A Gushing Fountain

by Martin Walser

  Under his cherry tree, Johann set Anita back down on the ground. “What now?” she asked.

  “Your Bharatanatyam dance was great,” he said.

  “How do you know about Bharatanatyam?” she asked.

  “From my father,” said Johann, as if it was nothing special.

  He took out his flashlight, the one he used to read under the blanket in bed when he just couldn’t stop, and shined it on the bivouac he had set up at the base of the big cherry tree. On a blue hand towel lay the cigarette pack with the transfers. There was a sponge in its canister and a tin of Leo Fucidin ointment, which he handed to her. “Anita, Anita,” he said, “it’s for you.” She laughed. “Not so loud,” he said. He thought the quieter they talked to each other, the more beautiful it would be. He picked up the cigarette pack and the sponge canister, Anita sat down, looked up at him, and he kneeled down in front of her and opened the cigarette pack. “Transfers,” he said. “Your knee,” he said. Luckily, she was wearing knee socks. So he only had to push her skirt back a little bit and then moisten a spot on the inner side of her right thigh with the sponge. Anita shivered. Then he positioned the transfer and ran the moist sponge over it. He pulled away the film and immediately placed the second transfer on her other inner thigh. Skirt up, skin moistened, transfer placed, sponged over, film lifted off and put in his pocket—done. Johann was so assiduous that Anita had no chance to say or ask anything. He felt that at that moment he was just as assertive as Adolf. He was afraid, however, that Anita would jump up and run away. Had he ever been so afraid in all his life? Once the two images had dried, he shined his flashlight on them and said, “A whale spouting water and Popocatépetl erupting.”

  “What’s it called?” asked Anita.

  “Popocatépetl,” said Johann.

  “Is there really such a place?” asked Anita.

  “What do you think?” said Johann. “My father said he wanted to climb Popocatépetl before he died.”

  “And did he?” asked Anita.

  “He didn’t make it.” And when Anita was silent, Johann said, “A thirteen-thousand-footer.”

  Anita said, “It’s a funny name.”

  “It means Smoking Mountain,” said Johann. “It’s near Puebla.” And then, as if it was self-evident, “In Mexico.” And he jumped to his feet, pulled Anita up, took her in his arms, and carried her back through the high grass to the path lying white with blossoms in the moonlight.

  He needed to leave so abruptly because he had nothing more to say about Popocatépetl. The transfer could be any old volcano. He didn’t know himself why he had suddenly said it was Popocatépetl. What he had really wanted to do was show Anita how the Eskimos greeted each other. But he didn’t get to that. Slowly, they walked downhill. Johann had a solemn feeling and hoped that Anita felt the same way. He couldn’t say a thing. Apparently, Anita couldn’t say anything, either. They walked down the hill at the same measured pace without touching each other.

  Anita stopped, and so did Johann. For a second they stood facing each other. Anita said quietly, “Good night.” Just as quietly, he said, “Good night, Anita, Anita.” Then she walked and he ran. Upstairs, he was greeted by Tell as if the dog had experienced everything along with him.

  Johann lay in bed and was glad Josef wasn’t there yet. He pulled the blanket over his head and knew that he was about to commit a sin. He thought of Adolf. When they groped each other in the reeds or the bushes, Adolf called the thing they touched their manhood. And it was obvious that he got that word from his father. Everything that Adolf got from his father lent what he said an unmistakable assertiveness and confidence it otherwise lacked. When Adolf talked about his or Johann’s manhood and meant by that nothing more than that particular part of their anatomy, Johann had always been surprised that Adolf didn’t find the word funny. He put his hand on the part of his anatomy he had no word for. Everything has a name, he thought, except for you. And since the part now responded to him, and the bigger it got, the warmer and more alive it felt, he thought how strange that it had no name! No name for the thing he now had in his hand and slid open and closed, open and closed and open again. The boys who were three or four or five years older—Edi, Heini, and Willi and Fritz—called it a dick and said balls (one heard about it without having to be there when they said it). Words like punches, thought Johann. Johann could not take in those words without a kind of trembling or shaking. Unimaginable that he would ever use such crude words. Johann felt that he needed to protect his member from words like that. There probably was no word for this part of his body, because it was not supposed to be touched or thought about. This part was not supposed to exist at all. And yet it did exist so . . . so much. And now he was completely overwhelmed by the feeling that he only existed thanks to this part. Whether it had a name or not. He would protect this part from any disparagement by a crude name.

