Beneath the Wheel Read online

  Hans made his first acquaintance with the brothers Finkenbein at the age of eight and remained friends with them for almost a year, despite his father's strict prohibition. Dolf and Emil Finkenbein were the sharpest street boys in town. Famous for stealing cherries and apples and minor transgressions against the forestry laws, they were also expert in all kinds of tricks and pranks. On the side they conducted a flourishing trade in bird eggs, lead pellets, young ravens, starlings and rabbits, and transgressed a town ordinance by leaving baited lines in the river overnight. They felt at home in every garden in town, for no fence was too sharply pointed, no wall so thickly crowned with broken glass that they could not easily scale it.

  Hans had become an even closer friend of Hermann Rechtenheil, who also lived in the Falcon. He was an orphan, a sickly, precocious and unusual child. Because one of his legs was shorter than the other, he could only hobble with the help of a stick and took no part in the street games. He was of slight build and had a pale, ailing face with a mouth prematurely bitter and a chin that was excessively pointed. He was an exceptionally dexterous and enthusiastic angler, a passion he communicated to Hans. Hans did not have a fishing license at that time but they went anyway, secretly, to out-of-the-way spots. If hunting is a pleasure, then poaching, as everyone knows, is a supreme delight. The hobbled Rechtenheil taught Hans to pick the right rods, pleat horsehair, dye his lines, tie running knots and sharpen fishhooks. He taught him to watch for telltale weather signs, to observe the water and muddy it with white clay, select the right bait for fastening to his hook; he also taught him to distinguish the various kinds of fish, to listen for the fish and to keep the line at the proper depth. By wordless example he communicated to Hans the delicate sense of when to pull in or let out the line. He vociferated against store-bought rods, floats and transparent lines and all other artificial paraphernalia, and he convinced Hans that there was no real fishing with tackle whose parts you had not put together yourself.

  Hans and the Finkenbein brothers had gone their separate ways after an angry quarrel. Hans' friendship with the quiet, lame Rechtenheil ended on a different note. One day in February his friend crawled into a miserable little bed, after laying his crutch across his clothes on the chair, and passed away quickly and quietly; the Falcon forgot him immediately and only Hans cherished his memory for long.

  But this death by no means exhausted the fund of odd people that inhabited the Falcon. Who for instance didn't know Rotteler, the former postman, fired for being an alcoholic, who now lay every week or so in the gutter, the cause of endless nightly uproars but otherwise as gentle as a child, always beaming with goodwill? He had given Hans a sniff from his oval snuffbox, accepted an occasional fish from him, fried them in butter and invited Hans to lunch. He was the proud owner of a stuffed buzzard with glass eyes, of an old music box that played old-fashioned dances in thin, delicate tones. And who for instance didn't know Porsch, the overaged mechanic, who always wore a tie even when he went barefoot? As the son of a strict rural teacher of the old school he knew half the Bible by heart and could stuff your ears with sayings and moral aphorisms. But neither his tendency to moralize nor his snow-white hair kept him from flirting with all the girls or getting soused regularly. When he was good and high he liked to sit on the curb by the Giebenrath house, addressing everyone by first names and showering them with proverbs.

  "Hans Giebenrath, my good son, pray listen to what I have to tell thee! How sayeth Ecclesiasticus? 'Blessed is the man that has not sinned with his mouth and whose conscience hath not condemned him. As of the green leaves on a thick tree, some fall and some grow; so is the generation of flesh and blood, one cometh to an end and another is born.' Well, now be off with you, you old scoundrel."

  In spite of all his Christian utterances, old Porsch was full of terrifying legends about ghosts and the like. He was familiar with the places they haunted and always teetered between belief and disbelief in his own stories. Generally he would launch one of them in an uncertain, boastful tone of voice, mocking both story and listener, but during the process of narration he began to hunch forward anxiously; his voice lost more and more volume and in the end became an insistent, uncanny whisper.

