Young Gerber

by Friedrich Torberg

  II

  Entry of the Gladiators. Strike the Gong.

  THERE WAS NO FIXED TIMETABLE yet for the next day, so the students had plenty of scope for guesswork. And yet it was also a school day like any other, since one thing was certain; Kupfer was their class teacher.

  Almost all of them had quickly adjusted to the idea. Thick exercise books with pages of graph paper and black covers, drawing instruments and a triangle already lay in the desks of the particularly hard-working. It never hurts to be well prepared. And if a test can’t be avoided, it’s best to do it with a smile and not morosely and reluctantly, which after all will do you no good. Exercise books have to be bought, so better do it today than tomorrow.

  Kurt brought neither exercise books nor any other teaching aids with him. Going halfway to meet a teacher without express orders struck him as an unnecessary and indeed reprehensible show of over-eagerness. He even hated speaking up from his desk when someone else was being tested up in front by the blackboard and was stuck for an answer. And why be so keen to do Kupfer’s bidding that you’d bring exercise books to school without being sure whether he was going to turn up at all? All these pitiful precautions “just in case”! He hoped that the industry of those keen to curry favour would be for nothing. Yet he knew that they wouldn’t draw any conclusions from that; they would meekly turn up with their exercise books again the next day.

  However, industry was rewarded. Soon after the bell rang Kupfer did come into the classroom. As he made entries in the register, Severin, unnoticed, put the seating plan on his desk.

  He had worked on it carefully, with red and black India ink, marking the position of the teacher’s desk, the door, the stove, the windows. Now he was clearly waiting for appreciation, but pretended to be surprised when it came.

  “Who was it did this? Ah. So you are… Severin. Very good. You don’t have the proportions of the windows quite right, and the distance between the steps up to my desk is rather greater.”

  Kupfer smiled (“I am putting on a show of eccentricity!”) and benevolently called, “Quiet!” when a couple of those who had appointed themselves to laugh at the professors’ jokes showed their understanding and appreciation of his by muted giggles.

  “Come over here and explain it to me!” said Kupfer, and drew his notebook towards him, still smiling. But now it was a different smile, contented, replete with the horrified astonishment of the students. Would you believe it? Testing someone in the very first lesson! And moreover, the very student who had rendered him a service! It was enough to shake the tried and tested foundations of sycophancy!

  Confusion was aired in suppressed murmurs, some students shifted where they sat and looked at one another in dismay. Only Lewy and Lengsfeld smiled in a wise and superior way. They knew about this kind of thing. Rimmel turned to look at Kurt Gerber, wanting to know what position to adopt. But Kurt had been prepared for anything, and merely shrugged his shoulders.

  Kupfer noticed the restlessness. He changed tack. “What is going on?” he asked sharply. “Do you by any chance think I’m going to waste a lesson just because this happens to be the second day back at school? Quiet there! Gerber!”

  “Sir, I—”

  “That will do. I don’t want to know. If you like you can come up to the front of the class instead of Severin.”

  Kurt restrained himself. Damn. He hadn’t taken this into consideration. He was not a diligent student, the Professor could mark his answers “Unsatisfactory” at any time—and only now, when Kupfer made insinuating remarks, did Kurt see that he was in danger.

  “Very well, then!” With composure, Kupfer turned to Severin. “There’s nothing we can do about the angle of the steps now. That will be for the next lesson. Now we’ll have descriptive geometry, then mathematics from nine to ten. Good.” He imparted this information casually, well aware of its terrifying effect. As if it were perfectly natural for him to take two lessons in succession. “Now, Severin, think of the stove in relation to the window again. As what geometrical figure can it be regarded? Use a little of the imagination that I trust you have! Well?”

  Severin squirmed with embarrassment in the face of so much confidence. He was one of those inconspicuous students who generally refrained even from trying hard at school for fear of attracting attention. The inconspicuous passed their written examinations by dint of some skilful sleight of hand, with luck just scraped through the oral tests, and one day were declared worthy of their Matura certificates. They would use some favourable situation at the beginning of the year to make a good impression, and if they succeeded that was all they wanted.

  Severin had been trying just that in providing the seating plan—and now there he stood staring at the stove, thinking strenuously and making faces, as if he had to find the most cogent of all answers for the most difficult of all questions.

  Kupfer, who was quick to pick up a suspect scent, asked, “What were your marks last year?”

  “Good in both semesters.”

  That surprised Kupfer. He didn’t know exactly where he was. Was Severin in fact an able student, just confused at the moment? Did he, after all, know so much that in these circumstances it would be disgraceful to let him fail over such a childish question? Well, he’d soon find out. For the time being Kupfer passed it over.

  “The stove most resembles a cylinder.” (Kupfer pronounced the word with pompous precision, as he did all words borrowed from languages other than German.) “Is that right?”

  Severin nodded, relieved.

  “Good, then let’s go on. Imagine the stove standing in that corner by the window. Let us suppose the sunlight falls in at an angle of sixty degrees. We want to work out what shadow the surface area of the cylinder, that is to say the stove, will cast on the plane surface, that is to say the surface of the desk.”

