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Standing

What’s the matter? Don’t stand around like that, get undressed. Käthe turned her back to her adolescent son, cigarette in one hand, holding her chisel against the rotating whetstone with the other. She called through the noise, in her powerful voice: If you’re cold do some knee-bends. He could hardly hear her, and only guessed what she was saying. The screech of the chisel against the whetstone raised gooseflesh on Thomas’s arms and legs. It was a noise that seemed to flay him. He stood motionless and watched her smoking, which she seldom did. Käthe’s blue working jacket, the one she often wore when she was working on stone, particularly in winter because she wanted to keep the stone dust from settling in her sweater, was white on the back; perhaps she had draped it over the side of the vat of plaster when she was making a model, or had brushed against the freshly painted wall later. Thomas took off his shoes, his trousers, his socks. It was cold. He breathed deeply and imagined the warm sand under the pine trees beside the Müggelsee, sun warming his skin. Under the soles of his feet he felt cold concrete with small stones scattered over it. The screeching stopped. Käthe switched off the motor of her whetstone and tested the edge of the chisel with her fingertips. The silence could feel like warmth to Thomas. His gooseflesh went away. A cool, glittering November sun shone through the opaque upper window of the studio. He took off his sweater and vest, finally his underpants. Käthe scrutinised him.

His body hair was still sparse, his chest smooth, nothing but blond down growing in his armpits and on his upper lip, and you could easily see not only his armpits but his testicles as well. Thomas crossed his arms over his chest, rubbing his skin to warm it up until it showed red weals.

Käthe looked him up and down. Weedy for a model, aren’t you? Don’t quite make the grade. She stubbed her cigarette out. Don’t make such a fuss about it, she said. A boy who lounges around his room all day writing poetry ought to go swimming now and then, run in the woods. It’s all on your doorstep. A lad like you needs fresh air or you’ll waste away. Käthe took several steps towards him. Put your arm up in the air. She showed him the angle she wanted. He knew it already, he’d been holding it at that angle for many days, hand behind his head; he had stamina, Käthe valued that in him. And he cost her nothing. Now, move your right leg slightly forward. There, that’s it. Käthe took another step towards him. Thomas could smell the garlic on her breath.

He was good at standing still; for several years he had been sitting for Käthe as a model, not to mention standing and lying down for her. It made sense, it was only natural, since after all they were living under the same roof, and he had some years to go yet before his school-leaving exam. Weedy was a nasty description, Thomas squirmed when he heard it, nor did he like to be told he didn’t make the grade, but he didn’t want to show that she had hurt his feelings. In her mouth those didn’t sound like mere insults. Käthe was describing the kind of person who, in her eyes, was an inadequate and lesser being. She would never say such things to one of the sculptors or writers she revered, nor to any woman friend of hers. They were reserved for inferior creatures, for Thomas, for children, for subservient models. She could speak to Ella in a way that demeaned her too. Käthe walked across the big room to her radio, which stood on a low bookshelf, covered with dust like everything else in the studio, and searched for a station broadcasting music. She loved Brahms and Vivaldi, Handel and Shostakovich, music for strings, powerful Romantic concertos full of universality and emotion, melancholy and cheerfulness. Up in the smoking room Käthe had had a record player for some time, but the records and needle were too sensitive to stone dust, so as she worked she had to listen to whatever was being played on the radio. If she couldn’t find any classical music, she listened to the discussion programmes. She was lucky today; the familiar female voice announced the string quartet no. 2 in A minor, op. 51, by Brahms. A Romantic start to the day’s work. She put on her protective goggles and took a few steps round the block of stone on which she had been working for three weeks, assessing it. Thomas thought he could sense her impatience. Käthe was breathing fast enough to make her big breasts heave. Her eye held the keen glance of an eagle about to discover and perceive the potential of every moment: she was already chipping away at the stone. Thomas sensed her hope, which to his mind had something childish about it. Käthe believed, defiantly and to some extent arbitrarily, that her creative work would succeed. He admired her for her lack of doubts; he himself had doubts at every moment of his life, and even deciding whether to buy potatoes and carrots or cabbage and meat when he went shopping cost him a great effort. Maybe he just didn’t have much taste? Thomas thought of cherries and how much he liked the taste of those, so much so that they gave him a stomach ache every summer. But shopping called for more than taste; it meant weighing up the preferences of other people who would be sitting at the same table with you, eating the meal.

Käthe seemed as certain of her taste as she was of her ability. You could already see, in broad outline, the head of the sculptured figure and the arms, which were bent level with each other. They had a pale, warm glow, their sandy yellow and earthy ochre made the human form appear inviolable. The body and legs were still hidden in the block of sandstone quarried from the Elbe area. The lower part of the stone was almost black; if sandstone was left out in the open for a long time it darkened. Greenish shadows made you think of lichen, moss or mould. Käthe’s stone had drawings in oil pastel on its surface, where she wanted to show the stonemason the places to chip away superfluous material in line with her sketches and models. Thomas knew how much Käthe loved the stones; he knew the look in her eyes as she tested a stone’s qualities, how she would strike one and make her assessment of its content of iron oxide and quartz. She liked sandstone from the Elbe. It had strangely dark veining, it was soft enough for her to work at it for hours on end, and so firm and resistant to damage that it stood a good chance of keeping the shape she gave it for centuries, even millennia. There was something monotonous about her tapping at the stone, something that radiated calm, and did not just demand patience but engendered it, at least for Thomas.

Not all decisions were difficult for him. He thought of the swallow that he had found last summer in the yard outside the door of the studio. Swallows nested under the roof; they had built their round nests below the gutter and fed their young there without a pause. At first he had thought the swallow was dead. He knelt down beside it and saw the blue-black sheen of its feathers, the brownish black of its forked tail, the crossed wing tips; its breast was bright white. It lay motionless on its back, its eyes looking as if they were blind. He carefully picked the little bird up. A slight movement of its plumage made him think of the wind; he blew on it, but it did not move. Its light body was faintly warm. Next moment he saw its ribcage rise — it was still breathing — and fall again. Thomas felt tears in his eyes. He stroked the little head with his forefinger. Did small birds like this fracture their skulls? His eyes went to the nests, and he clearly heard the young chirping. The sky and the tops of maple trees were reflected in the upper windows of the studio. It must have flown into one of the windows. How smooth the down of its head was. It neither moved its head nor spread its wings by a single millimetre; it must have severe internal injuries. Its soft feathers ruffled up. Thomas put the bird down on a piece of wood and wondered how he could lay it down to die in peace, how and where he could bury it later. He heard the sound of an engine outside the gate. He didn’t want to be disturbed, he didn’t want company, he wanted to be alone with the swallow. He was going to stay with it and protect it by his presence, so that the cat wouldn’t come along and eat it before it was dead and he could bury it. Suddenly its feathers moved. It flew up. Thomas jumped; maybe he had cried out in alarm. The swallow must have come back to life faster than he could watch it; it had dived off his hand, flew low close to the ground and then soared into the air, up and over to the workshops on the property next door.

