Chapter Seven
Mr. Giebenrath worked away at the cider press with dignity and noise, and Hans helped. Of the shoemaker’s children two had accepted the invitation; they busied themselves with the fruit, shared a small tasting glass between them, and carried enormous pieces of black bread in their fists. But Emma had not come along.
Only when his father had gone off with the cooper for half an hour did Hans dare to ask about her.
“Where is Emma, then? Didn’t she want to come?”
It was a while before the little ones had empty mouths and could talk.
“She’s gone,” they said, and nodded.
“Gone? Gone where?”
“Home.”
“Left? On the train?”
The children nodded eagerly.
“When?”
“This morning.”
The little ones reached for their apples again. Hans fiddled with the press, stared into the cider bucket, and slowly began to understand.
His father came back; they worked and laughed; the children said thank you and ran off; it grew evening, and they went home.
After supper Hans sat alone in his room. Ten o’clock came and eleven; he did not light a lamp. Then he slept deeply and long.
When he woke later than usual, he had only the vague feeling of a misfortune and a loss, until Emma came back to his mind. She was gone, without a greeting, without a goodbye; she had no doubt already known when she would be leaving when he was with her that last evening. He remembered her laughing and her kissing and her superior manner. She had not taken him seriously at all.
With the angry pain of this, the unrest of his excited and unappeased powers of love flowed together into a dull torment that drove him from the house into the garden, onto the street, into the woods, and home again.
So he learned, perhaps much too early, his share of the secret of love, and for him it held little that was sweet and much that was bitter. Days full of fruitless laments, longing memories, cheerless brooding; nights in which pounding of the heart and oppression kept him from sleeping or plunged him into oppressively terrible dreams. Dreams in which the uncomprehended surgings of his blood became monstrous, frightening fabulous images, deadly embracing arms, hot-eyed fantasies, dizzying abysses, huge blazing eyes. Waking, he found himself alone, enfolded by the loneliness of the cool autumn nights, suffered longing for his girl, and pressed himself, groaning, into pillows wet with tears.
The Friday on which he was to start in the mechanic’s workshop drew near. His father bought him a blue linen suit and a blue cap of half wool; he tried the things on and felt changed and rather ridiculous in the metalworker’s uniform. When he passed the schoolhouse, the house of the rector or of the arithmetic teacher, Flaig’s workshop, or the town pastor’s house, he felt wretched. So much toil, diligence, and sweat, so many little pleasures given up, so much pride and ambition and hopeful dreaming, all for nothing, all only so that now, later than all his classmates and laughed at by all of them, he could go into a workshop as the lowest apprentice!
What would Heilner say to that?
Only gradually did he begin to make his peace with the blue metalworker’s suit and to look forward a little to the Friday on which he was to christen it. There would at least be something to experience again, after all!
But these thoughts were not much more than quick flashes out of a dark cloud. He did not forget the girl’s departure, and still less did his blood forget or get over the excitements of those days. It pressed and cried out for more, for a release of his awakened longing or for a guide through the riddles whose solution was too hard for him alone. So the time passed, dully and torturingly slow.
The autumn was more beautiful than ever, full of gentle sun, with silver early mornings, colorfully laughing noons, and clear evenings. The farther mountains took on a deep velvet blue, the chestnut trees shone golden yellow, and over walls and fences the leaves of the wild vine hung down in purple.
Hans was restlessly in flight from himself. By day he roamed about the town and the fields and avoided people, since he thought they must be able to see his love troubles in him. But in the evenings he went out into the lane, looked at every servant girl, and crept after every pair of lovers with a miserably bad conscience. With Emma, it seemed to him, everything desirable and all the magic of life had been near and had treacherously slipped away again. He no longer thought of the torment and oppression he had felt with her. If he had her again now, he believed, he would no longer be shy, but would wrest all her secrets from her and push his way deep into the enchanted garden of love whose gate had now been slammed in his face. His whole imagination had become entangled in this sultry, dangerous thicket, wandered about in it despondently, and in stubborn self-torment would know nothing of the fact that outside the narrow magic circle beautiful wide spaces lay bright and friendly.
