NOT ALONE MY INKY CLOAK

Hertha had on a string of pearls she hadn’t worn in years. She was looking rather nice, standing there in the vestibule wearing an old, though elegant, black velvet dress, her hair neatly curled and tied in place with a bright ribbon, her shiny NS-Frauenschaft emblem pinned over her heart; but the expression on her face was worried and angry. Hamlet wasn’t going to wait. Wolfgang, who was running late, had just emerged from his room, buttoning his jacket. Seeing her, he frowned and stalked quickly down the hallway, as though he meant to build enough momentum to push her out the door.

“Ready at last?” she said with a touch of sarcasm as he came toward her.

Wolfgang shrugged. He was wearing his good suit with a red and yellow kerchief-tie pulled through a signet ring. She put a finger to it and said, “Hanning, you look like one of those nigger musicians.”

“That’s the idea,” he mumbled. He grasped his coat from its peg and threw it on. “Tschüß, Paps,” he called into the parlor, where his father was sulking, and followed Hertha out the door.

Neither of them spoke as they went, though Hertha glanced furiously at her watch at regular intervals. It was a beautiful spring night; the scent of damp, thawing earth filled the street, the Alsterbach lay still as glass, and the trees rattled and waved their buds in the night air. Hertha’s legs pumped as they hurried toward the station—a tram had pulled up with a screech as they approached. She sat on a bench by the window on the way to the Neustadt district while Wolfgang stood, apart from her, showing her his back, one hand clutching the leather strap, the other thrust into his pocket. At length Hertha tried to talk about the play; a friend of hers, a woman named Aline Bußmann, an actress who had played Ophelia a dozen times, had recommended the production. Wolfgang didn’t care. None of it mattered to him: not Hamlet, not this famous Aline, about whom his mother couldn’t stop talking. All he could think about was the Staatstheater. The place would be stifling if it were full—and it would be, for all the world turned out for master Shakespeare. Wolfgang imagined himself sitting pressed in between his mother and some overfed Hamburg bourgeois, thought of the smell of all those bodies sweating in the theater’s hot air, and knew exactly why Fritz had suggested that The boy get some culture.

At the theater stop, an elderly man pointed at the ring that held Wolfgang’s tie and made a cutting motion with his index. Baring his teeth, he muttered something unintelligible as mother and son stumbled forward to the doors.

“Jesus-God,” Hertha said once they were out in the street. “I told you—about your tie.”

Wolfgang shrugged as though he didn’t care, and strode on ahead of her, hoping that his speed might hide that he trembled with anger—and fear—beneath his coat. He kept on until they arrived at the theater, where an usher asked him to stop until Hertha had produced their tickets. Mother and son took their seats, side by side, each of them brimming with fury, and neither wanting reconciliation; Hertha clutched her bag in her lap and breathed deeply, letting the air out in sharp blasts through her nose. From time to time she fussed with the program, while Wolfgang grasped the armrests of his chair as though he were seated in a fast-spinning carnival ride. Two older women, sisters by the look of it, sat down beside Wolfgang, the one nearest to him constantly touching a lace handkerchief to her nose while the other chattered on about their last visit. On the far side, by Hertha, a man in uniform and his wife were discussing the meaning of the play. Nothing to do with any of that silly Oedipus pap, according to the husband.

Wolfgang made a show of yawning and stretching, for the benefit of both his mother and their closest neighbors. His own performance finished, he propped his chin in his hand in a final show of boredom.

At last the lights dimmed and the curtain lifted, revealing a scene of snow and ice, of towering, jagged rock that on second glance revealed itself to be a castle. Wolfgang did not recognize at first how he had straightened up and taken notice. He hadn’t paid much heed to the palace guards huddled inside their coats, or to the armored ghost who challenged them. Hamlet was a different matter. For almost two hours he forgot the snuffling woman beside him; his mother’s tense body and indeed, every other living soul within that great room had, for him, ceased to exist. Hamlet was played by a slender, dark-haired fellow, not much more than twenty, dressed in simple black clothes and tall boots, who wore a tired expression that Wolfgang could read even from well beyond the orchestra box. He didn’t much care if he couldn’t quite follow the language, or even the intricacies of the story, but O, what a glorious man! Wolfgang’s mouth opened softly, his lips moving as though he were speaking—just to have felt what it was like to be that person, there on the stage, as though he were just now remembering that this was the man he had always wanted to become.