The swallows were in the south now, the puddles in the yard were frozen, for the last few days it had been possible to walk on the ice of the reservoir in the woods with slide shoes. Thomas didn’t have any; his feet had grown much larger in the last two years. So over the past few days he had tried to make some out of the brass he normally used to make bracelets and rings. But it was too soft; after his first attempt yesterday deep notches had shown in the soles; the alloy was not stable, and thus not smooth enough for going on the ice. He had promised to give Ella a pair of slide shoes, he just needed a little more money, so it was not surprising that Käthe’s purse caught his eye, a small black-and-white object with a catch on top to open it. It was lying on the radio set. Käthe briefly interrupted her work to switch on the standard lamp in the corner; its three necks with the tulip-shaped lights on them could be turned to shine on the high ceiling, or on the floor that reflected the light — in that position they also lit up her model — or turned on the block of stone. In spite of all the studio windows the natural light was getting fainter and fainter; the sun had disappeared long ago. At this time of year it was bright enough to work without artificial light only for three or four hours a day. A daddy-long-legs was making its way down from the windowsill; it stalked over to a weary fly and set to work on it.

Thomas was chilly; the wood and coal he had put in the stove that morning had burnt down long ago, and he was standing much too far from the little stove anyway.

Thomas thought of Ella, and what she had told him about the lodger. Käthe was chiselling away at the elbow of the sculpture, she took a step back, looked at Thomas, looked at her stone, tapped on the chisel some more, bent down, picked up a large piece of stone, put it on the wooden table and went on working with her chisel. Since Eduard finally went away three years ago, Käthe had been letting the room to a lodger. Thomas and Ella had wanted separate rooms of their own, but Thomas had to sleep on the veranda. The twins seldom came to visit, and when they did they slept on the sofa in the living room. With the lodger, Käthe explained, they could afford heating, central heating with a radiator in every room of the house, running off a big oil-fired boiler in the cellar. The lodger’s name was Heinz. Ella and Thomas referred to him only as the lodger. If they ever did call him Heinz it sounded sarcastic, or at least subversive, and finally ironic, because they knew he had thought up that name for them, on account of his secret activities, so that they could call him something. The skin of the lodger’s face was yellow, and so was his right hand. He was almost always holding an unfiltered cigarette. Käthe’s tapping speeded up, short sharp blows that were to create the tapering of the arm on which she was working and give the impression of muscles. Thomas imagined the lodger with his yellow fingers quietly opening the door of Ella’s room at night; she had told him about it. In his mind’s eye, Thomas saw the lodger pulling off Ella’s quilt, looked at the sleeping Ella, pushing up her nightdress, pushing his yellow fingers between her legs. Ella was awake now, but looked paralysed; she pretended to be still asleep, her heart was in her mouth, she feverishly wondered whether she was dreaming — she had a headache that was spreading — and how she could end the dream, she felt as if her own heartbeats were stifling her, she knew she must resist but she didn’t know how. She had been able to recognise Heinz at once in the darkness of the room. What other man was already in the house at night and could get into her room? He was not wearing his soft peaked cap, his bald head shone instead, the thin wreath of hair above his ears was picked out by the faint light coming through the curtains from the street outside. The tapping of hammer on chisel struck Thomas’s eardrums, he was in the darkness of Ella’s room, it was as if he felt the lodger’s yellow hand creeping under Ella’s nightdress, groping around for her breasts that had only grown in the last few years. Ella turned away, the movement gave her strength, instinctively she sat up. They had exchanged words, Thomas heard them, they were louder than the tapping on Käthe’s stone, stronger than any oblivion, words that echoed inside him as if he had been there with them; it was all happening in his mind.

Hush, the lodger had said to Ella. You don’t want to wake anyone up, do you? Ella shook her head in the dark. Out, she whispered, get out of here. No, the lodger was laughing now, his quiet, snarling laughter. You know very well I’m not going. You’re a girl, Ella, you want it too. Ella clutched the quilt to her. Was he flinching back? Get out, she whispered, louder now. The lodger grabbed her wrist with one hand, and ran the fingers of the other through her hair. Your daddy told me how you like it. My what? You know who I mean. His hand was clutching one breast. Eddy’s little wife. Your mother threw Eddy out. Was it that he didn’t bring enough money home, didn’t he bother about things? Did she neglect him? Did he always have to turn to you? We know that, we and you. Eddy and I know each other, did you know? We work together, Eddy and I, you must keep quiet about that. No one must know. His grip on Ella’s breast was so painful that she wanted to scream. But she couldn’t. Go away, please. Words gulped down, pleading. It wasn’t a good idea for her to beg, he would notice her uncertainty, smell her fear. Ella’s head was ringing. Not likely, said the lodger, bringing his face close to her. Ella could smell the cognac he had been drinking, the tobacco that oozed from all his pores. The lodger pressed his mouth on Ella’s and tried to push his tongue into it. His stubble was prickly. Ella clenched her teeth to keep his tongue outside, she pressed her lips together so that they tingled, pressure, rough, felted, tongue, his hand under the quilt. Ella kicked out with her legs, teeth gritted. The light came on in the corridor, it shone under the door of the room. Now the lodger was whispering. Eddy told me you have a sweet mouth. You really do. Eddy would have taken you with him, you know that. His little wife, that’s what he called you, didn’t he? My little wife. The lodger’s breath smelled horrible. But you were still too young, it wouldn’t have done. Are you sad? No, I’m not. Cackling laughter. He was still clutching Ella’s wrist and pushing it down on the mattress, it was a firm grasp, she couldn’t wriggle out of it. Ella’s fear receded as faintness took over. Not a dream, I’m just fainting, she told herself, thinking almost coolly of a way to make him let go. A door closed, the light in the corridor went out, a second door latched. Silence. You like that, don’t you? The lodger had licked his finger and was searching, with the wet finger, for a way to get between Ella’s legs.

Tell me, aren’t you listening? Now Käthe was slapping Thomas’s arm. Get it down lower. I want to see that shoulder looking relaxed.

