A Gushing Fountain

by Martin Walser

  “Good,” said Johann. “Real tickly like.”

  “It’ll get even better,” said Father. “But not a word about it to anyone!” he said as he packed everything back into the little case. They didn’t have a patent for it yet, so caution, caution! This apparatus was going to cause a revolution in the field of medicine. And his friend Hartmut Schulz was going to give him a share of the profits. “Then all our troubles will be over,” said Father.

  Mother turned to Grandfather and said, “Won’t you say something to him, Father?” Grandfather lifted his hands a little from his thighs but let them drop again. Mother started talking, her voice pitched higher than Johann had ever heard it before. The Bank of Commerce and Agriculture had closed all its branches, including the one in Glatthars’ house. Mina would never see her savings again, and there was nothing left of Loser’s Gebhard’s twenty-three thousand. Day before yesterday, Kommerzienrat Sting was still saying the bank was flourishing—nothing but rumors, and he was going to take legal action to put a stop to them—and now word had it the farmers weren’t being paid for their milk, and that meant the end for sure. Herr Kalteissen, the bailiff, had been in the restaurant that very day. Precautionary garnishment of the safe, cabinet, the icebox in the hall, and the piano. Now they would have to feed coins into the meter next to the bell box to get any electricity. The teller at the savings and loan in Unterreitnau came up twenty-four thousand marks short: arrested. Hartmanns’ nursery had applied for a renegotiated loan but was turned down. Now they were going to be liquidated. Merk in Nonnenhorn declared bankruptcy two weeks ago and just got caught trying to steal a bicycle in Tettnang. Suddenly she stopped and said to Grandfather in her normal voice. “So you have nothing to say.”

  Grandfather addressed Father: “Now there’s that new auction hall. We’re a member. Every day dealers from out of town buy at least a hundred thousand pounds of fruit. We paid the fee for stall five, but we’re not there.”

  “Right now we don’t have the capital to trade in fruit,” said Father. “The credit terms are too short. I can’t push the BUY button at the auction if I then have to go to the farmer and confess I won’t be able to scare up the money for four weeks. You know farmers don’t give credit, Father.”

  “Why didn’t I go to America,” Johann’s grandfather murmured to himself, stood up wearily, and left the room.

  Mother said, “Max Brugger says only Hitler can help us now.”

  Father said, “Hitler means war.” Then he said he had to go to bed.

  “Yes,” said Mother. “All the color’s drained out of your face.” Father took the little black case with him.

  Mother sat down at the desk, rolled a piece of paper into the typewriter, and began typing with the index finger of her right hand. Johann went and stood behind her. He knew all the letters because he had learned them all with Josef, starting the very first day his brother came home from school with his homework. He would certainly have been able to type faster than his mother. In the upper left-hand corner, Mother had written the name Thaddäus Unsicherer. That was Mother’s father. Under the name she wrote, Farmer, and under that, Kümmertsweiler. In the right-hand corner, September 29, 1932, and in the middle, LOAN GUARANTEE. Johann sounded out the words until they put up no more resistance.

  Mother used Father’s fountain pen to practice a signature. She practiced on pieces of paper from the wastebasket, then crumpled them up and threw them back into the basket. Then she signed Thaddäus Unsicherer under what she’d typed. “This is just between you and me,” she said. She needed her father’s signature by tomorrow forenoon but couldn’t leave the business to run over to Kümmertsweiler and fetch it, so she had to imitate his signature. “So we don’t have to declare bankruptcy, Johann,” she said, “but it’ll be just between the two of us.” Johann nodded. Her tone of voice held the echo of everything his father and mother had said in the previous hour.

  He went upstairs, down the dark hallway, and saw that there was still a light shining under his father’s door. He knocked as quietly as possible and entered the room upon Father’s “Come in.”

