I will begin my story with an event of the time when I was ten or
eleven years old and went to the Latin school of our little town. Much
of the old-time fragrance is wafted back to me, but my sensations
are not unmixed, as I pass in review my memories--dark streets and
bright houses and towers, the striking of clocks and the features of
men, comfortable and homely rooms, rooms full of secrecy and dread of
ghosts. I sense again the atmosphere of cosy warmth, of rabbits and
servant-girls, of household remedies and dried fruit. Two worlds passed
there one through the other. From two poles came forth day and night.
The one world was my home, but it was even narrower than that, for it
really comprised only my parents. This world was for the most part
very well known to me; it meant mother and father, love and severity,
good example and school. It was a world of subdued lustre, of clarity
and cleanliness; here were tender friendly words, washed hands, clean
clothes and good manners. Here the morning hymn was sung, and Christmas
was kept.
In this world were straight lines and paths which led into the future;
here were duty and guilt, evil conscience and confession, pardon and
good resolutions, love and adoration, Bible texts and wisdom. To this
world our future had to belong, it had to be crystal-pure, beautiful
and well ordered.
The other world, however, began right in the midst of our own
household, and was entirely different, had another odor, another
manner of speech and made different promises and demands. In this
second world were servant-girls and workmen, ghost stories and breath
of scandal. There was a gaily colored flood of monstrous, tempting,
terrible, enigmatical goings-on, things such as the slaughter house and
prison, drunken men and scolding women, cows in birth-throes, plunging
horses, tales of burglaries, murders, suicides. All these beautiful and
dreadful, wild and cruel things were round about, in the next street,
in the next house. Policemen and tramps passed to and fro, drunken
men beat their wives, crowds of young girls flowed out of factories
in the evening, old women were able to bewitch you and make you ill,
robbers dwelt in the wood, incendiaries were rounded up by mounted
policemen--everywhere seethed and reeked this second, passionate world,
everywhere, except in our rooms, where mother and father were. And
that was a good thing. It was wonderful that here in our house there
were peace, order and repose, duty and a good conscience, pardon and
love--and wonderful that there were also all the other things, all
that was loud and shrill, sinister and violent, yet from which one
could escape with one bound to mother.
And the oddest thing was, how closely the two worlds bordered each
other, how near they both were! For instance, our servant Lina, as
she sat by the sitting-room door at evening prayers, and sang the
hymn with her bright voice, her freshly washed hands laid on her
smoothed-out apron, belonged absolutely to father and mother, to us,
to what was bright and proper. Immediately after, in the kitchen or in
the woodshed, when she was telling me the tale of the headless dwarf,
or when she quarreled with the women of the neighborhood in the little
butcher’s shop, then she was another person, belonged to the other
world, and was enveloped in mystery. It was the same with everything
and everyone, especially with myself. To be sure, I belonged to the
bright, respectable world, I was my parents’ child, but the other
world was present in everything I saw and heard, and I also lived in
it, although it was often strange and foreign to me, although one had
there regularly a bad conscience and anxiety. Sometimes I even liked
to live in the forbidden world best, and often the homecoming into the
brightness--however necessary and good it might be--seemed almost like
a return to something less beautiful, to something more uninteresting
and desolate. At times I realized this: my aim in life was to grow
up like my father and mother, as bright and pure, as systematic and
superior. But the road to attainment was long, you had to go to school
and study and pass tests and examinations. The road led past the other
dark world and through it, and it was not improbable that you would
remain there and be buried in it. There were stories of prodigal sons
to whom that had happened--I was passionately fond of reading them.
There the return home to father and to the respectable world was always
so liberating and so sublime, I quite felt that this alone was right
and good and desirable. But still that part of the stories which dealt
with the wicked and profligate was by far the most alluring, and if one
had been allowed to acknowledge it openly, it was really often a great
pity that the prodigal repented and was redeemed. But one did not say
that, nor did one actually think it. It was only present somehow or
other as a presentiment or a possibility, deep down in one’s feelings.
When I pictured the devil to myself, I could quite well imagine him
down below in the street, openly or in disguise, or at the annual fair
or in the public house, but I could never imagine him with us at home.
My sisters also belonged to the bright world. It often seemed to me
that they approached more nearly to father and mother; that they were
better and nicer mannered than myself, without so many faults. They had
their failings, they were naughty, but that did not seem to me to be
deep-rooted. It was not the same as for me, for whom the contact with
evil was strong and painful, and the dark world so much nearer. My
sisters, like my parents, were to be treated with regard and respect.