You like that, don’t you? Stop it, will you?! Hey, whispered the lodger even more quietly, can’t you call me comrade? What with burrowing between the quilt and Ella’s legs, his finger had dried, and the lodger put it back in his putrid-smelling mouth, not just one finger, almost his whole hand. The wet hand sought, groped, took hold. Hey, call me Heinz, little Ella, call me uncle, say ooh, you bad uncle. . Now he let go of Ella’s wrist, perhaps to reach for his trousers. But Ella took her chance, jumped off the bed at lightning speed and ran to the door. The lodger was laughing quietly. Get away, push off! Go back to Hamburg or wherever you came from, just go away, hissed Ella, the doorknob in her hand. You saucy little madam, he snarled back. Who said anything about Hamburg to you? You don’t know anything. We’re fighting for a free Germany, a socialist Germany, we’re at work everywhere. Hamburg is only a name, like Heinz, you just remember that and don’t make yourself look ridiculous. He left, disappeared into his room, the room that Thomas had secretly occupied in the weeks when the lodger wasn’t there and before he had put a lock on the door. Ella had told Thomas about the lodger’s visits, every word, everything she felt, every expression; perhaps she had left something out, perhaps she had added something. Thomas knew it all inside out, the dialogues, the incidents, he had only needed to hear it once and he knew every word. There was nothing he could do about that, he couldn’t forget it. His memory for words spared him nothing.

The knocking stopped, Radio GDR1 was broadcasting the news, and Käthe took off her dusty goggles, cleaned them with the hem of her blue jacket, and poured herself tea in the green-and-yellow cup that her potter friend had made and given her for her forty-fifth birthday.

You mustn’t tell her anything, Ella had insisted. She wanted Thomas to swear not to. He had sworn, for Ella’s sake. And what would he have told Käthe anyway? She probably wouldn’t have believed a word of it. She might have been furious: what did Ella think she was doing, going around in such provocative clothes? Käthe certainly had no idea of what went on in the house. It probably didn’t interest her. How was she to guess at something that didn’t interest her? She was gulping tea from her cup, breathing out heavily; Thomas could tell from the sound how good it tasted. She was a noisy drinker. She would never think of offering her model something to drink of her own accord. Thomas knew that, so he asked if he could have some tea as well, and his voice was hoarse because he had been standing naked for so long in the cold dust without saying a word.

What a silly question. Käthe ran her fingers through her short hair and shook her head in surprise. The peach stones of her necklace rode up to her throat. Her full lips smacked slightly as she spoke. Go upstairs and get yourself a cup. It sounded as if she didn’t like the news; she went over to the set and turned the tuning button until she found an animated discussion on the admission of African states to the United Nations.

We’re coming closer to peace, murmured Käthe, nodding with satisfaction. At least they’re rid of their masters. It’s about time the world recovered. She knocked on the stone, not waiting for any answer. Käthe very often made some pronouncement without wanting an answer, and if anyone did answer her she could be very annoyed.

Thomas looked around the studio; he didn’t want to go up to the house naked and look for a cup in the kitchen. He saw a glass with a little water in it beside the radio on the bookcase at the back of the studio. Can I use that glass?

Käthe didn’t answer; she obviously hadn’t heard him, or didn’t want to hear him. She was bending down looking for something in her box of tools.

Thomas went over to the radio, where his eye fell on Käthe’s purse again. He picked up the glass; there was a thin film of stone dust floating on the surface of the water. He tipped the water out on the huge cacti growing in the window, and poured some tea from Käthe’s big teapot.

Give me a hand, she said, pressing her hammer and chisel into the naked boy’s hands. Knock that bit down there away, the whole corner, or I can’t work when the stone here is still in the block. Get at least that corner off.

Thomas grasped the hammer higher up the handle and knocked the corner off the block. It was not the first time he had helped her. The stonemason had gone to the Baltic on holiday for two weeks. He had applied for a holiday two years earlier, a summer holiday. Now he had been given one in November, but his wife and children would have to stay behind in Berlin. Käthe shook her head: all this bureaucracy. The stonemason wouldn’t be back to do the preliminary work on shaping the stone until next week. Out of sheer impatience, because the sketches and small model studies in wax, as well as a larger plaster model, had been done weeks ago and were only waiting to be transferred to the stone, Käthe had already begun at the top of the sculpture and was turning to the fine structures there. Now she wanted to work on the lower part. What was a young man here for, after all? She wanted Thomas to knock the other corner off the block as well, working along the line she had drawn in wax crayon. She nodded with satisfaction as she watched him working. He felt warm; that was good.

That’s enough, said Käthe suddenly. You’re taking too much off it there, I’ll need that bit later to shape the knee. Leave it alone for now. She pushed Thomas aside with her shoulder and hip, like an animal nudging another with its flank, so that he stumbled over the wooden plank on which the stone stood. Mind what you’re doing. Käthe examined the stone again with a critical eye, put the rubber-framed goggles that she had pushed up into her hair back on her nose, bent down and began knocking a piece off the lower part of the sandstone. Then, still bent over, she turned her head and looked attentively at Thomas. You’re standing around like a bad penny, get back into your pose and we’ll carry on.

Thomas raised his arm until he thought it was at the correct angle. He knew that Käthe seldom began a conversation with her models; she needed all her attention for what was to come out of the stone. Thomas thought of his chemistry work. The chemistry teacher was glad to have a student like Thomas in his class. Recently he had asked Thomas to stand in for him and teach the class when he had been summoned to a meeting with the headmaster. Thomas felt diffident; he began by explaining the part played by oxygen in organic combinations with hydrogen and carbon, while his fellow students listened with vacant expressions, and he couldn’t be sure whether they knew what he was talking about. And there were indeed more exciting things in chemistry, Thomas thought so himself, so in mid-sentence he ventured on a change of subject and tried to explain electronegativity according to Allred and Rochow, as his American Uncle Paul had described it last time he visited early in the year. The class preserved their vacant expressions; they obviously hadn’t noticed that he was now talking about something different. Thomas wrote the formula on the board and said that you had to imagine electronegativity in proportion to the electrostatic power of attraction; he drew a diagram of the inner and outer electrons and was about to describe the power of attraction exerted by the nuclear charge on the bonding electrons, but he very soon realised that no one was imagining anything at all, indeed no one in the room could follow him, so he interrupted himself. Something stung his cheek. With one hand he searched his trouser pocket, found his elastic band and a green sweet wrapping with a strong smell of eucalyptus. He made a small missile and shot it at his best friend Michael’s forehead. Hands reached into pockets and school bags. The boys got out their catapults and began shooting at each other.

When the chemistry teacher appeared in the doorway with a stack of books under his arm he saw that some of the students were not in their places, they were laughing, shouting and fooling around. He told Thomas, in a loud, stern voice, that he had abused his trust. No sooner had he said that, reaching for the cane he liked to use at such moments, than an expression of the utmost misery spread over his face.

