A Gushing Fountain

by Martin Walser

  The band, the Veterans’ Association, and the choral society formed a half circle in front of the war memorial. Since the Brownshirts had already occupied part of the semicircle and stood there as if rooted to the spot, the other groups had to squeeze closer together. Herr Thierheimer from Bodolz stepped forward and said he was speaking as a representative of the Kyffhäuser Bund, but he spoke to everyone present. Too long had discord weakened them, and they owed it to their fallen comrades to unite. “In unity is strength!” he cried. At that moment, the sun broke through the clouds and poured all its light onto Herr Thierheimer. Since the war memorial stands at the narrowest point of the peninsula, the light glittered across from east to west, amplified by the lake. The choral society sang: Once I had a comrade, a loyal friend and true. Side-by-side to battle we marched to the snare drum’s rattle, you for me and me for you.

  After the church service, Father had left the ranks of the Veterans’ Association to join the choral society, where he was needed as second tenor. At the last note of the song, the drums started beating again. Herr Brugger’s voice called out, “Ten-shun!” The flags were lowered, including the one with the swastika. The Brownshirts stuck out their right arms. Adolf stuck his out too, and his gaze angled upward, like his father’s. Johann wanted to catch Adolf’s eye to let him know how he admired him. Adolf had said his father was proud that five years ago, he’d already had his only son baptized with the name Adolf. A large framed photograph of Hitler hung in the Bruggers’ living room. Hitler was sticking his right arm out as far as he could. Whenever Johann and Adolf entered the living room and Herr Brugger was there, Herr Brugger would say, “Go ahead and salute him, he deserves it.” Then Adolf would click his heels together, place one hand on the seam of his trousers and stick out the other like the man in the picture. The eyes and mouth and chin of the man in the picture all worked together, eyes and mouth and chin all focused on the spot toward which the exaggeratedly outstretched hand pointed. Johann tried it out himself, again and again. Then Herr Brugger would laugh and say, “You’ll get the hang of it soon enough.” Adolf often repeated sentences about this Hitler, and they all sounded like sentences he’d heard from grown-ups, especially his father. And he’d reel them off even when they weren’t appropriate. Every day Johann heard sentences from the guests at the regulars’ table in the restaurant, but he would never blurt them out when he was playing dodgeball or soccer or any other game. To say nothing of his father’s sentences. What his father said to him when they were alone didn’t fit in anywhere else than between him and his father. Returning home from church on the narrow path along the lake, Adolf was capable of coming to a sudden halt and proclaiming: Writers bleed ink, they lie and they stink! Or: Show a woman who’s boss from day one! Or: Jack of all trades, master of none! Or: Eat a good bit, then have a good shit! Adolf looked like a crowing rooster when he said these sentences. If only he would at least say that he got the sentences from his father! But there were also sentences or expressions that Adolf said, and the next day Guido or Paul or Ludwig would use them as if they weren’t from Adolf at all but from whoever was saying them at the moment. So Johann would try and see if he, too, could say about a child who didn’t look like its father that Helmer’s Franz had helped out; that every broom would find its handle; that such and such a man had put a bun in the oven of such and such a woman. Even if it was the first time you’d heard a sentence like that, you knew instantly what it meant and you looked for an opportunity to use it. Since it was always Adolf who introduced these sayings, he was the most important one in their group. Johann was happy that he and Adolf were best friends. He was sorry when they had to go home at suppertime. He hoped that Adolf was also sorry they had to part. But he couldn’t ask him. When he and Adolf had wrestling matches, he had no objection to Adolf putting him in a headlock.

  As the various groups marched back to the upper village with music blaring, the Brownshirts fell in so swiftly at Herr Brugger’s order that they marched directly behind the band and the other organizations had to follow. At the regulars’ table, Herr Brugger had called the Veterans’ Association a coffee klatsch club. On the square between the station and the restaurant, the marching column dispersed. The flag bearers rolled up their flags and the restaurant began to fill up.

  Ludwig took Johann with him to shoemaker Gierer’s house. Even without Ludwig, Johann could go to shoemaker Gierer’s any time he wanted. But now, on a Sunday noon, he would not have gone if Ludwig hadn’t insisted on it. Ludwig said he wanted him to say hello to his godfather. The senior postal inspector, ret., was a half-brother of the shoemaker and always visited him when he came to the village because he’d grown up in that house. Herr Zürn had been born in the Old Lighthouse in Lindau, but then his mother married shoemaker Gierer’s father.

  Ludwig and Guido knew everything about everybody, and as soon as someone’s name was mentioned, they would tell everything they knew about that person. And not just once, either. If a name happened to be mentioned again the next day, Ludwig and Guido would repeat everything there was to be said about that name. Johann imagined there must be a narrative that continued without interruption in Ludwig’s and Guido’s houses, one that could not leave unsaid anything that happened in the village. Nothing was insignificant. It’s like on a ship, thought Johann. Everything is important to keep the ship from going down, from the smallest thing to the largest. When Ludwig and Guido repeated what they heard at home, one didn’t know why they did it. They didn’t even know themselves. But it was absolutely certain that what they repeated had to be repeated. In a village, everything is important.

