“Sick,” Wirsich replied more with his hand than with his mouth. Joseph cried out:
“And on account of you, isn’t it? I’ll hear no retort, I know perfectly well that it’s so, just as if I’d been a constant witness to this illness and decline. What mother would not despair at seeing her son go so utterly to seed that he no longer dares meet the eyes of a man diligently occupied with picking up cigar butts on the street? For years on end she felt proud of her splendid son, always looking up to him with eyes filled with love and admiration, she provided and cared for him, and she is still alive—sick, to be sure, but she could easily enjoy good health in the final, fading days of her life if only the object of her care and love were prepared to comport himself in a just and capable manner and be just a tiny bit stalwart. It wouldn’t take much to satisfy the old woman, and she would then do her best to rekindle her old battered pride. She would practically worship her child because of his efforts to remain honorable and strong. And on top of everything else, this forgetful and degenerate person is her only son, her first and final chance to stoke the fires of maternal sentiment, yet he is so inept and cruel, clumsily trampling this love and these days and years of joy. You know what, Wirsich? I’ve a mind to give you a good thrashing.”
Together they went in search of lodgings for the night. There were still lights on at the Red House Inn, they went into the tavern. All sorts of craftsmen and journeymen were sitting around a table, one of them was telling tales of the cunning pranks he had apparently carried out in great number, and the rest listened. Joseph ordered a light meal and something to drink. He would, he thought, take the very first train back to Bärenswil in the morning.
There was only a single room left at the inn, so Wirsich and Marti spent the night in one and the same bed. Before falling asleep, they spent a good half hour chatting. Wirsich’s spirits were beginning to improve. Joseph suggested that he just go on living in this room at the inn and diligently compose letters of inquiry which, neatly enclosed in envelopes, he could deliver personally to their recipients. One should never feel ashamed to display one’s poverty and need openly, Joseph said, but at the same time, one must take care not to assume a self-pitying, mournful expression, which might easily strike those on whose benevolence one was depending as repugnant. Besides which, open displays of misery were tasteless. Personally going to see the business owners one was writing to had the advantage that these generally well-educated and sensible people were as likely as not to present one with a five-mark coin, as it was being made clear to them that the one seeking employment is making an honest effort. Various of Joseph’s acquaintances had gone about things in just this way, and they had always been able to report certain modest successes. The names and fates of those pleading for help were generally not of interest to the rich, but these gentlemen did give gifts, as this has long been the gracious and genteel tradition in old families and firms. True poverty did well to pay a visit to true gentility, for this is where poverty is least likely to find itself suffocated and choked, where it is permitted to breathe, show its true nature, and, indeed, let its sufferings be known. If one is already lying on the ground in the grip of deprivation, one has to learn to show decorously and openly that one is asking for help, this will be excused and condoned, it softens hearts a little and will never be deemed offensive to morality, which is flexible by nature. But the person undertaking this must also have poise, he is not permitted to start wailing like a babe-in-arms; rather, he should show by his conduct that he has been cast down by something great and mighty, by misfortune. This, in turn, does him honor and causes even the hardest person to become fleetingly, sweetly, nobly, decorously gentle. Well, now he’d held a long speech, and a fairly stirring one at that, but now, as he fully intended to do, he must get to sleep, for he would have to get up early the next morning.
“You are, I believe, a good fellow, Marti,” the other replied. Then they went to sleep. It was already half past three in the morning. At eight o’clock, after three hours of sleep and a train ride at dawn, the assistant was again standing in the engineer’s office between drawing board and writing table. Now he went to the living room to have breakfast.
