Chapter 37 Flintstones and Tombstones

Fat and fat, sleepy all day long, with a bodhisattva heart.After Gust Truczynski became Gust Kester, she didn't need to change anything.In addition, the time she spends with Kerst is really limited: Kerr took a fourteen-day vacation before going to the Arctic sea front, and they got engaged; he came back from the front for a two-week vacation, they got married, and spent most of the time hiding in the air-raid shelter.After Courland's army surrendered, although there was no news that Kester was still alive, whenever someone asked about her husband, Guste pointed to the kitchen door with her thumb and said confidently: " He's in Ivan's camp over there. As soon as he comes back, it's going to be a different place."

-------- ① Refers to the Soviets, because many Russians are named after "Ivan". The things left for Kerst to change in this apartment in Birk district refer to the life of Maria and Kurt after they came.I was discharged from the hospital, and I said good-bye to the nurses, promising to see them sometimes, and took the tram to Birke to see the sisters and my son Kurt.The philosophy of the apartment was not always consistent.Aesthetically and literaryly, stick to reality, burnt out from the fourth floor to the roof.I made it to the third floor to find that it had become a black market merchandise center run by Maria and my son.Little Kurt is six years old, and he is also counting fingers.

Maria remained loyal to her Matzerath even in the black market, her artificial honey business.She was scooping honey from unbranded buckets and pouring it on the scales.As soon as I came in, and before I got acquainted with the narrow world, she made me pocket honey, quarter-pound sacks. Little Kurt sat behind a wooden Basil washing powder box, as if behind a counter, and though he did glance at his father, who had returned home from illness, his winter gray eyes stared at him. Something worth seeing, and you have to look right through me to see it.In front of him was a sheet of paper on which he was arranging imaginary columns of numbers.He had only been in classes for six weeks in a crowded, poorly heated classroom, and he already had the air of a brooder and a success-seeker.

Gust Kester is drinking coffee.She pushed a cup of coffee in front of me, and I realized it was real coffee.While I was busy packing artificial honey, she watched my hunched back curiously, with sympathy for her sister Maria.She found it difficult to sit still and not let her touch my hunchback, such as "Ming Gua Shi Bian Tong Yao", "Ming Xiang", "Different Position", "Lue Li Xia", "Gua Lue", etc.For all women, touching the hunchback brings good luck.For Gust, luck is that Kester returns to his hometown and changes everything.She restrained herself and touched the coffee mug instead, but it wasn't going to get her lucky, and she sighed loudly.For the next few months, I would hear her sigh every day.She said: "As soon as Kester comes back, this place will change a lot, and you can believe that, even though you haven't seen him yet."

Gust denounces the black market, but loves real coffee that's traded for artificial honey.When customers came, she left the living room and went into the kitchen in her slippers, where she rattled in protest. There are many customers.Just after nine o'clock, just after breakfast, the doorbell began to ring: short-long-short.At night, when it was nearly ten o'clock, Gust turned off the electric bell, often ignoring the protests of Kurt Jr. He could only use half of the trading time because he was going to school. The person who came to the door said: "Is there artificial honey?"

Maria nodded tenderly and asked, "A quarter pound or a half pound?" Some of the people who came to the door didn't want artificial honey.They would say, "Is there a flint and steel?" Little Kurt, who went to school alternately one morning and one afternoon, got out of his number column, reached into the pocket of the sweater, and used the crisp voice of a child's challenge. Send numbers into the living room air: "Would you like three or four? You'd better have five. There's going to be a price increase, at least twenty-four. Last week it was eighteen, and this morning I've already had to make an offer Twenty. If you're two hours earlier, I'll be here just after school, and I'll be twenty-one as long as you are."

In the territory of four streets long and six streets wide, Little Kurt is a unique flint merchant.He has a source, but never reveals it, yet says again and again: "I have a source!" Even before he goes to bed, instead of saying evening prayers. As a father, I have the right to demand to know the origin of my son.He was never mysterious but confidently announced: "I have a source!" As soon as he said, I immediately asked: "Where did you get your flint? Tell me quickly, where did you get it?" !" During the months I was investigating this source, Maria always said, "Don't worry about your brother, Oscar. One, it's none of your business, two, if I should have asked, I would have asked, and three, don't pretend to be his." Fatherly. A few months ago, you couldn't even say 'yuck'!"

