Beneath the Wheel (4 page)

Hans lowered his head.

‘Well, what is it? Didn't you do well?”

“I guess I did, yes.”

“Just be patient,” the old man soothed him. “Presumably we'll have the results from Stuttgart this morning.”

The morning seemed endless. The results did not come, and by lunchtime Hans could hardly swallow, he was so close to sobbing out loud.

When he entered the classroom at two in the afternoon the teacher was there.

“Hans Giebenrath!” he exclaimed loudly.

Hans stepped forward. The teacher shook his hand.

“My congratulations. You came in second in the state examination.”

A solemn hush settled over the classroom, the door opened and the principal entered.

“My congratulations. Well, what do you say now?”

The boy seemed totally paralyzed with surprise and joy.

‘Well, haven't you anything to say?”

“If I'd known that,” he blurted out, “I could have come in first.”

“Well, you can go home now,” said the principal, “and tell your father the good news. No need to come back to school. Vacation starts in eight days anyway.”

In a daze, the boy emerged into the street. He saw the linden trees and the marketplace lying in the sunlight. Everything was as usual and yet more beautiful. By God, he had passed! And he'd come in
second.
When the first wave of joy had waned, a deep gratitude filled him. Now he could look the pastor in the eye. Now he could study, now he need not fear the drudgery of a grocery store or an office.

And he could go fishing again. His father stood in the doorway as he came home.

“What's up?” he asked lightly.

“Nothing much. They've dismissed me from school.”

“What? But why?”

“Because I'm an academician now.”

“Well, I'll be damned, did you pass?”

Hans nodded.

“How well?”

“I came in second.”

That was more than the old man had expected. He did not know what to say, kept patting his son on the shoulder, laughed and shook his head back and forth. Then he opened his mouth as if to say something, but just kept shaking his head.

“I'll be damned,” he exclaimed once more, and again, “I'll be damned.”

Hans rushed into the house, up the stairs to the loft, tore open the wall closet, rummaged around in it, pulled out a variety of boxes and rolled-up tackle-line and pieces of cork. It was his fishing gear. All he had to do now was cut himself a good rod. He went downstairs to his father.

“Father, can I borrow your hunting knife?”

“What for?”

“To cut myself a rod.”

His father reached into his pocket. “There you are,” he said with a beaming smile, “there are two marks. Go buy yourself a knife of your own. But go to the cutler's, not to Hanfried.”

Now everything was done at top speed. The cutler inquired how he had done in the examination, listened to the good news and found a particularly good knife for Hans. Down river, below the bridge to Brühel, stood beautiful, slim alder and hazel bushes. There, after making a careful choice, he cut himself a perfect, tough and springy rod and hurried home with it.

His face flushed and with glowing eyes, he sat down to the cheerful task of preparing his rod; he liked this almost as much as the fishing itself. He spent an entire afternoon and evening at the job. The white and brown lines were sorted, painstakingly inspected, repaired and freed of many old knots and tangles. Cork floats and quills of all shapes and sizes were tested and freshly cut, little pieces of lead were hammered into pellets and provided with notches for weighting the lines. Then he busied himself with the hooks—he had a small supply left over. He fastened them, some on four-ply black thread, others on a gut-string, the rest on horsehair that had been twisted together. Toward midnight everything was ready. Hans was certain he would not be bored during the long seven weeks of vacation, for he could spend entire days alone with his fishing rod by the river.

