Chapter 9 Chapter 9

Before the war, the Holst Wessel High School was called the Wilhelm Gongzi Higher Technical High School. This school was similar to ours, dusty and smelly everywhere.The 1912 building was outwardly more amiable than our matchbox brick building.It is located in the southern outskirts of the city, next to the Jeshkenta Forest.So, in the fall, when the new term started, the paths the two of us took to school were irrelevant. He hadn't been seen during the summer - Mark hadn't been seen all summer - and it was said that he had signed up for a military training camp for telegraphers.His sunburn was nowhere to be found, neither in Bresen nor in the baths of Gretko.Since it was pointless to go to Notre Dame to find him, Priest Gusevsky inevitably lost one of his most trusted Mass assistants during the summer vacation.Pilenz, the mass assistant, said to himself: Without Mark, there is no Holy Communion.

①The Hitler Youth regiment trained young people before the war. ②This is an imitation of the liqueur advertisement "No Meyer, no celebration".The same is true for "Without Mark, there will be no summer". Those of us who stayed still sometimes lingered on the wreck without much interest.Horten Sontak tried to find the entrance to the radio cabin, but in vain.The few boys in the lower grades went around rumoring that there was a very beautifully and strangely arranged dark cabin under the bridge.A fellow with close-set eyes, whom the idiots of his subordinates called a Stutterbeck, took pains to dive many times into the water.

Tula Pokriefke's cousin was a skinny little guy. He had been to the wreck once or twice, but had never dived.I tried, either with thought or with words, to have a conversation with him about Tula, and I was very interested in her.But the cousin suffered as much as I did from Tula's shaggy woolen turban and her perpetual smell of wood glue—or something else? "It's none of your business!" her cousin said to me—or so he would have said. ①Steutbeck was the leader of a pirate organization operating in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

Tulla didn't board the boat, but stayed on the seashore to bathe. Her relationship with Horten Sontak had ended.Although I went to two movies with her, I was not lucky: she can go to the movies with anyone. It is said that she took a fancy to the guy named Stieterbeck, which is really unfortunate, because Stieterbeck seems to value our shipwreck more, and has been trying to find the entrance to Mark's dark cabin. At the end of the summer vacation, many people whispered that he had successfully sneaked into the dark cabin, but there was no evidence: he neither took out a record that was swollen by water, nor brought up a moldy snow owl feather.

However, the rumors continued to die down.Two and a half years later, when the rather mysterious gang of youths headed by Stuartbeck was uncovered, there were rumors that during the trial there was reference to our sunken ship and the dark cabin under the bridge.I was already in the army at that time, and I could only learn about it from Priest Gusevsky.He has been writing to me when the postal route is smooth, to show his care and love.In his last letters in January 1945, when the Russian army was approaching Elbing, he spoke of the attack by the so-called ashes on the Church of the Sacred Heart, which was run by Priest Wiencke. A shameful attack.The boy's father's surname was mentioned in the letter; besides, I recall something in the letter about a three-year-old boy3 who was revered by the gang as a talisman and mascot.Whether Priest Gusevsky referred to the shipwreck in his last letter or in his penultimate letter, I am now at times quite sure and at other times not sure, since there is a diary and a ration bag Unfortunately, the small cloth roll was lost in Cottbus④.The wreck celebrated its grand holidays before the summer holidays of 1942, and lost its luster during the summer holidays.Because of the lack of Mark, I still find that summer very dull-without Mark, there would be no summer!

①The seaport city 50 kilometers southeast of Danzig was transferred to Poland after the war and is now called El Prague. ② One of the many underground youth organizations that emerged in large German cities after 1942. ③ refers to the protagonist Oscar? Matzerath. ④The author of this book was wounded in Cottbus on April 20, 1945. It cannot be said that we despaired of his absence.Of course I was more than happy to be able to get away from him and not have to follow him all the time.But why did I go to Priest Gusevsky to sign up as a mass assistant as soon as school started?Priest Gusevsky was, of course, very happy, laugh lines forming behind his rimless glasses, but when I took the opportunity to brush his burqa—we were sitting in the vestry—I asked about Joachim in passing. The smile lines behind those glasses were instantly wiped away by his seriousness when he saw Mu Malk.

