Young Gerber

by Friedrich Torberg

  “Do please—I’ve no objection—do by all means sit anywhere you like. We’re going to have a weekly lesson in the chemistry lab, and another in the classroom here. I’d like just to ask you to keep to the same seating plan in both rooms. There has to be a little discipline and order in your eighth year, I’m afraid I can’t help you there. You won’t be taking the Matura in my subjects, but you’ll need a good grade for a pass and the opinion of the examiners in general. So if I were you I’d bear that in mind. I certainly have no intention of making life difficult for anyone, but I can’t allow things to go on this year just as they did last year, or I’ll have to take drastic action.”

  “Cries of hear, hear on the right!” commented the occupants of the rows of desks from Lengsfeld to Gerber in the Sprechgesang choral style that they liked to use with Filip.

  “Never mind the childish jokes!” (His tone of voice expressed a less than happy mood.) “It’s your own doing if I treat you as though you’d already passed the exam. So can you please keep quiet?”

  “We—will—keep—quiet!” replied the Sprechgesang chorus. And then at last, for a change, they did keep quiet.

  Filip pulled the chair out from the teacher’s tall lectern. “It’s rather hot in here. I’ll take off my jacket, if the ladies don’t mind?” He hung his jacket over the back of the chair, and smiled at the two front rows. The students there returned his smile. “Hello, where’s Lisa Berwald?”

  “She left,” said Sittig. “I’d have expected you to know that.”

  “I don’t take such a close interest in the matter as you do, Herr Sittig. A pity, all the same. She was really charming.”

  Filip only just managed not to hear the “Shut up!” that came from the desk at the back.

  Kurt had not had time since yesterday morning to think about Lisa, had kept putting it off, and now he was annoyed to be caught out in this omission. Something else to lay at the door of bloody Kupfer, whom he couldn’t get out of his head. And now there Lisa was in his mind’s eye all of a sudden, in surroundings from which Kurt still couldn’t detach her.

  The rest of them had no difficulty. “She left,” was all Sittig had said, yet he was one of the students who had been particularly keen on Lisa. Now, Kurt supposed, he would just look for another girlfriend, and that would be that. In the same way as Filip says, “A pity,” hangs his jacket over the back of the chair, and compares Lotte Hergeth’s legs with Anny Kohl’s slim hips.

  And Lisa will never know how lightly everyone takes her departure, he thinks. She will never have a chance to notice that Kurt is the only one who misses her. Even if anyone tells her, she won’t understand.

  Knowing how pointless his intentions were, Kurt took his maths exercise book out of his desk and tore out a page.

  No. What was happening wasn’t something to put down on paper. It would have been hard enough to talk about it. And for that Lisa would have had to believe him, really believe him as they walked arm in arm, with smiling eyes, along a narrow, shady woodland path somewhere, or sat in the corner of a twilit terrace… then he could have tried to make her understand it, and not just that but everything else, everything—why did Lisa never talk to him like that? Months ago, that one unhoped-for hour in the park outside the building where she lived, that first, inexplicably long, ardent kiss, followed by more and more, as if the kisses were startled out of them… but they had never been alone together after that, never again… In break at school, of course, there were exciting moments in passing, brief glances, quiet words. There was also his fear that it had all been mere chance, a passing episode, a tribute to a mild night—Lisa smiled when he wanted, but it was the same smile that she had for everyone who came into the room. Only Kurt took it differently. As the confession of something to come, something wonderful, as an apology for the fact that it hadn’t happened yet, a promise that it soon would. If that “soon” always turned out to be “some other time”, it wasn’t his fault! What reason would Lisa have had to provoke him? And what reason would he have had to insist?

  Now that Lisa had left the school, now that the whole unspoken shame of his love’s possible dismissal as “only schoolchildren’s love” was gone—now much would change. Was Lisa waiting for him at least to make the first move, to push at what might be an unlocked door? Lisa never began anything herself. He would have to remind her of her promise. Again and again. Until sometime it bore fruit.

