Young Gerber

by Friedrich Torberg

  “What an achievement,” says Brodetzky, scornfully. Murmurs of disapproval swell. It is quite clear now that the mood of the class, or part of it anyway, has come down in Schönthal’s favour. But the bell and the entrance of Professor Borchert rule out any further debate.

  Borchert is a small, dithering man, distinctly fond of himself and the importance of what he says. If anything goes against the grain with him, the little eyes behind his pince-nez begin to blink nervously, then he draws himself up to his full height, and his comments always begin with the words, “In my lesson…” For the rest, he is not unpleasant out of a passion for being unpleasant, like his colleague Kupfer, only a man of erratic changeability, which can sometimes make him seem a little irresponsible. He may admit to being unfair and makes up for it, or he may suddenly fail you in a test for reasons you don’t know. Kindness, insight, an often surprising understanding of his students’ concerns—and petty vengefulness, fits of anger worthy of Nero, and pedantic inaccessibility change place in him at breakneck speed, creating confusion and anxiety. At heart he means no ill, but he is dangerous.

  Today, as usual, he has forgotten to check the register. As the class has been fully present for a long time (you don’t miss days lightly in the eighth year!), he notices the absence of Schönthal at once.

  “Monsieur Schönthal, est-ce qu’il est absent depuis la première leçon?”

  “Non!” reply several students. “Il est présent!”

  “Alors, où est-il?”

  Borchert gets no answer to that. The class, feeling awkward, does not reply. Borchert begins to suspect that Schönthal is missing “his lesson” on purpose, and is about to enter his name in the register. The eighth-year students don’t know how to correct this misapprehension.

  Borchert has opened the register. He stops in surprise, then reads quietly, but so that everyone can hear him: “Benda disrupted the lesson in the most outrageous manner by refusing to obey my orders and giving impudent answers when reproved. He thereby caused an equally reprehensible breach of discipline in the class as a whole… Monsieur Benda? Je suis profondément étonné! Qu’avez-vous fait?”

  Benda stands up but does not reply, from which Borchert concludes that the case is nothing to do with him. He, too, however, has noticed a regrettable change in the conduct of the eighth-year students recently, and he is much surprised that Benda, of all people—in any case, he is about to enter Schönthal in the register.

  But at that moment Schönthal comes through the door, his handkerchief still over his mouth. During the subsequent interrogation, matters are revealed that, once again, leave Borchert profondément étonné. He delivers a lecture of some length, making various allusions, and Kurt, whose nerves are on edge after what has happened, relates them all to himself, becomes restless and wishes all this would come to an end. Borchert reproves him several times, but leaves it at that. At last he interrupts himself: Zasche is playing with his pen-holder instead of listening.

  “Zasche! J’observe que vous n’êtes pas très intéressé!”

  Zasche, who has not understood a word of it, looks at him in alarm and nods, to be on the safe side.

  Borchert likes to exercise his not very inventive wit on the half-idiot youth. Since Zasche replies Oui or Non at random to Borchert’s questions, a delicious idea comes to the teacher. “Vous êtes fou, n’est-ce pas?” he enquires in a friendly, encouraging tone of voice.

  And Zasche, concluding from that tone that his consent is expected, says accurately, “Oui.”

  Borchert titters, and the self-appointed official laughers of the class join in, full of appreciation for the hilarious joke. Zasche stands there helpless, bright red in the face. It is a repellent spectacle, and Kurt’s indignation turns to it at once and uncontrollably.

  “Congratulations, sir,” he says. “But why not make such jokes about me instead?”

  The class falls expectantly silent. A verbal duel, Borchert against Kurt—this could be amusing. Borchert apparently in good humour, Gerber, they all know, fully charged with caustic explosive. The eighth year sit up straight. Körner imitates a fanfare, and Schleich says, audibly, “In the Great Hall of Toledo”. All the conditions for a dispute are present.

  Nothing comes of it. Borchert blinks vigorously, then nods regretfully: “In my lesson, Gerber, you should refrain from such arrogant conduct. You of all people need to do so. You ought to have an eye on your predicament. Alors, la dernière leçon…”

  And he has simply swept Kurt aside.

