Beneath the Wheel Page 14

  Hans could think of no reason why that evening came back to him now, nor why its memory was so overpoweringly beautiful, nor why it made him feel so miserably sad. He did not realize that his childhood took on this shape and dress once more before departing from him, leaving only the sting of a happiness that would never return. All he perceived was that these memories did not fit in with his thoughts of Emma and of the previous evening and that something had happened that could not be combined with his childhood happiness. He thought he could see the golden spikes on the flags glisten once more in the sunlight and hear his friend August laugh, and all of that seemed so glad and cheerful in retrospect that he leaned against the rough bark of the great spruce and broke into a fit of hopeless sobbing which brought him momentary relief and consolation.

  Around noon he went to look up August, who had just been made senior apprentice. He had filled out considerably and grown much taller since Hans saw him last. Hans told him of his father's suggestion.

  "That's a problem," was August's first response. He put on an experienced, worldly-wise expression. "That's a problem, all right ... because you're not what I would call a muscle-man. The first day you'll be standing at the smithy all day long swinging the forge-hammer, and a hammer like that is no soup ladle. You'll be lugging the heavy iron around all day, you'll clean up in the evening, and handling a file isn't child's play either, you'll only get the oldest and worst files to use until you know the ropes, files that don't cut anything and are as smooth as a baby's ass."

  Hans' confidence dropped instantly.

  "Well, do you think I should forget the idea?" he asked timidly.

  "Ho there! That's not what I said. Don't drop your pants. I just meant that at the beginning it's no child's play. But otherwise, well, being a mechanic can be pretty good, you know. And you've got to have a head on your shoulders, or you'll just be a blacksmith. Here, have a look."

  He took out a few small finely worked machine parts made of glistening steel and showed them to Hans.

  "Yes, you can't be off a half-millimeter with these. All made by hand except for the screws. It means eyes open and a steady hand! All they need is some polishing and tempering; then they're ready."

  "Yes, that's beautiful. If I just knew..."

  August laughed.

  "You afraid? Well, an apprentice is chewed out lots of the time. No two ways about that. But I'll be here and I'll help you and if you start next Friday I'll just have finished my second year and'll get my first wages on Saturday and on Sunday we'll celebrate with beer and a cake and everything. You too, then, you'll see for yourself what it's like here. And besides, we used to be friends before."

  At lunch Hans informed his father he'd like to become a mechanic and asked whether he could start working in a week.

  "Well, fine," said Giebenrath senior, and in the afternoon he took Hans to Schuler's workshop and signed him up.

  By the time dusk set in, Hans had almost forgotten his new job. All he could think of was meeting Emma in the evening. This took his breath away. The hours passed too slowly, then too quickly; he drifted into the encounter like a boatman into rapids. All he had for supper was a glass of milk. Then he left.

  It was just like the night before: dark, drowsy streets, dimly lit windows, lanterns' twilight, couples ambling.

  At the shoemaker's garden fence he became apprehensive, flinched at every noise. Standing there he felt like a thief listening in the dark. He had not waited more than a minute when Emma stood before him, stroked his hair, then opened the gate for him to come into the garden. He entered carefully. She drew him after her quietly along the path bordered by bushes, through the back door into the dark hallway.

  There they sat down on the topmost step of the cellar stairs. It was a while before they could make each other out in the dark. The girl was in high spirits, chattering and whispering. She had been kissed before, she knew something about love; this shy, affectionate boy was just right for her. She took his head in her hands and kissed his eyes, cheeks, and when it was the mouth's turn she again kissed him so long and so fervently that the boy leaned dizzy, limp, without a will of his own against her. She laughed softly and pinched his ear.

  She chatted on and on. He listened not knowing what it was he heard. She stroked his arm, his hair, his neck and his hands, she leaned her cheek against his and her head on his shoulder. He kept silent and let everything happen, filled as he was with a sweet dread and a profound and happy fearfulness, only flinching occasionally, softly, briefly, like someone in a fever.

  "What a boyfriend you are!" she laughed. "You don't try anything at all."

  And she took his hand and stroked her neck with it, passed it through her hair and laid it against her breast, pressing against it. He felt the soft bosom and the unfamiliar heaving, closed his eyes and felt himself swooning into infinite depths.

  "No! No more!" he said fending her off as she tried to kiss him anew. She laughed.

  And she drew him to her and hugged him so tight that, feeling her body against his, he went out of his mind.

  "Don't you love me?" she asked.

  He could not say a thing. He wanted to say yes but could only nod--so he just kept nodding for a while.

  Once more she took his hand and with a laugh placed it under her bodice. When he felt the pulse and breath of another life so hot and close to him, his heart stopped, he was sure he was dying, he was breathing so heavily. He drew back his hand and groaned: "I've got to go home now."

  When he tried to get up he began to totter and nearly fell down the cellar stairs.

  "What's the matter?" asked Emma, astonished.

  "I don't know. I feel so tired."