Open your books at page one hundred and three. There was total silence around him, no one whispered a word, and even after the bell went they still sat there listening, but the teacher said nothing until, at the end of break, he said the boys could pack up their things. When there was a chemistry test in class a week later, he gave Thomas seven extra questions as well as the six that the whole class had to answer. The idea was not to keep Thomas sitting twice as long as the others over the test but to show that he was able to solve more difficult problems and do twice as much as everyone else. You want to study at university, don’t you, Thomas? The teacher knew he could ensure that his best student failed the school-leaving exam. He didn’t need an extra-difficult test for that, he could interrogate him about politics, test his knowledge and his conscience there, call his attitude into question. But he was giving him a chance to show what he could do. Thomas had not managed to answer the last of the additional questions within the hour allowed. He hadn’t been quick enough. For the first time in five years he did not get a One. The teacher was wearing his miserable expression again as he gave back the tests and stopped beside Thomas’s desk. It was hard for him to see Thomas fail, it obviously troubled the teacher, he ran the knuckles of his clenched fist over the desk, there was strength in it, the will for pain as if the boy’s failure physically hurt him. Thomas lowered his eyes; it was awkward, indeed impossible, for him to meet that gaze. It would not be the only test in class this last winter before the school-leaving exam. But the teacher had made it clear that Thomas depended on his goodwill if he expected to get marks corresponding to his achievements. Then the final exams could take whatever turn they liked; nothing would come of Thomas’s plans to study at university if the teacher didn’t want him to. Nothing would presumably come of plans for university studies anyway, since they had decided at the Ministry of Education to give the children of the working classes preferential treatment, in the cause of a more just society. Disobedience was a quality that Thomas would do well to discard. The collectivisation of agriculture had been completed, there would be a pressing need for young men like Thomas to work on agricultural production, he could work with farm animals, for instance, then he and those like him would not be forming elite groups, and university studies would be left to the other sort. Thomas wondered why art didn’t count as work. Wasn’t he the son of a worker?

Oh, for God’s sake, take your hand away from your mouth! Käthe’s voice sounded brusque, she took a step towards him and grabbed his arm. Biting your nails the whole time, I’ll tear them right out one of these days if you don’t stop it.

Startled, Thomas looked at his hand; he didn’t notice when he was biting his nails. Even if he was standing in the middle of the room stark naked, as he was now, one hand behind his head, his arm crooked at the correct angle, the fingers of the other hand could land in his mouth without his thinking about it or being able to prevent it. The leg he was standing on hurt, he felt a pulling behind his knees. That was growing pains, he had often been told so over the last few years, and he must hope that his left leg, which was only minimally shorter than his right leg, could still catch up. He wasn’t fully grown yet at sixteen, all kinds of things might happen to him. Thomas was a year younger than Ella, but right at the start he had gone up a year at school, so that they were in the same class. His hair might grow, his leg, his attitude and his obedience. His feet were cold as ice just now, but he knew Käthe wouldn’t let him wear socks — even when she wasn’t working on the feet of her sculpture at all. She needed a clear view of human anatomy, she claimed.

Käthe looked at the boy critically. You must watch that arm, it keeps sinking. Hold it higher up. No, not as high as that — that’s better. The tapping of hammer and chisel went on to its regular rhythm. Amplify, hushabye, quantify, saygoodbye. Thomas tried to think of words that would sound good to it. You could avoid misunderstandings if you trusted the sound. He was sure that something like humboolabye fong fong, properly pronounced, sounded more impressive than just cold feet.

He liked sounds. Mortify, justify, purify, rectify. That last word made him think of the border official who promised the bearded German and his heavily pregnant lover, who wasn’t married to him, to get them papers, or at least to get the pregnant woman papers, because the bearded man already had them. After that the two of them spent a whole week in a cave, but they had no illusions about the unfortunate predicament they were in without papers, snow outside, a little fire burning day and night inside, because they thought the border official meant it seriously and would really help them. Thomas remembered the walk by night that he and Käthe had taken last year. She was fetching her twins from the grandparents in Pankow, it had been late in the evening, and she had let him sit behind her on the motorbike. But halfway there the motorbike had stalled at traffic lights and wouldn’t start again. So Käthe and Thomas had walked over half the Berlin borough of Pankow by night. He had asked her what his father had been like. Oh, a great guy, Käthe had replied. Then she had begun telling Thomas the story. She called his father the bearded man, because at the time he hadn’t shaved for weeks. She spoke of herself in the third person, as if it had not been her story. They waited in the cave, heavily pregnant Käthe and the bearded man. But after a week in the cave they had to accept that the kind border official was not himself a nice guy but more of a counterspy. Counterspy from Lombardy, they called him later. They could freeze just as well walking through the snow over the mountains on foot. On the watch for border patrols, they would neither of them remember their carefree life in exile in Sicily, the heat haze over the olive groves, the red soil, their happiness. On the second day they walked into a snowdrift and heard the calls of a man pulling his sledge on the other side of the valley. The man was looking for someone who had probably climbed up to go skiing a few days earlier but had not been seen since. It wasn’t easy for him to interrupt his search, but he told the two of them to get on the sledge. He had several furs on the sledge, wood, and hot embers in a cauldron; he heated three stones in it, and put them among the furs to warm the woman. Where were they going? he asked.

Käthe’s tapping died away. She stepped towards Thomas, looked at his throat, his collarbone and the hand he was holding behind his head.

Come over here. When I’m working by hand I can’t see you behind the stone.

Thomas changed his place.

Now, raise that one. She took his other arm as if he were a puppet and raised it, pushed, pressed the ulna. No; she shook her head. Now let it drop. Just let it hang loosely. She took his dangling hand in hers and looked at the fingers. Back to the angle again. Thomas crooked his arm as he had been doing for weeks. Käthe walked round him, taking small steps, stared at his collarbone again, his armpit and finally his fingers. She chose a different chisel and put it to her stone. Thomas blinked; the hand she was working on looked gigantic, his hand, as big as a log.

