Beneath The Wheel Part 7

"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 pa.s.sed, 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, gla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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.

Hans suddenly began to look unhappy again and wished fervently that Emma would soon leave. But she stayed on and laughed and sang and chattered away and knew a quick comeback to every joke. Hans felt ashamed and became completely quiet. Having to deal with young girls whom he had to call "Miss" he found awful anyway. This one was so lively and talkative, she paid no attention to him or his shyness, so he withdrew his feelers awkwardly and a little offended and crawled back into himself like a snail brushed by a cartwheel. He kept quiet and tried to look like someone who is bored; but he did not succeed and instead wore a face as though there had been a death in the family.

No one had time to notice any of this, Emma least of all. As Hans found out, she had been visiting the Flaigs for the last two weeks but she already knew the whole town. She ran from rich to poor, tasted the new cider, kidded everyone, laughed a little, came back, pretended to help, picked up the children, gave away apples and created an abundance of laughter and joy around her. She called out to every child that pa.s.sed: "Want an apple?" Then she would select a fine red one, place her hands behind her back and let them guess: "Left or right?" But the boys never guessed what hand the apple was in, and only when they started to shout did she give them an apple but always a smaller, greener one. She also seemed well informed about Hans and asked him whether he was the one who always had the headaches, but even before he could answer she was talking to someone else.

Hans was of a mind to quit and go home when Flaig placed the lever in his hand.

"So, now you can work a while, Emma'll help you. I've got to go back to the shop."

The master left, leaving the apprentice to help his wife cart off the cider kegs, and Hans and Emma to tend the press. Hans clenched his teeth and worked like a fiend.

When he began to wonder why the lever was so difficult to push, he looked up and the girl burst into bright laughter. She had been leaning against it as a joke and when Hans furiously tried to pull it up she did it again.

He didn't say a word. But while he pushed the lever with the girl's body leaning against it on the other side, he suddenly felt quite inhibited; gradually he stopped trying to turn the lever. A sweet fear overcame him. When the young slip of a thing laughed cheekily directly into his face she suddenly seemed transformed, more of a friend yet less familiar, and now he too laughed a little laugh of awkward intimacy.

And then the lever came to a complete stop.

And Emma said: "Let's not kill ourselves," and handed him the half-full gla.s.s from which she had just drunk.

This mouthful of cider seemed much sweeter and more powerful than the last, and when he had emptied the gla.s.s, he looked longingly at it and wondered why his heart beat so swiftly and he breathed with such difficulty.

Then they worked again for a while. He didn't really know what he was doing when he placed himself in such a way that the girl's skirt had to brush him and his hand touched hers, and whenever this happened his heart would seemingly come to a stop with anxious bliss and a pleasantly sweet weakness came over him.

He did not know what he was saying but he answered all her questions, laughed when she laughed, wagged his finger at her a few times when she fooled around and twice more emptied a gla.s.s from her hand. At the same time a whole swarm of memories rushed through his mind; servant girls he had seen standing with their boyfriends in doorways, a few sentences from novels, the kiss Heilner had given him, and a ma.s.s of words, stories and dark hints dropped during schoolboy conversations about the "girls" and "what it's like if you have a sweetheart."

Everything was transformed. The isolated voices, curses and laughter merged into an indistinguishable curtain of noise; the river and the old bridge looked remote as if painted on canvas.

Emma also looked different. He no longer saw her entire face -- just her dark happy eyes and her red mouth, sharp white teeth; a slipper with a black stocking above it, then a handful of curls dangling loosely in the back of her neck, a round tanned neck gliding into a blue bodice, the firm shoulders and the heaving b.r.e.a.s.t.s underneath, a pink translucent ear.

And after another while she let her beaker drop into the vat, and when she bent down for it, she pressed her knee against his wrist at the side of the vat. And he too bent down but more slowly and almost brushed his face against her hair. The hair gave off a weak scent and beneath it in the shadow of loose curls there glowed a warm, tanned, beautiful neck that disappeared into the blue bodice through whose tightly stretched lacing he caught a glimpse of the back of her waist.

