Cat and Mouse

Chapter XIII

"Misereatur vestri omnipotens Deus, et, dimissis peccatis vestris…" The words issued light as a soap bubble from Father Gusewski's pursed lips, glittered in all the colors of the rainbow, swayed hesitantly, broke loose from the hidden reed, and rose at last, mirroring windows, the altar, the Virgin, mirroring you me everything – and burst painlessly, struck by the bubbles of the absolution: "Indulgentiam, absolutionem et remissionem peccatorum vestrorum…" and the moment these new bubbles of spirit were pricked in their turn by the Amen of the seven or eight faithful, Gusewski elevated the host and began with full-rounded lips to blow the big bubble, the bubble of bubbles. For a moment it trembled terror-stricken in the draft; then with the bright-red tip of his tongue, he sent it aloft; and it rose and rose until at length it fell and passed away, close to the second pew facing the altar of Our Lady: "Ecce Agnus Dei…"

Of those taking communion, Mahlke was first to kneel. He knelt before the "LordIamnotworthythatthoushouldstenterundermyroof" had been repeated three times. Even before I steered Gusewski down the altar steps to the communicants' rail, he leaned his head back, so that his face, peaked after a sleepless night, lay parallel to the whitewashed concrete ceiling, and parted his lips with his tongue. A moment's wait, while over his head the priest makes a small quick sign of the Cross with the wafer intended for this communicant. Sweat oozed from Mahlke's pores and formed glistening beads which quickly broke, punctured by the stubble of his beard. His eyes stood out as though boiled. Possibly the blackness of his tanker's jacket enhanced the pallor of his face. Despite the wooliness of his tongue, he did not swallow. In humble self-effacement the iron object that had rewarded his childish scribbling and crossing-out of so and so many Russian tanks, crossed itself and lay motionless over his top collar button. It was only when Father Gusewski laid the host on Mahlke's tongue and Mahlke partook of the light pastry, that you swallowed; and then the thingamajig joined in.

Let us all three celebrate the sacrament, once more and forever: You kneel, I stand behind dry skin. Sweat distends your pores. The reverend father deposits the host on your coated tongue. All three of us have just ended on the same syllable, whereupon a mechanism pulls your tongue back in. Lips stick together. Propagation of sobs, the big thingamajig trembles, and I know that the Great Mahlke will leave St. Mary's Chapel fortified, his sweat will dry; if immediately afterward drops of moisture glistened on his face, they were raindrops. It was drizzling.

In the dry sacristy Gusewski said: "He must be waiting outside. Maybe we should call him in, but…"

I said: "Don't worry, Father. "I'll take care of him."

Gusewski, his hands busy with the sachets of lavender in the closet: "You don't think he'll do anything rash?"

For once I made no move to help him out of his vestments: "You'd better keep out of it, Father." But to Mahlke, when he stood before me wet in his uniform, I said: "You damn fool, what are you hanging around here for? Get down to the assembly point on Hochstriess. Tell them some story about missing your train. I refuse to have anything to do with it."

With those words I should have left him, but I stayed and got wet. Rain is a binder. I tried to reason with him: "They won't bite your head off if you're quick about it. Tell them something was wrong with your mother or your aunt."

Mahlke nodded when I made a point, let his lower jaw sag from time to time, and laughed for no reason. Then suddenly he bubbled over: "It was wonderful last night with the Pokriefke kid. I wouldn't have thought it. She's not the way she puts on. All right, I'll tell you the honest truth: it's because of her that I don't want to go back. Seems to me that I've done my bit – wouldn't you say so? I'm going to put in a petition. They can ship me out to Gross-Boschpol as an instructor. Let other people be brave. It's not that I'm scared, I've just had enough. Can you understand that?"

I refused to fall for his nonsense; I pinned him down. "Oho, so it's all on account of the Pokriefke kid. Hell, that wasn't her. She works on the No. 2 Line to Oliva, not on the No. 5. Everybody knows that. You're scared shitless, that's all. I can see how you feel."

He was determined that there should be something between them. "You can take my word for it about Tulla. The fact is she took me home with her, lives on Elsenstrasse. Her mother doesn't mind. But you're right, I've had my bellyful. Maybe I'm scared too. I was scared before Mass. It's better now."