The bearded man and Käthe had reached Tessin with frozen toes. Thomas saw the scene in his mind’s eye, the two men taking it in turns to haul the sledge with the woman’s heavy weight in it over the mountains. But didn’t anyone help you? Your father who was my grandfather? Nothing doing, Käthe had told him abruptly, without a shred of self-pity. They had sent telegrams to friends and relations in Germany and France from the post office in Bellinzona. After a long time, they had heard the first news at the post office: heroic fighting in Stalingrad. Soldiers sheltering in foxholes. A German U-boat had torpedoed a British passenger steamer off the Azores. Nearly seven hundred people said to have lost their lives. The destruction not only of civilians but of civilisation, Käthe called it. Perhaps that was a quotation, perhaps Thomas’s father had said it. How had he thought, how had he spoken? Käthe and the bearded man stayed in Bellinzona for a good two weeks, going to the post office every day. But in such circumstances friends in the north did not respond, and help was in short supply, Käthe’s father, that worthy professor, sent a telegram asking his dear Käthchen not to come to Berlin. Her condition would create a great sensation, her arrival could endanger her mother’s life. Humboolabye fong fong. On that walk through the night, Thomas had looked for any kind of emotion in Käthe’s face, but it was too dark for that. Her voice was steady: So fat Käthe was holding the telegram from the professor. The bearded man tried to take her in his arms, but she shook her head. My dear father, he couldn’t do anything else. He has always been able to protect us, all of us. Thomas wondered whether Käthe hadn’t been seething with indignation and despair, at least at the time. Of course, he thought now, the realisation that her father, to whom she owed everything and who meant everything to her, was now powerless and could only warn her in no uncertain terms not to go back to them, not to come to Berlin where she had naively been hoping for his help, must have sunk inexorably in and finally made its way into her mind. In addition, Käthe’s dismissal four years earlier from the masterclass she was taking had presumably shaken her self-confidence. Finding out that a professor’s daughter had no immunity had not only hurt her feelings but astonished her. And then her self-confidence was to be not simply shaken but destroyed, like her will. Back then in Berlin, being thrown out of the university had been a fleeting source of annoyance; the beauty of Italy had moved her more deeply and more enduringly. In the scent of orange blossom there she had entirely forgotten that in the opinion of some people in Germany she herself ought not to exist. The danger had been left behind in the north, thousands of kilometres away. Until Käthe, driven out of the orange grove at Castelvetrano, had no idea where to go and went to knock on the southern gateway to Germany. Thomas himself, at such a moment, would have felt no injury and betrayal as keenly as that of a father who a few years ago still did all he could for his children. It must have sickened Käthe to find that he of all people, the man who had opened up her fatherland and half the world to her, who had not only taught at the university and headed the nitrogen research programme, the man who only ten years ago had taken his wife and children travelling in the Engadin valley, to fashionable Paris and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, had shown her the fractured beauty of the Alpine slate, the turquoise glow of Lake Constance and the Musée Rodin in Paris, that this man, her father, was now skulking in his gloomy house in the Westend district of Berlin with the curtains drawn, not allowed to teach, dismissed from his position as head of research into nitrogen, was whiling away his days in his laboratory and was in bondage to those who obliged him to keep his wife in the cellar of his house. Käthe guessed that he was hiding her there, if not in the bushes in the square in front of the building then in his own father’s garden house on Wannsee. Her mother was in danger. Mortal danger? Would she be taken away, was that possible? Käthe knew that her father had been told, several times, that he ought to divorce his wife, mother of his four children. In fact it was a good sign, thought Käthe, that she was endangering her mother, his wife, as they reached Rahnsdorf after two hours of walking and crossed the bridge. It meant she was still alive. It meant that a certain amount of protection was still possible and was tolerated. Heavily pregnant Käthe had been glad to hear that her mother was well, was still alive, and was still under her husband’s protection, even if in hiding and conditions where she could not be sure of toleration. Käthe would make it on her own. Perhaps the bearded man would stay with her.

They had trudged through the snow to their hotel room — hamboolabye fong fong. The bearded man had said he was going to the post office again to see if his parents had sent any money. He stood in the doorway and Käthe looked at him: Are you coming back? The bearded man could say whatever he wanted — was he to be trusted? The bearded man’s father, not a professor but an upright pastor in Halle on the River Saale, replied to say God be with his son. He could give his regards to the pastor of Bergalingen near Bad Säckingen, when he passed that way in the Hotzenwald district of the Black Forest. His call-up papers for the front had arrived and were urgent, said his father. Not a word by way of invitation to them, no money transfer, nothing about the woman who was trying to palm her coming child off on his son. Perhaps pregnant Käthe didn’t even exist in the mind of the pastor at Halle. God be with him, it sounded chilly. Yet the bearded man and his pregnant lover saw the message for the pastor of Bergalingen, the precise information conveyed by its geographical situation, and its proximity to Switzerland as a hidden sign that they might hope to find help there. Hip hip hooray!

Inside himself, Thomas stretched; his exterior maintained almost the attitude that Käthe wanted. He pressed his shoulder blades together, straightened his backbone. All that standing in front of Käthe’s eyes hurt; when he thought of Bellinzona, Thomas felt like bursting into tears. She had told him about it only once, as a result of that motorbike breakdown and their nocturnal walk, and she had told him about it with her usual rock-hard cheerfulness. But there was a glitter in her eyes, something was tipping over and cracking deep inside her. He wanted to hug Käthe. He had tried several times, but to this day she always just stood there like a chunk of wood. She was strong. He admired the way she set her chisel to the stone, carved her stone, and never complained on her own account.

Käthe put her tools on the wooden table and stretched her arms, she was jubilant, she yawned and straightened her back. Working on stone might be strenuous, but it made her happy. Käthe’s rosy cheeks were glowing like a girl’s, her cry of glee was the shout of a child.

Thomas smiled at her, but Käthe didn’t seem to notice his smile. She shook the stiffness out of her arms and hands and cleared her throat noisily, in a way that Thomas had only ever heard otherwise from men in company. He tried to imagine what she must have looked like back then, a young woman with a big belly. Käthe picked up her chisel, took the wooden smoothing tool and shaved tiny pieces of stone off the head.

Ella wanted to go away, leave home, have a place of her own, a room of her own. She had taken Thomas into her confidence. The lodger lay in wait for her as soon as he came to Berlin. He had pestered her in bed at night, he had taken her by surprise in the bathroom, he had followed her through the woods from the house towards the suburban railway station and tried molesting her there, until luckily some people out walking came along the path. If only to get away from the lodger, Ella had to move out. Thomas was going to help her find a place. He would be left alone with the lodger’s avid desires. He might be able to cope with that, he hoped he could put up with it. The lodger had made advances to him as well; there had been just the two of them in the house that afternoon, the lodger and Thomas. They could have a nice time together, the lodger had said excitedly. First he had talked to Thomas, then he touched him.