  What a number of ominous, obscurely alluring things this wretched little street contained! Locksmith Brendly lived there after his business failed, after his disheveled workshop went completely to pot. He sat half the day at his little window, gazing grimly out at the bustling alley; occasionally when one of the filthy, ragged neighborhood children fell into his hands, he tortured it in a fit of malicious glee, pulled its ears and hair and pinched it until its whole body was black and blue. Yet one day he was found hanging from his banister on a piece of zinc wire, looking so hideous that no one dared come near him until old Porsch, the mechanic, cut the wire with metal shears from behind, whereupon the corpse, tongue protruding, plunged head over heels down the stairs into the midst of the horrified spectators.

  Every time Hans stepped from the well-lighted broad Tannery Street into the dank darkness of Falcon, its peculiarly cloying air caused a marvelously gruesome sense of oppression, a mixture of curiosity, dread, bad conscience and blissful intimation of adventure. The Falcon was the only place where a fairy tale, a miracle or an unspeakable act of horror might happen, where magic and ghosts were credible, even likely, and where you could experience the very same painfully delicious shudder that comes with reading sagas, or the scandalous Reutlinger Folk Tales, which teachers confiscate and which recount the wicked deeds and punishments of villains like Sonnenwirtle, Schinderhannes, the Postmichel, Jack-the-Ripper and similar sinister heroes, criminals and adventurers.

  Apart from the Falcon there was one other place where you could experience and hear unusual things, become lost in dark lofts and strange rooms. That was the nearby tannery, the huge old building where the animal hides hung in the twilit lofts, where the cellars contained hidden covers and forbidden tunnels and where in the evening Liese often told her wonderful stories to all the children. What transpired at the tannery was friendlier and calmer, more human than in the Falcon, but no less mysterious. The work the tanners performed in the various holes, in the cellar, in the tannery yard and on the clay floors seemed strange and unintelligible. The vast rooms were as quiet and as intriguing as they were ominous; the powerfully built and ill-tempered master was shunned and dreaded like a cannibal, and Liese went about this remarkable building like a good fairy, a protector and mother to all children, birds, cats and little dogs, the embodiment of goodness, fairy tales and songs.

  Hans' thoughts and dreams now moved in this world to which he had been so long a stranger. He sought refuge from his great disappointment and hopelessness in a past that had been good to him. In those days he had been full of hope, had seen the world lying before him like a vast enchanted forest holding gruesome dangers, accursed treasures and emerald castles in its impenetrable depths. He had entered a little way into this wilderness but he had become weary before he had found miracles. Now he stood once more before the mysteriously twilit entrance, as an exile whose curiosity was futile.

  Hans went back to the Falcon a few times and found there the familiar dankness and vile odors, the old nooks and lightless stairwells. Hoary men and women still sat about on doorsteps, and unwashed, flaxen-haired children ran around yelling. Porsch, the mechanic, looked older than ever, no longer recognized Hans and replied to his timid greeting with derisive cackling. Grossjohann, nicknamed Garibaldi, had died, as had Lotte Frohmuller. Rotteler, the mailman, still existed. He complained that the boys had ruined his music box, proffered his snuffbox and then tried to touch Hans for a few pennies; finally he told about the brothers Finkenbein--one of them worked at the cigar factory and was drinking as heavily as his old man; the other had fled after being involved in a knife fight at a church bazaar and had not been heard of or seen for a year. All that made a pitiful impression on Hans.

  One evening Hans went over to the tannery. Something seemed to draw him
through the gateway and across the damp yard as though his childhood and all its vanished joys lay hidden in the huge old building.

  After walking up the uneven steps and across the cobblestone court, he came to the dark stairway and groped his way to the clay court where the hides were stretched to dry: there with the pungent smell of the leather he inhaled a whole world of resurgent memories. He climbed down again and looked into the backyard that contained the tannery pits and the high, narrow-roofed frames for drying tanner's bark. Liese sat at her appointed spot on the bench by the wall, a basket full of potatoes in front of her, and a few children around her, listening.