"I thought you didn't believe in God and all that stuff."

"That's got nothing to do with it."

"OK, forget it. And now what?"

"Maybe Störtebeker and the boys could… You know them pretty well, don't you?"

"No dice. I'm having no further dealings with those characters. It's not healthy. You should have asked the Pokriefke kid in case you really…"

"Wise up. I can't show my face on Osterzeile. If they're not there already, it won't be long – say, could I hide in your cellar, just for a few days?"

That too struck me as unhealthy. "You've got other places to hide. What about your relatives in the country? Or in Tulla's uncle's woodshed… Or on the barge."

For a while the word hung in mid-air. "In this filthy weather?" Mahlke said. But the thing was already decided; and though I refused stubbornly and prolixly to go with him, though I too spoke of the filthy weather, it gradually became apparent that I would have to go: rain is a binder.

We spent a good hour tramping from Neuschottland to Schellmühl and back, and then down the endless Posedowskiweg. We took shelter in the lee of at least two advertising pillars, bearing always the same posters warning the public against those sinister and unpatriotic figures Coalthief and Spendthrift, and then we resumed our tramp. From the main entrance of the Women's Hospital we saw the familiar backdrop: behind the railroad embankment, the gable roof and spire of the sturdy old Conradinum; but he wasn't looking or he saw something else. Then we stood for half an hour in the shelter of the Reichskolonie car stop, under the echoing tin roof with three or four grade-school boys. At first they spent the time roughhousing and pushing each other off the bench. Mahlke had his back turned to them, but it didn't help. Two of them came up with open copybooks and said something in broad dialect. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?" I asked.

"Not until nine. In case we decide to go."

"Well, hand them over, but make it fast."

Mahlke wrote his name and rank in the upper left-hand corner of the last page of both copybooks. They were not satisfied, they wanted the exact number of tanks he had knocked out – and Mahlke gave in; as though filling out a money order blank, he wrote the number first in figures, then in letters. Then he had to write his piece in two more copybooks. I was about to take back my fountain pen when one of the kids asked: "Where'd you knock 'em off, in Bjälgerott [Byelgorod] or Schietemier [Zhitomir]?"

Mahlke ought just to have nodded and they would have subsided. But he whispered in a hoarse voice: "No, most of them around Kovel, Brody, and Brzezany. And in April when we knocked out the First Armored Corps at Buczacz."

The youngsters wanted it all in writing and again I had to unscrew the fountain pen. They called two more of their contemporaries in out of the rain. It was always the same back that held still for the others to write on. He wanted to stretch, he would have liked to hold out his own copybook; they wouldn't let him: there's always one fall guy. Mahlke had to write Kovel and Brody-Brzezany, Cherkassy and Buczacz. His hand shook more and more, and again the sweat oozed from his pores. Questions spurted from their grubby faces: "Was ya in Kriewäurock [Krivoi Rog] too?" Every mouth open. In every mouth teeth missing. Paternal grandfather's eyes. Ears from the mother's side. And each one had nostrils: "And where dya think they'll send ya next?"

"He ain't allowed to tell. What's the use of asking?"

"I bet he's gonna be in the invasion."

"They're keepin 'im for after the war."

"Ask him if he's been at the Führer's HQ?"

"How about it, Uncle?"

"Can't you see he's a sergeant?"

"You gotta picture?"

" 'Cause we collect 'em."

"How much more furlough time ya got?"

"Yeah, whenner ya leavin?"

"Ya still be here tomorrow?"

"Yeah, when's yer time up?"

Mahlke fought his way out, stumbling over satchels. My fountain pen stayed in the shelter. Marathon through crosshatching. Side by side through puddles: rain is a binder. It was only after we passed the stadium that the boys fell back. But still they shouted after us; they had no intention of going to school. To this day they want to return my fountain pen.

When we reached the kitchen gardens outside Neuschottland, we stopped to catch our breath. I had a rage inside me and my rage was getting kittens. I thrust an accusing forefinger at the accursed thingamajig and Mahlke quickly removed it from his neck. Like the screwdriver years before, it was attached to a shoelace. Mahlke wanted to give it to me, but I shook my head. "Hell, no, but thanks for nothing."

