Chapter 4 Chapter 4

To say something that is both a joke and not a joke: instead of being a clown, you may become something like a fashion designer.For it was Mark who brought the so-called tassel into the world the winter after the second summer of shipwrecks.Two small balls of wool, either solid or variegated, about the size of ping-pong balls, are tied to a piece of knitted wool and hang like a tie below the neckline of a shirt, with a knot tied in front so that the two balls can fit together like a tie. It is like a bow tie on both sides.I have verified that from the third winter after the war, people began to wear these little balls or tassels, as we call them, in almost all of Germany, especially in the north and east. It is especially popular among middle school students.In our place, Mark was the first to wear it. In fact, he could have invented it himself.Maybe he really is the inventor.According to his claim, he had his Aunt Susie make several pairs of tassels out of shredded wool, old thread of uneven thickness, and mended wool socks left by his dead father.

So, he put them around his neck and brought them into the school in a grand manner. ① That is, the winter of 1941 to 1942. Ten days later, the tassels began to appear in textile stores, at first they were shyly placed in a cardboard box next to the cash register, and soon they made their public appearance in a glass display window, without a certificate. Supply - this is especially important.Thereafter, they set out from the Langfur district and began their unrestricted march into eastern and northern Germany.Even in Leipzig, in Pirna, it was gradually worn—I can name many witnesses.A few months later, they reappeared sporadically in the Rhineland and the Palatinate, by which time Mark had removed the tassel from his neck.I still vividly remember the day Mark took his invention off his neck.This will be mentioned below.

We ended up wearing tassels for a long time, and it was all out of protest.The principal of our school, Klose, a senior councilor teacher, believed that wearing such tassels was too feminine and unworthy of a young German, so he banned tassels from being worn in the teaching building and on the campus.However, many only obeyed the rule, which was read out in every class as a bulletin, when they were in Klose's class.Speaking of tassels, I think of "Papa Brunis".This retired Senate teacher was brought back to the front of the pulpit during the war.He thought this kind of colorful thing was very interesting, and once or twice after Mark stopped wearing it, he tied the tassel in front of the starched collar and chanted Eichendorff. "Dark gables, high windows" he recited other lines, but nonetheless by Eichendorf, his favorite poet.Oswald Brunis loved snacks, especially sweet things.He was later taken away in the academic building, allegedly for taking vitamin sugar-coated tablets that were supposed to be distributed to students, and perhaps for political reasons—Brunis was a Freemason.Many students were summoned.I wish I hadn't said a bad word about him then.His doll-like adopted daughter was learning ballet and walked the streets in black mourning.They sent him to the Stutthof — where he remained forever — and it was a mysterious and complex story that had nothing to do with Mark, leaving it for others to write about elsewhere Right ④.

① Eichendorf (1788-1857), German Romantic poet and novelist.These two lines are the first two lines of his "Danzig" (1842). ②The world-wide secret organization originated from the guilds of masons and builders in the Middle Ages. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Freemasonry was declared an illegal organization and banned. ③Located in a small town 36 kilometers east of Danzig, there was a concentration camp during World War II. ④ In the novel, the protagonist Harry Liebenau describes the Stutthof concentration camp. Now back to the topic of tassels.Mark invented this kind of thing, of course he wanted to bring some benefits to his Adam's apple.For a while, they do calm that uncontrollable jump.But when the tassel became popular everywhere, even a whole grade fashion, it ceased to be so noticeable on the neck of its inventor.The winter of 1941-42 must have been terrible for him, unable to dive and his tassels failing.I have often seen Joachim Mark walking alone in the Strand.He walked across Bear Street toward Notre-Dame, his black lace-up shoes crunching the snow on the sooty pavement.He is not wearing a hat.

The two red protruding ears are smooth and translucent.The hair that has been smeared with sugar water and has been frozen hard starts from the swirl on the head and is parted from the center to the sides.His brows were furrowed, his face was sad, and his big eyes looked duller than usual.The collar of the coat turned up was also his father's.Close to the pointy, even shriveled chin and brow was a gray woolen scarf, fastened with a large, visible pin from afar to keep it from slipping.Every twenty steps, he always stretched out his right hand from his coat pocket to check whether the scarf in front of his neck was messed up.I've seen some clown performers with pins that big, Glock the clown, Chaplin in the movies.Mark is also practicing.Men, women, soldiers on leave, children, came in sporadic or flocks toward him from the snow.All the people, including Mark, exhaled white mist from their mouths.

