The Stronger Sex

“Well, well! Who’d have …” Here a fit of laughter overcame him. He suppressed it with some difficulty and went on, in a careful, higher voice, “Who’d have thought it of those old Germanic people! All I knew about them was they hunted bears and got sozzled on mead. And took fat blonde women to bed, of course.” He gave his laughter free rein, which set him coughing once more. He overcame the cough after some hawking and spitting.

I gave him an enquiring look and indicated the water glass, but he waved it away. Finally he sat exhausted in his chair, his eyes still moist with tears of mirth. “You of all people,” he said, “an expert on fealty! Wonderful!”

An uncomfortable feeling was beginning to come over me, but I kept quiet. He took out a handkerchief, wiped his eyes and said, “But then I’m sure you’ll understand the story I am going to tell you.”

Putting the handkerchief away, he shifted slightly and looked out of the balcony door. “Right. The three-window house. A very common type of housing. In this city, all over the Rhineland. All over Germany, I think. And presumably further afield. Northern France, for instance. Belgium. Maybe each originally intended for one family. But what with the huge demographic growth of the cities, they turned into apartment houses for several parties, provisionally at first, then permanently.”

He began drawing me a kind of sketch in the air with his right hand. “Three rooms per storey, one at the back next to the stairs, two at the front, a big one with two windows and a small, narrow one with the third window. You could have your kitchen in the narrow room. And families of six or seven could live and sleep in the two larger rooms. You just had to squeeze up tight to fit in.”

He looked at me, raised his forefinger and lowered it again. “And the great advantage of those houses was that they didn’t need windows at the sides. So they could be built side by side in terraces, close together. Which lowered the building expenses. And the heating expenses, only no one talked about that much in those days. Briquettes of brown coal were cheap. The coal man went through the streets with his horse and cart or his handcart and tipped two or three sacks of them, whatever you needed, through the hatches into the cellars under the ground floor.”

He stopped, nodded, began moving his lips silently again as if rousing his memory and enjoying it. After a while he said, “Our house was in a terrace with three other three-window houses. All the same height, with two upper storeys. So with the ground floor, that made three apartments for three sets of tenants per house. The owner of our houses lived next door with a whole house for his own family. They had two living rooms and a piano. There weren’t many of them, only the owner who was our landlord, his old mother and his daughter. His wife was never there; she was very ill, was in a home somewhere. They had a maid too, Gundel; she slept in the attic at the top.”

I was feeling impatient. Where was this story going, for God’s sake? I shifted involuntarily, looking for a different position to sit in. “Just a moment,” he said. “We’re getting to the point!”

After a short pause he went on a little faster. “I should say our houses had been slightly extended. Each had a small annexe built out into the yard and half the width of the main house. In ours the kitchen was on the first floor there and the bathroom behind it, or anyway a room with a bathtub in it. Free-standing, with lion’s paws. And behind the annexe a wooden veranda. Window boxes of flowers on the balustrade and a few tomato plants.”

He took a breath, shifted in his chair. “And from that lookout post, that veranda, which my imagination sometimes turned into the wheel house of a pirate ship, from there you had a view of the yard at the back of the block, colourful strips of patchwork paving, like in our yard, and green straggly weeds, sheds with flat metal roofs, a warehouse in the yard of a larger house that belonged to a grocery shop. And the plain backs of other buildings.”

He nodded, then made a sound as if he were laughing. He said, “A girl lived in the house opposite. Opposite ours, in one of the houses on the other side of the block, so quite a way off. An old building, the back of it, the one I could see, red-brown brick, unplastered. Plaster would have cost too much for the back of the building. And anyway that brown brick was a handsome, grainy building material. Well, never mind that.”

He stopped and then went on. “The girl, then. Pretty as a picture. Same age as me, so seven or eight when I first saw her. And getting older every year, and taller, and prettier.” He sighed. “Blonde. Long, thick braids. Just like the Nazi painters showed in pictures of beautiful Teutonic girls, good German girls. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen pictures from that period.”

I smiled and shook my head regretfully, as if sympathizing with his desire to know better. Then I said, in a matter-of-fact voice, “My girlfriend works on the arts supplement of the paper. She’s quite an art expert.”

He stared at me, turned his eyes away and looked at the cooler, raised a hand and pointed to it. “You can pour me a glass of that wine now.”

When I shook my head, he said, “They called him Reich Pubic Hair Painter. He painted female nudes, might have been straight out of the Nazi picture book. Under Hitler he was president of the Reich Chamber of the Visual Arts. Hence the name.”

“But less officially,” he said, “he was Reich Pubic Hair Painter. And like you say, Hilz was another fan of those German farmers’ daughters, the tall girls with white skin and a velvet band around the throat, he painted them by the dozen, nudes. But because Ziegler had the top job, he was the one who got called Reich Master of the Pubic Hair.”

I saw that he was in some difficulty with raising the wineglass to his lips, so I went over to him and took the glass in my right hand. Without another word he put his head slightly back and waited for me to help him drink. I put the glass to his lips, let him take a sip and put the glass down.

He rolled the wine around in his mouth, and then said, “What is it – are you planning to stay here beside me giving me little sip by little sip? That won’t do the trick, so come on, hurry up!”