When I refused to give up and insisted on finding out the source of little Kurt, Maria would slap the artificial honey bucket with a slap, and her anger burned to the elbow, and at the same time attacked me and Gust, who sometimes supported me in investigating the source: "You're all shit! Trying to ruin my son's business. You're living off his hard-earned money. When I think of Oscar's few calories* of sick allowance he eats up in two days I get angry when I do it, but actually I just find it ridiculous." -------- ① Calorie, a unit of heat.People need to get food that contains certain calories to maintain life.Food was scarce in Germany after the war, so people also used calories as a measure of food quantity.

Oskar had to admit that when I was hospitalized with a surprisingly good appetite and meager hospital food, it was thanks to this source of little Kurt--which was more than artificial honey--that I was able to regain my strength. The father had to be ashamed and silent, and with the considerable pocket money given to him by little Kurt for his innocent mercy, he stayed as little as possible in the apartment in the Birk district, so as not to see himself ashamed. Today, the less well-placed commentators of the economic miracle of all kinds recall the circumstances, the more gleefully they say: "The period before the currency change was unbelievable. Now it's alive! People Empty belly, but still waiting in line for theater tickets. All kinds of impromptu potato wine parties are like myths, and they are infinitely more interesting than the usual incense wine and caviar banquets held today."

These people, you could call them missed opportunity romantics.I could have lamented my missed opportunities as much as they did, because during the years when Kurt Jr.'s Flintstone source poured in like a fountain, I paid almost nothing to the thousands of people who tried to tutor and learn. Educated in circles, signed up for amateur university courses, became a regular at the Britannic Center called The Bridge, and discussed collective guilt with Catholics and Protestants.I'm with all these people who feel guilty, and they're thinking: If we take the guilt now, it will pass, and when things get better, we won't have to feel guilty anymore.

-------- ①This is a British language and cultural education institution located abroad. ②International public opinion believed that the Germans were collectively responsible for the war and the crimes of the Nazis during and after the war. Thanks to Ye University, I have a decent level of education, although of course my learning is not systematic and there are gaps.At that time, I studied many books.The book I read before I was growing up, it only taught me that I could divide the world into two halves, one half belonged to Rasputin, the other half belonged to Goethe, and then my Keller from 1904 to 1916 I don't think the knowledge gained from the "Fleet Yearbook" is enough.I read so much that I can't even remember.I also read in the bathroom.I read as I stood in line for hours among young girls with Mozart braids and books reading.I read while Little Coulter was selling flint and steel.I also read while packaging faux honey.When the power went out, I read by the light of a candle, which I also got from Little Coulter's source. I am ashamed to say that I did not read the books in those years, but forgot after reading them, leaving only a few words and a few maxims.What about drama?Just remember the names of a few actors: Hope, Peter Ethel, Flickenchild and her special pronunciation of the letter "r", in the experimental theater performances to be corrected by Flickenchild "r ’ Pronounced by drama school girls, and by Grindgens.He plays Tasso, dressed in black, and removes from his wig the laurel wreath that Goethe ordered in the script, because the green thing scorched his curls.This is the same Grindgens playing Hamlet in the same black suit.Frickenchild said Hamlet was too fat.It was Yorick's skull that made an impression on me, for what Grindgens said about it carries weight.Later they performed "Outside the Gate" in an unheated theater, and the audience was shocked.I imagined Beckmann, with his broken glasses, as Gust's husband, the homecoming Kerst.He