Young Gerber

by Friedrich Torberg

  “Good evening,” she said. Her hand was cold and lifeless. Then, taking no further interest in him, she turned away as if to go on talking to Gretl Blitz, but by now Gretl had moved elsewhere.

  Lisa glanced another way, looking bored, and fidgeted with her dress. Kurt stood in front of her feeling extremely embarrassed, and unsure what to say. Should he apologize at once? Maybe she was only putting on a show. Should he mention Wednesday? Perhaps she really hadn’t seen him…

  Lisa’s arms lie along the arms of her wicker chair, as she looks at Kurt, twisting her lips. “Well?”

  “What—how are you?” Kurt sits down beside her, pretending to be at his ease.

  Lisa turns a look of pert surprise on him. “Why are you interested in that all of a sudden?”

  “Because—I—Lisa, you must believe me when I say that—”

  “Yes?”

  Losing the thread, Kurt shifts his legs uneasily. His eyes wander over the room. The others are talking in loud voices, no one is taking any notice of the two of them; there’s a door covered with wallpaper behind the bar, where does it lead, maybe he could ask Lisa—no, probably better not…

  “You interrogate me as if I were a criminal!” Kurt tries to smile, but Lisa’s expression is unmoved. That leaves him totally helpless and confused. He looks at her intently. All his torment is in his eyes.

  Then, slowly, Lisa’s mouth softens, her lips and her eyes begin to smile and she stands up.

  “Come with me, you terrible fellow! You don’t deserve to have people being nice to you, but I’ll spare you a public lecture just this once.”

  She has gone behind the bar and is opening the little door.

  Kurt follows her. He feels weak at the knees, and has to keep himself for shouting out loud with joy.

  Beyond the door, Lisa switches on the light. It reveals a kind of lumber room full of easels and other artists’ materials, and the one piece of furniture is a sofa. Lisa sits down on it and begins scolding him with mock seriousness for not getting in touch before, and being so childish and so obstinate, and her happy beauty carries him away until, unable to control himself and—

  And then it is as he feared: Lisa’s eyes stay open, looking vacantly up at the ceiling, her arms hang limp at her sides. Kurt holds back for a moment, and then his mouth is on hers.

  She does not resist. But her lips are moist and cool. Kurt stops.

  “Lisa?”

  Lisa sits up. All of a sudden she is only a little girl. “Do we always have to kiss straight away?”

  “Always? How often have I kissed you, then?”

  “Well, and you’ll kiss me often enough yet, Kurt, believe me. But not just now.” Her voice is gentle and comforting. “It’s not always right, don’t you see?” She caresses his hair, and once again she is much, much older than him, superior, almost forgiving.

  Kurt does not entirely understand, however hard he tries. If she loves me, and she told me she did (he feels now as if the last time they were together was at Christmas), then… He takes hold of her again, hesitantly. “Lisa—!”

  She drops a light kiss on his forehead.

  “Come on. We can’t stay here too long.” And unabashed, she precedes Kurt out of the door covered with wallpaper.

  “Put out that fire, men!” cries Paul Weismann, whose eyes happen to fall on them. “Why did you switch on the light?”

  Kurt walks into the room.

  Otto Engelhart, with four others, is lounging on a sofa and lighting a cigarette with an air of indifference.

  His indifference is acting, Kurt suddenly thinks, it’s pretence, it can’t be anything but pretence—he’s playing at indifference the way Lisa is playing with me—why did she lead me into that room—why does she torment me—but she isn’t tormenting me at all, not even that…

  Boby Urban, when Kurt sits down beside him, spreads both arms wide and declaims, “O great Queen, what a wonderful thing is a sex life!”

  “Idiot!” snaps Kurt.

