Young Gerber

by Friedrich Torberg

  Kurt

  At eleven in the evening Kurt put his key in the lock with a steady hand; the door was not locked, and opened—but the chain was over it, leaving only a small gap through which the front hall was visible. There were lights on.

  Then he heard footsteps, and the sound of the chain being taken off. His father stood there in a long, black dressing gown. He let Kurt past him, closed the door behind him, and went into the living room without a word. Kurt felt that his letter had not had the intended effect. And he also felt something else: anything you stage with elaborate ceremony falls flat when it is put into performance. He felt that nothing is quite as bad as it seems—but thus, in a way, twice as bad too.

  There was a note on his bedside table:

  I am glad to hear that you are firmly resolved, I believe in your good intentions, and I hope you are right to be so optimistic. But one thing I will tell you: if you think that life has nothing in common with school, you are mistaken.

  Things were looking up. Kurt couldn’t explain it to himself, but they were definitely looking up.

  Borchert was the first to say so openly. “You appear to have seen reason, Gerber! And about time, too.”

  Next was Hussak: “There, you see, birdie? You could have done that all along. Very good, sit down.” And as if guessing Kurt’s opinion of such praise, he added, “Carry on like this for another five months, and then—!” That sounded comforting.

  Kurt also successfully passed a test set by Riedl; Mattusch, Prochaska and Seelig had always been happy with his work, and it seemed as if Kupfer had entirely forgotten that there was a student called Gerber in the back row. Did he guess, or did he know, that now Kurt really wanted the teachers to notice him? That he was always well prepared? Maybe Kupfer really did have informers who told him everything, maybe he had learnt that those excellent students Altschul and Nowak had taken Gerber, a candidate for failure, under their wing, and were doing their preparation for class work and tests, which was well known to be conscientious, together with him.

  It had not been easy for Kurt to decide, uninvited, to go and see Altschul at his home. However, one day when by chance he overheard him fixing a time with Nowak: “Right, then, come over to my place earlier today, Nowak, around three, and we’ll go through the history and geography together”—then Kurt made up his mind to carry out his plan. Just after three in the afternoon he rang Altschul’s bell, ignored the surprise that he encountered, and when he couldn’t take any more of the two students’ anxious diversionary tactics he said directly:

  “Look, I don’t want to take up any more of your time—please would you tell me, straight out, will you let me sit in on your studies? What worries me most is God Almighty Kupfer. You’re both much better than me at his subjects, probably better than most of the others.” (Here Kurt paused for a moment, and however ashamed he felt of his present pathetic course of action, he found that he could still despise his two flattered fellow students, who took themselves for mathematical geniuses, as they modestly demurred.) “I’m convinced that you could keep me above water if you agree. I know what bothers you, and I have to say you’re not entirely wrong. But I promise you I wouldn’t disturb the work we did together by cracking jokes or making demagogic speeches or anything. You know about my position at school—so you must be aware that I mean what I say seriously, and you know why I’m saying it to you.”

  At this Altschul waved his hand with a grand gesture at a chair: “Do sit down. Cigarette? Here. We’re just beginning on the geometry homework for tomorrow. An inclined prism, its base ABCD being a parallelogram lying in the second plane of projection, has a lateral edge…”

  Kurt Gerber had now been studying with the two model students for two weeks, day after day.

  And when Kupfer began the important semester exams, when one day he put the small, black notebook down in front of him and slowly leafed through it, when a deathly hush had come over the classroom and many of the students held their breath and ducked down behind the back of the student in front, afraid that Kupfer’s glance might fall on their names at that moment, when their paralysing expectation went on for ever, not ending yet, not yet, oh, let him go ahead and give me Unsatisfactory, I don’t mind anything, just so long as I can get this chunk of rock off my chest—when they were trembling as they had in a hundred lessons before, Kurt Gerber raised his hand suddenly, heard his name at the same moment, and went up to the lectern in the firm knowledge that he would be up to today’s test.

