A Gushing Fountain

by Martin Walser

  Johann nodded to Göser Marie as if he considered himself fortunate to have Herr Häfele do such a lovely job on such a head as his. But really, he was thinking enviously of his brother, Josef. Josef had persuaded them to leave some hair standing at the back, beyond the top of his skull. It was still short, but long enough to part. Josef was already going to school. Johann’s mother said that when he started school he could have a part too. He should be glad he could comb his hair so nicely toward the front. “Take a look at your friends,” she said, “Ludwig, Adolf, Paul, Guido, Helmut, and the other Helmut. Do any of them have a part? No. But more than one has his head completely shaved.” She was right. Johann couldn’t complain. It was just that he knew that Irmgard, Gretel, Trudl, and Leni liked longer hair. In the barn he’d given Irmgard the cologne that had been a present from Mina (“That’s for you, Johannle, to make you smell nice,” Mina had said), and two days later Irmgard had Trudl tell him to come to the barn on Saturday at four thirty. He did, and in front of the same witnesses who’d seen him give her the cologne, she gave him a little comb in its own slipcase. That could only mean that he should let his hair grow longer, because for what grew on his head now, his fingers sufficed.

  Johann popped a raspberry drop in his mouth and quickly descended the sandstone steps to the girl’s bicycle he had ridden here. They had two bikes, one with a crossbar that only his father rode, and the girl’s bike that Mina used to go grocery shopping for the restaurant, and Josef and Johann were allowed to use it too. It was unimaginable that his mother would ever ride a bicycle. She was too great or too powerful or too exalted or too fearful. One couldn’t imagine her using something she might fall off of.

  Johann liked the pressure of the serrated pedals against the soles of his feet. By the end of September his soles were so tough from going barefoot all summer that the pressure of the pedals, which still hurt in April, just felt pleasant. He rode up the main street, savoring the sharp sweetness of the raspberry drop and greeting every man and woman so loudly he was afraid he might frighten them and would be called on to stop before he had gotten past the high red sandstone wall that screened the Villa Primbs and its gardens from the street. This wall was so high that even now, at midday, it cast a shadow. In that shadow, there was a man coming toward Johann and gesturing in a way that made him brake. The man had already been looking at him from a long way off. Then he made a brief, unmistakable gesture with a small baton-sized thing that looked like a folding umbrella, the kind that pops open. The man was a stranger. He didn’t take the cigarette out of his mouth, not even when he started speaking to Johann. His cigarette bobbed up and down when he talked, just like Jutz the organist’s, who also gave Josef piano lessons. The man remarked that Johann must have just been at the barber’s. Johann nodded. He was pleased that the stranger noticed right away. The stranger said he was a photographer and had just found a wonderful subject, but needed a living person in the picture, too. “Come on, and I’ll show you,” and he walked up the main street beside Johann to where the red wall took a sharp turn uphill to the right. The stranger also turned right and Johann followed. When they were almost at the top, where the path continued on to the garden gate of the Hoppe-Seylers’ villa, the stranger stopped and said, “Here.” He wanted Johann to stand in the middle of the path with both hands on the handlebar of his bicycle. A great big mat of ivy hung over the high red wall, and behind Johann two huge redwoods—he knew they were there and saw them later in the photo—rose skyward from Hoppe-Seylers’ garden. They were the tallest trees in the world. People said Professor Hoppe-Seyler had brought them home from California and planted them there. From California or Sumatra. Johann had never seen the professor. The professor’s daughter—Johann guessed she must be a hundred years old—lived alone in the old house on the lake. Fräulein Hoppe-Seyler was one of their coal customers. From time to time Niklaus, Josef, Father, and Johann would cart ten or twelve hundredweights of briquettes up from the street below, past the gigantic trees, to the cellar window. Then Father and Niklaus heaved one sack after another off the handcart and together emptied them through the window into the coal cellar. The professor’s ancient daughter stood inside and urged them plaintively to “Slow down, slow down. Not so fast.” The faster they emptied the sacks, the faster the briquettes tumbled out, the more easily they crumbled, and the more coal dust there was in the cellar. Since Johann and Josef weren’t big enough to carry anything yet, they came along only to help push the handcart when they made these small deliveries. The slope of the entire village from the lake up to the Lausbichel was very uneven. When they went back down the hill, all four of them sat together in the handcart, padded with the empty sacks, and of course it was Josef who got to hold the cart shaft between his feet and steer.

