It was time for Johann to fetch the milk. On his way, he saw people standing and reading the notice from which Mina had learned what happened to her money. When he had filled his six-liter milk can in the cellar of the dairy, he hung it onto the railing where other, smaller cans were already hanging and joined the game of hide-and-seek that took place around the dairy each evening. The main thing for Johann was being in the same hiding place as Gretel, Trudl, or Irmgard and until he was found, staying so close to Gretel, Trudl, or Irmgard that he could touch them in a way that seemed more accidental than intentional. And if those touches elicited a response that also seemed more accidental than intentional, Johann felt like he was in a storm. Naturally, then, you didn’t want to be it in the next round and have to lean against the wall hiding your face in your arm and counting to ten and then have to look for the others who had hidden themselves in the meantime. When he was it, he was tormented by the idea that Adolf, Ludwig, Paul, Guido, Helmut One, or Helmut Two were touching Irmgard just as unintentionally or intentionally as he had. What darkness you plunged into when running between the dairy and Glatthars’ house! Out in front was street, sunlit square, everything bright and clear. In the back: another time of day, another world, a dark confusion of more than one shed, and all under the cover of dense foliage that shut out the light, and beneath the trees, tall grasses that reached to the lowest branches and just beyond that, the shrubbery on the banks of the Oeschbach. Nowhere else in the village was it so easy to disappear. And nowhere else was the early evening twilight as dark as in Bichelmaier’s hay barn. In this darkness the sought-after contact seemed both more accidental and more intentional and radiated much more power than the touches one managed to steal when every movement was visible.
Today Johann was the first to have to go home. But behind the dairy in Glatthars’ shed he’d managed to get closer to Irmgard than ever before. In the shed, which was tiny to begin with, Irmgard and he had hidden in a bin. Because the bin was really small, they had to press against each other. Johann had the feeling that both of them, he and Irmgard, had ceased to breathe as long as they were so jammed together, he behind her and she in front of him. They would probably never have had to breathe again. They were quickly found—by Adolf, of course—but then Johann, in a positively frantic burst of speed unleashed by the storm of contact, had caught up with Adolf and beaten him to the base. He tagged it and yelled, “In free—and Irmgard, too!” Although that was against the rules, he said it so forcefully that Adolf couldn’t object and immediately ran off behind the house to look for the others.
Johann took the lidless six-liter can and swung it so fast in big circles that the milk remained in its container. He relished the weight of the wheeling can, which almost pulled him over every time it reached the bottom of its arc. The fragrance of Irmgard’s hair was still in his nose. He was taller than Irmgard, and in their cramped hiding place, he’d had his nose practically in her hair. But when they squatted down and then kneeled to make themselves even more invisible, he was able to do something he’d never managed to do before—to touch Irmgard near the spot where it was strictly forbidden to touch her. He wasn’t quite sure how close he’d come. Involuntarily he started to sniff his index finger; maybe it still smelled of the spot. But before he got the finger to his nose, he snatched it away again. There were still people standing in a half circle in front of Glatthars’ house, and now Helmer’s Hermine stood beside the notice and people were listening to her. Johann didn’t understand what she was saying, but he saw her index finger ticking back and forth. And Hermine would have seen him sniffing at his index finger. And she would know at once what had led him to sniff his finger. She must be telling her listeners what they should do in the face of this announcement from the Bank of Commerce and Agriculture, but that wouldn’t keep her from catching Johann at his sniffing if he sniffed his index finger. Luckily, Hermine’s own index finger ticking back and forth had made him instantly aware of the danger.
Back home, as soon as he had put the milk in the icebox in the hallway he dashed straight up to his room where at last he could sniff his index finger for traces of Irmgard’s spot. They called boys who ran after girls skirt-chasers. Johann knew he was a skirt-chaser, but if anyone called him that he would hotly deny it. Not to mention that when he hid in a tight place with Adolf, he would have liked to touch him just as much as Irmgard.
He had to get to the station to meet his father returning from Oberstaufen by the workers’ train. They hadn’t planned it ahead, but Johann knew his father counted on being met by him. Although Father often tarried for whole minutes at a time behind Josef as he played his scales, Johann thought he was closer to his father. For instance, Johann had never seen his father giving Josef an Eskimo kiss. But he greeted Johann every day by rubbing the tip of his nose against the tip of Johann’s. He told him that was how Eskimos greeted each other.
