Young Gerber

by Friedrich Torberg

  Kupfer stood up, evidently about to end the conversation.

  Kurt’s mother also rose. She had difficulty in staying upright.

  “There may be a tragic outcome, Professor.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to keep to the rules.”

  “I doubt whether your rules allow you to endanger the health and perhaps the life of another human being. You can’t take the responsibility for that.”

  “You may leave what I can or cannot take the responsibility for to me. And if it is really as you say—then why have you not charged your son with his responsibility?”

  “Professor Kupfer!—”

  “That’s enough. At least it will be a salutary lesson to him. I want the confirmation, signed by Gerber’s father, tomorrow.”

  Kupfer turned on his heel and left the room.

  Kurt’s mother was almost fainting. One of the professors standing near (the last part of the conversation had been conducted in very loud voices) supported her.

  “Dear lady, there is no reason for you to be so upset!” Others joined in too, reassuringly. “Our colleague Kupfer is sure to be ready to discuss it all, you mustn’t take it so seriously!”

  Kurt’s mother hears none of it. All she sees, emerging again and again from visions of horror, is her husband breathing stertorously as he tosses and turns on his pillows.

  In the taxi she is shaken by fits of silent, racking tears. And before, sinking into a chair at home, she has overcome them, Kurt’s father comes in. Her weak attempts at concealment are fruitless; her husband insists on hearing the story, and has soon found out everything.

  When he enters the staffroom, lessons have begun again. Some of the professors who are not teaching are there, including Seelig.

  “Why, we were talking about your son, Herr Gerber. Your wife has just been here. What really happened?”

  Kurt’s father begins the story, briefly and in a composed voice. Now and then he has to wipe away the sweat breaking out in drops the size of pinheads on his forehead. When he comes to the nub of the matter, the detention, Seelig interrupts.

  “Detention?” he asks in surprise. “What do you mean, detention?”

  Why, on the decision taken at a staff meeting, Kurt had been given two hours’ detention yesterday, didn’t Professor Seelig know that?

  Seelig shakes his head, raising his eyebrows. Then he turns and calls to the corner of the room where three other teachers are standing, “Borchert, do you know anything about a detention imposed on Gerber of the eighth year yesterday?”

  Borchert does not. He comes closer.

  “Interesting,” murmurs Seelig. “Go on, please, Herr Gerber!”

  When Kurt’s father has finished, the two professors look at each other in surprise.

  “A meeting of all the teaching staff has to be held before detentions can be imposed,” says Borchert firmly. “There’s something wrong. Either our colleague Kupfer imposed the detention without authority, or more likely it wasn’t a real detention, your son was just asked to stay a little longer after school hours. But that doesn’t mean he’d have to bring your signature to school. Well, we’ll soon find out. Wait here, will you, Herr Gerber? Or would you rather sit in the next room? I’ll tell our colleague Kupfer that you’re here.”

  Only very confused accounts were heard of what went on in the next room. Some of the students said that in break the staffroom had been almost entirely empty, and loud, excited scraps of conversation had been heard in the room next to it, Kupfer’s voice being heard particularly often. What it was all about the students did not know, because the professors present in the big staffroom kept shooing them away.

  Kurt hardly listened to these stories; he spoke to hardly anyone these days, and so he had no idea of what was going on.

  But when he went home at midday, Dr Kron was visiting again, and he did not leave. Next day, accompanied by Kurt’s mother and Dr Kron, his father went to a large sanatorium in a nearby spa resort.

  Kurt was not allowed in to see him; he couldn’t make much of the few confused remarks his mother made, and only in later correspondence did he learn what had happened. On coming home, his father had called the doctor. Dr Kron had been able to prevent another heart attack just in time, and his father’s health had suffered so much from his argument with Kupfer, along with the strong powders and injections prescribed for him and all the upsetting incidents of the last few days, that Dr Kron wanted him to go to the sanatorium for a long stay, away from all harmful influences. Otherwise, said the doctor, he feared the worst.