  Severin was lucky enough to know how to begin this exercise—which was not surprising for a student of his stamp. When he started to hesitate, Kupfer intervened, added new complications and finished by solving the problem himself. Severin watched attentively, nodding from time to time to show that he understood, and repeated a few key words under his breath. This was the normal way of “making progress with the syllabus”, in which the student played the part of dogsbody. The initial danger of a storm, in the shape of a test carrying recorded marks, seemed to have blown over.

  “There.” Kupfer put the chalk down and gazed affectionately at the board. “Was that so difficult, Severin? So now you see. Thank you, sit down.”

  Severin was on his way, mightily relieved.

  “One moment!” Kupfer picked up the class register. “You were marked Good last year. Hmm,” and with a grin, he entered something in the book. “Today I’m afraid it was Unsatisfactory, at best.”

  Another surprise and another point scored. Once again it struck home. Severin bowed, scarlet in the face, and went back to his desk. The class sat there, rigid.

  Kupfer, unmoved, went on.

  “As you see, everyday objects provide the best examples. We just have to keep our eyes open and not allow ourselves to be put off. Don’t you agree? For instance, there was I in June 1916, lying beside the River Isonzo…”

  “Going to laugh again today, Scheri?” enquired Rimmel, half turning.

  “You’d all like that, wouldn’t you?” Kurt muttered through his teeth. “Laugh yourself!”

  Rimmel grinned, but no sound was audible.

  “Hello, Zasche!” Kurt called in break to the rather simple student who ran errands for the others. Was he, he asked, on his way down to the stationer’s to buy exercise books?

  Zasche nodded, and opened his hand to show a number of banknotes. Kurt added a contribution.

  “Get me two as well, will you? The same as for the others.”

  A little hanger-on, faced with a task that seems to him onerous, thinks it can be mastered only by stepping outside his own nature, and puffs himself up to unhealthy proportions, putting a strain on his lungs. Instead of redu
cing the task to its proper dimensions he screws himself up to what he supposes them to be, and then suddenly shrinks again, like a rubber band stretched tight and then abruptly snapping back. A melancholy sight—but at first no one thinks about him. Without considering what will happen, the gentle suddenly become rough, weaklings mimic strength, the naturally kindly arm themselves with severity and belligerence.

  “Well-Then”, as the stout German teacher Franz Mattusch was nicknamed, had never yet entered a student’s name in the register by way of reproof, or summoned him before a staff meeting, or actually given him a mark that meant he failed. However, he had his black days when he was possessed by an inconsiderate excess of ill will. Anyone intruding on his preserves then seemed to be inviting total annihilation. These lapses remained within the boundaries of his own subconscious. Not even the class teacher learnt what had happened in the German lesson. For Mattusch was far too lazy to spin out affairs at length, even in his mind, and he was therefore regarded as a good sort. And so he probably was, although whether at heart or only on the surface no one really knew; but that made no difference to the fact that ultimately he presented no danger.

  As if he were on the track of some misdeed, he came barging into the classroom with a lot of noise at ten, banged his briefcase down on the teacher’s lectern, and looked around the surprised students with brows thunderously drawn together. Then he let fly, and his remarks—he was a fast talker anyway—were wheezed out so asthmatically today that you could hardly understand what he was saying.

  “Outside the door I heard one of you saying: ‘Good, here comes Mattusch.’ I know who it was, of course.” (He paused, and every student present thought that he was meant. In fact, Mattusch had just wanted an excuse.) “Well then, you needn’t think you can lead such an easy life with me, right?” (“Well then” and “Right?” were Mattusch’s favourite expressions, and he used them all the time, snapping them out crisply.) “Well then, you needn’t imagine I’ll let everyone who’s lazy off so lightly, right? And no trying to argue with me, right? I’m the one who knows best, I always know best. Well then. This is your last school year, and you gentlemen will have to put in a bit of work, right? I’ll make sure you do. Well then, it’s not so good if ‘here comes Mattusch’, right? Kindly remember that. Sit down!”

  And during the lesson Professor Mattusch paced restlessly up and down between the rows of desks, pouncing on every offence against discipline, and never forgetting to conclude the lectures he then read the students with: “Well then, stop and think what you’re about. Your Matura exam is imminent, right?”

  Professor Prochaska, who had taught the class history and geography for the last three years, was not his usual self today either, and the consistency with which he kept up his new attitude throughout the lesson made the students fear it might be a permanent innovation.

  “Young ladies, young gentlemen,” he began quietly, yet oddly abruptly, and after the long break his strong Bohemian accent was particularly noticeable. “I’ll ask you not to make life difficult for me in this last year of yours. I’m an old man, I’m soon to retire. You’re the last class I’ll be preparing for the Matura—so show that you’re grown-up now! But you must also, if you please, kindly keep quiet.”

  The class fell silent. Quiet for Prochaska. What was this? A strangely weighty sensation hung in the air, pressing down on the thirty-two students in their final year like the hushed sanctity of a cathedral. The students, who in their different ways had reached different stages in their work, suddenly all felt equally bad, as if it were their fault that they were Professor Prochaska’s last class for the Matura. They also resented it. It limited their options; and what they had heard about the Matura so often recently, shaking it off easily again, now suddenly made sense. So the life upon which they were about to enter was really there, it stood before them, to be lived to the end, a furrow to be ploughed, grey, alarming. A mechanical mode of existence, its engine already switched off, began embarking on its final oscillations.