  Like a magician, the stranger produced a tripod out of his baton, screwed his camera onto it, and started giving Johann orders in a voice that reminded him of the tiger tamer from the Sarrasani Circus. He kept shifting Johann just a few inches. He’d barely move a fraction to the right before he’d have to move back again, but not too far. OK, let’s try again. The photographer kept looking up at the tops of the redwoods. Of course they had to be in the picture. Johann would have liked to explain to the photographer that Professor Hoppe-Seyler had brought them back from California or Sumatra, probably from Sumatra—no, definitely from Sumatra. He had it from the only person in town who would know: Helmer’s Hermine. Queen Hermine, that’s what his father called her when he talked about Helmer’s Hermine. Helmer Gierer’s Hermine. There were so many Gierers in town that if you wanted to refer to a particular Gierer, you had to add the name of their house or their job. Same with the Zürns and the Schnells and Hagens and Stadlers. “Without demeaning herself in the least,” said his father, “she cleans the villas of the summer people.” The only reason he didn’t mention that she spoke excellent High German was probably that he spoke High German himself. One time Fräulein Hoppe-Seyler wasn’t at home when they delivered briquettes. Instead of the black triangle that reached to the floor, topped by a tremulous white head, it was Helmer’s Hermine who opened the door. Thin, with pinched cheeks and a prominent, longish wart next to her nose. She unlatched the cellar window and cautioned them to empty the sacks carefully, just like the professor’s daughter. But instead of saying sachte, sachte like Fräulein Hoppe-Seyler, she said hofele, hofele, which also means careful but doesn’t sound so High German. As she escorted the coalmen back out the gate, she said that Fräulein Hoppe-Seyler claimed she didn’t give a hoot where the professor had brought the redwoods back from—yes, that’s just how she put it: she didn’t give a hoot where they were from. But Hermine informed them that the professor had brought them from Sumatra. Just consider the bamboo hedge the professor had grown by the lakeshore wall. “In my world view,” said Hermine, “bamboo goes better with Sumatra than California. You’re the only person I’ve told, no one else, just so you know.” And she tapped Father’s forehead with her finger. As they rattled back down the main street, Father shouted, “In my world view, bamboo goes better with Sumatra than California,” and he ticked his index finger back and forth like Helmer’s Hermine. Actually a gesture of negation, for Helmer’s Hermine it excluded the slightest possibility of contradiction. And in this town, being right was important.

  Helmer’s Hermine wouldn’t talk to just any old person on her way home from the villas to the upper village, where she lived with her brother beneath a roof that sloped down almost to the top of their manure pile. In contrast to the höfe—the more imposing farmsteads—such small premises that hardly dared peek out from under their overhanging roofs were referred to with the diminutive höfle. Hermine’s brother Franz, who worked Helmer’s höfle, went barefoot almost all year round. And if he did put on shoes on the coldest day of the year, he never ever wore socks or wrapped his feet.

  When Father pronounced Helmer’s Hermine a queen, Johann immediately sensed that her queenliness was expressed by the prominent, longish wart to
the left of her nose.

  Johann had lost all feeling in his feet from having to shuffle back and forth so much when the stranger finally called out, “OK! Now how about a smile?” Johann gave the best grin he could muster, and the stranger pressed the shutter release. He took down Johann’s name and address, and then Johann was allowed to go—or rather, ride—home.

  When he got home, he carried the bicycle up the back stairs into the house and left it leaning against the wall of the narrow hallway that led in from the back door. It was shortly before twelve, and what with the season and the nice weather, there were already guests—they called them tourists—sitting on the front terrace perusing the menu. That’s why he had to use the back stairs.

  He went into the kitchen and said, “I had my picture taken.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said his mother, who was just lifting a spoonful of red cabbage to her lips to see if it needed more juniper or bay leaves or a little vinegar. Johann told what had happened. His mother said, “For God’s sake, Johann, an itinerant photographer!” When she said that, and by the way she said it, Johann knew he should have refused. Spat on the ground and taken to his heels, that’s what he should have done. “An itinerant photographer!” His mother repeated the words.

  But Mina, who cooked with Mother and actually was more in charge of the cooking than Mother—Mina said, “But you should be glad someone took his picture, ma’am.”

  “What’s it going to set me back?” asked his mother.

  “I’d like a picture of Johann no matter what it costs,” said Mina, whereupon his mother glared silently her. “You don’t have to look at me that way, ma’am,” said Mina.

  Mother nodded and said, “There you go again, Mina.”

  “But it’s true,” said Mina. The Princess said nothing but did glance over her shoulder. Then she returned to her dirty dishes. Johann said everything extra loud in her presence because, since her accident, the Princess didn’t hear so well. It was important to him that she understand everything he said.

  On his way home, Johann had already thought this business of getting his picture taken might have unpleasant consequences. He felt a little queasy about it. Mother had put it into words at once: itinerant photographer and what’s it going to set me back. Johann had never been photographed by himself before. No one in the whole family had ever been photographed alone except for Father, twice, during the war. Up to now there had been five photographs: two pictures of Father as a soldier; then the oldest of all, Grandfather and Grandmother and beside them Johann’s father, maybe nine years old (Josef and Johann could see that the picture had been taken long ago, since the nine-year-old had on pants that went down below his knees); in the fourth picture, his father and mother on their wedding day, Mother all encased in a white veil and Father like a young statesman. While Father looked at you cheerfully, Mother looked like she was peering into a light that was too bright. She was squinting a little and her mouth was puckered, too, and her hands clutched a little white purse as if someone was coming to snatch it away from her. Mother stood there in white, rather on the defensive. In the fifth picture: Father and Mother between Johann’s grandfather and his great-uncle from the Allgäu—whom they called Cousin—and Josef and Johann in front of the adults. Josef and Johann in white. Josef was holding Johann’s hand as if he’d had to pull his little brother into the picture. Josef’s feet were side by side. The toes of Johann’s shoes touched and the heels were far apart. The photographer had posed the family on the steep, stony ramp behind the restaurant, where the beer wagons drove down and came to a stop just in time in front of the cellar door. This ramp, which was always full of ruts from the rainstorms, was also where the coal wagon came rattling down, pulled by two horses and filled with coal freshly unloaded from a railroad car, and Johann was always amazed at how Herr Weibel walked backwards, holding the bridles of his two massive dray horses to get them to transfer their weight and strength to their hind legs and brace themselves against the load of coal bearing down behind them. The overfilled wagon had to be brought to a full stop by the time it reached the two stalls the coal would be shoveled into.

