The Burrow: Posthumously Published Short Fiction Page 6

  What was striking about this was that Ottomar’s general style was well imitated, even though Ottomar himself – of this Blumfeld had no doubt – was far from ever expressing himself in such terms, or anything resembling them, about Blumfeld. The whole thing was an invention on the part of the layabouts in the first-floor offices, and Blumfeld simply ignored it, wishing he could have ignored the presence of his juniors in the same way. But there they stood, and it was impossible to think them away. Weak, pale boys. According to their employment papers, they were past school-leaving age, though it seemed doubtful to him. You wouldn’t even have wanted to entrust them to a schoolteacher, that’s how clearly they belonged in the care of their mothers. They could barely even move, and long periods of standing around seemed to take it out of them, especially at the beginning. If you let them out of your sight, they would crumple up with feebleness, standing there skewed or bent over in a corner. Blumfeld tried to point out to them that they would be crippled for life if they always gave in to the dictates of comfort like that. To entrust the juniors with even a small task was risky. Once he had asked one of them to bring him something; it was only a few steps away, but in his over-eagerness he had run off and gashed his knee against his desk. The room at the time was full of seamstresses, and the desks full of their wares, but Blumfeld had had to drop everything and take the crying junior back to the office and give him a little bandage. But even this zeal on the part of the juniors was merely for show, as, like children, they sometimes wanted to excel, but much more often, or in fact almost always, they wanted to dupe and deceive their superior. Once, when there was a great deal of work to be done, a sweat-dripping Blumfeld had raced past them and noticed that they were between bales of material, secretly swapping stamps. He felt like cuffing them, it was the only punishment for such behaviour, but they were children and Blumfeld couldn’t have infanticide on his conscience. And so he went on torturing himself with them. Originally he had imagined that the juniors would help him with the little things that demanded so much concentration and alertness at the time for the distribution of materials. He had pictured himself standing behind his desk at the centre of things, keeping everything in view and making the entries in ledgers, while the juniors ran back and forth on his say-so, giving things out as required. He had imagined his vigilance, though sharp indeed, would not be sufficient for such a crowd, and would be supplemented by that of the juniors, and that these juniors would over time garner experience, not depend in every instance on his telling them what to do, and gradually learn by themselves to draw distinctions among the seamstresses with respect to their relative needs and their trustworthiness. But with these juniors any such hopes were misplaced, Blumfeld soon saw that; he should never have encouraged them to talk to the seamstresses in the first place. Some, they had never approached at all, because they were afraid of them or took against them; others to whom they had taken a shine, they would often accompany as far as the door. For these ones they would bring whatever the seamstresses wanted, pressing the items into their hands with a kind of furtiveness – even if it was something the seamstresses were perfectly entitled to – collecting on an empty shelf various bits and bobs for these preferred parties, valueless remnants, often enough, but also usable items, happily beckoning to them from a distance behind Blumfeld’s back and getting sweets pushed into their mouth in return. Blumfeld soon put an end to these practices and drove them into a little corner whenever the seamstresses were due. But for a long time they thought that was a great injustice, and they sulked, broke out of their corner – though of course they never dared to raise their heads – banged loudly on the windowpanes to draw the seamstresses’ attention to the ill-treatment they had, in their opinion, received at the hands of Blumfeld.

  At the same time they are completely oblivious to the wrongs they themselves perpetrate. So, for instance, they are almost always late for work. Blumfeld, their boss, who from his earliest youth took it for granted that he had to arrive at least half an hour before the office opened – it wasn’t over-zealousness that drove him to it, no exaggerated sense of duty, no, just an innate sense of what was required – is usually kept waiting for his juniors for over an hour. Chewing his breakfast roll, he generally stands behind the desk in the room, balancing the accounts in the seamstresses’ little log-books. Before long he is immersed in the work, and there is nothing else on his mind. Then he is suddenly so alarmed that for a while after, the pen shakes in his hands. One junior has charged in, it’s as though he is falling over, with one hand he is holding onto himself somewhere, and with the other he is pressing his heaving chest – but all this charade amounts to is that he is offering an apology for his tardiness that is so ridiculous that Blumfeld prefers to disregard it, because if he didn’t he would feel obliged to give the boy the thrashing he deserved. As it is, he just glowers at him, then points him with one hand to the pen, and returns to his own work. One might have expected the junior to see the charity of his boss and to hurry to his place of work. Not a bit of it, he doesn’t hurry, he takes fairy-steps, he walks on tippy-toe; he sets one foot just in front of the other. Is he trying to get a rise out of his boss? No, it’s not that either. It’s just that same mixture of fear and cheek in the teeth of which one is helpless.