The smoothing sound died away. Käthe was inspecting her stone. Johann Strauss’s ‘Persian March’ was playing on the radio now. Thomas feared it; it was music that chased and tormented you. All the merriment it was supposed to contain, the daring, the triumph, attacked him, challenged him and made him feel weak. Undisturbed, Käthe went on pecking at the stone. In spite of the announcement that the violin concerto in D major in three movements by Brahms was to be heard over the next three-quarters of an hour, played by a certain Henryk Szeryng, there was a long silence after the woman announcer’s voice stopped, with only crackling noises, then a swelling rushing sound, and just as Thomas thought he could make out musical intervals in it, the music abruptly stopped and gave way to soft crackling. Thomas froze. For a moment Käthe stopped what she was doing; she didn’t like to miss the opening of a piece of music. The first deep notes on the strings sounded. Käthe put her tools down and drank some of her tea, took a couple of steps towards her stone and examined the rough shape of the elbow. Thomas felt as if he were seeing through her eyes and knew exactly what she was thinking. Something was wrong about it; the angle wasn’t sharp enough yet. The violin was playing in the foreground. Käthe did not often put her head on one side while she closed her eyes. She swayed, she didn’t dance but almost imperceptibly her body bent and stretched, she was melting. Dada, dadi, she murmured, singing along with the melody on the violin. Only her voice and the instrument existed, no stone, no Thomas, no one and nothing to whom she wanted to show her attitude and speak her mind. Thomas had never seen her like this before. Wonderful, Käthe purred and opened her eyes, her gleaming eyes. What music! She stood close to her stone and inspected it; she ran her short, strong hands over the rough curve and stepped back to pick up her chisel and peening anvil again. She worked on the elbow with short, fast taps. Thomas’s glance went to the window looking out into the yard; he heard voices there, footsteps, then he saw two figures on the other side of the window. Someone opened the small door into the studio.

A stocky, short man with red hair and a moustache, and a man with dark, curly hair marched into the studio. Thomas recognised the curly-haired man; he was a sculptor like Käthe, a sculptor from Leipzig.

Käthe beamed, she pushed up her goggles and put the peening tool down. Rüdiger, so you’re still around! She put out her arm, and she and the curly-haired man shook hands.

And this is Wiegand, said Rüdiger. Käthe greeted the redhead too.

A comrade and a colleague, added Wiegand. Käthe’s eyes were shining. There was a military sound to the clap of their hands as they met.

We thought we’d look in and talk about the competition. That bunch haven’t a clue.

Käthe nodded, and her smile turned to fiery earnest. We must work out a good idea, nothing will come of nothing. We must get the announcement right first.

Thomas was looking at his gooseflesh, a thousand tiny hairs standing proud in the light.

Rüdiger looked around him. Are you working on much just now?

Oh, this and that. Emerging from her throat, Käthe’s voice was a harsh rasp. I don’t have much here at the moment. I finished the relief for the hospital in the summer. Her voice rasped again; it sounded as if there was something in her throat. After that, just messing about, plaster and clay models. I’ve been waiting four months for this block of stone. Now it’s here and my stonemason has been sent on holiday. In the middle of November. Käthe laid her hand on the stone she had been working on just now. Her face brightened, her voice softened. A lovely stone, look, no great inclusions, not much dark veining. I already have a title: The Upright Man.

Thomas realised that his fingernails were between his teeth again; they made gratifying snapping sounds. He heard the three sculptors chattering as if they were birds twittering, again and again one voice would be raised, it was positively rhythmic, they were eager, sarcastic, rebellious. The voices grew louder and louder; they were deploring the ignorance of the ministers and leaders of the artistic associations. The yapping was like that of Thomas’s fellow students at school recently, complaining of their parents and present conditions. A pointless undertaking in both cases, it seemed to Thomas. Talking themselves into dependency and compliance, not out of it. Soongalaroo, varon te mai. Inventing words seemed to him a suitable reaction, something new and unique, a game against blind faith, the individual could and must move something in our society, they were saying, every individual was responsible for our democracy. Zumplepumple rumpledidum. Yet all eyes were blindly closed. How pitifully powerless talk and wishes were. The state had decided against the individual long ago. No one was waiting to hear about Rüdiger’s answer based on artistic principles, or Käthe’s love of Michelangelo and her commitment to the workers; conversations like these were pure boastfulness, blowing bubbles. All one class! Thomas saw the glitter of their words, which were shimmering in all colours of the rainbow. They didn’t need much light, the froth of what they were saying moved through the room in tiny flakes. A huge bubble, first the size of a breast, then as big as her head had come away from Käthe’s mouth, it was rising in the air, ooh and aah, said the marvelling mouths. Käthe was hardly ever happy, but she was proud. Her words tumbled over each other. Her pride sparkled, making the bubble shine more and more fantastically. Was she at one with her bubble? Did Rüdiger recognise its dazzling deception? Or was Thomas getting a distorted view of her through the curve of the bubble? Her nose was bending and growing, it looked enormous, the dark down on her upper lip vibrated under it, her full lips pouted, defiant and insinuating. Thomas laughed quietly to himself. The louder the froth and bubbles of the talk between Käthe and her friends, the more easily they thought they could recognise the signs of the times, identify the real news, and keep their eyes open for what had been going on over the last few years in this German Democratic Republic. Well, something was going to happen in the next few years, and they wanted to bring their influence to bear on the opportunity offered by this competition.

Wiegand had brought some cigarillos. They came from a tobacco dealer in Leipzig who sold only under the counter, and who had been obliged to close his shop down some time ago because the sales of tobacco had been centralised. The smoke of them rose from Wiegand’s nose and mouth and went back into his body with the next breath he drew. He held his breath for a minute during which he couldn’t say any more, thus allowing Käthe to take over from him in mid-sentence.

The workers in Leuna need something beautiful, mankind needs hope, needs an incentive. Bread and art.

The three of them nodded in a single synchronised movement, and they bowed their heads as one.

If we think that art is only for an educated bourgeois elite we are doing ourselves and the workers down, that would be a rejection of the working class, of a socialist society. We want to create art that is for everyone. Giotto painted for everyone, so did Dürer. Picasso didn’t cut himself off from other people, Guernica doesn’t stop short of the suffering of everyone. Suffering is universal, it affects us all. By now Käthe was in full swing, entirely enveloped in her magnificent froth. Thomas wondered whether, clad in that glittering garment, she could even see the others.

Why go on about suffering? Rüdiger looked at her in surprise.

We want peace, don’t we? Käthe looked sharply back at him.

Yes.

Everyone wants peace. Käthe spoke firmly; she had no doubt about it. Her visitors were looking at her expectantly. The Africans have liberated themselves. Germany has been liberated. Now we have to found a society in which fascism will no longer be an option.

Yes.

