Chapter One: Two Worlds
I begin my story with an experience from the time when I was about ten or eleven years old and went to the Latin school in our little town.
Much comes wafting toward me from there and touches me inwardly with pain and with pleasant shivers, dark lanes and bright ones, houses and towers, the striking of clocks and human faces, rooms full of coziness and warm comfort, rooms full of secrets and deep fear of ghosts. It smells of warm closeness, of rabbits and servant girls, of household remedies and dried fruit. Two worlds ran into each other there; day and night came from two poles.
One world was my father’s house, but it was narrower even than that; it really took in only my parents. This world was largely familiar to me; its name was mother and father, its name was love and strictness, example and school. To this world belonged a mild radiance, clarity and cleanliness; here were gentle, friendly words, washed hands, clean clothes, good manners at home. Here the morning hymn was sung, here Christmas was kept. In this world there were straight lines and paths that led into the future; there was duty and guilt, bad conscience and confession, forgiveness and good resolutions, love and reverence, the word of the Bible and wisdom. Our future had to belong to this world, and so it had to be clear and clean, beautiful and orderly.
The other world, however, began right in the middle of our own house and was entirely different, smelled different, spoke differently, promised and demanded other things. In this second world there were servant girls and journeymen, ghost stories and rumors of scandal; there was a gaudy flood of monstrous, alluring, terrible, mysterious things, things like the slaughterhouse and the prison, drunkards and scolding women, cows giving birth, horses that had fallen down, stories of burglaries, killings, suicides. All these beautiful and horrible, wild and cruel things were all around, in the next lane, in the next house; policemen and tramps went about, drunkards beat their wives, clusters of young girls poured out of the factories in the evening, old women could put a spell on you and make you ill, robbers lived in the forest, arsonists were caught by the mounted police—everywhere this second, violent world welled up and gave off its smell, everywhere except in our rooms, where Mother and Father were. And that was very good. It was wonderful that here with us there was peace, order, and quiet, duty and a good conscience, forgiveness and love—and wonderful that there was all the other as well, all that was loud and shrill, somber and violent, which you could still escape with one leap to your mother.
And the strangest thing was how the two worlds bordered on each other, how close together they were! Our maid Lina, for example: when she sat by the door in the living room at evening prayers and sang the hymn along with us in her clear voice, her washed hands laid on her smoothed-down apron, she belonged wholly to Father and Mother, to us, to the bright and the right. Right afterward, in the kitchen or the woodshed, when she told me the story of the little man without a head, or when she quarreled with the neighbor women in the butcher’s little shop, she was someone else, belonged to the other world, was surrounded by mystery. And so it was with everything, most of all with myself. Certainly I belonged to the bright and right world, I was my parents’ child, but wherever I turned my eyes and ears, the other was there, and I lived in the other too, though it was often strange and uncanny to me, though there you regularly got a bad conscience and grew afraid. At times I even liked best of all to live in the forbidden world, and often the return home to the brightness—necessary and good as it might be—was almost like a return to something less beautiful, to the duller and drearier. Sometimes I knew: my goal in life was to become like my father and my mother, as bright and pure, as superior and orderly; but the way there was long, until then you had to sit out your years in school and study and pass tests and examinations, and the way led all the while past the other, darker world, right through it, and it was not at all impossible that you might stay there and sink into it. There were stories of prodigal sons to whom this had happened; I had read them with passion. In them the return to the father and to the good was always so redeeming and splendid, I felt entirely that this alone was the right, good, and desirable thing, and yet the part of the story that took place among the wicked and the lost was by far the more alluring, and if one had been allowed to say it and confess it, it was really sometimes downright a pity that the prodigal repented and was found again. But you did not say that, and you did not think it either. It was only somehow there, as a foreboding or a possibility, deep down in your feelings. When I pictured the devil, I could imagine him quite well down in the street, in disguise or openly, or at the fair, or in a tavern, but never at home with us.
