; the threat of being gassed, of which no one knows whether it can be carried out—uttered by a retired civil servant in the neighborhood who is definitely known to have made unsuccessful advances (flagrant attempts to molest her in the dark hallway of the building, pawings at the baker, an act of exhibitionism, also in the dark hallway); the whole jungle of seizures and threatened seizures that “you couldn’t begin to cut your way through even with a machete” (Lotte H.). Is she to be haled into court and made to repeat her devastating comments, so exquisite in their pregnancy (literarily speaking), on Barzel, Kiesinger, and Strauss? There is but one answer to this question: no, no, a thousand times no.

But now without further ado: Yes, Leni “became associated with” the German Communist Party (Lotte H., Margret, Hoyser, Sr., M.v.D., and a onetime functionary of this party, all used the same expression!). Now we are all familiar with posters displaying the words “in association with …”; this usually refers to prominent persons who in fact never appear, nor have they ever been asked, or consented, to do so, persons who are merely credited with drawing power. Was Leni credited with drawing power? Apparently yes, although mistakenly.

The onetime functionary, now temporarily running a busy newsstand in a favorable downtown location, describes himself as a “sixty-eighter”; this—to the Au., at least—likable fellow, in his mid-fifties, seemed resigned, not to say embittered, and when asked if he would mind enlarging on the cryptic term “sixty-eighter” all he said was: “Well, since 1968 I’ve had nothing more to do with them. No sir, not me.”