A Gushing Fountain

by Martin Walser

  She couldn’t run home from Geiselharz every Saturday. It was too far. But then, on this Saturday, suddenly, quite suddenly, she asked her uncle if she could go home on the weekend. He drove her to Wangen in his Ford. She took the train to Oberreitnau and then walked through Unterreitnau and Bechtersweiler and past Rickatshofen to Kümmertsweiler. Then down to Gattnau to confess and told the priest: I want to enter a convent. She thought: If he doesn’t come today, I’ll go to a convent. It was clear to her that it was a sin to think such a thing. And it was a much graver sin to tell the priest you wanted to enter a convent when you didn’t want to at all. But she would enter a convent if she went home afterwards and the bicycle with the EFFENDI tag was not leaning against the fence under the hollyhocks. She would hurl herself out of this life and into the deepest convent, the Poor Clares in Siessen. Tomorrow morning, before Communion, she would need to confess again. Of course. Whether the bicycle is there against the fence afterwards or not, you can’t blackmail God. If he doesn’t come today, I’ll enter a convent—that’s blackmail. The priest had said, “What a beautiful decision, Augusta.” It was the first time he’d said her name during confession. Most of the time you never know if the man taking your confession has any idea who you are. Hopefully, he doesn’t recognize you by your sins. And it’s dark behind the curtains in the confessional. She should thank God, the priest said, that He had inspired this wish in her. Not to everyone does God open up such a short, direct path to Himself. Augusta should try to prove herself worthy of this wish that God had inspired. She must care for and nourish this wish like a seed, a seed of the tree of eternal life. And so she didn’t dare admit that she wasn’t yet completely sure she would enter a convent. In school, she had been the priest’s favorite. He had her sit on his lap to warm up the area around his gall bladder. And at the same time, he had her read aloud to the whole class from the catechism. Since the priest’s cook suffered from palsy and would often get sudden attacks of tremors, Augusta would be called on to fetch medicine for the cook from Dr. Moser in Bechtersweiler and deliver it to the rectory, since Kümmertsweiler was closer to Bechtersweiler than Gattnau was. The doctor said that when she was done with school, she could come and work for him, help his wife with the housekeeping. That’s what Augusta did, but stayed there only a year, cleaning, cooking, looking after the horse, splitting wood. The doctor’s wife, herself the daughter of a doctor, was too fine a lady to be expected to do any work. The doctor at least saw to it that at the end of the year, Augusta got a job in Liebenau so she could learn to cook.

  From Gattnau to Kümmertsweiler is uphill almost all the way. But after confession, she ran. She slowed down only when she reached the place where the hill begins to level off before dropping into the next valley. Here a footpath branches off past the dump, and she took it. She pressed a hand against the stitch in her side, and when it wouldn’t stop, she bent down, picked up the nearest stone, spat on its underside, and put it back down. That was supposed to help. She had to prepare herself for the sight of the empty place against the fence. Why should he come on this particular Saturday, after all? It’s true that the apples were just being picked, but there was no way for the Wasserburger to know that Augusta would come home from Geiselharz on this very day. He wouldn’t have any inkling. She had come home on seven Saturdays in the last three months and he wasn’t there. If the EFFENDI bicycle was not parked beneath the hollyhocks, she would walk back down to Oberreitnau that same evening, call up Uncle Anselm from there, and ask him to pick her up in Wangen. If not, then she’d walk from Wangen to Geiselharz. But her uncle loved to drive. If the bicycle wasn’t there—and it wouldn’t be—then the best thing would be to take her bag right away and keep on going to Oberreitnau while it was still light. Between Bechtersweiler and Rickatshofen, you have to go through woods twice. It’s dangerous even in the daylight, but as soon as it gets dark, it becomes impassable. If you try, Zürnewible will lift up your hat, pronounce a curse, and put your hat back down on top of it. And worse than Zürnewible were the two fiery horses. Augusta would die of fright if they came jumping at her. Anyone who’s ever encountered them has their hair turn snow white.

