Georgi Tenev - Party Headquarters

He dreams of lying there now, beneath a slab reading K-shev, comforted by the reassurances of gravediggers with traditions that he has found peace for all eternity, and in good company: Elise Brahms, and the great composer’s sister; the Africanist Hans Schomburgk; and Karl Hein, the 1936 Olympic gold medalist in the hammer throw.

Like every one else, K-shev, too, will set off along the surges of the river, he’ll head north. At Cuxhaven, the continent’s exit, he’ll take a turn. He’ll flow out into the North Sea, along the Island of Neuwerk, frozen at its mouth, plunging deep under the sea’s waters in the fairway of the local currents.

Particles of sand, dead epidermal cells, stones from a bladder clogged from years of sedentary living, from kidneys. Deficient red blood globules, the overly enlarged cancer cells of a leukemic circulatory system — the dead, sick man is travelling, swept out in an unknown direction. He slips away from me, away from my revenge — if such a goal still even exists.

Of course it exists!

If I’m not suspicious of K-shev even in death , that means I haven’t learned anything. And then the whole path up to this point would have been pointless, wasted effort.

The dead man’s bones embrace the mournful dust of opera singers and conductors, seafaring merchants and circus owners. Invisible and again omnipotent, he puts the final touch on his plans. He reaches out his hands, spreads his fingers. He takes a hostage, he takes in his death the life and work of the most important Nobel laureate buried in Ohlsdorf Cemetery: Gustav Hertz. Now I’m starting to understand, it’s all clear.

Tombstone

Gustav Ludwig Hertz

(* 22. Juli 1887; † 30. Oktober 1975)

Born in Hamburg, buried in Hamburg.

The father and pioneer of quantum mechanics, winner of the Nobel Prize. The most important German trophy scientist, exiled by the Red Army to Sukhumi, on the Black Sea coast.

Leader of the Institute for Separation of Uranium Isotopes .

Winner of the Stalin Prize, member of the Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences.

“Damn,” I say to myself — damn!

Only here, only now, do I begin to understand.

The Atomic Alliance

The sun peeks out, having slipped away from the labyrinth of the horizon, wet and radioactive, above the water of the rivers and the northern bays. The Atomic Alliance — a plot, a conspiracy. The enormous single atom, the sun above my head, which recycles its own light in disconsolate timelessness. A sun, displayed so as to signify absolute infinity. And the internal, invisible atoms that have entered into a secret pact with it. The particles that make up the whole, with scrupulous pedantry and sparing no details — the particles that I am made of. The structures in the construction of my body, the parts of the whole. I myself, along with thought, which remains without physical support, am located between them, stretched along the axis between the sun and my body.

He, the old man, makes love with the body of the motherland. This love gives birth to thousands of children and he organizes them into Pioneer battalions — attention! about-face! — he gives orders to the skittering legs of the surges, the Comsomol, and they all obey his every command. They live on his words and his voice, they hunger to resemble him, to imitate him in everything. But most of all his vices and weaknesses, the negative characteristics from his Party evaluations — it is these very things, the vices and weaknesses, which make the individual unique. Yet the leader’s shortcomings, infinitely multiplied, turn the separate faces into a faceless mass. For this reason, he has the effect of an invisible illness, quasi-disintegration — I recognize him precisely because of this scattering.

Okay, it’s clear, like we said: truly nothing should remain of him.

The Hamburg Crematorium

Part of the publicly traded company Hamburg Cemeteries

Fullsbütlerstrasse 756

22337 Hamburg

Price list and general information (valid as of January 1).

Built in 1965 and equipped with five cremation chambers with filtering systems for smoke collection according to the requirements in Regulation 27 on Gas Emissions in the Atmosphere. Open five days a week, with a twenty-four-hour cycle. Duration of a single cremation: sixty minutes at a temperature of 800-1,000 °C. Capacity: 18,000 deceased annually. With subsequent storage in urns. Casketless cremations are not permitted. Package price, incl. urn and urn storage (for a maximum of 28 days)—281 euro.

Preparatory chamber—97 euro.

Medical examination in accordance with administrative requirements—51 euro.

Delivery of urn for burial in the neighboring cemetery (Hamburg region)—46 euro.

Total: 475, even though I feel like that’s too much for him.

That leaves me with 1,499,525, plus or minus hotel expenses. Not bad, I figure.

I’m travelling, flying without layovers, resisting the temptation to sit in first class. By the way, I’m not raising all these financial questions out of self-interest — I’m not a cheapskate, I simply have to budget very carefully if I want things to end well.

But let’s put that aside for now, at least for a bit — now there’s the motherland, we’re flying above the pale border that expresses her autonomy upon the earth.

This country, The Motherland , as seen from above, resembles a lion, a compact little creature with sturdy if rather short legs and neck, taken away due to the unsuccessful diplomacy and military policies of past regimes. Almost headless, the little lion races forward, as if wanting to flop into the waves of the sea that splashes its chest.

This humble territory’s outlines don’t hint at the silhouette of a serious nation. Nevertheless, besides a certain naïve charm, there is also dignity in them. Or perhaps I’m biased — I’ve known that map for far too long, from childhood, from the school blackboard, to be able to evaluate it objectively. I think I even hear K-shev’s voice, calling from the luggage compartment:

My love for you is enough,

my love for you is everything.

I touch you through her, I embrace you,

even if you don’t love me.

Land like a volcano-woman—

But I don’t need you any colder!

I’m happy that your blood is southern,

and your chastity belt forged from iron.

I have no idea what he’s talking about, I’ve already learned to tune out his jabber.

“After all is said and done, my boy,” he continues, from the urn, “you still don’t know anything. And to be perfectly honest, I, for my part, don’t know anything anymore either, that’s what it looks like to me. Okay, for example: you fly back and forth, travel around. But in the end you still have to go back home, hrrrr,” K-shev sneezes and coughs hoarsely.

I know it’s cold in the luggage compartment.

“Yes, and there we’ll meet again. You’ll pay for your bad behavior. Yes, because we’ll meet up. I’ve laid out all the paths, my boy. Look: especially now, when I’m becoming nothing , shadow and smoke, like the shadows of the trees along the highway. Look, you can see it clearly from here, the asphalt encircles the homeland, its blue bandoliers crisscross the gardens’ fruitful breasts. I’m beyond the sunflowers, I abide in the branches’ shadow, I glow eternally at the curve in the road. The future that I’m shining from never becomes the past because:

We are at every kilometer,

and on and on — until the end of the world!