Wolfgang Hilbig - 'I'

He was already drifting in the twilight that preceded sleep, so it must have been between twelve and one. He lay rigid on the mattress, on the upper bunk, less visible from the spyhole, his usual evening stream of thought clouded over, the shapes in his head reeled away; the sombre red light of the night lamp over the door clung to his lower eyelids. . suddenly, frantically, the bolts were unlocked: Feuerbach came in, holding the bunch of keys himself; just now, half-asleep, C. had heard a loud altercation at the end of the cell block. He realized at once that the Major was appallingly drunk; the sour smell of vomit immediately filled the cell. — It stinks here, Feuerbach bellowed, and with the keys he smashed the light bulb over the door so that C. was showered with shards; in the pitch darkness C. felt a wet, cold, sticky form fall upon him. Why he hadn’t called or cried out, he didn’t know. . You mustn’t call for help against a drunken friend, he thought later, even if it’s a matter of life and death. And there had been a touch of pity in him for this befuddled, foul-smelling form. Feuerbach shoved him against the wall in the darkness and pulled down his pants; he felt a hard cold thrust between his buttocks, iron, the barrel of Feuerbach’s gun, its muzzle boring painfully inside him. — Should I do it, you dog. . Feuerbach bellowed, it had a gurgling sound, barely intelligible. Should I do it, you bugger. . should I shoot you up the hole, you queer bugger? — The Major burst into laughter and thrust the gun still harder. . then his laughter changed to a strange sort of sobbing, interspersed with slurred unintelligible curses, the bed shook; C. had lain as though paralysed, now he tried to struggle, the Major left off with the gun and made him see reason with a few nasty moves, which despite his drunkenness he performed with ease. Then — once again using the gun to poke C. in the ribs — he crawled onto the bed and lay down beside him. He wrapped his arms around C., sheathed in the sodden, slimy suit jacket, and pressed his wet, cold face to the back of C.’s neck, enveloping him in the smell of alcohol and the bitter fumes of disgorged gastric acid. Feuerbach’s whole body shook in a mixture of sobs and laughter. . Never ask about Harry again, you bitch, he mumbled and drooled against C.’s neck, never ask about Harry again, do me a favour, will you. . A few moments later Feuerbach had fallen asleep and began snoring loudly.

That night was so wild and implausible — it must have been around Christmas, incidentally — that C.’s recollection of it had grown indistinct. It was as though he had merely been haunted by one of the frequent nightmares he’d learnt to fear in prison, which usually featured Harry Falbe or his girlfriend Cindy. — For the rest of the night he’d slept on the wire mesh of the lower bunk, wrapped only in a blanket wrested from the grunting Major. In the morning Feuerbach had vanished and the cell was locked again. As though to prove that that night’s scene had been reality, his anus hurt for a week after that every time he defecated. On his release he was charged for the smashed light bulb. There was no explanation for the incident. . perhaps his case officer’s second demotion.)

I couldn’t remember asking anyone about Harry Falbe. . I’d never gathered information on him, nor on his girlfriend. . as far as I knew I hadn’t gathered any information, Kesselstein had even reproached me for it on occasion. On the contrary, I had helped Harry, or at least I’d tried to. .

Just once, one afternoon before Christmas, as I was about to head out for Hannoversche Strasse, I had asked Frau Falbe in the vestibule, rather rashly — just an awkward attempt at conversation, it seemed, since I had a strange mental block on the topic: By the way, do you have any idea whether Harry had a kid?

She was mopping the stairs and immediately straightened up from her work. — What. . she yelled, you asked me that once before! How could he have had a kid, you people always claimed he was a queer. How could he have had a kid, then? — In her voice was a venomous screech I’d never heard from her before.

He could theoretically, I said, and besides, I never claimed that. .

Oh yes, you did! she cried. You’re one of them, too, you’re all the same ilk, you screwed over my husband back then. . The whole building, the whole street is full of your ilk. And now you want to screw over Harry. . now he’s supposed to have a kid, so you can blackmail him. I’ll tell you something, you’re going to have to move out of here, by the end of the month I want the room vacated. I don’t want you people’s money. .

She was seething with rage; I was braced for a physical assault. — But you won’t get Harry any more, he’s in the West now, she scolded on. And soon the tables will be turned and Harry will report the lot of you. . he’ll report you all, he knows everything about you!

And then she worked herself up to a claim which I found monstrous. — Harry, she said, had evidence that the Security bigwigs were already setting up West German bank accounts. — Just in case, she said, they’d moved money over to West Germany, or to Swiss banks, Western money of course, hard currency. . where they’d got it from? Maybe they took it off people, or they bought up the money. And Harry had it in writing and he’d collected documentation! — Yep, he knows everything about you, she repeated. .

It’s dangerous to make claims like that, I said to her. You’re better off not talking about it, when people know things like that, they don’t let them go running around scot-free. .

But I only said it to you, she responded, shocked.

I hadn’t heard anything about any of the so-called embassy refugees being shipped off already, maybe it had just escaped my notice. And I hadn’t picked up any protest from our authorities about the Permanent Mission of the FRG ostensibly giving asylum to a child killer. . it would have been all over the newspapers. So maybe Harry Falbe was still here. . I knew too much, and it gave me the creeps. — On the S-Bahn train the anxiety stayed with me; I put it down to my landlady’s unexpected outburst. . I didn’t stop thinking about it until I was arrested.

I was the only person, then — or almost the only one — with concrete knowledge of the child Cindy and Harry had brought into the world. I had even seen the child with my own eyes, I was the only person. . if I discounted the pale, faceless girl Harry had dragged to his girlfriend’s flat that night three years ago (or was it four years now?). Some authority or other had to know it, but their fastidious files were gathering dust in the archives. . they ought to be glad if no claims were ever made on behalf of a child that had been registered. Or were the authorities already in their death throes?

Maybe in A. I could look for the girl who must also have seen the child. . Yes, in the end I was going to A. to run after some random person again. — What Kesselstein — then Feuerbach still — had said about Harry and the child had immediately struck me as preposterous and completely implausible. . and he had spoken as though he couldn’t even trust himself. But the fabrication was like him, the avid reader of American novels: Harry Falbe was said to have killed his child, at any rate that child had vanished without a trace. .

If anyone could know where it was, that person could only be me ! It was I who had shown Harry the hiding place early one morning after a prolonged drinking bout. The child could vanish without a trace only in the underground tunnels in the tract of ruins by the forest of A., only there could a child, dead or alive, be hidden beyond finding. And a child in its infancy could hardly have survived even a few days in that system of caves.