No, not with us. Nothing doing. Free-wheeling fathers, that's us. Always on the road. Unattached. Natural-born hunters. Childless and happy. It's true that Frankie (under the name of Franziska Ludkowiak) has two little girls from her earlier married and cookstove life, whom she ceded along with her share in the construction business to her former husband, the perpetually worried daddy, and their new mommy, who never has a thought for herself. But that doesn't count. And Billy's long-discarded daughter (by me) was growing up with her grandmother.
Down with diapers! Shitty brats! We don't give each other any. And as for our chicks — because Maxie, too, insists on having her private life — we don't knock them up; we have other ways of making them dependent. As if we didn't have our crises and domestic worries. Our constant jealousy and where were you yesterday? All so petty and nerve-racking. Having to make up lies for every fart. As if there were no bigger, higher, why not say it, more spiritual problems, the kind that challenge a man's very existence and make him productive. Oh no, just perpetual scenes and petty quarrels. Siggie's chick has attempted suicide twice. Frankie has to maintain discipline with her fists. Billy, to tell the honest truth, is disappointed: she'd thought Maxie was entirely different, more stable and reliable, but Maxie does it
with men off and on or lets men watch while she's doing it with some chick. They're all pretty mixed up. Their tragic pasts. They've all had ghastly experiences. Siggie claims her father felt her up when she was twelve. Billy talks about early imprinting because she was only fourteen, though already plump and fully developed, when the Russians came, so three, sometimes she says five, Russians raped her, one after the other. Frankie says her mother was a bareback rider (or a ventriloquist) with a circus. And Maxie never wanted to play with dolls but was made to. (And so many other possibilities: the milk that was too hot, the ghoulish uncle, Grandpa's mustache holder, and a cousin from Stolp who could piss his name into the snow. .)
But this is Father's Day. Today all chicks and imprinting episodes from the past have been left home. All by ourselves, we're off on a trip. Surrounded by a hundred thousand faceless men, we four voluntary, conscious, and therefore supernatural men are purposefully on our way: we're doing fine without the appendage, we're free, the new sex. Nature has taken us to her bosom. In every Prussianly sign-boarded forest, around trash cans on every lake shore, at every sylvan snack bar, we stop off, take a leak, settle down, and call one another from group to group: Hi, fellows! Cheers! It's good for us to be here. Let us here make tabernacles. Out here we're by ourselves, with no one to bother us. Blessed peace. No women quarreling and wishing for things. No Ilsebills far and wide. Nothing needs to stand at attention. Relax, friends. And let's have a drink. To what? To fathers. To all tired, broken-down, floppycock fathers. To all of us under Prussian pine trees, at scrubbed beer tables, in among the lake-shore garbage. Whichever way you've come: on foot, on bicycles, in carriages or cars. That's right, a nation of brothers, as it says in the song, all men together. On this Ascension Day let all men celebrate the Father on high, the Father who has exceeded all norms. And you guys on the gleaming motorcycles—"That's right, you over there on the opposite shore!" — who don't know yet what to do with your strength, who've wrapped yourselves in leather, black, rivet-studded angels, with your easy, springy stride and unerring flair, film figures all. Lanky, lurking wolves. And one who has brought a trumpet blows aggres-
sive signals. Yes, let us celebrate Father's Day, celebrate Father's Day. .
On the shore of the Grunewaldsee, in a place where the forest has been thinned, under a clump of pale mottled pines, on a floor of sand, pine needles, quaking grass, Frankie and Siggie put down the cases of beer and the ice bucket with the schnapps. Maxie carried the food basket with the steaks and lamb kidneys. When they had unloaded the spade, the poker, and the iron grill, Billy hauled two stones from nearby and set them down as a fireplace. As though at the end of a long journey, of mythogenic wanderings, she said, "This place is fabulous. This is where we cook."
(Long years ago, on our retreat. Dispersed in the Masurian marshes. And after the Battle of Wittstock, when with the help of Torstenson's cavalry and the Scottish Lesley and King regiments we had defeated the imperial troops and stopped to roast twelve spitted oxen over. .) Make a fire. Gather wood. Dead wood, washed ashore and now as hard as bone. Break branches over knees. Crate slats. Once contained sprats from Kiel. Snap brittle branches off bushes for which it is still winter. Pick up gnarled pine cones that burn like mad. And what else? Your feelings and suchlike kindling. My crumpled papers with their iambic meshes of hate. All ideas are born of flame. We who rub together and take fire. The old quarrel that heats the house. My arguments burn better than yours. Your love only smolders and dies away. Your morality has never yet struck a spark. It leaves us cold! Cold cold cold I
"No, Maxie. Oh, why didn't we leave you home!" said Billy as she piled kindling on crumpled paper between two stones. "These hordes of men — it's just no good for little girls like you. You and your begging; I could kick myself for giving in, giving in once again. Oh, please take me, oh, please let me come. I'll never forgive myself. What if those vulgar boys over there notice who's here! What I'm talking about? You're not going to stand there and tell me you're not a little girl any more. Don't make me laugh. Hear that, Frankie? Little Maxie doesn't want to be Papa's
darling any more, she wants to be a he-man like us. No more feminine frills, everything simple and straightforward between men. Did you ever hear anything so ridiculous?"
By then the wee little flame was rising voraciously. No one laughed. Only a few gnats from the lake. And more to herself than to Siggie, Frankie said: "Our Billy doesn't realize that when you come right down to it she's our darling butterball; that's why Maxie gave her an oversized bra for her tits on Mother's Day. Actually our Billy should have stayed home like a cozy housewife, doing crossword puzzles or darning Maxie's socks. I could have sent my Bettina and a couple of Siggie's chicks to chat with her and nibble pretzels. Our butterball is completely out of place here, don't you agree?"
At that Billy, who had once been my Sibylle, kept silent like a man (obstinately, sullenly) and busied herself with the fire. By then it was sending up proper flame symbols. And at other cooking sites in Grunewald and Spandau Forest, in clearings between the trees of Tegel, wherever it was forbidden to cook, light matches, play with fire, men had piled wood between stones like consummate Boy Scouts and were cheering the rising flames. The mounted police patrols could hardly ignore them. "We haven't seen a thing," they said. "But be careful, guys, even if it is Father's Day."
This is what distinguishes the male. Wherever he goes and describes his circle, he will set up a fireplace, test the wind, gauge the situation, and comply with the regulations. This he knows from the beginning, the moment he starts out. His passage is marked by traces of fire. That is how men give evidence of history.