Holding his glasses with one hand, he said calmly: "Of course, he still works as hard as he used to, and never missed Sunday mass, but for four weeks he went to some kind of military training camp. I decided I can't believe you came to Mass only because of Mark. Are you right, Pilenz?" About two weeks ago we were informed that my brother, Corporal Claus, had been killed on the banks of the Kuban.So I justified his death as a reason to repeat Mass.Priest Gusevsky seemed to take me at my word, or perhaps he was trying to convince himself of me and my further developed piety. ①The Kuban River originates in the Caucasus Mountains and flows into the Sea of ​​Azov.The Soviet-German army fought fiercely on the Kuban Peninsula.

It is difficult for me to recall the facial details of Horten Thorntuck or Winter, but I do remember Priest Gusevsky's thick, coarse, slightly grizzled black curly hair and the hood. A scalp full of dandruff.The top of the back of his head is shaved and has a light blue tinge.He always smelled of birch hair lotion and palm olive oil soap.From time to time he smoked Oriental cigarettes in a finely carved amber holder.An enlightened clergyman, he used to play ping-pong in the vestry with us Mass assistants and first-time communion children.All the white vestments, shawls and gowns, he had to have a woman called Tolkemit starched very stiffly; to complete.Whether it was an armband, a holy belt, or a chaste that stood or hung in the closet, he himself tied the lavender sachet.When I was about thirteen, he used to stick his short, hairless hand inside my shirt, from the neck down, all the way to the waistband of my pants before pulling it back because I didn't have elastic on my sweatpants.I used to fasten my pants with cloth straps sewn inside.Since Priest Gusevsky's friendly manner and often boyish air had already won me over, I did not give much thought to what he was trying to do.To this day, when I think of him, I often laugh at him in my heart, not without kindness.There is no need to say much here about the fact that he sometimes touches me innocuously, simply in order to find out my conversion to God.On the whole, he was a very ordinary priest.Although his parish was dominated by ill-educated workers, he carefully furnished a reading room.He maintained a moderate zeal for his work, and reservations about his beliefs—such as the doctrine of the Assumption—and he never stopped talking about altar cloths, the blood of Jesus, or ping-pong in the sacristy. It was so solemnly hanging the voice.If there was anything tacky about him, it was that he applied for a name change in his early forties, and within a year he was calling himself Guswin or Priest Guswin, and letting others call him that too .At the time, the Germanization of Polish names ending in "Ki," "Ko," "La"—such as Formela—was in fashion for many: Lewandowski became Renger. Nisch; the butcher Mr. Oltzewski became the butcher in Auerwein; the parents of Jurgen Kupka wanted to change his surname to Kupkat from East Prussia - but his application was somehow rejected .Perhaps according to the pattern of Saul becoming Paul⑤, Gusevsky also wants to become Gusevsky, but in this article, priest Gusevsky is still called Gusevsky, because you, Joa Him Mark did not change his name.

① Catholic priests all shaved the top of their heads as an identification mark. ②Light-flavored cigarettes, whose raw materials are mainly produced in Romania, Egypt, Turkey and other countries. ③The holy scarf hung on the left arm of the clergy for decoration is called the arm scarf; the long strip crossed on the chest with a cross pattern is called the holy belt. ④The large, sleeveless robe worn by priests during Mass or Holy Communion. ⑤ Paul, a character in the Christian "Bible" story, originally named Saul, later changed his name to Paul, and was executed by Emperor Nero in Rome.

I saw him again when I went to secondary morning mass for the first time after summer vacation.Immediately after the prayers before Mass—Gusevsky was standing on the side of the Epistle and reading the Liturgy—I spotted him on the second pew in front of the altar of the Virgin.I had no time, however, to contemplate his face until the breaks between the reading of the Epistles and the reciting of the hymns, and later in the reading of the Gospels.His hair was still parted down the center as usual, fixed with sugar water, and had recently grown almost the length of a matchstick.His sugar-soaked hair, stiffened like a steep roof over his ears: he could almost have appeared in the place of Jesus.He crossed his fingers and raised his hands to his forehead, his elbows dangling in the air.Beneath the gap between the hands was exposed the completely naked, uncovered neck.He turned the collar of his shirt over the collar of his smock: no tie, no tassel, no pendant--a screwdriver or anything else from that well-stocked treasury.The only animal in the open field was the throbbing mouse.It lies dormant under the skin, replacing the Adam's apple; it once attracted the black cat and induced me to attach it to his neck.On the skin between the Adam's apple and the forehead of the chin, there are still a few scratches that have been frozen.During the hymn, I almost missed ringing the bell.

