A Gushing Fountain

by Martin Walser

  In the churchyard they went their separate ways. When everything was over, they would meet at Father’s grave.

  Candlesticks had been set up to hold their candles. Adolf was already there. So Anita must be, too. In fact, Johann was the last to arrive. But it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet.

  As soon as he knelt down, he couldn’t think what to do next. He wasn’t able to make a quick confession before early Mass because if he had, it would have drawn everyone’s attention to his wicked life. So he was going to his First Communion with a mortal sin on his conscience. Everyone knows that breaking the sixth commandment is a mortal sin. Not one of your little secondary, venial sins that Heaven punishes with earthly penalties—sins you could even get rid of without involving a priest at all by just repenting and praying—but a mortal sin which, if he, say, were to die right now, would be followed by immediate and eternal damnation. In fact, sinning against the sixth commandment was the biggest sin of all. The only thing worse than this biggest of all mortal sins was if, stained with this sin, you took communion anyway, which was exactly what he was doing. Was going to do, unless a bolt of lightning, an earthquake, or the earth opening up and swallowing him prevented the sacrilege. He was unconscious. He was not the person going through all these practiced motions and saying all these memorized words. He didn’t want to be that person, that most dreadful of boys who went to the altar rail in a state of mortal sin. He kept stealing glances at Anita. She knelt with a straight back, her head held high and adorned with a white wreath. She was the tallest, or at least the straightest, in the girl’s pew. To see Anita was something beyond all damnation. On the other hand, she was the source of all damnation. But he still had to keep stealing glances at her.

  The priest droned on as always. “Before we begin to ponder these words from Holy Scripture, let us pray: Our Father, which art . . .” Whenever the priest in the pulpit got going on a prayer like that and everybody started praying along, you couldn’t hear him anymore. You only saw his beard bobbing up and down. He started to pray with his head bowed and then raised it, which meant that he could see anyone who wasn’t praying.

  Johann didn’t take in a single word of the priest’s sermon. But later during the Mass, he heard Herr Grübel’s voice soaring above the others in the choir. And he was kneeling next to Ludwig Grübel, whose father’s voice was the equal of Karl Erb’s. Johann didn’t just hear the voice, he saw it. It was the Light of Lights. He felt pierced through and through, as though he himself was singing, singing against mortal sin. Against all punishment. He sang.

  When the consecration had been completed and the communion bell rung, Johann followed the other communicants and bowed his head along with the rest. As he knelt and saw the priest’s white hand emerge from the golden chalice holding the white host, and as that hand with the host approached his open mouth and laid it on his proffered tongue, he thought: Don’t let it dissolve. Don’t swallow. If you can somehow take it out of your mouth, you haven’t committed a crime. But then, what was he to do with the host? It was the Body of Christ, so deep-sixing it or throwing it away was just as criminal as letting it melt in your mouth in a state of mortal sin.

  And then he was back in the pew, kneeling. The host melted in his mouth. Dissolved in him. And he was still alive. He thanked the Lord for that. Thanked him with a prayer that really should have been prayed earlier: Oh Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come to me, But speak the words of comfort, My spirit healed shall be. He was probably the only one who was unworthy. But then why this prayer? Don’t try to split hairs, you.

  And then, with lighted candles, the solemn recession of the boys and girls who had just received the Body of the Lord for the first time. Johann had kept a sharp eye out to see Anita stick her head forward to receive the host. And then the way she went back to her pew! Not went, floated. La Paloma.

  When the procession reached the entrance to the cemetery, it began to break up, and Johann saw Herr Brugger approaching from the direction of the Crown. Adolf ran over to the girls to fetch Anita, and then they went to meet Herr Brugger. Of course, Anita was going to ride back in his Mercedes. Johann had to go back to the cemetery, to the grave, pray three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys, and each time think: Lord, give him eternal peace, may eternal light shine upon him, Lord, let him rest in peace, Amen. Turning to his Grandfather’s grave: And same to you. There was no point in praying fast, since he could not stop praying before his godmother did. His huge godfather stood looking not at the grave, but at nothing. But with great concentration.