In the end he was glad when the Friday he had at first awaited with dread was there. Early in the morning he put on his new blue work clothes, put on his cap, and went a little timidly down Tanners’ Lane to Schuler’s house. A few acquaintances looked after him curiously, and one of them even asked, “What’s this, have you turned metalworker?”
In the workshop they were already working briskly. The master was just forging. He had a piece of red-hot iron on the anvil; a journeyman wielded the heavy sledge; the master struck the finer, shaping blows, managed the tongs, and between times beat time on the anvil with his handy forging hammer, so that it rang out bright and cheerful through the wide-open door into the morning.
At the long workbench, blackened with oil and filings, stood the older journeyman, and beside him August, each busy at his vise. On the ceiling quick belts were humming, driving the lathes, the grindstone, the bellows, and the drill press, for they worked with water power. August nodded to his friend as he came in and signaled him to wait at the door until the master had time for him.
Hans looked shyly at the forge, the idle lathes, the whirring belts and idler pulleys. When the master had finished forging his piece, he came over and held out a big, hard, warm hand to him.
“You hang your cap up there,” he said, pointing to an empty nail on the wall.
“There, come along. And here’s your place and your vise.”
With that he led him to the hindmost vise and showed him, first of all, how he was to handle the vise and keep the workbench and the tools in order.
“Your father’s already told me you’re no Hercules, and anybody can see it. Well, for the time being you can stay away from the forging, till you’re a little stronger.”
He reached under the workbench and pulled out a small cast-iron gearwheel.
“There, you can start with this. The wheel’s still raw from the foundry and has little bumps and burrs all over it; they have to be scraped off, or else the fine tools get ruined on them later.”
He clamped the wheel in the vise, took an old file, and showed how it was to be done.
“There, now carry on. But don’t you take any other file! You’ll have enough to do on it till noon; then you show it to me. And while you’re working you don’t bother about anything except what you’re told. An apprentice doesn’t need to have thoughts.”
Hans began to file.
“Stop!” cried the master. “Not like that. The left hand goes on the file like this. Or are you left-handed?”
“No.”
“All right, then. It’ll come.”
He went off to his vise, the first one by the door, and left Hans to see how he would get on.
At the first strokes he was surprised that the stuff was so soft and came off so easily. Then he saw that this was only the brittle top crust of the casting, which flaked off loosely, and that only beneath it lay the grainy iron he was supposed to smooth. He pulled himself together and worked on eagerly. Not since his playful boyish tinkering had he tasted the pleasure of seeing something visible and usable come into being under his hands.
“Slower!” the master called over. “When you file you have to keep time—one two, one two. And press down, or the file gets ruined.”
Then the eldest journeyman had something to do at the lathe, and Hans could not help peering over. A steel pin was clamped into the chuck, the belt was shifted, and the pin whirred, gleaming, turning hastily, while the journeyman took a hair-thin, shining shaving off it.
And everywhere lay tools, pieces of iron, steel, and brass, half-finished work, bright little wheels, chisels and drills, lathe tools and awls of every shape; beside the forge hung hammers and set hammers, anvil inserts, tongs, and soldering irons; along the wall rows of files and milling cutters; on the shelves lay oily rags, little brooms, emery files, hacksaws, and oil cans stood about, acid bottles, little boxes of nails and screws. Every moment the grindstone was in use.
With satisfaction Hans noticed that his hands were already quite black, and hoped that his suit too would soon look more used, for beside the black and patched overalls of the others it still looked ridiculously new and blue.
As the morning went on, life came into the workshop from outside too. Workers came from the machine knitting mill next door to have small machine parts ground or repaired. A farmer came, asked about his mangle, which was there to be mended, and cursed blasphemously when he heard it was not ready yet. Then came an elegant factory owner, with whom the master negotiated in a side room.
