New Lives

[Letter of March 24, 1990]

Hundred-year Summer

His hands in the pants pockets of his dress uniform, Salwitzky is standing between the door and the table, staring out the window. Because of the afternoon sun and the heat, the blackout drape has been drawn halfway. Vischer is sitting with his elbows on the broad windowsill, his back to the locker, a book in his left hand. It’s as quiet as a day in the country. Except occasionally you can hear the shuffle of boots or the high-pitched whine of the troop carrier’s fly-wheel. The company is out taking target practice.

“Quarter till five,” Salwitzky says, pushing the bill of his cap back even farther and wiping his brow with his hand. “And?”

“Nothing,” Vischer says.

“You’re not watching.”

“I can see if anything moves.”

“If you don’t keep an eye out, you can’t see anything.”

There’s a whistle, but not from their hallway, then the scraping of stools upstairs.

“If they come back and see us here and laugh themselves silly, I’m going to raise hell.”

“Go ahead,” Vischer said softly, laying his open book aside. He gets up and takes a writing pad and ballpoint from the locker, sits back down. He shifts the lined paper into position.

“What’re you doing now?” Salwitzky walks just far enough around the table to be able to see the grayish blue door of the officers’ barracks — the handle is broken.

Vischer’s head is cocked down over the page.

“What’re you up to?”

Vischer glances at his book and then goes on writing.

“I asked you something.”

“Dammit, Sal, you can see for yourself.”

Salwitzky turns around. He jiggles the lock on his locker, moves his briefcase from the stool to the table, unzips it, and then zips it back up again. He airs his cap and wipes his forearm across his eyes and brow. The armpits of his light gray shirt have darkened.

“You writing an official protest?”

“Nope,” Vischer says, turning the page. He crosses his legs and bends down again.

“I’ll never do it again,” Salwitzky says, “this sort of thing’s not for me. I want to take my leave with the whole company or not at all.”

“You’ll get home all right.”

“I don’t believe it, not when I see you sitting there like that.”

“Nothing’s going to happen before five o’clock, you know that.”

“If I don’t catch the eight twenty…”

“You won’t make it, you know.”

“You’re right. Shit!” Salwitzky gives his stool a kick, sending it crashing into the bed and toppling over. Salwitzky sets it upright and gives it another kick. The stool ends up just short of the door.

“This is what they call a hundred-year summer, Visch. A hundred-year summer, but not for us! We’re hanging around here, and out there…Never be another like it!”

“Nothing you can do. Not even if you stand on your head, Sal…”

Salwitzky whips around. “That’s just like you. Sal standing on his head, you’d go for that.” Salwitzky picks the stool up and shoves it back to the table. “You’d really go for that, man oh man!”

Salwitzky throws himself onto one of the lower bunks in the middle of the room; his dress shoes are on the cross brace at the foot of the bed. “Got problems, Visch? Did she dump you?”

Vischer thumbs some more in his book.

“You can tell me, Visch. She did, didn’t she?”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s okay, Visch, you don’t have to tell me.” Salwitzky presses his hands together and cracks his knuckles one after the other. “You need to get out of here more often, Visch, then you wouldn’t have these problems.”

Vischer goes on writing. A radio is booming in the hallway overhead. Salwitzky sings along while the tune lasts.

“No, really,” he then says. “About as talkative as a screwdriver — read, write, read. Probably don’t do anything different at home either.” Salwitzky presses his hands against the mattress above his head.

“Out of cash? Need some?”

“No thanks.”

“Really?”

“You haven’t got any anyway.”

“Not here, I don’t need any here. But at home. Try guessing how much I’ve got at home. You need some? Only have to say the word.”

“I don’t have to do anything, Sal.” Vischer leans back and reads, the ballpoint still between his fingers.

“There’s plenty of stuff you’d like, I’m not that stupid.”

“Peace and quite, for instance,” Vischer says. They can no longer hear the radio overhead.

“For me to stand on my head. You go for that. You really do like it here, don’t you?”

“What?”

“You couldn’t have it better anywhere else, what with boys always standing on their heads.”