  And on the way home, Johann thought about what excuse he could invent so as not to have to eat in the restaurant with his godparents. He didn’t want to have to watch Anita sitting at Adolf’s table and laughing. She was sure to be laughing, because Herr Brugger always told stories that made people laugh. Tell occurred to him; so he said to himself, but loud enough so the others could hear, that it was high time he looked after Tell. His godfather patted him on the shoulder in approval. At home, Johann ran straight upstairs, said, “What would I do without you?” to Tell, who was jumping up on him, led him out through the back door, over the grade crossing, and up the path to the Lausbichel. They turned off to his little bivouac under the cherry tree, and he sat down on the blue-checked hand towel he had left there last night. Tell stretched out beside him. The wind had blown down even more cherry blossom petals. It was like sitting on a bed. When he heard the clocks strike twelve, Johann knew that everybody who was coming to the banquet at the Station Restaurant was now seated, and he could go back.

  He went into the kitchen with Tell and slid into his corner seat, but without a book today. Mother was sampling Frau Lutzenberger’s gravy. On special occasions like this, Frau Lutzenberger always helped out, and Mother always praised what she did so much that Frau Lutzenberger blushed. And Mina had to sample the gravy after Mother and praise it just as much. And the object of so much praise smiled as though she didn’t take what they said as seriously as it was meant.

  It was no news to Johann that everything made and done in the village was better than anywhere else in the world. When he stood behind the bar in the dining room eavesdropping on the conversation at the regulars’ table, he heard in great detail about all the things that were better in Wasserburg than anywhere else in the world. Schäfler the wainwright made the best wagon wheels, Frei the blacksmith the best fittings, Groh the locksmith the best locks, Werner the baker the best rolls, and Gierer the butcher the best bratwurst. “And all that in a community,” as Schäfler the wainwright had once proclaimed, “where if one farmer falls down, he lands in another one’s field.” And Brem the carpenter once declared, also at the regulars’ table, that he might not be the best carpenter in the world, but he would see to it that his son would be—guaranteed. And it made Johann really happy to be living in precisely the village where everything was better than anywhere else in the world. For instance, when you heard what kind of cabinets people had to settle for from cabinetmakers in other towns, compared to the cabinets created by their cabinetmaker Rechtsteiner, you just had to thank your lucky stars you were permitted to live here. So it was only right and proper that Frau Lutzenberger’s gravy was the best gravy that ever was.

  Johann accompanied his godmother to the station, where she caught the train to Kressbronn. His godfather had said Behüt dich Gott and set off in the direction of the grade crossing. Over the Lausbichel, down to Mittelsee, up the Winterberg, not quite as far down to Hengnau, uphill from Hengnau, then down the Atzenbohl, then a really steep climb and he was back home in Kümmertsweiler, seven red roofs afloat among the treetops, back home with Johann’s other grandfather, who was much shorter but also much broader than his tall slender wife, the grandmother who always made sure that when Johann was sitting at her table in the midst of his hungry, long-armed uncles, he got his share of the fried potatoes that were served straight from the pan, back home with the chestnut and the bull and the seven cows whose names Johann knew by heart be
cause he’d filled all their troughs with feed and also seen to it that they all got their share.

  At three o’clock, there was a prayer service. Johann was waiting by the trailer with blue curtains at two thirty. Anita appeared at the door, three steps above him. He had never seen her from close up in this dress before. Gleaming white like the wreath on her head. And white gloves. And a little purse with a white cord, just like the one his mother was holding in her wedding picture. Frau Wiener also came to the trailer door but didn’t look the least bit festive. So he knew Anita’s parents had not been in church or sat at the Bruggers’ table. Only Anita. Johann was happy when Anita came down the three steps and stood beside him in the grass. She probably thought his cap looked stupid. He looked like Schmied the dockworker. Not that he had anything against Schmied the dockworker. But he didn’t want to look like him.

