Raising his velvet hat twice, so he could carefully blow off the fine cobwebs floating through the air from the old library, he plucked at the pink handkerchief sitting up prettily in the pocket of his blue sports jacket. With slightly bent legs, he bounced up and down daintily in his white tennis pants and bright yellow shoes. A car sputtered as it crawled past on Charlottenstrasse and Herr Priebe sniffed, his pointed nose protruding over a bushy blonde moustache. Waving his handkerchief gracefully at the dust, he bent forwards gently from the hips, then scurried across the embankment.
He was wearing violet stockings, and although he thrust his legs forward extremely energetically, he couldn’t quite manage to show them off to the other strollers because his pants were too long.
In Friedrichstrasse he eyed both ladies and gentlemen equally boldly, happy to pass as a philanderer on the lookout for female—or male—company. Opening his round, brown eyes wide, he peered about good-naturedly like a rabbit. His left eye, with its black-speckled iris, bulged slightly; Herr Priebe also jerked his head to the left repeatedly, looking over his shoulder as if he needed to see what was behind him.
The street was crowded with people, scattered along both sides: scurrying by, standing in front of shop windows, jumping into vehicles, or darting across the asphalt between the cars humming past. In Mohrenstrasse something touched his arm, and a voice coaxed: “How ’bout it, sweetheart?” A pretty face appeared, covered in make-up; a strawberry-blonde wig; huge eyes; a whiff of musk; a bouquet of violets on her bosom. Red in the face, Herr Priebe turned his head away. He stared carefully at the road, fixing his gaze anxiously on a cyclist, who bared his teeth at him.
Dazed, he stood motionless on the kerb, then roused himself and strolled in front of Barthmann’s shoe shop, humming. The delicate little doll tiptoed up behind him: strawberry-blonde wig, huge eyes, petticoat dangling above torn light blue stockings. She was chatting to a fop in a top hat. They laughed as he went past. Herr Priebe’s heart stood still.
He boarded a tram to Tiergarten and travelled up and down Hofjägerallee until he had calmed down; then he sank exhausted into a hackney cab. He lived in Brunnenstrasse, in a side building. Children were playing boisterously in the balmy evening air. Before going into the hallway he looked around to make sure nobody was following him. His father was sitting in shirtsleeves under the hanging lamp in the apartment, smoking strong tobacco—a bald-headed invalid in blue rimmed glasses with a bent back. Little Ella was already in bed against the wall; she pulled the pink handkerchief out of Valentin’s jacket pocket and sniffed it. He passed her a banana from the table.
On Monday he squeezed into his usual bus and rode with it all the way up to Wedding. He crossed an enormous coal yard. Sooty black lumps lay in little heaps smouldering. The courtyard was covered with thick dust; beneath it the rail tracks gleamed in the white morning light. Dust wafted continually from huge black mounds; powerful cranes were grinding their way in, their loads clattering into small bins. Herr Priebe walked across the dusty courtyard in his shiny black overcoat; his grey pants were thin and worn. He glanced drowsily at the tracks and climbed the spiral staircase of the little office block. Low, wide offices with wooden shutters on the windows; men behind desks; young girls in black smocks against the walls; they were pressing typewriter keys—a harsh metallic sound.
Distracted and deep in thought, he wandered up and down, chewing his moustache, smoking a shredded cigar. Two young women bumped into each other and said loudly to one another: “Doesn’t Herr Priebe look worn out!” He stopped short, stretched out at his desk, yawning audibly, and said to the man sitting next to him: “Big city life doesn’t agree with one forever, you know. It’s time I moved to Friedrichshagen.” He’d eaten pickled herring for breakfast that morning! He put on his horn-shaped pince-nez, shouted at a narrow-chested girl and threw a torn carbon copy at another girl’s feet. The girl picked up the scraps of paper, moaned, sobbed quietly and covered her face with her crumpled smock. Appalled, his face fell and he moved away, embarrassed.
During the lunch break Herr Priebe watched the girl, whose name was Antonie, closely, then followed her out onto the spiral staircase and in a nasal voice said affably that what had happened before was neither here nor there. She retorted in a thick Polish accent that she was afraid of being dismissed and started crying again. He took a step back; the young men at the desks nudged each other and smirked.
