‘Even that would have been worth it,’ thought Hillel.
He had had no time to look up, so he didn’t know whether the Chaluzim had really been standing at the window, and whether Malka had been there. It had all happened far too quickly, he had just had time to hold on to the reins and hold back the horses. It had happened and nothing could be done about it, they were past the house, and in their wake the first of them were already shaking menacing fists. Only then did it occur to him that you can’t keep going at the end of Fortunagasse, because there’s just that steep path off to the left, the one with the steps that leads down to the Limmat. He had tugged like mad on the reins, had tried somehow to stop the horses, but the nags had long since developed a mind of their own and could no longer be controlled, at least not by him. And Böhni, who might have been able to do something, sat there petrified with fear, his eyes wide open and his mouth as well, as if he wanted to scream and couldn’t remember how to do it.
Then, quite naturally, the horses had turned off to the left all by themselves, at a perfect, even gallop of the kind that you learn at coach-driving school, except that the pupils there would never have been allowed to take a bend so sharply, and certainly not at that speed. The cart leaned to the side, it balanced on only two wheels and would have tipped over had the passage not been so narrow that it scraped along a bay window on the ground floor and righted itself again. At the back, an empty milk churn fell from the cart, and then the wheels were already clattering down the steps, bumping so hard with each one that they were nearly thrown from the box.
Somehow the cart managed to come to a standstill, Hillel couldn’t have said how. Perhaps Kudi Lampertz was right when he said, as he always did, ‘Just let the horses get on with it, they’re cleverer than you are.’ All of a sudden it was completely still. Only the milk churn rolled very slowly from step to step behind them, clanking as if calling out, ‘Wait for me, I’m coming!’
Only then had he done what he should have done long ago: applied the handbrake. He had climbed down from the box and tended to the horses. They were sweat-drenched and steaming and were foaming at the mouth, but they hadn’t been hurt — Lampertz would have killed him! — none of them was limping, and eventually, when his heart had stopped thumping quite so hard, Hillel was able to drive on, right onto the Rudolf Brun Bridge, left onto the Limmatquai and then uphill to Schaffhauserplatz and back to the Strickhof.
There, alerted by telephone, Herr Gerster was already waiting for them, gave them an initial earful and then, as they were rubbing the horses dry, walked impatiently up and down, firmly resolved to give them the mother of all bollockings, which they would never forget as long as they lived.
‘Sons of bitches blithering bloody idiots!’ yelled the headmaster. ‘Why did you drive down there?’
‘No reason,’ said Hillel.
That story would be told for a long time to come, thought Gerster. You would have to be a dashed good horseman to come out of a hussar’s trick like that unharmed. He went on swearing a little longer, as his office decreed, but he was only doing it automatically now, and even looking at his watch.
The punishment he was giving them was a harmless one, just as thunder and lightning sometimes crashes like mad until you think the whole harvest is lost, and then there’s only a little shower of rain. They were to sort out the milk-cart, straight away. The scratches would have to be painted over where it had scraped along the wall, and they would have to do that together, to learn that camaraderie was the name of the game here at the Strickhof — ‘camaraderie, damn it all!’ — and if anything, the slightest thing, reached his ears, he would tear their heads off with his own bare hands.
He said again, ‘Sons of bitches bloody blithering stupid idiots!’, left them standing there and went back to his plum tart.
When the door slammed shut behind Gerster, Böhni was still standing to attention. Hillel turned to him and said, ‘Amod no’ach!’ He grinned when Böhni looked at him uncomprehendingly. In the Hashomer Haza’ir, the Zionist youth association, they liked to put on military airs, and that was the command when you were allowed to stand at ease at mifkad, or muster.
‘But you’ll paint the box,’ said Böhni.
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s all your fault.’
‘Camaraderie, Walter! Have you forgotten? Camaraderie is quite the thing at the Strickhof, damn it all!’ Hillel was so drunk on all the excitement and its happy outcome that he was even copying Gerstli.
The cart was already outside on the gravel, and that was quite sensible. Mending scratches is delicate work, and done better by daylight.
In the shed there were two brushes and a tin of green paint.
Kudi Lampertz had arrived quite unexpectedly; the headmaster had probably alerted him by telephone. Now he behaved as if he were only briefly interrupting his Sunday stroll, and watched their work with his hands propped on his hips. ‘The farmer works with his hands, not his mouth,’ was one of his favourite sayings, so Böhni and Rosenthal only went on arguing very quietly.
‘You’re a prick,’ whispered Böhni.
‘You know all about pricks,’ Hillel whispered back.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Looking at your shirt…’
‘I can wear whatever I like.’
‘You know why Fröntler shirts are such a dirty grey colour? Because character shows through.’
Böhni would have liked to floor him with a quicker answer, but none came to mind. ‘They’re going to beat the crap out of you,’ he whispered instead.
First they’ll have to find out who it was.’
‘Somebody might tell them.’
‘Are you going to be the snitch?’
Böhni didn’t reply, just assumed a devious expression that was supposed to mean: Jews always thought they were the only clever ones, but other people were just as good at settling scores.
‘Is that your plan?’
‘And if it was?’
‘I’d have to have a word with my uncle.’
‘Eh?’
‘He’s a famous wrestler. In the Jewish gymnastics association. Have you never heard of Arthur Meijer? If he and his troop turn up, you’ll be picking up your bones one at a time.’
‘Never put anything past the Jews,’ thought Böhni, that was what Rolf Henne always said in the Front. They might have some kind of secret fighting troop that you had to keep an eye out for. Why else would Rosenthal be grinning in spite of the threat of a good Swiss kicking? He couldn’t have known that Hillel was only amusing himself with the idea of his peaceful, short-sighted uncle as a dangerous street-fighter.
Walter Böhni wasn’t a bad person. Having grown up on a little farm near Flaach, in the middle of wine country, he had had to work hard even as a child, particularly in the spring, when the nobs in the city wanted their asparagus and people in the country had to break their backs to pick it. For him, agricultural college was a great chance to get on in life and amount to something, so he couldn’t stand people like Rosenthal, who only ever did things on a whim and didn’t really need to. He wanted to go to Palestine and farm there, he had said on the first day of school when they were all supposed to explain what they expected of the Strickhof. And everyone knew that there was nothing in Palestine but desert and bogs and nothing to farm at all.
Böhni’s parents had always worked hard, they’d grafted, and often didn’t know where they would get the next bit of meat to go with their potatoes. It wasn’t fair, and Böhni, who was also a thinker in his way, had been grateful when someone had given him an explanation for it. The Jews were to blame, with their department stores and banks, whose sole purpose was to suck the common man dry and keep him in his place. He hadn’t joined the National Front himself, you had to go to too many meetings and marches, but he read their paper regularly, and thought everything in it made perfect sense. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing if the comrades were kept informed about what the Jews were planning.