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.