Young Gerber

by Friedrich Torberg

  “I wouldn’t say so myself!” Schönthal has the nerve to say that out loud. He is seething with anger because his column of Very Goods has actually been disfigured by a mere Good in mathematics. It would have been so delightful—Benda being dead—for Schönthal to be the only one marked Very Good in all subjects. Damn Kupfer!

  The identity of those predicted to fail gradually emerges. And while other students surround them, while gloomy and useless assumptions cast their shadow, in another corner Pollak is engaged in fierce argument with Brodetzky, hissing furiously in his face that he doesn’t deserve his Very Good, and owes it only to the patronage he has had, while Scholz stands listening and nodding his large hippopotamus head—well, yes, very annoying, it has to be admitted…

  Kurt’s mother herself opens the door to him, putting a finger to her lips. Then she takes Kurt into his room and sits down opposite him. Only now does Kurt see that her eyes are red with weeping.

  Father must have died, he thinks, and the room seems to sway around him. Now nothing matters. Nothing.

  He waits to hear it.

  But his mother raises her head and asks, carefully controlling her voice, what his report is like.

  As if that mattered now! Is she trying to spare him?

  “Why have you been crying, Mother?”

  “Me—”

  But then she bursts into torrents of tears again, and from her broken, stammered remarks Kurt gathers that—that his father is not dead. He has only had a very severe heart attack, with his stertorous breath coming short; little veins burst with the strain of it and he spat blood, but now he has had an injection and Dr Kron is with him.

  His father is alive. So it isn’t true that nothing matters now. Far from it.

  How low I’ve sunk—down to animal level! I rejoiced—I actually rejoiced to think that now none of it would matter. Oh, God in heaven, thank you!

  Kurt has a solemn vision of himself in a long black robe, a figure of priestly stature, arms outspread, saying in a loud voice, “In the face of death, may the school be thrice accursed! All evil comes from the school!” The priest raises and lowers his arms three times. Then he has gone. (Not for ever. He did appear to Kurt once more, but that was much later, and everything was different.)

  Kurt looks up and sees that his mother is still in tears. He goes over to her and caresses her, a little clumsily. “It will be all right.”

  Slowly, his mother calms down and dries her tears. “But you haven’t told me about your report yet!”

  “So I haven’t!” With forced laughter, Kurt considers what to say. “Well, this will make you laugh: I have two marks of Unsatisfactory from Kupfer.” And he takes out the paper and acts as if he really expected his mother to laugh with him.

  His mother has collapsed into sobs again. “Dear God!” she whispers with trembling lips. “And his first question was: where’s the boy with his report? What’s to be done now, what’s to be done now?…”

  Kurt paces up and down the room as if a thousand devils were after him. He doesn’t know what to say. His breath sounds like a croak.

  In the hall outside, a man’s voice is heard asking for the lady of the house.

  Kurt’s mother wipes her face a couple of times, hastily straightens her clothes and goes out. Kurt follows, since she leaves the door open.

  Well, says Dr Kron, at least the worst is over, the patient has had another injection and now he is asleep. If anything happens they must phone him at once, whatever the time of day.

  With a faint whimper, his mother disappears.

  “Kurt,” says the doctor, his voice husky, “make sure your father has peace and quiet over the next few days. Absolute peace and quiet. No excitement, nothing at all to agitate him. I can say this to you, I know: his heart wouldn’t stand up to another attack like that. Do you understand me? Well then, I’ll be off—or is there anything else you want to ask?”

  “Yes—doctor, you say nothing to agitate him—only the reports were given out at school today, and—”

  “And what?”

  “The reports—at school—”

  “Yes, yes, what about it?”

  “And I’m going to have to tell him that—well, in short, I have two marks of Unsatisfactory, and that’s sure to agitate him.”

  Agitate him? Why? Dr Kron asks, perplexed. Two marks of Unsatisfactory, yes, but that’s nothing to worry about, least of all when a man has just had a close encounter with the Grim Reaper.

  “But my father thinks if I get marks like that, I’m going to fail the Matura!”