In the hallway he encountered Mina again. She ran her hand over his head as he passed, something she’d never done before. It must have to do with the money the bank had taken from her. Mother came out of the kitchen and said Father had called. He wouldn’t be on the workers’ train. He would catch the late train.
Back to the dairy again? No, he couldn’t, he just couldn’t. Irmgard must have gone home by now. He hoped so. And Irmgard would be the only reason to go back. Often, he would pass Irmgard’s house without so much as turning his head to see if anyone happened to be looking out or just standing in the doorway. Whenever he did, he had the feeling Irmgard was watching him walk past. And that walking past, observed by Irmgard, filled every step he took with enormous significance.
Johann went into the dining room and sat down next to his grandfather. He was sitting with a guest who never sat at the regulars’ table either but always with Grandfather under the clock: Herr Loser from Unterbechtersweiler, the only person who rode a bicycle with only one pedal. The other pedal was uncoupled and served as a footrest for the clunky wooden foot he’d had since the war. He had no trouble making forward progress on the bike, even though there wasn’t an inch of level ground between Unterbechtersweiler and Wasserburg; it was up and down all the way.
“Well, Gebhard,” Grandfather was just saying as Johann sat down, and he laid one of his hands on the hands of Loser’s Gebhard. Usually it was a guest who would put a hand on Grandfather’s blue hands. Elsa set a fresh glass of beer in front of Loser’s Gebhard and a shot of fruit schnapps to go with it. Herr Deuerling, who always let them know by the way he said Get goin’, get along with ya! that he’d been born on the Bavarian side of the Lech River, had taught them that little shot glasses were called stamperl. But Johann noticed that the word didn’t sound right in the mouth of anyone from around here. Herr Seehahn, however (who never let on where he was from but said that after the revolution he’d fetched up in Munich as a “revulooshunery seaman, ret.”)—Herr Seehahn could say stamperl so it didn’t sound funny. But then, Herr Seehahn was one of those people at home in many languages.
Johann knew Loser’s Gebhard even though he didn’t come to the restaurant every week. Once, when Loser’s Gebhard was sitting at the table, Grandfather told about how when he was twenty-five he, Grandfather, had sold the family house in Hengnau to their neighbor, Dorn. Dorn tore it down, and the lumber and bricks were carted off to Unterbechtersweiler because Loser’s house in Unterbrechtersweiler had just burned down. Loser’s Gebhard’s father had rebuilt his house and barn with that material.
Loser’s Gebhard downed the fruit schnapps in one swallow and said, “There you go, Elsa.”
“Well, Gebhard,” said Grandfather, “you never know. You think it’s the end of the world, and then it turns out all right.” Loser’s Gebhard banged his fist on the table and said, “Seventy-five percent disability, Josef.” Grandfather nodded the way you nod when you know exactly what the other’s going to say. And Loser’s Gebhard talked the way you talk when you’ve told the same story many times before, and to the same person. You’re not t
elling it to him, you’re reproaching him with it. On October 21 in ’17, three miles north of Ypres, his foot blown off. Seventy-five percent disabled. Ten years later, his hip starts to go. Grandfather nodded. Dr. Moser sends Loser’s Gebhard to the hospital in Hoyren. They treat the hip with high-voltage current. The hip luxates. Grandfather nods as if he knew what that meant. And since Loser’s Gebhard had lost so much mobility, when he falls while getting the hay into the barn, he can’t get up again and gets gored by the ox. A broken rib. Hematoma in his lung. Grandfather nods. “Time to sell, my wife says,” said Loser’s Gebhard. “We got to have a smaller place.” So they sell and buy Krenkels’ Karl’s place, only six acres with a mortgage of seven thousand marks on the appreciated value, but from selling their old place they have twenty-three earning interest at the Bank of Commerce and Agriculture. Grandfather nods. So even if the hops should fail again, nothing can happen to them. Then, after Hindenburg’s third emergency decree, it’s announced that the Dresdner Bank has suspended payments and the stock exchange is closed. Loser’s Gebhard goes right into town and asks if the Bank of Commerce and Agriculture is starting to wobble, too. No, it’s not in the least wobbly. But Loser’s Gebhard insists on hearing it from Herr Kommerzienrat Sting himself, who tells him, “Nothing but rumors, Herr Loser, not a storm cloud in sight.” If there were any threat, the Herr Kommerzienrat promised Herr Loser he would be the first to be notified and get his money. That was day before yesterday. And today the teller’s window is closed. The money’s gone. So he goes to a lawyer, who laughs. A bank director was the last person to ask if his bank was wobbly. Can’t make a case for criminal negligence according to the lawyer. “Gone is gone, Josef.”
