Almost every early morning there begins a duel of whisperings between Kraus and me. Kraus always believes that he must spur me on to work. Perhaps he’s not entirely wrong in supposing that I do not like to get up early. I certainly do like getting up early, but I also find it quite delicious to lie in bed a little longer than I should. To be supposed not to do something is so alluring sometimes that one cannot help doing it. Therefore I love so deeply every kind of compulsion, because it allows me to take joy in what is illicit. If there were no commandments, no duties in the world, I would die, starve, be crippled by boredom. I only have to be spurred on, compelled, regimented. It suits me entirely. Ultimately it is I who decides, only I. I provoke the frowning law to anger a little, afterwards I make the effort to pacify it. Kraus is the embodiment of all the rules here in the Benjamenta Institute, consequently I am always challenging the best of all my fellow-pupils to somewhat of a struggle. I would get ill if I could not quarrel, and Kraus is wonderfully well-suited for quarreling and teasing. He is always right: “Now it really is time you got up, you lazy rat!” And I am always wrong: “Yes, yes, patience, I’m coming.” A person in the wrong is cheeky enough always to challenge the patience of a person in the right. Being right is heated, being wrong always makes a show of proud, frivolous composure. The one who is so passionately well-meaning (Kraus) is always defeated by the one (me) who is not so outspokenly intent on what is good and requisite. I triumph, because I carry on lying in bed, and Kraus quakes with wrath, because he has to keep knocking vainly on the door, stamping his foot and saying: “Get up now, Jakob! Do it now! God, what a lazybones.” Ah, I do like people who can get angry. Kraus gets angry on the slightest pretext. That is so beautiful, so humorous, so noble. And we two suit one another so well. The sinner must always be faced with the person outraged, or else something would be missing. Then once I have finally got up, I act as if I were standing idly around. “There he is now, standing and gaping, the ninny, instead of doing something,” he says then. How splendid that sort of thing is. The mumbling of a grumbler is lovelier to me than the murmuring of a woodland stream, with the loveliest of Sunday morning sunshine sparkling on it. People, people, nothing but people! Yes, I feel it most strongly: I love people. Their follies and sudden excitements are more dear and valuable to me than the subtlest wonders of nature. —We pupils have to sweep and clean the classroom and the office early in the morning, before our superiors wake up. Two of us do it, in turns. “Get up now. Are you ready yet?” Or: “You won’t be so satisfied with yourself for long.” Or: “Get up, get up. It’s time. You should have had the broom in your hand long ago.” How amusing this is! And Kraus, eternally angry Kraus, how fond of him I am.
Once again I must go back to the very beginning, to the first day. In the break, Schacht and Schilinski, whom I did not know at that time, ran into the kitchen and brought breakfast, laid on plates, into the classroom. I also was given something to eat, but I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t want to touch any of it. “You must eat,” Schacht said to me, and Kraus added: “Everything on the plate has to be eaten up, everything. Do you understand?” I still remember how repulsive I found those words. I tried to eat, but disgustedly left most of it. Kraus came through the crowd to me and clapped me dignifiedly on the shoulder and said: “You’re new here, but you must understand that the rules insist on all food being eaten up. You’re proud, but wait a while, you’ll soon lose your pride. Can you pick buttered bread and slices of sausage off the street? Can you? Wait a while and see, perhaps you’ll get an appetite. Anyway, you must eat up all this here, that’s for certain. In the Benjamenta Institute no leftovers are tolerated. Get on with it, eat. Quickly. What anxious hesitation, I suppose you think you’re so refined! You’ll soon lose your refinements, I can tell you. You’ve no appetite, you say? But I advise you to have one. It’s because of pride that you haven’t got one, that’s what it is. Give it here! This time I’ll help you to eat it up, though it’s all against the rules. Right. Now you see how one can eat it? And this? And that? That was clever, I can tell you.” How embarrassed I was. I felt a violent aversion to this eating boy, and today? Today I eat everything up as tidily as any of the pupils. I even look forward every time to the nicely prepared and modest meals, and it would never occur to me to disdain them. Yes, I was vain and proud at the start, offended by I don’t know what, humiliated I no longer know how. Everything, everything was still simply new to me, and, consequently, hostile, and besides, I was a wholly outstanding fool. I am a fool to this day, but in a way that is finer and friendlier. And everything depends on the way a thing is. A person can be utterly foolish and unknowing: as long as he knows the way to adapt, to be flexible, and how to move about, he is still not lost, but will come through life better perhaps than someone who is clever and stuffed with knowledge. The way: yes, yes.