Chapter Two

T
HAT'S HOW SUMMER
vacations should be! A gentian-blue sky above the hills, one brilliant hot day after the other for weeks on end, punctuated only by brief and violent thundershowers. The river, though it flowed over sandstone cliffs, through gorges and forests, was so warm you could take a dip in it even late in the afternoon. All around town you smelled the fragrance of hay and flowers, and the few narrow strips of land on which wheat was grown turned yellow and russet; white, hemlock-like weeds shot up high and bloomed luxuriant along the brooks, their white blossoms always covered by an umbrella-like smudge of tiny insects, and they had stalks from which you could cut yourself flutes and pipes. Long rows of wooly and majestic mullein displayed themselves along the forest edges; willow catkin and purple loosestrife swayed on their tough slender stalks, bathing entire slopes violet. Inside the forest itself, under the spruce trees, stood solemn and beautiful and strange the high, steep, red foxglove with its broad, fibrous, silvery root leaves, the strong stalk and the high rows of beautiful red throat-shaped blossoms. Next to them all kinds of mushrooms: the shiny red fly-agaric, the fat and fleshy ordinary mushroom, the red tangled coral-mushroom, the curiously colorless and sickly-looking Pine Bird's Nest. On the many heather-covered banks between the forest and the fields there blazed the tough, fiery-yellow broom, then came long strips of lilac-red heather followed by the fields themselves, most of them ready for the second mowing, overgrown with a profusion of cardamine, campions, meadow sage, knapweed. The woods resounded with the ceaseless chirping and singing of the finches. In the pine forest fox-red squirrels leapt from tree to tree; along ridges, walls and dry ditches green lizards sunned themselves, and over the meadows you could hear the endless ululations, the untiring trumpeting of the cicadas.

The town made a very bucolic impression at this time of year. There were hay wagons about; the scent of grass and clanging of scythes filled streets and air. If there hadn't been two factories, you would have thought you were in a rural village.

Early in the morning of his first day of vacation, Hans stood impatiently in the kitchen waiting for his coffee practically before Anna had had time to get out of bed. He helped lay the fire, fetched bread from the baker, quickly gulped down coffee cooled with fresh milk, stuffed some bread into his pocket and rushed off. At the upper railroad embankment he took a round tin box out of his pants pocket and busied himself catching grasshoppers. The train passed—not in a great swoosh but at a comfortable pace because of a steep incline—with all its windows open and just a handful of passengers, a long banner of smoke and steam trailing behind. Hans gazed after it, watching the smoke dissolve and disappear in the sunny air. He inhaled deeply as if he wanted to make up doubly for all the time he had lost and to be once more a carefree, uninhibited boy.

His heart trembled with delight and the eagerness of the hunt as he carried his box full of grasshoppers and the new rod across the bridge and through the gardens in back to the “horse trough,” the deepest part of the river. There was a spot where, if you leaned against a willow, you could fish more comfortably and with fewer interruptions than anywhere else. He unwound his line, tied the little lead pellets to it, ruthlessly impaled a plump grasshopper and cast with a broad sweep toward the middle of the river. The old, well-known game began: little minnows swarmed in swirling shoals around the bait, trying to tear it off the hook. Soon the bait had been nibbled away and it was a second grasshopper's turn, and a third and fourth and fifth. He fastened them more and more carefully on his hook, finally weighted the line down with a second pellet, and now the first genuine fish tested the bait. He nudged it a little, let it go, then pulled at it again. Now the fish bit. A good fisherman feels the jerk through the line and rod in his fingers. Then Hans gave an artful twist and began to draw in his line very carefully. The fish was properly hooked and when it became visible Hans recognized it as a rudd. You recognize rudds at once by the broad belly which shimmers white-yellow, the triangular head, but most of all by the beautiful fleshy pink of their ventral fins. How much would it weigh? But before he even had a chance to guess its weight, the fish made a desperate leap, thrashed about the surface and escaped. You could still see it make three or four turns in the water, then disappear like a silver streak into the depths. It had not been a proper bite after all.

The excitement, the passionate concentration of the hunt had now taken hold of Hans. His eyes did not once waver from the thin brown line where it entered the water; his cheeks were flushed, his movements short, swift and sure. A second rudd bit and was landed, then a carp almost too small to be worth the trouble; then, one after the other, three gudgeons. The gudgeons made him particularly happy because his father liked them. They are meaty, have tiny scales, a thick head and an odd-looking white beard, small eyes and a slender tail. Their color is mixed brown and gray and on land shades to steel-blue.