  “Is the Moosweg all right with you?” asked Johann.

  Anita said she didn’t know which that was. Johann explained it was the path they’d taken yesterday, and she said that was fine with her. Johann stopped holding his breath. He had been afraid that the Bruggers were going to chauffeur her in their Mercedes to the afternoon prayer service, too. Although even that morning there had been something funny about it: Herr Brugger chauffeurs his wife, Anita, Adolf, and Adolf’s godfather to church and then withdraws into the Crown Restaurant, referred to by many in town as St. Alternate’s.

  Had Anita washed the whale and the volcano off her inner thighs? That question preoccupied him more than any other.

  And as if she could read his thoughts, she said, “The pictures are still stuck on. They tug at my skin when I move my legs.”

  When she said that and laughed, he was unable to look at her. He walked a little faster. He was afraid he would blush.

  “They really do pull.”

  “Tomorrow it’s off to Langenargen,” he said.

  She asked what Langenargen was like. Were there people there, too, who would ambush you at night, tie you up, and then beat you?

  Johann said the men who had done that were not from Wasserburg.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders and made a face as though he couldn’t say any more about it.

  “My father wants Axel to go to the police,” Anita said, “but Axel says it was the police who did it.”

  “Damn cowards,” said Johann.

  “Poor Axel,” she said. “There isn’t a nicer person in the world, and he’s the one they beat up.”

  “That’s how it always is,” said Johann.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “That the nicest people get beat up,” said Johann. He could tell that now Anita was looking at him admiringly. It made him feel good.

  And this wind, fortunately blowing up a storm again. The sky full of racing clouds so low they seemed to boil right up out of Nonnenhorn. The reeds that ringed the entire bay responded to every gust, bending down and springing back up and bending down again. The meadows billowed as though they wished they were water. Did Anita notice that one and the same wind blew against her forehead and his? It made him want to break into song again. But you almost never can do what you want to do. Not even say how great it is to be walking into this storm wind! The poplars! He could say that, couldn’t he? Look at those poplars, the way they’re bending! All fourteen or fifteen poplars on the path around the reeds and the bay, just look at how they’re bending all together. Anita, Anita, just look at them! That’s what he would have said if he could have said anything. Then he would have run ahead of her, so that she would follow him all the way down to the reeds and through the reeds to the place where the boat drifted ashore last summer, the one that capsized and drowned Elsa and Valentin at night when they rowed out onto the lake and tipped over from all their groping and grabbing and rocking. Both of them non-swimmers, of course.

  “Do you know how to swim?” asked Johann.

  “What do you think?” she laughed. The wind blew the bangs from her round forehead. He was also convinced that hers was the roundest forehead in the world. And almost as brown as Josef when he came back from skiing. And how blue her eyes were, and her mouth always open a little.

  He wished the storm wind would blow the cap off his head and far out into the meadow’s yellow and purple billows. He could run after his cap, Anita behind him, and they could at least fall down together and then see what happened after that.

  He asked Anita if she’d read Winnetou. She didn’t know what Winnetou was, and he couldn’t explain it to her. Then he said, “Do you want to go home by the path along the lake afterwards?” It would be beautiful in this stormy weather. “If you’re not afraid,” he said.

  “Afraid?” she said. “Afraid of what?”

  And suddenly he couldn’t think why she should be afraid. Anita, afraid? Anita, who flew around the tall pole and rode on Vishnu, Anita Devi, Anita Anita. Suddenly, it was clear to him that this wind bore her name. If anyone was afraid, it was him.

  When the graveyard gravel crunched under their steps, he began to walk so fast she couldn’t keep up. He couldn’t walk beside her among the graves.

