Gert Hofmann’s novel Our Conquest remains some of the earliest of his work we have in English, originally published in 1984 and translated by Christopher Middleton in 1991. Its focus is one we see in much of his work, a child’s perspective of war. The novel begins on the day of a town’s long-awaited ‘conquest’:
“One day our little town came to be conquered, or, as mother says, rolled up, from north to south, cut off from all surrounding towns and villages…”
The novel is narrated in the first-person plural, giving the impression of brothers, or at least siblings – the mother, too, refers to ‘them’. But later, when a suit is tried on, there is no description of it being tried on twice (or of two suits) suggesting a deliberate choice of the author to narrate in this particular way, perhaps simply to generalise the experience, or to add the air of superiority that is implied at times – especially with regard to their less fortunate friend Edgar whose mother and father are dead and who is “staying in our garden shed for the time being as our lodger.” (The narrator’s father is only ‘missing’, a distinction that is frequently mentioned). Edgar’s inferiority originates in the fact his father worked in the narrator’s father’s factory – making leather whips. This inferiority is demonstrated when Edgar waits in the shed while the narrator is fed bread and bacon fat by his mother. However, Edgar is perhaps older as when the boys decide they want to leave the house on the day of ‘our occupation’, the mother remarks to him:
“…at least I know that you’ll take care and that I can depend on you. You won’t let anything happen to them will you, you’ll bring them home safe and sound again?”
Yet when they are alone, Edgar is not cowed by the narrator and, in fact, wields power over them with his knowledge of the death of a Czech worker at their father’s factory. Rather than blackmail them for food, he makes them hurt themselves with a knife he has found:
“And we – we’ve taken a deep breath – take a firmer hold on the knife and, with a determined lunge, stab it into our thigh to punish ourselves. Oh the pain! And oh the blood! And among the old scars, the many fresh wounds.”
These wounds are mentioned throughout the novel – for example, when trying on the suit – and suggest a guilt which the narrator needs to be reminded of through pain. In the meantime, the boys are asked by the mother to go to the slaughterhouse as she has heard there is Butterschmalz (buttermilk) – a rumour which turns out to be unfounded, if, indeed, the mother believed it. At the slaughterhouse the boys are caught and questioned. The reader may have a suspicion that there is something in the slaughterhouse the director doesn’t want the boys to see:
“…only a few ghostly objects lying around on the flagstones in the darkness which we take to be bodies (of animals) that have been forgotten about or overlooked.”
The conversation in the slaughterhouse is the first of many, but these lengthy dialogues are presented without speech marks in long paragraphs accompanied by the thoughts of the narrator. In this way the novel, though taking place as the boys wander the town and interact with others, feels almost internal, a working out of the new world of ‘our conquest’. As well as the slaughterhouse, they visit a neighbour whose husband has recently died (it is here they acquire the suit) and a theatre. Throughout the question is not just what will life be like now? but will life be worth living? (answered in the negative by Herr Schellenbaum who has poisoned himself and his wife). The narrator provides an innocent (though even that is questioned) lens through which to view this moment of transformation.
Our Conquest is not Hofmann’s easiest novel. Its prose is intense, even smothering, in keeping with the fear and anxiety of the town. The unusual narration further disorientates the reader. And yet you are drawn into its world not only physically but mentally, inhabiting the same space (perhaps the ‘we’ is narrator and reader). It is a reminder of what a remarkable writer Hofmann is.
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