Beneath the Wheel Read online

  "You've got to listen to me," he said. "I was a coward at that time and I let you down. But you know what I'm like. I had made up my mind to stay at the top of the class and if possible to graduate at the head of it. You call me a grind; all right, perhaps that's true. But that was my kind of ideal. I just didn't know any better."

  Heilner closed his eyes, and Hans continued in a very soft voice: "You see, I am sorry. I don't know whether you want to become my friend again but you have to forgive me."

  Heilner said nothing and did not open his eyes. Everything that was good and glad in him wanted to greet his friend with happy laughter; but he had become so used to playing a harsh and lonely role that he kept the appropriate mask on his face a while longer. Hans persisted.

  "You absolutely have to, Heilner! I'd rather end up at the bottom of the class than have things go on like this. If you want, we can become friends again and show the others that we don't need them."

  At that point Heilner returned the pressure of Hans' hand and opened his eyes.

  After a few days, he too left the infirmary. The newly fashioned friendship caused considerable excitement in the monastery. The two friends were to experience some very unusual weeks together, weeks during which they did not actually have any significant experiences but were filled with a strangely happy feeling of belonging together and being of one mind. This was different from their old friendship. The long separation had changed both of them. Hans had become gentler, warmer, more enthusiastic; Heilner had grown more vigorous and masculine, and both had missed each other so much that their reunion seemed to them like a great experience and a delicious gift.

  Both of these precocious boys shyly, though unconsciously, tasted in their friendship the intimation of the delicate secrets of a first love affair. In addition, their pact had the harsh charm of their growing masculinity and the equally harsh spice of defying the entire student body, whose numerous friendships were still harmless games. The students disliked Heilner and could not understand Hans.

  The more intimate and happier Hans became with his friend, the more alienated he became from school. The new sensation of happiness rushed through his blood and thoughts like young wine, and Livy and Homer lost all importance and attraction by comparison. The teachers watched in horror as their model student turned into a problem child and succumbed to the bad influence of the dubious Heilner. Teachers dread nothing so much as unusual characteristics in precocious boys during the initial stages of their adolescence. A certain streak of genius makes an ominous impression on them, for there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his class than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians and sober decent folk. The question of who suffers more acutely at the other's hands--the teacher at the boy's, or vice versa--who is more of a tyrant, more of a tormentor, and who profanes parts of the other's soul, student or teacher, is something you cannot examine without remembering your own youth in anger and shame. Yet that is not what concerns us here. We have the consolation that among true geniuses the wounds almost always heal. As their personalities develop, they create their art in spite of school. Once dead, and enveloped by the comfortable nimbus of remoteness, they are paraded by the schoolmasters before other generations of students as showpieces and noble examples. Thus the struggle between rule and spirit repeats itself year after year from school to school. The authorities go to infinite pains to nip the few profound or more valuable intellects in the bud. And time and again the ones who are detested by their teachers and frequently punished, the runaways and those expelled, are the ones who afterwards add to society's treasure. But some--and who knows how many?--waste away with quiet obstinacy and finally go under.

  According to the good old school precept, as soon as these two strange young boys, Hans and Heilner, came under suspicion, they were treated with redoubled harshness. Only the headmaster, who was proud of Hans as his most zealous student of Hebrew, made an awkward attempt to save him. He invited Hans to his study, the handsome and picturesque belvedere that had been the prior's quarters where, legend has it, Doctor Faustus, who came from the nearby town of Knittlingen, long ago enjoyed his share of Elffinger wine. The headmaster was not a one-sided man, he did not lack insight and practical wisdom, and even possessed a certain measure of goodwill toward his charges whom he liked to call by their first names. His chief failing was a strong streak of vanity, which often let him give in to the temptation of performing little bravura acts on the lectern and did not permit him to suffer to see his own power and authority questioned. He could brook no interference, admit no mistakes. Thus boys who had no wills of their own, and those who were dishonest, got along famously with him. For the same reason, the strong-minded and honest ones had a very hard time of it because the merest hint of disagreement irritated him. He was a virtuoso in the role of fatherly friend with an encouraging look and a deeply moving tone of voice, and it was this role he was playing now.

  "Have a seat, Giebenrath," he said in a man-to-man tone, once he had given a vigorous handshake to the boy who had entered so timidly. "I'd like to have a word with you. But I can call you Hans, can't I?"

  "Please do, sir."

  "You have probably noticed yourself that your work has not been quite up to par in the last few weeks--at least in Hebrew. Until a short while ago you probably were our best Hebraist, that's why it hurts me to notice such a sudden slackening off. Perhaps Hebrew doesn't give you as much pleasure as it used to?"

  "Oh no, but it does, sir."

  "Think about it a little! Things like that do happen. Perhaps your interest has switched to another subject?"

  "No it hasn't, sir."

  "Really not? Well, then we have to look for a cause elsewhere. Couldn't you help me find it?"

  "I don't know.... I've always done my assignments...."

