Uwe Timm: Halbschatten (“Penumbra”) Novel Translated by Anthea Bell

Sample translation

Publication: August 2008 Hardcover 272 pages ISBN: 978-3-462-04043-2

Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co. KG Iris Brandt [email protected] Aleksandra Erakovic [email protected]

[pp. 7–32 of Uwe Timm’s Halbschatten (Penumbra)]

A towering mountain range, sheer blue-grey rocks, a pale brown path carving its way through them as it rises to the peaks; there is a buffalo on the path and a man riding it, his legs dangling down. The man is old, with a long grey beard. Both of them, man and buffalo, are looking at the valley below. Halfway up the slope trees grow, pines, their crowns standing out against the red sunset sky. Up above, soft clouds veil the heavens. It is a picture of peace, with light from outside breathing a little life into it.

How dense the white vapours look from here, how they fray and turn translucent the closer you come to them. There’s always a sense of uneasiness as you dive into the drifting grey where all sense of height and depth, up and down, is swiftly lost. Cool, moist air, no visibility. Then, slowly, the grey lightens, and you suddenly see the blue of the depths.

The canal, the stony embankment, trodden grass, an asphalt path, and beyond it a small domain tended like a garden; old gravestones, many of them damaged by bullets and shell splinters, beyond them more wilderness, weeds, tall grass, thistles. This cemetery was once a restricted military area. The Wall dividing East from West followed the bank of the canal. Beyond the Wall itself, gravestones had been removed to leave a clear field of fire and a strip was covered with sand, carefully raked like something in the precincts of a Japanese temple. The idea was for fugitives to be given away by their tracks. Some of the toppled gravestones were covered by wooden planks; border guards patrolled here, shouted orders, grey uniforms, steel helmets, snap-hooks, a quiet metallic clicking, German shepherd dogs, no flowers, no bushes for anyone to hide in – that was how it looked, a devastated wasteland, as if the war had ended only days ago. Then the Wall fell, says the city guide, and after the reunification of East and West this cemetery was opened to the public again. A man of around fifty, thin, his hair already grey, a lean face with ascetic lines around the mouth and nose. A long coat, rather shabby but fitted at the waist, also grey and giving him a military look. Buckled shoes. No, on closer inspection they are fashionable light brown shoes that do not go with the grey coat, and are far too flimsy for this cold, wet November day. A late afternoon, verging on evening as the mists rise from the canal. A bent figure walks around the far wall of the cemetery where it runs beside the road. The raucous chatter of a magpie’s cry. There are two or three small candles burning in the cemetery. All Souls’ Day. A fine old name for it, but most of those assembled here are Protestants, says the grey man, and anyway one’s particular brand of religion hardly matters in a disused cemetery. Over there, someone has put a little candle on the gravestone of Mölders, one of the few Catholics

in this place. Group Captain Mölders, flying ace and Second World War fighter pilot, he shot down a hundred and one enemy planes. The grey man is holding some manuscript pages rolled up into a kind of tube, and points them at a large marble slab. And there’s another light over there by the wall. Many of the names are illegible now. If the stones hadn’t been knocked about in the war anyway, rain has worn the words away from them, or they’ve been split by a network of roots. It’s all very long ago now. No one’s been buried here for the last fifty years. The grey man coughs, and you can tell that he’s freezing. This guided tour was just for me. He was recommended to me as an expert on this cemetery, I was given his phone number, I called him, and after a moment’s hesitation he agreed. In this place, he says, German history, Prussian history lies buried, or at least the military part of it. Scharnhorst lies here with other generals, admirals, colonels, majors, famous fighter pilots, the heroes of the air in their own day, Richthofen, Udet, Mölders, and among all these men from the armed forces there is a single woman. Look at the gravestone, it was erected recently. The old one was destroyed in the hostilities at the end of the war, this is a granite slab, a single rock. Flying is worth your life. Born 1907, died 1933. Marga von Etzdorf. A woman pilot, one of the first in Germany. Yes, I say, she’s the reason why I came here. I’d assumed she had died in an air accident, but then I read that she shot herself in Aleppo in Syria, after a crash landing. It made me feel curious. A woman of twenty-five doesn’t shoot herself over a crash landing, I thought. You’re right, says the grey man, he has done some further research, he adds, he’s looked for early film clips, photos, accounts of her flights to Morocco and Japan. Sensational feats of flying in those days; she was much admired, she was famous. He has questioned the few contemporary witnesses still alive, and by a strange coincidence a cigarette case came into his hands. The cigarette case played a certain part in her story. Look. The silver case feels smooth yet heavy as I hold it. The lid has been slightly dented by a splinter of brass, still there in it. In one place the tip of the splinter has just pierced the lid; you might think it had been expertly soldered in place. And on the back, look, says the grey man, the initials of two names are engraved: M. v. E. and Ch. v. D, with the word Isobars added, in italic script. When she wears dresses or a skirt and blouse in the photos she looks slender, almost fragile; in trousers or in her pilot’s flying suit she appears quite strong. He has found two film clips as well, says the grey man, silent films, of course. In one she is standing in front of her plane wearing a dress, the wind is blowing her short hair into her face. She laughs, bends her head, slowly pushes her hair back behind her ear. In the other she is sitting out of doors on a bench, in trousers and a leather pilot’s jacket with knitted welts at the wrists. She is talking and