When he straightened up again and her knee touched his hand and her hair grazed his cheek, he saw that she was flushed from bending down, and a tremor pa.s.sed through all his limbs. He turned pale and for a moment felt such a profound weariness that he had to steady himself by holding on to the press. His heart quivered, his arms became weak and his shoulders ached.

From that moment on he hardly said another word and avoided her gaze. However, as soon as she looked away, he stared at her with a mixture of unfamiliar desire and bad conscience. In this hour something broke inside him and a new, alien but enticing land with distant blue sh.o.r.es opened up before his soul. He did not know or could only guess what the apprehension and sweet agony signified, and did not know which was stronger, pain or desire.

But the desire signified the victory of his adolescent vigor and sensuality and the first intimation of the mighty forces of life, and the pain signified that the morning peace had been broken, that his soul had left that childhood land which can never be found again. His small fragile ship had barely escaped a near disaster; now it entered a region of new storms and uncharted depths through which even the best-led adolescent cannot find a trustworthy guide. He must find his own way and be his own savior.

It was a good thing that the apprentice came back and relieved him at the press. Hans stayed on for a while, hoping for one more touch or a friendly word from Emma, who was again chattering away with people at other cider presses. But because Hans felt embarra.s.sed in front of the apprentice, he slipped off without saying good-bye.

It was remarkable how everything had changed, how beautiful and exciting it had become. The starlings which had fattened up on the apple-pulp shot noisily through a sky that had never looked as high and beautiful, as blue and yearning. Never had the river looked like such a pure, blue-green mirror, nor had it held such a blindingly white roaring weir. All this seemed a decorative newly painted picture behind clear new gla.s.s. Everything seemed to await the beginning of a great feast. He himself felt a strong, sweet seething of brilliant expectations, but felt also that it was all a dream which would never come true. As they intensified, these two-edged feelings became a dark compulsion, a feeling as though something powerful wanted to tear free within him and come into the open -- perhaps a sob, perhaps a song, a scream or a loud laugh. Only at home did he calm down a litde. Everything there, naturally, was as usual.

"Where are you coming from?" asked Herr Giebenrath.

"From Flaig's cider mill."

"How many barrels?"

"Two, I think."

Hans asked to be allowed to invite Flaig's children when his father pressed his cider.

"Makes sense," grumbled his fadier. "I'll start next week, you can bring them then."

It was an hour before he would have supper. Hans went out into the garden. Except for the two spruce trees little was left that was green. He ripped off a hazel-bush rod and whipped it through the air and stirred about with it in the dried leaves. The sun had set behind the mountain whose black outline cut through the greenish-blue, moisture-free, late afternoon sky with its finely delineated spruce tops. A gray, elongated cloud, burnished by the sun, drifted slowly and contentedly like a returning ship through the thin golden air up the valley.

As Hans strolled through the garden, he felt moved in a strange and unfamiliar way by the ripe, richly colored beauty of the evening. Often he would stop, close his eyes and try to picture Emma to himself, how she had stood across from him at the press, how she let him drink from her beaker, how she had bent across the vat and come up blushing. He saw her hair, her figure in the tight blue dress, her throat and the neck in the shadow of her dark curls, and all this filled him with desire and trembling. Only her face he could not imagine, however hard he tried.

Once the sun had set he did not feel the coolness. He perceived the growing dusk like a veil rich with secret promises which he could not name. For, though he realized that he had fallen in love with the girl from Heilbronn, he had only an obscure comprehension of the masculinity awakening in his blood as an unaccustomed, wearisome irritation.

During supper he felt it was odd to sit in his changed condition amid his accustomed surroundings. His father, the old housekeeper, the table, its utensils and the entire room seemed suddenly to have grown old and he peered at everything with a feeling of astonishment, estrangement and tenderness as though he had just now returned from a long trip.

When they had finished supper and Hans wanted to get up, his father in his curt manner said: "Would you like to become a mechanic, Hans, or a clerk?"

"What do you mean?" Hans replied in astonishment.

"You could start your apprenticeship with Mechanic Schuler or week after next go to city hall. Give it some thought! We'll talk about it tomorrow.

