Kurt tore a page out of his geography exercise book:
“Anyone who likes the idea of responding to the injustice done to our friend Schleich by showing total passive resistance in Borchert’s next lesson, please sign below.”
And he signed his own name in large lettering under his appeal, folded the sheet of paper, wrote on the back, “Pass it on,” and pushed it over to Lengsfeld, who was dropping off to sleep beside him (Weinberg sat in front of him). Lengsfeld perused it and did not seem enthusiastic.
“What’s the point of that?”
“There isn’t any!” Kurt snapped, handing him the pen. Lengsfeld shrugged and signed. Then he pinched Hobbelmann’s buttock and, as he abruptly turned, held the sheet of paper out to him.
“I wonder if they’ll dare,” remarked Lengsfeld, turning to look at Kurt again.
“Just so long as you do.”
“Count on me.”
“…isn’t that so, my young friend Gerber?” Prochaska had noticed the inattention in the classroom.
“Yes,” said his young friend Gerber, agreeing to he didn’t know what. Then he put his hand out to Lengsfeld.
“Give me your word.”
Lengsfeld shook hands with deliberate man-of-the-world demeanour. He could be sure of Lengsfeld, then.
But what about the others? Kurt peered at the rows ahead. Severin was just passing the note on, and then went back to leafing through the dictionary. So he was doing the French exercise all the same, which was suspicious… The circular letter had now reached Körner, who turned to glance at Kurt. Kurt looked back at him as if by chance, without moving. Körner signed.
Kurt couldn’t see exactly what went on after that. But before his appeal reached the front rows of desks the bell rang for break. Prochaska murmured his usual, “Until next time, then,” and left the classroom. Kurt stayed sitting at his desk. He was feeling slightly uneasy, like the director of a play getting stage fright: would it go down well?
Then Schönthal was coming over to him. He slammed the piece of paper down on the desk like a playing card. “I ask you! What do you think this is going to achieve?”
Kurt did not reply. Without changing his position, he unfolded the paper. In all, there were eight signatures, not counting his own and Lengsfeld’s. Hobbelmann, Lewy, Gerald, Weinberg, Kaulich and Körner had signed. (Körner had written his name very small and illegibly, to be on the safe side.)
Only eight ready to do battle, then? Still—a quarter of the class. No, not a quarter, just eight individuals. Where were the rest? Kurt had guessed that the girls wouldn’t sign. However, he thought he could manage without them. But the twenty-five boys, one of whom had had his face slapped?
“Why didn’t you sign, Schönthal?”
Schönthal bared his gums, which were an angry shade of red. “Because it’s my opinion that it won’t do Schleich or any of us any good to annoy a professor. The professors are stronger than us.”
“As I’ve always said!” Körner’s voice rose from the circle standing round Kurt.
Kurt ignored him. His glance travelled on.
“Klemm?”
“Why ask me? Ask the others.”
“Schleich?”
“I’m personally affected! I can’t sign.”
“Nowak?”
“The note never reached me.”
“Duffek?”
“I’ll sign if everyone else does.”
“Rimmel? Sittig? You? You?”
Silence surrounded him, sank over him, was soft like mud around him on all sides. And suddenly it occurred to him that French was the next lesson, and he hadn’t done his homework. He felt like spitting at the whole bunch of them standing there smirking.
“It’s all nonsense anyway!” said Körner, summing up the general opinion.
Kurt assumed an artificial air of calm. “Speak for yourself!” And seeing that Körner was about to reply, he added, “If it’s all nonsense, then why did you sign?”
That was a mistake. With an argument like that, Kurt was pulling out the rug from under his own feet. Körner knew it, too.
“Don’t you like it? Then I can cross my signature out again.”
“Do that. If you don’t feel for yourself—and that goes for all of you—” (Kurt had jumped up and brought his fist down on the desk) “—if you cowards don’t feel for yourselves what’s at stake, then—” Tired and discouraged, Kurt sat down again. He couldn’t carry on.
“I don’t know why you’re all so worked up.” That was Hippo, dissociating himself. “After all, it’s Schleich’s private business!”
“You’re wrong there, Scholz.” At least Weinberg was backing him. “If something happens to one of us that might just as well happen to anyone else, it’s no one’s private business any longer.”
“The bell will go in a minute,” said Mertens.
“Friends!” Kurt tried one last time. “Will you or will you not go along with me? I can do without your signatures. Your word will be enough!”
His appeal failed to take effect. There was only an indistinct murmur. This rabble don’t even have enough courage to show cowardice, thought Kurt. He picked up the piece of paper. Meanwhile, when no one was looking, Körner had crossed out his signature. Kurt laughed.
“Anyone else want to withdraw his signature? I see. So I have Hobbelmann, Lewy, Gerald, Lengsfeld, Kaulich and Weinberg. Schleich, you have now,” he said, turning to Schleich as if to introduce him to the class, “you have now had your face slapped again by all the others. By your fellow students, Schleich. You’d better say thank you.”
