Beneath the Wheel (20 page)

The way the young mechanics stood in front of Schuler's house, so calm and proud, nodding to passers-by and talking among themselves, you could easily discern that they were a self-sufficient group, had no need of company, not even on Sundays when they had their fun.

This was exactly what Hans felt and he was glad to be one of them. Still, he was a little apprehensive about the planned expedition. He was well aware that the mechanics were in the habit of taking their pleasures in rather massive doses. Perhaps they would even go dancing. Hans had no idea how, but he decided to be a man even at the risk of a small hangover. He was not used to drinking quantities of beer and in the matter of smoking he had only just reached the stage where he could finish a cigar without running the danger of discomfort or disgrace.

August greeted him with easy cheerfulness. He said the senior journeyman did not want to come along but a colleague from another shop would come instead so there would be at least four of them, enough to turn a whole village upside down. Everyone could drink all the beer he wanted today, since he was paying. He offered Hans a cigar, then the four slowly got underway, ambled leisurely and proudly through town, only quickening their pace at the Lindenplatz to get to Bielach in good time.

The river reflected blue, gold and white. Through the almost bare maples and acacias you could feel the mild October sun. The sky was deep and of a cloudless light blue. It was one of those pure and tranquil friendly fall days on which everything that was beautiful in the previous summer fills the mild air with untroubled, smiling memories, when children forget what season it is and think they should be picking flowers, when old people gaze pensively from their windows, or up from benches in front of their houses into the sky because it seems to them the friendly memories of that year and of their whole long life winged visibly through the transparent blue. The young people were in high spirits and praised the day according to their gifts and temperament—by drinking or slaughtering an animal, by singing or dancing, by drinking bouts or suffering. Everywhere fruitcakes and pies were being baked, young cider and wine were fermenting in the cellars, and fiddles and accordions in front of inns and under the linden in the squares celebrated the last beautiful days of the year, inviting the world to dance and sing and make love.

The young fellows were making rapid headway. Hans smoked his cigar with a semblance of carelessness and was himself surprised how well it became him. The journeyman recounted his years spent traveling about and no one objected to his boasting. That was part of the act. Even the most unassuming little apprentice, once he gets into the thick of his subject and is among his own kind and safe from eyewitnesses, will coolly lace his account of his traveling days with legendary attributes. For the marvelous poetry of the life the artisans and apprentices lead is the common property of the people. The traditional adventures are reincarnated in every one of them and adorned with new variations, and every journeyman, once he really gets going, is a bit of the eternal Eulenspiegel and the undying Straubinger.

“Man, the last time in Frankfurt, what a wild town that was! Didn't I tell you how a rich guy, a big business man, wanted to marry the boss's daughter but she gave him the sack because she liked me better? She was my girl for four months and if I hadn't gotten in a fix with the old man I'd still be there and his son-in-law.”

And he went on to tell how his master, the bastard, had tried to give him a hard time, the miserable s.o.b., and once he even dared raise his hand against him but he didn't say a word, he just kept swinging that sledge hammer and gave the old man a look and the old man just sort of slunk away because he didn't want to have his head bashed in and then he gave him notice, the drip, in writing. And he went on to tell about a big street fight in Offenburg, where three locksmiths, he among them, had tangled with seven factory guys and knocked them half dead—anyone coming to Offenburg, all he had to do was ask that beanstalk Schorsch, who's still there and who was along back then.

All of this was communicated in a cool, tough voice, but with great intensity and delight, and everyone listened with pleasure and made up his mind to tell that story someday somewhere else with other companions. For every locksmith has had his master's daughter for a sweetheart at one time or other and has taken off after the evil master with a hammer and beaten the daylights out of seven factory workers. One time the story is set in Baden, next in Hessen or Switzerland; once it is a file or a slug of red-hot iron and not a hammer; sometimes the victims are not factory workers but bakers or tailors but the stories are invariably the same, and you like hearing them again and again because they are old and good and bring honor to the craft. None of which is meant to imply that the traveling artisans lack fellows in their midst—even today—who are not geniuses in experiencing or inventing, which are basically one and the same thing.