Kraus has had a hard life, even before he came here. He and his father, who is a boatman, traveled up and down the Elbe, on heavy coal barges. He had to work hard, hard, until one day he fell ill. Now he wants to be a servant, a real servant, to some master, and it’s as if he was born for it, with all his good-hearted qualities. He will be a quite wonderful servant, for not only does his appearance suit this profession of humility and obligingness, no, also his soul, his whole nature, the whole human character of my friend has, in the best sense, something servant-like about it. To serve! If only Kraus can find a decent master, I wish that for him. There certainly are gentlemen, or lords, in brief, superiors, who do not like or wish to be served perfectly, who do not know how to accept real achievements of service. Kraus has style and he definitely belongs to a Count, that is, to an entirely distinguished gentleman. One should not let Kraus work like an ordinary laborer or worker. He can be a representative. His face is perfect for indicating a certain tone, a manner, and anyone hiring him can be proud of his bearing and his behavior. Hire him! Yes, that is the expression people use. And one day Kraus will be hired out to somebody, or hired by somebody. And he is looking forward to it, and that is why he is so zealously stowing French away in his somewhat slow head. There’s something about his head that troubles him. At the barber’s, so he says, he acquired a rather horrid mark of distinction, a garland of small reddish plants, or briefly, points, or, even more briefly, and unmercifully, spots. Anyway, that’s bad, of course, especially since he wants to go to a fine and really decent master. What’s to be done? Poor Kraus! The points that disfigure him would not prevent me, for example, from kissing him if it came to such a pass, not at all. Seriously: they really would not, for I don’t notice such things any more, I no longer see that it looks unbeautiful. I see his beautiful soul in his face, and it is the soul that most deserves to be caressed. But the future lord and master will, of course, think quite differently, and that is also why Kraus puts ointments on his inelegant wounds, which disfigure him. Also he often uses the mirror to observe the progress of the treatment, not out of empty vanity. If he didn’t have these blemishes, he would never look into a mirror, for the earth cannot produce anything more unvain, uninflated, than him. Herr Benjamenta, who has a lively interest in Kraus, often inquires about the evil and its hoped-for disappearance. For Kraus will soon be going out into life and into a job. I’m afraid of the moment when he will leave the school. But it won’t come all that soon. He can still spend quite a long time doctoring his face, I believe, which I don’t wish to be the case, and yet I do wish it. He will come to his master quite soon enough, to one who will know how to prize his qualities, and soon enough I shall have to do without a person whom I love, without his knowing it.
I write all these lines mostly in the evening, by the lamplight, at the big school table, at which, obtusely or not obtusely, we pupils so often have to sit. Kraus is sometimes very inquisitive and looks over my shoulder. Once I corrected him: “But Kraus, tell me, since when have you been bothering about things that don’t concern you?” He was very annoyed, as all people are when they are caught on the secret pathways of stealthy curi
osity. Sometimes I sit idly quite alone until late in the night on a bench in the public garden. The streetlights are on, the garish electric light descends, liquid and burning, among the leaves of the trees. Everything is hot and promises strange intimacies. People walk back and forth. Whisperings come from the hidden paths of the park. Then I go home and find the door closed. “Schacht,” I call softly, and my comrade, as arranged, throws me the key down into the courtyard. I creep on tiptoe, since it is forbidden to stay out for long, into my room, and go to bed. And then I dream. I often dream terrible things. Thus one night I dreamed that I struck my mother in the face, my dear mother, far away. What a scream I gave, and how suddenly I woke up. Pain at the dreadfulness of what I had done chased me out of bed. I had seized the holy one by her respect-arousing hair and had thrown her to the ground. Oh, not to think of such things. The tears shot like sharp jets from the motherly eyes. I still clearly remember how the misery cut and tore her mouth, and how engulfed in sorrow she was, and how her head then sank back. But why recall these images again? Tomorrow I shall finally have to write the account of my life, or I shall be in peril of a severe reproof. In the evenings, at about nine o’clock, we boys always sing a short goodnight song. We stand in a semicircle by the door that leads to the inner chambers, and then the door opens, Fräulein Benjamenta appears on the threshold, clad all in wholesomely flowing white robes, and says to us, “Good night, boys,” orders us to go to sleep now, and warns us to be quiet. Then, each time, Kraus puts out the lamp in the schoolroom, and from this moment not the slightest sound may be made. Everyone has to go on tiptoe to his bed. It is all quite peculiar. And where do the Benjamentas sleep? The Fräulein looks like an angel when she says goodnight to us. How I revere her! In the evening the Principal is never to be seen. Whether that is peculiar or not, it is certainly conspicuous.
