Young Gerber

by Friedrich Torberg

  The doldrums? Why was he going on about being becalmed at sea? “Hello,” says Kurt, taking Boby’s proffered hand.

  “That’s better!” laughs Boby Urban. “I thought your joy at seeing me again had stopped up your mouth.”

  Someone is laughing. Where does that laughter come from. He’s still laughing. I suppose I’d better laugh too. Ha, ha. How was that?

  “Know what I’m smiling over, my little lost lamb?”

  No. No idea. What are you smiling over? Kurt shakes his head.

  “I’m smiling all over my face!” chuckles Boby.

  I know that one, thinks Kurt. And suddenly he realizes that he is glad to know the joke already. He doesn’t know why, but he is glad—so he laughs too, a loud roar of laughter.

  “I knew it!” nods Boby. “Good old Boby Urban”—he seems to be in high good humour, and practically belches the U of his surname—“he can always cheer the place up. Spray essence of Boby Urban around! It will get into the tiniest nooks and crannies.”

  And slowly, at first to his own astonishment, Kurt finds himself drawn into a conversation, question and answer and counter-question, easy and unforced; if he has nothing to say then he says nothing, and gives no offence.

  Where was Kurt off to, asks Boby. Hadn’t he said he was going up to see Paul Weismann recently? They’d all expected him, but he never turned up. What was the matter with him?

  Kurt doesn’t know what to reply—he genuinely doesn’t know. What was the matter with him? Wait… wasn’t that when I just missed the tram? No, that wasn’t it… oh, now I know. I think I’ve tracked down the reason. Yes. But I can’t tell him that…

  Lisa had been really cross, adds Boby. And quite right, too. Fancy just not turning up when a lady invites you.

  Hmm. To say that—no, I can’t tell him it was because of Lisa. But for other reasons, too.

  “You see, Boby, I don’t really like entertainments of that kind. Sitting together in the evening—yes. But a studio party—it was a studio party, wasn’t it?—you feel as if you absolutely have to—“”

  “Nonsense. We just call it a studio party so that it’ll look like something familiar. We don’t really set store by such things. Thank Heaven, we have other opportunities.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.” Kurt stops short, suddenly distressed. Then, just for something to say, he asks where Boby is going now.

  Boby is on his way to meet Paul Weismann. The coffee house is quite close; why doesn’t Kurt join them? Does he have time?

  Not really.

  Oh. Why not?

  “Well, yes, it’ll be all right,” says Kurt. And he goes to the coffee house with Boby Urban…

  Two hours later, when Kurt Gerber climbed the stairs to Professor Ruprecht’s apartment, he thought he felt a little part of the cheerful mood, which he had had some difficulty in sharing at first, now ebbing away with every step. And once the door had been opened to him there was almost none of it left. Or only enough at least to be aware of the unfriendly reception that Professor Ruprecht gave him.

  Professor Ruprecht, who taught mathematics and descriptive geometry at a different school, stood in the doorway in an open-necked shirt and red check jacket, and with his bushy facial hair and broad shoulders looked like a woodcutter. His remarks were inhospitable to match, and were spoken in a strong Sudeten German accent.

  “Could have turned up earlier, eh? I’ve been waiting an hour. Waste of my time!”

  Kurt went red, and stammered out a few apologies: the tram had been—

  “All right, the tram, of course. Always the same excuse.” Professor Ruprecht shook his head with a raucous laugh. Then he pointed to one of the basket chairs round the little table in the front hall. His voice became a little friendlier. “We can’t use my study at the moment. Never mind. I can’t give you a lesson today anyway, you should have turned up earlier. You need every lesson you can get. Right, sit down, then.”

  Kurt obeyed almost anxiously. What kind of a “sit down” was that?

  “Well then,” said Professor Ruprecht, lounging at his ease in another chair, “so you’re in a bad way with mathematics. And descriptive geometry too. So I hear from my colleague Kupfer and your father. How did the marking go?”

  A few minutes ago Kurt would have snapped back that he supposed he’d know if he had spoken to Kupfer. Now he said tonelessly, “Unsatisfactory in both.”