But he didn't toss the scrap metal into the wet bushes; he had a back pocket

How am I going to get out of here? The gooseberries behind the makeshift fences were unripe: Mahlke began to pick with both hands. My pretext cast about for words. He gobbled and spat out skins. "Wait for me here, I'll be back in half an hour. You've got to have something to eat or you won't last long on the barge."

If Mahlke had said "Be sure you come back," I would have lit out for good. He scarcely nodded as I left; with all ten fingers he was reaching through the fence laths at the bushes; his mouth full of berries, he compelled loyalty: rain is a binder.

Mahlke's aunt opened the door. Good that his mother wasn't home. I could have taken some edibles from our house, but I thought: What's he got his family for? Besides, I was curious about his aunt. I was disappointed. She stood there in her kitchen apron and asked no questions. Through open doors came the smell of something that makes teeth squeak: rhubarb was being cooked at the Mahlkes'.

"We're giving a little party for Joachim. We've got plenty of stuff to drink, but in case we get hungry…"

Without a word she went to the kitchen and came back with two two-pound cans of pork. She also had a can opener, but it wasn't the same one that Mahlke had brought up from the barge when he found the canned frogs' legs in the galley. While she was out wondering what to give me – the Mahlkes always had their cupboards full, relatives in the country – I stood restless in the hallway, gazing at the photograph of Mahlke's father and Fireman Labuda. The locomotive had no steam up. The aunt came back with a shopping net and some newspaper to wrap the cans and can opener in. "Before you eat the pork," she said, "you'll have to warm it up some. If you don't, it'll be too heavy; it'll sit on your stomach."

If I asked before leaving whether anyone had been around asking for Joachim, the answer was no. But I didn't ask, I just turned around in the doorway and said: "Joachim sends you his love," though Mahlke hadn't sent anything at all, not even to his mother.

He wasn't curious either when I reappeared between the gardens in the same rain, hung the net on a fence lath, and stood rubbing my strangled fingers. He was still gobbling unripe gooseberries, compelling me, like his aunt, to worry about his physical well-being: "You're going to upset your stomach. Let's get going." But even then he stripped three handfuls from the dripping bushes and filled his pants pockets. As we looped around Neuschottland and the housing development between Wolfsweg and Bärenweg, he was still spitting out hard gooseberry skins. As we stood on the rear platform of the streetcar trailer and the rainy airfield passed by to the left of us, he was still pouring them in.

He was getting on my nerves with his gooseberries. Besides, the rain was letting up. The gray turned milky; made me feel like getting out and leaving him alone with his gooseberries. But I only said: "They've already come asking about you. Two plain-clothes men."

"Really?" He spat out the skins on the platform floor. "What about my mother? Does she know?"

"Your mother wasn't there. Only your aunt."

"Must have been shopping."

"I doubt it"

"Then she was over at the Schielkes' helping with the ironing."

"I'm sorry to say she wasn't there either."

"Like some gooseberries?"

"She's been taken down to the military district. I wasn't going to tell you."

We were almost in Brösen before Mahlke ran out of gooseberries. But as we crossed the beach, in which the rain had cut its pattern, he was still searching his sopping pockets for more. And when the Great Mahlke heard the sea slapping against the beach and his eyes saw the Baltic, the barge as a far-off backdrop, and the shadows of a few ships in the roadstead, he said: "I can't swim." Though I had already taken off my shoes and pants. The horizon drew a line through both his pupils.

"Is this a time to make jokes?"

"No kidding. I've got a bellyache. Damn gooseberries."

At this I swore and looked through my pockets and swore some more and found a mark and a little change. I ran to Brösen and rented a boat for two hours from old man Kreft. It wasn't as easy as it looks on paper, though Kreft didn't ask very many questions and helped me to launch the boat. When I pulled up on the beach, Mahlke lay writhing in the sand, uniform and all. I had to kick him to make him get up. He shivered, sweated, dug both fists into the pit of his stomach; but even today I can't make myself believe in that bellyache in spite of unripe gooseberries on an empty stomach.

