Cat and Mouse

Ever since that Friday I've known what silence is. Silence sets in when gulls veer away. Nothing can make more silence than a dredger at work when the wind carries away its iron noises. But it was Joachim Mahlke who made the greatest silence of all by not responding to my noise.

So then I rowed back. But before rowing back, I threw the can opener in the direction of the dredger, but didn't hit it.

So then I threw away the can opener and rowed back, returned old man Kreft's boat, had to pay an extra thirty pfennigs, and said: "Maybe I'll be back again this evening. Maybe I'll want the boat again."

So then I threw away, rowed back, returned, paid extra, said I'd be, sat down in the streetcar and rode, as they say, home.

So then I didn't go straight home after all, but rang the doorbell on Osterzeile, I asked no questions, just got them to give me the locomotive and frame, for hadn't I said to Mahlke and to old man Kreft too for that matter: "Maybe I'll be back again this evening…"

So my mother had just finished making lunch when I came home with the photograph. One of the heads of the labor police at the railroad car factory was eating with us. There was no fish, and beside my plate there was a letter for me from the military district.

So then I read and read my draft notice. My mother began to cry, which embarrassed the company. "I won't be leaving until Sunday night," I said, and then, paying no attention to our visitor: "Do you know what's become of Papa's binoculars?"

So then, with binoculars and photograph, I rode out to Brösen on Saturday morning, and not that same evening as agreed – the fog would have spoiled the visibility, and it was raining again. I picked out the highest spot on the wooded dunes, in front of the Soldiers' Monument I stood on the top step of the platform – above me towered the obelisk crowned with its golden ball, sheenless in the rain – and for half if not three quarters of an hour I held the binoculars to my eyes. It was only when everything turned to a blur that I lowered the glasses and looked into the dog-rose bushes.

So nothing was moving on the barge. Two empty combat boots were clearly distinguishable. Gulls still hovered over the rust, then gulls settled like powder on deck and shoes. In the roadstead the same ships as the day before. But no Swede among them, no neutral ship of any kind. The dredger had scarcely moved. The weather seemed to be on the mend. Once again I rode, as they say, home. My mother helped me to pack my cardboard suitcase.

So then I packed: I had removed the photograph from the frame and, since you hadn't claimed it, packed it at the bottom. On top of your father, on top of Fireman Labuda and your father's locomotive that had no steam up, I piled my underwear, the usual rubbish, and the diary which was lost near Cottbus along with the photograph and my letters.

Who will supply me with a good ending? For what began with cat and mouse torments me today in the form of crested terns on ponds bordered with rushes. Though I avoid nature, educational films show me these clever aquatic birds. Or the newsreels make me watch attempts to raise sunken freight barges in the Rhine or underwater operations in Hamburg harbor: it seems they are blasting the fortifications near the Howald Shipyard and salvaging aerial mines. Men go down with flashing, slightly battered helmets, men rise to the surface. Arms are held out toward them, the helmet is unscrewed, removed: but never does the Great Mahlke light a cigarette on the flickering screen; it's always somebody else who lights up.

When a circus comes to town, it can count on me as a customer. I know them all, or just about; I've spoken with any number of clowns in private, out behind the trailers; but usually they have no sense of humor, and if they've ever heard of a colleague named Mahlke, they won't admit it.

I may as well add that in October 1959 I went to Regensburg to a meeting of those survivors of the war who, like you, had made Knight's Cross. They wouldn't admit me to the hall. Inside, a Bundeswehr band was playing, or resting between pieces. During one such intermission, I had the lieutenant in charge of the order squad page you from the music platform: "Sergeant Mahlke is wanted at the entrance." But you didn't show up. You didn't surface.