Ferdinand held out his shot glass to Berta a fourth time, let it be filled with good schnapps, drained it in one go, and declared with admiration, “I never knew a chauffeur to understand anything other than motors, speedometers, and the joy of steering passengers around the countryside — but I can’t say I’m surprised. Yes, I have long suspected there was more to you than that! And now I know for certain.”
After delivering this little speech, Ferdinand felt a most urgent need for a fifth shot, and Berta was amazed how quickly Wilhelmine noticed this. With a jerk, the schnapps bottle was wrenched from Berta’s hands, then passed back, and the glass was emptied straightaway once more.
“Berta. Keep your eyes open,” said Wilhelmine in a slightly reproachful tone, shaking her head. “You’re always off somewhere lost in your thoughts.”
Berta clapped her hand over her mouth; she cried out, “Oh, forgive me, Mr. Wolf! I was just stunned at the sight of so much made from so little.”
Ferdinand Wolf nodded knowingly and said, “So it is, Mrs. Schrei my dear, so it is. If you keep your eyes open and have a bit of common sense, the improbable becomes probable.” Rudolf yanked at his mother’s skirt, she bent down to him, and he whispered in her ear, “Help me, Mama, help me!” He pointed to the floor where a small puddle was forming. Berta took the boy by the hand, excused herself, and tried to cover up Rudolf’s shameful mishap insofar as was possible. She said, “Our able craftsmen will have to excuse us for a moment. I imagine they may enjoy a bit of time to themselves anyhow, and now they don’t have to worry about our meddling.”
The able craftsmen Ferdinand and Wilhelm broke out into hearty laughter. Wilhelm clapped his Berta good-naturedly on the shoulder and Ferdinand Wolf said, “What a charmingly unassuming creature.”
But Wilhelmine threw her hands up in horror, pointed toward the puddle, and cried out, “Berta! What an absolute mess! When will you finally teach your boy how to use the toilet?”
Little Berta wrinkled her nose and said, “It wasn’t me, Uncle Wolf, that doesn’t happen to me anymore!” Uncle Wolf cleared his throat, stroked Little Berta’s cheek, and Wilhelmine said, “Rudolf! Take your little sister as an example!”
Berta fled to the bedroom with Rudolf, and Wilhelmine waddled into the kitchen, returning with a rag to wipe up the calamity. “It’s repulsive! Repulsive! He really is a bit old for this sort of thing!”
Ferdinand Wolf nodded knowingly and declared, “Yes. Yes. Raising children. Hard work. It’s not so easy. I know. You have to be resourceful. You really do. It’s hard work indeed.”
Wilhelm looked at his colleague Ferdinand Wolf, bursting with gratitude, and Wilhelmine said irately, “That doesn’t change the fact that it is something she has to deal with!” And with a stern, sideways glance at Ferdinand Wolf: “The hard work, that is.”
“I WAS JUST DREAMING …”
Rudolf hung on the cross. Around him stood scattered groups of people, all of whom pinned him in their withering gaze. “Where’s my mother?” Rudolf cried from the cross.
“Your mother is in her grave,” a faceless voice answered him from the multitude, and Berta became conscious of herself lying under the earth, a few meters from the cross. She tried to shift her coffin lid and to cry out with all the force of her love:
“Rudolf! I’m still alive! I’m coming! Wait for me! Be patient! I’ll get you down from there! Rudolf!” The dreaming Berta observed this other Berta, as powerless and voiceless as a corpse in her fruitless struggle.
“Where’s my mother?” Rudolf cried a second time and looked down onto the nearby hillock where there was no cross and no flowers, only shoveled up dirt, as on a molehill. A figure without a face, a torso on two legs, pulled away from the group and said, “There she lies. Let her rest. It’ll be over soon. You’ll understand when the sun has reached its zenith.”
After the headless figure had spoken, the scattered groups merged into a single human mass. All of them had their heads at their sides, holding them in their hands and resting them on their hips. Each head was the same as the others. And all the heads resembled helmets.
“What did I ever do to you?” Rudolf cried. And since no one answered him: “Why am I hanging here on this cross? Why?”
One headless creature after another stepped forward out of the mass of people. The voices of women, girls, men, and boys drowned out one another in turn:
“You can’t catch a ball.”
“You can’t play an instrument.”
“You can’t even sing.”
“You always fall down.”
“Your nose bleeds.”
“You have two left hands.”
“You can’t do your sums.”
“You can’t even remember the Ten Commandments.”
“You can’t write on your own.”
“You can’t even copy things down.”
“All you can draw are animals, and houses, just barely — you can’t draw people with two hands, ten fingers, two feet, and a head. Your people have five eyes and monstrous mouths. Your people have seven heads or no head, twenty-three fingers or none at all.”
“You can’t catch frogs.”
“You can’t even make it to the bathroom when you need to go.”
“You’re a bed-wetter.”
“You can’t throw a punch.”
“You don’t know how to fight.”
“You’re a weakling.”
“You always have diarrhea.”
“You bite your nails.”
“You stutter when the teacher asks where you’re from.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“You can’t swim.”
“You’re a crybaby.”
“You grind your teeth at night.”
Rudolf yelled down from the cross, “But I’m not a bad person!”
And the headless ones answered him in a chorus, “You are good for nothing.”
The people put on their helmets, now they had heads again, only one still stood there headless, then stepped forward and pointed at the sun, saying, “It is done. The sun is at its zenith,” and then it threw its helmet on Berta’s grave, and a tremor bore through Rudolf’s body like a bark beetle through wood. But the scream that Berta always waited for in the leafless season, that one definitive scream, never came.
And Berta Schrei shouted for her son, and a ghastly thousandfold echo rang out of the earth, and the mass of people, already dissolving, scattered in all directions, with each person running for dear life. Voiceless Berta shouted down the hurricane-like storm that seemed to have driven, in a matter of seconds, grayish black banks of clouds from all four corners of the earth to gather above the cross where Rudolf was hanging.
When the clouds burst and the rain began to lash down, everyone had already fled into their homes and hovels, and Berta’s cry told them that Rudolf’s life had slipped away. His head hung down, and the hard rain battered shut the lid of Berta’s coffin, which had finally, momentarily, come open. Berta knew she had died before she’d been able to shelter Rudolf from the terrible weight of things.
HUNTING SEASON IS HUNTING SEASON
The chauffeur and Come-hither-boy Wilhelm Schrei telephoned to Donaublau from Felsenstein. In one of the apartments behind the filth-gray façades, which gave the narrow alley the aspect of a ravine, Berta Schrei, mother of two children, housewife, and helpmeet, grabbed the receiver.
“So. So. As you say. Hunting season is hunting season. I understand. Of course, Wilhelm. I’ve always understood that. Wilhelm, are you unhappy with me?”
And.
“Yes. As you say. Everything’s in order here. That’s right.”
And.
“If four weeks have already passed, then two weeks will certainly pass too.”