Wiegand was nodding now, too.

Käthe carried on. Her manner made Thomas think of the word declamation. Of words making sounds like delectation, reclamation. Declamation. He was sorry he couldn’t learn Latin. Subjects from the old humanist educational timetable, in which classical languages were taught, were thought undesirable these days; young people today were not to remain trapped in the elitist mindset of their past origins, they were to keep their feet on the ground, Russian was the language of choice. Not that anyone had any choice. Including Thomas. The three sculptors talked, smoked, argued and never gave a thought to the naked boy who stood there useless for some time, arm raised, then lowered, and finally, after a good half-hour, he moved from his pose in silence — he didn’t want to interrupt the conversation — picked up his vest and shirt and was about to put them on and go away, thinking he wouldn’t be needed any more.

As soon as Käthe noticed Thomas preparing to pull his vest on she took a couple of steps and snatched the shirt out of his hand. If you’re cold move about a bit, Käthe snapped at him, we’ll be going on again in a minute. She turned to her visitors and said: Years ago that governmental oaf over there began arming his soldiers again. In the administration and the courts, in government posts, everywhere you look you see the same old warriors, men who made their careers and their money and their reputation among the Nazis. Getting all the benefits. And now they reap a fitting harvest, their time has come.

The struggle of the working class against their rulers can succeed only if everyone joins in, agreed Rüdiger with a nod. His voice sounded muted; he recited the maxim as if reading it off a board.

Blood on their hands!

Blood?

I mean that lot over there in their fine posts, said Käthe, shaking her head, are you blind? Thomas was watching Käthe, marvelling at her manner, which seemed to him brave and sometimes naive, almost stupid. Käthe implicitly believed that all those in the creative arts who said they were socialists must be good people.

As Rüdiger and Wiegand did not know for a moment what they ought to say about the blood on the hands of people over there in the other Germany, Käthe cleared her throat and raised her voice again: No French Revolution without Joan of Arc. If we’re to get anything done it can only be through commitment, and everyone can help there, you and you, and so can I. Käthe was beaming, her cheeks were flushed now with heat and enthusiasm.

Thomas turned away. He thought it was embarrassing to hear three grown adults talking in such childish clichés.

Another half an hour passed while Thomas walked up and down the studio, naked and useless, until in the middle of her animated discourse she told him to come over to them. Here, she said to the small and rather flat-faced redhead, this is what I mean. Käthe tapped Thomas’s shoulders and the back of his neck as if he were made of stone. A grown man’s shoulders aren’t as narrow as that, you can guess at the imposing stature to come — stand up straight, Thomas, do! — but it’s present only as potential in a young man. And look, added Käthe, pointing to his loins like a teacher pointing to the blackboard, the genitals are hardly there yet. So saying, Käthe tapped Thomas on the hip and turned him like a jointed puppet so that he could be seen better from behind. Michelangelo exaggerated them as well, in his David they’re fully formed, stylised, or no one would realise that he’d grow to be a man. A man who stands tall and fights!

Thomas lowered his eyes. He did not stand tall. He was not a fighter. It depressed him to hear Käthe, in the firm belief that she could dissociate herself from every manifestation of National Socialism, taking him of all people, his body, as the example of a man standing tall in the class struggle. He wasn’t. He felt a hand moving down his backbone, presumably Käthe’s, but it could belong to someone else.

One of the men said: He’s not man enough for that yet. His shrill, cheerful laughter rang sharply in Thomas’s ears. But the others interrupted, drowning it out.

So let’s suggest a plaque for the chemicals plant, we’ll show the workers at work, the miner, the welder, the nurse, the factory hand.

Thomas kept his back turned to the others. He longed for calm, and thought of Käthe’s brother Paul, who like a great many other people had got out of Germany at the right moment. If Thomas had been around then he was sure he would have done the same. He was not a fighter, and the idea of triumph left him cold. Thomas wondered what his life would have been like if he had been born in America as the son of Käthe’s brother. Perhaps Käthe had simply missed the right moment back then. That was not how she described it; she had never wanted to go to America, she said; she wrinkled her nose very slightly at the thought of her brother, who had seized the first opportunity with both hands and emigrated in 1936. There was no art in America, said Käthe. No one was about to contradict her, neither Rüdiger nor Wiegand.

At that moment the door from the yard into the studio opened, and two long-haired, giggling women appeared in the doorway, each with a bottle of wine under her arm and another, already uncorked, in her hand. The door stayed open for a while; soft snowflakes were drifting down in the blue twilight outside. As if at a word of command, both women put their bottles to their mouths and took a large gulp, and then bent forward spluttering and laughing.

Wipe the snow off your shoes, Käthe told them, pointing to the scraper just inside the door. The Leipzig sculptors’ girlfriends giggled at their wet shoes, but obediently wiped the soles over the scraper several times. The hydrogen blonde flung herself on the little red-headed sculptor’s shoulder, belching; perhaps she was feeling sick. But then she raised her swan-like neck, and she towered over not only the little redhead but everyone else in the studio.

Oh, how sweet, cried the swan-necked girl as her glance fell on the naked Thomas and his genitals. She stared at his prick as if she had never seen a naked man before, or at least not such a young one. Thomas blushed.

What’s all this about, my pretty? said the redhead, patting his girlfriend on her back in its winter coat. Käthe said how during her Italian year she had noticed how much Michelangelo reduced the size of many male genitals in relation to their real proportions, and that very thing bore witness to the high force of attraction, the revelatory view with which he had depicted the human figure. The power of its shoulders and loins compared to the tiny member. Käthe spoke of the member as if it were an arm or a leg.

So he had a member, reflected Thomas, a member that was part of the body and needed no more precise description? Now he heard Käthe talking about the human race, the male sex, his head was ringing with all the words she used, while the swan-necked girl went on staring at his prick and he feared that, under her gaze, it might grow and grow. No strength in his narrow shoulders and such a sweet little sex, he felt, it was going to be only a little willy, his blood was throbbing, something was echoing, and Thomas feared that his blood might go down to his sex and then up to his cheeks, back to his sex and back to his head.

Only now, apparently, did Käthe realise that Thomas was still standing there naked and useless, unoccupied. She said sharply: Didn’t you hear me? Pick up that broom. And then get dressed; why are you standing around here without anything on?

