Beneath the Wheel (3 page)

And because heartfelt prayers and deep sympathy easily take effect even over great distances, Hans sensed that they were thinking of him at home. He entered the examination room with trembling heart, accompanied by his father, anxiously followed the instructor's directions, and looking around the huge room full of boys, felt like a criminal in a torture chamber. But once the examining professor had entered and bid them be quiet, and dictated the text for the Latin test, Hans was relieved to find that it was ridiculously easy. Quickly, almost cheerfully, he wrote his first draft. Then he copied it neatly and carefully, and was one of the first to hand in his work. Though he managed to get lost on his way back to his aunt's house, and wandered about the hot streets for two hours, this did not upset his newly regained composure; he was glad to escape his aunt's and father's clutches for a while and felt like an adventurer as he ambled through the unfamiliar noisy streets of the capital. When he had asked his way back through the labyrinth and returned home, he was showered with questions.

“How did it go? What was it like? Did you know your stuff?”

“Couldn't have been easier,” he said proudly. “I could have translated that in the fifth grade.”

And he ate with considerable appetite.

He had no examination that afternoon. His father dragged him from one acquaintance or relative to the other; at one of their houses they met a shy boy who was dressed in black, an examination candidate from Göppingen. The boys were left to their own devices and eyed each other shyly and inquisitively.

“What did you think of the Latin?” asked Hans. “Easy, wasn't it?”

“But that's just it. You slip up when it's easy and don't pay attention and there are bound to have been some hidden traps.”

“Do you think so?”

“But of course! The professors aren't as stupid as all that.”

Hans was quite startled and fell to thinking. Then he asked timidly: “Do you still have the text?”

The fellow pulled out his booklet and they went over the text word by word, sentence by sentence. The Göppinger candidate seemed to be a whiz in Latin; at least twice he used grammatical terms Hans had not heard of.

“And what do we have tomorrow?”

“Greek and German composition.”

Then Hans was asked how many candidates his school had sent.

“Just myself.”

“Ouch. There are twelve of us here from Göppingen. Three really bright guys who are expected to place among the top ten. Last year the fellow who came in first was from Göppingen too. Are you going on to Gymnasium if you fail?”

This was something Hans had never discussed with anyone.

“I have no idea.… No, I don't think so.”

“Really? I'll keep on studying no matter what happens, even if I fail now. My mother will let me go to school in Ulm.”

This revelation impressed Hans immensely. Those twelve candidates from Göppingen and the three really bright ones did not make him feel any easier either. It didn't look as if he stood much of a chance.

At home he sat down and took one last look at the verbs. He had not been worried about Latin, he had been sure of himself in that field. But Greek was a different matter altogether. He certainly liked it, but he was enthusiastic about it only when it came to reading. Xenophon especially was so beautiful and fluent and fresh. It sounded light, vigorous and free-spirited, and was easy to understand. But as soon as it became a question of grammar, or of translating from German into Greek, he seemed to enter a maze of contradictory rules and forms and was as awed by the unfamiliar language as he had been during his very first Greek lesson when he had not even known the alphabet.

The Greek text the next day was fairly long and by no means easy. The German composition theme was so tricky that it could be easily misunderstood. His pen-nib was not a good one and he ruined two sheets before he could make a fair copy of the Greek. During the German composition, a desk neighbor had the gall to slip him a note with questions and jab him repeatedly in the ribs demanding the answers. Any communication with neighbors was of course strictly prohibited and an infraction meant exclusion from the examination. Trembling with fear, Hans wrote: “Leave me alone,” and turned his back on the fellow. And it was so hot. Even the supervisor who walked up and down the room without resting for a moment passed his handkerchief over his face several times. Hans sweated in his thick confirmation suit, got a headache and finally turned in his examination booklet. He was far from happy, and certain that it was full of mistakes. Most likely he had reached the end of the line as far as the examination was concerned.

He did not say a word at lunch, shrugged off all questions and made the sour face of a delinquent. His aunt tried to console him but his father became wrought up and began to annoy him. After the meal, he took the boy into another room and tried to delve into the exam once more.

“It went badly,” Hans insisted.

“Why didn't you pay more attention? You could have pulled yourself together, by God!”

Hans remained silent, but when his father began to curse, he blushed and said: “You don't understand anything about Greek.”

The worst of it was that he had an oral at two o'clock. This he dreaded more than all the other tests combined. Walking through the hot city streets on his way to the afternoon test, he began to feel quite ill. He could hardly see straight with misery, fright and dizziness.

For ten minutes he sat facing three gentlemen across a wide green table, translated a few Latin sentences, and answered their questions. For another ten minutes he sat in front of three other gentlemen, translated from the Greek, and answered another set of questions. At the end they asked him if he knew an irregularly formed aorist, but he didn't.

“You can go now. There's the door, to your right.”

He got up, but at the door he remembered the aorist. He stopped.

“Go ahead,” they called to him. “Go ahead. Or aren't you feeling well?”

“No, but the aorist just came back to me.”

He shouted the answer into the room, saw one of the gentlemen break out in laughter, and rushed with a burning face out of the room. Then he tried to recollect the questions and his answers, but everything was in a big muddle. Time and again the sight of the wide green table with the three serious old gentlemen in frock coats flashed through his mind, the open book, his hand trembling on top of it. My God, his answers must really have been quite something!

As he walked through the streets, he felt as if he had been in the city for weeks and would never be able to leave it. His father's garden at home, the mountains blue with fir trees, the fishing holes by the river seemed like something experienced ages ago. Oh, if he could only go home now. There was no sense staying anyway, he'd flunked the examination for sure.

