Young Gerber E-Book

Friedrich Torberg

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Kurt Gerber embarks hopefully on his last year at school, leading to the all- important exam, but finds that he is constantly at odds with the sadistic class teacher Professor Kupfer, known to his students as "Lord God Kupfer", who particularly dislikes him. Inspired partly by its author's own experience of his final school-leaving examination, which he passed only at the second attempt, and partly by the suicides of no less than ten school students in a single week in the winter of 1929, Young Gerber is a timeless tale of classroom angst, and an undisputed classic of Austrian literature.

Leseprobe

FRIEDRICH TORBERG

YOUNG GERBER

Translated from the German by Anthea Bell

PUSHKIN PRESS LONDON

CONTENTS

Title Page

Epigraph

Translator’s Foreword

Chapter I: God Almighty Kupfer

Chapter II: Entry of the Gladiators. Strike the Gong

Chapter III: Three Encounters

Chapter IV: Meditations on x

Chapter V: The Palfrey Stumbles

Chapter VI: A Young Man Called Kurt Gerber

Chapter VII: Kurt Gerber, Number 7

Chapter VIII: The Hard Path to Failure

Chapter IX: “Wednesday at Ten”, a Trashy Novel

Chapter X: A Storm on Two Fronts

Chapter XI: The Palfrey Collapses

Chapter XII: The Matura Examination

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About the Publisher

Copyright

YOUNG GERBER

Translator’s Foreword

Exam pressure on young people is nothing new, as readers will discover from this novel, first published in 1930. Its author, Friedrich Torberg (a pseudonym; his real surname was Kantor), is regarded as an Austrian writer, although as a young man he held Czech citizenship. His family was from the same German-speaking Jewish middle class of Prague as Kafka’s, although Friedrich was born in 1908 in Vienna, where his father’s work had taken them. In his teenage years the family moved back to Prague; his last school years were spent in that city at the German Realgymnasium (grammar school or high school), which still used antiquated educational methods dating from the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Some reforms were already being introduced in Vienna at this time, but Young Gerber contains autobiographical elements.

After leaving school (he passed his final exams at the second attempt), and abandoning his university studies, Torberg worked as a journalist in both Prague and Vienna. Young Gerber was his first novel, and he was encouraged to send it to a publisher by Max Brod, Kafka’s confidant and the man who famously ignored instructions to destroy all his friend’s unpublished work after his death. Torberg’s novel was a great success, but only three years after its publication it was banned in Nazi Germany at the time of the first book-burnings, along with the works of many other German-language writers of Jewish origin. When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, Torberg happened to be in Prague, and armed with his Czech citizenship he emigrated first to Switzerland, then to France, before becoming one of a party of “Ten Outstanding German Writers” invited to the United States by the PEN Club in New York. During the war he worked in the States as a translator, freelance journalist and theatrical critic, and took American citizenship, which he retained even after his return to Austria in 1951. He lived there for the rest of his life, and died in Vienna in 1979.

Young Gerber’s instant success suggests that it aroused painful memories in the minds of those of its original readers who had been through the German and Austrian educational system of those days. Kurt Gerber, the 18-year-old protagonist, is persecuted during his final year at school by a man who, it is to be hoped, would be recognized today as a sadistic psychopath: Professor Kupfer, teacher of mathematics and descriptive geometry. “Professor” was evidently a kind of courtesy title for all the teachers in such secondary schools, and denoted no particular academic rank; we learn that Kupfer did not even have a doctoral degree.

The school-leaving examination itself, known as the Abitur in Germany, the Matura or Reifeprüfung in Austria, had a firmly established structure at the time described by Torberg. It was in two parts, first the written papers, then an oral examination. The compulsory subjects were mathematics and descriptive geometry (involving the representation of three-dimensional objects, useful if you intended to be an engineer or architect); a foreign language, either classical or modern; as well as German, history and geography. While physics, chemistry and natural history were studied, they did not feature as examination subjects. Only students who had passed the written papers were admitted to the oral part of the exam, which, as Torberg presents it, was vitally important. This fact explains the constant anxiety felt throughout their last year by the students in this novel when they are to be tested in class. Only if they pass the oral examination will they really have gained their Matura.

