They are intact, a small cluster, two adults, two children, red-brown, amalgamated, heart-coloured.
The professor is curled into a ball, his hands around his knees, head between his legs, at the air pump.
His wife, still with her heavy earrings, the solid purple crystal in the silver setting. Her skin is a dry and withered parchment, shrunk back over her skull, her face is too small for her head, her lips fall short of her teeth.
The gaping hole of her mouth.
She is clutching the two grandchildren. I recognise only one.
Before I vomit I count the dead.
By the stadium, Hamm:
1. Eline Schlosser (24 yrs)
Dimpfelweg 6:
2. Gerda Schlosser (61 yrs)
3. Friedrich Schlosser (68 yrs)
4. Reinhardt Hubertus (13 yrs)
5. Child, probably Frida Hubertus (9 yrs)
I go out again, into the light.
I walk in the direction of the docks, alone in a world emptied of people.
_ _ _
A few minutes later, on the corner of Borstelmann.
A man picks his way over the rubble, through the gigantic gateway, NASIUM still legible, in imposing Gothic lettering, once gilded. His legs are uncertain, a small, crooked man in a large, dusty cap, he too alone in the world. A clacking and grating of stone; the entire building spat out through the gateway. A chunk of masonry wobbles beneath his feet and for a moment he stands quite askew, on one leg, an arm held out, the bottle in his hand, and then he loses balance, careers and flails, carried forward by his own momentum, and stumbles past.
He picks himself up, stands for a second as if to recover his bearings, walks a few steps towards me and stops.
He turns his head slowly in the direction of sound, eyes white, milky cataracts.
He rubs his mouth.
He moves left, but stares right.
‘Why don’t you say something?’ he says. ‘Are you injured? Can’t you speak?’
He extends the bottle towards me.
‘You can have some of this. There’s more. Look …’
He shakes the bottle gently, amber schnapps sloshing inside.
‘Do you need help …? Is that you, Beate …?’
He scrabbles in the rubble with his hands, feeling the stones, heaving them aside, clawing.
‘Beate …? Are you there?’
I take my Efkas from my breast pocket, flick open my lighter, light up and blow smoke out into the empty air. He pauses.
‘Why won’t you help me?’ he asks.
‘Help you do what, old man?’
‘Help me find her … I can only see to the left …’
I step to my right.
‘Is that better?’
‘Yes, that’s better. I can see you now! Lothar …’
I stare at his extended hand.
‘My wife is … She was holding my hand. And then … Lothar. My name’s Lothar …’
‘Yes, you said.’
_ _ _
He sits down, his clouded eyes staring up at me. Now and then he lifts the bottle to his lips. I have scaled the mountain of rubble. In front of me are teetering walls, barely upright; to my left what remains of my old Gymnasium, the right side intact as far as the third floor, classrooms dissected by an Allied bomb: desks, blackboards, cupboards of splintered glass, the pale colours of a map of Europe. I step onto a beam, balance my way across a ten-metre drop and lever myself into a space that used to be a room.
Manfred’s classroom.
He was a year above me.
The main hall is gone, the corner where I spoke to him for the first time. He was leaning against one of the columns, in the midst of his group, smoking, a king in perfect tweed, handing out his orders. Peter with the ginger hair, his fat messenger boy, came up to me and said:
‘Schlosser wants to speak to you.’
‘With me? Why?’
‘Because.’
When I went to him the others were still chattering, but Manfred needed only to raise his hand and they were silent.
‘You’re Hoffmann.’
‘Yes.’
‘I hear you wiped out Hartmann in the Aeneid.’
‘I suppose.’
‘He had to stop you halfway through Book Six. You’ve got a photographic memory, haven’t you?’
‘Remembering is easy for me.’
He took a piece of paper from his pocket. Held it up in front of me for a few seconds, columns of figures, then crumpled it up and tossed it in the wastepaper basket.
‘What was yesterday’s share price for Howaldtswerke GmbH?’
‘114.2.’
‘Told you,’ fat Peter said.
Manfred put out his hand.
‘Manfred, Manfred Schlosser. Would you like to come birdwatching with me this afternoon?’
I cross the swaying floor to the blackboard. There are pieces of chalk on the ledge. I take two and make my way down to the ground again.
‘Here,’ I tell him, handing him a piece. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Lothar …’
‘Lothar what?’
‘Brylla.’
‘Lothar Brylla. And your wife’s name?’
‘Beate …’
‘Right.’
I write Where is Fr. Brylla? on the wall. Then underneath: Lothar is alive.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s find you something to eat.’
_ _ _
On what used to be Eiffestrasse:
‘My grandchildren, Arno and Wilfried, are with my sister in Neumünster, she—’
‘Do we have to talk?’
‘What?’
‘Can’t we just walk?’
‘Of course … all I was saying was …’
‘Don’t.’
_ _ _
Near Spalding, we traverse the smouldering tumuli of debris, then abruptly a little path cleared through the rubble.
‘Aren’t you coming?’ Lothar says when I stop.
‘No. Just keep going straight on. A hundred metres, perhaps. There are some people there. Policemen. Perhaps they have food. Perhaps your wife might be there …’
‘What about yourself?’
‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘I don’t even know your name.’
_ _ _
At the canal, walking south.
The pale flesh of the corpses, like boiled fishmeat, their loose, jointless limbs, mealy faces dip and bob in the water, drifting with the suitcases, like soggy bread, dumplings in soup, driftwood, rubbish, the drowned piling up beneath the Luisenbrücke, gently changing places, in motion, as though the Elbe were simmering.
They must have jumped in and been unable to get out again.
Few burns.
The rest of Luisenweg is gone, all the way down to Süder and Bille.
Hansaburg, far to the south, is still there. Towers and embrasures.
The wind picks up.
I carry on towards the docks.
_ _ _
The docklands are empty, not a soul to be seen. I climb aboard the wreck of
