The World as I Found It (86 page)

There was one more fainter that day, and three more the next. By the fourth day, Wittgenstein was desperate. Hardly had he hauled the first fainter off the floor than the second slumped in his desk. And even as he sent them to the corner, a fourth fainter fell out — Franz Kluck, grinning like Judas as Wittgenstein thrust him back in his seat.

This was too much. I'm fed up with all of you! he roared, smacking his rod on the side of his elevated desk. For the next ten minutes you can all wallow with the
pigs
, for all I care. But when I return, I promise you that any other fakers will be severely punished!

Yet here, he saw, he had boxed himself in again, promising what he was afraid to deliver. He was trapped, and they knew it. Even as he left, there were delighted squeals and taunting pig grunts. But when he returned, they all raced to their seats, biting their lips to suppress giggles. Wittgenstein resumed the lesson. For almost an hour they were quiet, but then he detected the same telltale restlessness and whispering. It was Frank and his cohorts again, averting their faces to hide their smirks.

I'm warning you, he said ominously, and then there came a hush — broken by a loud groan as Frank slumped to the floor.

Wittgenstein saw that his authority was at stake. He had no choice but make good his threat. This time there was no heat. He was thoroughly businesslike about it. Hauling Frank up by the arm, he thrust him back in his chair, then drew himself up and resolutely slapped him. It was a thoroughly regulation slap, not at all hard, but Frank played it up. Like a cowboy in the pictures, he splashed out of his seat and sprawled ignominiously on his face. Quit your playing, Frank, or I'll give you another! Over the next few months, Wittgenstein would hear these words again and again, because when he turned Frank over, the boy was bleeding profusely through the nose.

That ended Wittgenstein's career as a schoolteacher. This time there were charges of brutality, which Wittgenstein resolutely denied. Serious as they were, the charges were administrative, not criminal. He could have left Trattenbach then, but in an effort to clear his name, Wittgenstein fought the charges. In his desperation, he even agreed to submit to a psychiatric examination, meeting four times with a psychiatrist who finally pronounced him withdrawn and depressed but otherwise normal — not, in any case, brutal and sadistic. Ultimately, Wittgenstein was cleared of the charges, but in the meantime, Max didn't help his cause by beating up those three men, including Frank's father. In court later, Max refused to repeat to the judge the things the men had said. Herr Frank and his sneering cohorts should have known better than to taunt Max as he was being led off to jail. The judge and Wittgenstein both warned Max to forget the matter. It did no good. When he was released, Max went on a second rampage, then lit out, never to be seen in the village again.

To the end, Wittgenstein was genuinely perplexed about how he could have bloodied the boy's nose. It wasn't until several years later, when he was back in Vienna building the house for Gretl, that he received a letter from Franz Kluck explaining how Frank had jabbed a sharpened pencil in his nose as he lay on the floor. Franz's letter was a typical schoolboy confession, hurried, brief, incomplete. Franz said he was sorry for not telling the truth about what had happened that day, adding that he had wanted to but had been ashamed — but ashamed of what, or of whom, he did not say.

Father Haft's successor, Father Schöttl, was still in Trattenbach, still stuck there as pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Disrepair. Father Schöttl was one of those self-appointed reporters who periodically feel the need to fill others in on the drab news, whether or not they want to hear it. Every Christmas Wittgenstein received a card from him, and the news was always the same. The village was as bad, if not worse. Hilda Mueller, the girl he had struck, was a tramp — she had left the village, unmarried and pregnant. Herr Kluck had long since drunk himself to death. Now out of school and working for a grocer, Franz Kluck was about to take the civil service exam in the hopes of becoming a postal clerk.

Franz and Wittgenstein still corresponded occasionally. Wittgenstein knew that the young man still harbored dreams of going to university, and had Wittgenstein wanted he certainly could have gotten Gretl to finance his education. But he told himself that the young man was probably better off where he was, leading a simple life without unreasonable expectations. Actually, Wittgenstein thought quite a lot about Trattenbach. After the trial, he had sworn never to go back, but by now he was becoming curious. Often, he would imagine slipping back into the village in disguise, there to walk like a spirit among the people to see firsthand how it had all turned out. But of course this was just another fantasy, much like these late-night thoughts of confession.

