Many sales representatives have sung the praises of high-quality German net curtains. I wonder why, rather than referring to their durability, they never once point out this aspect: the fact, I mean, that behind them you are invisible. I think they would attract a whole other kind of customer with this argument.
Since I am preparing for a longish wait, and my knees have always been sensitive, I fetch a cushion from the sofa and kneel down on it comfortably. My mother is in the washroom, and will not disturb me. I’m just going to get something to drink when I see Löwy kissing Vera, or Vera kissing the fatty — who is kissing whom is hard to tell from this distance — and he is slobbering and drooling as though he were eating one of those chocolate cream éclairs that he swiftly rams down his throat walking down the street.
Just like on the banks of the river Jordan in the Bible, I think, just as revolting, wah, yuk. He can keep the girl as far as I’m concerned if she can’t tell wheat from corn, or however it goes. What a bitch, I think to myself, to be with that dark-skinned Jewish bastard, who kisses her so underhandedly in the yard. He has no gumption, has to hide away from the world, in the yard, just like at the river Jordan in the Bible. Then my mother comes and slaps me because I’m dreaming at the window rather than heating up water. Of course I can’t tell her why I’m there. Nor why this little domestic scene with the tenant from the second floor, whose body was still not quite developed that summer, affects me so. I suffer everything in silence, therefore, to let my mother go on believing that we have a decent backyard. I go back down to the basement, fierce fury tugging at my heart, to where the rumbling boiler and my blue and red striped sweater await.
I will give them what they deserve, twofold, threefold, I think to myself, and open the oven door. I grab the poker, prod around in the heat, stoke the fire, push the ashes to the wall of the oven with the poker, take the shovel, plunge it into the sack, and heap the coke into the hole. Because today is Friday, and Friday is wash day, that is how it is at home, that is how it has always been, come what may. Officium servare, officium facere, officium explere, officio fungi, not to be confused with fundi, fundo, fusus. In German: to defeat, to demolish, to destroy the enemy. For, as I already said, diligens officii, and I am after all the building’s Friday-afternoon-water-heater-upper.
Monday morning, nine o’clock. Second period: current affairs.
The events of the month are divided into:
Deaths of the month:
First, Fürstenberg, Carl, well-known German banker, Head of the Berlin Trading Company.
Secondly,
Composure, it all has to do with composure
Becker, Helmut, Former Prussian Minister of Culture
people will swallow the biggest red herring if told with composure
famous reformer of the German school system
for example, you should always sit up straight, strong straight spine
Catastrophes of the month:
Sitting up straight shows straight character
First, the burning of the Reichstag, February twenty-seventh. Due to insidious arson
look into the eyes, eyes are the windows of the soul
undertaken by the world Jewry and the Communist Conspiracy
interested, but not too interested the German Reichstag goes up
not greedy, he who stares is greedy, he who looks downward has
something to hide, he who squints is stupid
in flames.
A calm look, serious and direct Secondly, sixty-two people were killed
On to the profile, things are looking up, straight nose, German profile, blond hair, Grecian,
in a gasometer explosion in Neunkirchen on the Saar River.
heroic.
Anniversaries of the month:
First, the German fieldmarshal Alfred, Count Schlieffen, inventor of the Schlieffen Plan, was born one hundred years ago.
Secondly,
Secondly, secondly …
It is fifty years
Cleanliness, of paramount importance; of paramount importance, cleanliness,
since the death of
are my nails clean, good, shirt, good, cuffs, good, trousers, good, shoes, damn, damn it, damn them …
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
shit, shit, shit…
Saying of the month:
I'll just have to, I'll have to go to the John afterward…
If the farmer’s purse is healthy, the world is wealthy,
If the farmer’s in the red, the world will not be fed.
And finally please note down the latest agricultural news. On to today’s subject: the fruit tree, double underline.
According to the most recent count of fruit trees …
Count-fruit treeing, tree-count fruiting, count-fruit shitting, shit-count treeing,
in the Reich there are 155 million fruit trees:
70 million apple trees,
36 million plum trees (versus 57 million in 1913),
versus seventy-five million in nineteen thirteen,
25 million pear trees 18 million cherry
2 million peach
1.4 million walnut and
0.3 million apricot trees — new paragraph.
Teacher, could I have a quick word with you? No, no, cooler,
The majority of apple trees are in Württemberg (around eleven million)
cool, calm, confident, Teacher, it’s to do with, no, no, no,
as well as the majority of pear trees (four million), whereas most cherry trees are in the province of Saxony — full stop, new paragraph.
I’ll go up to him, and clear my throat, unfortunately I have to …,1 have to unfortunately …
In nineteen thirteen there were still one hundred and seventy-five million fruit trees in the Reich — comma — that is a disturbing decrease of twenty million fruit trees — comma — which comes about through — no comma — a lack of space and neglecting the farming traditions — full stop, new paragraph.
