A Gushing Fountain

by Martin Walser

  Dulle, Schulze Max, and Herr Seehahn lifted their glasses in a toast to Hanse Luis. The Princess said, “I couldn’t agree more, Luis. If you were thirty years younger, I’d give you serious consideration.”

  “Then I’d be thirteen, Mommy dear.”

  “Just the age I like ‘em,” cried the Princess.

  “That’s enough of that now,” said Mother.

  Father went over to the Christmas tree, picked up a blue package tied with gold ribbon, and gave it to Mother. She shook her head. He said, “Just open it, won’t you?” It was soap from India. And earrings: big, shiny black teardrops. She shook her head again, but more slowly this time. For Grandfather there was a nightshirt under the tree. Johann wanted to bring it to him, but he said, “Just leave it there.” The last to open his present was Father: a pair of leather gloves—kid gloves, Father called them. “You could almost play piano with them on,” he said to Josef. And put them on and went over to the piano and favored them with a quick medley of Christmas carols. Hanse Luis clapped silent applause with cupped hands because they were so bent and crooked he couldn’t strike his palms together. He said, “Outside music don’t hold a candle to this.” He could rest assured that everyone in the room knew that for Hanse Luis, “outside music” meant the radio. Then he stood up and said he should get going before he got mixed up in all this present business too. Mother said it was still snowing, and he should be careful not to fall. “Don’t worry, Augusta,” he said. “A good ol’ stumbler almost never falls.” He put a crooked index finger to the green, brimless, peaked hunter’s cap that he never took off his head, even made a little bow like a dancer, and left. In the doorway, he turned around, held up his hand, and said the only thing that worried him was that he’d be in a fix if it was going to be the fashion now to stick your arm out instead of saying Grüss Gott. He had such crooked paws it might look more like those guys who stuck out their fists and yelled Heil Moscow! And then, in his own brand of High German, “I foresee calamity, fellow countrymen.” And then in his language, “Der sell hot g’seet: No it hudla, wenn’s a’s Sterbe goht.” And with a “G’night everyone,” he was out the door before the Princess could give him back what he’d said in her High German: No need to rush things when it’s time to die. Elsa ran to unlock the front door for him, and then they heard her screaming, “No, Luis . . . That’s enough, Luis . . . Stop it, Luiiiis!” When she came back in, she was laughing. He’d tried to rub snow in her face. Johann was astonished. It was natural that Adolf, Paul, Ludwig, Guido, both Helmuts, and he would rub the girls’ faces whenever it snowed; what could be more fun than holding down Irmgard, Trudl, or Gretel in the snow and rubbing a handful in their face? It made the girls squeal like all get out. But how could anybody rub snow in the face of a giant like Elsa! Hanse Luis was a head shorter than her. She was barely back in the room before Hanse Luis popped his head through the door again and said, “Dr sell hot g’seet, a Wieb schla, isch kui Kunscht, abr a Wieb it schla, deesch a Kunscht.” And did his little dance and was gone. The Princess shrilled after him, almost in distress, “Ein Weib schlagen, ist keine Kunst, aber ein Weib nicht schlagen, das ist eine Kunst”—There’s no trick to beating a woman; the real art is not beating her. Dulle from Buxtehude raised his glass and said, “Without you, Princess, I’d think I was in a foreign country.”

  “My name ain’t Schulze Max if I don’t see another present lyin’ there that hasn’t been delivered yet,” said Schulze Max and pointed to a bundle of fur. The Princess was sitting nearest the tree and unrolled it: a cat skin.

  “Oh, Dulle,” said Mother.

  “Can I help it if they come runnin’ after me?” said Dulle. The Princess stroked the tiger-striped fur.

  Mina: “Petting a cat means you’re in love.”

  “So who’s it for?” asked the Princess.

  “Whoever asks,” said Dulle.

  The Princess: “Oh brother, another fifty-year-old. Forge an ID and then report back to Princess Adelheid, addio mio vecchio!”