  Dear one,

  As you see, I don’t mind showing that I understand your superiority over us these last two days by writing to you on a page from my maths exercise book. It’s twelve-thirty, and Filip, whose opening remarks to us were very light-hearted, is getting on my nerves now with his travel stories. So I’m writing to you; I’d rather do it now than when I get home, where I’m not so sure of being undisturbed.

  Are you interested in what goes on at school? In a kind of maternal way—so how are the little ones doing? Well, just fine, because guess what, God Almighty in person has descended into their midst and will be teaching them maths and descriptive geometry under the name of Artur Kupfer. So now Kupfer’s got his claws into me. I had a little fencing match with him yesterday in the very first lesson, a kind of preliminary skirmish, it gives me some idea of what’s coming. Then good old Prochaska was in here again, he really is going to retire after this year and is getting all tearful in his Bohemian accent. Well-Then is also still around; all the airs he put on about the Matura would have made the ends of his moustache twirl if he had one—but luckily he doesn’t. We don’t know the rest of the staff teaching us yet, but we expect them to be first-class, Niesset, Borchert and other big names. Think yourself well out of it!

  Many thanks for the card from Bologna. I’d have been even happier to get one by inland post saying you were back. But of course the lady’s not supposed to write first. Lisa, when are you finally going to stop tormenting me with all this waiting? I want so little from you. Is it still too much? You can answer that question with yes if you like, but you must answer it. Will you do that, Lisa? At once? Please do!

  Here comes the school servant with the provisional timetable. Filip reads out the names of the teachers. Borchert for French—ugh! Hussak for physics, great! Niesset for Latin, again ugh! Seelig for logic, three cheers! Riedl for natural history, doesn’t deserve even ‘ugh!’ Well, it could have been worse. But I don’t want to bore you.

  I’d have liked to tell you more: how dismal it is to have Lengsfeld sitting at your desk now, how terribly dismal! Did you think of that at all? And now it occurs to me that I haven’t even asked why you left school. I hope to hear it from your own lips.

  And not just that. I’d like to hear so much else from you, Lisa. Will you tell me?

  Yours.

  No signature. That was their way. As it happened, they only occasionally wrote to each other, or rather Kurt wrote Lisa three or four letters, and then Lisa scribbled a skimpy answer on a note, some kind of apology, something to fix their next meeting (which was then called off), and after that a few affectionate words hastily put down all anyhow, no salutation, no signature, just the bare bones of a letter.

  Kurt’s letters were always several times longer. He felt it necessary to write everything down, he always had far too much to say, and as he never had a chance to say it he wrote it all down indiscriminately, without stopping to think that his words would be out of date by the time Lisa saw them. Words of love age even as they are spoken. Before you have really finished saying them, before the person to whom they are spoken can catch them in their youth, just as you meant them, they have lost their first bloom. And words of love on paper age even faster. Events catch up with them, fade them, leave them meaningless to the recipient’s eye. They have been on the way too long, nothing is left of the secret of their origin, only the obvious nature of their aim stands there four-square in its dusty nakedness—and yet they are bashful and amazed, and don’t know what to do with themselves. You put those words down somewhere, anywhere that hap
pens to be empty, and sometimes that can be the place that’s right for them, but if so it’s by pure chance… it isn’t easy to deal with written words. And even with spoken words, only a willing, affectionate mind knows what to do with them, a mind that also pays attention to the pauses between them, and fits itself into them as if into a trough between warm waves on a wide, wide sea, letting the air stream over them, breathing them happily in, looking up at the sky and only the sky…

  Afterwards, Kurt felt annoyed about that letter. It seemed to him particularly badly written and superficial—and yet he had written it out of a sense of great need. Lisa won’t notice any of that, he thought in hopeless desperation. Because I always worry about how she may be feeling in advance. She might happen to be in a cheerful mood, and because she doesn’t much like “difficult” letters anyway, she wouldn’t have liked one that said any more. Oh, great—I love in the subjunctive mood of the future perfect tense. I ought to let Niesset know. Translate for us, Gerber, please! Ex abrupto! Does a man like Niesset ever write love letters? Not letters like that, anyway. I’m the only one who writes letters like that. And I think well of myself for doing it—what a fool I am.