The mist floated down his shoulders and behind him again.All the oncoming eyes were on that funny, very funny, very, very funny pin—or so Mark thought. ①Glock (1880～1959), formerly known as Adrian Wertach, a famous Swiss clown actor. During this cold, dry winter, I went on a hike with my two cousins ​​who were here for Christmas holidays from Berlin.In order to make a pair, they called on Schilling.We crossed the frozen sea to the ice-bound minesweeper.We fluffed up a little bit, trying to open the eyes of these two pretty Berlin girls to our shipwreck. They were both pretty, with curly blond hair.We also hope that we can do something nice on the wreck with these two shy chicks on the streetcar and on the beach that we don't even know about.

However, this afternoon was all messed up by Mark.The icebreaker made many trips to and from the channel leading to the port, so many ice blocks were piled up in front of the sunken ship, overlapping and criss-crossing, forming an ice wall full of cracks, which even partially covered the bridge.The wind blew, and the ice wall whistled.Schilling and I climbed the ice wall about a person's height and saw Mark first.We also pulled the girl up the ice wall.The bridge, the compass room, the ventilation ducts behind the bridge, and other things exposed on the ice formed a bluish-white glazed candy that a frozen sun was licking in vain.Not a single seagull.They are probably all far away on the sea, circling the garbage on the ice-bound freighter at the berth.

Mark had naturally turned up the collar of his coat, wrapped a scarf close to his chin and forehead, pinned the pin in front, and wore nothing on his head, with his hair still parted in the middle.On the contrary, Mark's two protruding ears are covered with the kind of black round earmuffs that workers who transport garbage and beer often wear. cross. He was busy on the ice on the front cabin of the sunken ship and didn't notice us.He must have been hot all over. He tried with a nimble, light ax to cut through the ice under which the open hatch in the forward cabin probably lay.With a quick and agile swing of the ax, he made a circular slit about the size of a sewer cover.Schilling and I jumped off the ice wall, picked up the girls, and introduced them to Mark.He certainly didn't take off his gloves, he just switched the ax to his left hand and shook everyone with his warm right hand.As soon as we drew back our hands, his right hand immediately took hold of the ax again, and began to chop towards the crack.Two girls stood with their mouths slightly open.

The tiny teeth were freezing cold.Exhaled breath formed a layer of hoarfrost on the hood.Their wide and bright eyes were fixed on the place where the iron ax hit the ice.Schilling and I stood idly by and started talking about his dives and what had happened over the summer, even though we were both furious with Marc. "Let me tell you, he once fished up a lot of small brands, fire extinguishers, cans, etc., opened them with a can opener, and the cans were full of human flesh; he also brought up a phonograph, you guessed it, crawled out of it What's coming? Once, he "the girls didn't quite catch it.They asked some really stupid questions and called Mark "you".

He hacked non-stop, shaking his muffed head only when we yelled out loud and exaggerated praise for his diving exploits on the ice.He did not forget to feel his scarf and pins with the hand that held the axe.Our mouths were dry and our bodies froze.After every twenty strokes, he would take a break and take advantage of this time to say a few modest words and introduce a little objective situation, without even caring about fully straightening his waist.He emphasized several minor diving trials with certainty and embarrassment, but avoided mentioning those dangerous expeditions; Adventures in the cabin of the sea.The crack went deeper and deeper into the ice.My cousins ​​did not fascinate Marc, because his diction was always flat and devoid of humor.These two chicks had probably never dealt with a figure who wore black earmuffs like a grandfather before.Schilling and I still had nothing to do, stood around with a runny nose, and he almost regarded us as two shivering cadet sailors, so that the girls also treated Schilling and me differently.Even on the way back, they kept looking rather arrogant.