“Oh, Gebhard,” says Grandfather, and nods.
In the meantime Herr Brugger, wearing a green suit as always, had come over from the regulars’ table and was sitting next to Loser’s Gebhard. He removed the toothpick from the corner of his mouth—Adolf had told Johann the toothpick his father always had in the corner of his mouth was made of ivory—laid a hand on Loser’s Gebhard’s shoulder, and said, “Meeting tomorrow night at Köberle’s in Bodolz. Why not come along and join up? Hitler’s going to get us out of this. Next month Bavaria’s going to lift the ban on uniforms, then you’ll see some marching, my friends. We’ll show these scoundrels and fops we mean business. Enough is enough. No more lies about who started the war! The ones who fired the first shot didn’t start it! Down with the Treaty of Versailles! It’s a disgrace: a hundred and thirty-two billion! In the last fourteen years we’ve paid them twenty billion and now we’re bled dry! Bankrupt like no country’s ever been before! And we’re supposed to keep on like that for seventy or eighty more years? Keep paying out for seventy or eighty years? Paying for a war that everybody started together! We just happened to lose it. Tomorrow night at Köberle’s in Bodolz, Gebhard. Hitler’ll get us out of this. Heil Hitler!” He thrust his right hand straight out and clicked his heels together. Before doing so, he removed the ivory toothpick from the corner of his mouth and stuck it in his breast pocket. From a hook on the wall he took down his hat, shiny in all shades of green and sporting a tuft of goat-hair, said, “Just you wait and see,” and left.
Adolf said his father’s hat was velour. Adolf claimed it was the only velour hat in Wasserburg. Everyone watched Herr Brugger leave. Grandfather murmured to himself, so only Johann could hear, “Why didn’t I go to America.” Herr Seehahn, who always sat at the second table on the terrace side of the restaurant, had jumped up when Herr Brugger called out “Heil Hitler” and had thrust out his hand, too. But he hadn’t managed to get the cigarette (which he only ever put down when he was eating) out of his mouth in time, so his own “Heil Hitler” was a good deal less impressive. Herr Seehahn rented a small room on the third floor of the restaurant. Because of the slanted eaves along one whole side of the room, Johann would have much preferred to sleep there than in his own high-ceilinged Room 9 with its merely straight walls and four large windows. Herr Seehahn’s room had the most interesting smell in the whole building. Herr Seehahn smoked night and day, drank beer, schnapps, and lake wine every night until closing time and beyond, and carried those smells with him to his room. The result affected the third-floor hallway—almost dominated it, in fact. Again and again, Johann would run upstairs to dip his nose once more into that exciting aroma. People mentioned Herr Seehahn with a shudder of admiration whether he happened to be present or not, simply because, despite the life he led, he had never missed a single minute of work as the bookkeeper of the fruit growers’ cooperative and had never made a single error as the cooperative’s statistician. Herr Seehahn took three meals a day in the restaurant, always at a table where no one else sat, and murmured to himself the whole time. Johann often tried to loiter unobtrusively near Herr Seehahn, setting out fresh beer glass coasters, emptying ashtrays, or even serving a beer or a stamperl or a glass of lake wine, just so he could catch a few words of this never-ending stream. But he had to manage it so that neither Elsa nor Mother noticed. Herr Seehahn’s soliloquy consisted of nothing but the worst profanity and the dirtiest of dirty words. It sounded like Herr Seehahn was constantly full to bursting and needed to get rid of what was raging inside him or it would probably have torn him apart or he would have expired some other way from what was eating at him. Johann was, of course, familiar with the words for the private parts of both men and women that Herr Seehahn recited, and now and then he could overhear curses, too, but no one could say these words and curses as softly or as fast as Herr Seehahn. And since he was compelled to talk without ceasing and at tremendous speed, there were never as many words as he needed and he had to repeat them over and over. And since even then, he sometimes ran out of words and the pressure inside him got too