  “I see. I see. How is it going to be with your Matura in a few weeks’ time? We’ll have our work cut out for us. Why didn’t you come to your senses sooner?”

  Kurt did not reply.

  Professor Ruprecht stroked his moustache, took a deep breath, and said:

  “Well—we’ll have to plunge in. We’ll make a start very soon.” He took out his notebook, opened it at the calendar and his timetable and laid it flat on the table. “The Easter holidays begin on Monday… I tell you what, take a bit of a rest then first, I could do with one myself. Today is Friday, so when shall we start?”

  “Whenever you like.”

  “Right, then shall we say—shall we say… Wednesday? Will that suit you?”

  “Of course, Professor Ruprecht, sir.”

  “Good. Wednesday at ten, then. You’d better make a note of that.”

  Without thinking, Kurt put his hand to his breast pocket, although he wasn’t carrying a student diary with him these days.

  “No notebook?” asked Professor Ruprecht impatiently. “Want me to lend you a piece of paper?”

  “No, that’s all right, thanks, I have something here,” said Kurt. He had found a card in his left-hand pocket, but for the moment he couldn’t remember how it came to be there. He took it out.

  It was Paul Weismann’s visiting card, with his address and telephone number. Kurt turned it over. He went pale.

  On the back of the card he had written: Wednesday, ten o’clock.

  Kurt stared at the letters. All the conflict of his life opened up like a chasm before him.

  Wednesday, ten o’clock: that was when he was to phone the painter Paul Weismann to arrange to meet at his studio.

  Wednesday, ten o’clock: that was when he was to go for a maths lesson with Professor Adolf Ruprecht.

  Wednesday, ten o’clock; Wednesday, ten o’clock.

  “Well, does it take so long to think about it?”

  Kurt pulled himself together and added a few meaningless squiggles to the card.

  “Right, agreed then!” said Professor Ruprecht.

  If he says “Wednesday, ten o’clock” now, I shall strangle him, thought Kurt. But Professor Ruprecht said no more. He rose to his feet and opened the door. “Goodbye.”

  Slowly, treading heavily, Kurt made his way down the stairs.

  All in order, he thought. I’m living out the novel of my life. I just wouldn’t have expected it to be such a trashy story.

  Wednesday, ten o’clock.

  Kurt stepped out of the telephone kiosk near Professor Ruprecht’s apartment and into the street. He hadn’t been able to get connected at first, and when he did he had quite a long conversation with Paul Weismann. Now he wondered, as he was arriving late anyway, might it not be better to call Lisa at once? Paul had advised him to do that, indeed he almost made it a condition. Kurt should establish contact with Lisa again, and then the meeting could be arranged much more easily.

  Kurt was glad to find that Paul took it so seriously. Lisa was angry with him. Did he mean enough to her for that?

  He had walked on, deep in thought, and suddenly he was outside the building where Professor Ruprecht lived. He went upstairs.

  A woman in a blue apron with her hair pinned up opened the door to him. She looked as if she might be the cook.

  “Good morning,” she said in friendly tones. “You’ve come to see my husband, haven’t you? You must be Herr Gerber?”

  Herr Gerber… Kurt said yes.

  “Adolf!” called the woman out loud,
looking in another direction. “Come out, will you? Herr Gerber is here for his coaching.”

  Soon Professor Ruprecht appeared. He growled a greeting to Kurt, took him into his study and turned to go again. “Sit down. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Kurt looked round the room.

  So this is where I’ll be sitting. On a chair. The chair stands at a rectangular table. There are three other chairs at the table, a sofa covered in red velour and an upright piano with a music stand.

  How does there come to be a piano in the room? Who here plays the piano? Maybe Professor Ruprecht himself. No, nonsense; maths teachers don’t play the piano.

  Otherwise the room looks perfectly normal. Of course. How else would it look? Did I expect to find a tall teacher’s lectern and a blackboard here?

  Somehow I think I did. Or no; no, I didn’t.

  Just a room like any other.

  Who lives here?

  “Adolf!” It was the voice of the woman again outside the room. “Adolf, won’t you have a quick bite to eat? A ham sandwich?” Then a door closed. What was all this about?