  Kupfer recorded his correct answers with barely perceptible surprise. He ended Kurt’s test by calling the next student up to the board, without any comment at all. The next student was Mertens. He got Unsatisfactory, and was not alone in that, which considerably enhanced the value of Kurt’s achievement.

  After the lesson he went, as usual these days, up to the front of the class to have a word with Altschul and Nowak. They congratulated him effusively, Schönthal asked, with some sarcasm, where all this knowledge of his had come from, and Scholz murmured appreciatively, “No one could have worked out the axial affinity better.” But Kurt wasn’t listening; he was trying to pin down a memory that was raising its bony finger to admonish him, what was it… a night a long time ago, some dreadful night he had already seen and heard this, all of it… when had Scholz clapped him on the shoulder like that?… and then he remembered that it was the night at the beginning of the school year when he had argued with his father about staying at the school… and then he had fallen asleep full of ideas of the future that were oppressing him at the time… and now it had turned out like that…

  Pale, with hunched shoulders, Kurt returned to the back row. Weren’t they all staring at him, all those who had been marked Unsatisfactory today, Mertens, Lengsfeld, Lewy, Zasche, with sad looks and painfully twisted mouths? Weren’t they saying, quietly and slowly and penetratingly, “Traitor”?

  Weinberg made as if to shake his hand again.

  “Kurt, what’s the matter with you? Aren’t you glad to have come up to scratch this time? Kurt!”

  Kurt jumped, and stammered in confusion, “Yes—yes, you’re right—very glad, yes.”

  “You’re also crazy!” said Weinberg. “Come on, let’s go and have a smoke in the toilets.”

  But, in spite of everything, Kurt Gerber sometimes realized, with horror, that a sense of comfortable satisfaction came over him when he gave the right answer, when a difficult question was asked, and the teacher enquired, looking round the class, “Well, who knows that? Benda—Schönthal—Brodetzky—Scholz—Gerber—no one? Ah, Gerber?” How horrible it was to be named in the same breath as those students, how much more horrible to be glad of it! Was there no way out of his dilemma?

  He tried to find one in the classroom, and didn’t. Instead, he found out that the low-achieving students, his former comrades in his battles and victories and defeats, were distancing themselves from him. It was almost a social shift. The proletarians of the class who got low marks and had so far been his faithful friends, while he himself was perhaps the only one to have found an impeccable compromise, let him know with bitter clarity that they thought he should be ashamed of his sudden change of direction. So be it. His uneasiness after his successful test by Kupfer had not deceived him. He was a traitor.

  It did not occur either to them, who were now shunning him, or to Kurt himself, who felt that their present dislike of him was justified, that any single one of them (with the possible exception of Lewy) would have turned traitor in the same way if they had only been able to.

  Mixing with the bright students was no good either. He would have liked to numb his feelings by getting on friendly terms with them—but they were cool to him; perhaps they didn’t really trust him, thinking he wanted to join their select circle only to profit from them, or perhaps they thought he didn’t really know enough, his reputation was too new and not yet established. He was out of place in both sets of students. And sometimes Kurt felt dismally abandoned, almost shunned like a lep
er.

  For that reason, an event that affected the others only fleetingly shook him deeply. One day Benda was absent, and as he had never been away sick everyone noticed at once. When he did not turn up the next day either, some were already passing on rumours about a bad attack of flu; and the day after that, Professor Seelig told the eighth-year students in the first lesson that their fellow student Josef Benda had suddenly died yesterday. “Such an excellent fellow!” he murmured, as the class rose to their feet. Then he asked who had been particularly close to him.