  The other man slowly turns to him and nods a couple of times. “My boy—”

  Something in his voice makes Kurt pay attention. He feels as if it were concealing something on which all the others are agreed, but they are considerate enough to keep it secret from him…

  And then the evening turned out as was to be expected. They were merry as they had been on the best days of the Christmas holidays, and Boby Urban played the piano, and a girl Kurt didn’t know sang chansons, and then the room was darkened, and from the gramophone the soft song of a crooner filled the room, curiously moving in the darkness, and the girl whom Kurt didn’t know showed a lot of interest in him, and the little door covered with wallpaper opened and closed again a couple of times, and once, as it did, the crooner was singing “I can’t give you anything but love”; it couldn’t be helped that he sang that, and Lisa commented on how sensuous the record was and wondered whose good idea it had been to put it on, and then Kurt was set free of the black fear that it was Lisa who was just going into the lumber room, and he loved Lisa very much and ignored the unknown girl beside him, ignored the interest she was showing in him, didn’t want to notice when she touched him as if by chance, and had to in the end, and the hammering senses of his nineteen years, and the warm proximity of a willing female body made the darkness unendurable to him… and he loved Lisa so much… and thought, when the light came on again, that he was now at the end his courtship, and nothing could be denied him any more…

  One of the group going along the street with Kurt at four in the morning, weary and heavy-footed, began praising the gramophone record.

  “I can’t give you anything but love,” Lisa hummed.

  Suddenly she interrupted herself.

  “Terrible trash, really,” she said.

  With those words in his ears, Kurt said goodbye. Trash. A trashy novel. All trash.

  And it was also trashy that the unknown girl squeezed his hand so hard when they parted, much harder than Lisa, with an air of promise. Trash.

  However, Kurt was aroused again. Next time I’ll go with her, he thought.

  Lisa, why didn’t you let me go with her? She wanted me, and I wanted her. Yes, I did want her. I’ll go to see her tomorrow and sleep with her. You have no right to stop me.

  But Kuno resisted all temptation, and next day was able to take his beloved blissfully in his arms… I’m a terrible moralist, I do it out of pure cowardice. What will happen tomorrow, Kurt wonders, what?

  Next day is a Tuesday. And Kurt knows what will happen that day. Although the night is not cold, he shivers, and turns up his coat collar.

  You didn’t care about me, Lisa. You’d probably even have been glad if I’d done it. Well, you can still have that pleasure. Nothing simpler than…

  Then a strong, vulgar perfume rises to his nostrils from right beside him. Glancing up, he looks into the face of a streetwalker, very close to him.

  There is a smile around her mouth, as if someone had thrown it into her face and it had stuck there. “Well, laddie? Give us a cigarette, will you?”

  Kurt jumps, and quickly walks on, impelled not by bourgeois fear of a social outcast, only by alarm. He is ashamed that he cannot even feel sorry for her; she looked old and unappetizing, and had gold teeth in her broad mouth. The idea of kissing that mouth makes him shiver.

  There is another one, too. She is simply dressed (not got up like the other, who had a feather boa and a big hat), and now that she turns round he sees she is pretty.

  Kurt comes closer, he soon reaches her. He slows down and stops.

  The girl looks past him, not exactly past, but at something farther away—where has he seen that sad look before?

  That’s right, the trashy novel. Of course. I have to think up something like this, or the trashy novel wouldn’t be complete.

  “Come with me,” says the girl quietly.

  She still does not look at him when he asks, “Where to?”

  She can’t have heard this question so very often
yet. It is some time before she replies with a smile meant to be enticing, “To where we’ll be alone.” Then she looks down at the ground again.

  What has come over Kurt? He’d had no idea of sleeping with a streetwalker, it is absurd for him to do such a thing, and he won’t do it, he will run away, now, will leave the girl right there, at once, next moment—but he is still there, and the girl is still looking at the ground.

  “Come on!” says Kurt suddenly.

  He walks very fast, and the girl beside him has to take many small steps. Noticing, Kurt slows his pace, and looks sideways at her—she keeps her head bent—oh, this is ridiculous—and yet there’s something there, no similarity, not that—but something like melancholy that knows nothing about itself.

