Young Gerber

by Friedrich Torberg

  Yes—but then why does he love her at all? What good is he doing her with his love?

  He thinks of Paul Weismann, who had said exactly that to him at Christmas. And also: there’s no going back for you now.

  No, I can’t. And I don’t want to. But you are wrong all the same, Paul, and I’ll tell you why. (Kurt thinks feverishly, feeling as if he and Paul were sharing the same room, and he puts his thoughts into the mode of expression usual between them.) I, my dear Paul, consider that the once exotic flower that now, thanks to the efforts of various scientists, grows and thrives by the roadside and is known as coitus vulgaris, ordinary sexual intercourse, is unimportant in the extreme. No, unimportant isn’t quite right, I mean it’s insignificant—that’s better. It no longer lies at the heart of the matter. There’s no objection to that, of course—on the contrary, we welcome with wild applause the fact that it is not of the essence any longer. If we had done so earlier, it would have been a cowardly lie. Sexual intercourse, as we call it, is not, it seems to me, what matters most. Love can flourish even without it, but doesn’t have to divorce itself from physical matters. There has just been a little re-evaluation, perfectly logically, on the grounds of supply and demand. For instance, listening to the song of a bird together is less common and therefore more valuable than sleeping together. And as long as birdsong is not declared immoral in itself, as long as a kiss and the pressure of a hand (or even a glance and a smile) can be of more fundamental importance than the exchange of body fluids, which can be carried out elsewhere, I see no need to make love dependent on the granting or otherwise of that exchange. It isn’t giving but refraining that’s important in love. Great Thought number 409. With which I will conclude my reflections for today. Did you get the point?

  No, you didn’t. But that’s not essential either. I don’t love you, I love Lisa. It’s Lisa I want to understand me. And she will understand me…

  Kurt goes back into the cinema, feeling more victoriously cheerful than for a long time. He knows what he has to do. He has decided. Now, however, it seems that Lisa, too, has made her decision, and is planning to carry it out come what may. She has left only the preparations to her partner in the game, just as you wait in playing chess for the final checkmate until your adversary could dictate it in the next move. Lisa Berwald (white) is decidedly against a draw as the result of playing on. Kurt Gerber (black), after a wide-ranging endgame offensive, had to get himself into a hopeless position and surrender.

  The last pause for reflection was cruelly long. Kurt tried to fathom it, but did not succeed. So he wondered if he had forgotten anything.

  No. It had all been said. Everything that he had been carrying around for a year, everything that today, after struggle and need and confusion, had finally taken valid form—it had all been said.

  And Lisa had listened to him, and hadn’t yet replied. She walked beside him in silence, and was still silent when the rain came down harder again, and they found a little roadside shelter where they could stand. She said nothing, and avoided Kurt’s anxious gaze.

  Suddenly she laughed quickly and softly, turning full-face to him for a moment, looked away again at once, pointed to a nearby neon advertising sign and said, as if carrying on a conversation already begun, “Look, isn’t that blue light pretty reflected on the asphalt?”

  A first Kurt didn’t know what she meant. Then he thought he must be deceived. Then he thought it a sign of her embarrassment. Then he suddenly smiled, because the whole thing seemed to him like a cartoon in a humorous magazine, and because it was in fact comic to think that Lisa might really have meant her words as an answer. Then it occurred to him that it was not really comic at all. And he remembered a porter saying, in mock indignation, “Now, now, Anni!” And he remembered much else.

  And then nothing occurred to him any more, his brain seemed like a hurdy-gurdy gone wrong, churning out all its old tunes at the same time, enough to send you out of your mind, so he put both hands to his head. It would have been wrong to think he did it out of bewilderment and pain, or sudden understanding, or was moved in any other kind of way; no, he felt entirely unmoved, nor did he himself move; he stood there like a dead tree for some time. Then his arms began to sway like thin branches tired of life in the wind, he hesitated slightly, turned around; a surprised voice followed him, but he was far away by now, he was walking to the blue light that looked so pretty reflected on the asphalt, and he leant down to look at it, and slowly, slowly all became clear to him in that blue light. When someone tapped him on the shoulder and asked, “Have you lost something?” Kurt Gerber said, “No,” and walked on.

  XI

  The Palfrey Collapses

  MEANWHILE, the end of the school year was coming closer and closer. It was barely two weeks until the written examinations; the majority of students had already finished their studies of subsidiary subjects, the first calculations of hours yet to be worked appeared, went from hand to hand, and were constantly adjusted by subtracting the number of hours worked at the end of the day, to the accompaniment of much cursing. Some particularly industrious students made sure of buyers for their textbooks in the present seventh-year class, the committee for the convivial farewell party was set up—it was the usual, traditional end-of-year turmoil, and everything would have been entirely traditional if one incident could have been overlooked, such an incredible incident that the eighth year began to doubt the natural order of things: Zasche, the near-idiot, suddenly came to life.