Next morning Herr Priebe’s forehead was wrinkled; he swapped smutty stories with his colleagues, went humming around the room and, as if by chance, bent down next to the Polish typist, who flinched. He then spoke softly to her for several minutes in front of everyone. Then he turned away from her, whistling nonchalantly, sat at his desk and sucked his nails. Murmuring “Yes, yes” dreamily, he glanced at the blonde, smoothly parted hair of his neighbour, who winked at him. Herr Priebe creased his full round face into a smile that looked as if it had been tied on with string from ear to ear.
Antonie Kowalski was a plump, well-proportioned creature. She wore big fake rings in both ears and wide metal bangles around her chubby arms. She lived with her Polish mother way up on the fourth floor in the house next door to Valentin, with only a low wall separating the two courtyards. Her mother told her she’d had an affair with a Romani tinker, while her husband was in prison. When he was released after three and a half years and discovered one-year-old baby Antonie, he’d thrown both of them, mother and child, out of the house. That’s when they’d moved into the attic in Brunnenstrasse. Antonie had grown up there, a delicate but passionate and quick-tempered little thing, though she became quiet and sickly once a month when she was indisposed, hiding away and crying with her mother—she’d been conceived under a full moon, after all! Late one night, when her mother was standing with the tinker in the kitchen, the fellow lunged at her, reeking with brandy. She ran to the window to cry for help and tore open the curtains and casements, flooding floor and table with moonlight. Momentarily blinded, she took a step back—and he was on her, threw her straight onto the shining white floor and, panting, tore off her skirt. So that’s how she became his “beloved”. No wonder Antonie chattered and laughed in her sleep whenever the moon appeared at her window! She would often sit at the window of an evening, her eyes wide open. Her mother had to shake her and call out loudly to her before she would look around and stand up.
One day when the whistle blew for midday break, Antonie was waiting for Herr Valentin on the spiral staircase. She asked him softly why he wouldn’t look at her and why he’d left her sitting alone the week before. “Here are two tickets for the concert at Lipps; I’ll be there at 8:30 in the bowling alley or inside the hall.” She pressed a yellow programme flyer into his hand and ran across the coal yard.
Herr Priebe shook violently. His hands were cold and sweaty as he sat down at his desk again. He was frantic and felt dizzy. Saliva poured out from under his tongue. He laid his head on the blotter. “What now?” He squashed his stiff hat onto his head, stumbled onto the street, and instead of going to lunch, rushed up and down the streets, along Liebenwalder-Strasse and Prinz-Eugen Strasse, across Pankstrasse and over the green strip around Wedding Station; from there he travelled halfway round Berlin and back again on the circular railway. In the evening he started to make his way from the office to the leisure spot wearing his shabby frock coat; but after a brightly dressed girl sniggered behind his back, he rushed home, applied perfume and put on his tennis outfit. After several false starts, with tears in his eyes he said goodbye to little Ella, who kept asking him why he was grunting like that, just like a bear.
Music was blaring from the gardens in Friedrichshain. Antonie was not at the dark bowling alley. The master of ceremonies’ voice rang out from the glittering dance hall. Herr Valentin leaned on the arm of one of his fun-loving colleagues as he climbed up the steps to the hall. Antonie was already dancing arm in arm with a suave officer. Herr Valentin greeted the girl graciously in passing. At the end of the polka she scurried up to him and stood next to him in silence. “Well, sweetie, what’ll we get up to?” he whispered, looking her up and down from head to toe with an expert eye.
She was wearing a white flannel dress with a brown leather belt. Her black hair was crimped over her ears and she’d combed it up from her forehead. Her large white feather hat had fallen down onto her neck while she was dancing, making her round face, flushed dark red, stand out starkly. She had a broad nose, protruding cheekbones and serious, moist black eyes. They faced each other in silence, then she placed her strong bare arm in his and with a tender and respectful glance pulled him out of the dance hall into the garden, which was shimmering in the light from the Chinese lanterns.