Beside it all and in between, men, wheels, and belts worked on evenly, and so for the first time in his life Hans heard and understood the hymn of work, which, for the beginner at least, has something moving and pleasantly intoxicating about it, and saw his small person and his small life fitted into a great rhythm.
At nine o’clock there was a quarter of an hour’s break, and everyone got a piece of bread and a glass of cider. Only now did August greet the new apprentice. He talked to him encouragingly and began raving again about next Sunday, when he meant to blow his first week’s wages with his mates. Hans asked what sort of wheel it was that he had to file down, and learned that it belonged to a tower clock. August was going to show him how it was to run and work later on, but just then the first journeyman began filing again, and everyone went quickly to his place.
When it was between ten and eleven, Hans began to grow tired; his knees and his right arm hurt a little. He shifted from one foot to the other and secretly stretched his limbs, but it did not help much. Then he let go of the file for a moment and leaned on the vise. No one paid attention to him. As he stood resting like that and heard the belts singing above him, a slight numbness came over him, so that he closed his eyes for a minute. Just then the master was standing behind him.
“Well, what is it? Tired already?”
“Yes, a little,” Hans admitted.
The journeymen laughed.
“That’ll pass,” the master said calmly. “Now you can see how soldering is done. Come!”
Hans watched with curiosity how the soldering was done. First the iron was heated, then the joint was brushed with soldering fluid, and then the white metal dripped from the hot iron and hissed softly.
“Take a rag and rub the thing off well. Soldering fluid eats in; you mustn’t leave it on any metal.”
After that Hans stood at his vise again and scraped away with his file at the little wheel. His arm hurt, and his left hand, which had to press down on the file, had turned red and was beginning to ache.
At noon, when the head journeyman laid his file aside and went to wash his hands, Hans brought his work to the master. The master glanced at it.
“It’s all right, it can stay like that. Under your place in the box there’s another wheel just like it; you take that one on this afternoon.”
Now Hans too washed his hands and went off. He had an hour free for dinner.
Two shop apprentices, former schoolmates of his, walked behind him in the street and laughed at him.
“State-examination metalworker!” one of them called.
He walked faster. He did not really know whether he was satisfied or not; he had liked it in the workshop, only he had grown so tired, so terribly tired.
And in the doorway, while he was already looking forward to sitting down and eating, he suddenly had to think of Emma. He had forgotten her the whole morning. Now suddenly the grief of yesterday and the day before sat on his neck again, as heavy as ever. He went quietly up to his little room, threw himself on the bed, and groaned with deep torment. He wanted to cry, but his eyes stayed dry. Hopelessly he saw himself given over again to the consuming longing whose goal was dark to him and which gnawed at him like a cruel disease. His head stormed and ached, and his throat hurt from stifled sobbing.
Dinner was torture. He had to answer to his father and tell about things and put up with all sorts of little jokes, for Papa was in a good humor. Hardly had they eaten when he ran out into the garden and spent a quarter of an hour there in the sun, half dreaming; then it was time to go back to the workshop.
Already in the morning he had gotten red calluses on his hands; now they began to hurt in earnest, and by evening they were so swollen that he could not take hold of anything without pain. And before quitting time he still had to clean up the whole workshop under August’s direction.
Saturday was still worse. His hands burned; the calluses had swelled into blisters. The master was in a bad mood and cursed at the slightest occasion. August comforted him, it is true, that the business with the calluses lasted only a few days, then one had hard hands and felt nothing anymore; but Hans felt utterly miserable, squinted at the clock the whole day, and scraped hopelessly away at his little wheel.
In the evening, while they were cleaning up, August told him in a whisper that he was going out to Bielach tomorrow with a few friends; it was going to be a fine, merry time, and Hans must not be missing on any account. He would come by for him at two o’clock. Hans said yes, although he would have liked best to stay lying at home the whole Sunday, so miserable and tired was he. At home old Anna gave him an ointment for his sore hands; he went to bed at eight o’clock and slept until well into the morning, so that he had to hurry to get to church with his father in time.
At the noon meal he began to talk about August and said he wanted to go out into the country with him today. His father had nothing against it, even gave him fifty pfennigs, and only demanded that he be back for supper.