  No one knew anything precise about the first signs of it, but when, after much dodging of the subject, one of the students first mentioned it, everyone else admitted to having noticed it too. Zasche began taking part in lessons. At first he confined himself to whispering answers to those sitting near him who were asked questions at their desks. To begin with no one listened to him, but when what he had said turned out to be right more and more often, his fellow students used his answers, if hesitantly at first. And soon Zasche was speaking up in class himself. Also hesitantly at first, and few really noticed; but then it became more and more noticeable, and finally he was holding forth so eloquently that it seemed as if the quiet fool had become a danger to the public at large. He flung his long arms far up in the air, moving them stiffly back and forth so that they looked like clock pendulums; and if he wasn’t asked at first he would whine in a thin, pitiful voice, “Please, please, here! Please, sir, I know the answer!” His large eyes, which had hardly any eyebrows, burned with a strange fire, and his thin body was extended to its full length. There was something ghostly about these desperate efforts on the part of a student given up as a hopeless case, and it had an uncanny effect on students and teachers alike. Zasche was nicknamed “Spooky”, and looking at him made you feel quite ill—in front of the whole school, at that. Students thought they would be glad to be rid of the place, if only because of Zasche.

  Kupfer began paying attention to him, asked him questions a few times in a slightly incredulous voice, and had difficulty in hiding his surprise when the answers were right. And when a word of approval escaped him for once—“Good, Zasche, very good!”—Spooky gurgled happily, and a broad smile appeared on his face. Then he passed the first test with striking success, and the eighth year unanimously concluded that Zasche was a good student. When they were set a very difficult question for homework, one of the few who had worked it out turned half in amusement to him for information—and it turned out that Zasche’s was the best solution of all. The eighth-year students tried in vain to find an adequate explanation of this miracle, and finally put it all down to the fantastic abilities of the private tutor coaching him. The other professors shook their heads too—and were very glad to think that now they would be able to let the supposed dunce of the class pass his exam with a clear conscience.

  Around this time Kupfer began the tests on which the final marks would be awarded, as if he had suddenly realized that the Matura was imminent. And one day, at the end of the lesson, Zasche is called up to the boa
rd.

  As the whole class has now become used to his mysterious qualities, no one is surprised that all goes smoothly. The others do not pay attention, but prepare hastily to be tested themselves.

  However, it looks as if Kupfer is never going to be through with Zasche’s test. He asks him more and more questions, and Zasche gives more and more answers, fidgeting jerkily, but his hands are perfectly steady with his compasses and triangle.

  “He’s working him to death today,” whispers Kaulich to the students behind him. “Look sharp, Spooky!” Others are also whispering encouragement for their own enjoyment.

  “Get a move on, Spooky!”

  “Shake him off!”

  “Quiet!” bellows Kupfer with unexpected violence. Then he turns back to Zasche, who looks as if it were nothing to do with him, and asks him another question, which is also promptly answered.

  And suddenly the whole class knows what is going on in front of them: Zasche is being tested until, at last, he can be marked Unsatisfactory.

  Kupfer’s intentions are plain to see. Zasche is not to pass the test successfully. Zasche is to get the deciding mark of Unsatisfactory and fail. They all realize that. Except for Zasche. He stands up there answering every question. And then grinning.

  Kupfer begins pacing up and down, asks for another construction, and another calculation, and another something else, leading to five more questions. He is in the grip of vibrant excitement, as if he were watching an interesting chemical experiment and waiting impatiently to see how the substances used in it develop.

  The whole class is infected. A number of them are no longer working, just listening, some because they are so fascinated by the scene, others because they can’t keep up.

  Zasche has just finished a construction, draws the last line under it, and steps back from the board. He does not look at his work with pleasure and satisfaction, as you might expect, but turns his brown doggy eyes on Kupfer.

  Kupfer ignores him, paces up and down with his head bent. Suddenly he stops and says:

  “Well then. And now we will take—we will take—yes: the angle bisector LQ as the diagonal of a rectangle and inscribe it in the parabolic segment. If you please.”

  From somewhere comes a mutter of disapproval, running through the class, sending up little flares here and there, and disappearing again.

  Kupfer does not hear it. He goes on:

  “The rectangle is NLQR and is shifted to be parallel with the tangent T.”

  “That’s it!” says Pollak, loud enough for most of the others to hear him. “Over and out. I can’t go on!” In consternation, he pushes his exercise book away and leans back.

  The little flames are flaring up again. “Outrageous!” someone murmurs. Others echo him. “What more does he want?”

  “Poor Spooky!”

  “It’s scandalous!”

  “Talk about dirty tricks!”

  However, Kupfer notices none of this. Only Zasche exists for him. Zasche is not a student any more. Zasche is a matter of his prestige.

  At last Zasche himself seems to understand. At a very slow pace that, in itself, could kill.

  The expression on his face changes as if he were watching a process also changing. A race, for instance.

  Then he stares foolishly at the board, which is covered all over with strong and faint and double and dotted lines, in three colours and with numbers and signs and circles and semicircles and many, many strange figures. The whole thing, if it ever had a point at all, is now completely pointless. That is how it must seem to Zasche himself.

  “Angle bisector LQ… parallel to T with the index K,” says Kupfer. “If you please.”

  Zasche looks at the board once more, steps quickly forward, places the triangle against it, turns to Kupfer, puts the triangle down again—a pitiful picture of total helplessness.

