Perhaps you could even say that at first every child makes a sharp distinction, animals here, human beings there, two worlds that are interwoven in a mysterious way that the child hardly recognizes as yet, as though there were openings somewhere through which you could slip from one to the other. Except that most people, especially those who confuse retrospective self-observation with the transfiguration of their own youth, can later not remember the time when they regarded people and animals equally with a mixture of curiosity and anxiety, as though it was very far from decided in which of the two spheres you would eventually make your own life.
You could even observe this phenomenon in animals, Ludwig Kaltenburg had discovered: “The jackdaw which courts its human friend at lunchtime, trying to stuff mealworm mash into his ears, and then flies off with its friends, the hooded crows.”
I had expected Kaltenburg to return to the subject of his Dresden jackdaw colony, I knew it preoccupied him as much as ever, I heard from the people around him that he brought it up more and more often, but it was never mentioned in his letters to me. When he did describe to me the distinctive behavior of his favorite jackdaw, Taschotschek, for me it was a sign: the professor did not have long to live.
4
DID THEY EVER find out how the professor’s jackdaws were poisoned?” she asked at this point. “And by whom?” Not for certain. There’s been plenty of speculation over the years, of course, there have been suspects — Eberhard Matzke, no less, personally ordered them to be killed, so thought the professor when he was already in the West and wanted to believe in a conspiracy aimed at getting rid not just of Reinhold but of him too. In his less dark hours he was inclined to see it as a mere oversight: stupidly, his jackdaw flock had fallen victim to an illegal pest-control operation carried out by some collective farm organization.
“Is it difficult to poison a jackdaw, then?”
Not at all, and it’s happening all the time. The odd bird had already unaccountably disappeared in previous years, after all. In the nineteenth century the farmers put out poisoned voles to deal with the crow problem, the corvids were regarded as nothing but pests, and jackdaws mingling with the great flocks of foraging crows were affected too. In Kaltenburg’s day, when bird poisoning was on the increase again, there’s no doubt they had begun large-scale experimentation in secret to develop plant protection through poisoned grain crops.
“Poisoned grain?”
Grain that had been contaminated with an agent called Hora. At the end of October 1964, for example, it was openly planted near Fürstenwalde along with drilled winter wheat. Right up until the following March dead birds were being collected from the area, though in fact very few of them were jackdaws or crows. The majority, over a hundred specimens, were skylarks that had no doubt been looking for food in the fields as the thaw began.
“Large-scale anti-crow measures — sounds terrible.” Katharina Fischer shook her head. “And surely that sort of thing was prohibited?”
It might never have been discovered if ornithologists on their routine rounds had not come across an unusually high number of dead birds. Late in February 1984, at a crow roosting place by the former gravel pit near Ichtershausen, forty-five jackdaws and eighty-five rooks were found. Subsequent investigations showed that the Rudisleben plant production collective had illegally soaked wheat and corn in the plant protectant Dimethoate and scattered the grain across the freshly plowed fields, which eventually led to the death of over a thousand birds.
“So poisoning operations took place mainly in winter?”
Yes.
“And yet according to your account, Kaltenburg’s jackdaws died in late summer?”
That’s true. And at that time of year you don’t see massive raids by crows. What always matters is protecting the winter sowing.
“Therefore, if I’ve got it right, we can’t be looking at either plant protectants or any other way of treating grain? Perhaps you’ve got to approach the question from a different angle altogether, and consider who had close contact with Kaltenburg’s jackdaws.”
Too many to allow the circle to be gradually narrowed down. Countless people. Workers at the Institute. Visitors. Neighbors. And strangers never seen by anybody but the jackdaws themselves.
“Is it conceivable that the jackdaws were poisoned by a stranger?”
It’s possible they were. Jackdaws are pretty inquisitive birds, after all, willing to engage with new people and new situations — but I’m not quite convinced. I’m assuming that Ludwig Kaltenburg’s jackdaws were duped by somebody who was around them every day.
“So we can rule out Eberhard Matzke, then.”
After all that man has hatched up, I’d be the last person to want to defend him. But by that point he had long since achieved all his aims; he had cut Reinhold out and had succeeded in deeply humiliating Kaltenburg as well by harshly rejecting the peace offer from Dresden, that is to say, by behaving as though the offer never existed. When I think what care Ludwig Kaltenburg took over planning for the peace negotiations, how important he thought it was to consider every possible reaction on Matzke’s part. In fact he didn’t even want to divulge precisely what his offer consisted of, he thought it essential that nobody should know the substance of the forthcoming talks, this was a matter between him and Eberhard Matzke above all. No doubt he still had Knut’s objections ringing in his ears when he decided not to go to Berlin himself — but none of his precautions did any good in the end.
He handed me a pile of documents. “Krause will drive you, and he’s going to drop you off at the Tierpark, all right? I promised to send over a bundle of papers, that’s this large envelope here, don’t get it mixed up with the smaller envelope you’re going to give to colleague Matzke in the afternoon. You know everybody there at the zoo, go straight to the boss, I’ve told them you’re coming, pass on our greetings, get the business over as quickly as possible without seeming impolite. Then make your own way to the Invalidenstrasse. Don’t worry about Krause lurking around, he won’t wait for you — when we’re in Berlin he always goes to see his sister, he gets well fed there and he can shoot his mouth off about how he’s treated in Dresden. He’ll pick you up again at the Tierpark at five o’clock on the dot.”
There’s nothing to report about my appointment with Eberhard Matzke. He didn’t even offer me a seat. He laid the envelope aside without thanking me. He just muttered, “Funk, Funk — and you say I supervised your microscope work?” as though he couldn’t remember a thing. I was idiotic enough to mention his bike, his cardigan, Martin Spengler in the practical lab, I wanted to smooth the path for him, and all the while I had no idea that I was looking into the face of an SS man.
I spent only about ten minutes in his office, and I still recall how surprised I was not to run into any of the museum assistants, either in the corridor or on the stairs. When Kaltenburg’s limousine arrived at the Tierpark, I had been walking up and down the path for more than an hour. Krause switched the heater on.