  As they stepped through the low front door into the passageway of shoemaker Gierer’s house, they learned that the senior postal inspector was still at the Crown having a Sunday morning glass. “With the other dignitaries,” said Herr Gierer. Father and Herr Gierer had once started a shoe polish business together that was going to make them rich. But the mixture in the tank had caught fire, the workshop burned down, and they were just able to extinguish the fire before it burned down the house as well. That was the end of the shoe polish business. To recover his losses from that failure, Father soon acquired a consignment of watches at an advantageous price and hired traveling salesmen to peddle them door-to-door. The traveling salesmen, however, had not settled up accounts as they should have. Shoemaker Gierer had once told Johann, “Every scoundrel that comes to town finds his way to your father and exploits him.”

  By the time the senior postal inspector, ret., and his wife entered the room, Johann was on the point of leaving, because he could see that Frau Gierer was already bringing in the soup tureen. But Ludwig pushed Johann in front of the senior postal inspector and all those medals and Herr Gierer said, “Johann, from the Station Restaurant across the way.”

  “Well, well,” said the senior postal inspector. “We certainly did your grandfather the honors today,” and immediately went on: “Born at number 63—Zapfe’s—in Hengnau. His father was from number 38—Zitterer’s—in Nonnenhorn. Your grandfather sold number 63 in Hengnau to Dorn. Dorn tore it down and some farmers who had draft horses carted it free of charge to Unterbechtersweiler in thirty-nine loads because Loser’s had burned down, and with the material from Hengnau they were able to rebuild their whole barn and part of the house.”

  “Now you know everything you need to know,” said the master shoemaker, who also had a white beard but not such a dense, full, protruding one as the senior postal inspector. The most important feature of the senior postal inspector’s face was indeed the mustache whose ends turned up toward the corners of his eyes.

  The senior postal inspector said that Johann’s grandfather had unfortunately disappeared after this morning’s inspiring ceremony and hadn’t shown up at the Crown for the morning toasts, a fact also remarked upon by Colonel von Reck, the custom official’s widow, Father Dillmann, and Herr Heller, the head teacher. But no doubt the good man, who was as modest as he was hard-working, had gone instead to v
isit the grave of his wife Franziska, from Wielandsweiler, who had passed away of consumption back in 1917.

  Ludwig and Johann were dismissed and ran up the path, bordered by espaliered pears, from the shoemaker’s house to Bahnhofsstrasse. Beneath the arch of roses at the end of the path, Ludwig said, “Now they’re standing at the table but can’t say the blessing because I’m not there.” But he still had to let Johann know that his godfather Ludwig Zürn was the only man who was an honorary district chairman of two different chapters of the Bavarian Veterans’ Association, namely Kempten and Lindau, and an honorary member of the executive committee, too. “And he was born in the Old Lighthouse in Lindau! Can you imagine that, Johann? So long,” shouted Ludwig and took off again.

  Clearly, Ludwig had learned to say everything associated with someone’s name from his godfather Ludwig Zürn, who wrote down every last thing about the village. But it was maybe even more significant that Ludwig was from the Grübel family, just like Guido was a Gierer. Their families had always been here. Neither Johann’s grandfather nor his father nor his mother had been born in the village. In Johann’s family, it wasn’t a matter of course to know everything about the village. They had to learn it.

  Over on the other side of the street he saw the men who had finished their Sunday morning wine and were still chatting between the front door and the terrace steps, and it looked like they’d never be finished. How would Johann get past so many talkers when he was supposed to say hello to each one? And woe to him if anyone felt slighted! So instead of going across the terrace and into the house, he’d go around the back, through the gate into the courtyard, and then up the back steps. But just as he was about to turn into the courtyard, Helmer’s Hermine intercepted him. “Your grandfather is a frigate,” she said. Her index finger ticked back and forth, precluding any contradiction. The longish wart was shining. From her mouth issued not just words, but also an odor Johann recognized: red wine. “Your grandfather’s never been a flag bearer in his life,” she said. “He’s a frigate, Johann, that’s what he is. The senior postal inspector, ret., is a nitpicker. A nitpicker without a clue what a frigate is, Johann. There’s not much to him, old Hurrah-Zürn. His mother, Zürn’s Elisabeth, was unmarried. His father was a Jew by the name of Tänzer, owned a knitting factory in Hohenems. And Elisabeth had barely given birth to her Ludwig in November when she married the first man who came her way, in February, and that was the poor hard-working miller’s helper Gierer, Michael Gierer from the Herbolz mill. He was twenty-five when he married Elisabeth and she was thirty-eight. Maybe there was more than just a reward in heaven involved in the deal, and when the first Gierer arrived, his little half-brother Ludwig Zürn was already there to welcome him. You’re the only person I’ve told, Johann, no one else, just so you know.” And tapped Johann’s forehead with her index finger and resumed her progress in the direction of the station, but before she reached it, she turned left on her way to meet—as Johann knew without having to see it—Frau Gierer from the bank, who walked up and down once a day on the fine gravel beneath the two chestnut trees on the station side of the restaurant, waiting for Helmer’s Hermine to give her all the latest news.