  “Fifty!” shouted Dulle, jumping up. “What’re you talkin’ about, sweetheart! You hear that, Maxie? She’s makin’ me into a gramps! Fifty! You gotta promise to take that back.” As he said it, Dulle was almost doing a jig, or bending and twisting, at any rate. He still dressed like a journeyman carpenter, but the outfit that once was black had long since ceased to have any color at all. His reddish hair welled out from beneath the carpenter’s hat he never took off and fell to his shoulders. And his beard was the same red and stuck out sideways so far from his cheeks that it was almost wider than the brim of the hat. There was very little of his face to be seen. A nose and eyes, and in front of his eyes a pair of glasses with lenses so small and round that his eyes seemed bigger than the glasses. Johann had the feeling that Dulle, who’d never been seen in church, went well with the Christmas tree. Better than anyone else, in fact.

  The presents had all been opened and now came the carols. After the first carol, “Oh du fröhliche, oh du selige,” Schulze Max said to Mother, “Your two boys could go on stage.” Father had taken off his kid gloves and was playing more and more complicated accompaniments. After “Kommet ihr Hirten, ihr Männer und Frau’n,” Schulze Max said to Dulle, “We’ll drink another glass to the musicians. If you agree.” Dulle nodded vigorously. “But then we’ll be on our way,” said Schulze Max. Dulle nodded again. And vigorously. Schulze Max: “We don’t want to start putting down roots here.” Dulle shook his head, vigorously. Schulze Max: “Especially not today, right?” Dulle nodded so vigorously that he had to push his glasses back into place. Schulze Max: “Even an innkeeping family needs some private time, right?” Dulle nodded again, but this time, he held onto his glasses so he could nod vigorously enough. Schulze Max: “And when does a family especially want to be by themselves—when do they need some privacy, if not on Christmas Eve, right?” Dulle took off his glasses since he wanted to nod even more vigorously than before. Schulze Max: “And what’s today?” Dulle, with an incredibly gentle voice, almost in a whisper: “Christmas Eve.” Schulze Max, very serious: “So the logical conclusion, dear and honored hostess, is that the next glass will be—really must be—the last.”

  Mother refilled their glasses. When you looked over toward Niklaus, you saw that his glass was almost always empty, too. He sat beside Grandfather, not with the guests, because he was part of the family. Just like the others who had presents under the Christmas tree, Niklaus had taken his—the pack of stogies and the plateful of cookies that went with them—back to his chair.

  As soon as Herr Seehahn sat down, Elsa brought him his own plate of butter cookies, gingerbread rounds, cinnamon stars, et cetera, leaving no doubt that he, too, belonged in the family circle. Without really bringing his mouth to rest, Herr Seehahn had grinned cheerfully and inserted into his stream of words several repetitions of a clearly audible Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, but then continued with his usual text: Out of luck but a good fuck, false serpent, stupid prick . . . Johann probably knew more of this text than the others. Maybe they thought it was just incomprehensible stuff. Johann was interested in every Seehahn-word he could catch. If you were more than a yard away, you couldn’t tell if he was talking or just chewing his lips.