  Cousin Anselm, the great uncle from the Allgäu, had brought the photographer with him and obviously insisted that everyone put on their best for the picture: Mother in a black velvet dress that Johann never saw her wear again. Sometimes he paid a visit to this dress in the wardrobe where it hung and stroked it. He felt a desire to take it out, slip it on, and look at himself in the oval mirror on the wardrobe door. A V-neck, almost no sleeves, but not sleeveless. Why didn’t she wear the dress anymore? Father had put on one of his long suit coats. All Father’s suit coats hung almost to his knees. A tie emerged from under his white collar. Cousin Anselm wore a tie that was almost a bow; his grandfather, no tie at all. He hadn’t even put on a collar. And his collarless shirt was open. And the jacket and pants he had on showed that he had not heeded the sartorial directives of the great-uncle they called Cousin. His grandfather, who almost always walked and stood with a stoop, gazed out from the picture as if from under his eyebrows. You could see he wasn’t happy about being photographed. There’d been an argument. The following day Frau Biermann, who’d come to live with them in the middle of the war shortly after Grandmother’s death, had moved out forever, back to Munich. She had expected to be included in the photo. It was said that she’d hoped to marry the widower. She was a cook, they said, who had cooked in an entirely different class of restaurant. When she didn’t get Grandfather, they said, she set her cap for his son. And then he went and married the peasant girl from Kümmertsweiler. And then Frau Biermann didn’t even get to be in the photograph. She slammed her door, packed her things, and left. Back to the big city. So Frau Biermann was missing in this picture. Johann didn’t miss her. He liked looking at himself most of all, then at the others. The great-uncle they called Cousin was worth looking at. His open suit coat revealed a vest sporting a fine watch chain. This cousin was always a welcome visitor, for his Ford car if for nothing else. The wheels of the car had spokes like a thicket. And you didn’t have to start it with a crank, like Father’s truck. Cousin pushed a button, the car emitted a gentle gurgle, and the motor started running. It was typical of this great-uncle they called Cousin, who had founded a dairy in the Allgäu by the name of Alpine Bee, that he arrived with a photographer in tow and had everyone get dressed up for the photo, the only picture that showed the entire family. And now Johann comes along and lets some itinerant photographer take his picture! A picture in which he would be the only person! The two pictures from France with his father by himself—on both pictures, a big, dense, black beard and mustache surrounded his mouth—were necessary because Father had been decorated, first with the Bavarian Order of Merit and then with the Iron Cross. But just like that, for no reason! And by an itinerant photographer, yet! And now he could charge them whatever he liked! Johann had guessed it would be like this—guessed it, feared it, known it. And yet he’d let himself be photographed anyway! He wanted to tell his mother that at least once a month, his friend Adolf dragged him over to look at the Bruggers’ photo album. He would open it and with his index finger led Johann to every photo that had been added since the last time. Herr Brugger had a camera of his own. Herr Brugger went to Friedrichshafen once with Adolf and took a picture of him in front of a Zeppelin that was about to take off. Adolf was prouder of that photo than of any other. Herr Brugger had already taken two pictures of Johann and Adolf together. And both photos would now be on display in Bruggers’ photo album for all time to come. When his index finger arrived at these photos, Adolf had said, “Whadd’ya think of ’em?” Johann had felt Adolf looking at him and that he should return Adolf’s gaze, that it was the kind of moment when in the old days two friends would open their veins and let their blood mix together. He and Adolf together in the same picture. Twice, in fact: once on the landing where a steamer was just docking and once with the church in the background. Johann hadn’t been able to look at Adolf. Bu
t he’d reached over with his hand and touched Adolf. “It’s all right,” Adolf had said.

  When Mother looked and looked at Mina without a word just to make her realize how ridiculous what she said was, Mina (who was from the Allgäu) said, “Dös kenna br. Der sell hot g’seit, as ging schu, abr as gaoht it.” And the Princess, irritated by the dialect, called over from her dishpan in a loud voice, “Das kennen wir. Derselbige hat gesagt, es ginge schon, aber es geht nicht.”—We know what that’s like. The man said it was all right, but it isn’t all right. She overlooked dialect only when Mother spoke it.