smoking, and you can see that when she opens the cigarette case with graceful movements, takes out another cigarette and lights it, it is done not automatically but with enjoyment. There’s a radio interview from the early thirties in which the reporter asks what her dream of flying is. Weightlessness, she can be heard replying against the rushing sound of interference. Even if only at the moment when you’re flying in a parabola. I sing when the plane lifts me up to the sky. I sing even though I can’t hear myself through the engine noise. I feel the air, the wind of my flight, even though the windshield breaks it. She gave that interview, says the grey man, just before she flew to Japan in 1931. She took off from Berlin Tempelhof on 18 August and began by flying north-west in a long loop, turning east later, with the city below her, the cathedral, the castle, the Reichstag building – the flash she saw was the angel on top of the Victory Column – and then, with a slight curve to the right, her course took her south. She saw the river Spree with the sun gleaming on it. She was calm, a little tired, exhausted by those last few days, all the arrangements, the farewells, the conversations, the parties. Her route passed over Poland, over the Soviet Union, over China. Her permit to fly over Russia, over the Soviet Union, had been delayed; the Englishwoman would have been on her way to Japan for several days now. Which of them – and bets were laid on it – would be the first woman pilot to reach Japan, Amy Johnson the Englishwoman or Marga von Etzdorf? Warsaw, Moscow, Siberia. Hours, days in her plane. Provincial airfields with containers of fuel transported there by Shell, because her flight was also an advertisement for the Shell company and the German aircraft manufacturer Junkers. How do you pass the time on such a long flight? I read, she says. A book, a book of poems. Heinrich Heine. Eichendorff. It’s easier to take in lines of poetry. If the air’s calm I solve crossword puzzles. I look down now and then, see flat brown land, then different shades of green from light to the deepest emerald, an endless carpet of forest, the primeval swampy forest of the taiga, steppes again, a little island of green, a few trees, more forest, some houses by the railway line, a station with a sawmill nearby. The workers don’t look up. The sound of their sawing machines probably drowns out the noise of my flight over them. Beyond that lies a great plain, and running through it, gleaming now and again, the ribbon of the railroad tracks. So what else do you do? I write up my diary, I write postcards to friends. Time passes. Six or seven hours, day after day. I land, fill up with fuel, sleep a little, take off again in the morning. The Russians are very friendly and helpful. After six days I reach the Chinese border, and unless I’ve deviated a long way off course the town ahead of me must be Chailar. I bring the plane down, looking for an empty field. There have been several flights to Chailar, but no one was able to give me