  And no one spoke up. Although they liked Benda, he had not been close to any of the eighth year, his death left no gaping void in anyone. Including Kurt. He had thought highly of Benda, he mourned him as a human being of obvious value. But that wasn’t what troubled him most. He was suddenly made to think: if I die tomorrow—who here will stand up and say they were close to me? Who’s particularly close to me now when I’m among them, we all suffer the same fate, we have for seven years, and I feel it more fervently than they guess? What am I to them except another alphabetical entry in the register? Gerber, Kurt, Number 7. There was no room for more. The staff wanted to reign over a body of students. The arabic numbers 1 to 32 give a roman numeral VIII. Benda, Josef, Number 2. Josef Benda, strong and calm, with eyes always looking inward—no one really knew him, no one was “particularly close to him”.

  It surprised everyone to see Kurt Gerber going around looking so upset today. Why? If he and Benda had been real friends, then he could have spoken up, surely? But that wasn’t it. Perhaps Schönthal had been right in suspecting that Kurt Gerber was sad because Benda had promised to explain two questions for the next maths test at school, and all that had now fallen through. It didn’t sound good, no one would have thought it of Kurt Gerber—but well, school was serious these days…

  An icy, unfeeling chill all around… it couldn’t go on like this.

  Even as he made a plan involving Lisa, he was aware of commonplace morality souring quiet heroism and self-sacrifice, affecting good intentions and their happy conclusion. There was something rotten about it all.

  “Lisa,” he wrote, “I have to be with you, at once.”

  You should only put the essentials in a letter.

  But days passed before her answer came, and days before he saw her—days, so much time, so little time—who knows that, we tumble helplessly back and forth, as if in a dream about flies—and then we emerge somewhere and nothing is as we expected—or else it is exactly as we expected, who knows?

  They were standing outside the coffee house to which he had accompanied her, not quite knowing what else to say. Once again Lisa was acting if this were her first date with him, everything went its familiar way, she was expected by some relations, she said as soon as they met, she must be there in half an hour’s time, and then it had gone on as before, meaningless chatter, not a word of any memories, not a word asking why Kurt had appealed to her and why now.

  Total disappointment is so powerfully convincing that any hopes previously nurtured seem deranged. Astonishment—how could it have turned out like this?—is not quite the same. It is more like: how could I have believed that it would turn out any outer way?

  “There we are.”

  “Yes. I see. Of course.”

  “Well, then…” She puts her hand out to him.

  “It’s snowing,” says Kurt, crazily.

  “Goodbye!” She’s still there.

  “Goodbye—but when, Lisa?”

  “Yes, when. Wait a minute… We’ll all be at Paul Weismann’s studio next Sunday. Will you join us?”

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “Right, then you’ll have to phone him, will you? We’ll see each other up in his studio, then. Goodbye, Kurt.”

  And then her hand has gone, and so has she, and Kurt is still standing there open-mouthed.

  It is snowing.

  Better this way. What kind of “help” did he really imagine she was to bring him? Not the way she’s suddenly beginning to take an interest in the school again. Asking him question after question about it. That was all he needed. How did your last maths exam turn out? What mark did you get for your French test? Terrible.

  No, Lisa can’t help him like that. How pathetic! His love would suddenly be just a schoolboy infatuation again.

  Kurt stamps his feet. Only now does he notice how cold he is.

  It is still snowing.

  But once you have come to terms with the cold, the snow is a gift, falling gently and consolingly as if to show that cold can be more than just cold.

  Kurt has come to terms with the cold. And it’s good that snow is falling.

  The snowflake falling on his lips is like a cool, fleeting kiss. A goodbye kiss.

  He looks up at the falling snow, and his glance takes in the black sky and reappears on the clouded glass panes of the café windows, and glides down to the ground with a large, white snowflake like a many-pointed star.

  Goodbye, Lisa.

  Is there no hope for him, no hope?

  Yes, there is one hope. He just has to make do with what he has. If he tries hard it will be all right.

  His father. He is so happy when Kurt tells him about a success at school. It’s enough to make anyone weep.