My sisters, too, belonged to the bright world. They were, it often seemed to me, closer in their nature to Father and Mother; they were better, better behaved, more faultless than I. They had their faults, they had their naughtiness, but it seemed to me that none of it went very deep, it was not as it was with me, where contact with evil often became so heavy and tormenting, where the dark world stood much closer. My sisters, like my parents, were to be spared and respected, and if you had quarreled with them, you were always afterward, before your own conscience, the bad one, the one who started it, the one who had to ask forgiveness. For in your sisters you offended your parents, the good and the commanding. There were secrets I could far sooner share with the most depraved street boys than with my sisters. On good days, when all was bright and my conscience in order, it was often delightful to play with my sisters, to be good and well behaved with them and to see myself in a virtuous, noble light. This must be what it was like to be an angel! That was the highest thing we knew, and we imagined it sweet and wonderful to be angels, surrounded by a bright sound and fragrance like Christmas and happiness. Oh, how seldom such hours and days came off! Often at play, at good, harmless, permitted games, I was seized by a passion and vehemence that was too much for my sisters, that led to quarrels and unhappiness, and when anger came over me, I was terrible and did and said things whose wickedness I felt deeply and burningly even while I was doing and saying them. Then came grievous, dark hours of remorse and contrition, and then the painful moment when I asked forgiveness, and then again a ray of brightness, a quiet, grateful happiness without any division, for hours or for moments.
I went to the Latin school; the mayor’s son and the chief forester’s son were in my class and sometimes came to see me, wild boys and yet members of the good, permitted world. All the same, I had close dealings with neighbors’ boys, pupils at the elementary school, whom we otherwise looked down on. With one of them I must begin my story.
One free afternoon—I was little more than ten years old—I was roaming about with two boys from the neighborhood. Then a bigger one joined us, a strong, rough boy of about thirteen, an elementary-school pupil, the son of a tailor. His father was a drunkard, and the whole family had a bad name. I knew Franz Kromer well; I was afraid of him, and I did not like it when he now fell in with us. He already had a man’s manners and imitated the walk and the sayings of the young factory hands. With him leading, we climbed down to the riverbank beside the bridge and hid from the world under the first arch. The narrow bank between the vaulted wall of the bridge and the sluggishly flowing water was made up of nothing but rubbish, of broken crockery and junk, tangled bundles of rusty wire and other refuse. Sometimes you found useful things there; with Franz Kromer in charge we had to search the stretch and show him what we found. Then he either pocketed it or threw it out into the water. He told us to look for things made of lead, brass, or tin; all of those he pocketed, and an old horn comb as well. I felt very uneasy in his company, not because I knew that my father would forbid me such company if he knew of it, but out of fear of Franz himself. I was glad that he took me along and treated me like the others. He gave orders and we obeyed; it was as if this were an old custom, although it was the first time I had been with him.
At last we sat down on the ground. Franz spat into the water and looked like a man; he spat through a gap in his teeth and hit whatever he aimed at. A conversation began, and the boys fell to bragging and showing off with all sorts of schoolboy exploits and nasty pranks. I kept quiet, and yet I was afraid that my very silence would make me conspicuous and turn Kromer’s anger against me. My two companions had drawn away from me from the start and sided with him; I was a stranger among them and felt that my clothes and manner were a provocation to them. As a Latin-school boy and a gentleman’s son I could not possibly be liked by Franz, and the other two, I felt it clearly, would disown me and leave me in the lurch as soon as it came to that.
Finally, out of sheer fear, I began to tell stories too. I made up a great robber’s tale with myself as its hero. In a garden near the Eckmühle, I told them, a friend and I had stolen a whole sackful of apples one night, and not ordinary ones either, but nothing but the finest reinettes and golden pearmains, the best kinds. I fled from the dangers of the moment into this story; inventing and telling came easily to me. So as not to stop right away and perhaps get tangled up in something worse, I let all my art shine. One of us, I told them, had always had to stand sentry while the other was up in the tree throwing the apples down, and the sack had been so heavy that in the end we had had to open it again and leave half behind, but we came back half an hour later and fetched that too.