changed everything as Gust said, filling my son Kurt's Flint and Steel Fountain. -------- ① Yorick is the jester of the Danish king in the play "Hamlet". When Hamlet saw his corpse, he said to the skull, "Didn't you leave a joke to laugh at yourself?" ②Grindgens is an actor famous for playing the devil Mephisto in "Faust", the son-in-law of German writer Thomas Mann.The Nazis came to power, and Goering appointed him director of the Berlin State Theater in 1934, and the two were close.His uncle Nicklaus Mann published the novel "Mephisto" in 1936, satirizing spineless intellectuals like him.He died of an overdose of sleeping pills in 1963. ③A play by German writer Wolfgang Borchet, about the repatriated German soldiers who were rejected everywhere and then threw themselves into the river.Beckman is the protagonist in the play. Today, for me, this is all in the past; today, I also understand that the post-war drunken state is just a drunken state, it must bring the pain of the hangover, like a tomcat, meow Meowing non-stop.Today, it has announced that all this has become history, but yesterday, all this was an act or crime committed by our own hands, still fresh and bloody.Because of this, today, I still like Gretchen Scheffler's lecture on knitting sweaters while reviewing the tour organized by "Strength from Joy": not too much Rasputin, moderate Goethe, outline Territorial talk about the "History of Danzig City" translated by Kay, the equipment of the liner that has sunk long ago, the speed of all the Japanese torpedo boats that were thrown into the Tsushima Sea Battle, in addition to Belisar and Nasses, Totila and Tai Yay, The Battle of Rome by Felix Dahn. -------- ① "Der Kater" in German means "tomcat", and also means "discomfort after being drunk".This is a word game. In the spring of 1947, I had given up Night College, the British Center, and Reverend Nimmerer, the third-floor balcony, and Gustav Grindgens, who was still playing Hamlet. -------- ① Nimmerer (1892-1982), an anti-Nazi Protestant leader, was imprisoned in a concentration camp for seven years. It has been less than two years since I decided to grow up at Matzerath's grave, and I already feel that adult life is the same.I miss the three-year-old figure I've lost.I am unwavering in my desire to regain my ninety-four centimeters, shorter than my friend Bebra and the late Rosweta.Oscar misses his drum.Several long walks brought him near the municipal hospital.Anyway, once a month he went to see Professor Idle, who called him an interesting case, and repeatedly visited the nurses he knew. Beside the cloth of recovery or death, he feels pleasant, almost happy. The nurses liked me, made jokes about my hunchback, were innocent and innocent, gave me good food to eat, and revealed their hospital secrets, endless and intricate, that were both delightful and tiring to listen to.I listen, offer advice, and even mediate minor disagreements because I have the sympathy of a matron.Among the twenty or thirty girls hiding in nurse uniforms, I was the only man who was pursued by them in a strange way. Bruno had already said that Oskar had beautiful, talking hands, soft, wavy hair, and those rather blue, always pleasing Bronski eyes.My hunchback and my equally raised, narrow ribcage from under the chin may contrast with the beauty of my hands and eyes, my lovely hair, which often happens anyway: when I Sitting in their department, the nurses would grab my hand, stroke my hair, or walk outside and say to people, "Look into his eyes, and you'll forget the rest of him." So, having overcome my hunchback, if I had had drums by my side and had a solid grasp of the drummer's potential, which has been proven so many times in the past, I would have definitely set my mind to conquer inside the hospital.And yet, shamefully and unsurely disbelieving that my flesh could have any impulse, after this tender prelude, I left the hospital and escaped the decisive battle.I go to get some air, walk in the garden or around the chain-link fence outside the hospital.The wire mesh of the fence is very dense and regular, which made me whistle and calm down.I stared blankly at the trams heading towards Weissguin and Benrath, strolling boredly beside the bicycle lane on