WE FOLLOWED THE ANIMALS’ example and kept out of the sun. I think it was a hot August afternoon when I was informed that I had to renounce my membership in the German Ornithological Society. I wasn’t the only one, we were all required to renounce membership in a Western organization. The animals dozed. We were agitated, we were restless.
Maybe this did start out as a crass joke doing the rounds of the Institute, though in those August days we were in no mood for joking—there was no escape from the enervating heat, whether we lay under the trees, retreated into the aquarium wing, or sat behind closed shutters and tried not to move if we could help it.
“Next thing they’ll be making us quit the German Ornithological Society.”
Professor Kaltenburg, wearing shorts, confused for a moment: “What are you talking about? Reinhold is sitting there isolated in West Berlin, and you’re wasting your time with that nonsense?”
One of the caretakers was trying all day to get hold of his family, with no success; his wife and children had gone ahead of him on holiday. Colleagues canceled impending trips to the West. Conversely, no prospect of a visit from Knut Sieverding. He never made the long-planned documentary about house sparrows. Troubled, Krause washed the car. Or did he come back in the evening from a trip to Berlin and report at first hand the events that had been unfolding on the streets? No. In any case, we wouldn’t have trusted his account.
All at once, the long-running dispute between Reinhold and Matzke was over. Professor Doktor Eberhard Matzke had displayed a frightening degree of ambition, against Reinhold’s will he had been made director of the research center, but he still wasn’t satisfied. He didn’t shrink from using uncouth language to his colleagues to cast doubts on Reinhold’s abilities, he blackened his name in the highest quarters, and above all, he declared, there was no place in East Berlin for an ornithologist who lived in West Berlin. It was as if colleague Matzke’s complaints and grievances had gained a hearing at some point, for Reinhold’s bird collection and library were now placed at Matzke’s disposal—the hated eminence no longer able to put a spoke in his wheel.
And then I can see Ludwig Kaltenburg sitting bent over on the wooden bench in his kitchen, his shoelaces dangling in the air for a moment. Gripping the heavy, leather-soled shoe by the heel, he pulls it off with a heave. He sits up again and grunts, “Oh, it’s you.” Kaltenburg points at the shoe, and as if apologizing, he says, “I went out to get milk.”
His beard, his hair, the bench, the tiled floor, are all bathed in the clear light of a mild day. The shopping bag with the bottles of milk is there; I notice the color of Kaltenburg’s socks, like mincemeat that’s been exposed to air for too long.
I force myself to look elsewhere, the art print on the kitchen wall, the linen cloth on the table, I make the embarrassed old man disappear.
I only vaguely recollect his sending me to Matzke in late 1961 or early 1962 with a peace offer. “Don’t forget to have a good shave, you know colleague Matzke can’t stand to see a badly shaven man of a morning.”
Eberhard Matzke no longer knew me. There was no reply to the peace offer. It will have been around then that the professor finally understood that this wasn’t about Reinhold at all. It was he, Ludwig Kaltenburg, that Matzke had had in his sights all along. From that moment on things went downhill with Kaltenburg.
The jackdaw skins lie spread out before me, a uniform blackish gray shimmer covers the work surface once the sun goes down. Yes, I skinned Taschotschek. I have preserved it and its fellows very carefully, and in Klotzsche too Kaltenburg’s jackdaws will be kept in a safe place.