Outside, shots rang out from shooting galleries under the old deciduous trees and the carousels hummed. Herr Valentin shoved his velvet hat back boldly, lit a cigarette and steered Antonie through the crowds milling around the tables. He chattered, laughed and kept gesticulating; his voice boomed. She held onto his right arm tightly. He called out to a girl going past with a glass of beer and greeted her with a suggestive remark. Antonie giggled excitedly. None of the lanterns at the bowling alley lit up. She jumped onto a table strewn with sand and after a pause he sidled over and hopped up next to her. It was not long before her white feather hat was resting on his cheek; soon she slipped her arm hesitantly around his waist. His body jerked; he twitched and squirmed as he felt her arm, then shuddered: “Oh God”. The velvet hat landed on the table behind them with a thud. Valentin said: “Sorry, Fräulein, it must be the sausages I had for lunch today. They must’ve been off.” She stroked his cheek with the palm of her hand and sighed coyly. “You must do something about that, Herr Priebe.” After a pause he grinned, slid away from the table and stood there pale as death. She followed.
That night he tossed and turned in bed, muttering into his pillow: “What’s going on? What is this?” His father called out from the room next door. “Your bed keeps creaking. How can anyone sleep with all that noise?” Priebe kept still. Then he had an idea. They’d seen a vase in a shop window; Antonie thought it was really beautiful. Long before eight in the morning, there he was—waiting outside the shop in Chausseestrasse, the first customer to enter, and he paid 28 DM for an ugly porcelain vase, decorated with a row of cupids puffing their fat cheeks and holding a wreath.
He met his little Polish friend that evening in Fasanenallee, where it was cool. She took the long parcel out of his hands and shrieked. As soon as they were sitting alone on a bench she tore the paper off and sat there gaping at the precious bright object. Carefully placing it beside her on the bench, she kissed Herr Priebe and bit him hard on the cheek. He tried awkwardly several times to push her fringe back under her white feather hat and thought it perfectly proper to grab her breast, uttering suggestive words of endearment. She pushed his hand away forcefully, took his head in her hands and smothered his whole face with kisses. Then they strolled along the narrow paths arm in arm, though he often let go of her so he could lean against a tree and roar with laughter; she found this odd—though she was flattered; finally she averted her gaze and looked at the ground. Suddenly, he threw the vase into the water near Rousseau Island, with such an ugly look on his face that Antonie sobbed with horror—then he promised her another one, even more beautiful! At the railing above the stretch of misty water he assumed a weary expression and croaked: “A vase here, a vase there! Now you have it, now you don’t!”
From time to time he entertained the young people in his office with tales about an exotic mistress he was keeping, who was, you know, simply wearing him out; he also just happened to mention a charming little diamond ring, a present he’d given her, adding without batting an eyelid that she’d lost it at a dance. One Saturday his colleagues urged him to come along with them to some of the best bars in the area. At first he thought it was a ridiculous idea, a good way to make money disappear. Still, Berliners were going out a lot more, having a good time, so—in a sudden rush of high spirits—Valentin surprised himself by cheerfully inviting them to accompany him to a series of new bars that he’d seen advertised. One night four of them squeezed into a miserable-looking hackney cab, had their first drink at Mundt’s dance salon, then drove from café to café and pub to pub. At three o’clock in the morning they were singing raucously inside Café Minerva. At three-thirty they staggered arm in arm into the Greif Café in Elsässer-Strasse. A grey-faced dame sitting at a corner table told Valentin he looked as pure and chaste as St Joseph. He sank onto the lap of another old hag—who promptly moved her beer away—and declared he was sure she’d be as tender in bed as his last mistress. The other three dumped the woman on him, packed the two of them into a horse-cab and staggered along, waving hats and umbrellas uproariously, behind the slow-moving wagon.
Over the next few days Valentin hardly spoke a word in the office. At times he looked stony-faced. Deflated, he couldn’t accept what had happened that night and flew into rages with his colleagues, though he really wanted to beg their forgiveness. He stayed at home of an evening, crying himself pitifully to sleep. He ignored Antonie. Even when she furtively wished him goodbye in the courtyard, saying she had to go and care for a sick relative in East Prussia, all he said was: “Well, Fräulein, if you’ve got leave, then go—go wherever you want.” He neglected himself, didn’t even comb his hair, and sometimes rushed out for a walk at midday in a highly anxious state.
