Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

72

The Boy

But we don’t want to end this book with death, dedicated as it is to life, invincible life, life always triumphing over humiliation and tears, over misery and death.

It is summer, early summer in 1946.

A boy, almost a young man, crosses an old farmyard in Brandenburg.

He runs into an elderly woman. ‘Well, Kuno,’ she asks. ‘What are you doing today?’

‘I’m going into town,’ the boy replies. ‘I’m to collect the new plough.’

‘Well,’ she says, ‘I’ll write down some things you can pick up for me – if you find any of them!’

‘If they’re there, I’ll find them, Mother!’ he calls, laughing. ‘You know that!’

They look at each other, smiling. Then she goes inside to her husband, the old schoolmaster who has long since reached pensionable age but who – as much as the youngest – is still teaching.

The lad takes Toni the horse, their pride and joy, out of his stable.

Half an hour later, Kuno-Dieter Borkhausen is on his way to town. But he is no longer called Borkhausen; he has been adopted, with all the legal formalities by the Kienschapers, back when it became clear that neither Karl nor Max Kluge would return alive from the war. Incidentally, the Dieter also fell casualty in this renaming: Kuno Kienschaper has a ring to it, and it’s quite enough of a name.

Kuno whistles cheerfully to himself while the chestnut Toni ambles along the well-marked path. Let Toni take his time, they’ll be back by lunch anyway.

Kuno eyes the fields on either side, assessing them, professionally gauging the state of the crop. He has learned a lot here in the country, and – thank God – he’s forgotten just as much. The back-tenement with Otti he hardly ever thinks of any more, nor of the thirteen-year-old Kuno-Dieter who used to be a kind of hoodlum, no, none of that exists any more. But the dreams of engineering have been postponed, and for the time being it’s enough for the boy to drive the tractor for the ploughing, in spite of his youth.

Yes, they’ve made progress together, Father, Mother and himself. They are no longer dependent on relatives, because the previous year they were given some land. They are independent people, with Toni, a cow, a pig, a couple of sheep and seven hens. Kuno can mow and plough; his father taught him how to sow, and his mother how to hoe. He likes the life, and he’ll certainly help to build up the farm, oh yes!

He’s whistling.

By the side of the road, a tall wasted-looking spectre suddenly looms up: ragged clothes, ravaged face. He’s not one of the desperate war refugees; he’s a wastrel, a layabout, a scoundrel. His sodden voice wheezes, ‘Hey there, boy, will you take me into town with you!’

The sound of the voice makes Kuno Kienschaper jump. He feels like asking the cosy old sofa Toni to break into a gallop, but it’s too late for that, and so, with lowered head, he says, ‘A ride? Not up front with me! You can sit in the back if you like!’

‘Why not with you?’ wheezes the man challengingly. ‘Not good enough for you, huh?’

‘Idiot!’ shouts Kuno with feigned roughness. ‘It’s because you’ll sit softer in the straw!’

The man agrees grumblingly, crawls up on to the wagon, and Toni breaks into a canter of his own accord.

Kuno has got over his initial shock at having to help his father Borkhausen out of the gutter into the wagon. But perhaps it was no accident; perhaps Borkhausen has been waiting for him and knows exactly who this is, giving him his ride.

Kuno squints over his shoulder at the man.

He is stretched out in the straw and now says, as though he had seen the boy’s look, ‘Do you know a boy hereabouts, a Berliner, must be sixteen or so? He must live somewhere here…’

‘There’s loads of Berliners live round here!’ replies Kuno.

‘So I noticed! But the boy I’m referring to, he’s a special case – he wasn’t evacuated in the war, he ran away from his parents! D’you ever hear of a boy like that?’

‘Nah!’ lies Kuno. And after a pause he asks, ‘You wouldn’t know a name for him, would you?’

‘Yes, he’s called Borkhausen…’

‘There’s no Borkhausens anywhere round here, mister; I’d know it if there was.’