It seems that the Benjamenta Institute once had more of a reputation and more customers than now. On one of the four walls of our classroom hangs a large photograph, with portraits of a great number of boys who attended the school during a previous year. Apart from that, our classroom is very sparsely equipped. Apart from the longish table, about ten or twelve chairs, a big wall-cupboard, an old traveling trunk, and a few other negligible objects, it has no furniture. Over the door which leads into the secret, unknown world of inner chambers, there hangs as a wall decoration a rather tedious-looking policeman’s saber with an equally tedious-looking sheath laid across it. The helmet is enthroned above them. This decoration is like a sign, or like delicate evidence, of the rules that prevail here. As for me, I wouldn’t accept these adornments if I were made a present of them; probably they were bought from an old junk-dealer. Every fortnight saber and helmet are taken down to be cleaned, which, it must be said, is a very nice but certainly altogether stupid job. Beside these ornaments there hang in the classroom the pictures of the late Emperor and Empress. The old Emperor looks unbelievably peaceful, and the Empress has a simple, motherly look. Often we pupils wash out the classroom with soap and hot water, so that afterwards everything smells and shines with cleanliness. We have to do everything ourselves, and each of us has for this housemaid’s work an apron around his waist, in which garment, with its redolence of femininity, we all without exception look comical. But we have a merry time on such cleaning days. The floor is gaily polished, the objects, also those in the kitchen, are rubbed until they shine, for which purpose there are dusters and cleaning powders in plenty. Tables and chairs are smothered in water, door handles are polished till they gleam, windowpanes are breathed on and rubbed clean, each of us has his little task, each of us does something. On such days of cleaning, rubbing, and washing, we are like the elves in fairy tales, who, as is known, used to do all their rough and laborious tasks out of pure, supernatural goodness of heart. What we pupils do, we do because we have to, but why we have to, nobody quite knows. We obey, without considering what will one day come of all this thoughtless obedience, and we work without thinking if it is right and good to do our work. On one such cleaning day, Tremala, the oldest of us all, came up to me and tried an ugly trick. He stood quietly behind me and reached with his disgusting hand (hands that do this are crude and disgusting) for my intimate member, with the intention of doing me a loathsome favor, almost like tickling an animal. I turn around quickly and knock the villain to the floor. Usually I’m not so strong, Tremala is much stronger. But anger gave me irresistible strength. Tremala drags himself to his feet and hurls himself at me, then the door opens and Herr Benjamenta is standing in the doorway. “Jakob, you rascal!” he calls, “come here!” I go to my Principal and he doesn’t ask at all who started the fight, but gives me a slap on the head and walks off. I’m about to run after him and shout at him how unjust he is, but I control myself, think, look over at the whole crowd of boys, and go back to my work. Since then I haven’t spoken a word to Tremala, and he also avoids me, he knows why. But whether he’s sorry, or anything like that, doesn’t matter to me. The indelicate incident has long been, how shall I say, forgotten. In earlier times, Tremala has been to sea in ships. He’s a depraved person, and rejoices in his vile tendencies. Also he is frantically uncultivated, therefore he doesn’t interest me. Sly, and at the same time incredibly stupid: how uninteresting! But Tremala has taught me one thing: one must always be somewhat on the lookout for all kinds of assaults and injuries.
