“I didn’t spend long thinking about it — Comrade Stalin never needed much time to make his mind up either — but fell into an instant diabolical rage, I flailed around with my arms, stamped with both feet so that the floorboards trembled, the whole hut, I yelled and roared, spat, threw the crutches out into the aisle, and screamed directly into the face of the pathetic bundle of humanity in front of me — barely twenty years old and from Vienna like me — that I was going to make mincemeat of him. That did the trick. In short, all I had to do was behave like an ape, and the poor amputee let me spoon-feed him soup as though I were his father and he the sick child. After that I actually managed to feed the wounded man so well that he was fit to be released. It was this man who took my family the news that I was alive. He smuggled a note out of the camp — in his mouth. A dazzling success, and it was Comrade Stalin who helped me achieve it.
“He grew tired, he was bound to become tired, since he never once took his eyes off us. At the end, perhaps, opening his coal-black eyes wide again, in his last great struggle he looked around the room to register precisely every detail, every face, and since he must have sensed — Comrade Stalin sensed everything — that there wasn’t long to go, in his last minutes he wanted to gain a comprehensive picture of his surroundings and take it with him who knows where, the table, the chair, the telephone, the ceiling, then his friends around him, enemies, doctors, snakes, he wanted to look out of the window too, he made an effort — Comrade Stalin never spared any effort — summoning up all of his remaining strength to take in the rectangle of window, the light, the light, but his view was blocked. The heads of these hypocrites, these murderers would have to roll to fulfill Comrade Stalin’s last modest wish, to see the daylight in the window one last time, even if it had long since got dark out there, early March, half past nine in the evening. It may be that at the end his eyeballs popped out of his skull because he wanted to catch a last glimpse, and yet he probably saw no more than a diffuse, blinding brightness, before somebody in the circle of intimates, of traitors around his sickbed, deathbed, closed his eyes forever.
“His coal-black eyes held an oath of loyalty: Don’t worry, I am following you and your actions, wherever you go, I will follow you to the ends of the earth. And I, was I worthy of the endless vigilance and unconditional loyalty of Comrade Stalin? I received my discharge papers from the camp beneath his gaze, I packed my things under his gaze — turning away without taking my leave of that so-familiar face. As though from one moment to the next all the looks we had exchanged over the years had been forgotten. I turned toward the west without visualizing how the firm gaze was boring into the back of my head, scowling at first, as though he had not yet lost me, as though his knitted brows still had the power to make me turn back. Gradually his stare must have become angry, despairing, in the end melancholy, marked by deep sorrow, since I was traveling inexorably toward my homeland heedless of whether I would ever again see this man who had looked into my eyes night and day for four years. And now suddenly it’s over.”
Kaltenburg stretched, raising his arms above his head.
“Children, it’s very late, we’d better be going”—and he stood up from his chair as though he were leaving the field hospital block, as though taking off his white coat, to reveal the black suit once more.
But after he had dropped me off at home and I stood for a while in the dark street, I could see a doctor again, white coat flapping as he walks down the central aisle of the hospital barracks, turning his head to left and right and tossing a few words of German to one patient here, some Russian to another over there, he corrects himself with a laugh, the flock of nurses in his wake laugh with him. The aisle between the beds vanishes into the distance, but the doctor shows no sign of fatigue when he reaches the door, he has pronounced on cases, encouraged and exhorted, three hundred times. And he knows every single face.
He steps out into the cold, clear air. He breathes in deeply. On the horizon a thin haze covers the hills, the nurses stand there shivering and smoking. The Russian woman doctor at his side has offered him a cigarette, but he needs to breathe in the pure air, he must quickly erase all those patients’ faces from his mind’s eye before tackling the next ward.
2
A FINE FILM OF cloud had hung over the city since the morning, now it was beginning to drizzle. Katharina Fischer said, “Stalin’s death loosened Ludwig Kaltenburg’s tongue,” and her voice sounded as hushed in the silence that surrounded us as if Stalin had died only yesterday, as if nobody quite knew how to deal with his death, as if behind every window silent, tear-stained, dejected people sat around the radio waiting in case the solemn music that had been playing for the last twenty-four hours was suddenly interrupted by an announcer, audibly struggling to maintain his composure, bringing a newsflash: Moscow has just reported that the great Stalin is awake again.
The pavement glistened, a dry smell of dust mingled with the dampness. I was showing Katharina Fischer around Oberloschwitz, pointing out the houses, paths, gardens that were so familiar to me in Kaltenburg’s day that I felt connected to every paving stone, every gap in a fence. Not much of all that was left, whether because the old wooden fence was missing here, the pavement was gone there, or because, as I hadn’t been up here since 1990 or 1991, it wasn’t easy to locate the reference points in my memory.
“We can’t let our animals go hungry because of a death, however great the deceased may be,” said the professor in measured tones next morning. Later it was said among his colleagues — who knew nothing about our late-night session at the Hagemanns’, and were never to know — that his inner conflict was obvious, his deep emotional upset making it hard for him to answer the call of duty. Others were convinced that the reason Kaltenburg had been speaking more slowly than usual was that the vodka the night before hadn’t agreed with him. Many later remembered the sentences: “We must think of the animals, we owe it to him,” as the professor proceeded to the normal business of the day. Certain breeding programs could not go unsupervised even for an hour, hatching times were near, some of the duck flock was suffering at the time from a nasty rash — but the present occasion called for some colleagues to be released from their duties: who was going to take care of the black ribbon, the banners, and the large portrait above the entrance to the house? Kaltenburg advised against flower arrangements. However tastefully done, anything made with plant material would look absolutely pathetic in a very short time: “Animals have no piety, nothing we can do about it.”
Anoth er suggestion was received with an unappreciative shake of the head: someone suggested piping solemn music into the enclosures. No music. Who would answer for the possible negative effects, territorial battles, premature births, general lethargy, no, the risk was simply too great. Ludwig Kaltenburg had a lifelong aversion to funeral marches.
Eventually he even sent one or two colleagues home, either out of sympathy or because he detested their overemotional tendencies. The various jobs were allocated, and Kaltenburg withdrew to his study to write a newspaper article. He had promised to contribute a page entitled “Stalin, Friend of Animals,” but when I looked in on him later at teatime the sheet of scrap paper still bore only the title, and the article never got beyond the concept stage.
Yes, Stalin’s death did loosen the professor’s tongue, but it seems that with his long monologue about the coal-black eyes that chapter was closed for Kaltenburg. The Stalin portrait at the Institute villa, pictures of Stalin all over the city: Kaltenburg passed the portraits without looking up. Whatever nightmares his experiences in the camp may have caused him, and whatever mistrust Ludwig Kaltenburg had to live with at that time, after Stalin’s death he seemed liberated. In a single night he had freed himself from the vigilant eyes of Stalin. Furthermore, it was as if Kaltenburg knew that in the future a path would be open for him to return to the Soviet Union.