Beneath the Wheel (13 page)

The student slowly opened his eyes, stared in astonishment at the teacher and shook his head.

“Certainly you were asleep! Or can you tell me what sentence we are at? Well?”

Hans pointed to the sentence in the book. He knew very well where they were at.

“Do you think you could stand up?” the professor asked derisively. And Hans got up.

“What are you up to anyhow? Look at me!”

He looked at the professor. The professor did not care for the look. He shook his head as if puzzled.

“Are you feeling unwell, Giebenrath?”

“No, sir.”

“Sit down and come to my room after class.”

Hans sat down and looked at his Livy. He was wide awake and understood everything, but simultaneously his inner eye followed those many unfamiliar figures which were gradually receding into a great distance while always keeping their shining eyes fixed on him until they disappeared in a faraway mist. Simultaneously the teacher's voice and that of the student who was translating and all the other little noises of the schoolroom came closer and closer until they were finally as real and concrete as usual. Benches, lectern and blackboard were present as always; so were the big wooden compass and the wooden triangle on the wall, and his classmates, many of whom were stealing curious, unrestrained glances at him. Then Hans was startled; he heard someone say to him: “Come to my room after class.” My God, what happened?

At the end of the lesson the professor gave him a sign to follow and they wound their way through the goggle-eyed students.

“Now tell me, what was the matter with you? You apparently were not asleep?”

“No, sir.”

“Why didn't you get up when I asked you to?”

“I don't know.”

“Or didn't you hear me? Are you hard of hearing?”

“No. I heard you.”

“And you didn't get up? Afterwards you had such a strange look in your eyes. What were you thinking at the time?”

“Nothing. I wanted to get up.”

“But why didn't you? So you didn't feel well after all?”

“I don't think I did. I don't know what it was.”

“Did you have a headache?”

“No.”

“It's all right. You can go now.”

Just before supper he was called away again and taken to his sleeping quarters where he found the headmaster and the district doctor waiting for him. He was examined and questioned once more but nothing specific was discovered. The doctor laughed good-naturedly and made light of the matter.

“Those are slight nervous disorders, sir,” he muttered half-jokingly to the headmaster, “a passing condition—light dizzy spells. You have to make sure that the young man gets a bit of fresh air every day. For his headaches I'll prescribe a few drops.”

From then on Hans had to spend an hour in the open each day after supper. He had no objections. What was worse was that the headmaster had strictly forbidden Heilner to accompany him on these walks. Heilner cursed wildly but there was nothing he could do. Thus Hans went on these walks by himself and even liked them somewhat. It was the beginning of spring. The budding green swept like a thin bright wave over the evenly rounded hills; the trees shed their distinct wintry outlines in the interplay of the fresh young foliage and the green of the landscape which became a vast flowing tide of living green.

In his grammar-school days, Hans had looked at spring with a different eye, more with liveliness and curiosity and more attention to specific detail. He had observed the return of the migratory birds, one species after the other, and the sequence with which the trees began to blossom, and then, as soon as it was May, he had started to go fishing. Now he made no attempt to distinguish the different species of birds or recognize the bushes by their buds. All he saw was the general activity, the colors bursting forth everywhere; he breathed in the smell of the young leaves, felt how much softer and intoxicating the air was and walked through the fields full of wonder. He tired easily and always felt like lying down and sleeping. He constantly saw other objects than those that actually surrounded him. What they were he did not really know himself and he did not give it much thought. They were bright, delicate, unusual dreams which surrounded him like paintings or like avenues lined with foreign trees that seemed, however, devoid of life. Pure paintings, only to be contemplated, but this contemplation was a kind of experience too. It was being taken and brought into another region, to other people. It was wandering on alien grounds, or soft ground on which it was a comfort to walk, and it was breathing a strange air, an air full of lightness and a delicate, dreamlike pungency. Occasionally, instead of these images there would come a feeling—dark, warm, exciting—as though a gentle hand were gliding caressingly over his body.

It was a great effort for Hans to concentrate while reading and working. What failed to interest him vanished like a shadow under his hands. If he wanted to remember his Hebrew vocabulary, he had to learn it during the last half-hour before class. But often he had those moments when he could see the physical presence of a description he had just read and could see it live and move much more vividly than his actual surroundings. And while he noticed with despair how his memory seemed unable to absorb anything new, and grew poorer and more untrustworthy from day to day, memories from earlier days would rush upon him with an ominous clarity that seemed both odd and disturbing. In the middle of a lesson or while reading he would suddenly find himself thinking of his father or old Anna, the housekeeper, or one of his former teachers or schoolmates: there they stood before him in the flesh, almost, and held his complete attention for a time. He also relived scenes from his stay in Stuttgart, from the examination and the vacation, over and over again, or would see himself sitting by the river with his fishing rod, smelling the sun-warmed water, and simultaneously it seemed to him as though the time of which he dreamed lay many many years in the past.

One damply tepid evening he was ambling back and forth through the dormitory hall with Heilner, telling him about his home, about his father, about going fishing and his school. His friend was noticeably quiet; he let him speak, gave a nod now and then and beat the air with his ruler a few times distractedly, the same ruler he played with all day long. Gradually Hans fell silent too; it had become night and they sat down on a window sill.

“You, Hans,” Heilner finally began. His voice was unsure and excited.

“What is it?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“No, go ahead.”

“I just thought—because you told me some things about yourself—”

“What is it?”

“Tell me, Hans, didn't you ever run after a girl?”

There was a quiet spell. They had never talked about that. Hans was afraid of the subject, yet it attracted him magically. He could feel himself blushing now and his fingers trembled.

“Only once,” he said in a whisper. “I was nothing but a boy at the time.”

Another quiet spell.

“—and you, Heilner?”