precise information. Below me lies the old town, houses huddled close together, but nowhere for me to land. I bring the airplane even lower, flying close above the buildings now, the narrow streets, the alleys, the pagoda roofs. People standing down there look up, I see rickshaws, bicycles, and suddenly, thirty metres up in the air, I distinctly smell the food in the snack bars. Then I spot a small field with crowds of people standing in it. I fly in a loop and then another loop, to show these curious bystanders that I need space to land. At last policemen and soldiers make the crowd move back. Yet another loop, and I bring the aircraft down. The Chinese immediately run towards my plane. There’s an alarming moment; those at the front were nearly forced into the propellers, which are still turning. Now, without the engine noise, I can hear shouts of jubilation. I climb out of the cockpit. Two Chinese men stretch out their hands to help me down from the wing of the plane. This is odd – they’re welcoming me as if they’d been expecting me for days. Only gradually do I understand what I’m being told by a Chinese merchant who knows a little English. The local inhabitants think I am Amy Johnson from England, my rival on this race by air to Japan. She landed here some days ago, and now they thought she was calling in on her way back. They even had containers of fuel ready for her. So Amy Johnson had reached Japan ahead of me. I was unspeakably disappointed. Suddenly I had an idea of how Scott must have felt when he reached the South Pole and saw the Norwegian flag planted there, in the boundless white wastes of snow. And the gloves that Amundsen had also left behind for Scott, although a well-meant gesture, seemed like derision. In my own case there was an extra touch of lunacy in being identified with the Englishwoman who’d been here only a few days earlier. At first I thought it was all just a joke. But the enthusiasm of these Chinese people was – how can I put it? – too serious for that. Either the Englishwoman and I looked as like as identical twins, or the sight of two European woman, still an unusual one here, made us seem like each other, just as we westerners find it difficult to tell the Chinese apart at first glance. I am not Miss Johnson, I said in German, asking the Chinese merchant to translate that for me. No one wanted to know. I tried again, in French and English. They all just laughed even louder, applauding enthusiastically. I am not Miss Johnson, I repeat in English. They laugh. They nod. A cheerful little company. There was nothing for it; I had to spend the night in the house set aside for the Englishwoman, pointing out again and again that I was not Amy Johnson.

Even years later, says Miller, the sentence Ai eem not Mees Johnsooon, phonetically pronounced, was still being used by the Chinese population of the town as a form of greeting to any English visitors.

Nonsense. That’s just one of Miller’s jokes. He’s always twisting everything around, inflating it out of proportion. He knew how to make me laugh. I’ve hardly ever laughed so much and so often with anyone as I did with him, she says.

Who is this Miller, I ask the grey man. He’s lying over there near the brick wall, along with some others. Doesn’t have a grave to himself. An actor. An impersonator, he imitated voices, we’d probably call him an entertainer today. Anyway, he travelled around. We’ll be hearing from him again. Over the next few days, Marga von Etzdorf flew on over the sea to Japan. It must have been a bumpy flight, with strong gusts of wind buffeting the plane. Imagine what it was like flying around the world in those days just as the fancy took you, no radio telephones, no radar, nothing. A fault in the engine, a small defect in the fuel feed system, the kind of thing that kept on happening then, and she’d have fallen to the water below like Icarus. She had taken off in the morning. Eleven days later, at noon, she reached Hiroshima. This time she found the airfield quickly, a Japanese army parade ground, correctly marked with two white lengths of fabric. The wind sock hung from a long bamboo pole. Here again there was a crowd of hundreds of curious onlookers, crowding together but well disciplined and held back by a rope. In front stood the reception committee all in a row: representatives of the city, military men, Consulate employees. There was a military band lined up to one side. Etzdorf turned the plane, taxied slowly over to the band and switched off the ignition. The band struck up the British national anthem once again. So here too the Englishwoman was expected on her return flight. She had immediately noticed the tall, lean man in the group of Europeans. His white suit, his Prussian blue tie. But most of all, probably, she noticed that open smile as he looked her way.

I’m sure she spotted Dahlem in the crowd at once, says Miller. He raised his hands as if in apology, went over to the band, spoke to the bandmaster. The bandmaster issued instructions, there was a frantic change of sheet music, then the instruments began on the German national anthem, unrehearsed, as you could immediately hear, and very slow, the tune dragging along like syrup flowing. After that Dahlem went over to her and introduced himself as the German consul. He congratulated her: she was the first woman ever to fly alone from Europe to Japan. What about Amy the Englishwoman? Well, yes, he agreed, thanks to