As Hans strolled through the lanes in the lovely sunshine, he took pleasure in Sunday again for the first time in months. The street was more solemn, the sun more cheerful, and everything more festive and beautiful when one had working days behind one with black hands and tired limbs. He understood now the butchers and tanners, bakers and smiths, who sat on the sunny benches in front of their houses and looked so royally cheerful, and he no longer regarded them as wretched philistines. He looked after the workers, journeymen, and apprentices who went strolling in rows or into the taverns, their hats a little askew on their heads, with white collars and in brushed Sunday clothes. Mostly, though not always, the craftsmen kept among themselves, joiners with joiners, masons with masons, stuck together, and upheld the honor of their trade, and among them the metalworkers were the most distinguished guild, the mechanics at the very top. All that had something homely about it, and even if much of it was a little naive and ridiculous, still behind it lay hidden the beauty and the pride of the crafts, which even today still stand for something joyful and sound, and of which even the most wretched tailor’s apprentice still receives a little gleam that no factory worker and no shopkeeper either has.
As the young mechanics stood in front of Schuler’s house, calm and proud, nodding to passersby and chatting among themselves, one could see well enough that they formed a dependable fellowship and needed no stranger, not even on Sunday at their pleasures.
Hans felt this too and was glad to belong among them. But he felt a little fear of the planned Sunday pleasure, for he knew already that among the mechanics the enjoyment of life went on in a solid and abundant way. Perhaps they would even dance. Hans could not do that, but otherwise he meant to hold his own as well as possible and, if need be, to risk a little hangover. He was not used to drinking much beer, and in smoking he had with difficulty got to the point where he could finish a cigar, cautiously, without misery and disgrace.
August greeted him with festive joy. He reported that the older journeyman did not want to come along, but in his place a mate from another workshop was coming, so that they would be four at least, and that was enough to turn a whole village upside down. Everyone could drink as much beer today as he liked, for he was paying for all of them. He offered Hans a cigar; then the four of them set off slowly, strolled slowly and proudly through the town, and only down at Linden Square began to march faster so as to get to Bielach in good time.
The surface of the river glittered blue, gold, and white; through the almost completely bare maples and acacias of the avenues a mild October sun shone down warmly; the high sky was cloudless and light blue. It was one of those quiet, pure, and friendly autumn days on which all the beauty of the summer that is past fills the mild air like a painless, smiling memory, on which children forget the season and think they must go looking for flowers, and on which the old men and women gaze into the air with musing eyes from the window or from the bench in front of the house, because it seems to them that the friendly memories, not only of the year but of their whole life that has run its course, are flying visibly through the clear blue. But the young are in good spirits and praise the fine day, each according to his gifts and temperament, with libations or with sacrifices, with song or dance, with drinking bouts or with grand brawls, for everywhere fresh fruit tarts have been baked, young cider or wine lies fermenting in the cellar, and fiddle or accordion in front of the taverns and on the linden squares celebrates the last fine days of the year and invites them to dance and sing songs and play the games of love.
The young fellows walked briskly along. Hans smoked his cigar with an air of carelessness and himself wondered that it agreed with him quite well. The journeyman told about his years on the road, and no one took offense at his talking big; that went with it. Even the most modest journeyman, once he is in steady work and safe from eyewitnesses, tells of his days on the road in a grand and dashing, indeed a legendary tone. For the wonderful poetry of the wandering journeyman’s life is the common property of the people, and through each single one of them it composes the old traditional adventures anew, with new arabesques; and every tramp and beggar of the road, when he gets to telling stories, has in him a piece of the immortal Till Eulenspiegel and a piece of the immortal Straubinger, the eternal tramping journeyman.
“Well, in Frankfurt, where I was then, damn it, that was life! Did I never tell you how a rich merchant, one of those slicked-up monkeys, wanted to marry my master’s daughter; but she sent him packing, because she liked me a size better, and she was my sweetheart for four months, and if I hadn’t got into a row with the old man I’d be sitting there now as his son-in-law.”