The long final chapter describes the course of this oral exam. Best of all was to pass with a distinction (Vorzug); second best was to be passed unanimously by all the examiners (Stimmeneinheit); students who did not quite achieve that could still claim the Matura with a majority of pass marks (Mehrheit). Interestingly, one of the girls in the class, Anny Kohl, is distressed by the prospect of getting only a unanimous pass; she wanted to emulate the other girls who had passed with distinction that day. Evidently girls with academic ambitions had to be competitive; Lisa, whom Kurt loves, has opted out as the book begins, leaving school to work in an arts and crafts studio and be a good-time girl. In Kurt’s class of final-year students there are few girls, only six of them among many more boys (and they sit segregated at the front of the class, where the teachers, all of them men, can have a good look at their legs). Exam pressure may still be felt today, but mercifully such details of the old Austro-Hungarian system are a thing of the past.

ANTHEA BELL

The whole world rests upon three things: on truth, on justice, and on love.

Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel

The author began writing this book in the winter of early 1929, a year after his first draft of it. Within a single week of that winter, from 27th January to 3rd February 1929, his attention was drawn to newspaper announcements of ten suicides by school students.

I

God Almighty Kupfer

IT WAS A MILD, late-summer morning, and the classroom door was open. Amidst all the noise, no one noticed when young Gerber came in. He went to his desk in the back row, sat down and looked at the scene before him at his leisure. It was just the same as on any other day at school. And Kurt Gerber, in line with the habit he had acquired from much reading of seeing everything that went on around him as if he remembered it, as if it were an account of something already in the past, registered it as almost a recapitulation of previous events.

The students in their last year at High School XVI had assembled in their classroom. They were sitting or standing around in groups, their conversations were loud, excited and incessant, even headlong; they had so much to tell each other after two summer months, their final long school holidays. For the last time they knew, with familiar certainty, that the end of those months meant the beginning of a new school year, but they also knew for the first time, and with an intriguing sense of novelty, that it would be their last.

Their last school year! Those four words had always had a magical aura—they were about to enter the world of reality, and the face and behaviour of every one of the thirty-two eighth-year students reflected that fact. Between 28th June and 1st September they had visibly been adjusting to adulthood, and now, in high spirits, they acted as if they already had this last year behind them. As if there were not another ten months still ahead of them, ten more months of being the school students they had been for the last seven years. Except that everything would carry the extra significance of being for the last time: preparing for exams, taking them, making mistakes, skipping lessons, homework, entries in the register, work marked from Very Good to Unsatisfactory. All that, thought Kurt, looking at the eighth-year students as they cheerfully talked, would be as it had always been since their first year. And not so very much had changed about themselves either, although Körner sported a moustache, and Sittig was kissing the hands of the Reinhard sisters who had just come in (they hadn’t grown any prettier in all that time). They would all behave badly, and less frequently well, just as they did before, and they would quake with fear of the exams and laugh at their teachers’ jokes. However, if Rimmel hooted with shrill merriment as he was doing now when Schleich recited the latest double entendres in a song about a randy landlady, and if it wasn’t a teacher’s joke he was laughing at, then first he would get his face slapped, and second he would have a black mark entered against him in the register—which in the eighth class, just before the final examination, was a far more serious matter than before. I’d happily give you a black mark myself, you toady, thought Kurt Gerber. Well, there we are. And now let the school year begin…

Kurt Gerber looked around. None of the chattering groups particularly attracted him.

Where was Lisa Berwald?

When he got home, he had found a picture postcard from Italy sending him her warm good wishes. “I’m afraid I don’t know where you are spending the summer,” she wrote, “or I might have looked in there myself. Well, see you when we’re back home again.” He wanted to know whether she would really have visited him on holiday, or if those were only empty words, like just about everything she said to him and did. But Lisa Berwald wasn’t here yet.

So who to talk to? It was simplest to join the group on his left by the window. Kaulich was there, with Gerald, Schleich and Blank.

After loud greetings the conversation was soon in full flow. Soon Hobbelmann, who had obviously just arrived, joined them.

“Hello, Scheri! I have news for you!” (Scheri was Kurt’s nickname. It had started out “Geri” with a hard “g” sound, short for Gerber, and then, Heaven knows why, had become Scheri, with a soft initial sound.) “Who do you think is going to be our class teacher?”