the sidewalk in the woods, laughing at the extravagance of nature.It plays spring, according to the playlist, making Beiyin crackle like firecrackers. -------- ① In Germany, bicycle lanes are drawn on the sidewalk on the side of the road. Across the road, our eternal Sunday painters paint the trees of West Cemetery with more and more green paint day after day.Cemeteries have tempted me many times in the past.The cemeteries are all neat, singular, logical, masculine, and dynamic.In the cemetery, one can muster courage and make up one's mind.It is in the cemetery that life acquires its outline—and I don't mean the graveyard, I can put it another way, if I like: it acquires a certain meaning. There is a bit road along the north wall of the cemetery.There are seven Tombstone stores competing there.The big shops are C. Schnogg and Julius Weber.The shop numbers are: Kraut, R. Heidenreich, J. Beuys, Kuhn & Müller, P. Konev.The shop is a mixture of wooden houses and studios, spacious, and the signboard in front of the roof is either newly painted or will be recognizable. Artificial stone pavement - the art of tombstones.Above Konev's shop I read: P. Konev - Stonemason - Tombstone Carver. Between the workshop and the open space surrounded by barbed wire fences, there are tombstones standing on single and double pedestals ranging from single-pocket to four-pocket tombs, that is, family joint burials.Immediately behind the fence, in the diamond-shaped shadow cast by the barbed wire in the sun, there are limestone tombstones, pillow-sized, for the less demanding; polished diabase slabs, carved with unpolished palm branches; Made of Silesian light cloud pattern marble, surrounded by arc decoration, about 80 centimeters high, the upper third is engraved, most of which are broken roses.Then there is a row of ordinary one-meter steles, Main River red sandstone, formerly used for the facades of bombed-out banks and department stores, now celebrating the resurrection here, if that can be said of a tombstone.In the center of this exhibition space is the luxurious object: a monument consisting of three plinths, two lateral symmetries, and a large stone wall engraved with floral decorations in white and pale blue Tyrolean marble.Protruding majestically from the main wall are reliefs which masons call bodies.Subject, a human body, with head tilted to the left, knees tilted to the left, crown of thorns, three nails, no beard, palm spread, chest wound dripping with blood, traditional line style, I believe, a total of five drops Blood. -------- ① Refers to the Eucharist of Christ, that is, Jesus Christ crucified on the cross. Tombstones with left-slanting subjects on Butte Road are plentiful and spare, and there are often a dozen or so subjects with outstretched arms welcoming buyers before the spring selling season begins.But it was Konev's Jesus Christ that especially attracted me, because he was most like my gymnast on the main altar of the Sacred Heart Church, with his chest and muscles stretched and his skills extraordinary.I spend hours by the fence.I scratched the purr of the she-cat on the wire fence with a stick, wishing myself this way and that, thinking of all the opportunities and nothing else.Konev has never been seen.The chimney protruding from one of the windows in the studio, twists and turns, and seems to bend its knees several times before it exceeds the roof.The butter of bad coal rises in moderation, descends on the cardboard of the roof, seeps down the windows, down the gutters, and disappears among the raw stones and cracked marble slabs.In front of the sliding door of the workshop, a three-wheeled motorcycle was parked, covered with a few pieces of tent cloth, as if it was camouflaged in case of low-altitude aircraft attack.Noises in the workshop—wood banging on iron, iron splitting stone—indicated that the masons were at work. In May, the tent sheets on the three-wheeled motorcycles were removed and the sliding doors were opened.I saw layers of gray inside the workshop, piles of stones, a gallows-like grinder, shelves for plaster models, and finally Konev.He walked stooped, his knees rattled, his neck was slumped, and his head was thrust forward.There are plasters on the back of the neck, some