  How else account for the fact that today Blumfeld, who has come into work unusually late himself, now, at the end of a long wait – he has lost his taste for balancing the books – through the clouds of dust that the wretched servant has whipped up in the air in front of him, sees the two juniors together on the street, approaching peaceably. They have their arms slung around each other and seem to be saying important things to each other, but they will have little, if anything, to do with work. The nearer they come to the glass door, the more they slow their steps. Finally, one of them is clasping the doorknob, but refrains from turning it. They are still chatting and laughing together. ‘Show the gentlemen in, why don’t you?’ Blumfeld calls out to the servant with raised hands. But when the juniors enter, Blumfeld is no longer in any mood to squabble; he doesn’t reply to their greeting and walks over to his desk. He starts to make some calculations, but looks up from time to time to see what the juniors are up to. One of them seems to be very tired, yawning and rubbing his eyes; once he has hung his jacket up on the nail, he uses the opportunity to lean against the wall for a spell; on the road he was fresh enough, but the proximity to work has made him suddenly tired. The other junior does feel like work, but only work of a certain kind. Thus it has apparently been his desire for ever to sweep the floor.

  As a line of work, it’s not for him: sweeping is a task for the servant; in his heart of hearts Blumfeld has nothing against the junior sweeping – let him sweep if he wants to, it’s hardly possible to do it any worse than the servant. But if the junior wants to sweep, then he needs to get in a little earlier, before the servant has started sweeping, and he shouldn’t really waste time sweeping, when he is being paid to do other work. If the boy is impervious to any sensible considerations, then at least the servant, that half-blind ancient, whom the boss would certainly not tolerate in any other section than Blumfeld’s, and who hangs on there by the grace of God and the boss, then at least this servant could be a little gracious and leave his broom for a few moments with the boy. He’s so clumsy anyway, he will lose heart right away and before you know it will be imploring the servant to take over. But just at the moment the servant seems to feel particularly responsible for the sweeping. You can see that, the instant the boy goes up to him, he clutches the broom more tightly in his trembling hands. He prefers to stand where he is and stop sweeping, just so as to concentrate all his attention on his ownership of the broom. The junior now no longer asks with words, because he does have some fear of Blumfeld, who appears to be doing sums; also ordinary words would be unavailing, because the servant can only be reached with very loud shouts. So the junior tugs at the servant’s sleeves. The servant understands of course, and he gives the junior his fiercest gla
re, shakes his head and pulls the broom closer to him, against his chest. Next the junior clasps his hands together and begs him. He doesn’t have any hope of achieving anything by begging, but to do so amuses him, so he begs. The other junior accompanies the proceedings with subtle smiles and obviously thinks in some inexplicable way that Blumfeld is unable to hear him. The begging, indeed, fails to make the least impression on the servant, who turns round and thinks he is now able to use the broom with safety. But the junior has followed him on tiptoe and, rubbing his hands together beseechingly, is now begging him from the other side. These turns on the part of the servant and tiptoeings on that of the junior are now repeated several times. Finally the servant feels hemmed in on every side, and notices something that, had he been a little less simple-minded, he might have realized right away, namely that he will tire before the junior does. In consequence of which he seeks help from outside, threatens the junior with his finger and points to Blumfeld to whom, unless the junior desists, he will make a complaint. The junior sees now that if he wants the broom at all, he will have to get a move on. So he makes a cheeky grab for the broom. An involuntary cry from the other junior signals the move. The servant this time manages to rescue the broom by taking a step back, and taking the broom with him. But now the junior knows no more forbearance: with mouth agape and eyes flashing, he leaps after the servant, who makes to flee, but his old legs instead of running merely tremble. The junior rips at the broom, and even if he isn’t able to seize it, he does enough to make the broom clatter to the ground, and thus become lost to the servant. Apparently to the junior as well, because as the broom falls all three freeze – the two juniors and the servant – because now Blumfeld must see what is going on. And in fact Blumfeld does now look up out of his little window, as though only just made aware of what was going on. Sternly and levelly he looks them each in the eye, nor does the broom on the floor escape him either. Whether it’s that the silence has gone on for too long, or that the guilty junior is unable to suppress his desire to sweep, at any rate he stoops, very carefully admittedly, as though reaching for a wild animal and not a broom, picks up the broom, passes it across the floor, then straightaway throws it away in horror as Blumfeld jumps up and steps out of his little section.