  “Oh, come along! Fail the Matura! That’s a good joke! Ho, ho!” Dr Kron claps him benevolently on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry, Kurt, I’ll soon talk your father out of any such notions. You’ll have to tell him, of course—but you just leave it to me to see that he doesn’t make a great drama out of such a little thing!”

  With this, Dr Kron shakes hands with Kurt and nods to him, amusement in his eyes wrinkling up the little folds of skin around them. He seems to find the idea really entertaining.

  “Fail the Matura!” he repeats at the door, with an air of comic concern. “Whoever heard anything like it?”

  Kurt could have embraced him. At long last, someone with a healthy outlook.

  He goes back into his room.

  There’s the chair where his mother sat in tears. There is the report. Mathematics: Unsatisfactory. Descriptive geometry: Unsatisfactory. There is his desk with exercise books and textbooks and the other musty old study aids lying on it, there is his diary up on the wall, with the note “Afternoon, Kupfer” written in for days ahead in the Afternoon columns. That is all it takes to make his healthy outlook fall sick again.

  And in another room his father’s breath is still gasping after the struggle with death that he so narrowly survived.

  Where’s the boy with his report?

  VIII

  The Hard Path to Failure

  TOO MANY DOUBTFUL GLANCES were turned on Kurt these days. And he lost what had so far enabled him to defy all dangers: his spirit of contradiction. He was not resigned, he still took an interest in his fate, and that was the worst of it; he would agree with everyone who came along and put his oar in, giving advice or an opinion, with hope or with concern, with condescension or pomposity—he would let anyone convince him for the moment. Indifference still amounts to something like an opinion of your own, although of the most makeshift nature. Kurt didn’t even have that.

  Someone might come along expressing horror: “For Heaven’s sake, what’s all this I hear about your poor showing at school—you’re not actually going to fail the Matura, are you?” Another might come along and tell him, “Don’t lose heart, it will be all right!” Yet another might come out with downright malicious mockery—“Fancy that, clever Kurt Gerber, prodigy that he was, can’t even do as well as thousands of average students!” Another would express lofty consolation: “Think nothing of it, plenty of important people have failed exams in their time!” Yet another might say, “You’ll do it!” and the next comer would say, “You’ll never do it.” And always whoever happened to be speaking to him seemed to make the only valid point. Kurt would listen and nod. “Yes, of course, that’s how it is, you’re right, how could I have thought?…” And five minutes later the next to speak to him would be right.

  So he staggered through the day, zigzagging between many positive and many negative opinions, none of them his own. It could happen that he stood in front of a teacher testing him with lips compressed, giving no answers—and then, in fear and trembling, ask the same teacher at the end of the lesson not to give him an Unsatisfactory, he had had a headache that made him unable to say a single word.

  But worst of all, he had to convince himself of his own lies. And it takes seven more lies to atone for one. Seven again and again. No one could take the burden of a single lie from his shoulders. They were all too busy with their own lies.

  So he went on lying to himself, and lying to his father, w
ho was gradually improving and was full of hope for a complete recovery. With some shameless thinking on the subject, Kurt managed to present the two marks of Unsatisfactory so that they almost looked like a guarantee of passing the Matura, and he did not sweat as he described a conversation with Kupfer… Believe it or not, Father, but he gave me those two marks of Unsatisfactory just for form’s sake, because I was so weak in his subjects at the beginning of the year. His own words—forgive me—were: “I’d prefer, and I expect you would prefer it too, for you to do badly during the early part of the semester and then be authorized to take the Matura, rather than for me to hand you a mark of Satisfactory now, and thus maybe lull you into a sense of security, unreliable and light-minded as you are, Gerber…” Yes, he assured his father, that was what Kupfer had said, it was indeed surprising, but the main thing was that it almost meant a guarantee, and so it did.

  His father said, “Hmm,” and sounded a little suspicious, but as Kurt went on from lie to lie, putting together an ever stronger chain of evidence, he let his doubts drop and forced himself to believe in it. He was feeling tired himself.

