On the whole I had not a bad bringing up, rather I had none at all.
When I was a good, devout, obedient, apt child, my parents praised me;
when I was the reverse they gave me a downright scolding. Praise almost
always did me good and made me feel inches taller; for some children
like plants shoot up only in sunshine.
But my father was of opinion that I ought not to grow in height only,
but also in breadth, and that to this end reserve and austerity were
good.
My mother was love itself. My father may have been the same by nature,
but he did not know how to express his warm and loving heart. With all
his gentleness this care and labour-laden man had a taciturn, serious
bearing: only later, when he judged me man enough to appreciate it, did
he ever give his rich humour free play before me.
During those years when I was tearing my first dozen pairs of breeches,
he concerned himself with me but little except when I had done
something naughty; then he allowed his severity full play. His
harshness and my punishment generally consisted in his standing over
me, and in loud angry tones, holding up my sin before me and pointing
out the punishment I deserved.
When such an outburst occurred, it was my habit to plant myself in
front of my father and remain standing before him as if petrified, with
my arms hanging down, and looking steadily in his angry face
throughout the vehement rebuke. In my inmost heart I always repented my
wrongdoing and had the clearest sense of guilt; but I also remember
another feeling that used to come over me during those homilies: a
strange trembling, a sense of charm and ecstasy when the storm burst
over my head. Tears came to my eyes and trickled down my cheeks; but I
stood rooted there like a little tree, gazing up at my father, and was
filled with an inexplicable sense of wellbeing, that increased mightily
the longer and louder he thundered.
When after such a scene weeks went by without my concocting mischief,
and my father, kind and silent as ever, went about his business without
taking notice of me, the longing to devise something to put him in a
rage gradually began and ripened in me again. This was not for the sake
of vexing him, for I loved him passionately; nor yet from malice; but
from another cause which I did not understand at the time.
Thus it once happened on the sacred eve of Christmas. In the previous
summer in Maria Zell[2] my father had bought a little black cross on
which hung a Christus in cast lead, and all the instruments of the
Passion in the same material. This treasure had been put safely away
until Christmas Eve, when my father brought it out of his press and set
it on the little house-altar. I profited by the time when my parents
and the rest of our people were still busy on the farm outside and in
the kitchen making ready for the great festival, and, not without
endangering my sound limbs, I reached the crucifix down from the wall,
and crouched down behind the stove with it, and began taking it to
pieces. It was a rare joy to me when with the aid of my little
pocket-knife I loosened first the ladder, then the pincers and hammer,
then Peter's cock, and at last the dear Christ Himself from the cross.
The separated parts seemed to me much more interesting now than before
as a whole; but when I had finished and wanted to put the things
together again and could not, I began to grow hot inside and thought I
was choking. Would it stop at a mere scolding this time? To be sure, I
told myself: the black cross is now much finer than before; there is a
black cross with nothing on it in the chapel in Hohenwang too, and
people go there to pray. Besides, who wants a crucified Lord at
Christmas time? At that time He ought to be lying in the manger--the
Priest said so; and I must see about that now.
I bent the legs of the leaden Christus back and the arms over the
breast, then laid Him reverently in my mother's work-basket, and so set
my crib upon the house-altar; while I hid the cross in the straw of my
parents' bed--forgetting that the basket would betray the taking down
from the cross.
Fate swiftly overtook me. My mother was first to observe how absurdly
the work-basket had got up among the Saints to-day!
"Who can have found the crucifix in his way up there?" asked my father
at the very same moment.
I was standing a little apart, and I felt like a creature thirsting for
strong wine to drink. But at the same time a strange fear warned me to
get still farther into the background if possible.
My father approached me, asking almost humbly if I did not know where
the crucifix had got to? I stood bolt upright before him and looked him
in the face. He repeated his question. I pointed towards the bed-straw;
tears came, but I believe there was no quiver of my lips.
My father searched for and found it, and was not angry, only surprised
when he saw the mishandling of the sacred relic. My craving for the
strong bitter wine grew apace. My father put the bare cross on the
table.