These dwindling numbers refer to — colon, new paragraph:
plums,
Yes, plum cake
Damsons,
Damson cake
Yellow plums,
Yellow plum cake
Reineclaudes,
Reineclaude, I don’t know that one,
Morellos,
Sweet cherries and …
Dring dring dring goes the school bell, high-pitched, followed by a drawn-out bing-bong. Pause. Everyone rushes out of the classroom to the playground. I stay behind, fiddle around in my trouser pockets, pick my nose, and loiter. Then I approach the teacher’s table. Not directly. First I pass by another bench. I draw my finger over the desk’s wooden surface, just as my mother does when she wants to see whether the German housewife’s most hated enemy has made itself at home on the sideboard. No dust has left its gray traces on my classmate’s desk. Only some writing tablets, a pencil case, and a crumpled ball of paper, whose days of glory, as Guardian of the Sandwich, are behind it now.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, I think to myself, but crooked lines can also serve a geographic function. Eventually I arrive at the teacher’s desk. Brackmann is putting his books away in his bag. I clear my throat. A skeptical pair of glasses look over the desk at me.
“Teacher?”
“What do you want, Eckstein?”
It is now or never, I think, opening my mouth and running my dry tongue over my lips. I even take a deep breath, to lend my voice the power that comes from breathing from the stomach. I want to be taken seriously.
I am ready now, and firmly stand my ground. I have wet my lips with my tongue, emptied my lungs, and am feeling calm and collected. As the first word is already forming in my mind, is bubbling up from the depths, I see a black bristly hair protruding from the teacher’s nose. It robs me of speech.
“Yes,” says Brackmann, tapping his pencil on the desk several times, “What is it, Eckstein?”
What is it, Eckste
in, I think, my eyes drawn again to the glistening nose hair peering maliciously out at me. Come on, say it, come on, say it now, I tell myself. I stare at Brackmann’s hands, having wrenched my gaze free, and hang my head as though in shame. For goodness sake, open your silly mouth and speak now.
But I can’t do it. I simply can’t. Not a squeak passes my lips, because I’m forced, as though drawn by a magnet, to look up again and to take in the landscape of the nose, complete with hair. I’m under the spell of the teacher’s nose hair. I’ve seen noses before, and hair, and don’t know what is wrong with me. So I stand there blankly, like a mute dope, like a staring carp that has got caught in a net and is gasping for air, in front of the teacher, who in turn begins to stare at me.
My hands are damp now. My upper lip breaks out in sweat, too. I know that all is lost, and wipe the palms of my hands on my trousers. And as I’m standing there, staring at Brackmann as though he were a statue — the unknown soldier in front of the Military Museum, for example, whom I ought to admire devoutly in the hope that some of its powerful, decisive strength may find its way into my heart — I hear the clasp on his bag snap shut. He turns his back on me, shrugs his shoulders, mutters something about the idiocy of youth today, and leaves the classroom.
I stay behind, silent and sweating. And then it comes, the liberating word, out it comes in a torrent: “Shit, shitty, shit, shitty, shit, shit.”
I’m not particularly creative at the moment, and limit my speech to two reliable old friends. As I’m kicking the teacher’s chair, for I’ve finally managed to shake off my paralyzed condition and am filled with fury, I hear a guffawing behind me. Then, as though that weren’t enough, a sickly sweet: “Teacher, Teacher.” The guffawing starts up again and goes on in a bleating tone that pierces me straight to the heart.
What should I do, how can I save my temporarily lost honor? There’s no time for complicated strategies. The braying laughter is behind me, the door is in front of me. What on earth should I do? I do the only sensible thing. It seems obvious. I don’t react at all. I walk out of the classroom, looking very relaxed, whistling a tune, aiming a kick with my right leg as I go, as though flicking a book out of my path. I don’t look back. Nor do I look sideways at the blackboard, nor at the desks that are set up in two rows behind me: you know what happened to Lot’s wife. I make a beeline for the wide open door, for the shortest distance between two points is, as already mentioned, a straight line.
Had the person, whose voice I recognized and who seemed so highly amused by me, followed me out of the classroom, through the corridor to the reading room, he would certainly have thought of the well-known and reliable saying about the order in which different laughs come and the subsequent quality of the laughter. But the person stayed put, and therefore didn’t see me pick up the German encyclopedia. A machiavellian idea had taken root in my mind. In my best handwriting, I wrote down something I had come across the day before while looking up some phenomenon in the animal kingdom. It was to do with alcohol intoxication and the devastating effect it has on the human organism. I was interested in this somewhat dry text for two reasons. First, it included words — impotence and idiocy — which filled any boy of my age with respectful horror. Then I had learned from my mother (who can be believed, since she knew all there was to know about the goings-on in our neighborhood) that the whole Uhland clan enjoyed the bottle: the grandfather, the uncle, and the father of one of my classmates had become slaves to alcohol. A sad state of affairs, some people might be saying now, but what does the Uhland clan have to do with it?