  But one day clouds seemed to hang low and heavy over the dining table at lunch, and when his mother left the room and his father immediately began, “Why have you been telling me lies?” Kurt knew what had happened. His father had made enquiries at school.

  Out of pure helplessness, Kurt raised his eyebrows, pretending not to understand. “But what—”

  “You failed in Kupfer’s subjects.”

  Kurt clung to the crumbling remains of his lie. “You can’t very well call it failing in the middle of the school year—and then, as I told you—”

  “Yes. As you told me. And did you tell me that you had a detention and forged my signature?”

  Kurt did not reply.

  “You tell lies,” said his father. “You forge signatures. You deceive me and others. You go behind my back. What am I to do with you?”

  That last sentence was spoken in a loud, trembling voice, and it was a genuine question. His father sat there waiting for an answer. His clenched fist hammered up and down rapidly on the table top, his lips were narrowed and his breath came fast.

  No agitation—his heart wouldn’t stand up to another attack like that—fail the Matura—that’s a good joke. Why does he take it so seriously? Why does he force himself to get agitated? He doesn’t have to.

  Kurt almost felt contempt, even hatred for his father. Only for a moment, but that was enough.

  He leant against the wall, pale, with his head thrown back. His fingers sought support and didn’t find it.

  His father had risen to his feet as well. He was shaking, and his words shook too, as if his whole body was uttering them.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing—there I stand in front of that nobody Kupfer like a prisoner in the dock—I dare not look into his eyes. So your fine son forges signatures, he’s going from bad to worse. I have to put up with that, damn you—what’s to become of you? I had to lie myself, say, Oh yes, I hadn’t remembered at once, but that was my signature, I said. You—aren’t you ashamed of yourself, deeply ashamed?…”

  His father had come closer and closer, and Kurt retreated slowly to the door. No, he was not ashamed of himself, he felt nothing. His feelings were dulled, he heard the words and could not take in their meaning, saw his father’s hand slowly rise in the air before him and then drop again without knowing what it meant, and then he was standing by the door, opening it, went unsteadily up to his room, stared at his books like a calf staring at the slaughterer’s axe, was suddenly in his hat and coat, wandering along the cold streets, taking an interest in the most insignificant things—and then it all went abruptly through his brain, he recapitulated, he was living through the story of his life, which did not run: “In his family circle, Kurt Gerber would sometimes talk about his schooldays, and his experiences of the time.” Although he didn’t know why, it was more along the lines of: “And suddenly Kurt was standing outside the building where Lisa lived—but not right outside it, and he didn’t want to go in, he didn’t want anything… would it always be like this? Always? Why was it all happening? The days were waiting for him, tomorrow, and the day after, and every day they were waiting for him, waiting to intercept him and send him on, each to the next day, the days were playing catch with him, going round and round in circles, never-ending circles…”

  Kurt gave up his private studies with Altschul and Nowak. Their differences of opinion began when he stopped paying attention to the other two and made jokes in reply to their corrections. Then he imitated the teachers, would suddenly make an eloquent speech attacking the shameful life of secondary education, embarked on boring mathematical debates, only to cut them suddenly short by observing that nothing mattered anyway—until one day Altschul rather brusquely faced him with the alternatives of working with them as he had at first, or not coming any more. This conclusion was not unwelcome to Kurt, who got to his feet with an air of offence, flung all the contempt at the two model students that it is possible to fling at model students, and slammed the door behind him without a goodbye. After that he felt curiously relieved, as if he had brought something to an end, and it was some time since he had managed to do that; it restored his own freedom and resolution again, and allowed him to see more than merely himself.