This state of affairs lasted just over two weeks. Then Valentin polished his yellow shoes and, feeling desperate, started playing the flâneur again; to break the suffocating tension he took a young clerk along with him. He spoke in a shrill, bossy, irate tone, and had the strange bloodshot eyes of a drunkard. He woke up one morning with a sore throat. The lump and the pressure wouldn’t go away. A strangely joyful feeling came over him, and in this distracted state he started jerking his head forwards like a goose and making clucking noises. He went to a doctor, who to his astonishment sent him to another. This doctor, a stout medical specialist with fleshy fingers, sniffed and smirked, scribbling in his notebook when Valentin asked what was wrong with him: “Hah, you’d better ask that lovely young lady you visited a few weeks ago. She’ll know what it is.” He didn’t need to hear any more. He tore down the stairs, laughing to himself. So, that’s what it was!
He snorted with pleasure in Königsstrasse. Suddenly seized with delight, he bought a popular magazine at the corner of Spandauer Strasse, just in case there was something about his problem in it. So, everything was fine again. The business had been worth it. He got changed at home and went for a stroll in the sharp winter air. In his fur cap and moth-eaten Crimean collar he cut a distinctly Russian figure. Whenever he passed a lady he kicked up his left leg with faint disdain. “We’re at home in good company now; this is just the right sickness for someone swathed in fur. It suits me through and through.” This was no ordinary sore throat. It was what roués, the lords and masters of the world, suffered. It’s not so terrible; people can still go strolling with it, still drink chocolate. He looked around smiling, deeply satisfied with this revenge. He told someone who just happened to be passing: “We have our freedom of movement back again.”
Antonie came back. Valentin greeted her disdainfully at the typewriter. She looked so ordinary to him—degraded, even, by her menial work. At midday she sidled up to him on the street; they traipsed all the way along Turmstrasse in the snow. When she asked why he was like this, he answered that all kinds of things happen in a city like Berlin; you could even call them “experiences”—but for him they were trivial. She asked him to explain. When he had lit a cigarette and played smugly with the match for a while, he came out with it bit by bit, saying that such things happen in life, you know; it’s hard to know how to behave, particularly with women; one hears all sorts of stories; anyway, it’s no simple matter. Her eyes were brimming with tears and she had a strange, guarded look on her face. His cigarette burnt down. He stammered nervously, saying he’d think things over. At the same time he smartly brushed off some snow that had fallen onto her skirt when she bumped into a tree.
When her frozen face loomed up one evening in Humboldt Park, he felt such humble adoration and was overcome with such fear that he crept up to her like a beaten dog, crouched at her hand and blurted everything out blindly, as if he were doomed. When he finished speaking, he was so overwrought he fell off the seat. Swept up in his excitement, Antonie tugged at his shoulder and begged him to stand up, accidentally stepping on her muff, which had just fallen on the ground. She wept and prattled, trying to comfort him as they made their way to the city. Every few minutes she grabbed him by the buttons of his overcoat and embraced him so violently that he sighed. Soon afterwards, when they were parting, both with blue noses and snow on their shoulders, she was inwardly so happy in the midst of her confusion that she invited Valentin up to her apartment. He glanced around anxiously, snorted, then took flight, running through the bright, narrow streets, past cinemas displaying posters about murder, past cafés from which violin music poured out, and as he ran his knees grew weaker and weaker, till they felt like melting wax.
In the long weeks that followed Antonie and Valentin spoke only twice. The first time was the day after their meeting in Humboldt Park. They met in front of the factory and made their way home together. She was wearing a black coat, a light boa and a velvet cap on her head. She glided towards Valentin, circling closer, opened her wide mouth a little, pursed her lips and stood trustingly beside him in the snow. But all they talked about was business and the weather and they kept stopping in front of display windows. They took the tram for the rest of the trip. Only as they were parting did he notice her puzzled sidelong glance.
After a week and a half he met her on the spiral staircase and asked her how she was. Plucking at one of her earrings, she replied: “Fine.” Perhaps they could see each other the next day.
She didn’t come into the office the next day. She stayed away for weeks. He wrote to her begging for an answer. Her mother was keeping her at home; she’d become quiet and withdrawn and was suffering from insomnia. Even a few days before leaving the office, she’d told her mother she could hear the delicate tinkling of little bells, in harmony with the deep sound of humming strings. She didn’t find it at all tiresome; she enjoyed hearing it, really. And she didn’t want to go out into the street, just preferred to stay in her room, seeing no one but her mother. One day when Valentin visited her he was allowed to sit opposite, so long as he didn’t touch her, for she simply couldn’t bear that. After he’d gone, she opened the window, then suddenly felt the need to keep totally still. Nevertheless, she took a few gentle steps around the room.