  Kupfer had carried through his wish to impose a detention in an ad hoc meeting, without all the staff present, and the votes of Riedl, Niesset and Waringer were opposed by those of Mattusch and Filip. The decision to impose it was therefore not valid, and Kupfer did not mention the matter again. Nor was Kurt Gerber given the consilium abeundi.

  It would have been sensible of him to take this as a hopeful sign that all was not yet lost, and even Kupfer’s power had its limits. In fact, the affair of the detention was a defeat for Kupfer. But Kurt Gerber was unable to let his train of thought lead him to such a conclusion. He was impelled to keep on thinking, turning ideas this way and that, until he was defeated again and Kupfer was the victor.

  When someone who has been lying seriously ill for a long time unexpectedly rises from his bed one day, and begins living a normal life again as the most natural thing in the world, the anxiety of those who wish him well has been so painful that they think this sudden cure is just a flash in the pan, a last flickering of the flame, and send the invalid back to bed willy-nilly to be treated with ointments and medicines. And then it can happen that he really does die. But it didn’t have to turn out like that.

  Nor did the affair of Lisa have to turn out as it did, although we must remember that Lisa may well have been going through a time when she felt that Kurt Gerber was a considerable weight on her mind. In any case, Kurt got an answer to his letter the very next day; it was a card sent by the pneumatic post system conveying items in canisters along underground tubes, and Lisa fixed an appointment for that very evening. He tried to feel glad, but dark forebodings stifled his attempts. What did it mean that Lisa answered at once? And in friendly terms, too? That was so far from her usual way that it seemed suspicious. (He did not dare to think that Lisa was acting of her own free will for reasons of insight and understanding, out of a sudden realization of what he was suffering and a wish to help him—in short, he did not dare to think it was because she loved him.) But perhaps she just happened to have this one evening free that week, and—oh, damn it, thought Kurt, crumpling up the card, I’ll find out in a few hours’ time. Do I always have to prepare for the worst?

  So it could have turned out differently for Kurt—and perhaps the same may be said of Lisa. Kurt might have been over-anxious, seeing a last flicker of hope where only a temporary short circuit was planned, a final No where only a temporary one was intended—and perhaps none of that would have been of any importance if a blue light had not been reflected on the asphalt after entirely pointless rain… but fate is not to be changed by the use of the subjunctive.

  So it was that, exactly at the appointed hour, Kurt and Lisa faced one another with expressionless faces, behind which strategy and calculation were constantly and secretly at work, with deception and cunning and in the hope that the other person wouldn’t notice any of it…

  The sudden shower in which Kurt was waiting had just turned to a slight drizzle as Lisa appeared. She turned up the collar of her trench coat and took Kurt’s arm. “Come on.”

  How well she keeps in step with me, thought Kurt. How different it is from the last time a girl was tripping along beside me. How could I ever have seen any similarity? I must have been drunk! Comparing her to Lisa!

  “You’re looking very beautiful.”

  Kurt says that slowly and with emphasis, as if he had planned the words beforehand and would have uttered them anyway, even if Lisa hadn’t been
there. He would like her to keep quiet for a little while—but she is already putting her hand in its damp glove over his mouth.

  “Oh, are you starting all that again? How often have I told you I don’t want to hear it?”

  Kurt breathes in and out deeply, with a challenging smile that shows all his teeth, and he repeats firmly, “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!” As he does so he squeezes her hand so hard that Lisa stops with a small cry and, thinking he may really have hurt her, Kurt looks so alarmed that Lisa utters a peal of glittering laughter, and everything is all right again.

  They have stopped under the entrance to a cinema; no rain can get at them here, and the place can be seen only in the diffuse light of the advertising signs.

  “Where are we going?” asks Lisa.

  Kurt feels as if a wire brush were being held against his forehead: he has no plan at all! He didn’t think of anything! He wanted to let things take their course—and they are indeed taking their course without a thought for him. This is where he has to be very strong and secure, master of the situation, now… But Lisa, for whom this is no problem, just a matter of the present moment—and she can always deal with those—says:

  “Why don’t we go into this cinema?”

