The man turned away and did not look back again. Ella patted her dog’s head. No one laughed.
Thomas howled quietly and whimpered.
A young lady bent down and offered the dog a glass. Thirsty? She laughed. Maybe a little water? The lady looked round, saw a flowered plate and tipped her white wine onto it. There you are.
Thomas panted, he got up on his knees and pawed the woman’s stomach with his hands. She almost fell over, she took a step or two backwards, supported herself on several people and stood her ground.
That’ll do, that’ll do. It was getting too much for her.
Ella jerked her dog’s leash and said: Bello, what did I tell you? You’re not to jump up at people. Calm down, Bello, come on, calm down. Thomas snuffled his way along the floor with the muzzle of his mask; he obviously couldn’t see enough of the plate through the openings for his eyes. He lapped up the wine with the tip of his tongue.
Ella, what an enchanting feather! Alfred offered Ella his hand in greeting. He was a fine figure of a man, a sculptor and not very keen to be friends with Käthe, but he always turned up at her parties. Next moment Alfred’s eyes fell on the half-naked dog.
And that is?
Enchanting, yes. Ella nodded.
And that — who do you have there?
My dog Bello.
I see. Alfred suppressed outraged laughter only with difficulty, snorted hard, and looked at Ella. Your dog? And you walk around here with him on the leash like that?
If I didn’t he’d bite. Ella tickled her dog’s head. Sorry, but he has to be kept on the leash.
Alfred bent down and clapped the dog on his back. Well, well, my good fellow. The dog growled. As Alfred straightened up his hand touched the garland round Ella’s shoulders. Then he tapped the skin of her flat bosom with his forefinger, clearly below the collarbone. Would you like some wine?
Thanks, but no, I must look after my dog. Ella tugged at Thomas’s leash and ducked under Alfred’s arm. The dog barked, he was barking at Alfred, the greedy finger had not escaped his notice.
And he’s looking after you, right? The lovely Ella and her naked dog! You could hear that Alfred had been drinking, maybe drinking too heavily. At least, several guests turned to Ella and Alfred and their eyes fell on the naked figure of Thomas, still unrecognisable in his mask. A big, fat woman with red ringlets and a peacock-feather dress cried out in delight. Could she sit on the dog? Her hand was already groping for the furry neck, her long fingernails dug into it, and before Ella realised what was happening she let her heavy buttocks down on Thomas’s back. There was a cracking sound, a groan, and Thomas collapsed on the floor under the peacock feathers. The woman rolled over to one side, lay on her back, spluttered and roared with laughter. Thomas’s prick was exposed as he lay sideways, one leg at an angle, the coat lining falling aside, the mask slipping up, his face distorted, his eyes closed in pain or shame.
Ella stood beside him, clapping. As long as she went on clapping, she hoped, more of the guests would look at her than at him. And a lot of them were looking. She nudged Thomas with her foot and hissed: What’s the matter? Stand up. Thomas hauled himself a little way up. Ella grasped the furry nape of his neck in both her hands, held it firmly, the way you pick up a cat by the scruff of the neck, and dragged him through the crowd. Loud music was playing, the plucked strings of a guitar, One morning very early. A dark-haired woman, throwing herself into it, was singing the Partisan song. Ella propelled her dog through the dancing throng, sometimes he crawled on all fours, sometime she had to push him, and among the dancers who were singing along Ella could clearly make out Käthe’s clear, high voice. She was the only one who could sing the Italian text, their struggle for freedom, every verse, every line of it, her voice drowned out the rest. O partigiano, portami via, ché mi sento di morir, e se io muoio su la montagna, o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao, e se io muoio da partigiano, tu mi devi seppellir. Ella heard her own voice in Käthe’s, and she knew every line: what her mother said, what her mother sang, when you sang it your arms and legs tingled, you wanted to burst apart and open up. She felt like dancing too, but first she had to get Thomas out of the crowd.
As soon as Ella had closed the door of her room behind her, Thomas tore off the coat lining, took the mask off his head, and threw himself naked on his bed.
Bastards.
It was your idea, Ella pointed out. She sat on the chair and smoothed out her parrot feather. You wanted. . she had to giggle again. . you wanted to go out there half naked.
Thomas rubbed his fist over his hip bones. Very funny, he groaned, so was that an invitation to crush me? Bastards.
Bastards, Ella repeated.
Not because of that clumsy idiot. What gloriously lousy blindness. How long do they think their freedom will last? What kind of stinking freedom is it if they lock us up?
Lock us up. You say that as if we were going straight to prison.
So we are. Straight to prison with the raving lunatics. They all look, and no one says anything, no one’s surprised. What do you think they need their damn Wall for? He’s lying, old Walter is, when he calls it a little fence.
Ella turned the quill of her parrot feather between her hands so fast that it looked as if it were a bluish goblet shape.
What use are the sky and the suburban railway and your friends to you if the world doesn’t notice what’s going on here? Communist decadence, that’s what it is, dictatorship. Do you want to live behind a wall, surrounded by a wall? Bella ciao. Käthe will never see her beloved Italy again. What a joke, she says she’ll take us to Italy some time, she’ll take us to France some time. Maybe we’d even have been able to go to New York and visit Uncle Paul?
Was that him just now?
She’s never once taken us anywhere. And now she’ll just have to go round in circles herself, always following the Wall, maybe to the shores of the Baltic for all I care.
Thomas stood up, put on a pair of trousers and a shirt. Through the open window, they heard the rain pouring down, the willow tree and the ruins of the mill on the other side of the road were suddenly brightly illuminated, a flash of lightning, the air smelled of damp soil, they heard thunder rolling quietly in the distance. Maybe, and he went to the window where he had hung herbs up to dry a few days ago, maybe that’s the death wish of the people here, they torment themselves if not blindly then with pleasure. Thomas cut some of the herbs off with a pair of scissors and collected the rustling leaves and dried stems in his hand. He smelled the herbs, spread his hand out flat, and cut them up smaller and smaller. It’s like being in kindergarten, the world is too large for them, they’d rather build a little fence round it and then no child can get away. Be good and stay in the guardianship of the collective, never put a finger outside it, not a foot, not a thought. Build a wall round it, keep people away, there’ll be no time off from your servitude to the state, you brought it on yourselves. Thus spake Walter Ulbricht.
What do you mean, a wall? Where do you see a wall? Ella let her jaw drop; she wanted to show him that she couldn’t follow his fantastic train of thought, and didn’t want to.
That’s what Ulbricht’s been talking about recently, exit permits to the world outside or not. The scissors clicked as he snapped them fast, the leaves must be cut up smaller and smaller. He denies that it’s being built but he already has a name for it. Don’t make me laugh!
They could hear music in the corridor, obviously the guitar player and the woman whose singing he accompanied were going through the whole house. Flying into space, past the stars to race.