  He couldn’t get enough of this feeling, a feeling he awakened by handling himself, and so he increased it by handling himself more vigorously while reciting some syllables to himself that made no sense, but had a rhythm, a Herr Seehahn rhythm. Yes, he felt like Herr Seehahn, spitting out syllables and sentence fragments. Anita-Anita occurred most often among the expectorated syllables. The thing he had touched for the first time in the shed behind the dairy with Irmgard was called her plummy. Plum—it wasn’t just something crude but also something delicate. Between the women’s beach and the men’s beach, there was a new beach to which both men and women could go. It was called Plumkiln Beach. In a meadow beside the lake, someone had wanted to construct an imitation of the grotto in Lourdes and had already brought in a Madonna from Lourdes. They had imported from Switzerland all the stones they needed for the grotto, but then Rome had not approved the project. So what remained was just a swimming beach. Plumkiln Beach. If the word dick struck Johann as completely crude, the word plummy seemed to him both crude and delicate. Narrow, sublime, both soft and firm. It was inconceivable that he would ever say it out loud to anyone. But now, alone, he could say it. When he said “plummy,” he felt that the plummy letters said what he imagined to be between Anita’s legs. Plummy. And himself. His member. That he had to call You, because he had no name for it. Only: You, you are who you are. He felt how his member responded to his syllables: I am who I am. And Johann: You are who you are. And again: I am who I am. You are who you are. I am who I am. Johann felt it shooting up from within, up and out of him. And felt himself falling. Because he had never been so high up, he fell lower than ever before. In what abyss was he lying, in what darkness and cold? Divided from himself. And yet it was he who lay there. Undone.

  Now he’d committed a sin. A mortal sin. He could not be the person who had done that. He was the person who wanted to separate himself from the person who had done that. Forever. He was the person who had had that done to him. The person who could not get away from the person who had done it. Who had done it to him. And since he could not get away from the person who had done it, he knew he had never had to suffer like this. Not when they buried his father, not when they buried his grandfather. What should he think now? That it would subside.

  When Josef tiptoed in, Johann pretended to be asleep. But how could he sleep when he had just destroyed the blessed state of grace? When he was contemplating committing the greatest, weightiest, most terrible of all sins: taking communion in a state of unchastity. Nothing could be worse. It was almost good for him that he felt more miserable than ever before in his life. It serves you right, he thought. You’re going to feel this miserable as long as you live. Why wasn’t he lying in the grave beside Elsa and Valentin? But they were buried in two different places, Elsa in Einöd bei Homburg on the Saar, and Valentin in Mindelheim. Johann wanted to lie in Einöd. Spooning. Elsa had once explained it to Herr Deuerling when, for a change, Herr Deuerling was not sitting on her lap on top of the coal bin behind the stove, but she on his. When you are lying next to each other like two spoons, Elsa had explained, they called that spooning in Ain
aid by Homborsh. Herr Deuerling said, “Get goin’, get along with ya!”

  Johann recalled that just as Elsa was explaining the spooning position, he happened to be reading the sentence in Winnetou, “. . . for there is nothing I abhor as much as, for example, a mouth full of bad air.”

  And when Schmied, the dockworker who made fast the steamers when they landed, came to say they had found them back there in the bay, Elsa and Valentin, along with their capsized boat, Johann had been sitting on the dock with a fishing pole in his hand, waiting for his cork to start dancing and then be pulled under by a perch that had taken his bait and thought it could shake itself loose by a wild dive. “From all that rolling and rocking,” the dockworker had said. “And then, both of ’em non-swimmers, a-course,” the dockworker had said. And then he said extra loud, since a couple of strangers waiting for the boat were listening, “All men must die, said the Yid, maybe even me.” It often happened that Johann remembered most what he understood least.