  Father was sitting more than lying, propped up on three pillows and reading one of the yellow booklets he got in the mail. Johann sat on the edge of the bed and held out his face the way he did when he wanted an Eskimo kiss from his father. Father still smelled of peppermint. He showed Johann two words in the booklet he had just been reading. “You know these already,” he said. “Go ahead and read them.” Johann sounded them out: Rabindranath Tagore. In the books and pamphlets in his bedside bookcase, Father had a supply of words that were still difficult to pronounce, even after Johann had sounded them out. Rabindranath Tagore. And when Johann succeeded, Father said, “You’re amazing, Johann.” Then he made Johann say the word without looking in the book. “You see,” Father said, “at first these words always look unpronounceable, but then they come out of your mouth all by themselves. At first, the words resist, but then they give in. Look here, sound it out!”

  Johann tried: “Phil-o-so-phy.”

  “Good. And now this one!”

  “The-os-o-phy.”

  “Good. Now something easy,” said Father. “What’s it say on this booklet?”

  Johann sounded it out: “The Path to Perfection.”

  “Johann,” said Father, “time for beddy-bye.” Almost at once, Father closed his eyes. Johann turned off the light and crept to his own bed on tiptoe because Josef was already asleep.

  The streetlight was reflected in the glass of the picture of the guardian angel. It hung at a slight angle from the wall that Johann faced when he lay in bed. And the light always shone right on the part of the picture where the guardian angel, dressed in white, was walking across the bridge without a railing and holding his hand above the child who walked ahead of him. The glass reflected the light so that Johann couldn’t see the guardian angel, but he knew that in the place where the light was falling, the guardian angel was depicted and was protecting the child from falling into the dark abyss.

  The next day was Thursday, and from eleven to twelve, Herr Witzigmann would be in the storeroom of the savings and loan. Johann and his mother were already coming up the narrow side stairs to the loading dock just as Herr Witzigmann was putting his key into the padlock. He pushed back the heavy sliding door, and they followed him into the storeroom and then into a boarded-off cubicle containing a table, two chairs, and a writing desk. On the table was a shiny green cash box. Fortunately, the stairs to the loading dock were so narrow that Mother couldn’t hold Johann by the hand. She was always leading him by the hand. If no one was looking, Johann had nothing against holding her hand, but not in front of other people.

  “Have a seat,” said Herr Witzigmann. But Johann preferred to stay close to his mother for now. Mother took from her black handbag the loan guarantee on which she had signed “Thaddäus Unsicherer” the previous evening and handed the paper across the table to Herr Witzigmann. Herr Witzigmann took it, read it, and said, “I’m glad, Augusta. I feel sure that in light of this, the executive board will extend the loan. You’ve come just at the right time; the board meets tonight.” Mother said she was aware of that. Then she stood up. Johann caught a glimpse of Herr Witzigmann opening the cash box and putting into it the paper he had from Mother. As Johann walked back home with his mother along the tracks, Mother held him by the hand again. But here—sheds on their left and the siding and main track on their right—nobody saw Mother holding his hand. As soon as they were past the railroad freight shed, he freed his hand from his mother’s. Here he could be seen. He engineered a transition from being led to letting go. Carefully, he pulled his hand out of his mother’s but immediately took hold of Mother’s wrist with the same hand.

  Before they had even reached the terrace, they could hear his father playing the piano. Mother frowned. Elsa came out to meet them and said, “Herr Brugger was just here, ma’am. He drank a small beer in one gulp, slammed his money down on the table, and said over his
shoulder on his way out, ‘We’re gonna pull the plug on that piano player tonight.’” Elsa wanted to know what he meant by that.

  “You’ll have to ask him,” said Mother.