  Kurt goes dark red in the face. She oughtn’t to have made the first suggestion; now she’s ahead of him again and he has to follow her, now, now, his thoughts are racing back and forth, panic breaks out, and suddenly he hears himself say, “Lisa, there’s no one else in our apartment—why don’t you come home with me?”

  He takes fright at his own words; it’s like an electric shock going through him. He is sinking into a bottomless pit of fear that Lisa will turn round now and march away. But she stays put. “Look at the film they’re showing! A Story of Everyday Life. Sounds amusing!”

  Is that all she’s going to say? Is she making out she didn’t hear him? Did she really not hear him?

  “Lisa—” he grasps at her avoidance of the question as a point of reference. “Lisa, you needn’t be afraid I’ll—”. He stops.

  “I know.” Her tone of voice shows it, and is slightly derogatory. He wants to say: don’t be so sure of that. The longing he has suppressed rebels in him. And he says harshly, disconnectedly, feeling his words sound wrong and wither away, “Lisa, just once—just one single time—one first time—can’t you do me a favour? Don’t you think I’ve earned it by now?”

  “Oh, I’d love to go to the cinema—you know how little time I have these days!”

  Her voice tugs with a thousand silvery chains at the cumbersome block of his resolution. He begins to waver. “Like a soldier with a maidservant,” he says uncertainly.

  “What are you thinking of this time?” asks Lisa, with comic severity.

  “Lisa”—he speaks her name again and again, as if it had incantatory power in his mouth—“Lisa, don’t be childish, I’m sure you get more chances to go to the cinema than to spend time with me. When I have you to myself at last, when we can be alone at last, surely we don’t want to be with a crowd of other people!”

  “But we can talk to each other in the cinema, too.”

  “Now you’re getting your ideas all tangled up, Lisa! If we’re going to talk it would really be better at home in my apartment.”

  “What bothers you about other people? We don’t need to trouble ourselves with them.”

  “I suppose you’re not interested to know whether I want to go to the cinema myself, are you?”

  “Yes, of course I’m interested—why are you so grumpy?” Lisa pauses and presses herself lightly against him. “Kurt, if I ask you?”

  “If you ask me, Lisa—if you ask me—then I’m lost. Please don’t ask me!”

  “This is terrible!” says Lisa, shaking her head. “We’ve been standing here for the last fifteen minutes, and I have to be home at nine-thirty. We could have been sitting in the foyer ages ago, talking more sensibly than here.”

  At that Kurt takes a deep breath, like a surgeon making up his mind to operate on a patient. In this case Kurt is both the patient and the surgeon. Every step that takes him closer to the ticket office is like the incision of a sharp instrument. And when he takes out his wallet he doesn’t remember what has just passed. It is as if he met Lisa by chance and they went into the cinema on impulse.

  The foyer is full of people waiting to be let into the next screening.

  “Quick, Kurt, there are two seats still free over there.”

  Without a word, he sits down beside her in the deep armchair, and hears the muted music coming from the auditorium. Suddenly it breaks off, and a ripple of laughter at he doesn’t know what comes through the closed doors. Kurt slumps in the chair with a soft groan.

  “Aren’t you feeling well?” asks Lisa. Until now she has been looking attentively at the photographs round the foyer.

  “Oh, it’s nothing.”

  “You’re not cross, are you, silly?”

  She strokes his hair and brings her face close to his. He sees her full, red lips in front of his eyes; their red is all he sees. And he feels some mysterious animal instinct rise in him, thinks of blood, takes fright, and lets his eyes move down, sees the creamy skin at the neck of her blouse, and the white strip of linen beneath it, sees the first curve of her breasts, guesses at more, and he begins to tremble and writhe in torment. His own hand shaking, he reaches for hers—but then she turns away with an air of comical regret.

  “Oh no—you know, I almost wish we hadn’t come in here.”

  And then she laughs.