E
ARLIER THAT NIGHT
, not long after Max had left in a fury, a delegation of distraught children had gone to Russell to make known their anger at Rabe.

Bertrand, we think Rabe should be punished for killing our dog, said John, the apparent spokesman for the group. We also think Rabe should be made to bury Daisy.

There were about eight children, and Russell invited them all into his office to talk about it. Gathering around him on his big leather sofa, the children were angry and upset, and he was amazed, as always, by the child's fierce and seemingly innate passion for justice. Russell and Dora had done much to try to cultivate this instinct. Under the auspices of the school council, the children had their own court, and they had their own code of punishments: two nights with no dessert, hoeing the garden — that was about the extent of it. But Rabe, Russell explained, was a case quite beyond their court.

Rabe is sick, he said. He needs the help of doctors, not punishment. Punishment is wicked when it can do no good. For all we know, Rabe couldn't help himself — and that is assuming that he did indeed poison Daisy. And, mind you, we do not know for a fact that he did. For all we know, Daisy may have died of old age.

At this John spoke up. But Rabe told Max that he did it.

Well, now, replied Russell. I expect you'd have confessed yourself, had Max throttled you the way he did poor Rabe.

That was mean of Max, said six-year-old Mary Berry, bouncing on her seat.

Yes, it was mean, agreed Russell, falling into that conspicuous, somewhat homiletic voice of his alter ego, the Headmaster. Finding guilt is not easy. Then there's the problem of what to do once you find it. Why did Rabe poison Daisy — if indeed he did poison her? Why has Rabe done so many other bad things? I, for one, think that Rabe did these things because he is sick and unhappy. A happy boy would not torture a poor innocent animal.

You mean Rabe is sick so he made Daisy sick? asked a red-haired boy named Alf.

But Russell could see that this was already getting sticky and hard to explain, the children's idea of sickness being something one catches rather than something that is passed down, instilled or whatever. And of course there were other questions. Inevitably, the children wanted to know where a dog like Daisy went when she died. Russell told them frankly what he thought: the dog simply died and was no more. He did add, though, that in a sense Daisy would live on through her puppies, who would carry, and pass on, a piece of Daisy just as the children carried and would one day pass on to their children pieces of their own mummies and daddies. But at this Russell saw several of the children, including John, screw up their faces, as if
he
were leaving, and he realized that they were all afraid of his leaving, of the long leaving. So leaving was the quotient, but the content, again, was pain — pain and the dread of pain, since all was leaving. And then Russell remembered how as babies in their baths, John and Kate would dip their hands into the water, looking at the liquid, then at their hands, and then at him, aghast, not knowing how to separate either their hands from the water or their own bodies from his. And with this anxiety ran another fear: that he might somehow vanish as in a game of peek-a-boo, eclipsed like the sun, never to be restored.

It was unlikely that Russell could have approached these matters with greater care or sensitivity, but still he was afraid that, no matter what he said, the children would be somehow scarred by the dead dog, the unbalanced boy, the violent man. The main thing, though, was that he was explaining, having learned that often it wasn't so much the explanation as the sheer care of explaining that matters most to children. But his explanations weren't just for the children's sakes; he, too, took comfort in explaining, which was as necessary for him as for them. The children were spread around him like a quilt, a warm, arm-splatched quilt that smelled of sticky skin, of flesh and rain and earth. The children seemed to act as if he were telling them a story, and so in a sense he was. Outside, it was already dark, getting ready to rain again. This was about the time that Wittgenstein was standing out on the road, hearing Max's confession — another less happy, less satisfactory explanation.

Late that same night, in a literally eleventh-hour effort to rid themselves of Rabe Peck, the desperate school finally found a place in Salisbury that agreed to take the boy, sight unseen, for a suitably exorbitant price. This was Vale of Muir Lodge, an institution desperately short of funds and full of empty beds and restraining jackets.