clever British propaganda she was being hailed everywhere as the victor, but in fact she hadn’t been alone, she had flown with her flying instructor. Amy Johnson’s flight wouldn’t count. And then Dahlem introduced me, Anton Miller, actor at present on tour in Japan. I kissed her hand. A noticeably small hand, a child’s hand smelling of oil and gasoline with a touch of perfume, lily of the valley or gardenia, a unique combination of machinery and the boudoir. Her hair was cut short. Everything about her seemed simple, practical, in harmony. Her face was tanned brown except for the places around her eyes that her flying goggles had covered. And I told myself: if you were to find love with her it would blow hot and cold in equal proportions. The way she came flying in – it was incredible. She looked delicate, but she radiated great energy. It was a wonderful sight to see her circling over us, tilting the aircraft to one side, coming down, keeping close to the rooftops as she flew in, making a soft landing and bringing the plane to a halt in front of the crowd, then climbing out of the cockpit and standing there. Coming down from the sky like that she wasn’t just a beautiful young woman, there was something about her of the dominating force that made a flying machine such an impressive sight. The Japanese applauded and shouted Banzai!

That man Miller is an unreliable fantasist. He loves to exaggerate, and like everyone who’s never been in an aircraft, or very seldom anyway, he glorifies flying. But his company is always pleasant and amusing.

No, says Miller, it was exactly the way I said: she came down from the sky like a noisy angel. She had extraordinary powers of attraction, and at the same time there was something light and carefree about her. That was the first and overwhelming impression when she landed. Neither woman nor man, she was rather like a medieval angel. Perhaps it was the jacket, certainly the leather cap which looked like a helmet, the medieval kind, but most of all it was the fact that she descended from the heavens. The Japanese around us were in a state of high excitement, quite unlike their usual manner, laughing, shouting, waving and clapping their hands. Meanwhile Dahlem stood there, hands in his trouser pockets, said: well, I don’t know about angels, she landed rather recklessly for that, should have flown in further forward and rather lower down, even though the telegraph line ran that way. I looked at her, I wanted to get closer to her, win her for myself, that was the only thought in my mind. What do you mean, thought? Your flesh was doing all the thinking. But then Dahlem came up with the offer of his room. The hotels in the city were fully booked, not a vacant room to be had.

Dahlem was staying with a Japanese friend of his. There was just one guest room in the house, and Dahlem had moved into it a few days earlier. Not an ordinary bedroom, more of a

small hall. One of those old wooden houses set in a little park. Dahlem said she could have his room and he’d sleep out in the corridor, a covered corridor with a cedar-wood floor so skilfully laid that when you walked over it a soft melody sounded, like birds twittering. Every step would give away not just a thief in the night but a lover too. And it’s no use taking your shoes off either, as they do everywhere in Japan, said Dahlem, laughing.

I was surprised by the large size and sparse furnishings of the room, she says. There was a mat on the floor, with a black screen standing in front of it, and a bow hung on one wall. A bow a good two metres long, asymmetrical, two thirds of the length of it above the grip, one third below. A dai-kyu, he explained, a bow that allows the archer to shoot his arrows either kneeling or from the saddle. A quiver stood on the floor containing several arrows with purple and yellow-green feathers. One arrow had a round ivory tip with a slit in it. It would give a shrill whistle as it flew through the air, the signal for an assault. On the other wall hung a calligraphic scroll with a poem which Dahlem translated for me.

Branches Collected and tied together: A brushwood hut. Untied, is as it was before, The wilderness is back.

He offered again to sleep in the corridor. No, certainly not. And when he still persisted, I said every movement on the wooden floor would keep me awake, and it would be rather too much to expect him not to move in his sleep at all. He laughed, and suggested rigging up a curtain to divide the room. I hesitated for a moment and then said yes, all right.

I don’t think she’ll have minded the idea of sharing the room with him, says Miller. After all, she was wearing practical garments, not a dress, didn’t have to pull anything off over her head, didn’t have to let anything below the waist drop, she could lie down in bed in her trousers, flying jacket and blouse. She had only her sponge-bag with her; everything else was still in the plane.