And he went on to tell how the master, the scoundrel, had tried to push him around, the miserable slave driver, and once had dared to raise his hand against him; but he had not said a word, only swung his forging hammer and given the old man a look like this, and the old man had gone away very quietly, because he was fond of his skull, and then afterward had given him notice in writing, the cowardly wretch. And he told about a great battle in Offenburg where three metalworkers, he among them, had beaten seven factory hands half to death—anyone who comes to Offenburg need only ask Long Schorsch; he’s still there and was in on it that time.
All this was told in a coolly brutal tone, but with great inner zeal and relish, and everyone listened with deep pleasure and resolved in secret to tell this story himself someday, somewhere else, to other mates. For every metalworker has once had his master’s daughter for a sweetheart and has once gone at a bad master with a hammer and has once thrashed seven factory hands miserably. Now the story is set in Baden, now in Hesse or in Switzerland; now instead of the hammer it was the file or a red-hot iron; now instead of factory hands it was bakers or tailors; but they are always the old stories, and people always like to hear them again, for they are old and good and do honor to the guild. Which is not to say that there are not always, again and again, and still today, men among the wandering journeymen who are geniuses at living or geniuses at inventing, which at bottom is the same thing, after all.
August especially was carried away and delighted. He laughed constantly and agreed, already felt himself half a journeyman, and blew the tobacco smoke into the golden air with a connoisseur’s look of contempt. And the storyteller went on playing his part, for it mattered to him to present his coming along as a good-natured condescension, since as a journeyman he really did not belong with the apprentices on Sunday and ought to have been ashamed to help the boy drink up his pennies.
They had gone a good stretch down the highroad along the river; now they had the choice between a slowly climbing little carriage road that led uphill in a curve and a steep footpath that was only half as long. They chose the carriage road, though it was long and dusty. Footpaths are for workdays and for gentlemen out for a walk; but the common people love the highroad, especially on Sundays; its poetry has not yet been lost for them. To climb steep footpaths, that is for country folk or for nature lovers from the city; it is a labor or a sport, but no pleasure for the people. A highroad, on the other hand, where one gets along comfortably and can chat as one goes, where one spares one’s boots and Sunday clothes, where one sees wagons and horses, meets and overtakes other strollers, encounters dressed-up girls and groups of singing young fellows, where jokes are called after one that one returns with a laugh, where one can stand and gossip and, if single, run after the rows of girls and laugh after them, or in the evening bring personal differences with good mates to expression and settlement by deeds! A journeyman is never so stupid as to exchange the merry, comfortable, and rewarding road for footpaths, and no more is the small citizen of the town.
So they took the carriage road, which wound uphill calmly and amiably in a great curve, like someone who has time and does not care for shedding sweat. The journeyman took off his coat and carried it over his shoulder on his stick; instead of telling stories he had now begun to whistle, in an exceedingly bold and lusty way, and he whistled until after an hour they arrived in Bielach. A few gibes had been aimed at Hans, which did not bother him much and which August parried more eagerly than he did himself. And now they stood before Bielach.
The village lay with red tile roofs and silver-gray thatched roofs bedded among fruit trees in their autumn colors, overtopped behind by the dark mountain forest.
The young people could not agree on which tavern they should stop at. The Anchor had the best beer, but the Swan the best cakes, and at the Sharp Corner there was a pretty innkeeper’s daughter. At last August got his way that they should go to the Anchor, and hinted with a wink that the Sharp Corner would hardly run away during a few glasses and would still be there to be found afterward. Everyone was content with that, and so they went into the village, past the stables and the low farmhouse windows set with pots of geraniums, toward the Anchor, whose golden sign glittered invitingly in the sun over two young, round chestnut trees. To the sorrow of the journeyman, who absolutely wanted to sit inside, the taproom was overcrowded, and they had to take places in the garden.