When I had finished, I hoped for some applause; toward the end I had warmed up and grown drunk on my own storytelling. The two smaller boys kept silent, waiting, but Franz Kromer looked at me piercingly through half-shut eyes and asked in a threatening voice: “Is that true?”
“Yes, it is,” I said.
“Really and truly?”
“Yes, really and truly,” I insisted defiantly, while inside I was choking with fear.
“Can you swear to it?”
I was badly frightened, but I said yes at once.
“Then say: By God and my salvation!”
I said: “By God and my salvation.”
“Well, all right,” he said then, and turned away.
I thought that settled it and was glad when he soon got up and started back. When we were on the bridge I said timidly that I had to go home now.
“There’s no such hurry,” Franz laughed, “we go the same way.”
He sauntered slowly on, and I did not dare to run off, but he really did take the way toward our house. When we got there, when I saw our front door and the fat brass door handle, the sun in the windows and the curtains in my mother’s room, I drew a deep breath. Oh, homecoming! Oh, good and blessed return home, into the brightness, into peace!
When I had quickly opened the door and slipped in, ready to slam it behind me, Franz Kromer pushed his way in with me. In the cool, dim tiled passage, which got its light only from the yard, he stood beside me, held me by the arm, and said softly: “Not so fast, you!”
Startled, I looked at him. His grip on my arm was as hard as iron. I wondered what he might have in mind, and whether he meant to hurt me. If I screamed now, I thought, screamed loud and hard, would someone get down from upstairs quickly enough to save me? But I gave up the idea.
“What is it?” I asked. “What do you want?”
“Not much. I just have to ask you something else. The others don’t need to hear it.”
“Oh? Well, what else am I supposed to tell you? I have to go up, you know.”
“You know, don’t you,” Franz said softly, “who owns the orchard near the Eckmühle?”
“No, I don’t know. The miller, I think.”
Franz had wrapped his arm around me and now pulled me right up close to him, so that I had to look into his face from very near. His eyes were wicked, he smiled an ugly smile, and his face was full of cruelty and power.
“Yes, my boy, I can tell you who owns the garden. I’ve known for a long time that the apples were stolen, and I also know the man has said he’ll give two marks to anyone who can tell him who stole the fruit.”
“Dear God!” I cried. “But you won’t tell him anything, will you?”
I felt that it would be no use appealing to his sense of honor. He was from the other world; for him betrayal was no crime. I felt that exactly. In such things the people from the “other” world were not like us.
“Not tell him?” Kromer laughed. “My dear friend, do you think I’m a counterfeiter who can make two-mark pieces for himself? I’m a poor devil, I don’t have a rich father like you, and if I can earn two marks, I have to earn them. Maybe he’ll even give more.”
He suddenly let go of me. Our front hall no longer smelled of peace and safety; the world was falling to pieces around me. He would report me, I was a criminal, they would tell my father, perhaps even the police would come. All the terrors of chaos threatened me; everything ugly and dangerous had been called out against me. That I had not stolen anything at all made no difference whatever. Besides, I had sworn. My God, my God!
Tears rose in my eyes. I felt that I had to buy myself free, and in despair I dug into all my pockets. No apple, no pocketknife, nothing at all was there. Then I thought of my watch. It was an old silver watch, and it did not run; I wore it “just because.” It had come from our grandmother. Quickly I pulled it out.
“Kromer,” I said, “listen, you mustn’t give me away, that wouldn’t be nice of you. I’ll give you my watch, look; I’m afraid I don’t have anything else at all. You can have it, it’s silver, and the works are good, it just has one little defect, it needs repairing.”
He smiled and took the watch in his big hand. I looked at that hand and felt how coarse and deeply hostile to me it was, how it was reaching for my life and my peace.
“It’s silver—” I said timidly.