①When the Catholic Church holds a liturgy, the officiant and the assistant usually stand on the left side in front of the altar to read the Epistle, and stand on the right side to read the Gospel, so the left side of the altar is called the Apostle's position. Before the communion pew, Marc's behavior was not very artificial.He dropped his folded hands just below his collarbones, and his mouth gave off a bad smell, as if a pot of kale was simmering endlessly in his stomach.No sooner had he got the wafer than he did a new trick.He had walked silently from the communion pews back to his seat in the second row, as every communion had done so far.This time he extended the distance. On the way back to his original position, he first walked slowly on tiptoe to the front of the altar of the Virgin Mary, and then knelt down on his knees, not directly on the linoleum floor, but chose the altar A shag rug in front serves as a cushion.He raised his crossed hands between his brows and above his head, eagerly reaching for the slightly larger-than-life plaster statue.The best of the virgins stood on the silvery moon, without a child in her arms, her starry Prussian blue burqa falling from her shoulders to her ankles, her slender fingers crossed On the flat chest, the inlaid, slightly protruding glass eyes looked up at the ceiling of the former gym.Marc raised his knees one by one, stood up, and crossed his fingers again in front of the collar of his shirt turned up. The carpet left a rough red pattern at his knees. ①A dark blue color. Priest Gusevsky also paid attention to every detail of Mark's new invention.I didn't ask any questions. Immediately after Mass, as if oppressed to unburden or share some burden, he could not help talking about Mark's excessive piety and conspicuous demeanor, and the worries that had been haunting him for a long time.Whatever inner crisis brought Mark to his knees before the altar, he said, his devotion to the Virgin bordered on pagan idolatry. Mark was waiting for me at the exit of the vestry.I almost backed through the door in horror, but he was already grabbing my arm, talking and laughing with an ease he had never felt before.He, who was usually taciturn, began to talk about the weather: it was a clear and warm autumn day, and the sky was filled with golden hairsprings. Signed up, but I can't help but shake my head and regret it afterwards. You know, I don't have much interest in these things, I mean the army, war games and the exaggeration of martial spirit. Guess what army. You can't guess ! Now being in the Air Force sucks.paratrooper?Wouldn't it be funny!Let me say it myself, I want to go on a submarine. You see, that's what happened.This is the only unit that still has a chance to show off its skills, although I think it is somewhat childish to stay in that stuff.I'm a person who prefers to do things that are practical or ridiculous.You know, I used to want to be a buffoon.Boys can think of anything.I think the current job is justified, and everything else is just passable.Well, students are students after all.We could really mess around back then.Do you remember, at that time I couldn't get used to that thing at all, I always thought it was some kind of disease, but it was completely normal.Now, it doesn't surprise them that many of the people I know and meet have a lot more stuff than I do.It started with a cat story.Do you remember when we were lying on the Heinrich Ehlers Field?There was probably a baseball game in progress.I was sleeping or half-asleep and half-awake in a daze, when a gray Yan Sheng came over, maybe it was black, it stared at my neck and pounced on me, or it was one of you — Schilling, I think, he'd do it — picked up the cat and then I swam over there.No, I've never been on a wreck again.Stuartbeck?heard about it.Let him have it.I didn't rent the wreck, did I?Go to our place to play when you have time. " Mark made me the most diligent Mass assistant all autumn, and I was not invited to his house until the third Sunday of Advent.For a long time before Advent I had to attend Mass alone, because Priest Gusevsky could no longer find a second assistant.Originally, I planned to go to Mark's house on the first Sunday of Advent and give him some candles, but the candles were "rationed" very late, so Mark had to wait until the second Sunday to offer candles. In front of the altar of Our Lady.He once asked me, "Can you get me some? Gusevsky is too picky to take one out." I said, "Try it." I got him a war Long candles as white as potato sprouts, very rare in the 1930s, the kind of program my family gets because my brother was a martyr.I walked to the Material Distribution Bureau②, and after showing the death certificate, I received a ration card.I took the tram to the special store in the Oliva district, but the candles there were all sold out.Then I made a special trip twice, and finally I can offer you candles on the second Sunday of Advent.Just as I imagined and expected, I was finally able to see you kneeling before the altar of Our Lady this Sunday.Gusevsky and I have been wearing purple cassocks all through Advent, but you don't