In the meantime the sun had risen higher. The foam at the upper dam glistened white as snow, warm air trembled above the water, and if you looked up you could see a few blindingly white clouds the size of your palm. It became hot. Nothing expresses the heat of a midsummer day more emphatically than a few clouds that seem to stand still and white halfway between the blue and the earth, clouds so saturated with light you cannot bear to look at them for long. If it were not for these clouds you would not realize how hot it was. Neither the blue sky nor the glistening mirror of the river would tell you, but as soon as you see a few foamy white, compact, noonday sailors you suddenly feel the sun burn, look for a shadow and wipe the sweat off your brow.

Hans found his attention slipping. He was a little tired, and besides, the chances of catching anything around noon are poor. The whitefish, even the oldest and biggest of them, surface at this time for a sunbath. Dreamily they swim upstream in large dark shoals, close to the surface, occasionally startled without visible cause. They refuse to bite during these hours.

He slung his line over a willow branch into the water, sat down and gazed into the green river. The fish rose slowly. One dark back after the other broke the surface—calm processions swimming lazily, drawn upward, enchanted by the warmth. No doubt about how well they felt! Hans slipped his boots off and dangled his feet into the lukewarm water. He inspected his catch swimming in a big bucket, softly splashing every so often. How beautiful they were! White, brown, green, silver, wan-gold, blue and other colors glistened on the scales and fins with every move.

It was very quiet. You could barely hear the wagons rumbling as they crossed the bridge and the splash of the mill wheel was indistinct from where he sat. Only the unceasing sound of water pouring over the dam and washing drowsily past the raft timbers.

Greek, Latin, grammar, style, math and learning by rote, the whole torturous process of a long, restless and hectic year quietly sank away in the warmth of this sleepy hour. Hans had a slight headache but it was not as painful as usual. He watched the foam break into spray at the weir, glanced at the line and the bucket beside him with the fish he'd caught. It was all so delicious! Intermittently he would remember that he had passed the examination and come in second. Then he would slap his naked feet into the water, stick both hands into his pants pockets and begin whistling a song. He could not really whistle properly. This had been a sore point with him for a long time and had made him the butt of many of his schoolmates' jokes. He was only able to whistle softly and only through his teeth but it was good enough for his purpose and anyway no one could overhear him now. The others were still in school and had a geography lesson.

*   *   *

Only he was free. He had outstripped them, they were now below him. They had pestered him because he had made friends only with August and never really enjoyed their rough-and-ready games and pleasures. Well, now they could go to hell, the oafs, the fatheads. He despised them so thoroughly he stopped whistling for a moment just to contort his mouth in disgust. Then he wound in his line and had to laugh, for there was not a trace of bait on the hook. He freed the remaining grasshoppers and they crawled shakily into the short grass. In the nearby tannery the workers were having their lunchbreak; it was time for him to go eat, too.

Hardly a word was said at table.

“Did you catch anything?” asked his father.

“Five of them.”

“Really? Just you make sure you don't catch the old one, or there won't be any young ones later on.”

With this the conversation lapsed. It was so warm out. It was a shame you couldn't go swimming right after a meal. Why was that? It was supposed to be harmful. Nonsense! Hans knew better than that. Though it was forbidden, he'd done it often enough. But he wouldn't do it again now, he was too mature for such pranks. At the examination they had even addressed him as “Mister.”

Then again, it was not bad to lie for an hour in the garden, under the spruce. It was cool in the shadows and you could read a book or observe the butterflies. So he lay there until two o'clock and nearly fell asleep. But now to the swimming hole! Only a few small boys were in the meadow. The bigger ones were still in school and Hans didn't begrudge them their fate. He undressed slowly and then slid into the water. He knew how to make the best of coolness and of warmth. Alternately he would swim, dive and splash about, then lie face down on the river bank and feel the sun dry his skin. The little boys kept their distance. Indeed, he had become a celebrity, and besides, he looked so different from the rest. His handsome head sat on a thin tanned neck, and there was an intelligent and superior look to his face. Also he was quite skinny, with thin limbs and a fragile, delicate build. You could count his ribs both in front and back.