"Why don't you go behind the dunes? Go ahead. On the double!" He walked hunched over, making curved tracks, and disappeared behind the beach grass. Maybe I could have seen his cap, but though nothing was moving in or out, I kept my eyes on the breakwater. When he came back, he was still hunched over but he helped me to shove off. I sat him down in the stern, stowed the net with the cans in it on his knees, and put the wrapped can opener in his hands. When the water darkened behind the second sandbank I said: "Now you can take a few strokes."

The Great Mahlke didn't even shake his head; he sat doubled up, clutching the wrapped can opener and looking through me; for we were sitting face to face.

Although I have never again to this day set foot in a rowboat, we are still sitting face to face: and his fingers are fidgeting. His neck is bare, but his cap straight. Sand trickling from the folds in his uniform. No rain, but forehead dripping. Every muscle tense. Eyes popping out of his head. With whom has he exchanged noses? Both knees wobbling. No cat offshore. But the mouse scurrying.

Yet it wasn't cold. Only when the clouds parted and the sun burst through the seams did spots of gooseflesh pass over the scarcely breathing surface of the water and assail our boat. "Take a few strokes, it'll warm you up." The answer was a chattering of teeth from the stern. And from intermittent groans chopped words were born into the world: "…fat lot of good did me. Might have guessed. Fuss for a lot of nonsense. Too bad. It would have been a good lecture. Would have started in with explanations, the sights, armor-piercing shells, Maybach engines, and so on. When I was a loader, I had to come up all the time to tighten up bolts, even under fire. But I wasn't going to talk about myself the whole time. My father and Labuda, the fireman. A few words about the accident near Dirschau. How my father by his courage and self-sacrifice. The way I always thought of my father as I sat there at the sights. Hadn't even received the sacraments when he. Thanks for the candles that time. O thou, most pure. Mother inviolate. Through whose intercession partake. Most amiable. Full of grace. It's the honest truth. My first battle north of Kursk proved it. And in the tangle outside Orel when they counterattacked. And in August by the Vorskla the way the Mother of God. They all laughed and put the division chaplain on my tail. Sure, but then we stabilized the front. Unfortunately, I was transferred to Center Sector, or they wouldn't have broken through so quick at Kharkov. She appeared to me again near Korosten when the 59th Corps. She never had the child, it was always the picture she was holding. Yes, Dr. Klohse, it's hanging in our hall beside the brush bag. And she didn't hold it over her breast, no, lower down. I had the locomotive in my sights, plain as day. Just had to hold steady between my father and Labuda. Four hundred. Direct hit. See that, Pilenz? I always aim between turret and boiler. Gives them a good airing. No, Dr. Klohse, she didn't speak. But to tell you the honest truth, she doesn't have to speak to me. Proofs? She held the picture, I tell you. Or in mathematics. Suppose you're teaching math. You assume that parallel lines meet at infinity. You'll admit that adds up to something like transcendence. That's how it was that time in the second line east of Kazan. It was the third day of Christmas. She came in from the left and headed for a clump of woods at convoy speed, twenty miles an hour. Just had to keep her in my sights. Hey, Pilenz, two strokes on the left, we're missing the barge."

At first Mahlke's outline of his lecture was little more than a chattering of teeth, but then he had them under control. Through it all he kept an eye on our course. The rhythm at which he spoke made me row so fast that the sweat poured from my forehead, while his pores dried and called it a day. Not for a single stroke was I sure whether or not he saw anything more over the expanding bridge than the customary gulls.

Before we hove alongside, he sat relaxed in the stern playing negligently with the can opener, which he had taken out of its paper. He no longer complained of bellyache. He stood before me on the barge, and when I had tied up, his hands busied themselves on his neck: the big thingamajig from his rear pocket was in place again. Rubbed his hands, the sun broke through, stretched his legs: Mahlke paced the deck as though taking possession, hummed a snatch of litany, waved up at the gulls, and played the cheery uncle who turns up for a visit after years of adventurous absence, bringing himself as a present. O happy reunion! "Hello, boys and girls, you haven't changed a bit!"

I found it hard to join in the game: "Get a move on. Old man Kreft only gave me the boat for an hour and a half. At first he said only an hour."

Mahlke calmed down: "OK, never detain a busy man. Say, do you see that bucket, the one next to the tanker, she's lying pretty low. I'll bet she's a Swede. Just for your information, we're going to row out there as soon as it gets dark. I want you back here at nine o'clock. I've a right to ask that much of you – or haven't I?"