I heard his voice talking to two women, servants, in Japanese, which he spoke fast and obviously fluently. A second mat and a pale grey length of cloth were brought. The two women draped it right across the room to make a curtain a good seven metres long, coming down to

the floor. The oil lamps hanging in the background cast the women’s shadows on the fabric as they moved back and forth on the other side. When they came closer to the curtain, their outlines were more distinct. The lamplight was dark yellow and slightly speckled with brown, like the fruits on the tree standing in the garden. Gradually some of its dark hue wore off. A strong wind had risen outside, and the rustling of the trees was like waves breaking. The lamps swayed slightly, very gently. I thought of next day and the flight to Tokyo. It was as if he had read my thoughts, because I heard him say that taking off in the morning wouldn’t be easy. I know; I’ll have to pull on the brake, step hard on the gas to raise the rear of the plane, then start at a diagonal angle to the airfield. Yes, he said, probably going north-west. At this time of year the west wind will still be blowing in the morning. Once the plane lifts off you’ll need to rise steeply just before the telegraph lines. But you know that already. You flew over the lines very elegantly when you were landing. He meant very close to them, of course. This was a surprise to me; he too was an aviator. He’d been a fighter pilot in the war, flying a triplane, a Fokker. He’ll help you to get the engine turning over, I told myself. The mere fact that he’d be there was reassuring. I could do it. Are you staying here long? I’m going to Tokyo in two days’ time, by rail. You can fly with me and I’ll send my things on the train. Can’t be done, I’m afraid. I still have business here. I wanted to ask him what kind of business, but I stopped myself. At first I could see his shadow only indistinctly as he moved about the room. Now he was probably sitting on the mat, since there was no chair of any kind in the room. His voice came from that direction as he asked whether I’d mind if he smoked a cigarette. No, of course not. I smoke too. Would you like a cigarette? Yes, please. He pushed a silver cigarette case under the curtain. A flat silver case, smooth, with a laurel-leaf pattern forming a narrow border. There was a monogram on the back: Ch. v. D. The other side was slightly dented. A splinter of brass had bored into it. I lit myself a cigarette and pushed the case and the lighter back. Our hands briefly touched. The sound of his lighter, the gleam of light, the shadow of his head on the curtain. The shadow of his voice. What’s that splinter in your cigarette case?

Souvenir of a dogfight, he said. There was no sound but the wind to be heard in the long silence that followed. The curtain moved gently in the draught. I was going to suggest that we might sit together for a while, so that we could see each other as we talked, but then I felt it was better just to hear him. I liked his voice. And at first glance I’d liked the rest of him: tall, lean, mid-blond hair with a central parting. Held himself upright, but not stiffly, his movements were slow and gentle. To begin with I thought he was an American from the way he stood there among the other Europeans and the Japanese, hands in his trouser pockets. We once had an American visitor on my grandparents’ estate. A sensation out there in the country, where even someone from Berlin seemed to come from another world. The young American had driven up in a convertible. He was touring Europe, and when he saw the manor house he simply stopped. He spoke German very well, French too. I noticed – I was fifteen at the time – how easily that American moved, how friendly and casual his manner was. He didn’t kiss the ladies’ hands, he didn’t make any stiff little bows, he didn’t click his heels. He just stood there in the hall, the big entrance hall with antlers on the walls, with his left hand in his trouser pocket. Twilight was already falling, and my grandparents invited him to stay the night. It was a more entertaining, easy-going party at supper that evening than any other I can remember in my childhood and adolescence. That young man really could have come from another world. My sister and I couldn’t sleep when we’d gone to bed. My sister was particularly keen to know whether the American had a girlfriend. I said, you’re in love with him. She said the same about me. And we both told each other, in unison: nonsense. After he left I hoped for weeks, even months, that he’d turn up at our door again one day. But of course he never did. Grandfather said his manners were, well, how should he put it, informal, but otherwise the American was a nice young man. It was his informality I liked so much: the way he stood there, head slightly on one side, one hand in his trouser pocket, smoking with casual movements, not greedily; they were all of a piece with the way he talked and the way he seemed to be thinking. I started smoking because of him. We, my sister and I, smoked in the woods in secret, imitating the American’s gestures: the way he held his cigarette, the way he carried it to his mouth, and above all the way he then held the cigarette in his hand as if he’d forgotten it, all of them gestures that are my own now when I smoke. I heard Dahlem laugh behind the curtain, I heard him say yes, the smoke signals of our secret desires.