  "Of course, my boy, of course. But differendum est inter et inter. Naturally you've done your assignments, you didn't have much choice, did you? But you used to accomplish a great deal more than that. You worked harder, or at least you were more interested. And I am asking myself why has your industry lapsed all of a sudden? You aren't sick, are you?"

  "No."

  "Or do you have headaches? You don't look as well as you sometimes do."

  "Yes, I have headaches every so often."

  "Is the daily work load too much for you?"

  "Oh no, by no means."

  "Or are you doing outside reading? Be honest."

  "No, sir. I read hardly anything on the side."

  "But then I don't quite understand, my dear boy. Something must be wrong somewhere. Will you promise me to make a little more of an effort?"

  Hans placed his hand in the outstretched right of the mighty man who regarded him with a benign and serious look.

  "That's the way, that's the way, my boy. Just don't let up or you'll get dragged beneath the wheel."

  As he pressed Hans' hand, the relieved boy headed for the door. Then he was called back.

  "Just one more thing, Giebenrath. You see quite a bit of Heilner, don't you?"

  "Yes, quite a bit."

  "More than of the others, I believe. Am I right?"

  "But of course. He is my friend."

  "But how did that happen? You are quite different from each other, aren't you?"

  "I don't know. He's my friend, that's all."

  "You know, don't you, that I don't much care for your friend. He is a restless, diss
atisfied fellow; he may be gifted, but he does not accomplish much and does not have a good influence on you. It would make me glad if you saw a little less of him in the future.... Well?"

  "I can't do that, sir."

  "You can't? Why can't you?"

  "Because he's my friend. I can't just leave him in the lurch like that."

  "Hm. But you could make an attempt to spend a little more time with the others, couldn't you? You're the only one who gives in to Heilner's harmful influence like that, and the consequences are beginning to show. What is it that attracts you so much to him?"

  "I don't know myself. But we care for each other and it would be low and cowardly of me to leave him like that."

  "I see. Well, I won't force you. But I hope that you'll free yourself from him gradually. I would like that. I would like that very much."

  These last words had none of his former mildness. Hans was free to go now.

  From that day on, he slaved away but he no longer made rapid progress as he used to. He had his hands full just keeping pace and not falling behind. He himself was aware that his friendship was partially responsible, but he regarded this not as a loss or obstacle but a treasure worth everything he was missing in school--an intensified, warmer form of existence to which his previous sober and dutiful life could not hold a candle. He was like someone in love for the first time: he felt capable of performing great heroic deeds but not the daily chore of boring, petty work. And thus he forced himself back into the yoke again and again with despairing sighs. He could not do it like Heilner, who worked on the side and appropriated the most necessary things quickly and almost violently. Because his friend would call on him almost every evening during their off-hours, Hans forced himself to get up an hour earlier in the morning and waged a bitter battle, especially with his Hebrew grammar, as with a fiend. The only work he still enjoyed was Homer and his history lessons. Like a blind man feeling his way, he neared an understanding of the Homeric world. In history, the heroes stopped being mere names with dates; they peered at him with burning eyes, and each had living red lips and a face of his own.

  Even while reading the Scriptures in Greek, he was occasionally overwhelmed, even staggered, by the distinctness and proximity of the figures. Once in particular, while he read the sixth chapter of Mark, where Jesus leaves his boat with the disciples, the words leaped up:

  "Straightaway they knew him, they ran up to him." Then he too could see the Son of Man leaving the boat and recognized him at once--not by his figure or face but by the wide glowing depths of his loving eyes and by a gently beckoning or rather inviting and welcoming gesture of his beautiful, slender brown hands that seemed to be formed by the strong yet delicate soul that inhabited it. The edge of a turbulent lake and the bow of a heavy barque also appeared for a moment; then the entire picture vanished like a puff of breath in cold air.

  At intervals something similar would happen and some personage or historical event would seemingly break forth hungrily from the books, yearning to live once more. Hans felt profoundly and strangely transformed by these fleeting apparitions, as though he had looked at the dark earth through a telescope or as though God had looked at him. These delicious moments were uncalled for, and vanished unlamented like pilgrims you do not dare speak to or friendly guests you dare not ask to stay because there's something alien and godly about them.

  He kept these experiences to himself and did not mention them to Heilner. The latter's previous melancholy had changed into a restless and biting intellectuality which criticized the monastery teachers, companions, the weather, human life in general and the existence of God, but occasionally would also lead to cantankerousness or silly impulsive pranks. Because Heilner lived in complete opposition to the rest of the students, Hans--who did nothing to oppose this--became just as disassociated from them. Hans felt fewer and fewer misgivings about this state of affairs as time went on. If only the headmaster, of whom he felt an obscure fear, were not there. After having been his favorite pupil, Hans was now being treated coolly and for obvious reasons neglected. For Hebrew especially, the headmaster's specialty, he had lost practically all enthusiasm.