  If Uncle Anselm had to pick her up in Wangen on Saturday, he’d know that something hadn’t gone the way it was supposed to. And he’d start in about Otmar from Amtzell again. Every time he handed her a letter from the Wasserburger, he said, “Otmar writes a pretty nice hand, too.” If the mailman gave her the letter himself, he said that if what was in there was a beautiful as the handwriting, then she was to be congratulated. Augusta had nothing against Otmar from Amtzell, but she was not going to marry him. She just couldn’t. Either the Wasserburger or the convent. Forgetting him could only be done in a convent. And she had to forget him or cease to be. She was already asking God to forgive her for her sin. She hadn’t meant it to sound like blackmail, which is the way He might have taken it. She knew Uncle Anselm would try to talk her out of the convent. Why not take Otmar instead? he would say, and list Otmar’s strong points: tall, smart, kind. And he’s not a bad looker, either, is he? It was painful to refuse her uncle anything. Since she’d left home, no one had done as much for her as her Uncle Anselm. The first time she’d been sent down to the cellar in Liebenau to fill the wine jug—she’d only been there two weeks—she was in such a hurry to get back upstairs with the wine that she forgot to turn off the tap. The barrel had run dry, all that expensive Bolzano—wasted. The boss had screamed, “I don’t ever want to see you again!” She cried all night. Before collapsing in her attic bed, she called her uncle from a public phone booth and told him about the disaster. He came the next morning, paid for the wine, and she was permitted to stay. She waved good-bye to her uncle—or at least to the cloud of dust completely obscuring his car—until there was nothing left to see. If Augusta went to church twice on a Sunday, her uncle remarked, “Once would do.”

  Augusta knew what Uncle Anselm would say when she told him she wanted to enter a convent: that the same thing would happen to her as happened to that nun who stabbed the child she bore and then threw it into the Nonnenbach, and every time you cross the Crooked Bridge over Nun’s Creek, the baby always cries out to you to this very day. Uncle Anselm had also been born in Kümmertsweiler and grew up there with his three brothers, Thaddäus, Kaspar, and David. When they finished working in the fields that bordered the Nonnenbach, they washed themselves in the stream’s meanders and coves and listened for the nun’s murdered child to start crying.

  As she neared the houses, perhaps she said to herself: You’re still going too fast. What would the neighbors think and say when they saw Unsicherer’s eldest, now in service in Geiselharz, running up from Gattnau on a Saturday afternoon! So few houses make up Kümmertsweiler that everyone is basically your neighbor. Everyone lives under the eyes of everyone else. She passed Becke’s, turned off before Günthör’s, and then rounded Unsicherer’s—the front door, which faced south, was only used when there was a wedding or a funeral—and already saw the manure pile, the barn annex, and the garden, and by the fence, beneath the white hollyhocks with violet edges, she saw the Wasserburger’s bicycle with the EFFENDI tag.

  The wedding was held a year later. Augusta became a restaurateur in Wasserburg. When she told her father later that she had come within an inch of entering a convent, he said, “I’d have preferred the Good Lord to any other son-in-law.”

  The gentle, always helpful cousin named Uncle Anselm didn’t hold it against her that she didn’t choose his Otmar. And now he was in jail, a hundred-seventy-fiver, a queer, or whatever all those words were. When Cousin Great-Uncle had Johann pick out the light-colored, close-fitting, double-breasted suit at Bredl’s in Wangen, as soon as Johann got home he went to Lindau in the suit and had his picture taken at Eckerlein’s photo studio, standing next to an elegant armchair with his left hand resting on the chair back in such a way that his left sleeve pulled back to reveal his wrist and the gold watch. Cousin Great-Uncle had been godfather to both Josef
and Johann and gave each of them a gold wristwatch. Too bad the picture couldn’t reproduce the flash of gold from the watch. Unfortunately, Johann hadn’t dared to have himself photographed wearing the light beige poplin coat as well. It was another present from Cousin Great-Uncle. The salesman at Bredl’s in Wangen had said it had raglan sleeves. Whenever Johann looked at himself in the mirror wearing the coat, he repeated that word: raglan. He felt like a flower in a vase in that coat. He couldn’t get enough of looking at himself. Wasn’t he a thing that could fly? All he had to do was spread his arms and they would become wings, the air an element just waiting to support him to any height, into any distance. His life would be a single rising up. He knew it when he stood before the oval mirror in his raglan coat. Of course, he was afraid of rising up and flying high. The higher the climb, the steeper the fall, that was clear. He’d been inoculated with that feeling. And yet he wanted to rise. To rise and nothing else. To prove to his mother that falling was not his lot. On the other hand, the man from whom he had everything beautiful had been in jail since November. The man with bronze skin and short, dense, silvery hair. A loser, demographically speaking, Herr Brugger had called him. Johann would have liked to defend his great-uncle, but he didn’t dare to. That made him feel like he was in agreement with Herr Brugger and Herr Deuerling and all the others who talked like that. But that wasn’t what he wanted at all. He wanted to contradict them, but he didn’t know how. After six weeks in jail, poor Uncle Anselm had lost thirty-two pounds, Mother said. He was just skin and bones. Johann resisted imagining his great-uncle like that. Although poor Anselm was certainly not allowed to wear his beautiful suits there, Johann could only picture him in a suit. His suits enclosed him like liquid become cloth. The liquid impression was reinforced by the fact that the suits had no pattern and no distinct color. Actually, they were always a light purple, but so light that it was more a hint of purple than the color. And now those suits were aglow in the medieval corridors of the Rottenburg prison. Johann imagined the great-uncle they called Cousin bribing the guards with truckloads of butter and cheese so they would let him wear his suits. Johann wanted to save his uncle from prison clothing. If they absolutely had to arrest people, why did they need to humiliate them as well?