“No idea.”

Hobbelmann looked around. “None of the rest of you, either? Go on, then, have a guess!”

“Seelig?” asked Kurt.

“Wrong.”

“Mattusch?”

“Wrong again.”

“Unless you’re going to say you don’t know either—who is it?”

“God Almighty Kupfer.”

Kurt jumped. His head shot forward. He felt the blood rising to his face. Next moment he had seized the startled Hobbelmann and was shaking him. “What did you say? Who?”

Everyone knew that although Professor Kupfer had never taught Kurt Gerber, he did not like him– but the effect of this sudden explosion was so funny that everyone burst out laughing. That brought Kurt to his senses. He let go of the gasping Hobbelmann, struck the top of the desk in front of him and cried, with comically exaggerated emotion, “Then all my wishes are finally granted!”

And his account of a meeting with Kupfer during the summer holidays came pouring out. The Professor stalked past him three times, ignoring him, and even when he came upon Kurt in the forest, and they were on their own, he did not return his civil greeting but said only, in a sharp tone of voice, “It appears that you have recovered very well from the seventh-year examinations,” and walked on before Kurt could say anything—“I could have hit the conceited fool”. And later, when by chance Kupfer was introduced to Kurt Gerber’s father, and his first words were: “Oh… Gerber? The father of that lad going up into the eighth year? Well, your son would have nothing to laugh about in my form. I know how to bring slackers like that into line!” there had been an argument. His father wanted him to change to a different school, but Kurt had persuaded him that, after all, it was far from certain that Kupfer was really going to be his class teacher—and now there he was, God Almighty Kupfer…

Silence reigned for a while. Then there was a buzz of voices.

“I heard there was going to be a new teacher.—How does Hobbelmann know, anyway?—It’s not set in stone.—Why not Mattusch as our class teacher again?—God Almighty’s not so bad, you just have to keep on the right side of him.—That’s true.—I’m staying out of this.—God Almighty Kupfer is all right.—Don’t expect me to swallow that. He’s failed me once already.—Let’s go on strike.—Down with Kupfer.—Don’t be ridiculous.—I’m telling you, Rothbart will stay where he is and Niesset will be our form master…”

Then the bell rang, only faintly audible at first in all the hubbub, but it soon died down. Eight o’clock. School was beginning. Someone closed the classroom door from the outside, and now all was quiet.

But then the noise swelled again. It was a familiar phenomenon, and its nonsensical nature hadn’t changed since the students’ first day at school: as soon as the bell rang they went to their places—without any pushing and shoving—where they continued the conversation they had broken off. Real silence fell only when the class teacher, often several minutes later, opened the door. And today of all days, when there were no lessons, only the class teacher’s official opening of the year of studies, which—as if to lead them gently from leisure to hard work—always began a little late, so that you didn’t really know whether to count it as a school day or still the holidays—well, today of all days, then, there was no real reason to preserve an anxious silence. Soon there was general conversation again.

Only Kurt Gerber sat there in silence. His thoughts were in confusion, he tried in vain to gather them all together and begin sorting them out, he could grasp nothing clearly but that name, the idea of it, the quintessence of that idea: Professor Kupfer, God Almighty. What to do? How was he to behave to him? Submissively? Knuckling under from the start, without waiting for the first blow, ducking so that it would fall on empty air? That would mean he didn’t even find out whether Kupfer really meant “to deal with” a “slacker” like him! Or, on the contrary, should he fight back? Brace himself to resist at the first occasion for it: I am not going to duck! But, for Heaven’s sake—this was the last year at school, the crucial year when you had to, had to pass the final examination, known in Austrian schools as the Matura. What should he do? Wait and see, that’s best, he thought. Maybe he won’t really be as bad as all that, and I’ll be able to get along with him without losing face. Some people speak well of him. Yes, and anyway—who says for certain that he’s going to be our class teacher? Why shouldn’t Mattusch stay with us, or maybe it will be the descriptive geometry master Rothbart, or Hussak who teaches maths and physics? Why is it to be Kupfer all of a sudden teaching us maths and descriptive geometry and being our class teacher? Why? Just because Hobbelmann wanted to show off by imparting a sensational piece of news? Nonsense. God Almighty Kupfer won’t be coming here…

“Here comes God Almighty Kupfer!”