  Oh well. All we need now is for her to tell me a sentimental story, how her father is an aristocrat fallen on hard times, that sort of stuff. This is a fine thing!

  Kurt looks at her again. The girl bends her head yet lower, as if his glance were burning her body as it runs down it.

  Terrible, thinks Kurt. Terrible, and it makes no difference whether she is really sad or not. Maybe she is really sad.

  And maybe, up in the room they take in the hôtel garni, she would have cried if he had suddenly said no, cried not just for the loss of business but because some vague memory came to her—yes, she might have cried.

  So Kurt put out the light and got into bed with her, and she pressed him close with her slender, childish arms, and sighed briefly only once.

  She did not put on a great show of lasciviousness, and they said the bare minimum to each other. She addressed him by the formal “you” pronoun, and after a moment of surprise he stopped using the familiar du to her, as one usually would to a prostitute.

  Now they lie in the tumbled sheets of the double bed, side by side, naked, drained of desire, strangers to each other; and when Kurt touches her arm, which is cold, he says, “Sorry!” without noticing how comic it really is to say a thing like that. Then they fall silent again.

  Suddenly she props herself on her elbows, lets her glance rest on Kurt for a long time, and says softly, “I bet your best girl loves you very much!”

  That was odd. She uses the du pronoun suddenly, and it feels warm and good, it reminds him of the time when he used to run after the pupils of the girls’ school in the summer holidays, and felt very much the victor if one of those young girls let him use the familiar du… Only then does he take in her words and stop smiling. He looks up at the ceiling.

  “You think so?”

  The girl nods. “Yes.”

  After a little silence, she slips out of the bed and has soon finished her toilette. From the sofa, she watches Kurt getting dressed.

  “You have such a handsome body!”

  So that was what she meant! You’re wrong, sad little girl. Lisa and I haven’t reached that point yet.

  Kurt knows, by hearsay, what he ought to pay her. All the same, he asks. At first the girl does not answer, but then, when Kurt presses her, she names a slightly higher sum, and gets it at once.

  She holds the banknote, stands up and looks at him undecidedly. Suddenly she puts her arm around his neck, kisses him quickly on the mouth and asks, “Give me a little extra, will you? I have to pay for this room.”

  Kurt, sunk in his own misery again, suddenly sees himself facing someone with very different problems, and does as she asks.

  Then they leave, the girl walking quietly behind him.

  As they pass the porter’s lodge, he hears a voice inside ask, “Well, Anni?”

  The porter is sitting in his armchair, leaning forward, his peaked cap askew on his head, and he winks with unmistakable meaning. The girl, half turned to him, makes a face in Kurt’s direction, which accompanied by a gesture says something like, “Fooled that one nicely!” putting her finger to her lips at the same time. When she realizes that Kurt has seen it all she breaks into raucous, shameless laughter, calls, “What are you looking at, then, dumbo?”, slaps her thigh and disappears into the porter’s lodge. Kurt hears the porter say, in simulated protest, “Now, now, Anni!”—and then he is out in the street, stumbling past shabby buildings already a dismal grey in the dawn light.

  His trashy novel had gone straight to an important point. The rest of the story was going to be a penny-a-liner.

  X

  A Storm on Two Fronts

  HERE WE GO.

  They were all thinking that, and many of them said it out loud. There were about five weeks left now before the written Matura examination, and soon after that the leaving certificates would be handed out. There was something mysterious about this in itself, heightening expectations and apprehension; everyone had to take the written examinations, but admission to take the full Matura, awarded on the grounds of the oral examinations, was granted only on the basis of the leaving certificates.