  Uniforms sometimes seemed humiliating, too. It was an embarrassment to show yourself in public until you were at least a lieutenant. That’s why he asked Josef in every letter he wrote: When will you be a lieutenant? He pictured Josef as a first lieutenant, himself as a second lieutenant, and Mother between the two of them. Then the village would have to admit it had underestimated this family. The village was the embodiment of mankind, precisely represented by Frau Gierer from the bank, Helmer’s Hermine, Herr Gierer the saddler, and all the other Gierers, Grübels, Zürns, Stadlers, and Schnells. The whole time Johann was picking apples, they were all constantly passing back and forth in the street and calling up to him in the tree: glad to see him home again, how had it been in the labor service, he was used to hard work, wasn’t he, and how long had he been back already and what did they hear from Josef, hopefully he’s fine, one’s happy just to still be alive, hopefully better times will come, OK Johann, keep it up boy, you’ve got some nice apples there, you can be glad if they taste as good as they look, OK then, God bless.

  But when Semper’s Fritz came by and shouted up that children really do eventually turn into human beings, Johann called back, “And soldiers into privates first class.”

  Fritz shouted back, “Schnapps is good for cholera AND promotion.” It was well known that Fritz had been quickly promoted to private first class because he supplied his unit in Eichstätt with schnapps. Fritz insisted that Johann come down at once and join him at the regulars’ table. He had to hear about a slap in the face that happened less than half an hour ago. “Come on, Johann, or you’ll never see me again.” Johann handed Niklaus his half-full sack. Fritz led him out to the street, and before they turned onto the terrace he rounded up Dulle, too, who’d had no intention of going to the restaurant but saw right away that Semper’s Fritz was not in the mood to take no for an answer. Semper’s Fritz needed an audience. Off they went to the regulars’ table, already full of the people Johann always saw there at this time of day. Luise was told to bring lake wine. When Fritz noticed that Johann was just sipping his, he interrupted his narrative and said, “Drink, drink, Brüderlein, drink!” He ordered a round of lake wine for everybody at the table: Herr Schmitt the tinsmith—Fritz’s teacher in everything—Schäfler the wainwright, Späth the master mason, Frei the blacksmith, Leo Frommknecht, and Schulze Max. Herr Seehahn sat at his own table, spitting words. It was the first time Johann had sat at the regulars’ table since they had leased the business. Fritz was immediately the one everybody else had to listen to. He passed around his hand-rolled cigarettes. “One rolled by hand is worth two Senussis in the bush,” he announced. Since Fritz wasn’t going to take no for an answer, Johann didn’t turn him down, but he smoked as cautiously as he drank. Once again, he observed how the regulars talked and how they listened. They all turned their chairs so they could look directly at Semper’s Fritz’s prominent mouth with its lips askew. Luise knew to have a full glass of lake wine ready to replace the one he was just emptying.