  He did not notice how she propped him up on the way to the garden gate, pressing against him, nor when she said good night and closed the gate behind him. Somehow he found his way home through the streets, he did not know how, as though a great storm dragged him along or as though a mighty flood tossed him back and forth.

  He saw pale houses, mountain ridges above them, spruce tops, night blackness and big calm stars. He felt the wind blow, heard the river stream past the bridge posts, saw the gardens, pale houses, night blackness, lanterns and stars reflected in the water.

  On the bridge he had to sit down. He felt so tired he didn't believe he'd make it home. He sat down on the railing, listened to the water rubbing against the pilings, roaring over the weirs, cascading down the milldam. His hands were cold, his chest and throat worked fitfully, blood shot into his brain and flooded back to his heart leaving his head dizzy. He came home, found his room, lay down and fell asleep at once, tumbling from one depth to the next in his dreams--through immense spaces. Around midnight he awoke, exhausted and in pain. He lay half-waking, half-sleeping until early dawn, filled with an unquenchable longing, tossed hither and thither by uncontrollable forces until his whole agony and oppression exploded into a prolonged fit of weeping. He fell asleep once more on tear-soaked pillows.

  Chapter Seven

  HERR GIEBENRATH applied himself to his work at the cider press with dignity and considerable noise; Hans helped him. Two of Flaig's children had responded to the invitation. They were sorting apples, shared a little glass between them with which they sampled cider, and clutched big hunks of bread in their fists. But Emma had not come with them.

  Not until his father had been gone for half an hour with the cooper did Hans dare ask where she was.

  "Where's Emma? Didn't she feel like coming?"

  It took a few moments for the children to swallow and clear their throats.

  "She's gone, she has," they said and nodded.

  "Gone? Gone where?"

  "Home."

  "With the train?"

  The children nodded eagerly.

  "When?"

  "This morning."

  The children again reached for their apples. Hans fumbled about at the press, stared into the cider keg until the truth slowly dawned on him.

  When his father
came back, they worked and laughed, and finally the children said thank you and ran off. At dusk, everyone went home.

  After supper Hans sat alone in his room. It turned ten, then eleven o'clock, and he did not light his lamp. Then he fell into a long deep sleep.

  At first, when he awoke later than usual, he had only an indistinct feeling of an accident or loss. Then he remembered Emma. She had left without saying good-bye, without leaving a message. She must have known when she would be leaving the last night he'd seen her. He remembered her laughter and her kisses and the accomplished way she had of surrendering herself. She hadn't taken him seriously at all.

  The pain and anger over this loss and the restlessness of his inflamed but unsatisfied passion came together in a single agonizing confusion. The torment drove him from the house into the garden, then onto the streets and into the woods and finally back home again.

  In this way he discovered--perhaps too soon--his share of the secret of love, and it contained little sweetness and much bitterness: days filled with fruitless lamentation, poignant memories, inconsolable brooding; nights during which a pounding heart and tightness around the chest would not let him sleep or plagued him with dreadful nightmares; nightmares during which the incomprehensible agitation of his blood turned into haunting images, into deathly, strangling arms, into hot-eyed fantastic ogres, dizzying precipices, giant flaming eyes. Waking, he found himself alone in his room, surrounded by the loneliness of a cool fall night. Hans suffered with longing for his girl and tried to suppress his moans in a tear-stained pillow.

  The Friday when he was to begin his apprenticeship drew near. His father bought him a set of blue overalls and a blue woolen cap. Hans tried the outfit on and felt quite ridiculous in it. Whenever he passed the school house, the principal's house or the math teacher's, Flaig's workshop or the vicarage, he felt quite wretched. So much effort, so much pride and ambition and hope and dreaming--and all for nothing. All of it only so that now, later than any of his former schoolmates and ridiculed by all, he could become the junior apprentice in a mechanic's workshop.

  What would Heilner have said?

  It took some time for him to reconcile himself to his blue mechanic's outfit but finally he began looking forward a little to the Friday on which he would be initiated. At least he would be experiencing something again!

  Yet these hopes were not much more than glimmers in a generally gloomy sky. He could not forget the girl's departure, and his blood seemed even less willing to forget the agitation of those days. It gave him no peace and clamored for more, for relief from the awakened desire. And so time passed with oppressive slowness.

  Fall was more beautiful than ever--with a gentle sun, silvery mornings, colorful bright middays, clear evenings. The more distant mountains assumed a deep velvety blue, the chestnut trees shone golden yellow and the wild grapevine curtained walls and fences purple.

  Hans was in a state of restless flight from himself. In the daytime he roamed through town and fields. He avoided people since he felt they could detect his lovelorn state. But in the evening he went out into the streets, made eyes at every maid and crept guiltily after every pair of lovers. The magic of life and everything he had ever sought seemed to have been within reach with Emma. But even with her it had eluded his grasp. If she were with him now, so he believed, he would not be timid; no, he would tear every secret from her and completely penetrate that garden of love whose gate had been slammed in his face. His imagination had become inextricably tangled in this murky and dangerous thicket: straying despondently, his imagination preferred stubborn self-torment to acknowledging the existence of clear friendly spaces outside this confining, magic circle.

