Naamloos verhaal

5

The first steps were hard work. There was no question of any physical weakness on my part; the fact was, I felt like an imbecile in the newspaper vendor's borrowed clothes. Trousers and shirt were just about passable. He had brought me a clean pair of blue cotton trousers, which he called "genes", and a clean, red-checked cotton shirt. I had rather been expecting a suit and hat, but when I took a closer look at the newspaper seller I had to admit that my reasoning had been deluded. This man did not wear a suit in his kiosk and, from what I had observed so far, there was little of the bourgeois about the dress of his clientele, either. Hats, just to complete the picture, seemed to be uncommon. With the modest means at my disposal, I decided to lend as much dignity as I could to the ensemble by eschewing his bizarre habit of wearing the shirt loose outside the trousers, instead pushing it as far down my waistband as possible. The trousers were slightly too big for me, but with my belt I was able to fasten and hitch them up tightly. Then I fixed my strap over the right shoulder. It was no German soldier's uniform, but the overall look was at least one of a man who knows how to dress decently. The shoes, on the other hand, were a problem.

Having assured me that he knew nobody else who took my size, the newspaper vendor had brought along an outlandish pair belonging to his adolescent son. Whether they could rightly be called shoes was a matter open to debate. They were huge, white, with massive soles: I felt like a circus clown. I had to resist the impulse of throwing them straight back into the face of that halfwit.

"I'm not wearing these," I said. "Why, they make me look like a buffoon!"

No doubt insulted, he made a remark to the effect that he disapproved of the way I wore the trousers, but I ignored this. I wrapped the legs of the genes tightly around my calves and pushed them into my boots.

"You really don't want to look like other people, do you?" the newspaper vendor said.

"Where do you think it would have got me if I had always done everything like so-called 'other people'?" I retorted. "And where would Germany be?"

"Hmm," he said, silenced by my comment. He lit another cigarette and said, "You could see it that way, I suppose."

He folded up my uniform and put it in an interesting-looking bag. What struck me was not just the material, synthetic and very thin, clearly much more durable and flexible than paper. I was also intrigued by the words that were printed on it: "Media Market". The bag must have served as packaging for that cretinous newspaper that I had spotted under the park bench. This proved that, deep down, the newspaper seller was a sensible man – he had kept the serviceable bag, but thrown away its infantile contents. Handing it to me, he explained the way to the cleaner's and said perkily, "Hasta la vista, baby!" This modern German would take some time to accustom myself to.

I set off, albeit not directly to the cleaner's. First I went back to the patch of ground where I had woken up. In spite of my fortitude, I could not deny I harboured a faint hope that someone from my past had accompanied me into the present day. I found the park bench where I had taken my first rest, then crossed the street – very carefully this time – and made my way between the houses to the waste ground. It was late morning and all was quiet. The Hitler Youths were not playing; they were probably at school. The place was empty. Bag in hand, I gingerly approached the puddle beside which I had awoken. It had practically dried up. Everything was so quiet, or at least as quiet as it can be in a big city. There was the muted drone of automobiles in the distance, and I could also hear the buzzing of a bumblebee.

"Psst," I said. "Psst!"

Nothing happened.

"Bormann," I called out softly. "Bormann! Are you there?"