Distant voices, the laughter of a woman suddenly stopping short. The call of a night bird. A rustling sound as if he were wrapping something in paper. Sudden silence. To break the silence I asked how he had come to start flying. After some time, as if he had to think whether he could or would answer my question, he said: oh, it was the dirt, it was the rats, the chalky white mud, the lice. He’d been sitting in a trench in Champagne in the autumn of 1917, a good three metres down, looking up through the narrow gap at the top of the trench to see the sky, where aviators appeared now and then, Germans, British, French, their aircraft circling each other, sometimes colliding, turning away, rising steeply only to circle one another again. Like eagles, he thought. Sometimes the metal of the planes flashed in the sun for a few seconds. There was something very romantic about the sight as he looked up from below, he admitted. That had been what made him volunteer, and he wasn’t deterred by the fact that planes were always being hit and falling out of the sky. The likelihood of dying in a trench or during an assault had been no less, greater if anything. But that hadn’t been the reason for his decision. As an infantry ensign he hadn’t known the first thing about engines. Engines and motors didn’t interest him. He had survived, he said, more by luck than cunning. What happens to us is no more necessary than our birth is necessary. That’s when the game begins, the game with chance that makes us what we are. And he had been accepted only because he could do a handstand. Too many men had volunteered just to get out of the mud, and at the time most pilots were still from the cavalry. Aviators are the knights of the air. He wasn’t in the cavalry, he was an infantryman. Only the cavalry learned to keep their balance, so it was said, and on a horse you were higher up and thus closer to the sky. It was no good suffering from vertigo, you mustn’t be afraid of heights. And you had to be able to steer, hence the comparison between riding a horse and flying an aircraft. A silly idea. When they were about to turn him down, he found a chair in the recruiting office and did a handstand on it. He just stood there in the room, head down, until one of the recruiting officers said all right, that’ll do. They had accepted him. And as he went out one of the officers added: with that trick, you could always join the circus.

I liked his calm, placid way of talking, the way he spoke of himself a little ironically, playing everything down, making it all seem relative. I can’t remember ever having heard a voice I liked as much; it was physically inside me, arousing palpable warmth, opening me up. A voice in the middle register with a touch of North German about it, long vowels with a nasal effect. His voice coming from the dark room, which was lit only by the still light of the two lamps. I saw something I’d never seen in the same way before, the aura of a lamp, the shadowy outline of the screen fading away into darkness. Ahead of me I could still make out the mountain landscape, with that bearded old man riding a buffalo. Dahlem said it was in the

twilight that things come out of themselves, become their true quintessence. Not in the bright sunlight from which people here try to protect themselves with parasols out of doors, but at that moment of transition when things pass from distinct, bright clarity into the darkness from which they emerge, into which they sink again as if into oblivion. But do things really disappear in the dark? Don’t they still exist as objects? They aren’t interesting any more, so they’re nothing, he said. Hm.

Dahlem was lucky enough to be good-looking. The injustice of nature incarnate, says Miller. He stood out. Especially there in Japan. Blond hair, blue-grey eyes. Japanese women were crazy about him. They’re not weighed down with those Western, Christian notions of guilt that reduce women’s pleasure to a small, shy gasp.

Different lands, different modes of conduct. Oh, that particular mode of conduct’s much the same everywhere, said a deep voice, laughing.

That voice, who’s that? Udet. He’s here. His grave is still tended. Evergreens to cover it in winter. Flowers now and then, candles. And then of course there are the veterans’ associations. Wreaths with the Iron Cross. Ernst Udet. Ever heard of him? Yes, a flying ace, pilot in the First World War. A Nazi general later. Shot himself. Ah, you know about it. So he still speaks to you. Most of the people I take on guided tours are deaf and dumb as they pass this place. Of course the voices fade away as time goes by. You can hardly understand many of them now, and most fell silent long ago. But Udet’s voice is still perfectly clear. That old soak. He was a stunt pilot between the wars. Probably the best known of them all. Could scoop up a handkerchief from the runway with a wing tip. Then he was put in charge of air armaments for the Luftwaffe and appointed colonel-general. Yes, he shot himself later. Do many aviators commit suicide? Not a significant number. No more aviators kill themselves than actors. Unless you’re counting crashes due to carelessness.

What was Dahlem doing in Japan? Travelling on a diplomat’s passport, a consul with special duties. What duties?

He was just back from China. On a secret mission.

And she – what was she doing there?