One day, Toni’s mother asked if she was bored, put her broad feathered hat on Antonie’s head and dressed her warmly. Toni smiled and said: “Come out with me.” Taking her by the elbow her mother asked: “Are you in love again, Toni? Do you have another boyfriend?” They went downstairs, but came straight back up again. “I’m much happier just being on my own with my lovely things.” And it was true; upstairs she snuggled down in the chair opposite her mother, chatting nicely and brightly with her. She smoothed her dress. The whites of her eyes were visible. She kept very busy, without knowing what she was doing. She often wandered softly around the room in slippers, with a happy face. She couldn’t bring herself to do any real work—just kept playing with bright pieces of cloth, first without thinking and then deep in thought. Little by little she sewed a doll together, a brightly coloured ragdoll: a little girl, only as big as a hand; she showed it to her mother, cuddled it and put it to bed.
Gradually, as she played and prattled, she expressed herself more openly. She helped her mother around the house absent-mindedly and kept her company whenever she went shopping. Valentin wanted to come and see her. He sat opposite her feeling heartbroken, but she just stared back vacantly. A girlfriend advised Antonie to send him away.
Late one afternoon, Antonie stood at the window of her attic apartment and looked out at the building next door. The longer she stood there staring, the more violently her arms flinched. She turned away, writhing with pain, and covered her bright eyes: “I really wish I could love him again; I can’t bear it without him; my love, I want to love you again.” In the evening he received a note from her. They were alone. Her hideously exposed face loomed in front of him. She held him and demanded: “Kiss me! Kiss me!”
“No, I mustn’t. I don’t dare to.”
“I don’t care about the doctor, Valentin. It’s not the doctor who can keep me alive or kill me.”
Trembling, the two embraced. She bit his lip hard and then he bit into hers. Valentin reeled. A snake coiled around them, embracing them in its iron grip, then released them.
Next morning, when Antonie’s mother had just thrown a brown scarf over her head to go and do the washing, Antonie crept drowsily out of bed. She took her mother by the arm, and drew her close, letting her mother caress her. “There’s nothing wrong with me, mother. I’m going to work.”
“Are you getting on well with Valentin?”
After a long pause, while it seemed as if she was asleep again, Antonie said: “I think so.”
She was lethargic at work, kept brooding and finally stayed away. Without saying a word to Valentin about it, she mixed with the little factory girls who went to dances of an evening in Brunnenstrasse and Chausseestrasse. She would wait around on dark corners at eleven o’clock at night, filled with curiosity, looking bashfully at suspicious-looking women, who teased and encouraged her to copy them. Antonie listened attentively, watched them carefully, allowed men to accompany her to the cafés and then ran away. After each of these outings, she grew quieter and quieter at home. Her insomnia started again. It was then that her strange sleepwalking first occurred. When it was totally dark, with her little doll in her hand, she would creep in her nightgown past her snoring mother, from the lounge to the kitchen, down the corridor and back again. Not a single floorboard creaked. Stepping past so carefully in her bare feet that she didn’t bump a single chair, she would swing the doll up to her mouth and murmur:
Dolly, take me with you, do.
You’re so good, I’ll go with you
Hop onto my arm, my little sweet!
Come out with me, into the street.
I’ll carry you on my frilly vest,
My pretty girl, sit still and rest!
You’re lovely, Dolly, good and true.
Only with you can I be lovely too.
One night, Antonie’s mother woke up when she heard Antonie sighing and rattling a window that wouldn’t open immediately. She took the dreamer back to bed without a word. After stammering a little, Antonie fell into a restless sleep.
Antonie was consistently kind to Valentin at this time. He often came to her in secret. He once asked her when they should get married, but she said there was no point—they didn’t need anything else. After he left, she would wait more and more impatiently for darkness to fall. She embraced him submissively and was good to him; but when he was gone she moaned miserably, spread soap over her little round mirror so she wouldn’t have to see herself, and drew the curtains together in front of the window.
Her mother felt her way through the kitchen in the dark. “Are you there, Toni?”
“Do you want to see Toni, mother?”
And when her mother approached with the oil lamp, she held the little cloth thing, the doll, up to her, covered with tears.
“This is Toni. This is my sweet little Toni. It’s our sweet little Toni, isn’t it, mother.”
She laughed and petted the rag doll; the older woman laughed too.