  “I’m an old man, soon to retire…” Why is he telling us that? Is it our fault? We don’t want to know, we don’t want to escort anyone to his grave! So one door is closing behind us at the end of this year—fair enough. But behind him? He’s all part of it. We want to leave him behind, too. However, not until the end of the year! We don’t want to know, at the very beginning, that it’s a last year in two senses. We don’t want to think of a life that promises none of us anything but a long wait to say goodbye… why is old Professor Prochaska saying goodbye to us today? We all like him because he’s kind, kind like anyone who’s used up all the bad in him. Professor Anton Prochaska had used up the bad in him pretty quickly, for his reserves of it had not been large. He had become a likeable character much earlier than most other people. As far as anyone could remember, no student had ever said a word against him—and now were no students to know him again? Are we, the class wondered, to be the last to know and like him?

  We’ll like him, anyway. And it would be good to tell him so. Why doesn’t anyone say anything?

  “Professor Prochaska, sir!”

  Kurt Gerber has risen to his feet. He’d felt that everyone was waiting for it.

  “Professor Prochaska, sir, I promise you in the name of the whole class that your last year at this school will be the best ever!”

  The rest of the class rises. They stand there in emotional silence. Prochaska cleans the inside of his glasses without taking them off.

  “We’ll observe a minute’s silence in memory of the dear departed!” he says, with the smile that accompanies all his jokes. This time, however, no one laughs. It was almost the truth.

  “Now, do sit down, please!” Professor Prochaska’s voice sounded the same as usual again. “I’m particularly glad to hear our friend Gerber say that. I’ve always thought he was the right sort, even if he’s sometimes been known to get rather rowdy playing a game of taroc. Or, come to think of it, was marriage the card game in question? Well, never mind. I’m sure we’ll get on well, young people. I’m not worried about that. Of course, you’ll have to work a little harder just before the Matura exam. And we don’t want you two having headaches too often, Lewy and Weinberg, do we?”

  Lewy said “No”, and Hobbelmann said the same on behalf of Weinberg. Prochaska was so short-sighted that he hadn’t even noticed Weinberg’s absence. (Weinberg never came back after the holidays until the third day of school. It was his speciality, and he was not a little proud of it.)

  “That’s all right, then. And once again, young people, behave like the young ladies and gentlemen you are. No coming in late after the bell has rung and slamming doors. You know the close attention everyone pays to the eighth class when you’re in your last year. So don’t do anything silly. I hope to get you all through the exam, but you mustn’t make it too difficult for me, young people, you must help me. It will mean a bit of effort, but, after all, you take the Matura only once in your life. At least, I don’t want any of you having to retake it. Right, there we are.”

  The students looked at each other. They knew what Professor Prochaska’s remarks meant. He would be telling everyone the individual questions in geography and history, the subjects they would be required to discuss in the exam, ahead of time. They had always heard rumours that he did that. However, the older students taking the final exam never said anything definite. So there was always anxiety: would it really happen? Now Prochaska had almost entirely dispelled that anxiety. He was a good sort. And to have him this year, too! What luck they had to be the last eighth-year class he would see through the exam…

  The last lesson was given by Professor Filip, a young teacher with private means who was regarded by the other professors and the students alike as out of the common run. Everyone knew that he taught for sheer love of teaching, and there was probably some connection with his favourite subject of individual psychology. He taught introductory courses on methods of advanced study, logic and chemistry, and was not regarded as
a great authority on those subjects. But he had wide general knowledge, which he readily imparted. So his lessons—in which art, politics, medicine and all sorts of other matters were discussed, rather than the ostensible subject—were the most stimulating of all. Filip also liked to depart from ordinary high-school conventions, disregarded any seating plan or other formalities, talking informally to the students, calling the girls by their forenames, and he was in mortal difficulty when there was an inspection. He would then call someone up to the teacher’s lectern—someone who had shown evidence of ability in the few opportunities provided by Filip’s lessons—and give him his head to say what he liked. Such students got the top mark of Very Good in his reports, most of the rest of them got Good and a few, who he knew for certain wouldn’t mind one way or the other, were given a mere Satisfactory. This lax concept of education did not, of course, gain him any respect—for that it would have been necessary for him to be a teacher of one of the main subjects on the curriculum—but it did mean that the students confided in him and treated him (with just a touch of condescension) as a friend. That went so far that students in the lower classes, whose pranks Filip was unable to deal with, were beaten up by the eighth year on their own initiative out of an honourable sense of indignation. The eighth year liked Filip a lot. Unfortunately he was of no real importance.

  And even Filip adjusted, in this first lesson he gave them, to the significance with which the coming Matura endowed them. It didn’t seem like that at first. He arrived late, said not “Sit down” but, as usual and with a civil little bow, “Good day to you”—but then he began trying to force something out; he ran his eyes over the class, and he finally brought himself to make the following speech: