Hänschen klein’, which put my father in an even fouler temper; often my brother was hauled out of his room again, but my father couldn’t knock the folk song out of him; he could knock the wimpishness out of him, but not the folk song; he severely reproached my mother because of this; my mother said, but I’m doing my best, don’t be so hard on them, and my father said, I’m not putting up with it, they’re not going to do that with me, they should know me better. We’d got to know our father very well over many years, but when my grandmother died he had to stop because I’d come of age; of course, he didn’t speak to me for several weeks after the funeral, he refused to speak to me till I’d apologized for my behaviour, and every day my mother came into my room and said, go on, apologize. She couldn’t cope when people didn’t speak to each other. But I could cope, because in the evenings I was able to read instead of having to play skat; nobody spoke to me, anyhow, because if my father wasn’t speaking to me then the other two weren’t allowed to, either; they only spoke to me secretly when he was away. My brother always apologized that same evening, so we all spoke to him, whereas I rarely apologize straight away; sometimes I didn’t apologize at all, but sometimes I apologized when my mother said, go on, apologize, can’t you see how this pains me. Although I could see how my behaviour pained her, I spent months reading books in my room in the evenings and doing nothing. Sometimes I’d wonder what I’d done, and when I remembered I’d wonder what was so bad about it, but when I missed the funeral, I realized straight away what was bad about that. Even then I didn’t go, however much that meant betraying my family. In the past, on the other hand, I seldom knew what I’d done wrong. Sometimes I asked. I soon realized this question wasn’t a good idea, this question drove my father into a blinding rage, and then he certainly gave me what for; afterwards, when I was in my room, he used to come in and say, now you’ve got time to think about it. My father could always spot and condemn my wickedness, even when I was totally unaware of it; he showed me how wicked I was, making it very clear, just as he showed my brother what a wimp he was, making that perfectly clear, too. My brother also wondered what he might break if he jumped from the first-floor balcony, he said that evening; when I’m in a closed room, he said, I’m always drawn to the window, I can’t help but be drawn to windows in closed rooms, I always want to jump out of the window, I’m obsessed by this urge. My mother fetched another bottle of