“I don’t give a fig for your silver or your old watch there!” he said with deep contempt. “Get it repaired yourself!”
“But Franz,” I cried, trembling with fear that he might run off. “Wait a little! Take the watch! It really is silver, really and truly. And I don’t have anything else.”
He looked at me coolly and contemptuously.
“So you know who I’m going to. Or I can tell the police too, I know the sergeant well.”
He turned to go. I held him back by the sleeve. It must not happen. I would much rather have died than bear everything that would come if he went off like that.
“Franz,” I begged, hoarse with agitation, “don’t do anything stupid! It’s only a joke, isn’t it?”
“Sure, a joke, but it could cost you dear.”
“Tell me what I should do, Franz! I’ll do anything!”
He looked me over with his narrowed eyes and laughed again.
“Don’t be stupid!” he said with false good nature. “You know how things stand as well as I do. I can earn two marks, and I’m no rich man who can throw them away, you know that. But you’re rich, you even have a watch. All you have to do is give me the two marks, and then everything’s fine.”
I understood the logic. But two marks! For me that was as much and as far out of reach as ten, as a hundred, as a thousand marks. I had no money. There was a little savings box that my mother kept for me; in it were a few ten- and five-pfennig pieces from uncles’ visits and such occasions. Apart from that I had nothing. At that age I was not yet given any pocket money.
“I don’t have anything,” I said sadly. “I don’t have any money at all. But I’ll give you anything else. I have a book about Indians, and soldiers, and a compass. I’ll go get it for you.”
Kromer only twitched his bold, wicked mouth and spat on the ground.
“Cut the chatter!” he said in a tone of command. “You can keep your junk. A compass! Don’t make me mad now, you hear, and hand over the money!”
“But I don’t have any, I never get money. I can’t help it!”
“Then you’ll bring me the two marks tomorrow. I’ll wait down at the market after school. And that’s that. If you don’t bring the money, you’ll see!”
“Yes, but where am I supposed to get it? Lord God, when I don’t have any—”
“There’s money enough in your house. That’s your business. So, tomorrow after school. And I’m telling you: if you don’t bring it—” He shot a terrible look into my eyes, spat once more, and was gone like a shadow.
I could not go upstairs. My life was ruined. I thought of running away and never coming back, or of drowning myself. But these were not clear pictures. I sat down in the dark on the bottom step of our stairs, huddled up tight, and gave myself over to misery. There Lina found me crying when she came down with a basket to fetch wood.
I asked her not to say anything upstairs and went up. On the rack beside the glass door hung my father’s hat and my mother’s parasol; home and tenderness streamed toward me from all these things, my heart greeted them pleadingly and gratefully, as the prodigal son greets the sight and smell of the old rooms of home. But none of it belonged to me now, all of it was the bright world of father and mother, and I had sunk deep and guiltily into the alien flood, entangled in adventure and sin, threatened by the enemy, with dangers, fear, and disgrace waiting for me. The hat and the parasol, the good old sandstone floor, the big picture over the hall cupboard, and the voice of my older sister from the living room inside were all dearer, more tender, and more precious than ever, but they were no longer comfort and a sure possession; they were nothing but reproach. All this was mine no longer; I could have no part in its serenity and stillness. I had dirt on my feet that I could not wipe off on the mat; I brought shadows in with me that the world of home knew nothing of. How many secrets I had had before, how many fears, but it had all been play and fun compared with what I brought into these rooms with me today. Fate was running after me, hands were reaching out for me from which even my mother could not protect me, of which she must not know. Whether my crime was a theft or a lie (had I not sworn a false oath by God and my salvation?)—that made no difference. My sin was not this or that; my sin was that I had given the devil my hand. Why had I gone along? Why had I obeyed Kromer, better than I had ever obeyed my father? Why had I made up the story of that theft? Boasted of crimes as if they were heroic deeds? Now the devil held my hand, now the enemy was after me.