If you had had a quarrel with them, your own conscience accused you
afterwards as the wrongdoer and the cause of the squabble, as the
one who had to beg pardon. For in opposing my sisters I offended my
parents, the representatives of goodness and law. There were secrets
which I would much sooner have shared with the most depraved street
urchins than with my sisters. On good, bright days when I had a good
conscience, it was often delightful to play with my sisters, to be
gentle and nice to them, and to see myself under a halo of goodness.
That was how it must be if you were an angel! That was the most sublime
thing we knew, to be an angel, surrounded by sweet sounds and fragrance
like Christmas and happiness. But, oh, how seldom were such days and
hours perfect! Often when we were playing one of the nice, harmless,
proper games I was so vehement and impetuous, and I so annoyed my
sisters that we quarreled and were unhappy. Then when I was carried
away by anger I did and said things, the wickedness of which I felt
deep and burning within me, even while I was doing and saying them.
Then came sad, dark hours of remorse and contrition, the painful moment
when I begged pardon, then again a beam of light, a peaceful, grateful
happiness without discord, for minutes or hours.
I used to go to the Latin school. The sons of the mayor and of the head
forester were in my class and sometimes used to come to our house. They
were wild boys, but still they belonged to the world of goodness and of
propriety. In spite of that I had close relations with neighbors’ boys,
children of the public school, whom in general we despised. With one of
these I must begin my story.
One half-holiday--I was little more than ten at the time--I went
out with two boys of the neighborhood. A public-school boy of about
thirteen years joined our party; he was bigger than we were, a coarse
and robust fellow, the son of a tailor. His father was a drunkard, and
the whole family had a bad reputation. I knew Frank Kromer well, I
was afraid of him, and was very much displeased when he joined us. He
had already acquired manly ways, and imitated the gait and manner of
speech of the young factory hands. Under his leadership we stepped down
to the bank of the stream and hid ourselves from the world under the
first arch of the bridge. The little bank between the vaulted bridge
wall and the sluggishly flowing water was composed of nothing but
trash, of broken china and garbage, of twisted bundles of rusty iron
wire and other rubbish. You sometimes found there useful things. We
had to search the stretch under Frank Kromer’s direction and show him
what we found. He then either kept it himself or threw it away into the
water. He bid us note whether the things were of lead, brass or tin.
Everything we found of this description he kept for himself, as well as
an old horn comb. I felt very uneasy in his company, not because I knew
that father would have forbidden our playing together had he known of
it, but through fear of Frank himself. I was glad that he treated me
like the others. He commanded and we obeyed; it seemed habitual to me,
although that was the first time I was with him.
At last we sat down. Frank spat into the water and looked like a full
grown man; he spat through a gap in his teeth, directing the sputum in
any direction he wished. He began a conversation, and the boys vied
with one another in bragging of schoolboy exploits and pranks. I was
silent, and yet, if I said nothing, I was afraid of calling attention
to myself and inciting Kromer’s anger against me. My two comrades had
from the beginning turned their backs on me, and had sided with him;
I was a stranger among them, and I felt my clothes and manner to be
a provocation. It was impossible that Frank should like me, a Latin
schoolboy and the son of a gentleman, and the other two, I felt, as
soon as it came to the point, would disown me and leave me in the lurch.
At last, through mere fright, I also began to relate a story. I
invented a long narration of theft, of which I made myself the hero. In
a garden by the mill on the corner, I recounted, I had one night with
the help of a friend stolen a whole sack of apples, and those none of
the ordinary sorts, but russets and golden pippins, the very best. In
the danger of the moment I had recourse to the telling of this story,
which I invented easily and recounted readily. In order not to have to
finish off immediately, and so perhaps be led from bad to worse, I gave
full scope to my inventive powers. One of us, I continued, always had
to stand sentinel, while the other was throwing down apples from the
tree, and the sack had become so heavy that at last we had to open it
again and leave half the apples behind; but we returned at the end of
half an hour and took the rest away with us.
I hoped at the end to gain some little applause, I had warmed to my
work and had let myself go in my narration. The two small boys waited
quiet and expectant, but Frank Kromer looked at me penetratingly
through half-closed eyes and asked me in a threatening tone:
“Is that true?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Really and truly?”
“Yes, really and truly,” I asserted defiantly, though inwardly I was
stifling through fear.
“Can you swear to it?”