great, he would fall into wordless puckering and spitting. Herr Seehahn had false teeth, uppers and lowers, and he concentrated most on not spitting out either his upper or lower denture during his high-pressure cannonades of curses. To that end, he kept his lips as close together as he could while still swearing and cursing, so that only the tip of his tongue would flick out briefly when he said stupid prick or miserable sonofabitch, and then immediately vanish again. And besides all this talking and spitting, Herr Seehahn had to smoke, too. Sometimes, but very seldom, he would hold the cigarette in his thin, white, translucent fingers, but mostly it bobbed up and down in his mouth, echoing everything he said. That Herr Seehahn had some connection to Bavaria was more obvious from his yellowish Tyrolean jacket with the little green stand-up collar and stag-horn buttons than from his dialect. He spoke the High German of educated Bavarians. The softly cursing and swearing Herr Seehahn would not have had such a strong attraction for Johann if he had not always been so friendly during his barrage of dirty words. His eyes smiled while his mouth cursed, smoked, and smiled. Sometimes, when neither swearing nor puckered spitting was possible, Herr Seehahn chewed rapidly on his own lips with the tiniest of movements. He was friendly even then. Johann had the impression that Herr Seehahn didn’t mind him getting close enough to catch a few words and fragmentary phrases. Herr Seehahn would even look at Johann and smile with his mouth and eyes while the whispered profanities shot from his mouth at terrific speed: “False serpent, stupid prick, good-for-nothing cunt, lights out knives out three men to stir the blood, miserable twat-fucker, ball-buster, little monster, half-wit, cum-bucket, dirty bum, date mate castrate—bingo, limp dick, pussy-chaser, shrew, blowhard, false serpent, the whole house is shaking what’s going on? pants down hands up take it out put it back, if you can do it do it, miserable blockhead, who hasn’t had any yet? who wants some more? there once was a brave musketeer got it up only twice a year, scarecrow, jezebel, nympho, false serpent, frozen account, falsehood and swindle rule the world, wacky place shitface, yesterday upon proud steeds now lying fallen in the weeds tomorrow in the cold cold ground, them that has gets more, kick his ass, pow right in the kisser, you must confess the world’s a mess a shitty shitty mess, God’s bankrupt, sit up and
beg, what a laugh, filthy pussy, false serpent, the whole house is shaking what’s going on? tumbly bumbly tralala . . .” Johann collected scraps of Seehahn and recited them, silently, but moving his lips. Only when nobody was around, of course. Best of all, in bed before going to sleep, his favorite way to say his prayers. False serpent was Herr Seehahn’s most frequent expression, and so it was Johann’s, too. He intended to practice until he could recite as softly and amicably and with the same lightning speed as Herr Seehahn.
Since Herr Seehahn remained standing when Herr Brugger was long since gone and still held his hand outstretched (without breaking his verbal stride, however), Elsa shouted, “Sit, Herr Seehahn!” whereupon he sat down, emitting words steadily all the while.
Standing behind the counter, Mother motioned to Johann and left the room. He followed. She told him to bring a rack of bottled beer from the cellar and put the sixteen bottles into the icebox under the bar. Then he was to ride his bike to Gierer the butcher’s. Since the shop would be closed already, he should ring at the back door to their apartment and ask Frau Gierer, the butcher’s wife, if he could still get a mark’s worth of cervelat sausage. Johann wanted to ask why Josef couldn’t do it, but he knew that Josef had ridden Father’s bicycle to Hemigkofen because Jutz the organist, who always rode to the restaurant and gave Josef his piano lesson in the extra room, had had his bicycle stolen. Johann rode down into the village to the butcher shop, bought eight cervelats with his mark, hung the net shopping bag with the eight sausages onto the handlebar, and headed home. The net bag swung back and forth, and just as he was passing the Linden Tree, it got caught in the front wheel and several sausages were torn up. Back home he delivered the net bag to the kitchen and said, “I had an accident.” Mina unpacked the cervelats.
A Gushing Fountain Page 4