  Everyone at the table—Dulle, Herr Seehahn, and Schulze Max—demonstrated that the glasses with beer and lake wine were a secondary consideration today. The main thing was the Christmas tree, the burning candles, the glistening red and silver balls that multiplied the light, the glittering tinsel, the hissing sparklers lit by Josef and Johann, and of course the carols they listened to with rapt attention. Schulze Max uttered the compliments for all of them. Johann sang for him. “Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming” was Johann’s favorite Christmas carol. He didn’t just hear his own voice when he sang it, he saw it, too: a silvery something that glistened and flowed way up high. He would never get as high as his voice was. He would never be that light. His soprano floated above Josef’s harmonizing alto and the piano’s accompanying or
namentation. When they were done, Schulze Max said, “Johann, if you don’t become a famous singer, you’ll have only yourself to blame.” Johann felt several shivers run down his back. Schulze Max had been a performer himself, both an escape artist and a trumpeter—first trumpet in the Sarrasani Circus! And once or twice a year, whenever somebody had paid in advance for more than ten beers, he would give some samples of his art. He could burst a chain and bite a rope in two. His hair, parted with the accuracy of a straightedge, always looked like it had been painted onto his bare skull. His face one sea of creases and wrinkles. At the war memorial, Johann had thought that the SA cap didn’t fit on top of this sea of creases and wrinkles. In the meantime, Johann had learned from Josef—but only after he promised not to tell anyone else and never to let on that he knew—who played Knecht Ruprecht every December 5th, Knecht Ruprecht with his beard-muffled face and jangling bells and rattling chains and terrifying hazel rod with which to punish children who had been bad, striding through the village at the side of Saint Nicholas, who was clad in festive red and white and distributed chocolate Nicholases: it was Schulze Max. You could hear the cowbells’ shrill jangle and the rattle of chains as soon as the pair came into view, coming up the street toward their house. Good Saint Nicholas’s friendly bell wasn’t audible until the two of them were right there in front of you in the kitchen. Till then, getting nearer and nearer and louder and louder was only Knecht Ruprecht’s harsh clanging and rattling. When the front door was flung open and both the good Nicholas and the terrible, ferocious Ruprecht came through the double doors into the central hallway, then stopped in the wide corridor, the clanging and rattling grew intolerably loud. The only thing to do was cling to Mother’s apron, press your face against her; soon they would burst through the kitchen door, and then . . . Although in the meantime he had learned from Josef that the terrible chain rattler and hazel rod swinger with the terrifying beard was Schulze Max—”you can recognize the chain from his escape-artist tricks in the restaurant”—he was still afraid. There was no conceivable protection from those terrible sounds.

  So now, Johann was singing against Knecht Ruprecht. Once and for all. If he praised him like this, he couldn’t frighten him anymore. The most terrible threat was that he would stick stubbornly disobedient children into the burlap bag hanging over his shoulder and whisk them off to a kind of immediate hell.

  Now they would drink one final glass to Johann, their little Caruso, said Schulze Max. “If you agree; otherwise we won’t.” Dulle nodded. “Then we really will be going.” If there was anything he hated, it was people who said they were about to leave and then didn’t. At least they wouldn’t be able to accuse him of that. “Nor you neither, if I know you at all.” Dulle’s nod was slow and generous, almost majestic. Elsa said that midnight Mass was beginning in half an hour. If they didn’t leave soon, they wouldn’t get a seat. Herr Seehahn stood up, went to pay, was surprised to hear that on Christmas Eve it was on the house. Schulze Max said, “Dulle, if we’d only known!” Dulle said, “Nobody can’t know everything.” Without taking the cigarette out of his mouth, Herr Seehahn cheerfully requested them to pray for his black soul and went up to his little room.

  “Gentlemen,” said Elsa, “let me show you the way out.”

  “Into the snow,” said Schulze Max.

  “Come to my place,” said Dulle, “it never snows in.”

  “I’ve still got a swallow of something at my place,” said Schulze Max.

  “Then you’re my man,” said Dulle. Elsa went out with them. On the way out, they started to sing, “Silent night, holy night, all is still, I am tight . . .”

  Elsa came back in and said, “Valentin’s waiting for me.”

  Mina said, “And Alfred’s waiting for me.”

  “Bon appétit,” said the Princess, saluted, and left the spare room before the others. She never went to church anymore. A priest in Ravensburg was responsible for her not being allowed to keep her Moritz.

  Grandfather said, “Good night, everybody,” and went out. Niklaus nodded and went out. Josef and Johann had started to blow out the candles.

  Suddenly Mina cried out, “Johannle, look out!” But it was too late. Because he had to pull down one of the top branches to blow out the candle on it, he hadn’t noticed that his left arm was too close to a candle that was still burning lower down: a burn hole in the sleeve of his new sweater. Johann took the sweater off at once. He knew he shouldn’t have put it on!

  Mina examined the burned spot. “I can darn that for you,” she said, “so you’d never see it if you didn’t know it was there.” But I do know it’s there, thought Johann. He wanted to cry but didn’t dare. But Mina could tell how unhappy he was. She took his face between her two hands, drew him to her, and said in her Niedersonthofen cadence, “An ugly rag’s prettier’n a pretty hole.” But then she had to go. To her Alfred. She acted as if it was hard for her to leave Johann at a moment like this. Johann felt his eyes getting moist. Mina and Elsa were gone.