One week later he returned to the city, this time as a prisoner. He had been sentenced to two days’ confinement for missing the compulsory military training he was to have completed in the fall. At the appointed hour, he presented himself at the barracks, where his military papers were taken from him; then he was escorted downstairs to his cell. The fifteen or so younger and older men lying there on cots with their coats spread out beneath them all turned to appraise the newcomer. Bad smells of every possible variety suffused the room, whose high barred window gave directly onto the street at ground level. “At least I have something to smoke,” Joseph thought, and proceeded to make himself comfortable, insofar as this was possible, on one of the cots. Soon each of the inmates had addressed a few words to him, one colorful figure after the other. Men from all walks of life had sentences similar to his. Every one of them was aggrieved. Perhaps it was a senior officer being reviled for his heinous deeds, or else some state or civil official was being raked over the coals. The faces of all of these fifteen or sixteen individuals displayed boredom, an appetite for freedom of movement, and dissatisfaction with the lethargy that dominated the room. Young men were there who had been serving time for weeks, and one, a milkman, had been there for months.
A paperhanger lay beside a hotel owner’s son who’d been to America. A clerical worker lay beside a mason and day-laborer, a wealthy Jewish merchant beside the dairyman and milkman, and a master baker beside an apprentice locksmith. None of these fifteen individuals resembled the others, but all of them resembled one another in the way they inveighed against whatever had brought them here and sought to pass the time. That their number included even well-to-do and educated persons could be explained by the legal impossibility of substituting a fine for one’s sentence of confinement, and so an equality of treatment could be observed here such as was scarcely to be found anywhere in the free, unfettered world.
Suddenly a game started up, one which, it seemed to Joseph, was a regular part of daily life here. It was called “Slap the Ham” and involved walloping fairly brutally, using the palm of the hand, the buttocks of a person condemned to make this part of his body accessible to these merciless blows. One of those not participating in the game had to cover the victim’s eyes to prevent him from noting the origins of these slaps and blows. But if he nonetheless succeeded in guessing the identity of the person who had struck him, he went free, and the one who had been found out was forced to bend down, willingly or not, in the unpleasant position vacated by the one just released, until he, too—either swiftly or after a long struggle—was fortunate enough to guess correctly.
This game was eagerly pursued for a good hour until everyone’s hands were tired from all the slapping. A short while later, food was brought in—goodness—it was prison fare, after all: no beans, carrots or cauliflower, not even a little strip of pork tenderloin, but just soup and a hunk of bread, dry, tedious bread, along with a sip of water. The soup, too, was a sort of water, and the spoon, to add insult to injury, was chained to the soup bowl as if someone might have wished to steal the lead, which would certainly have been uncalled-for. But it was practical, this chain, and military and insulting into the bargain, and it was quite comprehensible that prisoners in confinement were not there to be caressed, stroked and flattered. “Contemptuous behavior shall be met with contemptuous punishment”: these words appeared to have been written clearly and dishearteningly upon this spoon and bowl.
What a dull, tedious two days!
The milkman or dairyman was the merriest of the bunch. “They” had carried off this young man—who was really quite handsome to look at—bound hand and foot, because he had taken the liberty of dealing the police corporal arresting him such blows about the head that blood came spurting out of his mouth and nose. For this deed, the milkman was natural
ly condemned to an additional month’s confinement on top of his original sentence, which, however, seemed of little concern to this apparently unflinching individual who was utterly indifferent to matters of honor. On the contrary, he took this humdrum compulsory leisure as a jolly, hilarious joke that had gone on for months, he was highly accomplished at entertaining both himself and others, and the laughter in this basement room never entirely died out or flagged. The milkman never spoke of state or military officials without assuming a tone of childishly blunt arrogance and pride. Never did words marked by bitterness or repressed anger cross his lips. The thousand anecdotes he recounted—some genuine, some invented—were all more or less concerned with making fools and laughing-stocks of various persons of rank, whom this handsome, profligate individual seemed accustomed to treating like ridiculous wooden puppets. Robust and clever as he was, one could believe a good half of the tales he told without injury to one’s common sense, for indeed he appeared to be just the man for such exploits, a direct descendent of his homeland’s proud, fractious ancestors, equipped with a sense of both mischief and pugnacity that had long since vanished from generations of his countrymen and gifted as well with a courage that was all but compelled to feel scorn for the laws and dictates of the public sphere. A curious touch that contributed to the devilment he inflicted on superiors of every stripe was the army cap he wore atop his curls, having saved it after God knows what drill. Along with all his vagabond habits, he seemed at the same time not at all averse to simpler, softer sentiments; at least he could sometimes be heard yodeling and singing, which he did quite beautifully and with a good sense of rhythm. He also told tales tinged with longing of how he had traveled far and wide across Germany in all its immensity, journeying from one manor house to the next. His accounts of his dealings with the gentlemen who owned these manors and estates were—even if they consisted in part of lies or runaway narrative imagination—highly comical and pleasing, even romantic to listen to. This fellow had a mouth whose curve and shape were truly lovely, a face that was nobly, freely and serenely framed, and you couldn’t help thinking when you looked at him that in circumstances dominated by peril and the call to arms, he might well have been able to serve his country extraordinarily well. Everything about him spoke of forms of life and of the world no longer extant; especially when he sang—which he did once without warning in the middle of the night during Joseph’s time in the “jug”—one seemed to hear the sounds and the magic of vital ancient times. A wonderful evening landscape rose mournfully into the air along with his song, and, listening, one pitied both the singer and the age that found itself compelled to contend with persons of the milkman’s disposition in such a petty and faulty way as was in fact the case.
