That is why he did not laugh along with the others and his eyes glittered with joy.
There was no precedent for imposing a permanent ostracism on a boy or for expelling him. So theoretically they could do anything they wanted to, which Hans and Hendrik comprehended and, within certain limits, exploited. They even succeeded in exchanging letters that, after repeated readings, they both burned. Had they not enjoyed their heroism, they couldn’t have done it. Even so, it was hard to watch the pages of those letters shrivel and turn to ashes in the flames, pages on which Hendrik called Hans my dear friend and Hans called Hendrik his dearest brother. But they couldn’t have known that their instructors had information about most of these secret activities and the letters had not been undocumented. While the others were away and the service staff was busy with the major annual cleaning, painting, and whitewashing, Hans could get along without speaking to anyone. It was actually interesting to live without talking. Along with his friends subjected to similar punishment, he was mainly unsupervised for those summer weeks. Recalcitrant staff members gravely violated the strict rules and regulations so that others could observe and then write about the boys’ activities. And thus, at a given moment, all Schuer had to do was go to his desk and, while Baroness Thum zu Wolkenstein was still struggling with her first surprise, take out a paper listing the illegal activities that Hans von Wolkenstein had engaged in, in the company of another pupil named Hendrik Franke, the rules and regulations he had violated, and to what sort of sensual excesses he had yielded. How many times they had broken into Schultze’s office together, the papers they had taken from it and then destroyed, the content of the letters they had exchanged, and what sort of complicated relationship they had entangled themselves in with two trusted members of the service staff.
Which put his mother in a very difficult situation; the baroness struggled with tears of anger. At the very same time, this disobedient child was crouching at the foot of the central pier of the viaduct arching seventy meters over the valley, with the rumbling noise of the waterfall rushing down from the craggy ledge of the mountain slope opposite, while his friends in the botanical garden discussed the situation in their own argot.
He was crouching on a yellow-brown rock, where the whimsically cascading, gurgling, and splashing water sometimes flowed over his feet. He was wearing his institutional uniform, a sailcloth shirt sewn in a military fashion with brown corduroy knee pants. On the banks of the stream he had taken off his high-quarter buttoned shoes and corkscrew-patterned socks and hidden them in the high sedge. Because the instructors often played tricks on the boys by taking away their scattered shoes or clothes.
His bare soles clung firmly to the rough-surfaced rock, but making the slightest move caused it to wobble under him.
He did not want to lose his balance.
In this early afternoon hour, when above the high ridge of the Frauenholz gorge the last rays of the sun were disappearing, taking their warmth with them, the end-of-summer air in the valley acquired a sharp edge.
The smell of resin and wild marjoram was everywhere.
He leaned as far forward as the wobbly rock allowed, raised a stick over the clear water, concentrating on something in it, below its turbulent wild rushing. A strange, never-seen-before creature among the stones. Perhaps the corpse or torn-off limb of a creature; just then a new current shoved it under another stone. He would not leave it there; in a little while he’d pluck it out from under the stone and trusting to the current would ceremoniously put it back. He could just barely reach it with his stick. Just enough to turn it over. Whether it was a living creature or a dead one, he wanted to see its belly. The rock wobbled a little, the water splashed, and it wouldn’t be pleasant to fall in. A pale piece of flesh that had lost its color in the water. A shred of flesh from the body of one of the suicide boys ripped on the rocks as he was hurtling down. Or a drowned slug, or torn-off crabmeat. At this spot the current was so powerful that it washed away any telltale blood, and bits of clothes were thrown out on the grass or stones.
He had not yet decided whether to consider his find an independent being, a dead body, or some kind of waterlogged piece of meat or flesh that couldn’t be dislodged from the stones, when from on high, a little above the waterfall, from the rim of the gorge hidden by the oaks, he heard the familiar rattle of rolling stones.
Someone was coming down off the Ochsensprung. And in the next moment he could make out that it was a female. The color of her skin and something red gave her away. Or multiples of red. A brief flash among the foliage as she continued lowering herself carefully, accompanied by the happy noise of the stones.
Whoever undertook the neck-breaking stunt of coming down the dangerous and twisting trail — used mainly by deer — had to watch their step. And look out for what to hold on to next, assess which root, branch, or sapling would give support or hold one up for a split second while shifting weight for the next step.
A simple slip might mean serious injury.
Hans straightened up a little. To see the figure better, though he knew he should flee. He did not want simply to throw away his stick. To run, to flee as inconspicuously as possible, careful not to step on wobbly rocks so as not to fall into the frothing, ice-cold water. He cast a last look at the strange phenomenon he’d neither fished out nor managed to identify. With a few well-directed jumps he was off and away, looking back at the dark mountainside where the rustling in the bushes grew louder, which was encouraging. He clambered up the steep riverbank and felt a childlike joy at having escaped, then waded into the high grass, which benevolently swallowed him and covered him up. He went on listening, and panting, while he retrieved his buttoned shoes and thick knee socks. They had become damp with dew, and within moments he too felt damp as he lay in the grass. The approaching girl’s arms and legs and the red flashing of her skirt disappeared behind a group of rocks. On that stretch, the serpentine path lessened the steepness of the slope. When she clears it, the landscape will come upon her as if she were at a comfortable lookout point. Before that happened, he had time to stuff the socks into the shoes and, bending low, start off. Back to the protection of the railway viaduct’s enormous central pier.
He had to step on stones. Barefoot, he quickly picked his way over the yellowish, body-colored stones.
Every step made some noise and was painful.
His plan was to use the cover of the pier to back into the woods. From there he could stroll along the riverbank without any danger of being discovered, over the rather prickly ground covered with pine needles under the hundred-year-old trees, so that at a more distant spot he could put on his socks and shoes.
He looked back once more to see who this person was, what she might want. He did not know what he feared discovering or what kept him there despite his fear.
She was a girl somewhat older than he; at the sight of her Hans grew a little uncertain. Her dark hair was in braids with bows at the end made of the same red material as her skirt. She was carrying a small basket, as if she were collecting berries or mushrooms.
For that, she was too late in the valley.
Where the serpentine section of the trail ended, the most dangerous stretch began.
The trail continued downward, deepened by water-worn gullies and blocked with fallen stones. She could not help sliding, or grasping at shrubs, tendrils, roots, or dried-out stalks that would not break or be pulled off when she tugged at them; she was becoming flustered. The red-bowed braids now fell forward, now snapped back, her breasts quivered under her blouse, her little basket slipped up to her shoulder and almost slid off her wrist; everything was crackling and snapping. Which the valley and the viaduct echoed many times over. She was rushing headlong down the trail; her skirt kept flying up. Hans saw her long brown thighs and pink panties, and then the same series of pictures again.