“What’s with ‘standing on their heads’?”

“You know what I mean, you know very well. Plus your little vase of flowers and the tablecloth and all the rest of the shit.”

“You mean this?” Vischer pointed to a milk bottle behind the blackout drape, with a couple of withered wildflowers still stuck in some water.

“You ooze your way up to everybody here like a grease gun. ‘Can I bring something back for you? Coffee, vodka? Ring-a-ding-ding and thanks a bunch too.’ It pisses me off!”

Vischer shakes his head and goes on writing.

“But you just bring the stuff back, never take a drink yourself. It’s your way of paying them off.”

“For what?”

“Cocks and balls.”

Vischer bursts into laughter. “Head fulla shit, Sal, nothing but shit.”

“Didn’t you let that pansy give you a massage, I saw it myself, you stretched out here, couldn’t get enough.”

“You mean Rosi?”

“Moaning the whole time. Hey, I was there.”

“And you stretched out on your bed, too, Sal, don’t forget,” says Vischer, and looks up for the first time. “Somebody was all hot to get himself a massage from Rosi.”

“I had my shirt on and didn’t moan and carry on.”

“Undershirt pushed clear up, Sal, and remember what you said, about how somebody could sit on your ass?”

“You really like it here, Visch, just like our flamer. Rosi himself said so, because he’s not the only one, the place is fulla ripe boys who stand on their heads for him, Rosi said. And you, Visch, are just like all the rest, like all of ’em.”

“Shut up, Sal,” Vischer says, standing up and pulling the drape back. “Just shut your mouth.”

There’s a flash of lightning above the officers’ barracks. Vischer sits down, uses the windowsill as a table, his knees against the cold radiator, his back to Salwitzky, who goes right on talking.

[Letter of March 30, 1990]

Vischer didn’t turn around again until the squeaks began. Salwitzky is holding on to the metal frame with both hands behind his head, pressing his feet against the cross brace at the other end, and thrusting so that the bed frame shakes back and forth. “Rosi, you hot little piggy,” Salwitzky cries, and loses his rhythm, braces his feet against the mattress of the top bunk, and then, getting into the swing of it, kicks first against the cross brace and then the mattress. He rocks back and forth. “You hot pig!” he shouts. The springs squeak, the frame scrapes the floor. “Piggy, piggy, you hot pig!”

Suddenly a high screech — the metal poles disengage, Salwitzky shouts, holding the bed above him with his feet, shouts again. Salwitzky is an acrobat, a shouting acrobat. He can’t see Vischer because his legs, the bed, the mattress are in the way. “Have you got it?”

Vischer doesn’t answer. “Have you got it?” Salwitzky shouts, and, with what looks like incredible effort, sticks his head out to one side, so that he can finally see Vischer, who is supporting the top bunk now and smiling.

Salwitzky rolls to one side and stands up. Together they relink the poles at the foot of the bed. Salwitzky bends down and pinches the crease of his right pants leg, but so cautiously it looks like it hurts him to do it. Then he inspects the crease of his left pants leg. Little sweat stains dot his back and shoulders.

Vischer goes back to writing, his head cocked down close to the page. Salwitzky is standing behind him. Only the clumps of grass reveal how windy it is.

The first raindrops are so big you can see each one strike the pale gray asphalt, which is almost bluish in this light.

Salwitzky bends down across Vischer’s shoulder, cranks the window handle to open one of the panels. Like snowberries, the drops hit the asphalt with a loud slap. The sound even drowns out the trampling of boots, at least until the grid of the boot scraper starts resounding with a steady, almost rhythmic rattle.

Vischer sees a hand in front of his eyes, a strange, heavy hand with fat fingers, which as they spread reveal the tips with fingernails only half grown back and which remind Vischer of worms, or worse. Tendons and veins bulge, and the scar under the wedding ring turns white. Slowly the hand sinks down onto Vischer’s sheet of paper, and as the trampling of boots and the voices out in the hallway grow louder and doors bang and the asphalt turns black, the hand soundlessly crumples up the page before Vischer’s eyes.