  “Herr Brugger is on the executive board of the savings and loan,” she said as she gave her handbag to Johann to put in the safe. If there had been such a job as opening and closing the sighing doors of safes all day long, Johann would have chosen it instantly. Mother slipped on her white full-length apron and went into the kitchen. She gave Johann the sign, and as quietly as possible, Johann opened the door from the central hallway into the extra room. He went and stood beside his father, who noticed his presence, stopped playing, took Johann onto his knee, and quietly sang into Johann’s ear what he had just been playing. Then he said, “Well, now I think it’s time to go over the accounts receivable. Come with me.” And he went into the office. Father wrote down numbers from the book in which they recorded everyone who couldn’t pay right away for their coal or their wood. He hummed while he wrote the columns of figures. He hummed as if humming was more important than writing down the numbers. Suddenly, he stopped and put the fountain pen into the groove formed by silver leaves that went with the glass cube that held the inkwell. His humming had ceased. From far away, Elsa’s voice, calling out even before she reached the kitchen, “Two trout munnair,” and then the sharp, long-suffering voice of the Princess: “Meunière!” Johann closed the lid of the inkwell that fitted into the glass cube. The lid was a little dome of silver leaves. Herr Brugger’s inkwell had a silver lid in the form of a jockey’s cap. When Adolf saw Johann’s inkwell for the first time, he said, “What’s that supposed to be, cabbage leaves or something?” Johann had asked his father, who asked back, “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Now they always reminded Johann of cabbage leaves. “Aren’t they beautiful?” Father had asked. “Yes, they are,” Johann had said. And Father: “Art nouveau, Johann, Jugendstil. Put it in the word tree.” He still always thought of cabbage leaves when he saw the curved lid that Father had called a flat dome, but now the word Jugendstil twinkled from the word tree as well; now it was one of the words Father had him spell: pleurisy, Bhagavadgita, Popocatépetl, theosophy, Rabindranath Tagore, Balaam, philosophy, Swedenborg, Bharatanatyam. On the wall above the sofa hung a large landscape with red-and-white cattle grazing in a pasture that sloped down to a river and a girl sitting under huge forest trees, wearing a peasant dress that had perhaps never existed in reality. For Johann, this picture belonged to the words he spelled for his father. It was important to Johann that after he was done, his father always said, “You’re amazing, Johann.”

  Father still hadn’t stirred from his chair. Johann couldn’t leave until his father looked up. It would make it seem like he was trying to sneak away. So he leaned against his father a little. Father put his arm around Johann, pulled him close. Although Johann couldn’t see into his father’s face as he pulled him in, he knew his father was crying now. So he had to be very careful not to look into his face. If your father’s crying, you can’t look him in the face. His father took a tiny box from the right-hand desk drawer and opened it. It smelled of peppermint. Father took a small dispenser from its padding, put it under his nose so that the two tiny, green, pointed felt nibs disappeared into his nostrils. When the two nibs dried out and stopped dispensing peppermint aroma, they were dipped into a little bottle labeled Po-Ho-Oil. Father took several deep breaths. Pages covered with numbers lay on the desk. Father took the sheets of paper, crumpled them up, and gave them to Johann, who threw them into the wastebasket. Then he sat quietly on his father’s right knee until the office door behind them opened and his mother’s voice said, “Supper’s ready.” And she wanted to know what father thought about the coal dealers’ campaign; they should join in, too, didn’t he think so? She didn’t understand how he could have been sitting there at the desk this whole time and not read the letter she’d left there for him. Nine dealers from the region had already signed the agreement that for the time being, they would only deliver hard coal, coke, and briquettes for cash on delivery. “Sign it,” said Mother; they could always still make exceptions. Father signed.

  Father ate his steamed vegetables, drank his tea, and made fun of everyone forced to eat the meat concealed under their noodles. But today he couldn’t get a rise out of Mother with jokes about the food. She sat with Mina on the other side of the huge stove at a work table whose edges were as thick as they had been thirty years ago but whose center was worn down by the endless cutting and chopping and mincing.

  Had he read about the Brems in the paper? asked Mother. Because the Brems still owed them seventy-two marks and nine pfennigs. Father lifted his right hand and pantomimed drilling with his outstretched index finger. This was a reminder of a fight between the Brems. It had started because Frau Brem blamed a hole in the wooden wall of the privy attached to the exterior of their house on a mistake her husband had made with his drill, but he maintained that it was a knothole. And since his wife continued to insist it was his fault, he’d dragged her down to the lake and held her under the water, saying she’d stay there until she admitted it was a knothole and not a mistake with his drill. But even with her head under water, she still stuck her hand up and made a drilling motion with her finger. So carpenter Brem had to give in.

  They’d likely never see those seventy-two marks again, said Mother. Clearly, she wasn’t in the mood for any of the funny or tragic Brem stories Helmer’s Hermine brought up from the lower village and spread around—not as long as they had to reckon with losing the Brems’ seventy-two marks.