I will answer you, and won’t be sidetracked, although I don’t want to detract from the tension. I wanted to use Uhland’s anger. I had chosen him as my instrument of revenge, a privilege he knew nothing about, nor should he. Uhland, who was powerfully built, would execute the sentence without realizing that he was acting on my behalf. He reacted angrily to any comment regarding his family’s heavy consumption of alcohol. Now you’re getting the drift. My plan was to pass him a message from Little Löwy. Then I would step aside and watch how he paid him back for the humiliation written by me.
I went stealthily into the playground. Ten minutes to go. Plenty of time. I approached the small group. They were talking about ghost ships that made seas dangerous. There were thousands of them and Lloyd’s, the English insurance company, had just decided to have them sunk for security reasons. The boys, huddling in a half-circle, were making bets on how long it would take a ship to sink. I couldn’t get excited by such things, but I suggested that I write down all the bets and volunteered to be in charge of the money. My offer was turned down, and I got out my sandwich. Meat loaf. I wasn’t hungry, but munched away out of habit.
Very slowly, I slipped my hand in my pocket. The note was still there. I bit into my bread, then I got it out.
They were talking about ships that had been missing since ‘27.
“I’m supposed to give you this from Löwy.” I stretched my arm up high. True enough, I could have found a smarter opening gambit, I could have introduced the subject with some observation or joke. I waved the note in the air.
“So what?” said one of them, turning to me. The bet had reached one mark already.
“It’s from Löwy.”
Now all the boys were looking at me silently.
“It’s nothing to do with me.” I held it under Uhland’s nose.
He opened his hand. I took a step up to him, and handed him the note without a word. Uhland smoothed out the ball of paper, grown damp in my pocket, with a disgusted expression.
“You better pray that I care about this, or else …”
He narrowed his eyes as he always did when concentrating on something, tapped the paper with his index finger, then put his finger on my chest. I tried to grin.
“You read it.”
I felt a tight knot in the region of my stomach, surely I couldn’t… I hadn’t… I … I started to read.
I can’t remember who spotted Löwy first. He was standing with one leg against the wall that separated our yard from that of the liquor wholesaler — courtesy of whom our secretary had the privilege of typing letters of complaint on her new typewriter. He did not run away as we approached. He just watched us with interest, as though this were a tricky math problem to be solved.
After the first punch, delivered with expert precision by Uhland to the middle of his face, his nose and lip started to bleed. His blood smelled sweet and dripped onto his bright green linen shirt. It left big dark stains there that looked like sweat.
Löwy still didn’t react after this hit. He simply stood there and looked disbelievingly at his hands, at his shirt, and at Uhland. Someone tripped him. As he was falling, he covered his face to protect it. I saw his brown hair sticking out from between his crossed arms, his wide open red mouth, and his white teeth shining like bones in an open wound, but I didn’t see the look in his eyes. I started to kick him. Cautiously at first, testingly, then harder and harder. Uhland and the others joined me. We formed a circle around him, and kicked. Then, at one point — the bell must have gone — I was left alone with Löwy. He lay curled up in the dust, moaning. I kneeled down to his level and looked at him. His shirt was torn. His nose was bleeding. He had shut his eyes. I put my mouth to his ear, and whispered to him what I had to say. He should know his sentence. I took out my hunting knife — I always had it with me — and looked at the blade. It reflected the few rays of sunlight in the yard. I raised his right hand.
With a quick stroke I cut open Löwy’s thumb. He showed no resistance. Some blood stayed on the blade. I wiped it off on his trousers. Then I did the same to myself. I pressed our thumbs together.
“Blood and honor,” I said, “Blood and honor,” and licked the bitter blood of my peculiar new brother.
I got out all my belongings and looked for a suitable gift. I had some coins, my knife, some string, a pair of dice, and, in my shirtpocket, a postcard that I had taken because the postman hadn’t pushed it co
mpletely through the first-floor tenant’s letter box. I looked at the foreign stamp — you hardly ever got anything from abroad in those days. I folded the card in two, creasing the young woman who was smiling stupidly in front of a glacier, and stuffed it into Löwy’s trousers. Then I quickly went back to the building, hurriedly wiping the dust off my clothes.
I don’t know whether I felt pity for Löwy, though I did. I only remember one observation I made while standing over him, a strange one considering the situation:
After every kick, Löwy’s body gave a jerk, as though my feet and his rump were harmonious, meant for each other, part of the same strange machine. Yes, it seemed to me that there was only him and me at that moment, joined in punishment, unnoticed, helpless, forgotten by the world, just the two of us, and nothing else.
Spring Bulletin
1. Restructuring
Dear Dr. Heillein,
At the meeting of the thirteenth day of the month, held in the presence of the signatory president, to which you were invited (agenda: resolution on matters of vital importance affecting the department), the following conclusion was reached:
The Inventory: A Novel Page 4