Late one evening the electric light was burning in front of a recently opened nightclub in Hussitenstrasse. There was a bitter frost. Dressed in her black cloth coat, with a cap on her head, the little Polish woman ran into an alcove between the houses with two girls who were giggling and squealing uproariously, then looked across the street at the garish advertisements covering the display windows. A revolving door spun open and three colourfully dressed women emerged, arm in arm with two gentlemen; they crossed the dirty embankment in a row. One of the gentlemen was twirling gracefully; he had a flushed, bloated face and, to the amusement of the others, kept losing one of his rubber boots; a familiar pink handkerchief decorated the front of his crumpled overcoat. Antonie took a few unsteady steps towards the group and, hiding her face behind the muff, pushed her way into the dark entrance of a house. Amused, one of the gentlemen patted her head above her ear with a damp hand, tweaking a wisp of her hair as she passed, and, spluttering, sang: “Children come, come one and all. You’ve nothing to fear when you answer my call.”
At three’o clock in the morning they were singing duets in raucous voices in Valentin’s courtyard, and then in low voices they sang the hit song that Herr Priebe declared was in honour of his bride: “Take me with you, take me with you into your little chamber.” And as they stood around in a circle warbling, men and women together, a head of loose black hair appeared in the dazzling moonlight above the dormer window, then a bare neck and a shirt with red edges. A body in a white slip pushed its way through the window onto the roof. It stumbled in bare feet along the gutter with uneven steps; there was something small and black in its hand, which was wriggling in front of its skirt.
Mimicking a female voice, Herr Priebe sang out: “Oh, if Saint Peter only knew this!”
There was a scraping sound from the roof. Lorenz, the pimply-faced clerk. looked up. A white bundle, legs dangling, no stockings, dropped down close to the back block, crashed into a flower box, landed with a thud on the lid of a rubbish bin and burst, releasing a thick, sticky mass; something white and slimy spurted over the low fire wall; something dark and limp was left lying there.
“Someone has fallen from the window.”
Five people stood motionless. Herr Lorenz wiped his lips.
“Where was that?”
One of the young women shrieked and ran howling across the courtyard to the gate, followed by the other two.
“I can’t look at such a thing,” muttered Herr Priebe. “I feel very bad. I need to lie down and sleep.”
There was a clattering noise in the house and lights shone in the windows. Valentin moved his lips, wondering what could really have happened, made his way trembling up the stairs to his apartment and wrapped himself up warmly from head to toe: “I’ve had enough of this house. Oh, I feel terrible. I have to get away. Away!”
In the early hours of the morning when it was still dark Antonie’s mother knocked on Priebe’s door and stood screaming and sobbing next to the cold stove, saying the window wasn’t bolted at night; she’d forgotten to do it in the evening. In her fist she was clutching an old note from Antonie, which said that if ever she became ill again, Valentin mustn’t get her doll.
“Well, the ragged thing is there now. Come over anyway, Herr Priebe, and take it please.” Valentin yanked little Ella around by the shoulder, urging her to spit behind the woman. He snapped at his father for opening the door on such a thing. The child replied sulkily: “We’ve only just opened the door.”
The following week Valentin kept roaring uncontrollably at the staff, causing such senseless scandals in the office that they suggested he go for a holiday. He took himself off to Woltersdorf-by-the-Mill and rented a furnished room there—without saying goodbye to his father or sister. He told the landlady people were envious of him in Berlin and wanted him out of the way for a while—just old wives’ tales, of course, but there was no avoiding them; he’d be staying three weeks. He let out a torrent of accusations about the mean, nasty tricks dished out to him. He took the doll out of his suitcase and played with it, mumbling as he sat in a dark corner of the room. He told the landlady that people had to amuse themselves somehow if they had no one to keep them company. Sobbing bitterly, he pounced on the patchwork doll and hissed: “We just have to live with these things, Toni; so let’s try thinking about something totally different.” He cried out inconsolably, in such despair that when the landlady heard him she made the sign of the cross in front of the door.
When the woman was arranging mignonettes she said: “You’ll soon get over all this.” He gave a crooked grin: “Of course, what do you expect? We have ways and means, dear lady. We’ll pay them all back with interest and compound interest. Just wait till we get home.” And he sang so beautifully: “If only Saint Peter knew this”, that the landlady nodded her head: “My God, what a voice you have, Herr Priebe!”