  Johann had pulled his line out of the water at once and discovered that the worm he had wrapped around the three-pronged hook was no good anymore. So he reached into the tin can filled with dirt and took hold of a fresh worm. And began tugging the worm—which was growing harder and resisting—steadily but carefully (he didn’t want to tear it in two) out of the can. He skewered it on the triple hook until it was a squirming tangle, then he threw his hook back in. But he couldn’t wait until one of the perch hanging around in the water finally got interested in his worm. He pulled his hook back out, tore the worm apart while dislodging it from the points, and threw the torn pieces into the water, making a present of them to the loitering perch. Holding his fishing pole, he ran over to the bay. But he got there too late. Elsa and Valentin had already been placed into a black automobile. He wanted to show Anita his swimming certificate. Fifteen minutes in still water, it said.

  Anita should watch him some time, the way he skewered a worm onto the triple hook at the end of his line, pushing it down over the barbs until it stopped wriggling. He couldn’t get enough of imagining it down to the smallest detail. He wanted now to think about nothing except the twitching and squirming of the worm on the triple hook. Do nothing but crouch down and imagine it. Nothing else.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Low Sunday

  WHEN THE BLINDS CLATTERING in the wind woke Johann up on Sunday morning, it felt good to be under his blanket. When it wasn’t just the blinds on the two west windows that clattered but also the ones on the north windows, facing the station, it meant a storm was coming. And this morning, nothing was more important to him than a storm that would delay everything. If only the whole world would collapse. Johann stretched under the blanket, curled up again, and his hands wandered to the thing for which he had no name. Should he call it, provisionally, dick? Name?—Provisionally Dick. Then the mere thought of it would be a deadly sin, his blessed state of grace banished forever, i.e., he was headed straight to hell. You are who you are. I am who I am. You are who you are. I am who I am. IAWIA. That could be hidden, tucked in among KDF, NSV, NSKK, and WHW. He sensed that his member would accept the name IAWIA. The more he said IAWIA, the closer IAWIA and his member became. There ought to be a baptism. But please, not today!

  Johann jumped out of bed and ran to the lavatory to look down at the circus. They needed it to be warm with no wind! So all wishes: About face! Please, no big storm! The black buffalo Vishnu waited patiently under the Gravenstein tree while the wind covered him with a snowdrift of white petals. The ponies lay under the carriage house eaves and stared at nothing with great concentration. Tell had come running after him and put his front paws on the windowsill so he could look down, too. No one was stirring in the trailers. Tomorrow the circus would move on to Langenargen. Johann put his right arm around Tell and pulled him close until he could feel Tell’s nose at his neck. Tell knew he was supposed to lick him now, and he did.

  As Johann donned the glad rags known as his First Communion suit, he began to feel the solemnity of the occasion. Long before Easter, the great-uncle they called Cousin had taken him to Bredl’s store in Wangen to pick out this dark blue suit, along with a shirt, knee socks, and cap. The shoes were from Schorer’s, his very first low shoes ever. White knee socks. White shirt with a collar so wide the points covered his suit lapels and reached almost to his shoulders. The cap spoiled everything. But you couldn’t be a communicant without a cap. He took the communion candle, decorated with green and gold tendrils and a red Sacred Heart, out of its fancy box and practiced the best way to hold it in front of the mirror. Not too much piety, but not too little, either. And in his other hand, he held the Schott prayer book and hymnal, bound in leather with gilt edging. Cousin Anselm had asked him to carry it for his First Communion. Not a bad impression overall. Low shoes, knee socks, short pants that weren’t too long and actually didn’t even come down to his knees, a well-fitting jacket, the wide white collar, the elegant candle, the positively sparkling prayer book—but then that stupid cap topping it all off. Which mustn’t be crooked, not even a little, nor sit too far back on his head. So, jammed down on his forehead nice and straight. Voilà.

  Downstairs, Mina and Luise applauded. “What a sweet boy,” Mina cooed.

