The Sons Read Online Free PDF Page B

course I know your friend. He would have been a son after my own heart. That’s why you’ve been betraying him all these years. Why else? Do you think I haven’t wept for him? And that’s why you’ve had to lock yourself up in the office—the boss is busy, mustn’t be disturbed—just so that you could write your lying little letters to Russia. But fortunately a father doesn’t need to be taught how to see through his own son. And now that you thought you’d pinned him down, so far down that you could plant your rear end on him so he couldn’t move, then my fine son decides to up and get married!”
    Georg looked up at the terrifying image of his father. His friend in St. Petersburg, whom his father suddenly knew so well, seized hold of his imagination as never before. He saw him lost in the vastness of Russia; at the door of his empty, plundered warehouse he saw him. Amid the wreckage of his storage shelves, the slashed remnants of his wares, the falling gas brackets, he barely stood upright. Why did he have to go so far away!
    “Pay attention to me!” cried his father, and Georg, almost absentmindedly, ran toward the bed to take everything in, but froze halfway there.
    “Because she lifted up her skirts,” his father began to flute, “because she lifted her skirts like this, the revolting creature”—and mimicking her, he lifted his shirt so high that one could see the scar on his thigh from his war wound—“because she lifted her skirts like this and this and this you went after her, and in order to have your way with her undisturbed you have disgraced our mother’s memory, betrayed your friend, and stuck your father into bed so that he can’t move. But can he move, or can’t he?”
    And he stood up quite unsupported and kicked his legs about. He shone with insight.
    Georg shrank into a corner, as far away from his father as possible. A long time ago he had firmly made up his mind to watch everything with the greatest attention so that he would not be surprised by any indirect attack, a pounce from behind or above. At this moment he recalled this long-forgotten resolve and then forgot it again, like someone drawing a short thread through the eye of a needle.
    “But your friend hasn’t been betrayed after all!” cried his father, emphasizing the point with stabs of his forefinger. “I’ve been representing him here on the spot.”
    “You comedian!” Georg could not resist shouting, realized at once the harm done, and, his eyes bulging in his head, bit his tongue—though too late—until the pain made his knees buckle.
    “Yes, of course I’ve been playing a comedy! A comedy! That’s the perfect word for it! What other consolation was left for your poor old widowed father? Tell me—and while you’re answering me may you still be my loving son—what else was left to me, in my back room, plagued by a disloyal staff, old to the very marrow of my bones? And my son strutting through the world, closing deals that I had prepared for him, turning somersaults in his glee, and striding away from his father with the composed face of a man of honor! Do you think I didn’t love you, I, from whose loins you sprang?”
    Now he’s going to lean forward, thought Georg; if only he would topple over and smash to pieces! These words went hissing through his brain.
    His father leaned forward but did not topple. Since Georg didn’t come any closer, as he had expected, he straightened himself up again.
    “Stay where you are, then, I don’t need you! You think you have the strength to get yourself over here and that you’re only hanging back because you want to? Don’t be too sure! I am still much the stronger. All by myself I might have had to give in, but your mother has given me her strength, I have established a fine connection with your friend, and I have your customers in my pocket!”
    “He has pockets even in his undershirt!” said Georg to himself, and thought that with this observation he could