Mark refused to go, he wanted to punch the hole in order to prove that the position he had chosen was just above the hatch.Although he didn't say anything like "you wait until I've cut through it," he delayed our departure by about five minutes when we were already standing on the wall of ice.He kept bowing his waist and said something in a low voice, not towards us, but towards the cargo ships that were frozen in the berth. He asked us to help him.Maybe he gave an order politely?He wants us to piss into the crack he's made with the axe, and let the warm piss melt the ice, or at least soften it a bit.Just as Schilling or I were about to say, "That's impossible!" or, "We've already peed on the way here." My cousins ​​were already yelling, offering to help. "Hey, turn your faces away! And you, Monsieur Mark." Mark told them both where to squat, and he said that peeing had to be in the same place all the time, or it wouldn't work.Then he climbed up the ice wall too, and turned his face to the sand with us. Along with the snickering and whispering, there was the sound of urinating in two voices behind us.We looked out at the black crowds on the Brösen seaside beach and the frozen jetty.The seventeen poplar trees beside the seaside avenue were covered with a layer of ice.An obelisk appeared above the grove in Bresen, which was a monument to fallen soldiers.The golden ball on the spire sends us exciting flashes.Everywhere it felt like it was Sunday. After the girls pulled up their ski pants, we jumped off the ice wall and stood on tiptoe around the crack. It was still steaming there, especially in the two places Mark had previously struck with the axe.Pale yellow urine accumulated in the crevices of the ice, rustling, seeping down little by little.The edge of the crevasse gradually turned yellow-green.Bing was crying softly.The strong smell of bad smell never left, because there was nothing here to overpower it.Mark struck again with the axe, and the smell became even stronger.The icicles he picked out from the crevasses could fill an ordinary pail.At the two crossed places, he easily deepened the depth of the ice crevasse and dug two "shafts". The icicles soaked in urine were piled aside, and soon hardened again.He chose two more places and marked them.The girls turned their faces away.Schilling and I unbuttoned our trousers to help Mark.We melted away a few centimeters of ice and drilled two new holes that were not too deep.He didn't pee.We didn't ask him to, instead worried that the girls might encourage him to do it. We had just peed, and before my cousins ​​could say anything, Mark sent us off.We climbed back up the ice wall and looked behind him as he pulled the pinned scarf up over his chin and nose but not his neck.Red and white flecked wool balls, or tassels, were exposed between scarves and coat collars.By this time he had bent over and continued to chisel the crevasse we were talking about with the girls.Thin layers of mist appeared between him and us, like the fog in a laundry room, through which the sunlight struggled. On the way back to Bresen, our conversation revolved around him.The two cousins ​​alternately or simultaneously ask questions that not all of them can be answered.The little cousin wanted to know why Mark had tied the scarf so high, close to his chin, like a bandage around his neck.The big cousin also mentioned the scarf.Schilling seized this small opportunity and began to describe Mark's Adam's apple, as if talking about a chicken crop.He took off his ski cap, parted his hair in the middle with his fingers, made exaggerated swallowing movements, and chewed like Mark, which made the girls laugh, saying that Mark was so funny, he must have a brain unusual. I also made a small contribution to this by presenting your relationship to the Virgin Mary.However, despite this small victory to your detriment, my cousins ​​returned to Berlin a week later.We didn't get to do anything indulgent with them other than a few mundane hugs and kisses in the movie theater. The matter could not be concealed any longer: the next morning I took the tram to Bresen early in the morning. I nearly missed the wreck as I walked on the ice in the fog of the seashore.I found the hole in the ice above the front cabin, stepped on it vigorously with the heel of my shoe, and poked it with a cane that my father used for walking, breaking the layer. After a night, it was frozen enough to carry people. and poked a cane with an iron tip into the dark, ice-filled hole.The cane barely reached the handle, and the water almost soaked my gloves.The iron head touched the foredeck.No, not touching the foredeck.I first plunged my cane into a bottomless abyss, and when I was exploring sideways along the edge of the ice cave, I suddenly encountered an underwater obstacle.I felt the clash of iron on iron: here happened to be the uncovered, open