The Anchor was, by its guests’ notions, a fine establishment, that is, not an old village tavern but a modern brick cube with too many windows, with chairs instead of benches and a quantity of colored tin advertising signs, and also with a waitress dressed in city fashion and an innkeeper who was never to be seen in his shirtsleeves but always in a complete brown suit in the latest style. He was really bankrupt, but had leased his own house from his chief creditor, a big brewer, and since then had become even more genteel. The garden consisted of one acacia tree and a large wire trellis, half grown over for the time being with wild vine.
“Your health, boys!” cried the journeyman, and clinked glasses with all three. And to show himself off, he drained the whole glass at one draught.
“Say, pretty miss, there wasn’t anything at all in that; bring me another one right away!” he called to the waitress, holding out his glass to her across the table.
The beer was excellent, cool and not too bitter, and Hans relished his glass happily. August drank with a connoisseur’s air, smacked his tongue, and smoked meanwhile like a bad stove, which Hans quietly admired.
It was not so bad, after all, to have one’s jolly Sunday like this and sit at the tavern table like someone who has the right to and has earned it, and with people who knew how to live and be merry. It was fine to laugh along and now and then to risk a joke oneself; it was fine and manly, after drinking up, to bang one’s glass down on the table with emphasis and call out carelessly, “Another one, miss!” It was fine to drink to an acquaintance at another table, to let the cold cigar stub hang in one’s left hand, and to push one’s hat back on one’s neck like the others.
The strange journeyman who had come along now began to warm up and tell stories too. He knew of a metalworker in Ulm who could drink twenty glasses of beer, of the good Ulm beer, and when he was finished he wiped his mouth and said: Right, now a nice little bottle of wine! And he had known a stoker in Cannstatt who could eat twelve sausages one after another and had won a bet with it. But a second bet like that he had lost. He had made bold to eat his way through the whole bill of fare of a little inn, and he had indeed eaten almost everything, but at the end of the bill of fare came four different kinds of cheese, and when he was at the third, he pushed the plate away and said: Better die now than one more bite!
These stories too met with rich applause, and it turned out that here and there on earth there are persevering drinkers and eaters, for everyone knew of some such hero and his feats. With one it was “a man in Stuttgart,” with another “a dragoon, in Ludwigsburg, I think”; with one it had been seventeen potatoes, with another eleven pancakes with salad. They brought out these occurrences with matter-of-fact seriousness and gave themselves up with comfort to the recognition that there are, after all, many kinds of fine gifts and remarkable people, and some crazy characters among them too. This comfort and this matter-of-factness are old, venerable heirlooms of every tavern-table philistinism and are imitated by the young people just as drinking, talking politics, smoking, marrying, and dying are.
At the third glass Hans asked whether there were no cakes. They called the waitress and learned that no, there were no cakes, at which everyone grew terribly indignant. August stood up and said that if there were not even cakes, they could go one house farther. The strange journeyman cursed the miserable establishment; only the one from Frankfurt was for staying, for he had struck up a little something with the waitress and had already stroked her intensively several times. Hans had watched, and this sight along with the beer had strangely excited him. He was glad that they were leaving now.
When the bill had been paid and they all stepped out into the street, Hans began to feel his three glasses a little. It was a pleasant feeling, half tiredness, half spirit of enterprise; there was also something like a thin veil before his eyes, through which everything looked more distant and almost unreal, the way one sees in a dream. He had to laugh all the time, had set his hat a bit more boldly askew, and felt himself an exceptionally jolly fellow. The one from Frankfurt whistled again in his warlike way, and Hans tried to walk in step to it.
At the Sharp Corner it was fairly quiet. A few farmers were drinking new wine. There was no beer on tap, only bottles, and at once each of them had one set before him. The strange journeyman wanted to show himself generous and ordered a big apple tart for them all together. Hans suddenly felt a tremendous hunger and ate several pieces of it one after another. It was dim and comfortable sitting in the old brown taproom on the solid, broad benches along the walls. The old-fashioned sideboard and the huge stove vanished in the half-darkness; in a big cage with wooden bars two titmice fluttered, for whom a full branch of red rowanberries had been stuck through the bars as food.
