A Very German Christmas Read online

  I wandered through a crowd of these confectioners’ booths, for I know nothing more diverting than to watch unobserved, how the pretty Berliners enjoy themselves, how their bosoms swell with excitement, palpitate rapidly, and how these naive souls ejaculate shrilly, “Ah, but it is lovely!” At Fuch’s, during the exhibition this year, were to be seen pictures of Lalla Rookh such as were shown last year at the castle during the court festival of which you have heard. It was impossible for me to see anything of these wonders at Fuch’s, because the pretty heads of these ladies formed an impenetrable wall before the square sugar tableau. I will not bore you with my opinion of this confectioners’ exhibition; on it Karl Müchler, the war minister, he who, it is said, is the Berlin correspondent of the Elegante Welt, has already written an article in that paper.

  1822

  CHRISTMAS

  Kurt Tucholsky

  Thus standing ’fore the German rubble

  I meekly sing my Christmas song.

  I’ll neither heed nor need to trouble

  with all the wide world’s right and wrong.

  That’s for others. Laid upon us.

  I hum so soft, the sound near gone,

  that tune with all its youthful promise:

  O Tannenbaum!

  Were I Knecht Ruprecht spreading blessings

  and saw this pandemonium

  —the Germans have no use for lessons—

  God knows! I’d turn the way I’d come.

  The last of the breadcorn’s falling, blighted.

  The alleys bare their teeth and foam.

  I’d drape them from your boughs delighted,

  O Tannenbaum!

  I stare into the candles crackling:

  Who holds the guilt that runs so deep?

  Who threw us into blood, and cackling?

  Us Germans, patient as the sheep?

  They do not mourn. They man their station.

  I dreamt my dream I thought was gone

  Close off and cease their arrogation!

  Ignore the scoundrels’ cruel predation!

  Then sing with Christmas liberation:

  O Tannenbaum! O Tannenbaum!

  1918

  INTERVIEW WITH SANTA CLAUS

  Erich Kästner

  The doorbell was ringing again. The ninth time in the last hour! Today, it seemed, every doorbell lover in the city was out. Such days do occur. I shuffled off grumpily toward the door and opened it.

  Who, if you can believe it, stood outside? Saint Nicholas himself! In his famed historic outfit. White beard and rosy cheeks. The sack of apples, nuts, and gingerbread over his shoulder. The stern hazel switch in his gentle hand.

  “Oh!” I said. “Nicholas the stressed!”

  “Nicholas the blessed, if you please. B and l.” He sounded a little irritated.

  “As a boy I always called you ‘Nicholas the stressed.’ I found that more plausible.”

  “That was you?”

  “So you remember, then?”

  “Of course! You were a cute little rascal back then!”

  “I’m still little.”

  “And you live here now.”

  “That’s right.”

  We smiled resignedly and thought on times past. Then he suddenly recalled his Christmas duties and asked, as a businesslike aside: “Were the children nice this year? Who was naughty, and how so?”

  I clarified for him that I keep a childless household, and am too fond of children to over-burden them by acting as their father.

  “Lazybones!” he growled, and turned to leave the landing.

  “But stay awhile!” I begged him. “Drink a cup of coffee with me!” To be frank, I felt sorry for him. This wintry life of delivering packages, up and down staircase after staircase, and over and over the stereotypical, slightly foolish inquiries after the good or bad behavior of beloved children, who feared him and froze in their prayers at the thought of him—this was a job fundamentally unsuitable for a reasonably-educated, thousand-year-old man. “Do me the honor!” I continued. “There’s raisin bread.”

  What can I tell you? He stayed. He deigned to stay. First he wiped his boots clean on the doormat, then he leaned his sack against the coatrack, hung the switch on one of its hooks, and finally drank a cup of coffee with me in the sitting room. With it he ate four pieces of raisin bread. Thick slices. Pola, the small black cat, had sprung onto his shoulders at the second slice, and was now lying like a fur boa around his neck and purring. The sound was like that of a gnome seated at a sewing machine.