  At the end of the lesson, Filip was surrounded and involved in a debate about the Matura. Other groups of students were also discussing the day’s events.

  “This is getting serious, my children!” Blank nodded, looking melancholy. “If even good old Filip is talking like that…”

  “He only wanted to show off,” said Mertens.

  “You don’t say so! They all want to show off, of course they do—but there’s something in it this time. This is when the crunch comes.”

  “I wish I had the whole wretched thing behind me,” muttered Schleich, sounding depressed.

  No one said anything. Kaulich tried for a change of mood.

  “Look, we can feel sure Prochaska will tell us the questions. At least that’s something.”

  “And how about Kupfer? And Niesset? And Borchert? Don’t they mean anything? That old paralytic Prochaska wouldn’t have dared to fail anyone, anyway.”

  “Calling the only decent one among them names now, are we? We’re too hard on him.”

  “The confession of a sensitive soul!”

  Körner, at whom this sally was directed, took offence and walked off. The others were strolling towards the exit as well. Just as Filip passed them, Gerald was saying gloomily, “The hell with this whole school!” Once again, Filip appeared not to have heard. Maybe he shared that opinion himself. What he had said about the marginal importance of his subject for the Matura had sounded very forced. But Mattusch had been genuinely bawling them out, and Prochaska had been genuinely sad, and finally, Filip had genuinely thought that he had to say something…

  The eighth-year students were tacitly allowed to light cigarettes outside the school building, although strictly speaking they, too, were forbidden to smoke “in the vicinity of the school”.

  “What do we really make of Niesset?” asked Klemm. “Is he worse than Borchert or not?

  “They’re both about as bad as each other. A dead heat, coming in just behind God Almighty Kupfer.” Lengsfeld said that with such a wry expression that several of the students began to laugh.

  “It’s not funny,” objected Mertens. “Just imagine if we’d had Birdie for maths as well.” By Birdie he meant Professor Hussak, who had acquired this nickname because he called the students “my birdies”. “Wouldn’t it have been terrific? Birdie instead of God Almighty Kupfer!”

  “For Heaven’s sake, can’t any of you stop your teeth chattering?” Kurt was impatient on his own behalf, too; it was worrying to find the others confirming his fear of Kupfer. “We do have God Almighty Kupfer, and there’s nothing to be done about it. But if you’re going to be scared shitless before he even lifts a finger, you’ll be falling at his feet like ripe plums later. Why are you all so frightened of him?”

  “Not everyone’s as good at maths as you, my dear Gerber!”

  “And thank goodness not everyone’s such a fool as you, my dear Schönthal! We none of us know so much that we’re immune to failing. Not even you!”

  “Oh, really? I don’t know about that.”

  “Well, I do. What’s more, there’s no point in arguing about what we know or don’t know. We’d do better to think how we can disarm God Almighty Kupfer!”

  “I don’t know what use that would be!” Brodetzky was considered one of the best of the year at maths, and was not in the least afraid. It would have been extremely awkward for him to get involved in any mass protest that could do him no good. “God Almighty Kupfer is only a teacher like any other. It’s normal for someone who knows a subject to pass and someone who doesn’t know it to fail. Never mind God Almighty Kupfer—”

  “Which isn’t as hard as all that!” said Pollak, finishing his sentence. He felt as sure of himself in maths as Brodetzky, and had no plans to rebel.

  Slowly, the groups of students dispersed, and in the end only Kurt and Lewy were left.

  Kurt looked at the thin figure with the strangely old face for a long time. He had sympathetic feelings for Lewy—now, in particular—as the most dismal proof of Kupfer’s machinations. Because of them, Lewy had been forced to repeat a year twice, and had therefore been at the school for two years more than the rest of them. Kurt would have liked to show his friendship in some way—but Lewy dismissed any sympathy with cold contempt. He seemed indifferent to his own fate at this school. He didn’t bother much about the other teachers, either. But he had a fanatical hatred of Kupfer, and would even have been ready to sacrifice his twenty-first year of life to it.