August in particular was delighted and completely swept off his feet. He laughed continuously and said yes, yes, yes, already considered himself a journeyman for all intents and purposes and blew tobacco smoke with epicurean disdain into the golden air. And the narrator continued to enjoy his role, for it mattered to him that his coming along would appear as a good-natured act of condescension since as a journeyman he, properly speaking, did not belong in the company of apprentices on a Sunday and should have been ashamed of himself for helping an apprentice drink up his first earnings.

They had walked a good ways down along the river and now had a choice between taking the gradually rising dirt road which curves lazily up the mountain or the steep footpath which was only half as long. They decided on the dirt road, though it was longer and dustier. Footpaths are for working days and for gentlemen on walks; but the common people prefer the regular country roads, especially on Sundays—these roads have retained their poetry for the people. To climb steep footpaths is something for farmers, or for nature lovers from the city; that is either work or a sport but not a pleasure. On a country road, however, you can make leisurely headway and can talk and don't wear out your soles or clothes, see carts and horses, meet other people just as leisurely as yourself, overtake girls all dressed up and groups of singing fellows. People will call out jokes to you and you will laugh and parry them; you can stop and chat, and if you have nothing better to do, run after girls and laugh after them, and in the evening you can settle personal differences with your companions by taking direct action.

Thus they took the country road. The journeyman took off his coat, bung it on his stick and then shouldered the stick; instead of telling stories he had begun to whistle in an altogether daring and vivacious manner and he did not stop whistling until they reached Bielach an hour later. Hans had been the victim of a little needling but it had not penetrated very deep and these attacks were parried more eagerly by August than by himself. And now they stood at the edge of Bielach.

The village with its red-tile and silver-gray thatched roofs lay couched among autumn-tinted orchards, a dark densely forested mountain rising up in back.

They could not agree which tavern they should enter. The Anchor served the best beer but the Swan the best cake and Sharp Corner possessed a pretty innkeeper's daughter. Finally August's suggestion prevailed that they should first head for the Anchor, adding with a wink that the Sharp Corner probably would not run off while they had a few steins. No one had any objection to this so they entered the village, walked past animal pens, low farmhouse windows decked with geraniums and headed for the Anchor whose golden sign gleamed invitingly in the sun above two young chestnut trees. To the chagrin of the journeyman, who insisted on sitting inside, the bar was overcrowded already and they had to sit outside in the garden.

Its guests regarded the Anchor as a first-rate tavern, not, in other words, some old farmer's inn but a modern brick building with far too many windows, with chairs instead of wooden benches and a clutter of metal advertising signs, as well as a waitress in city clothes and an innkeeper whom you never caught with his sleeves rolled up but who always wore a modish brown suit. Actually he was bankrupt but he had mortgaged his house to his main creditor, the owner of a big brewery, and since then assumed an even more dignified air. The garden consisted of an acacia tree and a big wire fence, for the time being half overgrown with wild grapevines.

“To your health,” shouted the journeyman and clinked steins with the three others. And to prove his mettle he chuggalugged the whole mug.

“Hey, miss, there wasn't anything in that one. Bring me another,” he called after the waitress and handed her the mug across the table.

The beer was excellent, cool and not too dry. Hans enjoyed it thoroughly. August drank with the air of a connoisseur, simultaneously clicked his tongue and smoked like an oven in ill repair—something which Hans quietly admired.

It was not so bad after all then to go on a Sunday spree and sit at such a table like someone who has the right to, and with people who got a kick out of life. It felt good to join in the laughter and venture an occasional joke of your own; it was good and manly to slam your mug on the table when you were finished and call out without a care in the world: “Hey, miss, another!” It was good to drink a toast to an acquaintance at a nearby table, the butt of your cigar dangling from your left hand, your hat pushed back onto your head, like everyone else's hat.

