The Paternoster

In winter in Hamburg—the busiest port in Europe—when gangways are slippery and frozen handrails take the skin off an ungloved hand, when the wind along the Elbe is like a razor around your ears, and in the many harbour channels where traffic is least, you can find sheets of ice as big as a tabletop which rock and clack together as barges and tenders and tugs nudge their way through, and snowdrifts pile up at the entrance to our shipping office at the dockside.

There are six of us working for the company. Otto Meisterhans is our boss, a nice old guy who gave me a job when I came ashore a few years ago. He is usually the first to arrive in the morning, going to his leather-topped desk, reading and marking the shipping pages of the day’s Hafen-Morgenblatt as the rest of us arrive. Each of us taps on his office door frame to wish him good morning, and crosses to shake hands with him before going out to our desks to begin work. And each evening, as we leave, each one will tap on the door frame, cross to his desk and shake hands again, wishing him good evening before we go. Udo jokes that it works better than punching a time card. Herr Meisterhans leaves his office door open all the day, unless he has something of a private nature to discuss, which is very rare. If he wishes to speak about something personal such as one’s salary, or perhaps to query something, he is more likely to ask someone to stay behind for a minute after others leave in the evening, so that there is no need to close the door, although he still does that.

The building itself is of another time. Not like so many Hamburg buildings destroyed in the massive fire-bombing, many of which have been painstakingly re-created to the old plans and designs. No, this one—and even the one next to it—somehow managed to survive all those incendiary raids, despite their location almost at the edge of the Free Port, the place they call Speicherstadt (warehouse town), with its acres of high stacked containers and those old high brick stores smelling of spices. Our building has a wide stairway leading up to the entrance, and at each side at the top of the steps there is a mock-stone pillar, on which a sculptured male figure bends his head, supporting half of the portico on his shoulders. At the entrance there is a Windfang, a double set of doors to protect the inside from snow, rain and sleet as people open the outer doors, so that the windfang space between the outer and inner doors is a buffer climate zone, like an airlock in a submarine.

Once inside the second doors, the lobby has a polished floor, with two passages left and right leading to facilities on the ground floor either side of the internal stairway and paternoster. Ah, do you know what a paternoster is? It is a continuous moving vertical chain of small cubicles like elevator cabins (but smaller, accommodating usually only two people), open fronted, which travel slowly upwards past landings on each floor, then through a roof space, and down again past another set of floor openings beside the first, until they reach another no-man’s-land in the basement and begin their upward journey again.

There are not too many paternoster elevators left, perhaps because they are slow, and everyone these days expects high-speed lifts; but also because they probably contravene some modern safety regulation. For years in Germany there have been moves to have paternoster lifts done away with. Although I have never known anyone to come to any harm, maybe there has always been that slight possibility of an accident. Everyone knows the story about a carpenter somewhere who foolishly tried to enter with a ladder. Familiar users of a paternoster do not hesitate. They know exactly how slowly the chain moves, and can judge at a glance when to step in, or when to wait a few seconds for the next cubicle. The name paternoster—“Our Father”, of course—comes from the Catholic chain of rosary beads of which it is reminiscent. Our paternoster elevator is convenient, but many impatient tenants prefer to use the stairway to get to their office destination sooner. And there are those who prefer the exercise of walking up and down stairs. Although we in Germany seem to have had a love affair with the paternoster, I have heard it was originally an English invention. No doubt the English just call it a “lift”, while we Germans typically have a long word for it: Personenumlaufaufzüge. I think paternoster is simpler.

Herr Meisterhans is somehow like the paternoster: old-fashioned, slow, and yet still practical. He dresses half a century out of time, with his rather heavy tweed suits which include a waistcoat equipped with a watch-chain from pocket to buttonhole, although in his case there is no fob-watch at the end, only his ring of keys, and an enamelled membership medallion from the Verein, the association to which he belongs. In summer, his only concession to the warmer weather is to change from tweed to a light gabardine, and an almost-sporty panama, which alas, is showing its age by discolouration around the band.