Mertens, who had been keeping watch outside the door, rushed in and sat down in his place as good as gold. The noise broke off abruptly.

So it was true. Or maybe he was on his way to another class?

He ought to be here by now.

Was Mertens trying to fool us?

There—now… nothing.

The sound of the door handle being pushed suddenly down was like a shot breaking the deep silence. Kurt started with alarm, and his knees felt weak as he got to his feet.

The others had risen as well and stood motionless as Professor Artur Kupfer, known among the students as God Almighty Kupfer on account of the infallibility to which he often and emphatically laid claim, strode past the right-hand row of students to the teacher’s desk.

Professor Kupfer was about forty years old, and rather too corpulent for a man of medium height. Areas of his short fair hair bore witness to unsuccessful efforts with the brush to arrange it neatly at the back of his head. His moderately high forehead, like the whole of his rather bloated face, was an undistinguished red in colour, despite the attention he obviously devoted to it, and on his thin, prominent, aquiline nose that effect was enhanced by the little red veins running over it. Steely blue eyes behind oval, rimless glasses looked persistently for something that wasn’t present. Today he wore a casual pale-grey suit with a matching tie. He had draped a raincoat over the arm in which he was clutching the large green class register; his free hand, as usual, was plucking at his carefully trimmed blond moustache.

Professor Kupfer had reached the lectern that was the teacher’s desk. He mounted the step up to it, still with his back turned to the students, and threw the raincoat carelessly over the back of his chair. Then he swung swiftly round, looked expressionlessly at all of them now standing to attention, and said very quietly, with a slight nod of his head, “Sit down!” For the first time that remark, heard five times every day for hundreds of weeks, had a special effect on the students. It was almost a relief, coming from the mouth of the man whose appearance had imposed such unusual and almost paralytic rigidity on the eighth-year class. He actually speaks, they thought, God Almighty Kupfer speaks like any human being. Doesn’t make his stern will known in brief gestures. Says just, “Sit down”, like the other teachers, and now there he stands saying nothing, as any human being might say nothing.

“I will wait until we have total peace and quiet,” says Professor Kupfer in a sharp voice, without moving, without looking at anyone. And only when the class is sitting as motionless as it was standing before, only then does he move, apparently in order to illustrate the contrast between the students, who must sit still at his bidding, and him, whom no one here can command, and who now moves all the more freely.

Kurt Gerber had not looked away from him yet; he was staring at him spellbound, as if looking for some vulnerable spot in the enemy with whom he was about to enter the ring for a ten-month wrestling match.

Now Professor Kupfer made a movement like a man waking from profound and distant thought, leant against the tall lectern, hands in his jacket pockets, and suddenly began to smile. Instantly, he had so transformed both himself and the mood of the class that all he had previously said and done became an artificial prelude, one he had performed almost without thinking. Now, however, now that God Almighty Kupfer was really here, now the real game began.

His voice had an entirely different sound—and once again Kurt jumped, just as he had when the door handle was pressed down, although both times he had known what was coming next.

“Well, so here we all are.” Kupfer fell silent, as if thinking hard. He wanted to give what he said the appearance of improvisation, as if he were voluntarily exposing his own little human weaknesses. (Hoping to appear “jovial”, he often adopted a stilted manner.)

“Let’s see who’s here.” His glance swept around the room. Kurt sat there in fevered expectation. What would happen when God Almighty Kupfer noticed him?

“Lewy,” said Kupfer, with his mouth hardly open, “we’ve already had the pleasure—Lengsfeld, yes, all old acquaintances—and I see Gerber is also here—you liked the summer holidays better than this, eh?” he asked as Kurt, who had risen to his feet, red in the face and unsure of himself, silently bowed.

“Yes.” Kurt said this barely audibly, and quickly sat down again.

“Good. We’ll start with a roll-call of the register.”

He opened it and began reading out the names; each time a student said, “Here,” he made a note in the book without looking up.

“Altschul!”

“Here!”

“Benda!”

“Here!”