The bell rang. No one said anything, except for Weinberg, who whispered as Borchert was coming into the room, “Bastards!”
Kurt grasped his hand. Weinberg shook hands heartily with him.
I ought to be feeling downcast, thought Kurt. But there’s no time for sentimentalities. Now it’s about something else. It’s about me.
The petty feelings of his own that he had dismissed had only crawled into hiding, and now they came out again like snails.
Kurt read the signatures once more. He now had to write off not just Körner but Lengsfeld too; the appeal had gone to him first, and he had really just signed for the sake of a quiet life. As things stood now, he couldn’t be counted on. What about the rest? Gerald was convinced that the campaign was just, and he could be considered reliable. And he had plump Hobbelmann on his side as well. He wouldn’t venture to do anything in defiance of him (and now Kurt was in a mood to consider all resistance as directed against him personally). Lewy had signed as a joke. Kaulich could afford to sign on a whim, he had nothing to fear. And he had no doubts of Weinberg. So if it was really only those six—but that was crazy.
A decision had to come soon, he thought. Borchert has now finished making his entry in the class register. Else Rieps goes back to her desk with the pen and Borchert opens the textbook—quiet, please, quiet.
His face thrust forward, Kurt stares at the Professor. Who will be called up to the front of the class? Borchert is leafing through his book. More slowly than usual, almost cautiously. Does he guess something? No. He lets his eyes wander over the class. Who will it be? Kurt would like to make his mark—but Borchert notices nothing. He is still looking around. Is he going to test anyone or not?
No! No, Borchert isn’t about to test anyone. He perches on the lectern and says (Kurt jumps at the first sound he utters) casually and even in German, “Now, let’s go on. We’ll look at a poem by Victor Hugo, ‘Les Djinns’. I’ll read it to you myself first.
As he begins, Kurt relaxes, and the enquiring glance that Weinberg gives him seems to express his own thoughts: Borchert is going to let the grass grow over the whole incident, may even apologize to Schleich himself; it’s perfectly possible, of course Borchert must feel he was in the wrong, and he’ll be careful not to expose his authority to any other tests of how much we’ll take, he’s not going to test anyone, he won’t call anyone up to the front –
“Kaulich!”
Kurt leans forward. What’s this? So he’ll venture to go on?
“Translate the first verse.”
Kaulich slowly lumbers to his feet. Kurt’s heart is in his mouth.
Kaulich stands there, awkwardly turning from page to page of the book as if he can’t find his way around it. Perhaps he really did open it at the wrong page, perhaps he’s just pretending.
“Sit down, and pay better attention next time!”
Borchert said that without any emotion, and now he is looking round the classroom again. Kurt might as well resign himself at once. It was chance that Kaulich was called on, chance again that he didn’t answer, and now it will be the turn of one of the eager beavers to be summoned to the front.
“Weinberg!”
Kurt has to bite his lower lip in order to go on looking indifferent.
Weinberg has risen from his desk and is standing there holding the book, eyes looking ahead and not at the page.
“Translate the first verse!”
Weinberg says nothing, just stands there motionless.
“Don’t you hear me? I want you to translate!”
That sounds angrier. But Weinberg grits his teeth. His jaw can be seen working again.
“Very well,” says Borchert, pretending indifference. “Gerber, you translate, will you?”
Now Kurt is no longer surprised. As he stands up he wonders what would happen if he spoke now. For a fraction of a second he feels a scornful desire to do just that. Then, unmoved, he looks at the Professor’s face.
Some time passes. They all look up from their desks. At last Borchert’s slowly spoken words break the silence. “So that’s how it is! Well, we’ll soon see about this. You can sit down, Gerber!”
Kurt had never before felt such dislike of that “we”, that royal plural expressing long-accepted arrogance. It’s a crying shame: one person standing there saying “we”, everyone else sitting below him, all saying “I”. Borchert goes to the lectern desk, pulls out the drawer and opens the register.
“Someone give me a pen!”
Then something wholly unexpected happens: no one does as he says.
“A pen!”
In the front row, Else Rieps moves as if to stand up. It’s not clear whether she is being held back or not—but anyway she stays sitting there.
Deep joy goes through Kurt. They’re not so bad after all, they do have a sense of solidarity when the crunch comes. Borchert will have to reprimand the entire class in his report.
“I can wait,” says Borchert calmly, folding his arms and leaning back. A dull, leaden silence reigns in the room.
Borchert’s eyes are twinkling all the time. He could stand up himself, go over to someone’s desk and pick up a pen or a pencil. Kurt imagines what it would be like (and now it seems to him not impossible), if the owner of the pen said, “Excuse me, Professor Borchert, sir, but that pen is my private property!” Would Borchert dare to confiscate it?
So the whole class will be reported for a breach of discipline. The silence preserved by Kaulich and Weinberg will suddenly look quite different—what amazing luck that Borchert didn’t call on any of those who backed out!