even have the scarf with the big pins on it—another new twist—the long-dead locomotive driver once The refurbished smock that you wore can no longer cover the shirt, and your neck sticks out straight from the collar of the white shirt. ①Christian holidays, from the fourth Sunday before Christmas to Christmas. ②The national management department responsible for the distribution of daily necessities and handicraft raw materials during the war. ③Catholic clergy wear purple robes during Advent and Lent to express their repentance to God. On the second and third Sundays of Advent, Marc knelt stiffly on the rough carpet for a long time, because I was going to visit him in the afternoon and hoped that he would keep his promise and wait for me at home.He didn't even blink—perhaps only when I was busy at the altar—and stared glazed over the offering candles at the Virgin's belly.His hands formed a steep roof, held up in front of his forehead and thoughts, his crossed thumbs not touching his forehead. I thought: I am going today.I'm going to see him.I want to take a closer look at him.I must go.There must be something up there—and he invited me, too. Strand is a short, gated courtyard, with empty fences against rough-washed gables, and sidewalks lined evenly with trees—the stakes under the linden trees were all lost a year ago, though they Still needs support—I'm both disappointed and tired of the sight before me, although our West Street is also like this, full of the same smell, permeated with the same breath, and with its same Lilypot ① garden years. Pass the years year after year.To this day, whenever I leave the Kolping House - which is not the case - to visit old friends in Stockum or Lohausen, between the airport and the northern cemetery, I have to go through many almost equally disappointing and tiresome When I walked down the streets of the residential area next to the house numbers and linden trees, I always felt that I was walking towards Mark's mother, towards Mark's aunt, and towards you, the great Mark.There is a small bell hanging on the small gate of the garden. When you step over it, you can see clusters of straw-wrapped roses drooping their heads in the snowless winter.The flower beds are not planted, but are inlaid with whole and broken Baltic shells.A ceramic tree frog the size of a rabbit squatted on a weathered marble slab, surrounded by upturned soil, and some loose or dry soil was piled up in some places.Between the garden gate and the three clinker steps in front of the house a narrow path led me, in my thoughts, to the ocher-coloured half-arched gate.In the flower bed on the other side of the path, on a stone foundation as high as a tree frog stands a nearly vertical wooden stake about the height of a person, on which hangs a birdcage that looks like a mountain ranch hut: I am standing between the two flower beds. He walked seven or eight steps in between, but the sparrow in the cage only concentrated on eating.People originally thought that the smell of residential areas should match the changes of seasons, or fresh, or pure, or sandy.However, during the war years, East Street, West Street, Bear Street, no, the whole of Langfurt, West Prussia, and even Germany smelled of onions, the smell of onions. Onion flavor fried in margarine.I don't want to assert that it's the smell of onions cooked in rice or freshly cut.In fact, onions were so tight at the time that they were barely available anywhere.Because Reichsmarshal Goering mentioned the shortage of onion plaque on the radio, jokes based on his speech were circulated in Langfur, West Prussia and all over Germany. I should really smear the case of my typewriter with onion juice now, and make it feel like I did at the time that those years polluted all of Germany, West Prussia, Langfurt, East Street, West Street and got rid of the diffuse The onion smell of corpses everywhere. ①Lilliput is the name of the Lilliputian country in the novels of the British writer Swift. I stepped up the three clinker brick steps in one step, and was about to grab the doorknob with my hand, but the door was pulled open from the inside. Mark stood in the door in a pair of felt shoes, his shirt collar turned out.It looked like he had just done a parting in the middle.His long hair, which is neither bright nor gray, is straight and evenly combed from the middle seam to the back, and the hairstyle is well maintained; however, when I was about to leave an hour later, his hair had fallen down, Accompanied by his words, it trembled in the red ears. We sat in the living room that opened onto the backyard, with light streaming in from the glass balcony.Desserts are potato biscuits made according to a war-time recipe, with a rose-scented taste that reminds you of almond candies.Next to the dim sum, there are homemade plums in syrup, which tastes ordinary.These plums were grown in the garden of Mark's house in the fall of that year-through the glass window on the left side of the balcony, a plum tree with fallen leaves can be seen, and the trunk is coated with a layer of white lime. I sat on the assigned chair, facing the outside, and