  Had he or had he not read it? He had not. “Read it, Josef.” Josef took the newspaper. “Real Estate Auction,” said Mother. Josef read aloud:

  REAL ESTATE AUCTION

  At 3:00 p.m. on Monday, November 23, 1932, the house no. 9a in Wasserburg am Bodensee (Brem) will be sold by the office of the Mayor of Wasserburg at a public auction to be held in the extra room of the Station Restaurant. The property includes a residential structure with several apartments, stalls, barn, workshop with wood-working machines, farmyard, and large orchard (the latter suitable for building lots) and is located on a principal street of the town. It comprises about 25,700 sq. ft. and the structures are in good condition. The conditions of the auction will be announced on the day of the sale.

  Inquiries can be addressed to the undersigned official receiver.

  Lindau-Bodensee, October 30, 1932.

  Noerdlinger, Attorney-at-Law

  “And the Capranos,” said Mother, her voice quiet again, “are pretty shaky, too. It’s all over with the Hartmanns, and it could happen to either of the Brodbecks any day now. Glatthars don’t know which way to turn, and we’ll be next.” Real estate auction, thought Johann, more words to learn. The harder it was to understand words like that, the more he wanted to sound them out. Father’s answer to what Josef had read? Angora rabbits, the silver fox farm in Ellwangen, silk worm production in the attic, the inn with a bakery in Neukirch, the small farm in Mariabrunn. But their best opportunity was his friend Hartmut Schulz’s magnetic apparatus. “Just think,” he cried, “he’s going to cut me in!”

  Mother said she had got Herr Witzigmann to extend their credit until November 21. A further extension was out of the question.

  Everyone had stopped eating. Father said, “For gold all lust, have it they must. Alas, we’re poor.” When they all looked at him, he said, “Goethe.” But not to worry, he would consult his mantra, and his mantra would tell him where pots of money were to be found. “Don’t worry, Augusta, stick with me and you can’t fail.” Mother said the Lakeshore Café had got a license for live music three times a week.

  Father said, “If you call that music!”

  Mother said, “It’s dance music!” When no one reacted, she said, “The boiler’s dripping again.” Grandfather and Johann were sitting on the long bench under the hot water boiler. Water dripped onto the bench between them. “After dinner, ride over to Schmitt the t
insmith and tell them to send Fritz,” she said. Johann nodded. Mother called over to the Princess, “Adelheid, come to dinner. I’m not going to tell you again.” Without turning around, the Princess said, “You might have given me three chances, but since it’s you, I’ll come now.”

  Josef was the first to leave the table. He had to practice. Recently, Josef had started to toss his head back even when a tuft of hair wasn’t falling into his face. Johann longed to be able to toss his head back the same way. Josef had barely left the room before the scales started up. “There are still guests on the terrace,” said Mother. Father was silent. He raised his head and turned so he could hear the scales better. Since he had the biggest ears Johann had ever seen and big round eyes to go with them, Johann thought, Now he looks like a deer again. His mother said, “And the Crown is putting a crown of electric lights onto their facade so everyone driving by or arriving by boat will see nothing but the Crown.”

  Father said, “What a beautiful attack he has.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Blessing the Flag

  FATHER AND GRANDFATHER SAT ON their separate chairs as if not in the same room. Although there was hardly enough space in the office to look past each other, they were turned at such an angle that they didn’t have to acknowledge each other’s presence. Fog outside made even the trees in the courtyard look like ghosts. A foghorn sounded down on the lake, a sound almost like a question. And no answer. The boat blew its horn again—no answer. It sounded like the boat had called out in vain and then called again. And again. But always quite calmly. Johann knew that in the dining room, Herr Seehahn would be getting furiously worked up. Whenever fog horns were heard, Herr Seehahn shouted, “Stop it!” Turned his head toward the lake and cried, “Stop it at once or we shoot, no bleating allowed starting right now, miserable wretch with your idiotic bleating . . .” Herr Seehahn had been in the navy. Whenever a guest he didn’t know entered the dining room, he would stand up, raise his hand to his temple like a soldier, say, “Revulooshunery seaman Seehahn, ret.” and sit down again. The cigarette never left his mouth the whole time.