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Und du wartest erwartest das Eine,
das dein Leben unendlich vermehrt;
and you wait, anticipate the one thing
that will multiply your life endlessly
Kindheit
(1912)
Sunlight filters in through the windows with the curtains drawn back and you watch the specks of dust catch in the light. You consider that they are all around you at all times, merely invisible — and in that way they are like the stars. You will soon be six years old and these four walls are your world, but you don't mind. They aren't a limitation, but a canvas, and you dream of the space far beyond them.
Your mother stands in the doorway, her dress starch-white. Your mother brings you medicine, has you breathe steam from under cloths and persist in watching the wider world of your village from your window while the other children run and yell and kick balls outside. Perhaps one day you’ll be able to join them. For now, in the world of your daydreams and your books, you don’t mind.
(Your mother leans down to push your hair back. Your mother stands before you at the foot of your bed. When she is there, you see her — but as soon as she turns, you can’t remember her face.)
(1914)
You are eight years old and your world is marginally larger. You stroll through town careful to step on only every third cobblestone with your left foot and only every fourth with your right. You like counting, taking things apart, and — still — gazing at the stars. Now you feel more confident that you will reach them someday. Lately you’ve become absolutely obsessed with the stories of H.G. Wells, most recently the time machine. You will construct your own machine someday, but yours won’t just move back and forth along a timeline. Yours will also go up.
You read aloud sometimes; on the days you have to spend alone, it’s nice to hear a voice — any voice —, an echo though it may be. Sometimes you read aloud to your father. He doesn’t say much; he simply sits and listens, watching on from behind those round gilded glasses. He doesn’t praise much, but he brings thicker, more complicated books from his schoolhouse, and you know that this is his means of expressing approval. One day you look at him while he’s busy with one of his sketches, and you realize — one day, save for the moustache, you will look just like him.
You are eight and you are reading when something strikes the window. With a jolt of delight, you jump to your feet too quickly and suppress a wave of dizziness as you push the frame open and lean out. There’s a small crowd of boys down by the entrance to your house, lingering at the edge of the sidewalk and into the street. The most of them aim to torment you for the better part of the week, to tease you with effeminately diminutive names for being their somewhat peculiar teacher’s sickly, equally peculiar son, to punish you for their poor marks somehow, but perversely enough, you don’t mind. Attention is attention, and the boy in the middle — not the tallest, but the one with the freckles and mop of curly bright red-blonde hair — their ringleader, has taken a liking to you, somehow. He lets his cohort tease, the way foolish thirteen year olds do, but he still comes back round the corner to toss sweets up through your open window. You should hate it, but you find yourself intrigued by that smile.
(1914)
You watch again from the window as the lines of soldiers go by. They too are all lines — horizontal in their caps and vertical in their helmets and the long points of their guns. They step in perfect sync and you are mesmerized by the rhythm, by the order, by their beauty. You don’t quite understand yet what the war means. You are eight now, still, but you will come to know.
(1916)
You are ten and your father wears one of those uniforms. He kneels down and reaches with both arms to embrace you and you feel all of the pent-up emotion rise and sit thickly in the center of your throat. Your breathing catches in your still frequently belabored chest. You want to stop the tears, but it’s too late; the mechanism has engaged and there is no stopping its forward motion. Your father pulls back and, even seeing them, says nothing. You want him so badly to speak to you, to say anything, but instead he brushes your cheek with a thumb — the rough fabric of the issue sleeve coarse against it — before turning and leaving.
You will never see him again. Somehow you know this, even then.
(1918)
By the end of 1918, when you have turned twelve, even the red-headed boy and his friends have gone off to join your father, already two years long gone. (And speaking of your father, he wrote just one letter— or, well, sent a letter; in fact there were very few words, just a sketch of a bird.)
You feel proud of them because you know that you should. You feel proud of your country because you know that you should, because you are told to by the adults around you — no one handles you too gently, they know you listen too closely for that — and by the papers and by your schoolmates, the ones with fiery eyes who would be there as well, were they just a bit older, and the ones with brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins, grandfathers, who do not want to believe that these men-boys-men can be fallible. Or worse, the ones who know that they are, that human bodies fall easily, all too easily. Technology is as much horror as it is wonder.
You do not yet know how to recognize or place this grief.
Ode an die Arbeit
(1923)
It was an unconventional way to get to the carnival, what with Edward totaling the car and the two of you needing to hitch a ride in the back of a truck, but for whatever reason you can't bring yourself to feel too irritated; after all, all's well that ends well, even if the end is — in hope, anyway — a beginning. Thankfully it seems like the rest of the team, the Münchner Raketenklub as they have come to call themselves, arrived without incident. In fact, you get the feeling that they aren't exactly surprised to hear that the pair of you had an unexpectedly adventurous experience, given Edward's reputation for being off-beat and its transitory application to you as well. You don't particularly mind; you know they mean it fondly when they teasingly call you the Wunderkinder, and — most importantly — you see them listen seriously to your ideas and your equations. What you lack in time and strength you make up for with your brain, you tell yourself. You try terribly not to focus on time.
