While still in the station he witnessed a mother admonishing her child to “stay here, please.” Even when a wayward child was threatening to disappear into the passing crowd and one felt one’s face reddening with anger, one still used the proper imperative, albeit with a sharper edge. Even the harassed mother over there struggling with her luggage would not let herself go in public with a coarse, rustic “Hey!” Here they had internalized Luther, talking like a book at all times, as Martin realized at once.
When he arrived he knew practically nothing about the forms and the depths of the local language. After a period of disenchantment, while Martin tried to ward off any taint of dialect by employing a harshly correct High German, his growing curiosity led him to become more accustomed to it, and he gradually acquired a command of Saxon, though without ever accepting it completely. In particular, he learned to imitate its Chemnitz variety, in fact he eventually picked up an almost perfect Chemnitz accent, perhaps partly because it could not have been much further from Martin’s native inflections. There was not the slightest melodic affinity between the two dialects, so that he didn’t have to develop a feeling for fluent, for right and wrong transitions.
Now, however, Martin was lost, confronted by paths branching off between two mountains of rubble, he should have paid more attention to the directions. Die Ohren (the ears) — as he wasn’t far now from the scene of the action, a sound was beginning to emerge that resembled these words, if anything; the chorus drifted across the empty lots, breaking on the hollow facades. Soon he thought he could make out another syllable, something formed with an aus (out), the shouting children were to his left, raus, saus, or Haus, at the next crossroads perhaps he would find out what lay behind this Ohren aus (ears out).
Later he could not have said what he caught sight of first, after he had taken the turning: the dozen or so boys and girls perched high above him, excitedly leaning out of the window spaces in a ruined building, poor creatures with scarred knees and mended clothes, shrieking their heads off. Strangely enough, it was more difficult to hear them now, were they suffering from mumps, could it be that the children had lost their teeth?
Or was it the man ahead of him he saw first, down below in the alley, about a hundred meters away, he must have taken a secret path over the wasteland, through what had been backyards, and emerged from a passageway onto the open street without noticing Martin’s appearance at the corner of the house? From behind, it was difficult to guess his age, between thirty and forty, Martin would have said. Dark suit, no coat, no hat. Nothing else striking about him. It was hard to imagine what he was doing in such a place carrying his briefcase — perhaps he was just someone who had finished work early and was taking his usual shortcut from office to home.
Martin shuddered at the thought that he might have ended up in a similar job and had to walk day in, day out through the ruins of some small German town or other. There would be monotonous work waiting for him in the surveyor’s office, insufferable colleagues, at home his young family would be expecting him, at some point the children would leave home, otherwise things would stay the same for the rest of his life. Not that Martin had achieved much in the last few years. But at least he wasn’t carrying a briefcase, he was carrying a portfolio full of his own drawings through the city.
The children were targeting the man from city hall, of that there was no doubt, perhaps they had followed him the whole way. There was nothing for it now, the man would have to pass the screaming crowd of children. He straightened his back. Slowed down. Hesitated. Stopped. Bent down and reached for a stone. The children were so busy shouting at him that they didn’t grasp what was going on. No, this rabble simply had no fear. Drawing himself back for the throw, he turned around quickly, saw Martin behind him, dropped the stone. And finally Martin understood: Ohren didn’t come into it, it wasn’t Ohren the kids were thinking of, they were shouting in Saxon dialect, “Oochen aus, Oochen aus” (eyes out).
The young man in the dark suit, hatless and coatless, was wearing an eyepatch. With only one eye, his tormentors would have calculated, he wasn’t likely to hit anybody, the stone would have been propelled with force but not aimed properly, and would have bounced back off the facade somewhere.
“Eyes out, eyes out”—the man with the eyepatch reached the next crossing, the one after that, soon he had disappeared. Martin had not moved from the spot, his portfolio under his arm, now he wished he had called out to the man ahead of him, stopped him and asked the way, involved him in a conversation. There was no point in turning back, the children would be quicker than he, knew the area well. It was quiet now, they were waiting for him to get nearer. What would they shout at him, what flaw would they hit upon, would it be the scar, his posture, his whole figure, his long arms clutching the portfolio with his drawings, his cheekbones, his shoulders, his walk, his hairline, would they discover something else altogether that nobody had yet noticed? Martin knew how sharp and merciless children’s eyesight could be.
Suddenly he felt like emulating the one-eyed man. That is to say, he was conscious that he was already looking around for a really big stone, as sharp-edged as possible, it had to be weighty and solid, mustn’t easily crumble. No rotten piece of rubble. A good throwing rock. And Martin had no intention of meekly putting the stone down again if somebody suddenly turned up in the street. He meant it seriously. He wouldn’t be able to defend himself against the children’s superior numbers, he would go down under a hail of stones, but one of the gang at least would have reason to remember this day for some time to come.
As soon as he was two or three houses away, they started up their chorus as if at a word of command. Martin walked on swiftly, straight ahead, not looking up, not hearing a thing. Then the indistinct carpet of sound again. Then half-intelligible words again. He had left the gang behind him, reached the next street corner. The children were hollering, “Oochen aus, Oochen aus,” as they had been the whole time, as they had perhaps the whole year through, a monotonous battle cry, but good enough at any rate to intimidate random passersby, and the eyepatch was nothing but an unlucky coincidence.
Martin slowed down, the children hadn’t meant him personally, nor the one-eyed man, he had survived his second lesson about Dresden. He looked at his shoes — dust; his trouser legs — dust; sandstone and mortar had combined to form a fine layer. Now he could feel his shoulders, could feel his neck again. He was gripping the portfolio tightly in his left hand, his right hand was empty.
8
WE WERE SITTING IN our damp clothes in a small shelter upstream by the Elbe when Martin described his arrival in Dresden to me. The rain fell steadily in front of us, we had been careless enough to run into a storm that had been threatening to break for ages, not a soul in sight anywhere apart from us, but we had both been drawn by the sulfur yellow sky. We sat on the narrow bench together, the storm had passed overhead toward the city, and I remember exactly how we flinched when our clammy sleeves touched, how Martin constantly edged away from me, as though while he was narrating he could see me only from a certain distance. Then we left the shelter. Martin had fallen silent. The fields were steaming.