  In the end he was glad when the dreaded Friday arrived. With no time to spare in the morning, he donned his new blue outfit and cap and walked down Tanner Street, a little timidly, toward Schuler's workshop. A few acquaintances looked at him inquisitively and one even asked: "What's happened, you becoming a locksmith?"

  The shop already resounded with the din of work. The master himself was busy forging. He had a piece of red-hot iron on the anvil and one of the journeymen was wielding the heavy sledge hammer, the master himself only executing the finer, form-giving blows, handling the tongs which held the iron, and striking so rhythmically with the lighter forge hammer that it rang out through the wide-open door clear and bright into the morning.

  The senior journeyman and August both stood at the long workbench black with grease and iron filings, each of them busy at his vise. Along the ceiling purred the rapidly moving belts that drove the lathes, grindstone, bellows and drilling machine--all driven by water power. August nodded to his companion as he entered and motioned to him to wait at the door until the master had time for him.

  Hans gazed timidly at the forge, lathes, the whirring belts and the neutral gears. When the master had finished forging his piece of iron he came over and extended his warm, callused hand. "You hang your cap up there," he said and pointed to an empty nail on the wall. "Now come with me. There's your place and your vise." With that he led Hans to the vise farthest in the back. He demonstrated how a vise is handled and how you keep your bench and tools in order.

  "Your father already told me that you're no Hercules, and I guess he's right. Well, until you're a little stronger you don't have to work at the forge."

  He reached under the workbench and drew out a cast-iron cogwheel.

  "You can start on that. The wheel is still rough from the casting and has little knobs and ridges all over. They've got to be filed off, otherwise the fine tools will be ruined later on."

  He clamped the wheel into the vise, picked up an old file and showed Hans how it was done.

  "Well, now you take it from here. But don't you use any other of my files! That'll keep you busy till lunch break. Then you can show it to me. And while you're working don't pay attention to anything but your instructions. An apprentice doesn't need to have ideas of his own."

  Hans started to file.

  "Stop!" shouted the master. "Not like that. You put your left hand on top of the file. Or are you a lefty?"

  "No."

  "Well, all right. It'll work out somehow."

  He went back to his vise, the one nearest the door, and Hans tried to do his best.

  As he made his first strokes he was surprised how soft the ridges were and how easily they came off. Then he realized that only the topmost brittle coating was flaking off and the granular iron he had to file off was underneath. He pulled himself together and kept on filing. Not since the days of his boyhood hobbies had he tasted the pleasure of seeing something concrete and useful take shape under his hands.

  "Not so fast!" shouted the master over the din. "You've got to file in rhythm: one-two, one-two, and press on it, or you'll ruin the file."

  The oldest of the journeymen had to go to the lathe, and Hans could not keep from glancing in his direction. A drill bit was fitted into the chuck, the belt was moved into position, and the shining drill buzzed while the journeyman severed a hair-thin glinting steel shaving from it.

  All around lay tools, pieces of iron, steel and brass, half-completed jobs, shining little wheels, chisels, drills, drill bits and awls of every shape and size; next to the forge hung the hammers, top and bottom tools, anvil, tongs and soldering irons. Along the walls lay rows of files and cutting files; along the shelves lay oil rags, little brooms, emery files, iron saws and oil cans, soldering fluid, boxes with nails and screws. Every moment someone or other had to go to the grindstone.

  Hans noted with satisfaction that his hands were already black and hoped that his overalls would follow suit, for they still looked ridiculously new and blue next to the black and patched outfits of the others.

  Later on in the morning people coming from the outside brought even more activity into the shop. Workers came from the nearby garment factory to have small parts ground or repaired. A farmer came and asked about a mangle of his they were repairing and cursed blasphemously when
it was not ready. Then a smartly dressed factory owner came and the master took him to a room off to the side.

  In the midst of all this, people, wheels and belts went on working smoothly, evenly, and thus for the first time in his life Hans understood labor's song of songs--work. It has--at least for the beginner--something enchanting and pleasantly intoxicating as he beholds his own small person and own small life become a part of a greater rhythm.

  At nine o'clock they had a fifteen-minute break and everyone received a chunk of bread and glass of cider. Only now could August greet the new apprentice. He talked to him encouragingly and enthused some more about the upcoming Sunday on which he wanted to treat his friends to a great spree with his first wages. Hans asked him what kind of wheel that was which he was filing smooth and was told that it was part of the watch-works of a tower clock. August was about to demonstrate the part it would play in the mechanism when the senior journeyman picked up his file again and they all quickly went back to their places.

  Between ten and eleven Hans felt himself tiring. His knees and his right arm ached a little. He kept shifting his weight from one leg to the other and surreptitiously stretched his limbs, but it did not help much. So he put down the file for a moment and rested against the vise. No one was paying any attention to him. As he stood there resting and heard the belts whirring above him, he felt slightly dizzy and he closed his eyes for a minute. Just then the master came up behind him.