  This is too much for Kurt. Schönthal’s words still ring in his ears—you’re going to fail anyway, you’re going to fail anyway—and now this humiliation, this unmistakable hint at his position. Kurt feels weak at the knees.

  He is going steadily downhill, failing several tests, and, moreover, when he is sent back to his desk with an Unsatisfactory again, he sees a malicious grin flit over Schönthal’s face. He tries to spur himself on to work hard—I’ll show that idiot! But such an ambition soon seems to him so degrading that for a while he does not answer questions put to him even when he could. Herr Schönthal was not to think he had the slightest wish to convince him; no, maybe I don’t know anything about gneiss, granite and mica schist, and I’m not interested in them, I know other things, things of which he has no idea, and I don’t want to know the stuff that he prides himself on, I’d be ashamed to know it, I won’t say a word…

  One day Professor Seelig takes him aside after the lesson and speaks to him urgently, warning him to try a little harder, not make it so difficult for the few teachers who are still on his side to speak up for him. Kurt tries morosely dismissing this, but Seelig looks at him so sadly out of his deep, dark eyes that Kurt pipes down. And above all, Seelig goes on, he must try to sort out that business of Kupfer and his detention, he must, and Kurt promises to do so almost tearfully, like a child trying to be good. Oh, sometimes he would be so glad to have everything all right again, everything in order, it hurts him so much to be hated and have to hate in return, what’s it all for, why is Schönthal glad to think of me failing, why is Kupfer so unpleasant to me, so deeply unpleasant, why, what’s got into him, perhaps he is a very unhappy man and could be kind and soft-hearted if he had someone to love him… And Kurt told himself to stop falling apart like this, shored himself up with good intentions, went over to Kupfer and began speaking in a gentle, amiable voice—but Kupfer hurled the sharp dagger of arrogant implacability at him, and Kurt guessed at the existence of a huge and horrible Never; we cannot run against it headlong, or it will fall like a gigantic wall and force us to the ground, and if we get too close it will crush us…

  It hadn’t come to that yet.

  The palfrey had tried to get to its feet. But it stumbled and collapsed at the knees again. Its strength was wasted. The whip rose without haste after every lash, fell again without haste, rose again, regularly, up—down, up—down, twenty-four hours, a full day, and here came the next lash, the palfrey already felt nothing more, and its eyes were slowly losing the glint of fear and the gleam of hope alike—until one day the whiplash remained in the air and did not come down.

  The Christmas holidays were here.

  VI

  A Young Man Called Kurt Gerber

  THERE WERE TIMES when Lisa Berwald, shaken by sudden ideas of the aimlessness and pointlessness of her existence, did not know what to do about Kurt Gerber and his devotion to her. When that happened she mentally clothed her naked perplexity in a wrap that billowed out around her; she hoped it would be seen as plain lack of interest, so that she could resist any attempt to make her go on strenuous forced marches of emotion. It seemed to her entirely pointless to scale peaks when in the course of nature every ascent must be followed by a descent. Why go to the trouble of such feats of mountaineering? Very well, you’d reached the top. And then what? See the beautiful view inevitably disappear again, go back down to the grey plain and live there even more discontented than before? Was she to take the trouble of loving vows
on herself just for the sake of a promise which was always going to be impossible to keep? Why should she set out to exert herself, plant hopes, tend and raise them?

  Lisa Berwald saw no need to exert her heart and brain, her thinking and her feeling any more than the moment required. And so, not having used up her energies in making unusual demands on herself, she always got the maximum achievement at the minimum expense. Down-to-earth people would call that a “practical disposition”. And they would not be wrong. To have a practical disposition means not doing anything useless. However, because all that is beautiful has been proved to be entirely useless, the practically disposed do not usually lead beautiful lives, and Lisa Berwald did not. That is true of those who do have a practical disposition, but to say so of Lisa would be to do her wrong, because she lacked their calculating egotism. Lisa Berwald had no idea at all about her own nature. What she did, she did instinctively, and because her instincts were good she always did what was most advantageous. But she didn’t think about it, was not calculating, and so did not get any further use out of her instinctive reactions. She was never in command of a situation, only faced with it. She was indifferent to the facts of it, and so they dwindled in importance until, as she ignored them, they were finally entirely lost from view. There was something strangely generous, even noble, in her thoughtlessness.

