Will, стр. 83
Aunty Emma sighs. ‘I don’t want to bother you with it.’
‘Then go away again,’ Mother answers firmly. ‘You can’t come bursting in here with tears in your eyes and then start talking nonsense. I took our dinner off the gas just for you because I could see something was wrong.’
‘In other words, you’ve already bothered us,’ sounds from behind the newspaper. Father is hungry. He winks at me. I sigh in reply.
‘No, Father. That’s not true either. And you’re always welcome to stay for dinner. There’s not a lot though.’
‘Not like at yours, Emma,’ my father tries again. Over the last few months he’s developed an obsession with other people’s food, which in his fantasies grows more and more abundant compared to what we get at home. He mostly blames his wife for the consequences of the increasing shortages and my diminishing ability to find a way around them. She’s starving him.
‘Ah, shut up for once. I’ve bloody well had it up to here with your idiotic jabbering!’
Silence. Mother’s sudden outburst has stunned everyone. My father, who’s suddenly turned as white as a sheet, lets his newspaper sag. Aunty Emma’s mouth is hanging open. My mother has lowered her eyes, but she means it, that’s clear, she’s not taking a single word back. Father stands up, clears his throat and says he’s going out to get some fresh air. We hear the front door closing.
‘Good riddance with all his nagging,’ Mother says, still just as determined, without her voice trembling or catching. She nods in my direction and asks Aunty Emma if she should chase me off too. Then the two women burst out laughing. I stand up.
‘Not at all,’ Aunty Emma says, ‘just stay there.’
‘Has your German left you?’ Mother asks.
Aunty Emma shakes her head. ‘No, it’s because of what he just came to tell me. He’s completely distraught. I had to calm him down. I’ve never seen him like this before.’
‘Stop beating round the bush, Emma.’
Something I can’t quite place has slipped into Mother’s tone, as if her shouting just now has released something she has kept hidden from us all. Aunty Emma doesn’t notice; not that noticing things about other people is her strong suit anyway.
‘A month ago they got a new colleague from the Eastern Front, Hauptsturmführer Schmidt or something like that. Gregor and the others didn’t get along with him that well. I met him once. Very quiet, no drinker. He always looked like he was in a complete rage. Gregor said he refused to understand how they do things here, that Russia had hit him hard, he’d seen too much and been through too much, it more or less drove him mad and… It makes me sick to think of it… That fellow picked fights with everyone, especially Heinrich…’ Aunty Emma looks at me. ‘You know him. He was in the Hulstkamp once when you and your girl were there… Remember?’ Aunty Emma sees me turning pale and tells me with a stabbing glance that she won’t be digressing into how drunk I got or what happened in the toilets. ‘The Hauptsturmführer with the scar on his face, quite a jolly chap. Heinrich…’
‘I remember him vaguely.’
‘Well, this bloke from the Eastern Front shot him. Can you believe it? Germans shooting each other? This Schmidt fellow drew his pistol and shot him dead as if it was nothing. Shouting that they were all profiteers. Incredible. My Gregor works day and night.’
‘So did they lock the madman up?’
‘No,’ Aunty Emma says quietly. ‘Gregor was lucky, because that fellow started shooting at everyone in sight. In the end it was Gregor who got him. He could have been killed…’ She starts to sob.
‘Child, come now…’ My mother gently squeezes her sister’s shoulders.
‘Some… times…’ Aunty Emma has started bawling and can hardly speak. ‘Sometimes… I think… it’s all going to pot… You’re in love, you love each other so much, and you make plans… but so many things can go wrong… Sometimes I think: it’s over, it’s finished… and where does that leave me? Do you understand?’
She rubs her stomach. It’s playing up again. Back to where she started.
‘Oh, come now. Things won’t come to that,’ my mother says while looking at me, sharper than ever, perhaps seeing me sharply for the very first time.
Aunty Emma says goodbye. I hear her sobbing quietly at the front door for a moment and then she’s gone.
‘Your father’s probably found a safe haven somewhere by now, don’t you think?’
I shrug.
‘Dear, oh dear…’ After putting dinner back on, she sits down opposite me again. ‘So now they’re at each other’s throats. What kind of circus is this turning into? They come here stealing like magpies, sticking everything they can find in their own pockets, getting pissed off their faces, messing around with women like our Emma, who’s actually a complete ninny, no matter how much I love her, and what happens in the end? They start killing each other… All because of the money from the foreigners who settled here. You see where it leads. Those Jews have driven that whole nation mad with greed. They deserve each other.’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it’s always someone else’s fault.’
‘Don’t you ever get tired of your own drivel, Wilfried?’
Shadows can talk. No clotted blood on the floor of this room, and none of the dried meat or vegetables I delivered either. Meanbeard’s German books are still here, together with a coat, some forgotten underwear and a worn sock. The rest has disappeared together with Chaim Lizke. I’m finished. Or not? It’s hard to say. Lizke’s place of hiding has become my refuge. I fill page after page here with my poems, my ‘Confessions of a Comedian’, as if there’s no end to it, as if the end itself has been