Often I go out onto the street, and there I seem to be living in an altogether wild fairy tale. What a crush and a crowd, what rattlings and patterings! What shoutings, whizzings, and hummings! And everything so tightly penned in. Right up close to the wheels of cars people are walking, children, girls, men, and elegant women; old men and cripples and people with bandaged heads, one sees all these in the crowd. And always fresh bevies of people and vehicles. The coaches of the electric trolleys look like boxfuls of figures. The buses go galumphing past like clumsy great beetles. Then there are wagons that look like traveling watchtowers. People sit on the seats high up and travel over the heads of whatever is walking, jumping, and running below. Fresh crowds thrust in among the existing ones, and all at the same time there’s a going and a coming, an appearing and a vanishing. Horses trample. Wonderful hats with ornamental feathers nod from open, swiftly-passing rich folks’ coaches. All Europe sends its human specimens here. Gentility walks check by jowl with the menial and the bad, people are going who knows where, and here they come again and they are quite different people and who knows where they are coming from. One thinks that one can untangle it all a little, and one is glad to be taking the trouble to do so. And the sun sparkles down on it all. It shines on one person’s nose, on another’s toecap. Lace-work pokes from the hems of skirts in a glittering confusion. Small dogs go riding on the laps of genteel old women in coaches. Breasts bounce toward one, female breasts pressed into clothes and shapes. And then again there are the many silly cigars in the many slits of masculine mouthparts. And one thinks of undreamed-of streets, invisible new regions, equally swarming with people. Evenings, between six and eight, the swarming is most graceful and dense. At this hour the best society goes promenading. What is one, really, in this flood, in this various, never-ending river of people? Sometimes all these mobile faces are reddishly tinted and painted by the glow of the setting sun. And when it is gray and raining? Then all these figures, and myself among them, walk quickly along like images in a dream under the dark gauze, looking for something and, it seems, almost never finding anything that is beautiful and right. Everyone is looking for something here, everyone is longing to be rich and to possess the fabulous goods of fortune. One walks quickly. No, they all restrain themselves, but the haste, the longing, the torment, and the restlessness gleam out of their greedy eyes. Then again everything swims in the hot noonday sun. Everything seems to be asleep, even the vehicles, the horses, the wheels, the noises. And the people look so blank. The tall, apparently collapsing houses seem to be dreaming. Girls hurry along, parcels are carried. One would like to fling one’s arms a
round somebody. When I come home, Kraus sits there and makes fun of me. I tell him that one really must get to know the world a little. “Know the world?” he says, as if immersed in deep thought. And he smiles scornfully.
About a fortnight after my arrival at the school, Hans appeared among us. Hans is a regular peasant boy, like the ones in the Grimms’ fairy tales. He comes from deepest Mecklenburg, and he smells of flowery, luxuriant meadows, of cow barn and farmyard. He is slim, rough, and bony, and he speaks a strange, good-hearted peasant language, which I like, as a matter of fact, if I take the trouble to hold my nose. Not that Hans gives off bad smells or anything. And yet one does hold some kind of a nose, perhaps a mental one, a cultural nose or soul nose, and one can’t help doing so, without even wanting to offend the good Hans. And he doesn’t notice such things at all, this country person sees and hears and feels in far too healthy and plain a way for that. Something like the earth itself and earth-furrows and curves confronts one, when one looks deeply into this boy, but there’s no need to look deeply. Hans doesn’t demand pensiveness. Not that he doesn’t matter to me, not that at all, but, how shall I say, he is a little remote and lightweight. One takes him quite lightly, because nothing about him gives serious cause for emotion. The Grimms’ Fairy Tale Peasant Boy. Old-fashioned and agreeable, understandable and essential at the first fleeting glance. Very worthwhile to be a good friend to the fellow. In later life, Hans will work hard, without sighing. He will hardly notice the exertions, worries, and adversities. He is bursting with strength and health. And yet he’s not bad-looking. Altogether: I can’t help laughing at myself: I find something slightly nice in everything and about everything. I like them all so much, my pupils here, my school-friends.
Jakob von Gunten Page 4