pink and some black, overlapping horizontally and vertically, and the ointments penetrate each other.Konev came with a rake and raked among the displayed tombstones, for spring had come.He worked meticulously, leaving variable marks on the gravel, raking together dead foliage that had fallen to a few gravestones last year.As the rake moved between the diabase slabs of the shell gray stele in front of the fence, his voice startled me: "Son, did your family kick you out?" "I especially like your tombstone." I said flatteringly. "Don't say such things, if you are unlucky, someone will put such a piece on top of your head." Only then did he turn his stiff neck with great effort, and squinted at me, or rather, saw my hunchback. "How did they make you like this? Is it okay to sleep?" I let him laugh and then told him that a hunchback doesn't have to be a hindrance, that I've surpassed a hunchback in a way, and that some women and girls even say they like it, and they even adapt to the peculiarities of a hunchbacked husband. Circumstances and conditions, frankly, they find multiple pleasures in the hunchback. Konev leaned his chin on the handle of the rake in thought: "It's possible, I've heard of it." Then he told me about a time when he was working in the basalt quarries in Eifel, he had a time with a woman who had a wooden leg, I think the left one, that could be removed.He compared it with my hunchback, although my "box" - as he called my hunchback - could not be unloaded.Mason gave a long and tedious review.I waited patiently for him to finish, and after the woman had reattached her wooden leg, I asked him to allow me to visit the workshop. Konev opened the iron door in the middle of the barbed wire fence and pointed a rake at the open sliding door to let me in.I trod over rustling gravel until the smell of sulfur, plaster, and damp surrounded me. A heavy, pear-shaped wooden hammer with a flattened upper end rests on a rough stone slab leveled with four pry bars. The depressions on the surface indicate that it is always struck in the same place.A pointed chisel for a rough chisel hammer, a pointed chisel with a round point, a freshly cast toothed chisel that is blue from quenching, a long elastic hammer for working marble, on a piece of blue rock Wide and short grooved hammer, lubricant dried on the wooden frame, double-chamber travertine tombstone standing on the log ready to be transported, polished, dull, greasy, yellow, cream-colored, very thin hole. "This is a chisel hammer, this is a spoon chisel, and this is a slotting chisel." Konev lifted a wooden strip that was one palm wide and three steps long, and moved it to his eyes to inspect its edges and corners. "It's a ruler. I also use it to beat my apprentices when they don't obey." "You hire apprentices too?" I asked more than out of politeness. Konev complained: "I can hire five for each job, but I can't hire one. Now they're all learning the black market, fools!" These practices prevent some promising young men from learning a decent trade.While Konev showed me the various types of emery stones, from coarse to fine, and how they would polish a Solnhof slab, a small thought occurred to me.He pointed me to pumice stones, chocolate-colored lac stones for rough grinding, and diatomaceous earth, which can be used to bring out the shine on dull slabs, and I kept spinning my little thoughts , it has gradually brightened.Konev showed me models of letters, told me about embossed and indented letters, about the gilding of letters.It didn't take much gold, he said, for a real guttale would gild both the horse and the knight.This made me immediately think of the statue of Kaiser Wilhelm riding a horse facing the sand ditch in the Haymarket of Danzig. The Polish cultural relics conservators may decide to gild it.In spite of the gilded horse and knight, I never gave up my little idea, which became more and more valuable.I pondered, and finally got it into shape, while Konev was explaining to me the three-legged stippling machine used for carving, tapping various nails skewed to the left or right with the knuckle bones. Plaster cast of Christ on the cross.My thoughts came to me: "Do you want to hire an apprentice?" What I actually said was: "Are