  “There, you see, Kurt. I knew you wouldn’t put me to shame. Keep up the good work, do your old father that pleasure.”

  Yes, my dear father, I will. Although I don’t know that a scrap of paper with an official stamp on it means happiness. We carefully hang it on the wall, and never really need it again, and I have the impression that you don’t entirely believe it means happiness either—but I can see it would be bad for you if your only son failed his Matura. No, my dear father, that won’t happen. And in a few days’ time we’ll get our half-year reports, and there won’t be a single Unsatisfactory on mine this time.

  It is only of his father that Kurt is thinking when he goes up to the lectern and is handed the stiff, bluish paper with the familiar text, showing a pre-printed column of subjects on the left, and another column for the marks on the right, always filled in, in regular handwriting, by the class teacher… oh no, this is a silly joke… what curious words emerge when you put a few random letters together side by side… un-sa-tis-fac-tory… Unsatisfactory… mathematics, Unsatisfactory… descriptive geometry, Unsatisfactory… funny, what on earth does it mean… probably nothing, nothing at all… the letters just don’t belong together… they dance around… or no, there they stand up straight again and side by side: Unsatisfactory…

  “Is there anything you want, Gerber? No? Then go back to your place.”

  Yes. Sorry. Is there anything I want? I’m going already. No.

  The others take the piece of paper from his hand, read it and give it back to him in silence. Why should they say anything, when he himself is perfectly calm and composed?

  Calm and composed. That’s right. Not in the least upset or regretful. This piece of paper has no effect. It leaves him indifferent. Exactly.

  And Kurt listens to Kupfer’s comments with an expression of civil interest on his face.

  The marks have turned out really very much as might have been expected, says Kupfer in an offhand manner, no better and no worse than suited the students’ proven achievements. It was, he added, certainly unfortunate that seven students must be regarded as having an overall negative result, but although this half-year report, as the last before the Matura, does have special significance, its verdict is not yet final.

  Kurt sizes up the students sitting there from the way they look. Who are the seven? But all of them are looking gloomy. The gravity of the moment demands it.

  To be sure, Kupfer goes on in a rather firmer voice, to be sure those judged Unsatisfactory in the first half of the year will have great difficulties ahead of them. They had better recollect in good time that they are now in their eighth year, are they not? At that point you should devote the whole year to going full steam ahead. It would be ridiculous to as
sume that one or two better marks in tests just before the reports were delivered could retrieve the situation. (He means me, thought Kurt, no one else, he means me.) That, says Kupfer, would be too comfortable. He had, of course, seen through these tactics on the part of certain gentlemen. (Here Kurt has to smile: a nice name for me. I am “certain gentlemen”.) It ought by now to be obvious that no one could deceive Professor Kupfer! (But no one tried to, Professor Kupfer, sir! I’ve learnt my lesson, sir! Four or five hours a day with those model students Altschul and Nowak, then a few more hours at home alone and in break, and I was always well prepared, sir!) As he had said, there was no final decision yet, that wouldn’t come until after the final exam. The humble could be raised up; those on high could be laid low.

  Ha, ha, ha, chuckle the self-appointed laughers.

  “Well, you know what you have to do. Work! Or else!…”

  He would have liked to hold out the prospect of slavery rather than work, and to add a chilly threat to that “Or else!…” But the way he suddenly breaks off and strides out of the classroom is very effective in itself.

  The slaves, herded together there, wait in meek torment for their lord and master, who knows no mercy, to remove himself.

  Some of the favoured, perhaps chosen to be overseers, are rubbing their hands. Others, condemned to damnation already, stagger away from their desks and are surprised to find that they can still walk anywhere they like.

  You might expect them to crowd together, united by the same fears. But no; they avoid one another. No one wants to stand on the same bottom step as the others, each wants to be the one student to be spared that shame.

  “The most vicious thing of all was what he did to Scheri,” says Hobbelmann, who has an Unsatisfactory himself, but only in French.