Hans got up and went outside. The sudden question had confused and blinded him. Unexpectedly, active daily life, with which he had nothing to do for months, confronted him with a half-enticing, a half-threatening face, making promises and demands. He had no genuine enthusiasm for becoming a mechanic or a clerk. The grueling physical labor of the former frightened him a little. Then he remembered his schoolfriend August, who had become a mechanic and whom he could ask.

While he considered the matter, his ideas on the subject became less and less clear and it no longer seemed so urgent. Something else preoccupied him. Restless, he paced back and forth in the hallway. Suddenly he grabbed his hat, left the house and walked slowly out into the street. It had occurred to him he would have to see Emma once more today.

It was getting dark already. Screams and hoa.r.s.e singing drifted over from a nearby inn. Some windows were lighted and here and there one after the other lit up and shed a weak reddish glow in the dark air. A long line of young girls flounced arm in arm down the alley with loud laughter and talk running like a warm wave of youth and joy through the drowsy streets. Hans looked after them for a long time, his blood rushing to his head. One could hear a violin behind a curtained window. A woman was washing lettuce at the well. Two fellows and their sweethearts were strolling on the bridge; one of them, holding his girl loosely by the hand, was swinging her arm back and forth and smoking a cigar. The second couple walked slowly, holding each other tight; the fellow held her firmly around the waist and she pressed shoulder and head firmly against his chest. Hans had seen this a hundred times without giving it any thought. Now it held a secret significance, a vague yet sweet and provocative meaning; his glance rested on this group and his imagination strained toward an imminent comprehension. Fearful but shaken to the roots of his being, he felt the nearness of a great mystery, not knowing whether it would be delicious or dreadful but having a foretaste of both.

He stopped before Flaig's house but he had not the courage to enter. What was he to do and say once inside? He remembered how he used to come here as an eleven-year-old boy, when Flaig had told him stories from the Bible and steadfastly replied to the onslaught of his questions about h.e.l.l, the devil and ghosts. These were awkward memories and they made him feel guilty. He did not know what he wanted to do, he did not even know what he desired, yet it seemed to him as though he stood before something secret and forbidden. It did not seem right to him to stand in front of the shoemaker's house in the dark without entering. And if Flaig should happen to see him or should step outside he would probably not even bawl him out, he'd just laugh, and that he dreaded most of all.

Hans sneaked behind the house to look into the lighted living room from the garden fence. He did not see the master anywhere. His wife was either sewing or knitting. The oldest boy was still up and sat at the table and read. Emma walked back and forth, obviously clearing the table, and he caught sight of her only intermittently. It was so quiet you could hear every step distinctly from die remotest part of the street, and the rushing of the river on the other side of the garden. The darkness and the chill of night came fast.

Next to the living-room window was a small unlit hall window. After he had waited for some time there appeared at this window an indistinct shape, which leaned out and looked into the darkness. Hans recognized from the shape that it was Emma and his heart palpitated with apprehension. She stood at the window for a long while, calmly looking across to him, yet he had no idea whether she recognized him or even saw him. He did not move once and just peered in her direction, wavering between hope and fear that she might see who it was.

And the shape vanished from the window. Immediately afterward the little bell at the garden door chimed and Emma came out of the house. At first Hans was so scared he wanted to run off, but then he stayed, leaning against the fence, unable to move, and watched the girl approach him slowly in the dark garden. With each step she took, he felt the urge to run off but something stronger held him back.

Now Emma stood directly in front of him, no more than half a step away, and with only the fence between, she peered at him attentively and curiously. For a long time neither of them said a word. Then she asked: "What do you want, Hans?"

"Nothing," he replied and it was as if she had caressed him when she called him Hans.

She stretched her hand across the fence. He held it timidly and tenderly and pressed it a little. When he realized that it was not being withdrawn, he took heart and stroked the warm hand. And when it was still left to him to hold, he placed it against his cheek. A flood of desire, peculiar warmth and blissful weariness coursed through him. The air seemed lukewarm and moist. The street and garden became invisible. All he saw was a close bright face and a tangle of dark hair.