We know very little about him, as we know little about each other. He has an apartment in one of those high-ceilinged older buildings which somehow survived the war, in Altona below St Petri’s church, and he lives alone, employing a housekeeper to “do” for him. Once, when Meisterhans was ill, and young Udo had to take paperwork home for his approval and signature, Udo was eager to report back about the apartment, with remarks about it being “like a morgue”, and hinting that there was something going on between Meisterhans and the black-clad housekeeper who answered the door. Udo’s antics sometimes cause a smile, and Herr Kabel, the senior shipping clerk, asked Udo to stop gossiping and go back to his work.

Kabel, the second in charge, has been with the firm longest, and has a commerce degree. He sits at the biggest desk in a corner of the main office between two windows, giving him an outstanding view two ways up and down the Oberhafen channel and across the busy Elbe where it is crossed by the twin bridges leading south to Veddel. Herr Kabel is a stern, straight-backed man in his fifties, who smokes short Dutch cheroots which he buys from that disabled tobacconist on the corner of Lippeltstrasse. Meisterhans gives Kabel the responsibility (and no doubt pleasure) of PR meetings with our important customers, whom he entertains at the Rathaus restaurant with its collection of ship models high around the walls, where the businessmen no doubt drink and laugh and charge it all up to their respective firms, for that is what business entertainment is all about, isn’t it, for those privileged enough to enjoy it?

The next most senior would be Frau Walter, a mature lady I guess about my age, and single, but these days no one is called Fräulein any more, no matter what her married status. Frau Walter is slim, and usually wears a severely-tailored suit of matching jacket and skirt. However, her severity of dress is not reflective of her personality, which is warm and kindly. On her desk between the calculator and the telephone PBX, she has framed photographs of her nieces and nephews, about whom she will readily tell anyone who asks. Frau Walter answers the company telephone pleasantly and types correspondence for both Meisterhans and Kabel. She has a habit of addressing me—“So, Herr Koopmann!”—that leads you to expect her to continue the sentence, to add something, but that’s all you get.

Next, young Frau Peters, who has been with the company about a year, and keeps very much to herself. She is our Computer and Fax expert—having attended several specialist courses—as well as being our file clerk, but she also types up many of the complicated bills of lading, customs and government documents. She comes to work in a battered VW Käfer, from where she lives out along the river near Nienstedten, I think, but I couldn’t tell you if she is married or single. I would guess that she is not yet thirty. Her dark hair is pulled back neatly behind her head, and she invariably wears trousers to work with a sweater or shirt, and listens to earphones (is it called a Walkman?)—perhaps to discourage contact. She has no conversation apart from work, but that could be said of all of us; we all have our private lives which we keep to ourselves.

Young Udo is the modern equivalent of an “office boy”, learning the shipping trade and running errands, although these days youths like Udo have little respect for elders and experience, and as a consequence learn less than they should. Meisterhans and Kabel have discussed Udo more than once, and while Kabel is impatient and dismissive of Udo’s careless attitude, Meisterhans has urged Kabel to be tolerant with this product of another age. “Give him time,” he urges. I don’t know what they say about me.

Udo shares a wide desk with Frau Peters, so that they sit on opposite sides of the same broad table, but since Udo tended to stare at Frau Peters’s bosom while he was talking on his phone, she has shielded herself from this unwelcome attention by building up a dividing screen of file trays, her computer monitor, and various reference volumes. Udo got the message, and now limits his teenage ogling to the unguarded moments when Frau Peters puts on, or takes off, her coat at the coat-rack, so that he can watch the movements of her bosom as she puts her arms into her coat sleeves. He thinks he is unobserved.

Finally, there is me, Erich Koopmann. Being once a seaman, I do most of the ship visits for Meisterhans, boarding vessels in port as necessary, including down cargo holds, and also making most of the calls on the Customs and the Free Harbour warehouses up and down the Elbe, with its constant noisy ship and tug traffic, tooting horns, and wheeling, squealing seagulls. That is the working side of my life.