The innkeeper came to the table for a moment and bade the guests welcome. After that it was a while before a conversation got going. Hans took a few little sips of the sharp bottled beer and was curious whether he would really manage the whole bottle.
The one from Frankfurt swaggered away again dreadfully about vintage festivals in the vineyards of the Rhineland, about life on the road and in the flophouses; they listened to him gladly, and Hans too could not stop laughing.
All at once he noticed that he was no longer quite right. Every moment the room, table, bottles, glasses, and companions flowed together into a soft brown cloud and took shape again only when he roused himself vigorously. From time to time, when talk and laughter swelled more violently, he laughed aloud with them or said something that he at once forgot again. When they clinked glasses, he joined in, and after an hour he saw with astonishment that his bottle was empty.
“You’ve got a good swallow,” said August. “Want another?”
Hans nodded, laughing. He had imagined a drinking bout like this to be much more dangerous. And when the one from Frankfurt now struck up a song and they all joined in, he too sang along at the top of his voice.
Meanwhile the room had filled up, and the innkeeper’s daughter came to help the waitress serve. She was a tall, handsomely built person with a healthy, strong face and calm brown eyes.
When she set the new bottle down in front of Hans, the journeyman sitting next to him at once bombarded her with his most elegant gallantries, to which, however, she paid no ear. Perhaps to show him her disregard, or perhaps because she liked the fine little boy’s head, she turned to Hans and quickly ran her hand over his hair; then she went back to the sideboard.
The journeyman, who was already on his third bottle, followed her and took every pains to get a conversation going with her, but without success. The tall girl looked at him indifferently, gave no answer, and soon turned her back on him. Then he came back to the table, drummed with the empty bottle, and cried with sudden enthusiasm, “Let’s be jolly, children; clink glasses!”
And now he told a juicy story about women.
Hans heard nothing more than a muddy jumble of voices, and when he was nearly finished with his second bottle, talking and even laughing began to come hard to him. He wanted to go over to the titmouse cage and tease the birds a little; but after two steps he grew dizzy, very nearly fell, and turned back carefully.
From then on his boisterous merriment slackened more and more. He knew that he was drunk, and the whole drinking no longer seemed funny to him. And as if at a great distance he saw all sorts of trouble awaiting him: the way home, a bad scene with his father, and tomorrow morning the workshop again. Gradually his head began to ache too.
The others too had had enough of a good thing. In a clear moment August asked to pay and got little back on his taler. Chattering and laughing, they went out into the street, dazzled by the bright evening light. Hans could hardly keep himself upright anymore; he leaned, swaying, on August and let himself be pulled along.
The strange metalworker had turned sentimental. He sang “Tomorrow I Must Leave This Place” and had tears in his eyes.
They really meant to go home, but as they passed the Swan, the journeyman insisted on going in there too. In the doorway Hans pulled himself free.
“I have to go home.”
“Why, you can’t even walk by yourself anymore,” laughed the journeyman.
“Yes, I can. I—have to—go home.”
“Then at least have a schnapps first, little one! It’ll put you back on your feet and set your stomach right. Sure, you’ll see.”
Hans felt a small glass in his hand. He spilled a lot of it; the rest he swallowed and felt it burn like fire in his gullet. A violent nausea shook him. Alone he staggered down the front steps and got out of the village, he did not know how. Houses, fences, and gardens turned past him crookedly and confusedly.
Under an apple tree he lay down in the damp meadow. A host of disgusting feelings, tormenting fears, and half-finished thoughts kept him from falling asleep. He felt soiled and disgraced. How was he to get home? What was he to tell his father? And what was to become of him tomorrow? He felt so broken and miserable, as if he must now rest, sleep, and be ashamed for an eternity. His head and eyes hurt, and he did not even feel enough strength in himself to get up and walk on.
Suddenly, like a belated, fleeting wave, a touch of his earlier merriment came back; he made a face and sang to himself:
Oh, my dear Augustine,
Augustine, Augustine,
Oh, my dear Augustine,
All is lost.