Friedrich, a broad-backed hulk of a man who climbs more nimbly than one would expect, gives the all-clear for the set-up of the scaffolding; Great! you call back. In periphery you see that a crowd is forming, adults and kids alike, all curious onlookers. It's just a model rocket, it'll only shoot up a few hundred meters, but it's the theory you're trying to drum up interest in. There's been some attention since two summers ago when you were working under Oberth in Romania — where you met Edward...
(Thinking idly of it now, you recall the long stretches of sunflower fields from the window of the train, your legs cramping from sitting for so long but your head and heart absolutely buzzing with excitement. It's a good while yet back to Munich, but you're excited to have met someone — around your age, no less — just as interested in rocket engineering. Someone brilliant — you can already tell — who nevertheless still seems interested in your thoughts, too!)
... Edward remarks something about drawing in quite an audience as he drops off the last of the materials, which you accept gratefully— but then he turns to leave.
You aren't going to watch...?
My neck's still sore from the crash... he answers; you can't stop the way your face falls, sensing it before realizing it, but it's no matter. Edward's back is already turned, one last glimpse of that long golden blonde hair and dark coat before it disappears into the crowd.
You're irritated — now whose fault is that...? — and, somewhat irrationally, hurt. Friedrich makes a comment that you only half hear, lingering a little in your nebulous emotions— but then it's time for the show.
When the rocket launches you feel the same swell of excitement and pride you always do. It's just a little thing — your goal is tens, if not a hundred times larger — but you follow it all the way up, grin widening as the cheers start, and you glance over at them, too, the kids on their parents' shoulders, other carnival attendees about to enter the fun-house nearby pausing to crane their necks and peer curiously at their display. You take in the blue sky, the soft colors of all of the banners on the stands, the verdant hills in the distance — summer's dying, surely, but still holding on just a little longer — and all at once you love this place, you love the adult life you have worked so hard yourself to build, and you love your dream— the one you have had since you were a child, and the one you are making reality.
You are praised — all of you are — and you accept it. You work hard; you have reason to be proud.
Milch und Blut
(1923)
You have worked so hard to keep this a secret. You've known for the better part of a year that it isn't going to go away, that your time is limited, and that — crucially, for if this were not the case, then it would make hiding this that much harder — that you cannot transmit it to anyone else. You can't hurt anyone with your illness, and this is the smallest comfort and an unequal trade, because no one can help you, either.
You've hidden it for months, waved it away as a cold, dust in warehouses, the draft from leaving the windows open for too long, not wearing a scarf, the aftereffects of pneumonia from years ago, and so on. It is as much of a blessing as it is a source of pain that these white lies seem to work. Either you are a very good liar, or no one is looking very closely, after all.
Your cover blows one evening in November. Feverish and frustrated and feeling terribly alone, you pack up your things and tell Edward that you'll be staying in the factory from now on, since your work is nearly finished. He has the audacity to tell you immediately to stop, to spout critique about your sponsors — you know this! you know they have their own machinations, but doesn't Edward understand, can't he see that you don't have another choice, that you don't have the time—?
He grabs your shoulder as you're stomping down the common stairs of your flat and you suddenly cannot take it any longer, you whirl around and lose your temper, intending to shove off his grip but — either because you used more strength than you intended to or because he was off balance on the steps — knocking him fully down and backward, the thud of his back striking the stairs making you wince yourself; you hadn't meant to hurt him—
—but you don't have time to tarry in that guilt, either. Your airways constrict, your lungs feel like you've swallowed water, water and needles, absurdly you think of pine sap — shouldn't you know by now to think of less stupid things — and you know also not to panic but you do anyway because you cannot move and Edward will see, you saw when Edward fell that Noah followed and that she will see too, they will both see —
— and you cough, you cough and hack until sweat runs from your brow and tears gather in your eyes, until finally you expectorate, blood warm in your hand — your blood, it never becomes less revolting — and finally, though shakily, the passageways clear...
You look at Edward and at Noah and you see their expressions but cannot bear to parse them. See, you want to say. This is what you haven't noticed! and you know it isn't fair, but you can't help it.
"You say this world isn't yours?" you call out to Edward, voice breaking. "Well, it is mine, and I want to leave proof that I lived in it. I'm running out of time!" you yell, not sure whether you want to scream louder or to cry.
"You have no right to tell me what to do!"
You run, foolish a decision as that is, and the heavy wooden common doors slam loudly behind you as you charge out into the night.
No one follows.
The last physical memory you have is of a sharp pain in your back almost faster than the sound of a crack, the heat of metal, the fire and smoke from the rocket, bright yellow-fire red light. Getting shot was not precisely something you had reckoned with when you’d launched into your most spontaneous plan of action, but somehow, it seemed fitting — or fair — for what more could you have wanted than to have seen one of your rockets in flight, and to know that the person inside was going home... Had you been in greater possession of his rational faculties, the argument that you weren’t certain what exactly was on the other side of that portal might have soured your final moments, but now, vision going fuzzy-black and an alternating heat and cold in your abdomen that was honestly beginning to frighten you — it was an awful lot of blood, wasn't it — you preferred to think more positively, to wish your friend — and what else — a warm farewell...
Und da weißt du auf einmal: das war es.
and then you know suddenly: that was it