Heilner sighed. “Oh, forget it!… You know one shouldn't talk about it, there's no point to it.”

“But there is, there is!”

“I have a sweetheart.”

“You? Really?”

“At home. The neighbor's girl. And this winter I gave her a kiss.”

“You did?”

“Yes.… You know it was already dark. In the evening on the ice she let me help her take off her ice-skates. That's when I kissed her.”

“Didn't she say anything?”

“Say anything? No. She just ran away.”

“And then?”

“And then—nothing.”

He sighed once more and Hans looked at him as if he were a hero who came from forbidden fields.

Then the bell rang and they had to go to bed. Once the lantern had been extinguished and it had become quiet, Hans lay awake for more than an hour thinking of the kiss Heilner had given his sweetheart.

The next day he wanted to find out more but felt ashamed to ask; and Heilner, because Hans did not ask him, was too shy to raise the subject on his own.

Hans' schoolwork went from bad to worse. The teachers began to look disgruntled and shot sour looks at him; the headmaster looked ominous and angry and his fellow students, too, had long since noticed how Hans had fallen from his previous height and was no longer aiming for first place. Only Heilner was not aware of anything unusual because schoolwork did not count for much with him. Hans watched all these events and changes without paying them any heed.

Heilner in the meantime had become fed up with working on the news sheet and again concentrated all his attention on his friend. As an act of stubborn defiance of the headmaster's edict, he accompanied Hans several times on his daily walk, lay in the sun with him and dreamed, read his poems aloud or cracked jokes about the headmaster. Hans still hoped that Heilner would continue with the revelation of his romantic adventures, yet the longer he desisted the less he could bring himself to inquire. Among the rest of the students both of them were as much disliked as ever, for Heilner's malicious barbs in
Porcupine
had not won him anyone's trust.

The newspaper was on its last legs anyway; it had outlived its function, which had been to bridge the uneventful weeks between winter and spring. Now the beginning of this beautiful season offered them more than enough entertainment with walks, identification of plants and outdoor games. Every afternoon, wrestlers, gymnasts, runners and ball players filled the cloister yard with screaming activity.

In addition there was a new
cause célèbre.
Its instigator—everybody's
bête noire
—was Hermann Heilner.

The headmaster, having heard that Heilner made light of his edict and accompanied Giebenrath on his walks almost every day, did not pick on Hans but asked the chief culprit, his old enemy, to come to his study. He called him by his first name, something which Heilner immediately protested. The headmaster reproached him for his disobedience. Heilner asserted he was Giebenrath's friend and no one had the right to forbid them to see each other. There resulted a real scene. Heilner was condemned to a few hours of house-arrest, and strictly prohibited from joining Giebenrath for the next few weeks.

Thus on the following day Hans once more took his official walk by himself. He returned at two o'clock and went into the classroom with the others. At the start of the lesson it developed that Heilner was absent. The situation was the same as when Hindu had disappeared. But this time no one thought that the absentee was delayed. At three o'clock the whole class and three teachers went out and patrolled the grounds for the missing boy. They separated into smaller groups, ran shouting about the woods, and some of them, including two teachers, did not think it inconceivable that Heilner had intentionally harmed himself.

At five o'clock all the police stations in the vicinity were alerted by telegram and in the evening a special-delivery letter was sent to Heilner's father. By late evening no trace of him had been found and the boys whispered in their sleeping quarters until late at night. The majority of them believed Heilner had drowned himself. Others felt that he'd simply gone home. But it had been ascertained that the runaway had no money.

Everybody looked at Hans as though he had to be in on the secret. But that was not the case. On the contrary, he was the most startled and miserable of the lot, and that night in the sleeping hall when he heard the others question, speculate, talk nonsense and crack jokes, he crept under his blanket and lay awake hours in agony and fear for his friend. He had a premonition he would not come back and his heart was filled with woe until he fell asleep from worry and exhaustion.

At just about that time Heilner was bedding down in a wood only a few miles away. He was freezing cold and could not fall asleep but he breathed with a great feeling of relief and stretched his limbs as though he had just escaped from a narrow cage. He had been on the road since noon, had bought some bread in Knittlingen, and now occasionally took a bite while glancing through the sparsely covered sprigs at the dark night, the stars and the swiftly moving clouds. It was all the same to him where he would end up; what mattered most was that he had finally escaped from the hated monastery and shown the headmaster that his will was stronger than mere commands and edicts.

All next day they looked for him, but in vain. He spent his second night in a field near a village between bundles of straw. In the morning he retreated into the forest, and only toward evening, as he was about to visit another village, was he picked up by a gendarme. This man took charge of him with friendly mockery and deposited him at the city hall. There his wit and flattery won over the mayor, who took him home for the night and stuffed him with ham and eggs before putting him to bed. Next day his father, who had arrived in the meantime, came and fetched him.

The excitement was great at the monastery when the runaway was brought back. But he kept his head high and did not seem to regret his brilliant little jaunt. The authorities demanded that he throw himself on their mercy. He refused, and in front of the teachers' tribunal he was neither timid nor subservient. They had wanted to keep him at the school but now his cup had run over. He was expelled in disgrace and in the evening he left with his father, never to return. He had been able to say good-bye to his friend Giebenrath only with a brief handshake.

The speech the headmaster delivered on the occasion of this extraordinary case of insubordination and degeneration was of singular beauty and verve. Much tamer, more factual and feebler was the report he sent to the school board in Stuttgart. All future correspondence with the expelled monster was prohibited, an edict which merely caused Hans Giebenrath to smile. For weeks Heilner and his flight were the main topic of conversation. The passage of time and his absence modified the general opinion of him and many looked back upon the fugitive, once so anxiously avoided, as an eagle escaped from captivity.