hatch of the forward cabin.If the two plates are superimposed, the hatch is like the lower plate, just below the ice hole. lie!It's not that precise, and it can't be that precise.Either the hatch is bigger, or the ice hole is bigger. Of course, the hatch is indeed directly under the ice hole.I couldn't help being proud of Joachim Mark, and it was as sweet as chewing a toffee.I really want to give you my watch. The round block of ice, which must have been forty centimeters thick, lay flat next to the hole, and I sat on it for ten minutes. About two-thirds of the way down the ice was a ring of yellowish urine from the day before.We did him a favor.Of course, Mark could have dug the hole by himself.Can he do without an audience?Does he have something he just wants to keep for himself?If I don't come to admire you, then even the seagulls will not fly over the front cabin to admire the ice hole you have carved. He always has an audience.Even if he was digging the circular crevasse on the frozen shipwreck alone, the Virgin Mary never left his front and back.She watched his ax and rejoiced for him.If I say this now, I am afraid that the church will not agree with me.Yet even if the Church had no right to regard the Virgin Mary as an unwavering witness to Mark's performances, she herself had been watching him with rapt attention.I know this all too well, because I was an assistant at the Mass, first at the Church of the Sacred Heart, with Priest Wienke, and then with Priest Gusevsky at Notre-Dame.Even after I've lost faith in the altar's magic, mostly due to age, I still help.This thing brings me joy.I always try my best and don't drag my feet like I usually do.I didn't know, and still don't know, whether there was really anything before or after the service or in the shrine where the wafer was kept. Anyway, when I stood next to Priest Gusevsky as one of the two acolytes, he Always a pleasure.For, I never exchanged pictures of cigarette advertisements between offerings and variants—as was the fashion among other Mass assistants—never delayed ringing the bells, and never traded wine from Mass.The other Mass assistants were horribly nasty fellows who not only looked at some boyish thing on the altar steps and bet with coins or broken ball bearings, but also ate each other during the pre-Mass prayers in Kamichi. Ask some technical details about warships that have been sunk or have not.Either they did not read the prayer at all, or they had a question and answer between two Latin sentences. "What year was the cruiser 'Eritrea' launched before I entered the altar of God? 1936. What is it about? It was sent by Italy to East Africa before the God who rejoices in my youth The only cruiser. Displacement? God is my strength. Two thousand one hundred and seventy tons. speed?I don't know until I go to the altar of God.Weaponry?There are six 150mm guns as before, but four 76mm guns are wrong!Exactly right now and in the future.What are the two German artillery training ships called?For ever, amen 'Brummel' and 'Blemsay' ③. " ① Clauses and variants are theological names used by the Catholic Church. ②Catholic ceremonies are usually in Latin. In order to take care of some believers who do not understand Latin, the mass assistant often rings the bell when the priest speaks about some important matters. ③The original text of the black dotted words in this paragraph is Latin. Later, I stopped going to Mass at Notre-Dame regularly, and only went at the invitation of Priest Gusevsky.His mass helpers often deserted him for a Sunday cross-country march, or for a collection for a Winter Relief Society. ① A paramilitary training organized by the Nazi Youth. What has been said above is only to describe my position in front of the central altar.I could see Mark from the central altar as he knelt before the altar of the Virgin.How could he pray!His eyes were like bullocks, and his eyes became more and more dull, and the corners of his mouth kept twitching, as if he was about to spit out a cavity of resentment. The fish thrown onto the beach drum up their gills again and again in vain for air.This scene may illustrate how selfless Mark's prayers have become: when Priest Gusevsky and I walked through all the pews for the communion, we came to Mark, as devout as ever. Kneeling on the left side of the altar, the scarf and the huge brooch hang down on his chest.His eyes were fixed, his parted head was thrown back, and his tongue was sticking out, so that the lively mouse was exposed, and I could even catch it with my hands. jumping up and down.Joachim Marke may have also noticed that his eye-catching thing was exposed and twitched.He made an exaggerated gesture of swallowing, probably trying to attract the glass beaded eyes of the Virgin Mary standing on one side.I can't and I don't want to believe that you've ever done a tiny thing without an audience.