you looking for an apprentice for yourself? Or am I mistaken?" Konev wiped the boil medical tape on the back of the neck. "I mean, is it possible for you to take me in as an apprentice?" It was a bad question, and I corrected it immediately, "Don't underestimate my physical strength, Mr. Konev! Er Jin, you can work unambiguously!" I was inspired by my determination, but now I will not give up until I achieve my goal.I rolled up the sleeve of my left arm and let Konev touch my small but tough muscle like beef.He wouldn't touch it, so I picked up a rough chisel hammer from the limestone and let the hexagonal piece of metal bounce across a hillock the size of a tennis ball.My display of strength was later interrupted by Konev.He turned on the sander, whirling a sheet of emery on the travertine base of the two-cave headstone.In the end, keeping his eyes on the machine, he shouted over the grinding noise: "Sleep all night and think about it, young man! Working here is not like licking honey. Come back after you make up your mind, and I can accept you as an intern." I listened to the mason's advice, and for a week I considered my little idea.During the day, I compared little Kurt's flint and steel with Pitt Road's tombstone, and heard Maria scolding me: "You, Oscar, are all dependent on us now. Do something, cocoa, tea, milk powder, whatever. !" I didn't start to do it, and I heard Gust praise me for Kester who was not at home as a role model, and let her praise me for my opposition to the black market.However, what I can't stand is my son Kurt.As he concocted the column of numbers and put them on paper, he deliberately ignored me, just as I deliberately ignored Matzerath for so many years in the past. We sit and have lunch.Gust turned off the bell so customers wouldn't come in and see us eating scrambled eggs and bacon.Maria said: "Look, Oscar, we can eat these good things only because we don't put our hands in our arms." Little Coulter sighed, and the flint and steel had fallen to eighteen each.Guste ate, eating a lot.I also imitated her, tasted the taste, probably because of the egg powder, I felt unpleasant, and because I bit the cartilage in the slab meat, I suddenly felt the need for happiness even at the root of my ears.In spite of my many stronger reasons to the contrary, in spite of all my doubts, I still claim happiness, unhindered happiness.While the others were still sitting, eating, and satisfied with the powdered eggs, I stood up and walked towards the cabinet, as if happiness was at my fingertips.I searched in my compartment, behind the photo album, under the textbook, I found, no, not happiness, but two small bags of disinfectant given by Mr. Feingold, and I took it out of a bag, no, Not happiness, of course, but my poor mother's ruby ​​necklace, thoroughly sanitized.It was taken by Jan Bronski on a snowy winter night many years ago from a window with a round hole that Oskar sang to break in advance.Oscar was still very happy at that time, he had the ability to sing broken glass.I took this jewelry and left the apartment, and saw in it the starting point of my steps.So I hit the road and rode to the train station.I thought to myself what would happen if it was done, and then, after a long bargain, I never forgot that if... but the one-armed man and the Saxon who was called a jury judge, they Knowing only the value of the jewels, I had no premonition that they would add to my need for happiness.They took my poor mother's necklace and gave me a leather briefcase and fifteen packs of American cigarettes, Lucky Brand ①. -------- ① After the war, the German economy went bankrupt, and the Reichsmark was like waste paper.In black market transactions, Jixiang brand cigarettes and other brands of cigarettes produced by the allies have become commercial securities and currency in circulation. In the afternoon, I went back to Birke's house again.I opened the bag: fifteen auspicious cards in packs of twenty, a fortune, to the astonishment of the others.I pushed the packaged golden tobacco mountain in front of them and said, this is for you, but let me get peace from now on. I prepared a full lunch box, and from today onwards, I will take it to my work place in my briefcase every day.May your