  The portentously busy activity in the classroom was obvious. To some extent there had been a foretaste of it at the beginning of the school year. Students were visibly less willing to help each other now, and sometimes there was bad feeling between them. Some of the professors made caustic remarks; others, whose subjects were not examined in the Matura, began gradually closing their lessons down—first of all Professor Filip, who announced one day that chemistry teaching for the present school year was over, and he planned to fill the rest of his lessons with debates on themes chosen at random. Unfortunately his lessons were particularly chaotic because the fevered atmosphere generated in the lessons on other subjects was explosively discharged in them, with certain rows of desks competing to chant in chorus, as well as much shouting and bawling; and when Filip, in desperation, resorted to draconian measures (making entries in the register, holding tests in class, threatening detention and failure) they simply laughed at him. He wasn’t taken seriously; everyone knew that he never made himself heard in staff meetings, it was unimaginable that anyone would be failed in any subject at his request, and the certainty that he would not in fact make any such request left him the laughing stock of the class. The eighth-year students exploited his harmlessness with diabolical subtlety, and it was pitiful to see him trying unsuccessfully to control the pack, once it was let off the leash, by shouting or pleading or appeals to their sense of “maturity”. The class itself felt that its conduct was shameful, but good resolutions remained unobserved. Professor Filip, perhaps the only one of the teachers to bring energetic idealism to his post, was condemned to be a lightning conductor for the storm clouds that had built up into an unbearably sultry atmosphere in the lessons given by the professors whose subjects mattered more.

  The same applied, but a little less riotously, to the deadly boring geology lessons of Professor Riedl. He showed fossilized plants under a microscope that he had brought with him, and the students had to go up to the teacher’s lectern and look through it. At first they confined themselves to uttering loud cries in a show of enchantment and great interest; later Linke thought up the idea of keeping a record of the time each of them spent looking through the microscope. They actually drew up tables, and Pollak, who had looked through the lens without moving a muscle for two minutes seventeen seconds, earned loud applause. Riedl issued stern bans on such silly tricks, but with little success.

  Prochaska’s lessons were relatively calm. Throughout the class’s schooldays he had dictated the material on which he would be testing them, and now he divided it into sections, providing them with titles and numbers; and he let it be understood that the section on which each of them would be tested for their final set of marks would also be what they needed to know for the oral part of the Matura. So if someone was called out and told, “Now, my young friend, we would like to hear something about the French Revolution!” or, “Tell us, if you please, what you know about mining in Central Europe!” only those two topics from his history and geography lessons were of any further interest to that particular student. It was on his knowledge of them that he would have to pass the Matura. Sometimes the
old Professor would express anxiety—“You must go carefully, young people, I do beg you, steer clear of any scandal; this is my last year, you know!” But the students reassured him: nothing had gone wrong in thirty years, so why would it go wrong this time? They would take care, they said—and Prochaska, with a sly smile, would call up the next student.

  In common to the languages taught by Borchert and Niesset was the fact that a student who had passed the written test for his final marks better in one would later be examined orally on the other. (If he had equally good marks for both, then preference in the oral exam was given to the classical language.) As both teachers had their favourites, the grotesque situation arose that in their cases it was a good thing to have a poorer mark for the written work in their better language. Borchert wanted Altschul to take the oral Matura in French—and so informed him that he could give him only Good as the final mark on his leaving certificate. Niesset planned to show off with Scholz’s prowess in Latin in the oral Matura, and so advised him to make some mistakes in his final written exam. There were pitched battles between the two teachers for certain students, followed with interest by the others, for both Borchert and Niesset entirely forgot about the students who were weaker at languages and whose main concern was to do well enough to be allowed to take the oral Matura, and were glad to slip through by this means. If Borchert sometimes went for them ferociously, or Niesset warned them not to take anything for granted, they buried themselves even deeper in unobtrusive reserve and were soon forgotten again. They would reappear only when the Matura itself came—trusting that they could muddle through it somehow.

  Hussak and Seelig also had something in common: they became less and less demanding and were content with only the most perfunctory achievements, knowing that the eighth-year students had more important matters on their minds now. It was also quiet in their lessons, and the respect they were both shown almost had a touch of awe about it. It was quite hard to believe that some teachers did not start out anxious to show their power for as long as possible, but quietly and modestly made the transition from their great importance to their even greater unimportance.