  Like a man in a hurry who sees the last train steaming away from him, he is seized by senseless rage, is almost bursting with it. He feels like jumping up and hitting out around him, shouting, with his eyes closed. He doesn’t know why all these ideas come into his head just now; all he knows is that they are right feelings, they were bound to come to him, they might have come long ago, and now they are inevitably here, a pack of slavering hounds barking aloud as they break out of their enclosure. He glances briefly and sideways at Lisa, as if to see whether her filthy lies haven’t started her body decomposing yet—it’s a lie, all of what she has done to him is a lie, a shameful deception, he has been led up the garden path by a girl who laughs at him behind his back, not heavenly, silvery laughter, oh no, a screech of shrill, whorish merriment– there, there, now he knows, now he has found out the bold, liberating thing that will save him, and with his fists clenched and his teeth gritted he gets it out, and hopes it will singe her like a burning torch:

  “You tart!”

  Lisa Berwald didn’t hear him. She had already got to her feet, surprised and perhaps slightly apprehensive, and just as the doors to the auditorium were opened she had walked on ahead.

  Kurt dried the sweat from his forehead and followed her. He felt an endless sense of lightness, his anger had salutary side effects. He felt almost malicious glee at his own discomfiture, as looks of unconcealed interest followed them on the way to their seats in a box. Lisa really is extraordinarily beautiful, he thought objectively. No wonder if people envy him. Yes, take a look. You’d all like to be helping her off with her coat and sitting beside her, wouldn’t you? Very understandable. Right, now you can turn round. And incidentally—in the box next to ours there is another very beautiful woman, her bare white arm lying casually over the low partition between us… suppose I made up to her when the lights go down? What would Lisa say to that? Probably nothing, she wouldn’t even notice… or perhaps she is waiting for that herself… perhaps that was the only reason why she wanted to go to the cinema… how silly of me not to think of it before. Think how she pressed close to me outside… and if I were to ask you… no, you can wait for that, Lisa, I’m not falling for that kind of thing, not I…. I don’t wait for darkness so that I can steal what I want to have in the light… I’m not going to touch you, no, no, no…

  His warm glance moved over Lisa and stopped to rest on her face like a veil protecting it. Lisa was leaning back in her seat, her full hair
waving softly round her cheek and the back of her head, her lips were slightly open, her eyes looked into a void below half-closed lids. At that moment her beauty was so relaxed as she concentrated on nothing at all that Kurt had to turn timidly away.

  The music began softly. The lights in the auditorium went down, only a few red bulbs left on at the back. In the faint light they gave, Lisa’s beauty seemed to him even more mysterious.

  And to think that he, with a rough hand, had wanted to fall lecherously on this dream, this airy delicacy, this divine miracle!

  Kurt Gerber was ashamed of himself. His shame was boundless, an awed sense of his own insignificance before so much grace, a barely grasped surge of gratitude. It had come to him at the last moment, the very last. He had very nearly—and then he would have felt miserable, vile and miserable. Slowly that realization rose in Kurt, constricted his throat and wouldn’t move, however hard he swallowed, however low he bowed his head.

  Carefully, he stood up. But the seat creaked slightly, and Lisa turned to him.

  “What is it? Where are you going?”

  “I have a bit of a headache, Lisa, that’s all,” he whispered back. “I’m just going out to the buffet to see if they have a headache powder.”

  Very, very gently, so that she is sure not to notice, he touches her shoulder and leaves. He goes out of the cinema, into the street, and feels like walking on and on for ever, never coming to the end, never having to stop. The rain is refreshing. Kurt holds his face up to it and breathes deeply, his mouth wide open.

  Now Lisa is sitting in the cinema watching the screen, with no idea, none at all. How he envies her that. And at the same time deep, deep pity floods him, he doesn’t know where it comes from or what its end will be. He knows only that he is the one person on God’s earth to feel sorry for her like this—he knows that, and it makes him great and good. Poor, lovely Lisa.

  Shouldn’t she be permitted anything, shouldn’t he accept whatever she did? Could anyone try disturbing the radiant aimlessness of what she does with dark, tormented intentions, with petty desires? Wasn’t it a violation in itself that he had invited her home to his apartment, where he might have flung himself mindlessly on her? And wasn’t the idea that she would probably have let him do as he wanted worse, more destructive than everything else?