At the entrance to the Isolierstation, with its sticky-rubber antibacterial mat and positive air-curtain, Sister Monika, serene and ever-smiling behind those rimless glasses inside her order’s wimple, hands me the usual disposable overshoes, gown and mask, and says, “He’s in good spirits, looking forward to your visit, Herr Koopmann. We have had a successful day.”

But Bobi, when I arrive at his bedside, is waspish and sour, as he so often is nowadays. “You’re late again. I suppose you’ve been shagging that Miss Peters from your office.”

I sigh, taking his thin trembling hand. “The traffic, Bobi, and the Schnellbahn is not so schnell today.” And, changing the subject: “Schwester Monika says you’ve been having a good day?”

As Sister Monika leaves the ward and I relax my face-mask down around my neck, he interjects. “No no, leave it on Erich, it makes you look handsome and mysterious, like Doktor Paulus; without it you’re an ugly Lump.” But Bobi’s joking makes him laugh, then gasp for breath, his gaunt face distorted, his skin-and-bone hands clutching at the bed-sheet like talons with each spasm racking his frail body.

“So what’s happening?” I ask cheerfully.

In a minute, his breath back, he says, cynically: “Just the usual. Dying. What else would I do?”

I try to keep the smile on my face. “Sister Monika says you have had a good day.”

“Oh yes, fucking Sister Monika knows everything.” But he changes again, from bitterness to near-normal. “No, I shouldn’t say that. Dear Sister Monika has been reading me some poetry. Now why don’t you ever read me poetry?”

“I don’t know any poetry.”

“You used to.”

“You mean, like”—I recite like a child—“Auf dem Hügel / da steht ein Soldat / Er macht …”

“You’re a bitch. Be serious. What about some of that nice French verse? La vie est … something something?”

I clear my throat and take over, from memory, embarrassed, for I am not used to reciting poetry. “La vie est brève / Un peu d’espoir/ Un peu de rève/ Et puis—Bonsoir!”

“Christ. That’s lovely, Rick. More please. Love the accent. You can be a romantic old bastard when you want to. Whose poetry is it, Verlaine? Fontaine?”

“Can’t remember. OK, Bobi, I’ll try and bring you some poetry for next time.”

After a calm moment he says, between deep shuddering breaths: “I had a dream, Erich. We were on a tropical island in the sunshine; beautiful turquoise sea, white sandy beach, leaning palm-trees …” He waves his skinny bruised arms like a conductor. Arms thin as matchsticks, skin blotched like birthmarks. And always his head trembling as if it is too heavy for his neck.

“When you’re a bit better, Bobi, we’ll go there. I’ll get Meisterhans to find us a freighter to the Seychelles, or somewhere, and we’ll sit on a beach in the sun eating mangoes with the juice running down our chins.”

He smiles at my image, but he knows, we both know, it will never happen. “O, Rick, Rick,” he says softly. Tears fill his dark eyes as he shakes his head. And as he starts to say something else, gasping, he chokes, coughs, coughs, shakes with aching violent gripping spasms again. Then, matter-of-factly, “Oh Christ; shat myself. Push that bell, will you Erich?”

“It’s OK,” I say. “I’ll clean you. I’ll change you. Here, let me.”

“No, Rick, no!” he protests, coughing. “For Christ’s sake, you’ve cleaned up enough of my puke and shit for too long”—coughing, coughing, then angrily, frustrated—“just ring the fucking bell, will you!”

“Still, Bobi, sshh! Here, let me …” But a nurse must have heard him shouting, and comes quickly to attend the sordid stinking task, moving me aside. And when she finishes, he is sobbing as I try to comfort him, but he shrugs away from me and faces the window with its distant view of the ancient windmill and the modern home-going string of tail-lights approaching it in the dusk. He drowses off for a bit, and when he wakes again, seems surprised to see me. “Oh, hi Erich. Wie gehts?” And I tell him a little about my day in the port, but he is not interested.