"I can see," he said, speaking with perfect calmness, and he took his
hat down from the nail, "I can see he'll have to be thoroughly punished
at last. When even the Lord Christ Himself is not safe----! Mind you
stay in the room, boy!" he bade me darkly, and then went out to the
door.
"Run after him and beg for pardon!" cried my mother to me. "He's gone
to cut a birch-rod."
I was as if welded to the floor. With horrible clearness I saw what
would befall me, but was quite incapable of taking a single step in
self-defence. My mother went about her work; I stood alone in the
darkening room, the mutilated crucifix on the table before me. The
least sound scared me. Inside the old case of the Black Forest clock
standing there on the floor against the wall, the weights rattled as
the clock struck five. At last I heard someone outside knocking the
snow off his shoes; that was my father's step. When he entered the room
with the birch-rod I had vanished.
He went into the kitchen and demanded in abrupt and angry tones where
the rascal was? Then began a search throughout the whole house; in the
living-room the bed and the corner by the stove and the great coffer
were rummaged through. I heard them moving about in the next room, in
the loft overhead. I heard orders given to search through the very
mangers in the byres and the hay and straw in the barns; they were to
go out to the shed, too, and bring the fellow straight to his
father--he should remember this Christmas Eve all the rest of his life!
But they came back empty-handed. Two farm-hands were to be sent about
among the neighbours; but my mother called out that if I had gone over
the open and through the forest to a neighbour I should certainly be
frozen to death, for my little coat and hat were still in the room.
What grief and vexation children were!
They went away, the house was nearly empty and in the dark room there
was nothing visible but the grey squares of the windows. I was hidden
in the clock-case and could peep through the chinks. I had squeezed in
through the little door meant for winding up the works and let myself
down inside the panelling, so that I was now standing upright in the
clock-case.
What anguish I suffered in my hiding-place! That no good could come of
it all, and that the hourly increasing commotion was certainly working
towards an hourly more dangerous conclusion, I clearly perceived. I
bitterly blamed the work-basket which had betrayed me from the very
beginning, and I blamed the little crucifix; but I quite forgot to
blame my own folly. Hours passed, I was still in my up-on-end coffin,
already the icicles of the clock-weights touched the crown of my head,
and I had to duck myself down as well as I could lest the stopping of
the clock should lead to its winding up and thereby the discovery of
myself. For my parents had at last come back into the room again and
kindled a light and were beginning to quarrel about me.
"I don't know anywhere else to look for him," said my father, and he
sank exhausted on a chair.
"Just think, if he's gone astray in the forest, or if he's lying under
the snow!" cried my mother, and broke into audible weeping.
"Don't say such things!" said my father, "I can't bear to hear it."
"You can't bear to hear it, and yet you yourself have driven him away
with your harshness!"
"I shouldn't have broken any bones with these twigs," he replied, and
brought the birch-rod swishing down upon the table: "but if I catch him
now, I'll break a hedge-pole across his back!"
"Do it, do it!--perhaps it will never hurt him any more!" said my
mother, and wept again. "Do you think that children were given you
only to vent your anger on? In that case our dear Lord is quite right
when He takes them again betimes to Himself. One must love little
children if they're to come to any good!"
Thereupon he said, "Who says that I don't love the boy? I love him with
my whole heart, God knows, but I don't care to tell him so: I don't
care to, and what's more I can't. It doesn't hurt him half as much as
me when I have to punish him, that I _know_!"
"Well, I'm going out for another look!" sighed my mother.
"I can't rest here, neither!" he said.
"You must just swallow a spoonful of warm soup, to please me--it's
supper-time," she said.
"I couldn't eat now, I'm fairly at my wits' end," said my father, and
knelt down by the table and began to pray silently.
My mother went into the kitchen to get together my warm clothes for the
fresh search in case they should find me anywhere, half frozen. The
room was silent again, and I, in the clock-case, felt as if my heart
must burst for sorrow and anguish. Suddenly, in the midst of his
prayer, my father began to sob convulsively. His head fell on his arm
and his whole body shook.