During these two days in prison, the assistant might have had the most splendid opportunity to think over all sorts of things, for example his life up to then, or the difficult position Tobler occupied in this world, or the future, or the “General Law of Obligations,” but he didn’t do this: he failed to take advantage of so precious an opportunity and instead contented himself with listening to the jests and songs and dirty jokes told by the dairyman, which appeared to him more interesting than all the pensiveness to be found in both the new and old worlds. Besides which the game “Slap the Ham” was repeated nearly every two hours, providing additional relief from any urge to engage in philosophical reflection; or else the prison guard came in through the rattling door to call for one of the prisoners who was “done,” which likewise diverted intellectual attentiveness from higher matters to base and common interests. And what was the point of thinking?
Wasn’t it most crucial to foster thoughts of sharing in the lives of others, and experiencing things? And even if the forty-eight hours of confinement might have produced forty-eight thoughts, did not a single, general thought suffice to keep one’s life progressing along a good smooth path? What use could these enchanting, respect-inspiring, laboriously pondered forty-eight thoughts be to a young person, as it was foreseeable that he would forget them all tomorrow? A single thought to chart his course by was surely far preferable, but you couldn’t just think it, thoughts like these melted into sentiment.
Once Joseph heard the milkman remark that his entire glorious little fatherland was more than welcome, if it wished, to kiss his ass.
How natural and how unjust these words were. To be sure, the fatherland, or at least its legal concepts, was victimizing the milkman, obstructing and shackling him, dictating tedious and limb-shattering terms of imprisonment, boring him and exposing him to unpleasant circumstances, financial losses, and harm to his physical health. And there were thousands whose opinions corresponded exactly to the milkman’s. Thousands whom life had not treated quite so equitably, who had not been helped to advance along some path quite the way the obligation to do military service blindly, dryly assumed. Fulfilling one’s duty was not quite so convenient for some as for the many others who even managed to turn this obligation into a living and an advantage, allowing the state to support and feed them. Some indeed found that military service ripped an unfortunate hole in their careers, and some were even thrust into the most bitter and brutal dilemmas, as the demands of the military establishment consumed their last laboriously saved-up pennies, whether Rappen, Pfennige or centimes, and by the time they’d completed their duties, their money was all gone. Not everyone could then go running to father and mother asking for support, not everyone would at once be offered renewed employment at the same office, factory or workshop; often a long time might pass before a person belonged once more to the community of working, apprenticing, earning and goal-driven individuals. Under circumstances like these, could a person’s love of country still be counted on? What an idea!