  So when people told Kurt Gerber that Lisa was stupid, he smiled secretly at such a comical conviction. At the most he would concede that she was not, maybe, highly intelligent, but no one was asking that of her, and all the same—

  That “all the same” covered several contingencies. From time to time, Lisa had fits of enthusiasm. Then she would devour, in motley confusion, the most difficult reading matter she could find, she learned languages, went to the opera, surprised acquaintances with her unspoilt judgement—and the fit would suddenly wear off again. Not a jot of all the culture she had swallowed wholesale remained, she was an empty vessel once more, sitting without a word for hours on end and looking sadly into space.

  The sadness might arise from the fact that Lisa, having been intellectually overstrained, was thinking of something just the opposite, and if she did not consciously identify it she felt what it was: she had never been in love. She hadn’t even had the usual teenage crush on anyone; when at the age of thirteen she let someone kiss her for the first time it was no picture postcard of an Adonis for whom she yearned, but a chance-come neighbour in the summer holidays, a bank clerk with thinning hair who took advantage of Lisa’s being left alone in the apartment that evening. At the time she had felt flattered because he was, after all, grown up, and once back in the city she cherished fantastic expectations, contemptuously rejected the burgeoning wishes of her male fellow students at school, and was greatly disappointed when no one else came along. The boys she met at dancing class, with their smooth words and the dirty jokes they told in private, bored her, but as she, the prettiest of the girls, did not want to be the only one without a boyfriend, she would let first one and then another kiss her, and at the age of fifteen she knew everything that a kiss had to offer. And then came a dismal, trying time full of dry sobs, sombre nights and burning days, when she simply did not know what to do about the urges of her young body, and went about in a daze. It was then, too, that she took to putting up with the knowing way her fellow students pestered her—until one day, when Lisa was between seventeen and eighteen, Otto Engelhart came along. She hardly knew where from, she didn’t love him, didn’t even like him when he was introduced to her and she bowed awkwardly. What happened next was also unimportant to her: how they came to be sitting in a car side by side after going to the theatre on a rainy autumn evening, kissing wildly, and then she was lying naked in a strange bed, and woke up naked in a strange bed, and she still wasn’t in love with Otto Engelhart. It could just as well have been anyone else, she thought. But it hadn’t been. And he was followed by this one and that one (she was the one who made her choice now, and she did it like a queen in full knowledge of all her powers), and then even Otto Engelhart said nothing and kept away—but she felt it was no coincidence when he came back one day, his angular face pale, his throat rough with emotion, and there lay Otto Engelhart at Lisa’s feet and Lisa didn’t like to see it, so as he would not get up she lay down on the floor beside him. After that they stayed together. Lisa Berwald was “walking out” with Otto Engelhart. It almost amused her that rumours about her began going the rounds at just this time. Now that she was being faithful to one boyfriend, people began looking at her askance, calling her flighty and flirtatious. At school only the energetic support of the more liberal professors kept these slurs from having further consequences. Then one day her parents were wringing their hands—people she didn’t know had thought it their duty to open their eyes, was it really true, had their daughter sunk so low? Lisa saw all the uselessness of a frank discussion, and neither wanted one nor felt that she would be any good at it, so she soothed them, assuring them that it was just silly talk, good heavens, the things people would say… and like it or not, her parents had to be content with that.

  However, people did not stop whispering about her, and that became a real nuisance. Particularly when Otto Engelhart himself began complaining. Defiantly, she now allowed others to “succeed” with her, as they put it. Nor did she object when Otto Engelhart had similar success with other girls. She knew that he could not break free of her any more than she could break free of him, that whatever happened they would always find their way back to each other with the inevitability of a boomerang, however far it is flung.