He bought himself a sweet roll and killed the afternoon wandering through the streets, so he wouldn't have to face his father. When he finally came home they were upset, and because he looked so worn out and miserable, they gave him a bowl of broth and sent him to bed. The next morning he would have tests in mathematics and religion, then he could return home to the village.

Everything went quite well in the morning. Hans regarded it as bitter irony that he should succeed in everything on this day after having had such bad luck in his major subjects the day before. No matter, all he really wanted was to get back home.

“The exams are over, now I can leave,” he announced to his aunt.

His father wanted to stay for the day and drive to Cannstatt and have coffee in the garden of the spa there. But Hans implored him so vehemently that his father permitted him to leave that very day. He was escorted to the train, given his ticket, a kiss from his aunt and something to eat. Now he traveled exhausted, his mind a blank, through the green hill country. Only when he saw the mountain covered with dark fir trees did a feeling of joy and relief come over the boy. He looked forward to seeing Anna, the maid, and his little room, the principal, the familiar low-ceilinged schoolroom and just anything.

Fortunately no nosy acquaintances were at the station and he was able to hurry home with his little valise without anyone seeing him.

“Was it good in Stuttgart?” asked Anna.

“Good? How can an examination be good? I'm just glad to be home. Father'll be back tomorrow.”

He drank a bowl of fresh milk, fetched his bathing trunks that hung in front of the window, and ran off, though not to the meadow where all the others went swimming.

He walked far out of town to the “scale” where the water flowed slowly and deeply between high bushes. There he undressed, tested the water first with his hand and then his foot, shuddered a moment and then plunged headfirst into the cool river. Swimming slowly against the weak current, he sensed himself shedding the sweat and fear of the last days. He swam more quickly, rested, swam on and felt enveloped by a pleasant fatigue and coolness. Floating on his back he let himself drift down river again, listened to the delicate humming of the evening flies swarming about in golden circles, watched swallows slice through a sky tinted pink by the sun which had set behind the mountains. After he had dressed and ambled dreamily home, the valley was filled with shadows.

He walked past Sackmann, the shopkeeper's garden. As a little boy he'd stolen a few unripe plums there once with a few friends. He walked past Kirchner's timber yard. White fir-beams lay about under which he used to find worms for bait. Then he passed the house of Inspector Gessler on whose daughter, Emma, he'd had such a crush two years ago when they went ice-skating. She was the most delicate and best-dressed schoolgirl in town, she was his age, and there had been a time when he had longed for nothing so much as to speak to her or take her hand just once. But it had never come to much, he had been too shy. She attended a boarding school now and he hardly remembered what she looked like. All these incidents from his boyhood came back to him as from a great distance, yet so vividly that they seemed imbued with promise—like nothing he had experienced since. Those had been the days when he sat in Naschold's doorway where Liese peeled potatoes, listening to her stories; when, early on Sunday with rolled-up pants and a guilty conscience, he had gone to the dam looking for crayfish or to steal minnows from the traps, only to get a thrashing in his Sunday clothes from his father afterwards. There had been such a profusion of puzzling people and things—he had not given them any thought for such a long time. The cobbler with a twisted neck, and Strohmeyer who (everyone said) had poisoned his wife, and the adventurous “Herr” Beck, who had wandered all over the province with a walking stick and rucksack and who was addressed as “Herr” because he had once been wealthy and owned four horses and a carriage. Hans knew little more than their names and sensed dimly that this obscure small world of lanes and valleys was lost to him without ever having been replaced by something lively or worth experiencing.

Because he still had leave from school that day, he slept well into the morning and enjoyed his freedom. At noon he met his father at the station. His father still babbled blissfully about all his Stuttgart experiences.

“I'll give you anything you wish if you've passed,” he said happily. “Give it some thought.”

“No, no,” sighed the boy. “I'm sure I failed.”

“Nonsense, what's the matter with you? Tell me what you want before I change my mind.”

“I'd like to be able to go fishing again during vacation.”

“Fine. You can if you pass.”

Next day, a Sunday, there was a thunderstorm and downpour and Hans sat for hours in his room, thinking and reading. Once more he reviewed what he had accomplished in Stuttgart and again reached the conclusion that he'd had rotten luck and could have done much better. Anyway, he certainly hadn't done well enough to pass. That stupid headache! Gradually he began to feel oppressed by a growing dread, and finally he went to see his father, profoundly worried.

“Father—”

“What's the matter?”

“I'd like to ask something. About the wish. I'd rather not go fishing.”

“Why do you bring that up again now?”

“Because I … I wanted to ask whether I couldn't…”

“Out with it. What a farce. What is it?”

“Whether I could go to secondary school if I didn't pass?”

Herr Giebenrath was left speechless.

“What? Secondary school?” he exploded. “Go to secondary school? Who put that scheme into your head?”

“No one, I just thought…”

Deathly fear stood written all over his face but the father didn't notice.

“Off with you, off,” he said with an unhappy laugh. “What extravagant notions. You seem to think I'm a bank president.”

He dismissed the matter so decisively that Hans gave up and went outside in despair.

“What a kid that is,” he heard his father grumbling behind him. “It's unbelievable, now he wants to go to secondary school. Give them an inch and…”

For half an hour Hans sat on the window sill, stared at the freshly polished floor boards and tried to imagine what it would be like if he was unable to attend the academy or secondary school and continue his studies. He would be apprenticed to some cheesy shop or become a clerk in an office and his entire life he would be one of the ordinary poor people, whom he despised and wanted to surpass. His handsome, intelligent schoolboy's face twisted into an ugly grimace filled with anger and suffering. In a fury he leapt up, spat out, grabbed the Latin anthology lying by his side and with all his strength tossed it against the wall. Then he ran out into the rain.

Monday morning he went to school.

“How is everything?” asked the principal, shaking his hand. “I thought you would come to see me yesterday. How did the examination go?”