The visibility was poor and of course it was impossible to make out the nationality of the freighter in the roadstead. Mahlke began to undress elaborately, meanwhile spouting a lot of incoherent nonsense. A few words about Tulla Pokriefke: "A hot number, take it from me." Gossip about Father Gusewski: "They say he sold goods on the black market. Altar cloths too. Or rather the coupons for the stuff." A couple of funny stories about his aunt: "But you've got to give her credit for one thing, she always got along with my father, even when they were both kids in the country." More about the locomotive: "Say, you might drop back at our house and get the picture, with or without the frame. No, better let it go. Just weigh me down."

He stood there in red gym pants, a vestige of our school tradition. He had carefully folded his uniform into the regulation bundle and stowed it away in his old-accustomed place behind the pilothouse. His boots looked like bedtime. "You got everything?" I asked. "Don't forget the opener." He shifted the medal from left to right and chattered schoolboy nonsense as if he hadn't a care in the world: "Tonnage of the Argentine battleship Moreno? Speed in knots? How much armor plate at the waterline? Year built? When remodeled? How many hundred-and-fifty-millimeter guns on the Vittorio Veneto?

I answered sluggishly, but I was pleased to find that I still had the dope. "Are you going to take both cans at once?"

"I'll see."

"Don't forget the can opener. There it is."

"You're looking out for me like a mother."

"Well, if I were you, I'd start going downstairs."

"Right you are. The place must be in a pretty sad state."

"You're not supposed to spend the winter there."

"The main thing is I hope the lighter works. There's plenty of alcohol."

"I wouldn't throw that thing away. Maybe you can sell it as a souvenir someplace. You never can tell."

Mahlke tossed the object from hand to hand. He slipped off the bridge and started looking step by step for the hatch, holding out his hands like a tightrope walker, though one arm was weighed down by the net with the two cans in it. His knees made bow waves. The sun broke through again for a moment and his backbone and the sinews in his neck cast a shadow to leftward.

"Must be half past ten. Maybe later."

"It's not as cold as I expected."

"It's always that way after the rain."

"My guess is water sixty-five, air sixty-eight."

There was a dredger in the channel, not far from the harbor-mouth buoy. Signs of activity on board, but the sounds were pure imagination, the wind was in the wrong direction. Mahlke's mouse was imaginary too, for even after his groping feet had found the rim of the hatch, he showed me only his back.

Over and over the same custom-made question dins into my ears: Did he say anything else before he went down? The only thing I am halfway sure of is that angular glance up at the bridge, over his left shoulder. He crouched down a moment to moisten himself, darkening the flag-red gym pants, and with his right hand improved his grip on the net with the tin cans – but what about the all-day sucker? It wasn't hanging from his neck. Had he thrown it away without my noticing? Where is the fish that will bring it to me? Did he say something more over his shoulder? Up at the gulls? Or toward the beach or the ships in the roadstead? Did he curse all rodents? I don't think I heard you say: "Well, see you tonight." Headfirst and weighed down with two cans of pork, he dove: the rounded back and the rear end followed the neck. A white foot kicked into the void. The water over the hatch resumed its usual rippling play.

Then I took my foot off the can opener. The can opener and I remained behind. If only I had got right into the boat, cast off and away: "Hell, he'll manage without it." But I stayed, counting the seconds. I let the dredger with its rising and falling chain buckets count for me, and frantically followed its count: thirty-two, thirty-three rusty seconds. Thirty-six, thirty-seven mud-heaving seconds. For forty-one, forty-two badly oiled seconds, forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine seconds, the dredger with its rising, falling, dipping buckets did what it could: deepened the Neufahrwasser harbor channel and helped me measure the time: Mahlke, with his cans of pork but no can opener, with or without the black candy whose sweetness had bitterness for a twin, must by then have moved into the erstwhile radio shack of the Polish mine sweeper Rybitwa.