Two weeks later, at the end of April, he left, fuming: “Country life is not for Berliners—not for me, at least.”
At home, he put his things away in a cupboard and bought himself a green necktie, the kind that could be left untied so it fluttered in front of your waistcoat. He arranged to meet his friend Lorenz, the clerk, at eleven o’clock in the evening. He oiled his hair while the others were asleep, put new grey gaiters over his shoes, cranked up the hanging lamp so he could look in the mirror and amused himself practising poses. Then he saw a doll’s arm sticking out of the heavy wooden trunk. He turned his back on the suitcase, turned up his nose, stood there for a moment and then stuffed the arm back in. As he picked up his moustache clamp and looked back over his shoulder, he saw that the arm was sticking out again. Valentin yanked the lid up, tossed the doll into a pile of dirty linen and snorted with contempt: “Filth, I’ll deal with you; throw you out! Time’s up, you filth! Into the nightstand you go!” The lid crashed down.
Standing stock-still, he saw the lid shake in the mirror, then slowly lift up as the doll wriggled through the crack and landed on a towel on the floor. Still in his shirtsleeves, Valentin stepped clumsily up to the towel and raised his fists like a boxer: “What a waste of time! What a mean trick!” Like a toy tumbler, the doll teetered on the floorboards and fell down again. Valentin charged at her. She darted, wriggled and came closer. When he fell on her, the doll paused beside the locker, then darted into the white moonlight and glided gracefully towards the door. The doorstep creaked and all at once the doll was gone from the room. With rage welling up inside him, Valentin jammed his hat onto his smoothly combed head of hair and grabbed the door handle. When the dainty creature reached the landing, she swung herself straight over the dark banister.
He stood in the door frame feeling the cold air—his jacket under his left arm, the strap of his gaiter sagging. Shoulders slumped, he whimpered: “My God what is this? Should I wake my father?” He crept down the stairs, following the sliding sound. As he stumbled through the long hallway he whispered: “Stop, you! Stand still! I—I’ve done nothing. I’ll take you with me to see Lorenz.”
After her, after her!
There was a hailstorm in Brunnenstrasse. She was jumping around under the arc of the gas lamp. Soon he was taking long strides; hers became longer. She grew as tall as a boy, then a man. They were now in Stralsunderstrasse. He swung his jacket in his left hand, swallowing hailstones. She turned into Hussitenstrasse, stopped at the corner and was now as large as a horse. He collided with her; she ducked, then swaying from one shoulder to another she ran off, taking him with her.
He bit into her head. At Saint Sebastian’s Church he heard grunting noises beneath him. He shook her by the neck, whimpering: “I want to do the right thing.”
She replied scornfully: “Really? Is that really what you want?”
“You can let me go home. Haven’t I been through enough already?”
“Not nearly enough!”
They tore past a policeman who blew his nose: “Just look at that fellow! What a way to walk! Thinks he’s a rider. He thinks he’s riding. Hey there! Giddy up!”
Valentin was about to call out to the policeman, but he sped past too quickly. He howled into the wind: “I’m losing my hat.”
“You don’t need a hat.”
“And my jacket—and my collar!”
“You can go bare.”
Valentin whimpered and thrust his hands over his red eyes. “I don’t want to know any more about these things. I’ll ask little Lorenz what he thinks about it.”
The tracks to the engineering works appeared, as if from deep inside the darkness. Valentin roared, tossing back and forth: “Nobody helps me! Nobody helps me!” The doll held him tight as if stuck to him like rubber gum. And as he scratched, digging his arms and legs into the soft mass, writhing in his seat, Humboldt Park loomed up in the dark behind iron railings, not a soul to be seen, just rigid trees.
“Agh, agh,” he choked. The doll roared with laughter: “So you’re taking me with you to see Lorenz, are you?” The square was empty. The inky waters of the pond stretched out in front of them. She loosened his legs, and then snapped them together. A single jerk and he charged head first into the water.
With a gurgling noise, she plunged in after him. He gulped water and reared up. “I’m dying; let me go.” With an arm as long as a wooden pole she pushed him under the water. “This is only the start, you deceitful dog!” The water splashed in all directions, bubbling and gurgling for several minutes. “I should leave you to rot.”
As the hail came slanting in low over the pond, a dull drumming sound filled the darkness.