Flying for Germany, says a young man’s voice. Morale was low in those days. Germany down and out. The Weimar Republic. That talking shop the Reichstag. Et cetera pp.

Who’s that babbling away? Maikowski. Lies quite close to the Etzdorf woman. His grave’s been levelled out. Hans Eberhard Maikowski, Sturmführer in the SA. A notorious hit-man, led an SA Storm unit in the twenties, the oldest one in Berlin. Proudly chalked up the murders of thirty-three dissidents to his name. Affectionately called Hanne Maiko by his friends. And in their lingo, he was a martyr. On 30 January 1933, when Hitler had become Chancellor, Maikowski was shot in a brawl with some communists. Or maybe his own men had something to do with it. There were people who wanted to get rid of him. He was a particularly tough character, and he knew too much. Talks now the way he always did. And he’ll have picked up that phrase et cetera pp somewhere or other. All confused, trying to sound educated although he really hated what he called scribblers. There’s someone playing the violin. Yes, wait a minute, you’ll be able to hear him more clearly soon.

The shameful Versailles Treaty. Must encourage our people overseas. Marga von Etzdorf flying for Germany. Count Luckner sailing for Germany. Captain Kircheiss ditto. Germany down and out. War guilt. Et cetera pp.

It’s like a bird bringing up pellets, that’s all, says the grey man. Spits it out bit by bit. He’s getting quieter, though. Who’s still interested? Do you know anything about the Weimar Republic yourself? Or Count Luckner? Yes, stories, but long ago. The Count went privateering with a barque in the First World War. The Sea Eagle. And he could bend five-mark coins in his fingers. How old are you? Born in 1940. What a lot of baggage you carry around with you, says the grey man, what a load of old junk. Rather unusual for someone of your age. Most of them who come on my tours don’t have the faintest idea, as I said before. This place says less and less to them, means nothing at all to younger folk.

The grey man coughs, and puts a pastille in his mouth. Manna to hoarse throats, he says, Ems Pastilles. He stops beside a tree, an oak, with withered summer leaves still hanging on it. The magpie flies past with its raucous cry, and settles on the cast iron fence around a grave. Ah, the magpie, one of the daughters of Pieros transformed into bird shape, says the grey man. Would you like a pastille? Thank you. Bismarck sucked Ems Pastilles, says a rough voice, and adds something else. What did he say? It’s hard to make him out. Yes, his mouth is full of earth.

She flew for Germany.

Nonsense, says Miller. She flew because she liked flying, that’s all. She was a different woman in the air. There was a transformation. You have to imagine her in an evening dress, high-heeled snakeskin shoes, fingernails painted red, and then in her mechanic’s overalls, smeared with oil.

Yes, an unusual woman, says the old soak. Very independent. Could change spark plugs and remove pistons. Cleaned her own fuel pipes. And what matters most, she could fly. Same as any man. She was dashing, an excellent aviator. Lufthansa’s first woman pilot, co-pilot. Had a beautiful voice into the bargain, she could sing wonderfully well. And tip-top in the air. Don’t anyone try to tell me otherwise. I know. Did some stunt flying with her once. No need to laugh in that dirty way, you over there. She was a Diana. How do you mean? Well, she had something kind of aloof about her, not stand-offish, perfectly friendly, but she kept her distance. Didn’t look as soft and girly as her rival Elly Beinhorn. I was head over heels in love with Elly. And? Zilch. No, not with her, no luck there. With Antonie Strassmann it was different, oh yes, she was a good pilot too. Had what I guess they’d call a liaison with her, only a few weeks. She did just as she liked. Wonderful woman. Couldn’t care less what people said, what was etiquette, what the prim and proper thought. What about Marga von Etzdorf? Marga, ah, well. Interesting, slightly Slavonic features, broad cheekbones, dark eyes. Something virginal about her, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean like an old maid. And as I said,

a lovely voice. Always very elegantly dressed when she wasn’t just out of her aircraft. I made a dead set at her, well, of course I did. Nothing came of it, nothing doing there either, wouldn’t let me land on her airstrip. You don’t rank with me. Ha, ha. It’s difficult to hear you clearly. There’s other reasons for that. First I was going to shoot myself in the heart, then I thought of all those wonderful women and I put the gun to my head instead.

- End of Sample translation -