When the interval came, Wolfgang disengaged quickly from his mother and hurried out to the top of the stairs. He felt as though he were shivering, whether from cold or from excitement he couldn’t be sure. The grand hall was full of people, young and old, all of them dressed, as Hertha was, in their finest clothing and jewelry. A number of SS officers stood out, their black uniforms visible among all the colorful clothing, the gold braids and beribboned field gray of the regular army. The crowd parted as a group of four of them passed through, the chant of the Hitler-greeting following them as they crossed the floor. Party armbands and uniforms abounded—officials and senior officers out with their wives. The men boomed their laughter across the space, slurped from their champagne bowl, and filled the air with their smoke and talk, while their wives clutched their bags and sipped from their own glasses, grinning, their sequined shoulders flickering in the light. A woman standing on the staircase, her long auburn hair spilling to her waist and a pale fox stole wound about her neck exclaimed, Moritz, darling!—her voice surprisingly deep and loud, as she took a tall young man by the elbow and pulled him in close for three kisses. Among all these faces Wolfgang did not see Hertha. He wasn’t looking for her.

He ensconced himself between two marble columns. He needed to think. What was this play doing to him? His legs felt strained and weak, as though he’d been sprinting for the duration of the first three acts. His body felt as though it was no longer his, but having fed on Hamlet’s speeches, he had now become something other than the small-framed, hamster-cheeked Wolfgang Borchert. Unconsciously he had adopted the pose in which he had first seen the actor, head angled downward; eyes up, focused, so it seemed, on a particular face in one of the loge boxes; lips at an angle, as though in an angry sneer; hands down at his sides, formal, the tips of his fingers touching the seam of his trousers; his back erect, heels together, toes pointed slightly out.

He had been standing that way for several minutes when his mother found him.

“Hanning?” she asked, as though she were no longer sure of her own son’s face. “I thought perhaps you’d gone home.”

“No, mother,” he said, finding in his voice some new, borrowed quality.

“Don’t you like the play?”

He looked away from her. Hertha’s voice hurt him, though he wasn’t sure why. She said something else, and he turned again. She irritated him; her interruption of his fantasy, her very arrival and continued presence, spoiled every thought and emotion, broke his joy down into anger, and her persistence made it all seem as though this were exactly what she’d wanted. After a time she asked him, “Shall we return to our seats?”

Wolfgang followed her, unspeaking, uncooperative, as though she were dragging him off to school. Once seated she asked, “It’s a lovely production, isn’t it?”

What did she know of lovely productions? he wanted to ask. And what did he care if it was lovely? Couldn’t she see that the play was meant to be anything but? He trembled, waiting for the curtain to rise, eager as he’d never been for anything before in his life to discover how it all came to an end.

The play resumed, rescuing him from further talk, but on the way home, Hertha pressed him.

“You haven’t said anything about the play.”

Wolfgang pretended not to hear her.

“Hanning, I—”

“Don’t say anything!” he growled, turning his back on her as he did. Why wouldn’t she leave him alone? It was as though she had sensed this new feeling that was blooming inside him and sought to stamp it out by keeping him engaged. Their entire trip home was punctuated by her attempts and his deflections. A few people seated close by stared at the odd scene in disbelief, as though they’d never experienced a mother and son who didn’t always get along.

Fritz had gone to bed, though it wasn’t late when they arrived home. In the parlor they found an empty port glass and a full ashtray. A book laid sprung open atop the coffee table. By the look of it, he hadn’t left the sofa all evening. While Hertha busied herself with picking up Fritz’s mess, Wolfgang pulled down a volume of Schlegel’s Shakespeare—it didn’t matter to him which one, the first he could find—and went to his room, without bothering to say good night.

by Matthew Yost