  “OK, OK, comrades of all ages, listen up to what an enlisted former apprentice tinsmith wearing the honorable uniform of his nation had to swallow from a monkey who didn’t even finish his commercial apprenticeship, he was so eager to be in the military, you know who I’m talking about, I won’t say the name—I dunno, my God, our lieutenant and Iron Cross first class wearer, you know, with his assault gun and tank corps duds, former HJ squadron leader and embroidery artist who always tried to ignore this apprentice—later journeyman—tinsmith so he wouldn’t have to say hello. He used to look the other way when the guy in the tinsmith’s outfit ran past. So OK, and now, less than thirty minutes ago, the former journeyman tinsmith and current private first class on active duty meets up with the Iron Cross first class–wearing lieutenant and embroidery artist. Of course, the tinsmith lowers his eyes and turns to look at butcher Gierer’s shop window because he’s caught sight of a pyramid of canned goods and wants to know what’s being offered by a pyramid of cans in the fifth year of this terrible war the other side started. But the Iron Cross first class lieutenant starts screaming at the totally undecorated pfc: Back to Hartmann’s nursery this instant and then about face and march right back here and salute Herr Lieutenant or I’m gonna get reported, and delinquent company is the very least I can expect for refusal to obey an order! But the former journeyman tinsmith and current private first class seems to be hard of hearing, just stands there hemming and hawing like a mule in the rain. But the lieutenant, son of the newspaper lady, yells at the motionless former tinsmith, ‘And along with reporting you, we’re gonna finally clear up that shady business at your physical.’ That was too much for the private first class on active duty. All of a sudden, that awful mistake made by a not very bright journeyman tinsmith is being called a shady business. You all know what happened. You’re just as sorry as I am that the young man I once was marched past the tables of the medical commission, took a piece of paper from each table, corps of engineers and fit for active duty and God knows what all they needed if the Fatherland was going to know what could be expected of you. And the tinsmithing lad I was back then goes out into the hall and, confused as he is, he misses the door where all that paper was supposed to be turned in so that the folks in Kempten could call him to the colors at the appointed time. This dummy, unaccustomed to and confused by the state of nakedness required for the physical, misses out on two years. For two years—and I say this with deep regret—I was not able to do my duty by the Fatherland. What could I have been by now instead of just a private first class! Which, by the way, is what the Führer was, too. But Semper’s Fritz could have been more if the physical hadn’t led to him making a mistake and taking those papers home with him instead of turning them over to the folks from K
empten. And that’s what the Iron Cross first class lieutenant calls a shady business. Wants to dig it up again, i.e., ship me off to a delinquent company, which I’m not exactly longing for. It’d be the end of me for sure. So there’s nothing for me to do but to go back to Hartmann’s nursery and about face and parade march back past the Iron Cross fist class lieutenant posted by butcher Gierer’s window with a salute that was a joy to behold. But then I circled around behind the Bruggers’ and came up the back way and then back onto the street. No way I can drink enough to puke as much as I’d like to. Don’t get me wrong—it’s because I’m horrified. That such a thing can happen to anybody! Let me just say here and now: no one should have to take that. Especially not from our precious Edi Fürst, whom we learned early on to call Edmund. No mistake, comrades, I scare myself. I deeply regret it if I’ve been the cause of misunderstandings of any kind. I rise and salute our Führer, whom I honor, admire, and love, because I know he can’t know about everything that’s done in his name by random people. Heil Hitler. Don’t salute, Luise, just bring more wine. Man, can’t she see how thirsty I am?”

  After that, there was no more talk about the incident. Except for Semper’s Fritz adding sotto voce, “The Herr Lieutenant used to poach my chicks, too, and leave me the dregs.”