Marc, with his back to the balcony, sat facing me at the narrow end of the table. Mark's aunt sat on my left, and the light from the side made her gray curly hair silvery; Mark's mother sat on the right with the most light, her hair was combed tightly It doesn't look very shiny.Despite the heat in the room, Marc's helix, the thin hair around the helix, and the tips of the trembling locks of long hair still outlined the cold light of winter.The top part of his wide lapel is dazzlingly white, and the lower it becomes grayer: Mark's neck is flat in the shadows. These two thick-waisted women were born and grew up in the country, and they never know where to put their hands. They always have endless words to say to each other.Even when they greeted me and asked about my mother's health, they always turned to Joachim Mark.They expressed their condolences to me through him as an interpreter: "Oh, I didn't expect your brother Klaus to stay there. Although we only met him, we also know that he is a good boy." Mark's tone is gentle but firm in controlling the topic.Overly personal issues—during the period when my father sent military mail from Greece, my mother had an affair with some soldiers—Marc always tried to intervene: "Forget it , Auntie. In this chaotic age, who wants to decide the world's case. Mom, this matter has nothing to do with you. If Dad was still alive, there would be no place for his face, and he would never allow you to talk about others like this. " The two women obeyed him, or rather obeyed the dead train driver, because whenever the aunt and mother were talkative, he would gently mention him and keep them quiet in the presence of the dead.When talking about the situation on the front lines—the two of them couldn't tell where the Russian battlefield was and where the North African battlefield was, and even confused Alamein with the Sea of ​​Azov—Mark always explained the correct geographical position in a calm tone. , never getting angry: "No, aunt, this naval battle took place on Guadalcanal, not Karelia." ①A town in northern Egypt. In 1942, Rommel's African Army was blocked by the British army here. ②The border sea of ​​the European part of the Soviet Union. From 1941 to 1942, the Soviet-German army fought fiercely in the Crimea Peninsula. ③ Southwest Pacific island country, the largest island of the Solomon Islands. From 1942 to 1943, the Japanese army was hit hard by the US military here. ④ Refers to the Western Karelia region between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga in the Soviet Union.The site was long contested during the Soviet-Finnish War and World War II. However, it is his aunt's lead that draws our interest in all the American and Japanese aircraft carriers that took part in the Battle of Guadalcanal and were sunk in the battle.Mark believes that the "Hornet" and "Hornet" which began construction in 1939 are two aircraft carriers similar in tonnage to the "Patrol". They are probably in service now and have participated in this battle. Since it was either the Saratoga or the Lexington, perhaps both were wiped from the fleet register.Little is known about Japan's two largest aircraft carriers, the Akagi and the slow-moving Kaga.Mark put forward a bold idea.He said that future naval battles are only about aircraft carriers, because it is not cost-effective to build battleships from today's point of view. If war breaks out again in the future, the most promising are fast light ships and aircraft carriers.He added a few more details, much to the astonishment of the two women.When Marc reported the names of many Italian light cruisers one after another, his aunt was as excited as a girl, and clapped vigorously with her big skinny hands. After the applause fell and the room became silent again, she scratched her hair in embarrassment. Nobody mentioned Holst Wessel High School.I also remember that when Marc rose to his feet, he mentioned the history of his ancient neck with a smile, which was his own account - and his mother and aunt laughed too - and also described the original cat. My fairy tale: this time it was Jurgen Kupka who pinned the beast to his neck.I really want to know who made up this fairy tale.It's him?it's me?Or the guy who rocks the pen here? I remember it vividly: as I was about to say goodbye to the two women, his mother slipped me two potato biscuits wrapped in paper.In the hallway, leaning against the ladder leading to the attic, Marc pointed out to me a photograph that hung next to the little brush pocket.A fairly modern locomotive belonging to the former Polish Railways with tender carriages—with the PKP logo appearing in two places—occupies the entire horizontal plane of the photograph.In front of the locomotive stood two men with arms crossed. Although they were not tall, they were majestic.The great Mark said: "This is a photograph taken shortly before my father and the fireman Rabda were killed near Dirsau in 1934. My father was posthumously honored because he avoided a nasty accident. A medal." ① Polish abbreviation for Polish Railways. ② Polish town, located about 30 kilometers southeast of Danzig.