Her voice seemed to reach him from far-off in the night when she said very softly: "Do you want to kiss me?"

The bright face came closer, the weight of the body bent the fence boards slightly toward him; loose, lightly scented hair brushed his forehead, and closed eyes with wide lids and dark eyelashes were near to his. A strong shudder ran through his body as he shyly placed his lips on the girl's mouth. He shied back trembling at once but the girl had seized his head, pressed her face to his and would not let go of his lips. He felt her mouth burn, he felt it press against his and cling to him as if she wanted to drain all life from him. A profound weakness overcame him; even before her lips let go of him, his trembling desire changed into deathly weariness and pain, and when Emma unloosed him, he felt unsteady and had to clutch the fence for support.

"You come back tomorrow evening," said Emma and quickly slipped back into the house. She had not been with him for more than five minutes but it seemed to Hans as if hours had pa.s.sed. He gazed after her with an empty stare, still holding onto the fence, and felt too tired to take a single step. As if in a dream he listened to his blood pounding through his brain in irregular, painful surges, coming from the heart and rushing back, making him gasp for breath.

Now, through the window, he saw a door open inside the living room and the master enter; probably he had been in his workshop. Suddenly Hans became afraid he might be seen and he left. He walked slowly, reluctantly, with the uncertainty of someone who is slightly intoxicated. With each step he felt like going down on his knees. The dark streets, the drowsy gables, the dimly lit red windows flowed past like a pale stage setting. The fountain in Tanner Street splashed with unusual resonance. As if in a dream he opened a gate, walked through a pitch-black hallway, climbed a series of stairs, opened and closed one door after another, sat down at a table that happened to be there and only after some time did he become aware of being home in his room. There was another long pause before he could decide to undress. He did it distractedly and sat undressed in the window for a long time until the fall night suddenly chilled him and drove him between the sheets.

He felt he would fall asleep that instant but he had no sooner lain down than his heart began to throb again and there was the irregular violent surging of his blood. When he closed his eyes, it seemed as if Emma's lips were still clinging to his, draining his soul, filling him with fever.

It was late at night before he fell into a sleep which hurried in a headlong flight from dream to dream. He was steeped in darkness, and groping about, he seized Emma's arm. She embraced him and they slowly sank down together into a deep warm flood. Suddenly the shoemaker was there and asked him why he refused to visit him; then Hans had to laugh when he noticed that it was not Flaig but Heilner who sat next to him in the alcove in the Maulbronn oratory, cracking jokes. But this image also vanished at once and he saw himself standing by the cider press, Emma pushing against the lever and he struggling against her with all his might. She bent across the vat feeling for his mouth. It became quiet and pitch-black. Now he once more sank into that deep warm depth and seemed to die with dizziness. Simultaneously he could hear the headmaster deliver a lecture but he could not tell whether it was meant for him.

He slept until late in the morning. It was a bright, sunny day. He walked up and down in the garden for a long time, trying to become fully awake and clear his mind which seemed enveloped by a thick drowsy fog. He could see violet asters, the very last flowers to bloom, standing in the sunshine as though it were still August, and he saw the dear warm light flood tenderly and insinuatingly around the withered bushes, branches and leafless vines as though it were early spring. But he only saw it, he did not experience it, it did not matter to him. Suddenly he was seized by a recollection of the time when his rabbits were still scurrying about the garden and his water wheel and his little mill were running. He thought back to a particular day in September, three years ago. It was the evening before the day commemorating the battle of Sedan. August had come over to see him and had brought some ivy vines along. They washed down their flagpoles until they glistened and then fastened the ivy to the golden spikes, looking forward with eagerness to the coming day. Not much else happened but both of them were so full of antic.i.p.ation and joy. Anna had baked plum cakes and that night the Sedan fire was to be lit on the rock on the mountain.

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 a.s.s."

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 Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sed too slowly, then too quickly; he drifted into the encounter like a boatman into rapids. All he had for supper was a gla.s.s 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 tearfulness, 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, pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ces. 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.