  Their reconciliation after such interludes (if reconciliation is the word for it) was without scenes or bitterness, and it was also without any emotion that, lying in Otto Engelhart’s arms, Lisa said one day that, now she was nineteen years old, she would soon be getting married.

  However, there was painful surprise in his voice when he asked, “Who to?”

  She didn’t know, said Lisa indifferently, examining her fingernails. Probably some paunchy businessman supplied by her parents or a helpful friend of theirs.

  Well, said Otto, he was sure that would be a good thing for her. They couldn’t have gone on in the same way as before anyway.

  To which Lisa unexpectedly asked, “Why not?”

  And Otto Engelhart, eyes wide with surprise, repeated, “Yes, well, why not?”

  Then there was a long silence, while they were both thinking the same thing, and both thinking it with the same hopeless fury.

  But it was no good. Lisa left school, where she had been for too long because at home they couldn’t think of anything else to do with her. On her summer holiday in Italy she was introduced to a manufacturer considerably her senior, who could boast of owning a car and an unnaturally high voice for a man; these went with an easy-going nature. His surname, very inappropriately, was Brumm, denoting a low growl like a bear’s, and he was what is known as a good catch. He knew nothing or little about her earlier history, or else he knew it all and didn’t mind, because Lisa was very beautiful and very young and was nice to him. He would certainly have married her, if only to possess her, and she seemed happy enough with that; but when they went home to the city, Lisa suddenly took fright at her unimaginable future, and one day she was back with Otto Engelhart. At home she explained, briefly, that she had thought it over and she really couldn’t go about with a surname like Brumm for the rest of her days, and she rather liked to think that she would now be considered an excitable and hysterical young woman.

  That had been in September. Since she didn’t want to be entirely a burden on her parents, who were not pleased with her anyway, and also to find a substitute for school, she took a job in an arts and crafts studio, where she embroidered cushions, made decorative tea cosies topped by china dolls’ heads, was highly valued by her boss and was even popular with the rest of the staff, because she was pleasant to them, obliging and not ambitious. At the beginning of November the young and very rich son of an estate owne
r started idolizing her, heaped luxuries on her, and quarrelled with his family on her account. She enjoyed this for a few weeks, and then suddenly dropped him. In the Christmas holidays she was going to visit a winter-sports resort not far away, with Otto Engelhart and some of his lively assortment of friends.

  A pleasant weariness had overcome her. Surveying her existence, she saw the possibility of living for several endlessly long years just as she liked. For the time being that was enough to put her in the right frame to think, with a kind of agreeable emotion, of Kurt Gerber and his wild, ambitious love, which in its purity put something of a strain on her. In such a mood, her intention of denying him the fulfilment of his dream, but in the most painless and gentle way possible, grew and flourished; she would do it with many kind words, even with many passionate kisses. For she was firmly determined that Kurt Gerber must not entertain such ideas. There had been a brief period when she would have yielded to him, because she liked him, and at the time she didn’t mind much about her current boyfriend, the fourth or fifth. But Kurt had failed to take his chance at the time. When she realized that he had refrained from doing so intentionally she had been very cross at first, and the next moment more moved than ever before. Then she took fright at the wide range of turbulent, uncontrolled feelings he showed he had for her. She could not understand how anyone could take a kiss so seriously, and because she herself had such very different feelings she thought Kurt Gerber’s love was childish (although she respected the fact, particularly striking in the surroundings of school, that he was so adult in other ways). A maternal feeling for him had developed from this attitude, although it had nothing to do with the concepts of “friendship” or “platonic love” misused by schoolgirls. It was a strange way of reciprocating his feelings that made his devotion seem inappropriate. As she knew that her views were free of any false cowardice, she thought she could satisfy Kurt in the way she planned. Indeed, there was a certain esteem for him in it. She did not want to have slept with Kurt “too”, did not want to see him as just one of several. He had no idea of this. The fact that he knew he had had predecessors inflamed him; he would show her that, for his part, he did not want to sleep with her “too”. And so they both, but from different causes, shrank from a relationship that was like many others, and loved at cross-purposes without knowing it.