For a moment it was no longer fear of tomorrow that I felt but, above all, the terrible certainty that my road now led farther and farther downhill and into the dark. I felt clearly that new misdeeds must follow from my misdeed, that my appearing among my sisters, my greeting and my kiss for my parents, were a lie, that I carried a fate and a secret with me that I was hiding from them.
For a moment trust and hope flashed up in me as I looked at my father’s hat. I would tell him everything, accept his judgment and his punishment, and make him my confidant and my rescuer. It would only be a penance such as I had often gone through, a hard, bitter hour, a hard and contrite plea for forgiveness.
How sweet that sounded! How beautifully it beckoned! But nothing came of it. I knew I would not do it. I knew that I now had a secret, a guilt that I had to swallow down alone, by myself. Perhaps I was at the parting of the ways just now; perhaps from this hour on I would belong forever and ever to what was bad, would have to share secrets with the wicked, depend on them, obey them, become their like. I had played the man and the hero; now I had to bear what came of it.
I was glad that when I came in my father took me to task over my wet shoes. It was a diversion; he did not notice the worse thing, and I was allowed to bear a reproach that I secretly applied to the other as well. And as I did, a strange new feeling glittered up in me, an evil, cutting feeling full of barbs: I felt superior to my father! For a moment I felt a certain contempt for his ignorance; his scolding about the wet boots seemed petty to me. “If you only knew!” I thought, and I seemed to myself like a criminal being questioned about a stolen bread roll when he had murders to confess. It was an ugly and repugnant feeling, but it was strong and held a deep allure, and it chained me to my secret and my guilt more firmly than any other thought. Perhaps, I thought, Kromer has already gone to the police and reported me, and storms are gathering over my head while here they look at me as if I were a little child!
Of this whole experience, as far as it has been told up to here, that moment was what mattered and what lasted. It was a first crack in my father’s sanctity, a first cut into the pillars on which my childhood had rested and which every human being must have destroyed before he can become himself. The inner, essential line of our fate is made up of these experiences that no one sees. Such a cut, such a crack grows together again, it heals and is forgotten, but in the most secret chamber it lives on and goes on bleeding.
I myself was horrified by the new feeling at once; I could have kissed my father’s feet right afterward to beg his pardon for it. But nothing essential can be begged pardon for, and a child feels and knows that as well and as deeply as any sage.
I felt the need to think my situation over, to think up ways out for tomorrow; but I never got to it. All evening I was busy with nothing but getting used to the changed air in our living room. The wall clock and the table, the Bible and the mirror, the bookshelf and the pictures on the wall were taking leave of me, as it were; with a heart going cold I had to watch my world, my good and happy life, become the past and come away from me, and I had to feel how I was anchored and held fast by new, sucking roots out there in the dark and the strange. For the first time I tasted death, and death tastes bitter, for it is birth, it is fear and dread of a terrible renewal.
I was glad when at last I lay in my bed! Before that, as a final purgatory, evening prayers had passed over me, and we had sung a hymn that was one of my favorites. Ah, I did not sing along, and every note was gall and poison to me. I did not pray along when my father spoke the blessing, and when he ended, “—be with us all!” a spasm tore me out of that circle. The grace of God was with all of them, but no longer with me. Cold and deeply tired, I went away.
In bed, when I had lain there a while, when warmth and shelter lovingly surrounded me, my heart strayed back once more in its fear and fluttered anxiously around what had happened. My mother had said good night to me as always; her step still echoed in the room, the light of her candle still glowed in the crack of the door. Now, I thought, now she’ll come back once more—she has felt it, she’ll give me a kiss and ask, ask kindly and full of promise, and then I can cry, then the stone in my throat will melt, then I’ll throw my arms around her and tell her, and then it will be all right, then I’ll be saved! And when the crack of the door had already gone dark, I went on listening for a while and thought it must, it simply must happen.