  In church, the seat beside Adolf was still free. How could he let Adolf know that Anita—over with the girls now, the most visible of all—had a whale and a volcano on her thighs? A baleen whale (What, you’ve never heard of one?) and Popocatépetl (And you don’t know what that is either?). And if Adolf answered: You can kiss my ass, you and your Popocattywhatever! then he would punch him right in the face, punch him like he’d never been punched before. And then they would fight and Johann would win this time, that was for sure. He couldn’t do it in the church pew, however. He’d have to postpone his inner-thigh report. Now he was itching for a fight with Adolf. For at least a year, Johann had been noticeably taller than Adolf. Adolf might be stronger, stockier, but was still an inch or so shorter. All Johann had to do was grab him in a flash, grab Adolf’s neck with his right arm, throw a headlock on him. Then force him to his knees, then onto the ground, then onto his back. Johann would kneel on his upper arms the way Josef always kneeled on Johann’s upper arms when he had him on his back. But then Johann wouldn’t stand up and release him like Josef did. He would bend down to Adolf, put both hands behind his head, and raise him up gently, saying: See? Boast like ten naked niggers and you get pounded into the ground! Come on, get up, you old cannon fodder. And he’d even help him to his feet and maybe add something that Adolf had been saying lately, something he must have gotten from Herr Brugger: You old swindler, you.

  During the service, Johann whispered to Adolf and Paul that they were going home by the path along the lake. He said it the way Adolf always said things. And in fact, to his right and his left there were nods of agreement.

  Johann sang along with the hymns that were part of the prayer service, sang as though he was all by himself, with just the organ accompanying him. At least, all he could hear was himself and the organ. He kept looking over at Anita. Couldn’t she hear him? She must be able to. He was singing for her. But she didn’t look over. Johann had never ever sung like this before. “Star of the Sea I Greet Thee,” and Holy, holy is the Lord upon his throne, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord alone. He from the beginning, Father, Lord, and friend, Whose reign endures forever, Kingdom without end. Truly, he’d never sung like this in his life. No one ever had sung like this. Stained with the worst mortal sin, he had partaken of the Body of the Lord. It didn’t get any worse than that. But he would sing. Schubert. Holy, holy is the Lord upon his throne.

  At the grave, he recited his prayer—Lordgivehimeternalpeace—faster than he’d ever done before. He had to keep them from going home up the main street. Adolf greeted him with a mocking yodel. Johann didn’t join in their laughter. “Let’s go home by the path along the lake,” said Johann. Adolf said that was fine with him, since he had on sturdy footwear. Johann thought of the word manhood. Sturdy footwear, that was Herr Brugger talking for sure: sturdy footwear, con
sequences, role model, bad example, bootlicker, fop, womenfolk, litmus test.

  They walked between the Crown and the teacher’s house and down to the lake. Guido called to the girls to come, too. “Along the lake!” shouted Adolf. The girls conferred. They didn’t all come, but most of them did. The path along the lake was not continually under water, but each wave was topping the breakwater and flooding parts of the path before streaming back. You had to run forward while the wave was receding and before the next one came. Johann thought they should run forward, wait, and run forward again along with the girls. He wanted to show Adolf that not he, Adolf, but he, Johann, was there to protect Anita from the waves breaking onto the path. But Adolf blocked the way and said, “You have to answer a question first before you’re allowed to use the path. If Lake Constance sinks by half an inch, how many cubic feet of water does it lose?” Not a single boy or girl could answer. Adolf: “One hundred sixty million cubic feet. If you didn’t know the answer, you have to pay. A toll.”

  Manhood, consequences, sturdy footwear, toll, thought Johann.

  Adolf explained that a toll was a fee. Fees used to be called tolls.

  He was barring the way with his thick communion candle. He really did have the thickest one of all. He said, “Boys pay a pfennig, girls pay with a kiss.” He said, “If you can’t pay, you have to go home by the usual route or you have to beat me. Then you can go past.”

  Now he was holding his candle like a sword. Paul pointed and yelled, “Look, there’s the customs boat!” Adolf turned around to look and in that second, Paul, Guido, Berni, and Ludwig shot past behind his back. Helmut One, who always had change in his pocket, paid a pfennig for himself and Helmut Two. The girls blew kisses to Adolf, and he let them pass.