  Well, all it meant—just a moment—was that someone here was called Adolf, and Adolf was eating a ham sandwich, so all it meant was that maths teachers are perfectly ordinary people.

  No, no, no! For God’s sake! That’s impossible.

  Teachers don’t have any private life. No.

  Kurt hastily opened his book of mathematical formulae, stopped listening to sounds outside the room and stared at the densely packed numbers and signs on the page.

  Adolf? Professor Ruprecht!

  Adolf Ruprecht, Professor of Mathematics and Descriptive Geometry at High School III, came in.

  Kurt looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. He had difficulty in suppressing a smile. This man, he thought, has just been eating a ham sandwich.

  The Professor sat down opposite him, took out his watch and placed it on the table.

  “You can never arrive punctually, I see!” Then, unexpectedly, he grinned. “I thought as much—you slept in for a while.”

  So what? You slept in for a while. These things happen. And if a student does sleep in for a while and arrives late, what about it?

  “Does a young man good to sleep in, am I right?”

  Definitely. How many people are you going to bawl out today, my dear Professor? Do wipe the crumbs off your chin.

  “Then let’s make a start. Where are you weakest in the subject?”

  Everywhere. And you have a bull neck too, you woodcutter.

  “Well?” asked Professor Ruprecht impatiently.

  “I—I think—in integral calculus.”

  “Ah. How’s your knowledge of the formulae? Let me see.”

  Kurt pushed the book of formulae his way.

  x2 cos x dx =

  When the lesson was over (in the course of it Professor Ruprecht, shaking his head, had more than once expressed serious reservations), and Kurt went out into the front hall, the woman was there. She said, “Goodbye,” and he still heard her voice when he was at the door. “Come along in, Adolf, do.”

  Maybe he’s henpecked, thought Kurt as he went down the stairs, and maybe that’s the only reason why so many students at High School III come to grief, racking their poor brains for a thousand reasons.

  I wonder what it’s like when Ruprecht hands out an Unsatisfactory? When Kupfer eats a ham sandwich?

  It’s all so ridiculous…

  Kurt went into a telephone kiosk and called the Dremon Studio. His heart was thudding.

  “Dremon Studio,” said an expressionless, businesslike male voice.

  “Yes—hello—Dr Berwald speaking—can I speak to my sister—” Kurt began.

  “Who is this? I don’t understand you.”

  “Dr Berwald. I’d like to speak to my sister—” Kurt tried again, his voice shaking, but once again he was interrupted.

  “Who? Speak more clearly, please! Who is this?”

  Then Kurt was overcome by a crazy fear that he had been recognized. He hung up and hurried out of the kiosk.

  Out in the fresh air, it all seemed very comical. I’m not responsible for my actions, he thought. I’ll go and see Dr Kron. There’s something about the Matura—shut up, this is ridiculous. Why did I hang up? I ought to have insisted. Shall I call again? I was disturbing them. No, better not. Anyway, she wouldn’t like me to.

  All of a sudden a wild longing for Lisa took hold of him. An ardent longing such as he had never felt before. Lisa seemed to him all that could still give meaning to his life, something to support him, yet he knew that she would never understand that. But it was not hopelessness that surrounded him, nor the despair of unrequited love; it was the fear of being loved but not in the way he wanted, and the even greater fear that that was done intentionally.

  Kurt decided to wait outside Lisa’s workplace that evening.

  The Dremon Studio was in one of those narrow alleys in the city centre that the press of traffic seems to leave alone. The more it races past them, the greater seems their silence. The little alley leads to a square with an old church in it. The rays of the setting sun were not strong enough to light up the cupola entirely, but cast a little glow on it. Milk-white curls of cloud stood in the pale-blue sky, getting whiter and whiter. A gust of mild wind raised a sheet of paper from the asphalt and blew it a little way farther. Then it settled on the ground, calm, satisfied.

  Kurt noticed that it was spring weather, and was glad of it.

  The church clock struck three times for a quarter to seven. Electric light was on in several shop windows. Shutters were being rolled down in front of others. Lisa must turn up soon. People are already coming out of the shops and businesses and into the alley, going away singly or in couples, many of them arm in arm.