  It made for a delightful spectacle to observe how the forty new academy students had changed in body and soul in a matter of months, excepting a few whose growth seemed to have been arrested. Many had grown at a spectacular rate, much to the disadvantage of their physical bulk; their wrists and ankles stuck hopefully out of clothes which had not kept pace. The faces displayed the whole spectrum of shadings between vanishing childishness to budding manhood, and anyone who still lacked the angular forms of puberty had been lent a provisional manly seriousness, delicately wrinkled brows, from the study of the books of Moses. Chubby cheeks had actually become a rarity.

  The less satisfied Hans was with his academic progress, the more resolutely did he--under Heilner's influence--cut himself off from his companions. No longer a model student and a potential first in class and therefore without cause to look down on anyone, his haughtiness did not suit him well. But he could not forgive his roommates for letting him know something of which he himself was acutely aware. He quarreled often, particularly with the well-mannered Hartner and the presumptuous Otto Wenger, and when the latter mocked and annoyed him one day Hans forgot himself and replied with his fists. A bloody fight ensued. Wenger was a coward but his weak opponent was easy game and he showed no mercy. Heilner was not there to help him. The rest of his roommates just watched and felt he had it coming. He received a regular beating, bled from the nose and all his ribs ached. He lay awake the entire night with shame, pain and anger. But he kept the incident secret from Heilner and only divorced himself even more rigorously from his roommates and from now on would hardly exchange a word with them.

  Toward spring, under the influence of rainy afternoons, rainy Sundays and interminable dusks, new activities and movements began to flourish in the monastery. Acropolis, which counted a good pianist and two flute players in its midst, held two regularly scheduled musical evenings a week; Germania founded a dramatic reading group, and several young Pietists banded together and established a Bible-study circle and read a chapter every evening together with the appropriate commentary of the Calw Bible.

  Heilner applied for membership in the dramatic group but was not accepted. He seethed with fury. As a form of revenge he now forced himself on the Bible group, where he wasn't wanted either, and his daring speeches and atheistic allusions aroused bitterness and wrangling in the modest little brotherhood. He soon tired of this game too, but retained an ironically Biblical tone of voice for some time after. However, no one paid him much heed, for the whole school was imbued with a spirit of adventure and enterprise.

  A talented, witty fellow from Sparta caused the biggest stir. Apart from personal fame he was interested in bringing a little life into the old roost to break the monotony of their workaday routine. His nickname was Dunstan and he discovered an original way of creating a sensation and becoming a celebrity.

  One morning as the boys came from their sleeping halls, they found a paper glued to the shower-room door, on which, under the heading of Six Epigrams from Sparta, a select number of the more unusual personalities--their foibles, escapades, friendships--were derided in rhyming couplets. The pair Giebenrath-Heilner received its blow too. An extraordinary uproar arose in the small community. The boys crowded around the bathroom door as though it were a theater entrance and the whole mob buzzed and pushed about like a swarm of bees when the queen is ready to take to the air.

  The next morning the door literally prickled with epigrams, retorts, corroborations and new attacks, in which the instigator of the scandal had been shrewd enough to take no further part. He had achieved his purpose of setting the barn on fire; now he could sit back and watch the conflagration. For several days almost every boy joined in this war of epigrams. Lucius was probably the only one who went on with his work unperturbed as ever. Finally one of the teachers noticed what was up and put an end to this e
xciting game.

  The shrewd Dunstan did not rest on his laurels; he had in the meantime prepared his master stroke. He now published the first issue of a newspaper which had been multigraphed in tiny format on exercise paper. He had been assembling material for weeks. It was called Porcupine and was primarily a satirical enterprise. A comical conversation between the author of the book of Joshua and a Maulbronn academy student was the prize feature of the first number. It had an enormous success and Dunstan, who now assumed the air of a busy editor-publisher, enjoyed almost as great and dubious a reputation as the famous Aretino in the republic of Venice.

  General astonishment prevailed when Hermann Heilner took an enthusiastic share in the editing and joined with Dunstan in exercising the role of sharply satirical censor, a job for which he lacked neither wit nor venom. For about four weeks the little paper kept the whole monastery in a state of breathless excitement.

  Hans had no objection to Heilner's participation. He himself lacked the talent as well as the inclination for it. At first he hardly noticed that Heilner spent so many evenings in Sparta; he was preoccupied with other things. During the day he walked about without energy and without paying much attention, worked with painful slowness and without pleasure. Then something peculiar happened to him during the Livy lesson.

  The professor called on him to translate. He remained seated.

  "What's the meaning of this? Why don't you stand up?" the professor exclaimed angrily.

  Hans did not stir. He sat upright at his desk and held his head slightly lowered, with his eyes half-closed. The shout had half-roused him from his dreams, but the professor's voice seemed to come from a great distance. He felt his neighbor nudging him. But none of this mattered. He was surrounded by other people, other hands touched him and other voices talked to him; close, soft, deep voices that uttered no words but only a deep and soothing roar like an echoing well. And many eyes were gazing at him--alien, premonition-filled, great, glowing eyes. Perhaps they were the eyes of a crowd of Romans he had just been reading about in Livy, perhaps the eyes of unfamiliar people of whom he had dreamed or whom he had seen at one time in a painting.