Thomas picked up the broom that stood in the corner; he used it every evening after they had finished work to sweep the floor. The visitors followed the naked boy and the broom with their eyes, saying nothing, perhaps daunted by Käthe’s imperious tone of voice, perhaps waiting for Thomas to leave the studio at long last so that they could go on with their conversation undisturbed. Thomas had to bend to pick up the dustpan. Käthe and her guests were still silent. He tipped the pieces of stone into the waste bin standing by the door, placed the dustpan on it, stood the broom beside it and straightened up. Tantantaraa! Thomas bowed to his audience and spread his arms submissively. The Upright Man; mentally Thomas could only shake his head, Käthe’s name for the sculpture made him laugh, an angry laughter. He took his clothes and went up the wooden staircase that had no banister rail two steps at a time, and so into the house where it adjoined the studio.

Unlike Ella, Thomas seldom felt hatred. He was not annoyed with Käthe, he was annoyed with himself. What did he expect? Käthe had often told him and Ella not to make selfish claims. Moderation was all. No one had a right to love and protection. Käthe wouldn’t help him to get a place to study. She disliked the elite to which, as a girl of good family, she had once belonged. All that mattered was for people to create art for their own society out of their own strength. Her children were to learn to work like anyone else, that was what she demanded, that was what she expected. Thomas liked her glowing cheeks, but he distrusted the reason for them.

Those who want to change society had better begin with their own children, said Käthe, putting one of her favourite Bulgarian wines down beside the bottles brought by her guests. The guests were sitting round the large table listening to Käthe. Ella put coal on the stove. Thomas laid the table; as directed by Käthe he had warmed up the bean casserole, and she wanted him and Ella to wash the dishes after the meal.

Sit down, Thomas, you two can eat with us, come on, sit down. Once upon a time children ate in the kitchen with the domestic staff, and only French was spoken at their distinguished parents’ table.

The guests looked at Käthe. Why French? The swan-necked girl stretched, her high voice trying hard not to betray her Saxon accent.

That’s how it used to be at our home in a professor’s house. We children ate with the domestic staff in the kitchen, we sat at our parents’ table only on special occasions. That’s what we learned French for. Käthe looked around at her silent audience.

Really? The strange movements of Rüdiger’s mouth made his moustache jump up and down. The two women also let out noises of surprise. Really?

. . and so that we could read French as well, anyone who wants to read Balzac and Molière has to know French, added Käthe, as if that were a better explanation for her visitors. Away with social rank! We don’t want the language we use to show the status of our professions any more, not under socialism. If the son of the chef who speaks in Berlin dialect studies chemistry, and the doctor’s son who speaks High German learns to be a chef, our society will be mixed up in a new order, and then we’ll have done it. Everyone must make a contribution. My father was a professor, I carve stone.

Wiegand nodded appreciatively. What Käthe was saying obviously met with his approval. While Thomas filled Wiegand’s plate with the steaming casserole, he realised what Käthe was getting at. The dialect someone spoke showed only if he came from Berlin or Leipzig.

Käthe solemnly held her glass aloft: The cook toils all day in his large kitchen, the milling-machine operator in the factory, I carve my stones — and now let’s drink to the People’s Own Works, the Leuna and Buna chemicals works! Santé! She held her glass out in all directions, and there was a muted clinking.

Some time ago Thomas had found out that glass sounded best only if the bowl of the glass was free in the air. You had to hold the glass by the stem, but no one here was doing that. And it shouldn’t be filled to the brim. Käthe began eating even before Rüdiger had wished everyone bon appétit. Maybe she thought it more modern not to give herself away by any more French table-talk. Käthe didn’t notice that Ella wasn’t sitting down with them yet, because she was taking the ash bucket out into the yard, and that Thomas was sitting at the other end of the table with an empty plate, because there were not enough beans for everyone. The raised arms of several wax models of the Upright Man in the middle of the long table obscured her view.

She tried a saying in Saxon dialect, and looked expectantly round the circle at the table. But although they came from Saxony, maybe they didn’t know the saying, which depended on the Saxon pronunciation Oogen, Fleesch, Beene for Augen, Fleisch, Beine: eyes, flesh, legs. Thomas said them after her in High German, assuming that that was what she wanted to make her meaning clear.

No, no, said Käthe brusquely, waving his contribution away. It all depends on banishing fascism from the way we think. I meant to say that we’re all human, no matter what dialect or accent we use.

Understood, said Rüdiger. Käthe seemed to like this obedient response, and she went on.

We must affect everyone wherever we can. Everyone has children, and they have friends, and the friends in turn have parents, so we can exert extraordinary influence through our children.

Thomas went into the kitchen to fetch the big bowl of salad. When he got back into the smoking room he thought he would suffocate.

The golden tassels of the velvet cushion on which Käthe was sitting swung about. Thomas looked at her Biedermeier chair and the Persian rug. In this bourgeois living room her idea of society sounded not just adventurous but fantastic. Her lecture had moved away from Michelangelo now, words like Gommern and People’s Own Works were flying through the air. They were also talking about the extraction of mineral oil and various sites of production. The workers and their rights, a revolution from within, Buna and Leuna sounded like fairy-tale words, the honour of the worker and his right to art, zarroolafrutzi kuttodamnutz, thought Thomas, taking refuge again in imaginary words, fleckibutz schnuttikutz, he must not only enjoy the benefits of art but be depicted in art himself, workers must be shown engaged in heavy labour, at the conveyor belt, in the lab, with their hands on the pistons! The mere word worker obviously moved and excited Käthe. Her eyes shone when she talked about the workers. While Thomas listened to Käthe he saw her firing up, so to speak, and recognised the unconcealed joy with which she devoted herself to the assumed influence and heroic power of her own existence. She told no story in which she did not feature as the heroine: who had the ideas for the worker, who spoke up for them, whose mouth was opened? Open your mouths, she told Thomas and Ella, a precept that came out as if propelled from a mechanism as soon as one of them appeared at the table to take the guests’ crockery into the kitchen. Then she brought the palm of her hand down on the table, uttering a high-pitched squeal, and she laughed, because she could see how easily she was succeeding in making her guests enthusiastic, impressing them, carrying them away with her. The guests nodded, yes, of course, everyone wanted to help the workers to get their due. Glasses were filled and clinked. The muted sound made Thomas uneasy. Young people, said Käthe reproachfully, well within earshot of Ella and Thomas, young people must take responsibility for themselves and learn to speak up for others, or nothing will come of our new society. Nothing at all. There are plenty of people around here already who are moral cowards and hangers-on. Not to mention a few wimps.

People around here. Thomas could tell how little Käthe felt she was one of them, how urgently, perhaps by means of her heroic deeds on behalf of the workers, she wanted to be a part of the whole, adapt, fit in, adjust to the place and belong to a Germany that had cast her out a good twenty years ago, when those like her were no longer wanted or needed, were banished, hunted, killed. A Germany that was now recovering only with difficulty.