Then I went back to things as they were and looked my enemy in the eye. I saw him clearly; he had one eye screwed shut, his mouth was laughing coarsely, and as I looked at him and swallowed the inescapable down into myself, he grew bigger and uglier, and his evil eye flashed like a devil’s. He stayed close beside me until I fell asleep; but then I dreamed neither of him nor of today; I dreamed that we were out in a boat, my parents and my sisters and I, and all around us was nothing but the peace and brightness of a holiday. In the middle of the night I woke, still felt the aftertaste of bliss, still saw my sisters’ white summer dresses shimmering in the sun, and fell out of all that paradise back into what was, and stood facing the enemy with the evil eye once again.
In the morning, when my mother came hurrying in and called out that it was late already and why was I still in bed, I looked ill, and when she asked whether something was wrong with me, I threw up.
Something seemed to have been gained by that. I loved being a little sick and being allowed to lie in bed all morning with chamomile tea, listening to my mother tidying up in the next room and to Lina out in the hall letting in the butcher. A morning without school was something enchanted, like a fairy tale; the sun played into the room then, and it was not the same sun they shut out at school by letting down the green blinds. But even that had no savor today and had taken on a false ring.
If only I had died! But I was just a little unwell, as I had often been before, and that settled nothing. It protected me from school, but it did not in the least protect me from Kromer, who would be waiting for me at the market at eleven o’clock. And this time my mother’s kindness brought no comfort; it was a burden, and it hurt. Soon I pretended to be asleep again and thought things over. There was no help for it, I had to be at the market at eleven. So at ten o’clock I got up quietly and said I was feeling well again. I was told, as usual in such cases, that I must either go back to bed or go to school in the afternoon. I said I would like to go to school. I had made a plan.
I must not come to Kromer without money. I had to get hold of the little savings box that belonged to me. There was not enough money in it, I knew that, not nearly enough; but it was something, and a kind of instinct told me that something was better than nothing and that Kromer at least had to be appeased.
I felt wretched as I crept in my stocking feet into my mother’s room and took my box out of her desk; but it was not as wretched as yesterday. The pounding of my heart choked me, and it got no better when, down in the stairwell, I found on my first inspection that the box was locked. It was very easy to break open; there was only a thin tin grating to tear through; but the tearing hurt, for only now had I committed a theft. Until then I had only pilfered treats, lumps of sugar and fruit. This was stolen, even though it was my own money. I felt that I was again a step nearer to Kromer and his world, that it was going downhill so nicely, step by step, and I set my defiance against it. Let the devil take me, there was no way back now. I counted the money anxiously; it had sounded so full in the box, and now in my hand it was miserably little. It was sixty-five pfennigs. I hid the box in the downstairs hall, held the money in my closed fist, and stepped out of the house, differently than I had ever gone through that door before. Someone upstairs called after me, it seemed; I walked quickly away.
There was still plenty of time; I slunk by roundabout ways through the lanes of a changed town, under clouds I had never seen before, past houses that watched me and people who suspected me. On the way I remembered that a schoolmate of mine had once found a thaler at the cattle market. I would gladly have prayed that God would work a miracle and let me make such a find too. But I no longer had any right to pray. And even then the box would not have been whole again.
Franz Kromer saw me from far off, yet he came toward me very slowly and seemed to take no notice of me. When he was near me, he gave me a commanding sign to follow him and walked calmly on without once looking back, down the Strohgasse and over the footbridge, until he stopped by the last houses in front of a new building. No work was going on there; the walls stood bare, without doors or windows. Kromer looked around and went in through the doorway, and I after him. He stepped behind the wall, beckoned me over, and held out his hand.
“Got it?” he asked coolly.
I drew my clenched hand out of my pocket and poured my money into his flat palm. He had counted it before the last five-pfennig piece had stopped ringing.
“That’s sixty-five pfennigs,” he said, and looked at me.
“Yes,” I said timidly. “That’s all I have, it’s too little, I know. But it’s all of it. I don’t have any more.”