artificial honey and flint business prosper as well, I say this without getting angry or complaining, I'll be in another line of business, and hereafter my happiness will be written, or in jargon, Will be chiseled on tombstones. Konev hired me as an intern for one hundred Reichsmarks a month.This amount of money is equivalent to not being paid, and I can only pay this amount of money for the work I do.A week later, it was proved that I was not strong enough for the rough work of a mason.A freshly split Belgian granite wall, which will be used as a four-chamber headstone, was entrusted to me by Konev for rough hewing.I've only been working for an hour, and I can't hold the chisel in my hand, and I can't feel the hand holding the hammer.I had to leave the rough chiseling to Konev, and I did what proved my dexterity: fine chiseling, zigzags, visual inspection of the plane with two rulers, four pry bars Adjust the level and continuously cut trenches in the dolomite border.A vertical square log is placed horizontally on the top to form a "T" shape. I sit on it, despite Konev's accusations of changing my left-handed habits, I still hold the chisel in my right hand and swing the pear shape with my left hand. Wooden hammer, iron hammer, chisel hammer, crackling, jingling non-stop, with the sixty-four teeth of the chisel hammer biting the stone at the same time, gnawing away the stone piece by piece: happiness, it is not my drum , happiness, is only a substitute, but happiness can also be a substitute, perhaps only happiness obtained through substitution, happiness is always a substitute for happiness, happiness piles up—marble happiness, sandstone happiness, Elbe sand Stone, Main gravel, your gravel, our gravel, Kirchheim happiness, Grunzheim happiness.Hard happiness: blue shore stone.A cloud of brittle bliss: Alabaster.Chrome steel chiseled blissfully into the diabase.Dolomite: green happiness.Soft bliss: Tuff.Colorful happiness comes from the Lahn River.Porous bliss: basalt.Cold Bliss comes from Mount Everest.Happiness is like a volcanic eruption, rolling down into piles, flying stone dust, rustling between my teeth. When engraving, I showed my talent even more.I even surpassed Konev and took on the ornamental part of the engraving work: leaf plates, fragmented roses for children's tombstones, palm branches, Christian symbols such as PX or INRI, coves, embossments, eggs. Shaped moldings, chamfers and double chamfers.Oscar engraved various embossed decorations on tombstones of various prices and wished them good luck.It took me eight hours to carve the following inscription on a piece of polished diabase wall that was repeatedly blurred by my breath: Here lies my dear husband—start another line—we Kind Father, Brother, and Uncle—Separately—Joseph Esser—Separately—Born April 3, 1885, Died June 22, 1946—Separately—Death is Life door.Then, I read through an inscription for the last time. At this moment, what I got in exchange was joy and happiness.For this, I am grateful again and again to Joseph Esser, who is 61 years old, and the green moiré diabase in front of my carving chisel. I have carved the five "O"s in the inscription on Mr. Esser's tombstone with extra care; Oskar's favorite letter "O" always appears regularly and endlessly, giving me happiness, but I engraved them a little too big.Two boils, and we had to move the travertine tombstones of Hermann and Elzer Webknecht, née Freitack, to the South Cemetery.Until that day, the masons never believed in my strength.In moving the tombstones, he was most likely assisted by an almost deaf but otherwise useful helper from the firm of Julius Weber.As compensation, Konev came to help when Weber, who employed eight people, was short.I offered to help him with the work in the cemetery several times, but I was repeatedly rejected.Fortunately, Weber's business was booming at the beginning of October, and he couldn't lose a single man before the frost.Konev had to count on me. -------- ① PX is the monogram of the Latin word "Christ". INRT is the Latin abbreviation for "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews". The two of us lifted the travertine monument to the back of the three-wheeled motorcycle, put it on the hardwood slider, pushed