And hardly had he finished singing when something hurt him in his innermost being, and a muddy flood of unclear images and memories, of shame and self-reproach, stormed in on him. He groaned aloud and sank sobbing into the grass.
After an hour, when it was already getting dark, he got up and walked unsteadily and laboriously downhill.
Mr. Giebenrath had scolded at length when his boy failed to come home for supper. When nine o’clock came and Hans was still not there, he laid out a stout cane of rattan that had not been used for a long time. The fellow probably thought he had already outgrown his father’s rod? He would have something coming to him when he got home!
At ten o’clock he locked the front door. If his lordship the son wanted to go gallivanting at night, he could see where he would end up.
Nevertheless he did not sleep, but waited with growing fury from hour to hour for a hand to try the latch and shyly pull the bell. He imagined the scene—the vagabond would get what was coming to him! The young rascal would probably be drunk, but he would sober up all right, the scamp, the sneak, the miserable wretch! Even if he had to break every bone in his body.
At last sleep overcame him and his rage.
At the same time Hans, so threatened, was already drifting cool and still and slow down the dark river through the valley. Disgust, shame, and suffering had been taken from him; the cold, bluish autumn night looked down on his slight body drifting darkly along; the black water played with his hands and hair and blanched lips. No one saw him, unless perhaps the shy otter going out to hunt before daybreak, which eyed him slyly and glided silently past him. No one knew either how he had got into the water. Perhaps he had lost his way and slipped at a steep spot; perhaps he had wanted to drink and lost his balance. Perhaps the sight of the beautiful water had lured him, so that he bent over it, and since night and the pale moon looked up at him so full of peace and deep rest, weariness and fear drove him with quiet compulsion into the shadows of death.
During the day they found him and carried him home. The terrified father had to put his stick aside and let his accumulated fury go. He did not weep, it is true, and let little be seen, but the following night he again stayed awake and now and then looked through the crack of the door at his child, who had grown still and lay on a clean bed and, with his fine forehead and his pale, clever face, still looked as if he were something special and had the inborn right to a different fate from other people. On his forehead and hands the skin was a little scraped, bluish red; the handsome features slumbered; over the eyes lay the white lids; and the mouth, not quite closed, looked contented and almost cheerful. It looked as though the boy had suddenly been broken off in his blossoming and torn from a joyful course, and the father too, in his weariness and lonely grief, succumbed to this smiling illusion.
The funeral drew a great number of mourners and curious people. Once again Hans Giebenrath had become a celebrity in whom everyone was interested, and once again the teachers, the rector, and the town pastor took part in his fate. They all appeared in frock coats and solemn top hats, followed the funeral procession, and stood for a moment at the grave, whispering among themselves. The Latin teacher looked especially melancholy, and the rector said softly to him, “Yes, Professor, something could have been made of him. Isn’t it a pity that it’s precisely with the best ones that we almost always have bad luck?”
With the father and old Anna, who wept without stopping, Master Flaig stayed behind at the grave.
“Yes, a thing like this is hard, Mr. Giebenrath,” he said sympathetically. “I was fond of the boy too.”
“You can’t understand it,” sighed Giebenrath. “He was so gifted, and everything went well, after all, school, examination—and then all at once one misfortune after another!”
The shoemaker pointed after the frock coats going out through the churchyard gate.
“There go a few gentlemen,” he said softly, “who helped bring him to this too.”
“What?” the other started up, and stared at the shoemaker doubtfully and in alarm. “Why, damn it, how do you mean?”
“Calm yourself, neighbor. I only meant the schoolmasters.”
“How so? How do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing more. And you and I, we too perhaps neglected a good deal with the boy, don’t you think?”
Over the little town a cheerful blue sky was spread; in the valley the river glittered; the fir-covered mountains shone blue, soft and full of longing, into the distance. The shoemaker smiled finely and sadly and took the arm of the man, who, out of the stillness and the strangely painful fullness of thought of this hour, walked hesitantly and awkwardly toward the lowlands of his accustomed existence.