  Hundreds of things happened in a single day, hour after hour, and you didn’t know why, or what the outcome would be. If they represented the result of certain considerations, what were the links in the chain? What was achieved by marking Zasche Unsatisfactory? Zasche, who would plod through life impassive as a beast of burden, who needed a Matura certificate for some kind of professional post waiting ready for him, Zasche who never did anything to hurt anyone, and was no more superfluous in the world than thousands of others who were full of their own importance. What good would it do anyone for Mertens to stand in front of the blackboard white as chalk, while he was given time to think about something he had never understood? Where was it all going? Why were students who all sat here together in their first year, many long years ago, all on a par at the time—why were they now divided up, sorted out, identified more clearly than they wanted to be identified themselves? Very well, so admittedly one had more talent than another, one would use it better than another, was more successful, was marked Very Good, and the other was not. But Unsatisfactory? Not Satisfactory? Who deserves to be told, “You are not satisfactory”? Who had given the teaching staff, and every one of its members, the right to determine the course of the students’ lives for decades to come? To make the inviolable decision, once and for all, that this one could reach for the future complacently, sure that nothing would go wrong for him, while that one collapsed and crouched, a shipwrecked sailor on a desert island, surrounded by a desolate sea, desperately looking out to see if a little white dot wouldn’t appear on the inexorably regular horizon, a little white dot that might mean mercy or chance or delusion?

  The professors looking askance behind their official-looking glasses have their argument ready: “Those who are not suitable for high school shouldn’t be there.” Fair enough. But who decides on suitability? Let’s come to you, Professor So-and-so, sir. Who knows what your verdict would have been on this or that student if you, sir, forgive my mentioning it, had moved your bowels more easily on a certain day, or if your wife, sir, had not burnt the morning coffee? And even assuming that you came to your decision objectively and conscientiously—what would happen if the whole teaching staff were changed, and another set of professors were brought in to make the decisions? Is it quite impossible that Brodetzky might fail, and Hobbelmann pass with distinction? And further assuming that, even so, as providence will have it, Hobbelmann fails and Brodetzky passes with distinction—what does that prove? That Hobbelmann is unsuitable? That he never ought to have gone to high school at all?

  Did you, Professor So-and-so, sir, ever ask anyone if you ought to become a teacher? If you were suitable? And would you
then have submitted meekly to a negative decision that, like yours now, could have been the result of a mosquito bite?

  Probably not. And no one can expect it. You have won the right on paper to be a professor in roughly the same way as you now cause others to win the right on paper to leave school with a Matura certificate. And those to whom you owe that right have won it in the same way, and those before them too, and so on, back and back… that’s enough. There could be only one way out: for the embryo to say whether it ought to come into the world at all. Absurd, don’t you agree? But if that possibility did exist—who, who, who would have the right to tell the embryo it wasn’t suitable to be born?

  And who has the right to tell a young man who is alive, and may already be able to point to some achievement of his own—stopping a runaway horse, refraining from crushing a flower—whose only wish is to live through a certain part of his life, on which he embarked when he had no will of his own, but was wax in the hands of those who sent him to school and those to whom he was sent; whose existence makes your own possible, gives it a point, because you would not be a professor without him; whose every breath earns him the right to draw the next, just like the rest of us, but who has many more breaths to draw ahead of him than you do—who has the right to tell such a young man, “You’re not suitable!” because he has forgotten a formula, or a historical date, or the future perfect tense of a verb? Who has the right to cast the first stone, a stone falling into the smooth surface of his youth where the stone sinks deep, making ripples run out from his soul to the shores of torment and back to his soul again; circles that will be imprinted on him for ever, unless the great circle forms that reaches beyond the shore and into death—does every chance-come schoolteacher have that right?

  We can’t change world affairs, neither you, Professor So-and-so, sir, member of salaried class number such-and-such, nor I, Kurt Gerber, student number such-and-such in the register. But I can try to convince you of your nonentity, to get you to see that you have to leave the wretched blind alley into which you have sent so many people on their way through life, and do it as unobtrusively as possible. It’s your fault that it is a blind alley, because when we met you we were willing to take a more pleasant path, and it was up to you to lead us, but you led us into the blind alley; we have now fled from it, averting our faces, into the wide road—and whether I get away unscathed or not, whether I fail or not, these are my last months at school. Oh yes, I’ll soon make up for what I missed. But not in the way you expect.