‘Funny!’ says the man, forcing a laugh, and hits the boy hard between the shoulder blades. ‘I’d have sworn it was a Borkhausen driving this cart!’

‘You’d be making a mistake then!’ answers Kuno, and now that he’s sure what’s going on, his heart is beating solidly and coolly. ‘My name’s Kienschaper, Kuno Kienschaper…’

‘Well, there’s a coincidence!’ says the man in mock astonishment. ‘The boy I’m looking for’s Kuno, Kuno-Dieter in fact…’

‘No, my name’s plain Kuno. No Dieter. Kuno Kienschaper,’ says the boy. ‘Plus if I knew I had any Borkhausen on my cart, I’d turn my whip around and hit him till he got off my cart!’

‘No! No! Surely not!’ says the tramp. ‘A boy who whips his own father off a cart?’

‘And once I’d whipped Borkhausen off my cart,’ Kuno Kienschaper continues mercilessly, ‘then I’d go straight to the police in town and tell them to look out. There’s a man around who’s no good for anything except lazing around and stealing and doing damage; he’s got a jail record, he’s a criminal, you’d better get hold of him!’

‘You wouldn’t do that, Kuno-Dieter,’ calls Borkhausen in real alarm now. ‘You won’t set the police on me! Now that I’ve got out of jail and am on my way to recovery. I’ve got a letter from the padre saying that I’ve bettered myself, and I don’t touch stolen goods any more, I swear! But I was just thinking now that you’ve got a farm and are living off the fat of the land, you wouldn’t mind letting your father rest up a bit with you! I’m not well, Kuno-Dieter, I’ve got something wrong with my chest, I need a break…’

‘Now you give me a break!’ cries the boy bitterly. ‘I know if I let you into our house for one day, you’d take root there, and it’d be impossible to get rid of you, and with you we’ll have unhappiness and bad luck in the house. No, you get right off my cart, or I really will give you a taste of the whip!’

The boy had stopped the cart and jumped down. Now he stood there, whip in hand, prepared to do anything to defend the peace of his newly acquired home.

The eternal loser Borkhausen said miserably, ‘You wouldn’t do that! You wouldn’t hit your own father!’

‘You’re not my father! You told me that often enough before!’

‘That was meant as a joke, Kuno-Dieter, don’t you understand!’

‘I’ve got no father!’ shouted the boy, wild with anger. ‘I’ve got a mother, and I’m starting afresh. And if people come from long ago and say this and that, then I’ll whip them until they leave me alone! I’m not letting you ruin my life!’

He stood there so threateningly with whip upraised that the old man was really frightened. He crept down from the wagon and stood on the road, fear contorting his face.

He came back with the cowardly threat: ‘I can do you a lot of harm…’

‘I was waiting for that!’ cried Kuno Kienschaper. ‘First you beg, then you threaten – that was always your way! But I’m telling you, I swear, I’m going straight to the police, and I’m going to accuse you of threatening to set fire to our home…’

‘But I never said that, Kuno-Dieter!’

‘Nah, but you thought it, I could see it in your eyes! That’s the way you are! Remember, in an hour the police will be on your tail! So, you get away from here.’

Kuno Kienschaper stood on the road until the ragged shape had disappeared into the cornfields. Then he patted Toni on the neck and said, ‘Come on, Toni, are we going to let someone like that make a mess of our lives a second time? We started afresh. When Mother put me in the water and washed the dirt off me with her own hands, that’s when I swore to myself: From now on I’m going to keep clean all by myself! And so I shall!’

Over the next few days, Mother Kienschaper had occasion to wonder several times why she couldn’t get the boy out of the house. Usually he was always the first to volunteer for fieldwork, and now he didn’t even want to play with the cow in the pasture. But she said nothing, and the boy said nothing, and when the days lengthened into summer, and the rye harvest came due, then at last the boy headed out with his scythe…

Because it is written that you reap what you sow, and the boy had sown good corn.