“My dear Mrs. Schrei. You’re giving this little transfer too much significance. What’s really happened, after all? Berta’s changing classes. That’s it. Try to look at the whole thing as a kind of organizational matter. It really is nothing. It says nothing about Berta’s future development. She may yet grow up to be a Madame Curie!”
“No. I just can’t accept it. You can’t turn my daughter into a special student. That’s something you just cannot do! I always got straight As, Miss, and my daughter will also get nothing but straight As. That I promise you! On my life: I will make sure of it. Just one more year. A year!”
“Calm down, Mrs. Schrei. Please, don’t get so worked up …”
“My Berta is going to be placed in a special school! My Berta is supposed to be an idiot! And I should calm down?”
The teacher tried to console Berta Schrei with sympathetic words as Berta walked out of the classroom, waving her hands.
In a trance, she walked in the direction of Allerseelengasse 13, bravely choking back her tears. But hardly had she taken the first step onto the sidewalk of her street than the shame of it all shook her and the defeat streamed from her eyes, and it was more blind than seeing that she stumbled along Allerseelengasse, till she made it to building 13.
THE USUAL, WILHELM, THE USUAL
After her conversations with the principal and the teacher, Berta stopped upbraiding her daughter. She no longer bothered to remind Little Berta to cinch her schoolbag tight or to carry it up on her back.
Whenever Wilhelm called from Felsenstein to find out what was new, Berta told him that everything was the same.
She didn’t mention how Little Berta was skulking around the house like Rudolf, dragging her schoolbag like some heavy, nearly immovable burden, and she likewise neglected to mention their daughter’s transfer to a special school.
When Wilhelm asked whether she had gone to see the teacher and, if so, what the latter had wished to tell her, Berta replied, “The usual, Wilhelm, the usual.” She also failed to mention Little Berta’s transformation from conscientious and motivated to slovenly and utterly indifferent.
There was a time when, if Little Berta’s fountain pen had slipped from her hand, or if she’d dripped a small blot of ink in her notebook, she would rush to rewrite its entire contents in a fresh one, and very neatly at that. Her once precise, rounded, and actually quite beautifully formed letters seemed now to jut up and down every which way across the page. One would lean to the left, another to the right; there wasn’t a single example of a letter keeping within its prescribed lines. Little Berta’s writing trailed upward, downward, ran aground on ink blot after ink blot, and she would say laconically, without fail, about each assignment she worked on: “I can’t do it.”
Not once did she manage to write out a text correctly, let alone form a complete sentence on her own. Little Berta and Rudolf vied for the title of most forgetful, recollected neither the Ten Commandments nor the name of their hometown; they even swore they didn’t know the name of the street where they played. If Berta lost patience, refused to believe her children’s confusion, and shouted out in desperation, “All right, out with it! How much is one plus one? You must at least still know that!” still she would get no more of an answer than the teacher had. Shrugged shoulders. Silence. Perhaps a meager “I don’t know.”
The result was that Berta herself came to doubt her children’s comprehension, and in spite of Wilhelm’s constant questions, was reduced to simply repeating: “Everything’s the same as always. What do you want me to say, Wilhelm? Everything’s as it was. That’s right. Yes. As you say.”
ANOTHER DREAM, WHICH GAVE HER MUCH TO THINK ABOUT
The night after the conversation with the teacher, Berta Schrei had another dream, which gave her much to think about. Little Berta was sitting at home with Rudolf; they were doing their homework. When the doorbell rang, Little Berta ran to the door, opened it, and a corpse was flung in at her feet, “The corpse! The corpse!” Little Berta screamed, “Rudolf, the corpse is here!” She walked in a circle around the corpse, and pointed at it as Rudolf ran over. The two children stared at each other, slapping their thighs with laughter, then dragged the corpse by its legs into the living room with their combined strength. They knelt down by it, stared at it, winked at one another, stood up, danced a “Ring Around the Rosie,” then knelt back down beside the corpse again. Hours passed, days, until hunger drove them out of the apartment; they walked from one house door to the other. Beggar children, imbeciles, with mindless hunger shining from their eyes.
In the dream Berta saw herself lying there, the corpse in the living room, saw her children on their journey, saw an edict tacked up to the notice board of the building: “Beggars, imbeciles, and maniacs are to be turned away from the door.” She saw her children at the trashcans, how they struggled with stray dogs over a bone. Once they’d rifled through the trashcans and waste heaps of Donaublau and crammed themselves full of whatever they found there, sometimes confusing an old scrap of fabric with a bit of food, they turned back to Allerseelengasse, saw a new edict tacked up on the notice board of building 13, collided with one another, giggled, danced a “Ring Around the Rosie,” and assured each other that they couldn’t read the edict’s words: “The corpse in question is not to be buried.”
Again and again, they danced their “Ring Around the Rosie” in front of the notice board, then with great hooting and giggling, madness in their eyes, the trashcan and waste-heap odors and scraps clinging to their bodies, they stormed up the stairs, once more to wait for hours, for days beside the corpse, until hunger drove them back out. They wandered like ghosts through the city of Donaublau, decrepit, dingy, feral creatures that everyone ignored, and in the face of whom everyone fled.
Hand in hand they skulked, stumbled, ran from door to door, from trashcan to trashcan, from waste heap to waste heap, later returning to their mother’s corpse, to slap their thighs with laughter, to yowl out dirges, to cry, to dance in a strangely disjointed manner, pausing once in a while to kneel down by the corpse, then staring off into space. And the dreaming Berta found it odd that no one came to bury her, to pull the children away from their deathwatch, or at least to beat them to death.
“Life as such. Life as such. Did you deny it?”
“Life as such. Life as such. Did you steal it?”
“The weight of things. The weight of things. Did you forget it?”
“The weight of things. The weight of things. Did you dream it?”
The dreaming Berta wanted to come to her corpse’s aid, to close Rudolf’s and Little Berta’s mouths, but scream as her body might, it was voiceless. The strain only made something crack in her head. The children could see clearly how the corpse had begun bleeding from its eyes, nose, and ears. They pointed at it with their spindly fingers, giggled, and chanted their song more ghoulishly and boisterously than ever.
“Life as such. Life as such. Did you deny it?”
“Life as such. Life as such. Did you steal it?”
“The weight of things. The weight of things. Did you forget it?”
“The weight of things. The weight of things. Did you dream it?”
And at that they returned to dancing in their strangely disjointed manner.
“Soon they’ll come to lock away the corpse! Soon they’ll come and seal up the apartment! Rudolf! Berta! This living room will become a coffin! Rudolf! Berta! This apartment will become a grave!”
Wilhelm came, along with the work crew who’d been employed to seal off apartment 12 in building 13 on Allerseelengasse, to keep the stench of rot inside.