  Hans stopped in the dark doorway and cocked his ear in her direction. A great sense of peace filled the twilit tanner's garden. Apart from the soft rushing sound the river made as it flowed past, behind the wall, all there was to hear was the soft rasping of Liese's knife against the potatoes and her voice, telling stories. The children sat or crouched calmly and hardly moved. She was recounting the tale of St. Christopher, whom a child's voice called across the stream at night.

  Hans listened for a while. Then he walked slowly back through the courtyard and home. He felt that he could not become a child again after all and sit beside Liese, and from now on he avoided the tannery as much as the Falcon.

  Chapter Six

  FALL HAD LEFT its marks: isolated beech trees and birches held yellow and red torches among the dark spruces. Fog hovered in the ravines for longer periods, and the river steamed in the mornings.

  Hans, the pale ex-academician, still roamed the countryside each day. He felt listless and unhappy and avoided what little company he could have had. The doctor prescribed drops, cod liver oil, eggs and cold showers.

  No wonder that none of this helped. Every healthy person must have a goal in life and that life must have content; young Giebenrath had lost both. His father now concluded that Hans should become a clerk or be apprenticed to some craftsman. But the boy was still weak and needed to regain more of his strength. Even so, the time had come to get serious with him.

  Since the first bewildering impressions had receded and since he no longer believed in committing suicide, Hans had drifted from his hysterically unpredictable state of fear into one of uniform melancholy into which he sank deeper slowly and helplessly as if in a bog.

  Now he roamed the autumnal fields and succumbed to the influence of that season. The decline of the year in silently falling leaves, the fading of the meadows in the dense early morning fog and the ripe, weary yearning for death of all vegetation induced in Hans, as in all sick persons, a receptivity to melancholy and despair. He felt the desire to sink down, to fall asleep, to die, and suffered agonies because his youth itself made this impossible, clinging to life with its quiet obstinacy.

  He watched the trees turn yellow, brown, bare; the milk-white fog rise like smoke out of the forests and gardens where all life has died out after the last fruits are picked but in which no one paid heed to the colorfully fading asters. He watched fallen leaves cover the river where no one fished or swam any more, whose cold edge was left to the tanners alone.

  During the last few days masses of apple-pulp had been floating down-river. People were busy making cider and the fragrance of fermenting fruit juice could be smelled all over town.

  In the mill, which was furthest downstream, shoemaker Flaig had rented a small cider press and invited Hans to help him with the work.

  The yard in front of the mill was covered with cider presses, large and small, with carts, baskets and sacks full of fruit, with tubs, vats, barrels, whole mountains of brown apple-pulp, wooden levers, wheelbarrows, empty carts. The presses labored, crunched, squeaked, groaned and bleated. Most of them were lacquered green, and this green along with the yellowed pulp, the colors of the fruit in baskets, the light green river, the barefoot children and the clear autumn sun made on everyone witnessing this scene an impression of joy, zest and plenty. The crunching of the apples sounded harsh but appetizing. Anyone passing by who heard this sound could not help reaching for an apple and taking a bite. The sweet cider poured out of the pipes in a thick stream, reddish-yellow, sparkling in the sun. Anyone passing by who saw this could not help asking for a glass, taking a sip and then just standing there, his eyes moistened by a sense of well-being and sweetness which surged through him. And this sweet cider filled the air far and wide with its delicious fragrance.

  This fragrance really was the best part of the year, for it is the very essence of ripeness and harvest. It is good to suck it into your lungs with winter so near since it makes you grateful and brings back a host of memories: of the gentle May rains, summer downpours, cool morning dew in autumn, tender spring sun, blazing hot summer afternoons, the whites and rose-red blossoms and the ripe red-brown glow of fruit trees before the harvest--everything beautiful and joyful that happens in the course of a year.