I very much doubted whether gulping it down would agree with him, but what was I to do? I raised the glass and he drained it, gulp by gulp. When I put the glass down he waved briefly to the cooler. I refilled the glass, then sat down opposite him again.

He hesitated a moment, as if he couldn’t decide whether to ask me for more, but in the end he left it at that. “Well,” he said, “the girl from the house opposite.” He nodded and continued. “She went to school with our landlord’s daughter. They were in the same class. I probably first saw them together on the way to school. Her blonde braids down her back, dangling and flying about in the air. Or out to the side, when their conversation got lively. And knee-length socks. White socks, I mean. Not brown ribbed long socks like so many girls wore, fixed to a liberty bodice with suspenders. Boys wore something similar too. No, the socks she wore were chic.” He laughed.

After a sidelong glance at the glass and then at me, he said, “And then I saw her from in front too. Closer. She was coming to see Luise, the landlord’s daughter. To do homework together and play.” He laughed. “I spent time with Luise too, playing and telling stories. Sometimes we got under the bed together. In the dark. Can’t remember what our excuse was for that. Probably we were playing at hiding from burglars who had broken into the house. Anyway, we crawled up close to each other. In the dark, under the bed. And rubbed up against each other, and didn’t know why we felt so excited.”

He suddenly said, vigorously, “Oh, nonsense! Of course we knew why we were excited. Because we were doing something forbidden – but nice. It was all to do with unchastity and breaking the sixth commandment, or was it the seventh? Anyway, we knew that. Well, it amounted to no more than rubbing, side by side, that was all.”

He sighed. “Only with Nora – she was the girl with the blonde braids – with Nora I never got that far. Luise never came to see me with her. And if Nora was at Luise’s house, I wasn’t allowed in. Or at least I never ventured to go over to see the two of them. Through the little gate in the stone wall between the two yards. Stupid of me, maybe. Perhaps they were just waiting for me. But I was never invited, anyway.”

He laughed. “Not that they hid away from me. If I went out on the veranda to seem busy with something there, glancing over now and then, over to the annexe on the other side of the wall… they sometimes showed themselves to me. A window would open all of a sudden in the annexe on the other side, a kitchen window or the window of the little living room, and I could hear them running about and giggling and playing jokes. Dressing up, in Granny’s fox-fur stole or one of her old hats, waving their arms, parading their slim little bodies and disappearing again, laughing themselves into fits. And as for me, I stared and stared at that little blonde darling.”

He nodded, smiled, fell silent for a while. Then he said, “Of course other boys saw what a beauty she was too. I don’t know whether she went out to the Korso later – you know, that part of the suburban boulevard under the lime trees that went from the main street to the pretty park by the river. The young people gathered there in spring and summer, teenagers, boys getting fluff on their faces and with voices breaking, feeling the pleasant throb of their hormones. And the girls with little curves appearing under their blouses. You went to the Korso to stroll along. Up and down, just to look at first, then to touch. To fumble, yes. In the park, in the shade of the trees and bushes.”

He stopped for breath and then said suddenly, “I wasn’t one of them on the Korso. That’s why I don’t know if she went there. And joined the games.” After a little pause, he said, “I couldn’t be there. I wasn’t the sort to mix with them socially. They were all from the grammar schools, or higher schools, they were called. Higher schools for boys and similar schools for girls. And I was just in the middle school where you didn’t get a higher education. I was from a lower social class.”

I felt I should convince him I was listening, participating in his feelings. “A lower social class?” I said. “I thought people didn’t go in for that sort of thing under the Nazis?”

“You’ve no idea! No, no, my dear fellow, there always have been upper and lower classes and there always will be, those who have to slave away for a living and the others. The ones who think they’re so special. The posh farts.” He looked at me. “Anyway, I’d left school, went to train as a fitter, that made me lower class. And I wasn’t in the Hitler Youth either. My father would have tanned my hide if I’d even thought of it. But most of the boys on the Korso belonged.”

He laughed, and breathed out heavily through his nose. “Some of them went around in their uniforms on Saturdays, a few with the aiguillette, that braided cord on the shoulder or breast pocket, red and white or green. Green was for a squad leader.” He laughed. “If I’d shown up on the Korso… oh, I don’t know, they’d probably have waved their sheath knives in front of my face. And the girls would have stood there gawping. Sheath knives, yes. They carried them about at the time. On Saturdays in their uniform belts. On weekdays to show off. With a comb tucked into their long socks.”

He thought for a moment, and then said, “But strictly speaking, I couldn’t have cared less about all that showing off. To be honest, I’d have felt a fool strutting about like that of an evening. Waiting until I could take a girl off into the park. It was nothing to me, with one exception.”

He paused, nodded. “Except for Nora, do you see – except for Nora! I suspected, no, I was afraid she was there on the Korso in the evenings. And in the end she’d disappear into the party with one of those fools. I think I even thought of going there to check up. I probably dreamed of giving the arsehole a punch in the face. And Nora going off with me somewhere, just with me.”

He leaned forward and looked at me. “You see, lawyer? I was jealous. Green with envy! All because of a girl I’d never come close to!” He let out breath violently. “A girl I’d never even spoken to! Let alone touched her. I was in love with her, that was it. But there was no more to it. All the same, she was… I thought of her, I saw her as something that belonged to me, and I was jealous! So now do you see, lawyer, how they go together? Love and jealousy! Like your head and your arse!”