  They ate at the long table in the kitchen. Johann and Grandfather sat on the bench beneath the boiler that continued to drip, despite several steel bands that had been clamped around it. Josef and Father sat between the table and the stove. Although there would have been plenty of room left for Mother, she almost never ate with them. Had he ever seen her sit down to eat?

  Johann told Grandfather that they had been expecting him at the Crown for the Sunday morning glass. Grandfather ran his hand over Johann’s head. Before Father ate, he counted out a certain number of drops from various little bottles onto slices of zwieback. No one talked during the meal. Josef had propped a book in front of his plate and read while he ate. Mother called across the stove, “Josef!” Father said, “Let him be.” He said it so softly that Mother probably didn’t hear it. Josef kept reading. Johann thought about Gierer’s Guido and Grübel’s Ludwig and their never-ending narratives.

  That evening when Josef and Johann were on their way to bed, Father, who was already lying down, called them in and had them sit on the edge of his bed. As always, Father was more sitting than lying. And there were books on his nightstand. He wanted to tell them why he would rather not have marched today, even though it was such a special day for Grandfather. But Grandfather had been too young in 1870 and too old from ’14 to ’18 and so didn’t know what war was like. And the senior postal inspector Zürn with his chest full of peacetime medals didn’t know either. Father’s last battle was in July ’18, near Soissons. He’d been with two other men in a listening post at the head of a trench, one they had dug out perpendicular to the main trench every few hundred yards. At the forward end, the head of the trench, you could often hear the voices of the enemy soldiers at night. Two from the same parish with father: Strodel’s Traugott and Helmer’s Franz. The sun was blazing down. The enemy’s barrage was what they called curtain fire, a curtain of impacts landing behind them. The enemy obviously thought there were more German soldiers than there were in the forward positions. Father had shot off one flare after another, but their own artillery was silent—out of ammunition. The canary they always had with them in a cage, because canaries feel a gas attack before humans do and fall over dead as soon as they breathe it, and then you have time to get your gas mask on—the canary was already dead in its cage, but no trace of gas. The impacts were getting closer and closer. Shells have a melody before they hit the ground, a melody that gets shorter and shorter. Father knew he had to get out of that position. Suddenly, he hears Strodel’s Traugott. Father and Helmer’s Franz crawl over to him. Strodel’s Traugott arches his back and his intestines are writhing out. The two of them stuff them back into his belly. Strodel’s Traugott’s eyes start open and swivel from side to side, trying to jump out of their sockets. Shoot me! he screams. Shoot me, shoot . . . Father and Helmer’s Franz stroke his arms. He screams Shoot me! Shoot . . . my God . . . and screams until he’s out of his head.

  “That same day they came with tanks and took us prisoner,” said Father. “Listening post and the forward trenches. Helmer’s Franz played dead and they didn’t get him. They put us in a retaliation camp. We had invaded them, destroyed their country one village after another.” He opened the drawer of the nightstand and took out a funeral card: Strodel’s Traugott. A soldier, spiked helmet, Iron Cross, a beard like Father used to have. Josef read the text under the photograph: Dear Sacred Heart of Jesus, be my love. 300 days indulgence. Sacred Heart of Mary, be my salvation. 300 days indulgence. “Good night,” said Father, and returned the card to the drawer.

  Just as they were leaving, Mother came into the room, very excited. “Hindenburg was speaking,” she said. “On the radio. You could hear him as clear as if he was standing next to you.”

  Father: “What did he say?”

  Mother: “That it can’t go on like this. He said Germany won’t survive this winter! If Hoover doesn’t change course right now and free Germany from reparation payments, it’s all over. There’ll be a disaster, a catastrophe caused by nothing but hardship and hopelessness.”

  Father: “The name of the catastrophe is Hitler.”

  Mother: “He didn’t say that.”

  Father: “But that’s what he meant.”

  “Time for bed, boys,” Mother said and pressed her hand against her right side.

  Immediately Father said, “Gallbladder?”

  Mother sat down on the edge of the bed but stood right back up again and said, “We’ll see.” Of course, she said it in a different language than Father’s. She spoke a different language than he did, after all. Kümmertsweiler German is what she spoke. Father spoke Royal Bavarian Middle School German, even though he was born in Hengnau, and Hengnau is two miles at the most from Kümmertsweiler. As the crow flies. Actually, beyond Hengnau the land climbs fairly steeply, then back down through Atz
enbohl woods to Nonnenbach, across the Crooked Bridge and then another very steep climb to the hamlet called Kümmertsweiler.