This is nothing but robbery! cried the headmaster, looking pigstuck as he held the telephone. But after spending an hour dickering with the blackguard who ran the place, Russell finally struck an agreement by which Vale of Muir would take the boy for a two-week evaluation period —
and
with the proviso that if they did not themselves keep the boy, or were not judged suitable, they would secure an appropriate institution that would take him until his mother was found.

Miss Marmer readily volunteered to take the boy to Salisbury the next day, being all too glad to get away from Beacon Hill — and the headmaster. And later, after Russell had settled matters with Vale of Muir, Miss Marmer gave him another night's harbor, and not such a bad night, either. The truth was, Miss Marmer felt badly about her outburst that day, when she had railed at him by the stairs during her quarrel with Lily.

So, early the next morning, after Russell had crept from her room, Miss Marmer took Rabe Peck down to the car, where Tillham was waiting to drive them to the station. Earlier, Tillham had dug a grave for Daisy and laid the dog in it, just as Russell had instructed. Unfortunately, though, the old man had not dug a grave-shaped hole but a round hole, as if he were potting a tree. In fact, when Russell looked into the hole, he wondered for a moment if it was a shrub or piece of rooting, what with the way Tillham had bundled the dog in a ball of twine-bound burlap.

Dratted old nitwit! muttered Russell to himself, knowing all too well the child's natural concern for orthodoxy and consistency. He knew the children would be disturbed by the unusual hole, and, sure enough, they were.

But that's a
round
hole, huffed Rose, who had seen her grandmother buried. Graves aren't supposed to be
round
.

A grave can be any shape, Russell replied carefully. Certain primitive peoples used to bury their dead in clay jars. Really, my dear, there is no right or wrong way. It's merely a matter of
custom
— I mean the way different people do things.

But where's Daisy?
squealed Peter, one of the smaller boys, clutching Russell's leg as he peered down into the hole.

She's down there, said Russell, taking the boy's arm reassuringly. Daisy's all wrapped up in that burlap there. Quite nicely wrapped, as you can see.

Is she a mummy? asked another boy, with an astonished look. Has Mr. Tillham made her a mummy?

But with this, little Peter, still clutching Russell's leg in confusion and having heard something about a mummy, bawled: But I still don't
see … Where's Daisy?

There were some tears, and several of the children said some kind words about the deceased, who had never bitten anybody or even barked very much, and who in her day had dropped many a litter. Then, after this eulogy, the children tearfully sang
Oh-where-oh-where-has-my-little-dog-gone
, the only dog song they knew, while Russell fiercely rubbed his face, trying not to smile.

Russell wanted the children to see death as a thoroughly natural process, but he needn't have worried. Scarcely had the children filled in the dirt and covered it over with grass and wildflowers and a turtlish stone with
DAISY
painted on it than they were asking when they could get another dog. And then they were off, Daisy, for the time being at least, forgotten.

That was all. When Mr. Tillham returned, Russell took John and Kate, along with Wittgenstein and the Moores, to an isolated beach below the cliffs. It was a huge, luminous day, and the white chalk path that cut down the cliffs to the beach was steep and difficult for them, encumbered, as they were, with baskets, blankets and chairs.

John, said Russell preemptively, John, mind you — But, waving his arms in the speeding wind, the boy ran whooping down the path like a young goat, heedless of his father's shouts.

Picking down the crumbling path, they saw the boy on the beach, lunging at the chopping swells that cracked like eggs against the black rocks, then ran foaming down their mussel-crusted sides. John was quivering with excitement as he ran up to his father, begging, May we swim now, Daddy? May we?

You may, said Russell sternly. But only if you mind me. Didn't you hear me calling you back up there? Russell lit his pipe and sent him off with his sister. The boy had no fear of the water. Waiting for the first good wave, he took a step back, then charged into it, squealing as it bowled him over.

John!
cried Russell.

Suspended under that white bombardment of light and mist, the boy was deaf to him. So let him go, Russell told himself, but he hung on, so powerless as the next wave rocketed down, consuming the squealing boy with the sound of a distant explosion.