Leavetaking Read Online Free PDF Page B

thorns of the bush trembles a woolly tuft of hare’s fur. Later that day, however, I was led back to school by my mother, later that day I stood with my mother in the corridor in front of the classroom door, and my mother knocked at the classroom door and the teacher opened the door fromwithin and inside all faces were turned toward me, all within had formed a community together and I was the one who had come too late. And every day I went down the avenue with Friederle, and Friederle pressed against me, dug his elbow into my side, shoved me to sidewalk edge. I avoided him and walked in the road. Why don’t you walk here beside me, Friederle asked, and made room for me. Hardly had I started walking next to him when he rammed his elbow into my ribs again. I began to run, but he held me back by my satchel. We came to the square where the street to school forked off, and Friederle stuck his leg between mine so that I fell, my satchel sprang open, books spilled out, the slate and the box of chalk clattered out, the box with my sponge in it rolled far away over the cobbles up to the tramcar conductors who here, at the end of the line, were sitting on the trolley car steps, eating their breakfast and laughing and munching their sandwiches, the conductors threw the box across to me, it was a box made of black lacquered wood, with a red rose painted on it. Here at the square where the road to school branched off, a whole enchanting world began, walls of fortresslike buildings pushed close together, with glimpses of courtyards and stables, a church tower built of rough stone rose up out of the shingled roofs, in a wheel at the top of the spire storks had made their nest and struck out at one another with their long, sharp beaks. Behind the leaded panes of a window sat an aged man in a rocking chair, and out of a gatehouse came two men with knives, their faces taut and reddish and silkily shining like the thin skin overhealing wounds, and behind them on a heap of brushwood lay a pig, its four legs bound together, and on a red-tiled wall a butterfly trembled with outspread wings that had black and yellow markings, and a hand holding a needle thrust out between its fingers approached the butterfly and the needle pierced it through. On the school playground rose a small stone building with an arched, shabby doorway, and when one pressed one’s eyes to the windowpanes and shielded them from the sides with one’s hands, one could see inside in the half dark the carriage with its high, turned doorposts and black canopy and it sometimes happened that the coachman came in a long frock coat with his big black horse, cautiously opened the door, backed the horse into the shafts, and drove the creaking carriage out. The piercing bell summoned us to the classrooms. Here was a whirring and stirring up of dust around the splintery desks that smelled of ink and cold sweat. I unpacked the slate and the broken chalk. Friederle turned around in his place and threatened me with his fist. The teacher called me out to the front. I had not understood his question, I never understood his questions. His bloated face rocked close in front of me, his eyes bulged at me, his thick lips opened. Now, what was it I wanted, he asked, and rubbed my ear with the knuckles of his clenched fist, and white threads of saliva trembled on his opened lips. From the benches all around me came a tittering. Even the teacher’s face was distorted into a grin. That they all laughed at me was proof that I was funny, and so I too grinned, and this ability to amuse others was a valuablegift. But, the teacher screamed, you’re still laughing, and his grin had only been a baring of his teeth, and the laughter around me from the benches oozed away. I was hauled up by the ear onto the podium and placed in front of the blackboard, and what I had to demonstrate to the teacher and class was how one kept one’s palm held out under the raised cane. It was a difficult exercise, for my hand