It was nice of Else Rieps not to stand up. He wonders if she’s in love with him? Why not? There’s so much about Kurt to be loved.
Except that Lisa can’t see it. Lisa—why does he have to think of her at this moment?
Because he’s happy, that’s why, very happy for the first time in a long while. Whenever he’s happy he has to think of Lisa. If he walks through a park in the evening, and a white swan, neck held high, passes the weeping willows bending down over the pool, when everything is as soothing and full of relief as tears very quietly shed; or when he stands on a hill at night and sees the thousands of lights in the great city twinkling down below and the stars above; or when he sees anything else beautiful that makes his chest expand, filling it entirely—then he has to think of Lisa, every time, there’s no help for it, and he misses her so much, he doesn’t even long to kiss her, only to feel her breath on him, maybe share her silence, her peace and calm…
Peace and calm! Kurt comes back to his senses with a start. Where is he? In the classroom. And Borchert is still sitting on his desk with his arms folded. And no one moves. A car drives by down in the street. The noise it makes dies away within seconds. Then there is only silence again, almost tangible, like a heavy blanket against your face and then you hear a strange whistling sound.
The noise of someone clearing his throat breaks off abruptly. If the Headmaster were to come in now! But Kurt can’t think that out to the end. The peace and quiet hums like a distant engine. He holds his breath. How much longer is this going on, for goodness’ sake, they’re only halfway through—there—what’s that?
Borchert, without batting an eyelid, with an expressionless face as if nothing has happened, as if what he is doing is perfectly natural—Borchert puts his hand in his pocket, brings out a fountain pen and writes something in the register.
Several people are coughing now, desks are creaking, paper is rustling.
Then Klemm is summoned to the front of the class and translates the first verse of Victor Hugo’s poem “Les Djinns”.
Just as all imaginable misfortune falls on a defeated commander, just as the last of his loyal followers leave him, as he always has to fulfil new conditions, put up with new humiliations—everything now turned against Kurt Gerber.
His defeat in class, which sheer good luck had seemed to avert, was now out in the open. Most of the students were sorry for him, but there were some who could hardly hide their glee behind murmurs of regret.
Even more incredibly: at the end of the lesson Schleich went to see Borchert in the staffroom and apologized to him. Schleich apologized to Borchert. Borchert had called Schleich a cretin, a snotty-nosed youth, useless. In front of the whole class. Borchert had slapped Schleich’s face. In front of thirty others. And Schleich apologized to Borchert—because, well, Professor Borchert would soon have a chance of doing something much worse to Schleich than slapping his face, wouldn’t he? So it was probably better for the student Schleich to admit remorsefully that he was wrong, yes, Professor Borchert, sir, I was stupid, I know, Professor Borchert, sir, you’re under great strain, and I ought not to have contradicted you, forgive me, Professor Borchert, sir, for getting my face slapped by you…
Borchert was gracious enough to forgive him. He also forgave young Kurt Gerber, who turned up in the staffroom shortly after Schleich, and he said he was prepared to let the matter rest there. For indeed, young Gerber had begged him fervently to do so. It was easy to see that he didn’t find it easy to apologize. At first, that is. Later it was better, he knew how to convince himself of the terrible consequences there would be for him if his class teacher, Professor Kupfer, got to know about the incident, he was deeply sorry that he had let himself be carried away without considering such factors, that he… well, in a nutshell, it was Kurt Gerber who succeeded in persuading Borchert to withdraw his report of the whole class for indiscipline. In fact the other professors did read it, in spite of the two red lines crossing it out, and shook their heads—but the almost inevitable influence it would have had on the staff meeting soon to be held to allot the latest marks was averted, what could be salvaged from the wreck had been salvaged; indeed, at the end of his conversation with young Gerber, Professor Borchert had even found a few friendly and encouraging words to say…
That was Kurt Gerber’s greatest failure.
IX
“Wednesday at Ten”, a Trashy Novel
A FEW DAYS LATER the results of the last staff meeting to allot marks were announced. And the fact that Kurt Gerber had again scored Unsatisfactory in maths and descriptive geometry, that his situation now seemed utterly hopeless, that his father received the news in a silence where pain and anger, concern and anxiety seemed to mingle in wordless misery, and he now saw nothing for it but to ask his father, of his own accord, to engage
a private tutor to coach him—all this was like the full stop at the end of a sentence. The machinery of torment worked of its own accord and with inescapable precision, hardly letting all the feelings that he had to cope with enter his mind, and he was greatly surprised when he rang Professor Ruprecht’s bell and the tutor was not at home! Then, when he was told to come back in an hour’s time, he felt that that, too, was right and proper, had been foreseen, shame coming in two instalments, redoubled…
“Hey there, young misery!”
Someone clapped him on the shoulder. Kurt jumped as if a revolver had been held in his face. Then he recognized Boby Urban.
“You certainly look down in the doldrums! What sends you marching past me with your head bent?”
Young Gerber Page 19