Later, when I am leaving, I say, “I’ll get some poetry for you, promise. Tomorrow. Is there anything else I can bring you?”

Bitter again, but near exhaustion, he says, “Yes, you can bring me one of those lovely Arab boys Frau Merkel is flooding our country with; a boy with skin the colour of honey, and a bottom like an Aprikose. He will love me properly, not like you.”

And when I leave the hospice, when I reach the street and the rushing people, with lights reflecting off wet cobbles, I turn my head, leaning into the wall until I am in control again.

As I catch the paternoster in the morning, Udo steps in quickly after me and says, “Morgen, Herr Koopmann. That consignment on Afrika Venture, it’s all old car bodies, wrecks, for Conakry, wherever that is; I wonder what they do with them, the niggers—live in them?” I shake my head sadly at his crudeness. We hear a couple of lawyers from the office above ours who choose the echoing stairs, one of them laughing, complaining loudly, “Two goals! Two goals? Du lieber Gott!”

Another day, I share the paternoster with Frau Walter, who is smiling as always, nicely perfumed as we stand in that small cabin, and she says: “So, Herr Koopmann!” But this time she adds, “Ah, the good old paternoster, it is just like life, not so? What goes around, comes around.” She has a laugh like music, and I am very aware how close she stands to me in that confined space.

Then there is that strange morning when I come back from boarding the Komatsu Maru, with a strong wind on the Elbe tossing seagulls about the sky like bits of paper, and the company launch slap-slapping against built-up waves and wetting my face with icy blown spray. At the street entrance to our building there is a chaos of flashing lights from Feuerwehr and police emergency vehicles. “Was ist Hier los?” I ask. An excited bystander explains that they have taken away a body; a dead old man caught in the paternoster. In the paternoster? Was it an accident? He doesn’t know.

When I go upstairs I learn from a sobbing Frau Walter in our subdued office that “the dead old man” is Herr Meisterhans, who has apparently suffered a heart attack and fallen half in and half out of the paternoster, so that its safety shut-off mechanism has held his body and activated an alarm until help comes. The paternoster will be closed until the results of a Magistrat investigation. Perhaps closed forever.

After work that strange day, Herr Kabel asks me to stay behind, which makes me nervous about my future, now that my sponsor Meisterhans is no longer there. But when everyone else has gone, still shocked and saddened from the tragedy, Kabel suddenly brightens and holds out his hand to me in Meisterhans’s empty office, which he seems to have taken over. “Now, Herr Koopmann.” And then he laughs. “Herr Koopmann? No—you will be now Erich, not Herr Koopmann! And you will call me Reiner; let us agree to be Brüderschaft partners. OK? Please, call me Reiner.” So we shake hands. Here is this man, senior to me, suggesting we should be informal business friends, when I have thought maybe he was going to push me adrift.

“I have something important to talk to you about,” he says. Already, he has changed his speech from formal “Sie” to informal “Du” in recognition of our new brotherhood relationship. “We are so sorry to lose Otto—Herr Meisterhans—but the directors have asked me to take his place. I will be relying on you to take over some of my former duties. It will be a promotion for you, OK, Erich? We will go to the Bierstube just now and talk some more about salary et cetera over a drink, do you have time?” Then he puts his heels together, stiffly exaggerated, as if he is raising an imaginary glass at eye-level to toast me, saying, “Auf die Brüderschaft!”

He goes to pick up his briefcase. “Shall we go, Erich?”

I say, “There is something else, Herr Kabel.”

And he straightway corrects me, laughing, “No, no, Erich. Not Herr Kabel. From now on, between us, I’m Reiner, remember?”

I sheepishly accept the new format. “Something else, er—Reiner. Sorry about the timing but I need to take time off on Thursday, for a funeral.”

And he is immediately serious, solicitous. “A funeral; well, yes, of course, Erich, so sorry. Is it someone close?”

And I tell him, “Yes. My brother.”