  “You keep a cozy place here,” he said. “Decidedly comfortable.”

  “Would you care for a cigar?”

  “I wouldn’t turn one down.”

  I offered the box. He helped himself. I gave him a light. Then with a sigh of relief he pulled off his right boot with the help of his left. “It’s the support for my flat foot. It puts a cruel pressure on the bottom of my foot.”

  “You poor man! With your job!”

  “There’s less work these days. Good thing for my feet. These phony Nicholases shoot up like mushrooms from the ground. Wherever you look, they stumble through the streets and squares by the dozen.”

  “On the other hand—one day the children will believe that you, the true Santa Claus, no longer exist!”

  “True! The scoundrels damage my reputation! Most of them, who throw on a fur, hang a beard off their faces, and copy me, don’t have the least talent! They bungle it! It’s not so simple to be Saint Nicholas!”

  “Not by any means! Just once I wanted to give your business a try. But the beard was scratchy, and made me sneeze. And my little nephew cried out right away, ‘Cheers, Uncle Erich!’”

  “There you have it!” said my visitor and nodded, pleased. It seemed he was gradually warming up to me. He puffed out marvelous big smoke rings. Pola looked at him curiously. Then she sprung through one of the blue-gray rings as through a hoop, and made her way to her favorite spot, the chair under the old wall clock, to take a nap enchanted by its ticking.

  “Since we’re already discussing your work,” I said, “I have a question for you that has preoccupied me since I was a child. I wouldn’t have dared at that time. Today it is easier. As I’ve become a journalist in the meantime.”

  “Alright, then,” he said, and poured himself more coffee. “What have you wanted to ask me since you were a child?”

  “Well,” I began hesitantly, “your job is in a sense a mobile seasonal trade, right? In December you have plenty of work. It’s all compressed into a couple of weeks. You could call it a ‘short-term industry.’ And now…”

  “Hm?”

  “And now what I’d burningly like to know is what you do for the rest of the year!”

  Good old Nicholas looked at me with a fairly puzzled expression. It almost gave me the impression that no one had ever asked him such an obvious question before.

  “If you’d rather not reveal anything about it…”

  “No, no,” he grumbled. “Why not?” He gulped down some coffee and puffed out a smoke ring. “There’s more than enough to do in November of course, with all the work collecting materials. In some regions there will suddenly be no chocolate. No one knows why. Or the farmers will hold back their apples. And then the drama with customs control at the border. And all the traveling papers. If things go on like this, I’ll have to use up October for it too. Until now, I’ve really just spent October sequestering myself and letting my beard grow.”

  “You only wear your beard in winter?”

  “Of course. I can’t exactly run around all year as Santa Claus. Do you think I keep my fur coat on too? And drag that sack and switch three hundred and sixty-five days a year all over the place? Well then. —In January I draw up the balance. Horrible. Christmas gets more and more expensive, century after century!”

  “I understand.”

  “Then I read the December mail. Before anything else, the children’s letters. That holds things up colossally, but it’s necessary. Otherwise you lose contact with your clientele.”

  “Sure.”

  “At the beginning of February I lose the beard.”

  At this moment the bell rang at the front door again. “Please excuse me.” He nodded.

  Outside on the landing stood a door-to-door peddler selling obnoxiously colorful picture postcards, who told me a very long and very sad tale, the first part of which I listened to bravely and with ears clenched tight.

  Then I gave him the loose change I had on me, and we wished each other well. Although I refused steadfastly, he forced half a dozen of the horrid cards on me as a thank-you gift. He was, in the end, not a beggar, he said. I respected his considerable pride and relented. Finally he went away.

  When I returned to the living room, I found Saint Nicholas groaning and putting his right boot back on. “I’ll have to be on,” he said, “it doesn’t help a thing staying here. What have you got there?”

  “Postcards. A peddler forced them on me. I find them rather atrocious.”

  “Give them here. I know a buyer. Many thanks for your warmhearted hospitality. If I wasn’t Santa Claus, I might envy you.”

  We went to the hall, where he picked up his tools.