  ‘Get to work both of you, and stop mucking about,’ Blumfeld shouts, and with his extended hand he points the two juniors the way back to their desks. They obey, but not shame-faced and with lowered heads; instead, they stalk stiffly past Blumfeld, stare him in the eye, as though to keep him from hitting them. Experience might have taught them that Blumfeld never strikes, but they are overly timid and are forever crassly seeking to preserve their real or apparent rights.

  The Bridge

  I was rigid with cold; I was a bridge, lying suspended across a gully, here on this side were my toes, on the other my fingertips were drilled in, I had bitten myself fast in crumbling cement. The skirts of my coat were flapping around my sides. In the depths was the noise of the icy trout stream. No tourist ever wound up at this impassable height; the bridge was not yet marked in any map. So I lay and waited; I was bound to wait; short of falling, no bridge, once built, can ever cease to be a bridge. Once towards evening, it may have been the first or the thousandth, I don’t know, my thoughts were always in a tangle, and forever going round and round, towards evening in summertime, the stream was rushing more darkly, I heard the footfall of a man. Now concentrate, concentrate. Stretch yourself, bridge, put yourself in order, unfenced struts, hold the one who has been entrusted to you, compensate discreetly for any uncertainties of his step, and then should he sway, make your presence felt, and like a mountain god, hurl him ashore. There he came, tapping me with the iron ferrule of his stick, then he flicked up the tails of my coat and brushed them straight over me, drove the point of his stick into my bushy hair and left it there, presumably while he looked away into the distance. Then – just as I was dreaming him over hill and dale – he suddenly jumped with both feet onto the middle of my body. I shuddered in wild pain, wholly at a loss. Who was this? A child? A gymnast? A daredevil? A suicide? A tempter? A destroyer! And I turned round to catch a sight of him. A bridge turns round. I hadn’t completely turned when I was already falling, I was falling and already I was dashed to pieces and pierced on the pointed little rocks that had always gazed up at me so quietly from the rushing waters.

  Texts on the Hunter Gracchus Theme

  Two boys were sitting on the harbour wall playing dice. A man was reading the newspaper on the steps of a monument in the sabre-swinging hero’s shadow. A girl was filling her bucket at the well. A fruiterer was lying beside his wares, staring out onto the lake. Through the empty door and window openings one could see two men over their wine in the depths of a bar. The landlord was sitting at a table nearer the front, drowsing. A barque swept quietly into the little harbour, as though being carried over the water. A man in a blue overall clambered ashore, and made the ropes fast to the rings. Two other men in dark jackets with silver buttons followed the bosun, carrying a bier on their shoulders, in which it was clear that, under a large tasselled silk cloth with flower patterns, a man was lying. No one on the quayside bothered about the new arrivals, even when they set down the bier to wait for the bosun, who was still working on the ropes; no one stepped up to them, asked them a question or gave them a closer look. The leader was a little further delayed by a woman who now appeared on deck, with loose hair and a child at her breast.

  Finally the bosun was ready and indicated a yellowish two-storey house whose straight lines could be seen on the left side of the waterfront; the bearers picked up their load and carried it through the low entrance formed by two slender pillars. A small boy opened a window, just caught the group disappearing into the house and hurriedly shut the window again. The door, made of heavy carved oak, was closed behind the party. A flock of pigeons that had been flying around the church tower now settled in front of the house. As though there was food waiting for them within, the pigeons collected in front of the gate. One flew up to the first floor and pecked at a windowpane. They were pale, well-looked-after, lively birds. With a magnificent gesture, the woman on the barque threw them some grain, which they picked up and flew over to the woman.