  On top of everything, the bell rings at that moment.

  It is not the class but Kupfer who breathes a sigh of relief. He will finish testing Zasche. And there can be no doubt how it will end. Unless divine inspiration strikes Zasche.

  It doesn’t. Zasche utters a muted groan, puts the triangle against the board again, draws a line that next moment can’t be seen, then says, “The angle bisector LQ—” and stops short.

  There is lively activity and noise in the corridor outside.

  The class is restless, too, as the eighth-year students shift on their benches, scrape their feet, tap their desks and whisper.

  “You are to construct a rectangle NLQR!” says Kupfer, very slowly.

  Another student would probably have done something inappropriate at this moment, might perhaps have pointed out that the bell has gone, or tried a protest—“Professor Kupfer, sir!” But not Zasche. Zasche has nothing like that in mind, Zasche probably does not see Kupfer as a professor or indeed a normal human being, not as anything that can be addressed other than in mathematical formulae…

  He makes a faint attempt to dig his compasses into the board somewhere, lets them drop again, and stares at the board.

  “Well? Why are you standing there like an ox outside a new barn door?”

  Kupfer has no idea how apt his comparison is. There really is something oxlike about Zasche’s face, something animal in his alarmed distress. And the board really is a door. A barred door. Beyond it lies life, perhaps a happy mother, or love, or a position in the civil service, or something else. But Zasche will never get beyond it. The class is getting increasingly restless. Kupfer notices, but does nothing about it.

  “Well? Can you do it or not?”

  Zasche does not reply.

  “Thank you. Unsatisfactory, sit down,” says Kupfer. And although he has used his normal tone of voice, there is a note of infernal jubilation in it that would make the blood in your veins run cold.

  Zasche stiffly raises his left arm, with which he is holding the triangle, then his right arm, with which he is holding the compasses, then lets both arms sink and stands there staring at Kupfer.

  The class has put up with much from Kupfer. Now, however, it is indignant. Muted sounds of disapproval break out. Kupfer seems not to hear them, picks up his briefcase and goes quickly out.

  For a moment the muttered disapproval breaks off.

  And the sudden silence is broken by a long, penetrating scream, as if someone were trying and failing to vomit. “Aaaaaahh!—”

  That wasn’t Zasche, who is still standing at the front of the class, not moving.

  The others swing round, not knowing what’s up. They see Kurt Gerber, in the back row, slowly rising to his feet, hands half raised in the air, fingers spread, his eyes popping, his mouth twisted.

  “Bloodhound!” he shouts. “Bloodhound!”

  The eighth-year students stare at him rather anxiously, taken aback. Some of them, perhaps out of embarrassment, perhaps because it really is funny—begin to laugh.

  “Ha, ha—what’s the matter? Are you crazy?”

  But the laughter soon dies down, and there is peace and quiet in the room again. Terrible peace and quiet.

  Kurt climbs up on the bench in front of his desk. Saliva is running from one corner of his mouth.

  “Someone hold onto him!” whispers a girl’s voice from the front rows.

  Kaulich leaves his desk and goes over to Kurt.

  At that, Kurt jumps down, races past his baffled fellow student as he makes for the lectern, flings himself against the board, beats both fists on it.

  “Bloodhound! Bloodhound!”

  Zasche looks askance at him, utters some inarticulate sounds and hurries back to his own desk.

  All is quiet again.

  Someone outside the door flings it open, puts his head in, slams it shut again.

  The noise in the corridor, after filling the classroom unimpeded for seconds, acts like a cold shower. The students’ sense of oppression is almost tangibly washed away. And then Schönthal is on his feet, saying, “You ought to have done that during the lesson, Gerber!”


  Kurt gives a start, closes his eyes and gropes his way to the door. He stands there, indecisively, and then leaves the classroom and locks himself into the toilets.

  Someone outside knocks three times.

  Kurt opens the door, and Kaulich enters the gloomy, evil-smelling place. He doesn’t know quite what to say, so he elaborately lights a cigarette.

  “You don’t want to think too much of that,” he begins.

  Kurt nods, vaguely.

  “Schönthal is a fool. I told him so.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why!—”

  Kaulich says nothing for a while. Then he drops his cigarette on the floor, looks at Kurt and still remains silent.

  Suddenly Kurt begins talking, hastily, in confusion, muddling everything up. He has to talk, would probably have started talking even if no one else were there, but now he has someone to talk to, which is better. He talks about the test, about Zasche, about Kupfer, about himself, about the terrible time he was going through as that poor idiot out there was tested to death, about the torment filling him like the air in a fish’s swim bladder until it all exploded in that pointless outburst. He feels so ashamed of it now that he doesn’t want to go back to the classroom.

  Kaulich listens without a word; it is impossible to tell whether he understands. In the end, he says, “But you’ll have to go back to the classroom. God Almighty Kupfer will be on his own way back now.”

  He opens the door.

  “I’ll follow you in a minute,” says Kurt.

  Kaulich leaves, and Kurt looks out of the window. It offers a view down into the yards of a block of buildings. Construction work is in progress in one of them. Kurt looks at it.