  “Shame,” I said. “You still haven’t told me how you spend the rest of the year.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “In truth there’s not much to tell. In February I take care of the children’s carnival before Lent. Later on I wander over to the spring markets. With balloons, Turkish honey, and cheap mechanical toys. I’m a lifeguard in summer and give swimming lessons. Sometimes I also sell ice-cream cones on the street. Yes, and then fall comes again, and now I really must go.” We shook hands.

  I watched him through the window. He trudged through the snow with big hasty strides. At the corner of Ungerer Street a man was waiting for him. He looked like the peddler, that talker with his stupid picture postcards. They went around the corner together. Or had my eyes deceived me?

  Fifteen minutes later the doorbell rang once again. This time it was the errand boy from the deli, Zimmerman and Sons. A welcome visitor! He brought the grilled roast chicken that I had ordered, a small tender rolled ham, and two bottles of Piesporter Goldtröpfchen, a late vintage.

  I reached to pay, but my wallet was not there.

  “There’s no rush, Herr Doktor,” said the messenger paternally.

  “I’d bet it’s just on my desk!” I said. “But fine, I’ll settle up tomorrow. Wait a moment, I’ll bring you a fine cigar!”

  But the box with the cigars was missing too.

  Nor could I find them later. No cigars. No wallet. The silver cigarette case, likewise, was nowhere to be found. And the cuff links with the moonstones and the evening pearls were neither in their place nor anywhere else. In any case not in my apartment. I couldn’t figure out where any of them might be. I certainly didn’t rush to check up on my railroad stock certificates or stamp collection.

  Nevertheless, it turned into a quiet, pleasant evening. The roast chicken and the Piesporter were first-class. No one else rang at the door. Behind the window snowflakes drifted down like an endless white mesh curtain. Pola woke up briefly and made woolen goulash out of a scarf. Truly a fine evening. Only something was missing. But what?

  A cigar! Of course!

  Luckily, my golden lighter was also nowhere to be found. For even I would admit—although I’m not easily perturbed—that to have a lighter, but nothing to smoke, could completely spoil the entire evening!

  1949

  THE SEPARATION

  Ilse Frapan

  “We fell out, my wife and I.”

  Dr. Beckbissinger had been separated from his wife. Everyone knew about it.

  The wrong was on his side; such, the men’s verdict. She was entirely to blame; so spoke the women. We may therefore take it that no one knew much either way regarding the true merits of the case. The fact of the separation, however, lay beyond dispute.

  He had remained in Hamburg on account of his practice. On account of her art—she was a sculptress—she had returned to South Germany, their common home.

  The affair had aged Dr. Beckbissinger by at least ten years. That, too, was well established.

  People thought it came of his having never unbosomed himself to anyone, and by palpable maneuvers they tried to induce a reopening of the wound. That it must thereby find relief and heal they made no doubt. But the patient stubbornly resisted this mode of treatment, and little by little their prying concern for his heart’s cure died out.

  The interesting melancholy of his face furnished a fruitful topic of conversation; his slightly grizzled beard was held to contrast delightfully with the black eyebrows; and never surely did man boast so skillful or so finely shaped a hand. There would have been depths of satisfaction in discovering whether he was likely to think of a second marriage. But, alas! this proved impracticable; and as the doctor ignored the questioning glances that were directed at him, and as languishing eyes failed wholly of their purpose, he gradually sank to the level which formed, it would seem, his sole ambition, and grew to be regarded as an excellent doctor and nothing more deservedly so regarded.

  This estimate of him, and his own individual leaning, brought about that he became almost exclusively a children’s doctor, achieving notable success in that fruitful field of labor. He was “Uncle” to more than a hundred children, and with the little nephews and nieces of his affinity, showed himself just as talkative and merry as with their elders he was taciturn and unresponsive. Gratitude he thus earned in goodly measure, but he won few friends, unless his big tawny comrade, the St. Bernard dog, Leo, be excepted. A strange atmosphere of isolation hung about the man and his dog; unobservant people even hardly failed to be conscious of it.