“But even so!” Warmed by the feeling contained in this “even so” he’d just thought, the assistant leapt up from his cot to take part in a round of “Slap the Ham.” Luck was on his side, he never had to “stick it out” for long. He always guessed at once which hand was striking him. He recognized the apprentice locksmith by the violence of the blow, the paperhanger by his clumsiness, the Jew by his bad aim, the American by the gingerliness and embarrassment with which he participated in the game, and the milkman by the intentionally tempered and muted force of the blows. The milkman had, from the beginning, felt a certain tenderness toward Joseph. Whenever he began one of his stories, he always turned to Joseph because he saw that the assistant was his most attentive listener.
The “prisoners” were forbidden to smoke, but schoolchildren came up to the barred window and carried out the sweetest and most charming smuggling operation. One of the inmates climbed onto the shoulders of another and—with the help of a nail attached to a mysterious stick—quickly and skillfully speared the packets of tobacco and cigars and tossed the small change up to the little salesgirls and smugglers through the window, so that the “jug” was always full of smoke. The guard, apparently a good-natured fellow, said nothing.
For Joseph, these two nights in prison were cold, shivering and sleepless. During the second night he was able to sleep a little, but it was a restless sleep full of feverish dreams.
The milkman’s “little fatherland” lay stretched out wide, with all its districts and cantons, before his passionately gazing eyes. From a layer of fog, the ghostly, dazzling Alps towered up. At their feet stretched divinely green, beautiful meadows filled with the ringing of cowbells. A blue river described a luminous and peacefully charcoaled ribbon that curved through the region, gently touching the villages and cities and knights’ castles. The entire countryside was like a painting, but this painting was alive; people, occurrences and feelings were moving up and down it like attractive and meaningful patterns upon a large tapestry. Trade and industry seemed to be flourishing wonderfully, and the serious beautiful arts were lying in fountain-plashed corners, dreaming. You could see Poetry seated at a lonely desk, lost in thought, and Painting working victoriously at an easel. All the many factory workers were ret
urning—silent, beautiful and exhausted—from the place of their labors. You could tell by the evening light on the roads that these were roads home. Distant and echoing and poignant bells rang out. This high ringing appeared to be echoing around everything there, thundering about and embracing all of it. After this, you could hear the delicate silvery notes of a goat’s little bell, and it seemed as if you were standing high up upon a mountain pasture ringed all around with neighboring mountainsides. From deep below, down in the lowlands, train whistles could be heard, and the clamor of human labor. But all at once these images were sliced into bits, dispersed as if by a breath, and a barracks rose up clearly, proud of its façade. Before the barracks, a company of soldiers stood facing forward at motionless attention. The colonel or captain, seated on horseback, ordered the formation of a square, whereupon the soldiers, led by their officers, carried out this maneuver. Curiously, however, this colonel was none other than the milkman. Joseph recognized him clearly by his mouth and his resonant voice. The milkman now held a brief but fiery speech exhorting this young militia to protect the fatherland. “Despite everything!” Joseph thought, smiling. After all, they were standing at ease, and so it was certainly permitted for one to smile. The day was a Sunday. A young handsome lieutenant walked up to soldier Joseph and said in a friendly tone: “No shave today, eh, Marti?” Whereupon he strode off along the front rank, his saber rattling. Joseph rubbed the underside of his chin in embarrassment: “I haven’t even had a shave yet this morning!” How the sun was gleaming. How warm it was! Suddenly there was an abrupt shift in the dream, and an open field appeared with a group of marksmen lying spaced out in a half-circle. Gunshots resounded in the nearby wooded slopes, and the signals rang out. “You’re dead, Marti, fall down!” the milkman-colonel cried from atop his horse, where he was surveying the battle. “Aha,” Joseph thought, “he’s being kind to me. He’s letting me rest here on the splendid lawn.” He remained lying there on the ground until the skirmish was over, passing the time by pulling blades of grass through his thirsting mouth. What a world, what sunshine! What freedom from cares there was in just lying there like that! But now it was time for him to spring to his feet again and rejoin the formation. But he couldn’t, he was pinned to the ground. The blade of grass refused to budge from his mouth, he began to struggle with it, sweat appeared on his brow and fear in his soul, and he woke up to find himself on his cot once more, beside the snoring locksmith’s apprentice.
The Assistant Page 18