“I’d have thought you were smarter,” he scolded, with an almost gentle reproach. “Between men of honor there has to be order. I don’t want to take anything off you that isn’t fair, you know that. Take your nickels back, there! The other one—you know who—doesn’t try to beat me down. He pays.”
“But I don’t have any more, I just don’t! It was my savings box.”
“That’s your business. But I don’t want to make you unhappy. You still owe me one mark thirty-five. When do I get it?”
“Oh, you’ll get it for sure, Kromer! I don’t know just now—maybe I’ll have more soon, tomorrow or the day after. You understand, don’t you, that I can’t tell my father.”
“That’s no concern of mine. I’m not the kind who wants to do you harm. I could have my money before noon, you see, and I’m poor. You wear nice clothes, and you get something better for your midday meal than I do. But I won’t say anything. I’ll wait a little, for all I care. The day after tomorrow I’ll whistle for you, in the afternoon, and then you’ll settle it. You know my whistle?”
He whistled it for me; I had heard it often.
“Yes,” I said, “I know it.”
He went off as if I had nothing to do with him. It had been a business deal between us, nothing more.
Even today, I believe, Kromer’s whistle would give me a fright if I suddenly heard it again. From then on I heard it often; it seemed to me I was hearing it always, over and over. There was no place, no game, no work, no thought that this whistle did not reach, this whistle that made me dependent, that was now my fate. I was often in our little flower garden, which I loved very much, on the soft, colorful autumn afternoons, and a strange urge made me take up again the games of earlier stages of my boyhood; I was playing, in a sense, a boy who was younger than I, who was still good and free, innocent and safe. But right into the middle of it, always expected and yet always horribly disturbing and startling, Kromer’s whistle sounded from somewhere, cut the thread, destroyed the make-believe. Then I had to go, had to follow my tormentor to bad and ugly places, had to give an account of myself to him and let myself be dunned for money. The whole thing lasted perhaps a few weeks, but to me it seemed to be years, to be an eternity. Seldom did I have money, a five-pfennig piece or a groschen stolen from the kitchen table when Lina left the market basket standing there. Each time I was scolded by Kromer and heaped with contempt; I was the one who meant to cheat him and keep back what was rightfully his, I was the one who was robbing him, I was the one who was making him unhappy! Not often in my life has distress come so close to my heart; seldom have I felt greater hopelessness, greater dependence.
I had filled the savings box with game counters and put it back in its place; no one asked about it. But that too could come crashing down on me any day. Even more than Kromer’s rough whistle, I often dreaded my mother when she came softly up to me—wasn’t she coming to ask me about the box?
Since I had appeared before my devil without money many times, he began to torment me and use me in other ways. I had to work for him. He had errands to run for his father; I had to run them for him. Or he ordered me to carry out something difficult, to hop on one leg for ten minutes, to pin a scrap of paper to a passerby’s coat. In my dreams, night after night, these torments went on, and I lay sweating in the grip of nightmares.
For a time I was ill. I often vomited and was easily chilled, but at night I lay in sweat and fever. My mother felt that something was wrong and showed me great sympathy, which tormented me because I could not answer it with trust.
One evening, when I was already in bed, she brought me a little piece of chocolate. It was an echo of earlier years, when I had often been given such comforting tidbits to fall asleep on if I had been good. Now she stood there holding the little piece of chocolate out to me. I felt so wretched that I could only shake my head. She asked what was wrong with me; she stroked my hair. All I could get out was: “Don’t! Don’t! I don’t want anything.” She put the chocolate on the night table and went out. When she tried to question me about it the next day, I acted as if I did not remember anything. Once she brought the doctor in; he examined me and prescribed cold sponge baths in the morning.
My state at that time was a kind of madness. In the midst of the ordered peace of our house I lived timid and tormented, like a ghost, had no part in the life of the others, and seldom forgot myself for so much as an hour. Toward my father, who often irritably called me to account, I was closed and cold.