The colleague from the other shop began to unthaw too and to tell stories of his own. He told about a locksmith in Ulm who drank twenty mugs of beer at a sitting, and of the good Ulm beer, and when it was finished he would wipe his mouth once and say: “Now let's have a bottle of wine for a chaser!” And he had known a stoker in Cannstatt who could eat twelve knockwursts in a row and had won a bet that way. But he had lost a second bet just like it. He had bet he could eat everything on the menu of a small inn and he'd eaten his way down to the cheeses and when he reached his third cheese he just pushed the platter away and said: “I'd rather die than eat another bite.”

These stories too were well received. It became clear to Hans that on this earth there must exist a goodly number of endurance drinkers and eaters, for everyone knows about one such hero and his feats. One can tell about a man in Stuttgart, another about a dragoon, I think in Ludwigsburg, one story has seventeen potatoes, another eleven pancakes and a salad. All these events are recounted with professional seriousness and everyone takes comfort in the realization that—after all—there exist all sorts of remarkable people and beautiful talents, and crazy fools. This sense of well-being is an old and honorable heirloom of tavern conventions and it's imitated by the young just as they imitate drinking, talking politics, smoking, marrying and dying.

While they were at their third mug, one of them asked for some cake. The waitress was hailed and they were told there was no cake. They all became quite wrought up. August rose to his feet and announced that if this place didn't even have cake, they might as well hit the next inn down the street. The colleague cursed about what a lousy way it was to run a business; only the journeyman wanted to stay—he had been flirting with the waitress, had even stroked her bottom in passing. Hans had noticed and this sight plus the effect of the beer had excited him strangely. He was glad they moved on.

Once the bill was paid and all of them stepped out on the street, Hans began to feel slightly affected by his three mugs of beer. It was a pleasant sensation, half weariness, half devil-may-care. He was conscious too of something like a thin veil before his eyes through which everything looked more remote, almost unreal and much as it looks in dreams. He could not help giggling, had set his hat at an even more rakish angle and considered himself one hell of a fellow. The Frankfurt journeyman whistled again in his tough way and Hans tried to keep the beat.

It was pretty quiet in the Sharp Corner. A couple of farmers were sampling the new wine. There was no draft beer, only bottles, and each of them was immediately served one. The colleague journeyman wanted to prove how grand he was and ordered an apple pie big enough for all of them. Hans suddenly felt hunger pangs and ate several slices in quick succession. It was comfortably dark on the firm, wide benches along the wall in the old dark-brown barroom. The old-fashioned counter and the huge stove were no longer distinguishable in the semi-darkness; in a big cage built of wooden staves fluttered two songbirds. A whole branch with red bird-berries had been thrust through the staves for them.

The host stopped at their table for a moment and bade them welcome. After that it took a while for a real conversation to develop. Hans took a few gulps from the tart bottled beer and wondered whether he was going to be able to down the whole bottle.

The journeyman was carrying on again about wine festivals in the Rhineland, his journeyman days and what a vagabond life he had led. They all listened in high spirits and even Hans could not stop laughing.

Suddenly he became aware that something was not quite right with him. Every few seconds or so the room, the tables, bottles and glasses and his companions merged into a brownish miasma, and only by a great effort on his part did they regain their outlines. From time to time, when the conversations and laughter rose in volume, he would join the laughter, add a comment and forget immediately what he'd said. When they clinked glasses he joined in and after some time he realized that his quart was empty.

“That's quite an intake you have,” said August. “Want another?”

Hans nodded and laughed. He'd always thought that such a drinking bout would be much more dangerous. And now the journeyman intoned a song and they all joined in and Hans sang with as much fervor as the rest.

Meanwhile the room had filled up and the innkeeper's daughter came to lend the waitress a hand. She was a tall, well-built girl with a healthy, vigorous face and calm brown eyes.