Guests had been arriving for the last two hours. Through the closed door of the room, Ella heard them knocking rain off their umbrellas and coats in the corridor, the walls of the house quivered to the noise of chattering, laughing, cries of surprise. In the long corridor Ella and Thomas heard the bell ringing and the guests knocking, the shrill tones of greeting. As guests passed, someone’s elbow might hit the door of the room, something scraped by, perhaps an umbrella brushing against the door; Käthe’s dog barked shrilly. Only guests coming here for the first time rang the bell — everyone else knew that Käthe’s door was always open, you could walk in at any time. Whoever wanted to, whenever they wanted to, with flowers or empty-handed. It was a railway junction of parties, gatherings, meetings. Even secret and personal, intimate and riotous encounters took place behind unlocked doors. Those who came were responsible for deciding to come and for what they would see and hear.
Käthe’s colt-like whinny penetrated the noise. She had invited the man who cast her models to join the guests. In his presence her laughter was particularly shrill.
Zabula budy kaparak vi llilli marushnick plavy, rickey pickedy. Ella straightened up and raised her eyebrows enquiringly: Zalunalafye? There was surprise on her face. Only now did she notice that Thomas was still in his pyjama trousers and carrying a garland of dried leaves and flowers. He had fixed the blooms of yellow roses to a willow shoot, along with the umbels of hydrangeas, once blue, now faded to grey-green, and silvery-white poplar leaves. He laid the garland neatly round Ella’s shoulders. From his smile, Ella could tell that he saw how beautiful she was. She needed his eyes more than the mirror, she trusted only his eyes, she could believe only in them. Ella tied the goatskin lying over the chair at her desk round her hips like a skirt, securing it with string.
What about this? Thomas held out the goat’s cloven hoof that Käthe’s dog had once found on a walk in the outskirts of the wood. Since then the goat’s hoof, dried and useless, had been lying on the mantelpiece over the stove. Ella strapped it to her stockinged foot.
That afternoon Thomas had worked away on a stick with his knife, first paring the grey bark off the white wood, then spending hours making holes with a corkscrew and patiently hollowing out the stick, making her a flute as the finishing touch to her Pan costume. Ella put the flute to her lips, her breath filled her stomach and her lungs entirely, and now she blew with all her might. The shrill note tugged at the roots of their hair, hurt both ears until they turned away.
Ahhksy, lizzizumma! Thomas turned round in a circle, pressing his hands to his head, his ears, eyes, mouth — a monkey who didn’t have enough arms for three, whose apertures, holes and pores were exposed unprotected to the world of which it wasn’t supposed to, didn’t want to know anything. His feet sprang into the air as if the floor were too hot for him, the air burning with the sound of the flute.
Wasn’t she a magician?
Ella laughed. She blew the flute again and doubled up with laughter, because Thomas had flung himself on the floor and was acting as if he were dying from the high sound of her flute.
Pizzei. . piri k’h. . z’ho. . f’hu. . L’iiiii. Thomas stretched out, contorting himself, on the linoleum, his limbs lay slack, his eyes stared fixedly in one direction, far away from a sister who only wanted to be the god Pan today.
Ella bent over him. Falu? She looked at him from all sides; no one else could die as artistically as Thomas. And hadn’t she killed him? Hadn’t he carved the flute that she would play, and then he could die beautifully at the sound? Kattampeu? Not an eyelash moved, not an eyelid twitched, nor did the corners of his mouth. Ella giggled. Vooo, she whispered, her lips tingling, vooo, vooo. She cautiously nudged his body with one toe, then nudged rather harder so that his hips moved forward and Thomas was lying face down on the floor.
Ella took the parrot feather off her cap and crouched at his feet. They were bare, and cold although it was summer. She tickled his soles, first gently and lightly, the feather scarcely touched him, then she ran it round his toes, the balls of his feet, brushed the deepest hollow in his soles with the tip of the feather until he jumped up, spluttering and dancing about like Rumpelstiltskin.
Aren’t you going to get dressed? Ella laughed and tried to grab the leg of his pyjama trousers. Hey, are you going in your pyjamas today?
Naked, he cried, I’m going naked! And he shook the trousers off his legs and took the pyjama jacket off. I’m going like this. Are you ashamed of being seen with me, then?
Ella rolled her eyes and yawned.
The Emperor’s new clothes, pu’foo, pu’foo? Singsaladye. Thomas the naked man.
There was no reason for her to be alarmed or overawed by her naked brother, half man, half boy — he had only a few soft blond hairs where others had wiry bushes. Thomas put a soft dog mask over his head; it covered his face, his hair, his throat — anyone who knew Thomas naked would recognise him. But who did, besides Ella? Käthe maybe, he had had to model for her all winter. However, that was months ago, and Thomas had grown taller and stronger now. Käthe had seldom been able to dispense with him as a model last winter, and when she did she sent for a young man from Friedrichshagen instead. The two young men would certainly know each other naked; they had met in Käthe’s studio. Maybe the stonemason who sometimes carved the broad outline out of the Elbe sandstone might also know what Thomas looked like naked. Ella remembered how Thomas, red in the face, had once come storming into her room in desperation, indeed in shame and rage, just as he had run away from Käthe, humiliated.
But summer parties like this evening’s were not dangerous, at least in their early hours. Käthe was so busy greeting guests and dancing that it would be ages before she got round to holding forth. There was a pleasant sweetish smell of pipe tobacco that someone might have brought back from the West. Or was it a perfume? It smelled of the West, of another world drifting into this house.
Thomas raised his nose and sniffed the air, he barked, he snapped at Ella’s hand.
He got down and jumped around on all fours, he whined and howled.
Ella patted her big dog. She ran her fingertips over the soft skin on his back, a nakedness that wouldn’t hurt anyone. The dog licked her hand, rubbed his head against Ella’s leg, and she patted his muzzle and the fur on the nape of his neck where the dog mask covered it. Where did you get that fur? She stroked the ears sewn to the mask.
Thomas barked.
Stop barking, where did you get the fur? From the rabbit?
What rabbit?
Why did he ask? The whining could certainly be pretence. Ella was surprised by the sadness that suddenly came into Thomas’s voice. The one that was lying dead under the larch tree. You shot it, Thomas, admit it. You took the airgun and shot it.
Thomas shook his head vigorously. No, that’s not true.
Ella thought it strange that Thomas often found not only empty snail-shells and dead insects that he displayed in small cigar boxes, flies, bumblebees, honey bees, a dragonfly, peacock butterflies, brimstone butterflies, moths, large blue dung beetles from the woods. He also simply came upon dead mammals, a mole, the prickly skin of a hedgehog whose killer had obviously been unable to eat it and left it lying in the woods, the bloated body of a dog that had been drifting in the Fliess, and Thomas had fished it out before it reached the open water of the Müggelsee. He brought all these things home; he collected the insects and buried the mammals. Had he caused the rabbit’s death? He certainly fired the shotgun, and not just into the air, shooting down the clouds and the sun. The rabbit had shown no external injuries.