Free Kaltenburg by Marcel Beyer Page B

colleagues. Perhaps that was why he put so much effort into cultivating Kaltenburg’s friendship, just as Kaltenburg did into gaining his. Although they were both in their late thirties, I envisage my father as the younger man and Kaltenburg as the older of the two, no doubt because of later images, snow-white hair framing a tanned face radiating health.
    â€œIs it really true,” I asked him, “that you took some live ducks with you to Königsberg, and all the other professors were amazed?”
    â€œYes, I did, by the crateful, and I lugged fish over there as well, and kept them in the institute.”
    Professor Kaltenburg has become world-famous, but I have never yet discovered whether my father was a leading light in his subject, and in later years, to spare myself painful memories of him, I have never looked up my father’s books or articles. As an adult, however, I have been comforted to hear from Knut, Martin, and others who attended his lectures at the University of Posen that he was a good teacher who inspired enthusiasm in his students for the plant world. And given the unspectacular nature of most botanical phenomena, that is no mean feat.
    Kaltenburg inquired in detail about the feed we were giving the starling, about its care, my father answered obligingly, Kaltenburg nodded, Professor Kaltenburg shook his head, he asked whether my father had caught and reared the bird himself, no, he had bought it, Kaltenburg wanted to know who from, while the starling was continually looking for new places in the conservatory from which to fly at the professor, my father named the dealer, and Kaltenburg shrugged: “I know him well, of course, and I’ve got to say he’s reliable enough.”
    The two of them arranged that Kaltenburg should take care of the bird himself for a few days so that he could observe it. They looked at me as though my agreement mattered to them, I nodded, I didn’t mind, I wasn’t attached to the bird. Privately I hoped Professor Kaltenburg would succeed where my father hadn’t, and teach it to talk.
    Our guest didn’t want any tea, at any rate not just yet, perhaps later, my mother would join us. But he would be interested in a tour of the greenhouse. He let my father show him his favorite plants; Kaltenburg kept giving him a sharp, or rather surprised, sidelong glance while my father immersed himself in his plant world. My father was attracted by the less conspicuous, often overlooked grasses, herbs, flowers, his interest wasn’t sparked by the cultivated type, and ultimately not even by any that grew from seed sown by human hand. Then it was my father’s turn to suddenly raise his head and take a sidelong look at Kaltenburg as the latter examined a plant which had recently been brought in. Two men, as it might have seemed to an observer, who were doing some cautious footwork around each other for the moment, as though unclear whether this was leading to a friendship or was just preparation for a fight.
    Striped goosefoot and fat-hen, spreading orach, redroot amaranth, black nightshade, and smooth sow thistle: my father showed me them all on our walks, I can still recite them by heart, but soon I’ll have forgotten them again. Oblong-leaf orach and flixweed or tansy mustard, wall rocket, prickly lettuce, Canadian horseweed: my father regularly audited the railway embankment not far from the house. “Look, we’ve never seen these tiny flowers before, and the panicle there.” He crawled around in the grass, carefully freeing the roots with a trowel. And up there on the embankment the slow-moving trains, made up of a few passenger cars and countless cattle wagons, in which the animals never stirred, where are they heading for? I asked my father.
    â€œTo the east—don’t you know your compass points?”
    I learned to distinguish white from black henbane, my father held up two stalks with hairy leaves and small flowers,