  “Well, what do you think?” asked Kurt.

  Lewy shrugged his shoulders. He spoke monotonously, his tone suggesting a lack of interest, his lips twisted ironically, and he was probably well aware that most people put that down to arrogance on his part. “God Almighty Kupfer has outwitted people better than that lot. But he’ll pass them all.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid he will. That’s sad.”

  Lewy snapped his fingers. “If you ask me, Lisa leaving is even sadder. Such a nice, firm body!” A lascivious look came over his face.

  What was all this? Intentional or chance? Kurt was afraid of giving himself away, and hardly knew what to reply.

  Lewy didn’t seem to notice his embarrassment.

  “It’s too stupid. The only one of the girls who might have been good for something.”

  Kurt bit his lip. He did not like such conversations in the least. And he could do nothing about it, or Lewy would be dropping some remark tomorrow and the whole class would happily seize on it.

  However, Lewy’s ideas had a logic of their own. “And by the way,” he said, “there’s a new dancer appearing at the Cockatoo Club tonight. A friend of mine knows her from her last engagement. Like to come with us?”

  “No, thanks. I’m expecting my parents back from their summer holiday this evening.”

  “Well, maybe next time.”

  “Maybe. And please—no meaningful hints at school tomorrow!”

  “Meaningful hints? What kind of hints?”

  “Oh, nothing. See you tomorrow.”

  They said goodbye, and Kurt went into the stationer’s shop near the school. “Rudolf Lazar. School Supplies,” said the sign. The owner, an ever-friendly man with a goatee beard and a way of cracking jokes containing sly double entendres that he stepped up according to the age of his customer, said good day. “And what may I have the honour of selling you, Herr Gerber?”

  Kurt asked for a number of exercise books, refills for the pen he used in his compasses, and an eraser.

  “A rubber, yes, to be sure, guaranteed unbreakable,” the stationer assured him, disappearing into the premises behind the shop.

  Kurt took the letter to Lisa out of his pocket. “Lewy sends regards,” he wrote on the back.

  “Anything else?” The stationer had come back with what he had asked for.

  “Yes, an env
elope, please.”

  “A nice cold envelope, just coming.”

  Kurt addressed the letter there and then. As he was writing “Frl.” the stationer said, “I’d think a little less about the Fräuleins today if I were you, Herr Gerber. The study of Fräuleins isn’t on the curriculum for the Matura.”

  Really, this was too much. Had no one anything better to do than think about the Matura?

  “That’s my business, Herr Lazar!”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of interfering in your business, which you’re quite right, is none of mine, although—”

  Kurt cut him short abruptly, but he couldn’t avert a mollifying, “Well, well, well! I didn’t know it was so serious, I’m sure the young lady will be pleased. Such a handsome young gentleman…”

  At this point Kurt gave up. He was unable to think of an answer, so he paid and walked home slowly, his head bent. When the letter began to feel moist in his hand, he hastily put it into the nearest postbox.

  Kurt does nothing to break the awkward silence that fell between him and his parents once they had arrived home and greeted each other. At supper it is not so noticeable, but then it becomes oppressive and intolerable. A sense of stagnation builds up in the air. His mother opens her mouth to say something several times, but can’t begin. Kurt himself is not even searching for a remark. And as for his father, he just wants to rest after the stress of the journey home, and before the day-long business meetings that always put such a strain on him, since he holds a leading position in his firm. His father has other anxieties. It costs him an effort to tear his mind away from them and, finally, ask his son what has been going on at school.

  Nothing, says Kurt, without looking up.

  Did he really, his father enquired, mean nothing?

  Really nothing. What, Kurt asks, does his father think could have happened on only the second day back at school?

  That was exactly what he had asked, his father insists.

  And that was exactly the answer he had given, replies Kurt angrily.