  Why isn’t Lisa here yet? Maybe she hasn’t been to work at all? Maybe she isn’t well?

  Ah, there—no. But he must keep a good lookout now, because more and more people are coming into the alley.

  And then no more at all come out. Where is Lisa?

  It’s getting quite dark now.

  Kurt paces restlessly up and down, minutes pass by, a girl looks at him with flashing eyes, stops outside a shop window, then slowly walks on, turning twice more to look at him… She must think me an idiot, thinks Kurt, knowing very well that he is not going to speak to her… wondering whether to go up to the Dremon Studio, which is on the first floor, and its three large windows facing the street are still lit up…

  He takes a couple of hesitant steps—then he has to wait for a car to pass—and as he is going on again Lisa comes out of the building.

  She has not seen him, and goes down the alley towards the church. Kurt slowly follows her, enjoying the sight of her upright gait, and he is sure she, too, would rather he did not accost her outside her workplace.

  She turns right. Kurt walks faster, full of happy hope, and trembling slightly.

  Now he, too, has turned the corner and is three or four steps behind her.

  “Lisa!” Kurt stops. But his throat is so strangely dry that his voice sounds low and rough. Lisa has not heard him; she quickens her pace a little.

  The alley bends, becomes busier, he has to give way to passers-by. There is a car over there.

  At last he is right behind her again.

  And as he calls her name softly once more…

  At the very moment when the word “Lisa!” passes his lips, a figure comes out of the gateway of a building, or through a porch, or maybe just along the side of the wall… the figure of a man who greets her—Kurt hears him, who kisses her hand—Kurt sees him, and next minute he has passed them, having quickly pressed his hat down over his forehead. He doesn’t want Lisa recognizing him, that is his last clear thought, and then there is a rushing inside his head as if it were being hammered from all sides, he must get away fast, fast, didn’t Lisa just call his name in surprise, isn’t she looking at him as he walks away, shaking her head, fast, go on, get out of h
er sight, there, turn right—damn it, not a side street but a barred gateway set back from the street, and locked, now I can’t go either forwards or backwards…

  Groaning with shame and rage, Kurt hunches up his shoulders, makes himself small and presses himself into the niche, face turned away; he can hear footsteps and Lisa’s voice, Lisa’s voice—he can’t make out what she is saying for all the uproar in his head, but she is talking to someone else, probably smiling; Kurt grits his teeth, and clenches his fists in his coat pockets.

  At last he turned. There they went. He watched them go, and the strain ebbed, slowly relaxing him. His arms dropped to his sides.

  There they went. He could still see them. Now they were stopping.

  Then he put his hand in his pocket, it was almost cooler than the black metal thing it held; there was a brief bang, another, the man at Lisa’s side flung his arms in the air, stood motionless for a moment and then collapsed. Kurt Gerber put the revolver back in his pocket, laughed scornfully and stepped out of the dark doorway.

  Of course Kurt Gerber did not do any such thing, he just thought about it, for it had crossed his mind again that he was living in a trashy novel where a dramatic effect like that would have been in place. But once again, Kurt lacked the requisite solid foundations: he had no revolver on him.

  So it was that Kurt, without having spoken to Lisa first, turned up at Paul Weismann’s place on Easter Sunday, when the “studio party” had been arranged. Professor Ruprecht had given him today and the next day off—on Wednesday school began again—and so Kurt set off feeling less gloomy than he had feared.

  Paul Weismann let him in. The room was dimly lit by bulbs fitted into niches in the walls. It was filling up already, with about a dozen people sitting on two low couches or in basket chairs in front of a long, narrow table fitted out as a bar along the wall.

  Several of his friends from Christmas came over to shake hands with Kurt, now and then he was introduced to others whose names he did not take in, and then he saw Lisa sitting in a corner—Lisa—and she didn’t look up when Kurt came in, but went on talking vivaciously to Gretl Blitz, who was the first to greet Kurt. Lisa didn’t seem to notice his presence until he was holding out his hand to her.