  “He has such an anxious mind,” said Frau Sturken, his old housekeeper. “From the very first he was set on being a doctor. And all his troubles come to him along of his doctoring, for to be sure the womenfolk ran after him no end, and that was more than she could stand. It were natural enough, to my thinking, her feeling as she did ; it’s but human nature for folks to want to stick to their own and not see it took away by others, and all the more when it’s a matter of a doctor as must be forever on the move like any cab horse. Neither am I for blaming them other folks, for he’s that sort of man well, if I’d but knowed him in time—Ah, what am I talking about! You needn’t be staring at me like that. Why, I’m seventy-six, and my doctor there he’ll be seven-and- forty. That wouldn’t exactly fit; we’re a sight too far apart. See yonder, there he goes down Bush Street, him as has the big Inverness and the big dog and the gray hat. Don’t he look the gentleman?”

  The object of her laudation stood talking to the postman, on whom Christmas burdens weighed heavily, and who, in addition to his bag, now carried an armful of seasonable sendings.

  “Ay, doctor, there’s one for you today. Half a minute while I look. Right, ain’t it?” And he placed a large envelope in the doctor’s hand. “Compliments of the season to you, sir.”

  “From Holland!” exclaimed the doctor, taken by surprise, and opening the letter as he walked along. His brow cleared at sight of a smiling face that greeted him from within the folds of the letter. The envelope contained the portrait of a little boy of about three years old. With his tiny Christmas tree upon his arm, he looked as roguish, as merry, as jolly as a plump little Santa Claus. And when in pleased astonishment the doctor had uncovered the small effigy, the best part was still to come. At the foot of the mount in the funniest of scrawls stood the words, “A merry Christmas to the preserver of my life.” It was meant to look as if the three-year-old baby fingers themselves had traced the characters. What a quaint idea!

  Then uprose before the doctor’s inward eye a vision of those dainty little fingers tightening themselves around his own in a deadly spasm, and once more he seemed to gaze into the agonized, despairing face of the young Dutch lady, the child’s mother, as she besought him not to tear the rigid hands forcibly away, and not to desert her and her dying treasure that stormy night in lonely Heligoland. And there came back to him every incident of the night and the half day following, spent mainly in a crouched position at the bedside, until the child’s fingers suddenly relaxed, and sleep brought healing. He remembered having to take his food in that attitude, to eat whatever the sick child’s mother thrust into his mouth. He could not help smiling at the recollection of it. To neither of them had the comic aspect of the situation then occurred; he had shared the grave anxiety of the moment; it was as if he were watching his own child’s deathbed for the second time. In this picture a presentment of perfect health he was more than ever struck by a likeness between the two children, which during the boy’s illness had impressed him so painfully. A merry Christmas! The wish was well intended, but he had done with seasons of rejoicing. To the preserver of my life! A sweet sound, and possibly no mere idle form of words. But ah! his own child he had not found means to save; his only child, and he had lost him. And then the tormenting reflection that everything might have turned out differently if the boy had lived! Thus even from this chance wayside blossom, meant to give only pleasure, he pressed out a bitter drop. Sighing he thrust the picture into his breast pocket.

  Two men of his acquaintance came by.

  “The doctor begins to age,” remarked the one, “seems in the dumps today. It’s a pity, such a good chap as he is.”

  The speaker drew himself up erect, with a consciousness of his own exemption from other men’s disabilities, and both lifted their hats airily.

  “Here child, Angela,” said one of them, “run across to Uncle, and ask him if he will join our Christmas party tonight.” Then, turning to his companion, “We live under one roof, you know. Liberty don’t seem to agree with him over well, ’pon my soul. Could scarcely believe it when the thing happened. An affair of jealousy, wasn’t it? Should never have credited the old boy with that sort of feeling.” And he stroked his smooth banking house face complacently and winked with his small pig’s eyes at the doctor across the road. “Ah, he won’t, won’t he? Too busy? Well, we must console ourselves. Maybe he prefers to spend the evening with countryfolk of his own.”