Cigarette?
Thomas nodded.
Comrade Günter. The group leader offered his hand.
I’m Thomas. He shook hands with Comrade Günter. When he stopped breaking stone the cold crept under his armpit and into every other crook and hollow in his body.
A packet was held out to him. Thomas was about to take a cigarette, but Comrade Günter took it back again. Oh, sorry, don’t have many left. The comrade put one in his mouth and tucked the packet away in his breast pocket. It was windy. The group leader cupped his hands round the match, which didn’t light. The wind was whistling now. Thomas felt a drop fall on his shoulder, then another. It was raining. The group leader took a step aside, turned his shoulder to Thomas, lit his cigarette and blew smoke out quickly. Aren’t you cold?
No, claimed Thomas. The smoke narrowed his pores, he felt a greedy, boundless longing for the bitter-sweet taste, for a warming cigarette.
Comrade Günter drew deeply on his cigarette, blew the smoke in Thomas’s face and stepped towards him; he inspected Thomas, his eyes passing over Thomas’s smooth, bare chest, and he drew on his cigarette again. It was raining harder now. Thomas heard the lighted cigarette hiss softly. He felt Comrade Günter’s breath against his bare collarbone, he heard him begin to say something, then hold his breath, and finally breathe in deeply again. I could help you, said the group leader, and now, with the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he came even closer, so that Thomas couldn’t bend down to hack at the stones. He felt the heat of the cigarette dangerously close. Come on, said the group leader, and he was going to take Thomas’s hand, but Thomas flinched away. The group leader’s hand landed on his hip, slipped down, dug bony fingers into his naked buttock.
No thanks, no. Thomas clutched the handle of the pickaxe in both hands now. From the distant road, another quiet whistle could be heard. Thomas saw a group of people, heard distant sounds mingled with the wind and rain, maybe another group of workers, young labourers and apprentices on their way back to the hostel after their day’s work. The group leader held his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, he blew the smoke straight into Thomas’s face, then salivated noisily and licked Thomas’s face slowly. Thomas hardly trembled, but he held his breath and closed his eyes in shame. The group leader’s tongue passed over his lips, he clearly heard the man gathering saliva in his mouth again, to leave as thick a slimy trace on his face as possible. Taking small steps, Comrade Günter trod from one foot to the other, and thrust his tongue into Thomas’s ear. Thomas heard him salivating, felt the slobbering, it sounded like spitting.
Maybe some other time. The group leader let out a brief, harsh sound, perhaps meant to be laughter. I’m off now, I’m hungry.
The wind blew more strongly, it roared through the tops of the pine trees above the stone quarry and the little poplars, the raindrops were larger now, the poplar leaves rustled and Thomas kept breathing deeply, he didn’t want to shiver. The smell of Comrade Günter’s spit lingered in his nose. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the group leader climbing out of the quarry up the stone steps beside the hoist. The street lights on the road above had come on. Thomas stopped and did not move. He wasn’t going to let the cold get to him. His body was wet, the wind carried not only rain on it but also sand and tiny twigs and leaves that stuck to his skin and flew into his eyes. He was waiting for darkness. He broke stones now to keep from getting even colder. Rain washed the stone, and with the rain the dust disappeared, the air was clear, washed clean, satisfied. It was as if no one had been here breaking stones all day. And why should they? Thomas had stopped asking himself the point of all this. Stones were quarried from the rock of the pit so that up above they could be poured through a funnel into a breaking machine that would crush them with its steel jaws. Maybe they would end up only as ballast and gravel. They were simply broken up small. He could do that now, naked in the rain, he could break them up on his own as darkness fell. No one would see him.
When darkness had fallen over the fallow land here, Thomas climbed up the wet stone.
The boys were playing skat, anyone who won a trick got to drink spirits from a wooden mug painted in the Russian style. Rain beat against the window. And anyone who won a game could drink from the bottle as long as he could without putting it down. Thomas found his clothes in the corner beside the bed; they were sandy, and so was the rubbish bucket they were lying on. The showers behind the manager’s house could be reached only with a key after previous application. Thomas washed at the basin; there was a cold-water tap.
A newspaper cutting was pinned on the wall, Brigitte Bardot with her big breasts, the drawing pin went through her throat.
A second bottle of spirits was opened. Thomas put on his underclothes, trousers and sweater. Ella had found a place in the wardrobe department of the Deutsches Theater. She wanted to learn dressmaking. She had gone to the interview in her Pan costume. She had been asked to make a small bag with neat seams in front of the wardrobe mistress, sew on a button and make a buttonhole. To her own surprise, she had succeeded at the first attempt. There were huge rooms in the theatre, Ella had told him enthusiastically, breathing deeply through her nose with her eyes closed again and again, because she liked the smell there so much. She could prepare for her school-leaving exam at the adult education college, which held evening classes for people with jobs. Thomas would help her study when he was allowed to come home at Christmas. Now he lay down under the blanket with his clothes on and closed his eyes, although the noise the boys made kept him awake. He pulled the blanket over his head. Perhaps you could choke on your own breath? Or at least lose consciousness and go to sleep? The Fatherland calls you. Thomas heard that rallying cry, soldiers came marching up, and a band of wind instruments and drums was drilling him. He couldn’t march, couldn’t get the rhythm of it, he stood still. The soldiers fired their guns, formed a wall around him, came closer, threw their guns his way, he was supposed to take hold of a gun. He couldn’t catch one, he didn’t want to, the guns hit him, their butts struck his bare body. He wanted to escape, he ran but he couldn’t move from the spot, again and again he saw the wall of soldiers in front of him, guns were thrown to him, banners. Fluttering. Drumming. Music blaring. Fanfares. Protect the Fatherland, protect the Socialist Republic! There it was again, loud and clear. What might have been a dream just now reminded Thomas of reality, the hostel, the hut, the room, the bottom bunk bed where he had been trying to sleep. Thomas thought his eyes were encrusted, gummed up. The boys were still talking noisily at the table, bottles clinking, Thomas pressed the blanket to his eyes. Anyone who joined up now could look forward to a place in the Socialist Republic, training, studies. Solidarity and the right role seemed within touching distance. The boys here were determined. They were talking about the women from the prison on the way into the village, high-spirited laughter, skirt-chasers! All the noise circled around the Wasserburg and its female inmates. When Thomas dreamed again, fast asleep, surrounded by silence, he saw Violetta naked as he had never really seen her. Her red hair shone under his hands, he tasted her skin, it was sourish, unpleasant. There was scarcely any encrustation left when Thomas opened his eyes, dim light was coming through the window from a street lamp, it was silent, and he lay sweating under the scratchy blanket. His trousers and sweater were damp with sweat, the hair stuck to the nape of his neck. Thomas heard the boys breathing, snoring. He didn’t want to undress, he wanted to be rid of the blanket. Cautiously he felt the scratchy thing. The blanket too was damp on top, crumbly, it smelled of vomit. Thomas withdrew his hand, he sat up, the metal springs of the bed above him scratched his scalp, he ducked. Head down, he looked at his bed in the faint twilight. Someone had thrown up on his blanket while he was asleep. It smelled of spirits and vomit, it was what Violetta had tasted like in his dream.