it onto the trailer, and stuffed the base aside, wrapped the edges and corners with empty paper bags, and then loaded tools, cement, and sand. , gravel, wooden bars and boxes for unloading.I closed the flap and Konev was already in the driver's seat and started the motorcycle.He stuck his head and boiled neck out the side window and shouted, "Come on, lad, get your lunch box and get in the car!" The three-wheeled motorcycle walked slowly around the city hospital.At the gate of the hospital, there are like clouds of female nurses in white clothes.Among them was a nurse I knew, Sister Gertrude.I waved, and she waved too.Bliss, I thought, she looks like Bliss, I should invite her once, though I can't see her now, because we're heading for the Rhine.Where should she be invited.The car drove towards Capersham, and asked her to go to the movies, or to the theater, to see Grindgens play.It's beckoning, yellow brick building, not a theater, thick smoke rising, above the treetops where the crematorium leaves and half, Sister Gertrude, would you like a change?Another cemetery, other tombstone shops, greeted Sister Gertrude at the gate: Beutz and Kranig's shop, Portkisser's natural stone shop, Bum's tombstone art shop, Göckeln Cemetery garden shop.Someone checked at the gate. Entering the cemetery is not that simple. The administrator wearing a cemetery hat said: The travertine stele of the double-cavity tomb is located at No. 79 in the eighth district. Salute at the cemetery cap.We handed over the lunch box for him to heat in the crematorium, and Sugar Leo stood in front of the morgue. I said to Konev: "Isn't this a man named Sugar Leo in white gloves?" Konev reached for the boil on the back of his neck. "This is Sabel William, not Sugar Leo. He lives here." Will such an answer satisfy me?I used to be in Danzig and now I am in Düsseldorf, but my name has always been Oscar.So I said, "In our cemetery in the past, there was a man who looked exactly like this. His name was Sugar Leo. At first, his name was Leo, and he was a student in the priest class." Konev covered his boil with his left hand, and with his right hand, he drove the three-wheeled motorcycle to turn in front of the crematorium. Another name. Here's one Sabel William!" We passed Sabel William.他挥动白手套打招呼，在这座南公墓，我感觉像在家乡一般。 十月，公墓林阴道，世界正在脱落头发和牙齿，我是说，黄叶摇落，上下纷飞。寂静，麻雀，散步的人，朝八区方向驶去的三轮摩托声，八区离得很远。一路上，老太太带着洒水壶和孙儿孙女，瑞典黑花岗岩上的太阳，方尖碑，裂开的柱子，颇有象征意义，也许是战争留下的创伤，紫杉或者类似紫杉的树木背后颜色发绿的天使。女人用大理石的手遮住眼睛，却被自身的大理石弄花了眼睛。穿石头凉鞋的基督祝福榆树。四区的另一个基督在祝福桦树。在四区和五区之间的林阴道上行驶时，我的想象有多美啊！譬如说，大海。大海把各种东西抛到海滩上来，其中有一具尸体。从索波特滨海小道传来小提琴声，还有刚开始放的焰火，扭扭捏捏的，这是为战争中双目失明的人举办的。我，奥斯卡和三岁孩子身材，弯腰去看海滩上的那具尸体，希望这是玛丽亚也有可能是格特露德姆姆，我本该请她一回的。但这是美貌的卢齐，苍白的卢齐，这是正向高潮推进的焰火告诉我，向我证实了的。她身穿贝希特斯加登毛线茄克，她在转坏念头时就穿这件衣服。羊毛衫湿了，我给她脱下来。这件毛线茄克里面她还穿着一件，同样湿了。又一件贝希特斯加登茄克衫的图案展现在我眼前。末了，焰火已经放完，只剩下小提琴声。我在一件又一件再一件羊毛茄克里面，找到用德意志少女同盟的运动衫裹着的她的心，卢齐的心，一块冰凉的小墓碑，上面写着：奥斯卡在此安息——奥斯卡在此安息——奥斯卡在此安息…… “别睡觉，小伙子！”科涅夫打断了我的由海水漂来、被焰火照明的美的想象。我们向左拐弯，八区，新辟的区，没有树林，墓碑寥寥无几，扁平地、饥饿地躺在我们面前。坟墓都太新，尚未修饰，千篇一律，却把最近举行的五处葬礼衬托得格外鲜明：棕色的花圈，被雨水淋湿、颜色融化的饰带，堆成了一座座现代化小山。我们很快在第四排头上找到了第七十九号，另一边就是七区。七区已种上了一些迅速成长着的幼树，比较有规律地覆盖着一米石块，多数系西里西亚大理石。我们把车开到七十九号墓的后头，卸下工具、水泥、砾石、沙子、基座以及有点油腻的亮堂堂的钙华碑。我们把这块大家伙从拖斗上用木杠卸到木箱上时，三轮摩托车猛地一跳。坟头插着一个临时的木十字架，横木上写有赫·韦布克内希特和埃·韦布克内希特。科涅夫把它拔出来，让我把挖掘机递给他，他便动手挖两个洞，用来灌两个水泥墩，按公墓管理处规定，洞深六十一厘米。我到七区去提水，和水泥。我和好时，他说已挖了五十一厘米深，吩咐我可以往两个洞里灌水泥了。科涅夫坐在钙华碑上，喘着粗气，伸手到脖子后面去摸他的疖子，说：“快出脓了。我感觉到它们快穿头出脓了。”我在夯水泥，很少想别的。一支新教送葬队伍由七区爬行而来，经八区去九区。他们隔开三排墓在我们前面经过，科涅夫从钙华碑上滑下来，我们按照公墓规定向牧师和死者家属脱帽默哀。棺材后面，孤单单地走着一个黑眼、矮小、七歪八斜的女人。跟在后面的人，全都高大结实得多。 “傻瓜，别磨磨蹭蹭的！”科涅夫在我旁边发起牢骚来。“我感觉到，在我们把墓碑竖起来以前，它们要穿头了。” 其间，送葬队伍已经到达九区，聚集在一起，响起了牧师上下起伏的声音。水泥已经凝结，如果我们现在能把基座架到墩上去，该有多好。可是，科涅夫却肚子朝下趴在钙华碑上，把帽子塞在额头与石头之间，把上装和衬衫衣领往下拽，露出后颈。这时，九区死者的生平事迹也传到了八区我们的耳朵里。我不仅要爬上墓碑，还得骑在科涅夫的背上，弄清这件突然发生的不愉快的事情：两个并排长着的疖子。一个迟到的人，带着一个太大的花圈，匆匆向九区赶去。那里，布道正在缓慢地接近尾声。我猛地撕去膏药，用一片山毛榉叶擦掉鱼石脂磺酸铵膏，看到了两个差不多一样大小，由焦油褐渐次变黄的疖子。“让我们祈祷吧！”这话语从九区随风飘来。我把这当做信号，脑袋一歪，用两只大拇指垫上山毛榉叶又压又挤。“天父……”科涅夫小声说：“别压，挤吧！”我挤。“……你的名。”科涅夫也一起祈祷：“……来吧，你的国度。”我又压，因为只挤不管用。“将实现，如在……也在……”疖子没破裂，真是奇迹。又一遍：“今天给予我们。”科涅夫也跟着念经文：“罪过，莫受诱惑。”脓比我想象的还多。“王国、力量和荣耀。”我挤出五颜六色的剩余物。“永恒。阿门。”我又挤时，科涅夫念：“阿门。”我又压，他念：“阿门。”九区那边已开始向家属致哀，科涅夫还在念：“阿门。”他平趴在钙华碑上，得到了解救，嘟哝着：“阿门。”又问，“还有水泥安基座吗？”我有。他说：“阿门。” 我把最后的几铲水泥撒在两个水泥墩之间作为连结。这时，科涅夫从磨光的刻字墓碑上挣扎起来，让奥斯卡给他看秋天的杂色山毛榉叶和他那两个疖子的杂色内容。我们扶正帽子，手搭到石上，立起赫尔曼·韦布克内希特和埃尔泽·韦布克内希特（娘家姓弗赖塔克）的墓碑。这时，九区参加葬礼的人也都星散了。