  Semper’s Fritz was the only one still around who could entice Johann down from the ladder. When Herr Taubenberger came up the street, however, Johann jumped off the ladder on his own, tossed the sack to Niklaus whether it was full or not, and dashed into the street to ask the mailman, “Anything from Josef?” There had to be a letter once a week. If Herr Taubenberger had a letter from Josef in the huge letter bag that dwarfed him, he pulled it out before you even got to him and waved it in the air to show that it made him just as happy as the addressee. When he had to answer the question Anything from Josef? with a No, he did it wordlessly, just shook his head and showed that he had to force himself to keep going in order to pursue his cruel profession, a profession that compelled him to tell people that again today there was no letter from the man they feared for day and night because they hadn’t had a letter in such a long time. When a letter came, it wasn’t opened until all three of them were together. Nine-year-old Anselm insisted on being the one to read Josef’s letters aloud, no matter whether they began Dear Anselm or My dear Mama or Dear Ones. Even before the salutation, Anselm always read what was in the upper right corner: Eastern front, September 19, 1944; Eastern front, September 27, 1944; Eastern front, October 6, 1944; Eastern front, October 15, 1944; Eastern front, October 20, 1944. And so they learned that Josef was doing quite well so far, except he hadn’t seen any real action yet; farther forward they’d thrown the Russians back twenty miles and he and his tank were stuck in the repair shop, but life here was more fun than in barracks at any rate; sadly his assistant gunner had shot himself yesterday, it was a mystery to them all since he’d had the good luck to be assigned as gunner in a Panther right out of training; everything in Poland had been outrageously expensive, a pound of pears cost ten reichsmarks for example; here in Hungary people brought fruit right up to the train for them; they’d finally reached the Rumanian border, crossed the ridge of the Carpathians that evening, and on September 29th he’d finally, finally, seen some action at last, not too much going on, they were waiting to provide cover for the infantry and the Russkies were firing artillery, antitank guns, and grenade launchers all day long, but to no effect except Josef and his crew couldn’t get out of their tank; Josef had soon gotten used to being under fire and was even able to read a book—by Hesse; in the evening they made a foray with a few other tanks, saw two Russian tanks at thirteen hundred yards, a Stalin and a T34, an assault gun fired at the T34 but missed, Josef fired and the Russky was on fire with the first shot, Josef was ecstatic, what luck on his first day, even though the T34 had already been crippled and couldn’t move, it was his first hit; right after that they took a hit on their glacis plate, a real good jolt, knocked the can for a loop, if it’d hit a little higher it might have crippled them, but except for some minor damage they were just shaken up; another letter from us yesterday, a nice feeling to know somebody back home was thinking of them way out there, he used to think it would be better not to have anyone, how easy, how carefree it would then be to go to war, but now he thought it would be awful not to have someone to shed a tear for him, without the folks back home there’d be no point to this fight; if possible please have the Lindau paper sent to his new address; suddenly they were being sent forward again, with a few tanks they beat back a Russian battalion, in the night his can took a direct hit and had to withdraw from the battle so he had time to write again; lots of chickens and pigs running around there, they made porridge and coffee with real beans; the Russkies had apparently broken through near Grosswardein and they were on the move through Hungary again; hopefully everything was going well at home, they got almost no news at all; there was so much talk about the new miracle weapons, hopefully they would arrive soon; the local people everywhere greeted them with open arms, the Russky occupation here was terrible: people shot, women raped, the people in Grosswardein brought them wine and bread and cheese and bacon; he’d been awarded his first decoration, the Panzer assault badge in silver, he would send the certificate home; how were things back home, he hoped to get a letter soon; in the fighting around Grosswardein he had put nine anti-tank guns and two tanks out of action; during the last assault an officer from another company had climbed into his tank and was going to recommend Josef for the Iron Cross, which would be super, of course; the Russkies broke through with eighty tanks yesterday and Josef hadn’t been able to take part because his main gun wasn’t firing accurately; he wondered if they had any news from his friends back home, where was Hermann Trautwein, where was Edi Fürst, where were Saki and Jim, could they please send addresses if possible; he had hardly been afraid at all so far, of course when the shells landed close to their tank it did make them pull their heads in; the commander of their army had gotten the Iron Cross with diamonds; he was glad Mother had leased the restaurant; the next time he came home it was sure to be nice, if only the war would be over soon; the worst thing would be Russians in their beautiful homeland, they could believe whatever the propaganda said about how the Russians treat civilians, he’d seen it for himself and if that’s the way they treated the Hungarians it’d be much worse for us; at the moment it was just their own artillery shooting over their heads but you never knew what the Russians had up their sleeve even though they had suffered terrible casualties the last few days; by the time Johann got to the front the war was sure to be over; they were really hoping to get the new weapons soon; Mother wasn’t to worry about him but she should please pray for him; his division—in fact, his regiment, tank regiment 23—had been mentioned in the Wehrmacht report; the situation was dicey, they were surrounded yesterday but today there was supposed to be an opening, they weren’t about to let themselves get captured; day before yesterday he’d run into the son of Hornstein from Nonnenhorn; today for lunch they’d made themselves some pancakes, think of that, they were almost as good as the ones back home; in Grosswardein he’d eaten so much chocolate he almost exploded; they must get more news about the war than he did at the front; finally there was mail from home, the letter with the pictures from his leave made him so happy; he was fine as always, at the moment he was in Debrecen where there was a lot going on, the Russians were constantly on the offensive and always with superior numbers, Josef’s division had been a thorn in their side for a long time and the Russians were always trying to bottle them up and had managed to do so, but not for very long; yesterday a cameraman filmed Josef looking for lice in his shirt, he didn’t notice him until it was too late, hopefully it wouldn’t get into the newsreels; with all my love, your Josef.