Though we had not arranged for any signals, you might have knocked. Once again and again once again, I let the dredger count thirty seconds for me. By all calculable odds, or whatever the expression is, he must have… The gulls, cutting out patterns between barge and sky, were getting on my nerves. But when for no apparent reason the gulls suddenly veered away, the absence of gulls got on my nerves. I began, first with my heels, then with Mahlke's boots, to belabor the deck of the bridge: flakes of rust went flying, crumbs of gull dropping danced at every blow. Can opener in hammering fist, Pilenz shouted: "Come up! You've forgotten the can opener, the can opener…" Wild, then rhythmic shouting and hammering. Then a pause. Unfortunately, I didn't know Morse code. Two-three two-three, I hammered. Shouted myself hoarse: "Can o-pen-er! Can o-pen-er!"

Ever since that Friday I've known what silence is. Silence sets in when gulls veer away. Nothing can make more silence than a dredger at work when the wind carries away its iron noises. But it was Joachim Mahlke who made the greatest silence of all by not responding to my noise.

So then I rowed back. But before rowing back, I threw the can opener in the direction of the dredger, but didn't hit it.

So then I threw away the can opener and rowed back, returned old man Kreft's boat, had to pay an extra thirty pfennigs, and said: "Maybe I'll be back again this evening. Maybe I'll want the boat again."

So then I threw away, rowed back, returned, paid extra, said I'd be, sat down in the streetcar and rode, as they say, home.

So then I didn't go straight home after all, but rang the doorbell on Osterzeile, I asked no questions, just got them to give me the locomotive and frame, for hadn't I said to Mahlke and to old man Kreft too for that matter: "Maybe I'll be back again this evening…"

So my mother had just finished making lunch when I came home with the photograph. One of the heads of the labor police at the railroad car factory was eating with us. There was no fish, and beside my plate there was a letter for me from the military district.

So then I read and read my draft notice. My mother began to cry, which embarrassed the company. "I won't be leaving until Sunday night," I said, and then, paying no attention to our visitor: "Do you know what's become of Papa's binoculars?"

So then, with binoculars and photograph, I rode out to Brösen on Saturday morning, and not that same evening as agreed – the fog would have spoiled the visibility, and it was raining again. I picked out the highest spot on the wooded dunes, in front of the Soldiers' Monument I stood on the top step of the platform – above me towered the obelisk crowned with its golden ball, sheenless in the rain – and for half if not three quarters of an hour I held the binoculars to my eyes. It was only when everything turned to a blur that I lowered the glasses and looked into the dog-rose bushes.

So nothing was moving on the barge. Two empty combat boots were clearly distinguishable. Gulls still hovered over the rust, then gulls settled like powder on deck and shoes. In the roadstead the same ships as the day before. But no Swede among them, no neutral ship of any kind. The dredger had scarcely moved. The weather seemed to be on the mend. Once again I rode, as they say, home. My mother helped me to pack my cardboard suitcase.

So then I packed: I had removed the photograph from the frame and, since you hadn't claimed it, packed it at the bottom. On top of your father, on top of Fireman Labuda and your father's locomotive that had no steam up, I piled my underwear, the usual rubbish, and the diary which was lost near Cottbus along with the photograph and my letters.

Who will supply me with a good ending? For what began with cat and mouse torments me today in the form of crested terns on ponds bordered with rushes. Though I avoid nature, educational films show me these clever aquatic birds. Or the newsreels make me watch attempts to raise sunken freight barges in the Rhine or underwater operations in Hamburg harbor: it seems they are blasting the fortifications near the Howald Shipyard and salvaging aerial mines. Men go down with flashing, slightly battered helmets, men rise to the surface. Arms are held out toward them, the helmet is unscrewed, removed: but never does the Great Mahlke light a cigarette on the flickering screen; it's always somebody else who lights up.

When a circus comes to town, it can count on me as a customer. I know them all, or just about; I've spoken with any number of clowns in private, out behind the trailers; but usually they have no sense of humor, and if they've ever heard of a colleague named Mahlke, they won't admit it.

I may as well add that in October 1959 I went to Regensburg to a meeting of those survivors of the war who, like you, had made Knight's Cross. They wouldn't admit me to the hall. Inside, a Bundeswehr band was playing, or resting between pieces. During one such intermission, I had the lieutenant in charge of the order squad page you from the music platform: "Sergeant Mahlke is wanted at the entrance." But you didn't show up. You didn't surface.