  Mother pressed her hand against her side and said she couldn’t go to church with them. She sat down quickly on the nearest chair, then bent forward as far as she could and stayed that way. Father said, “It’s a colic. Come on, lie down and I’ll make you some tea and a compress.” Mother straightened up and said Father should go to Mass with the boys. Then she stood up, a hand on her right side. She said she’d joined the new party—as good as joined. Herr Minn was bringing the application form tomorrow. Father said nothing. The owners of the Crown, the Linden Tree, and the Pfälzerhof had already joined. Mayor Hener, too.

  “I haven’t joined,” said Father.

  “Exactly,” said Mother. The church bells began to ring. Now the party meetings would be in the Station Restaurant instead of the Crown, she said.

  Father already had on his coat and his new kid gloves. He took them off and said he’d stay with Mother. “You two go ahead,” he said. As Johann was lacing up his boots, he thought of the itinerant photographer. Those three pictures were worth more to him than new boots.

  It was still snowing outside. As they waded through the freshly fallen snow, he thought about the Norwegian sweater, or rather, about the burn hole in the sleeve. A sweater like the brightest silver, with a pattern of raised blue stripes that formed rings across the chest. And there was something in the blue stripes that glittered, too, a kind of almost-silver. And now, the hole. He couldn’t really listen to Josef telling him about how his piano teacher Jutz from Kressbronn was going to play the organ in church tonight. He always rode his bicycle to Wasserburg. How was he going to manage in this snow? Easy for you to talk, Johann thought, you haven’t got a hole in your sleeve. When he’d put on the sweater, he sensed that he looked like the knight in Richard the Lion Heart and his Paladin. But now—it was all over. Later, when he knelt next to Adolf in church, Adolf would tell him what he got for Christmas, and what could Johann say? He wished he could get into bed and repeat Herr Seehahn’s words to himself. But maybe he could say the words when he was still up, too, maybe even in church.

  The dark figures emerging from the houses and moving down the hill along with them, saying nothing, didn’t bother him. The snow was swallowing every step and every sound anyway. He allowed them all to fall in in his midnight march. He was the Silver Knight, marching through the black night in flurries of snow. The hole in his sleeve proved that life was a struggle.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Meetings

  FATHER SAID HE HAD NO OBJECTION if Johann wanted to be there. “You’ll hear some familiar words. Look here,” he said. “Sound it out.” Johann sounded out the capital letters typed on the piece of paper: MEETING TO ORGANIZE A THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN WASSERBURG. “You’re amazing, Johann,” said Father.

  Only one of the two rows of tables in the spare room was occupied, the one along the interior wall that was closest to the stove. Niklaus had already started heating the room around noon. An east wind had been blowing for days. Minus 30 degrees in Silesia. Over
in the restaurant, SA men were warming themselves up before starting on their next round through the village. Since early afternoon, ten, twelve, sometimes even fourteen SA men in brown shirts, stiff, flared breeches, and shiny jackboots had been riding through the village on motorcycles. The men on the passenger seats carried swastika flags. They were all wearing their caps with chinstraps again. Again, it looked like a wind storm was imminent. And they also looked stuffed, probably because they were wearing thick sweaters under their brown shirts on account of the cold. The noise of the motorcycles and the flags snapping in the wind brought people to their windows, doors, and into the street. The village lay under one continuous blanket of snow and glittered in the sun. Periodically, the motorcycle column would halt, the motors were turned off, and one of the men put a megaphone to his mouth and announced that at eleven o’clock that morning, the Reich president, General Field Marshall von Hindenburg, had appointed the Führer Adolf Hitler chancellor. To mark the occasion, there would be a live broadcast of tonight’s rally on the radio, direct from the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. On all German stations. Whoever believed in Germany’s salvation should come to the Station Restaurant tonight.

  Of the Brownshirts, Johann knew only Herr Brugger, Schulze Max (who rode behind Herr Brugger with a flagstaff in his hand), and Herr Häckelsmiller, who sat on another passenger seat. From Adolf, Johann knew that Herr Brugger had paid for the uniforms of Schulze Max and little Herr Häckelsmiller, from their caps to their boots.

  Again, Johann noticed how Schulze Max’s creased and wrinkled face didn’t go with his cap.