  After her usual hesitation, Luise said, “Woll.”

  Josef, already at the table with his bandaged foot on a chair, said, “Agnus Dei in person.”

  The Princess smacked her lips and said, “Yummy.”

  Mother, who hadn’t said anything yet, gave her a severe look and said, “Behave yourself, Adelheid!” And to Johann, “Time to go.” As always, she carried three-year-old Anselm on her hip, and he repeated everything his mother said. It had become a habit, because every time he repeated his mother’s words, the grown-ups would laugh. Johann’s godfather and godmother were sitting at the table beneath the clock, all ready and waiting for him. The folding partition was open, and Luise had set all the tables for the post-communion banquet, with a vase of daffodils on each one.

  “Here comes our communicant!” cried his godmother with a big smile on her face.

  Mother said, “If only his papa could see him now,” and started to cry. Little Anselm didn’t repeat that. She went out of the room and returned at once, now holding the three-year-old by the hand. It almost looked as if the three-year-old had gone to fetch her and was now leading her back into the room.

  His godfather said the important thing was that the living were doing well. It sounded like a reprimand. In the meantime, Josef had hobbled on his crutch over to the piano in the spare room and started to play.

  “He’s really good,” his godmother said.

  Johann’s godfather said nothing, but looked over at piano-playing Josef as if to say: You don’t have to play so fast for me, you show-off!

  As they were leaving, Mother said (as she always did when someone was heading for the church) they shouldn’t forget to visit the grave, too. She was tormented by the thought that because of the business, sometimes an entire month went by before she could visit the grave. She was sure her dead husband was registering her repeated failure with disappointment. And she was not at all sure he would accept her duties in the business as an excuse. Perhaps he was only aware that she didn’t visit his grave every week, and in his dead state did not know why she hadn’t come. But his grave must absolutely not be without a visitor on Sundays and holidays, because people might talk. To say nothing of lacking flowers. And what would people say if barely three months after his death no one visited the grave anymore! That was her constant refrain to Josef and Johann. And when Frau Hotz or Frau Ehrle, who tended the neighboring graves, told Mother that her sons had just dashed by after High Mass, sprinkled holy water on the grave, and taken off again, then mother was so distressed she could hardly speak. Her conclusion: now she knew what would happen to her when she was under the ground. No one would come to her grave and pray for her. When she talked like that, little Anselm would lay his head on her shoulder.

 
Johann walked proudly down the Dorfstrasse between his huge godfather and his smiling godmother. His godfather from Kümmertsweiler and his godmother from Kressbronn were not unknown in the village. People greeted them right and left. It had taken his godfather almost an hour to get from the farm in Kümmertsweiler to Wasserburg. He’d considered harnessing up the chestnut and coming in his little racing cart, but then thought better of it. A day of rest in the middle of spring planting would do the chestnut good, and besides, the streets in Wasserburg were almost all tarred, and the chestnut didn’t like that. Johann’s godmother had come by train. As they walked down the length of the village among growing crowds of people, she could not simply remain silent, of course. It would look like they’d had an argument.

  “Spring’s in an awful hurry this year,” she said.

  His godfather nodded.

  “I can’t recall a year,” she said, “when things blossomed so early.”

  His godfather nodded. Then he finally opened his mouth and said, “Never known there to be so many hares as this year.” Johann got the feeling that his godfather wanted to say there was something special about the year of his First Communion. But as if he realized that it would sound too positive coming from him, he added, “Wouldn’t be bad if we got some rain.”

  No trace of Anita. How on earth would Herr Brugger ever get his Mercedes to the church through these crowds? Herr Brugger had probably already picked Anita up, and she was now sitting at their house on the big leather sofa with the fluted brass buttons that always gleamed like gold. Not a trace of Anita’s parents, either.

  Unfortunately, the wind was gradually blowing the clouds away. The day didn’t look so threatening after all. Johann’s godfather had to hold on to his hat and Johann to his communicant’s cap. Even before they reached the church, the pealing of the four bells washed over them and just at that moment, the clouds parted and the sun streamed down. People going into church nudged each other and pointed.