  Those were marvelous days for everyone. The ostentatiously rich, inasmuch as they condescended to appear in person, weighed a juicy apple in one hand, counted their half-dozen or more sacks, sampled their cider with a silver beaker and made sure everyone heard how not a single drop of water weakened it. The poor brought only one sack full of apples, sampled their cider with a glass or an earthenware dish, added water and were no less proud or happy. Those unable to make their own cider ran from one acquaintance and neighbor's press to the other, received a glassful of cider and an apple from all of them and demonstrated by way of expert commentary that they knew their part of the business too. All the children, rich and poor, ran about with little beakers, each clutching a half-eaten apple and a hunk of bread, for, according to an old but unfounded legend, if you ate enough bread while drinking new cider you would avoid an upset stomach.

  Hundreds of voices yelled and screamed at the same time, that is, apart from the racket the children made, and all these noises contributed to a busy, excited and cheerful hubbub.

  "Hey, Hannes, come here! Over here. Just one glassful."

  "Thanks, thanks. I've the runs already."

  "What d'you pay for the hundredweight?"

  "Four marks. But they're great. Here, have a sip."

  Occasionally a small mishap occurred. A sack of apples would burst and the apples would roll into the dirt.

  "Dammit, my apples! Help me, you people!"

  Everyone would help pick up the spilled apples and only a few little punks would take advantage of the situation.

  "Keep 'em out of your pockets! Stuff yourselves but not your pockets. Just watch it, Gutedel, you clumsy oaf!"

  "Hi there, neighbor! You needn't be so stuck up. Come, have a taste."

  "It's like honey! Exactly like honey. How much are you making?"

  "Two kegs full, that's all, but it won't be the worst!"

  "It's a good thing we don't press in midsummer or all of it would be drunk up by now."

  This year too a few disgruntled old folks were present. They had not pressed their own cider for years but kept telling you about the year so-and-so when apples were so plentiful you could practically have them for nothing. Everything had been so much cheaper and better, no one had even thought of adding sugar in those days, and anyway there was just no comparison between what the trees bore then and now.

  "Those were the harvests! I had an apple tree that threw down its five-hundred weight all by its own self."

  But as bad as the times were, the disgruntled oldsters were not lax to sample the cider, and those who still had teeth were all gnawing at apples. One of them had even forced down so many apples he had gotten a miserable case of heartburn.

  "As I said," he reasoned, "I used to eat ten of 'em." And with undissembling sighs he thought upon the time when he could eat ten large apples before he got heartburn.

  Master Flaig's cider press stood in the middle of this throng. His senior apprentice lent a hand. Flaig obtained his apples from the Baden region and his cider was always of the best. He was quietly happy and stopped no one from taking his little "taste."
His children were even more cheerful; they scurried about letting themselves be carried away with the throng. But the most cheerful of all, even if he did not show it, was his apprentice. He came from a poor farmhouse up in the forest. He was glad to be in the open air again and to work up a good sweat; the good sweet cider also agreed with him. His healthy farmboy's face grinned like a satyr's mask; his shoemaker's hands were cleaner than on Sundays.

  When Hans Giebenrath first reached this area, he was subdued and afraid; he had not come gladly. But right away, at the first cider press he passed, he was given a beakerful, and from Naschold's Liese of all people. He took a sip, and while he swallowed the sweet strong cider, its taste brought back any number of smiling memories of bygone autumns and filled him with the timid yearning to join the frolicking again for a change and to have a good time. Acquaintances talked to him, glasses were proffered, and when he reached Flaig's press, the general festivity and drinking had taken hold of him and begun to transform him. He tossed the shoemaker a snappy greeting and cracked a few of the customary cider jokes. The master hid his astonishment and bade him a cheerful welcome.

  Half an hour had passed when a girl in a blue skirt approached, gave Flaig and the apprentice a bright laugh and began helping them.

  "Well, yes," said the shoemaker, "that's my niece from Heilbronn. Of course she's used to a different kind of harvest what with all the vineyards where she lives."

  She was about eighteen or nineteen years old, agile and gay, not tall but well built and with a good figure. Her warm dark eyes shone cheerful and intelligent in her round face with its pretty, kissable mouth. Although she certainly looked like a healthy and lively Heilbronn girl, she did not in the least give the impression of being a relative of the devout shoemaker. She was very much of this world and her eyes did not look like the kind that are glued to the Bible at night.