Kurt, listening carefully as he waited for his own name to be called, expected to hear “Berwald” at this point, and he looked at Lisa’s place. It was still empty. In his surprise, he didn’t hear Kupfer murmuring, “Berwald has left the school,” nor did he hear him reading on, calling the names of Blank, Brodetzky and Duffek, he didn’t hear Gerald’s name or his own. His thoughts had abruptly taken another direction, and in the same way as they had previously been circling around “Kupfer”, they were now circling in mindless haste around “Lisa”… Lisa, Lisa, he thought, where’s Lisa? And now, when Hobbelmann turns and urgently whispers “Scheri”, he jumps, and his carefully prepared “Here” comes out in such a strange tone that no one can help laughing, and even Kupfer, who has called “Gerber!” three times with increasing impatience, only shakes his head and, without castigating him for inattention, reads on through the register. Halpern, Hergeth, Hobbelmann. Once again, Kurt hears nothing, but stares at the green-painted wood of the desk in front of him and thinks: Lisa… He was planning to invite her out to a cake shop for the last free morning when she might not be surrounded by twenty others; he’d meant to work out a plan with her for the school term ahead, one last moment of free time, entirely free—you’re back from Italy, Lisa, where no one knew you were still at school, and you and I and everyone know that I’m almost past my schooldays, we’re much older than we used to be, and we’ll behave accordingly, no one must notice anything, we won’t talk on our own in break, those childish idiots mustn’t have anything to see and gossip about, Lisa—but Lisa wasn’t here…

Professor Kupfer had closed the register and stepped forward to deliver his opening address to the class, with the same smile on his lips as he had assumed earlier. It really did suggest a touch of goodwill, even a kind of modesty. He was trying to come down, as far as possible, to an earthly level. But the obvious care he took to do so made his intentions clear: they were to notice how far he had to descend from those heights where he usually sat enthroned in order to appear to the students a member of the human race like themselves. Look, his tone of voice and the tenor of his address implied, I am taking a great deal of trouble to make myself understood. But thank heavens, I can only regret that it doesn’t work. I am steeped too far in knowledge that is denied to you, in experience that you could not understand—yet something of it must come through to you in my words, and for your sake I did intend to keep them as easy as I possibly could. However, no one can stay far below his own level for long. So, as I proceed further in my address, I must give more meaning and richness to my words, seemingly at the expense of the subject. You will not be able to follow me, but I can’t help myself. I trust you will not take offence at my considering you stupid. But should anyone dare not to hide his inferiority under a cloak of humble shame, and instead try to express it in any way whatsoever, thus making me aware that I am, after all, among hopeless idiots, it will be the worse for him! And I shall be careful that not the slightest expression of your stupidity escapes me!

What he said, out loud, was: “Captain Kupfer—for I held the rank of captain in the Great War—sees everything, takes note of everything, knows everything.” Kupfer uttered these words perfectly seriously, and Kurt’s astonishment (for the time being he was still incapable of any other feeling) increased immeasurably. He had listened intently to what Kupfer said as, after beginning in the traditional way, he moved more and more into the first person, punctuating his remarks with instances of self-glorification, at first in parenthesis but then coming thicker and thicker, climbing higher and higher up artificial hills of pomposity, and now the inflated address had reached the peak of the vanity of the man delivering it, to no one’s pleasure but his own. Kurt had listened to all this. Now he was waiting for whatever outrageous comment would follow what the speaker had been at such pains to express.

“You see, you must know that it is impossible to deceive me, and it will be in your own interests not even to try. Do not think you might succeed after all, and don’t listen to anyone else’s whispered suggestions. It is inadvisable to lend an ear to such advice. I have never done so. Nor do I ever follow the crowd. The crowd always does something stupid and regrets it later. That is life. The stupid shed tears afterwards, it is the clever who laugh. I am in the habit of laughing.”

“Ha, ha,” said someone in the artificial pause that followed this.

Kurt had not actually laughed; he said, “Ha, ha,” aloud and slowly, as he contemplated this shallow admirer of his own reflection, thinking himself undisturbed in the cloudy fields of his divinity, and was possessed by an uncontrollable wish to take him down a peg or two and return him to his rightful place at the teacher’s desk.

Undisturbed, Kupfer looked at the desk where Kurt was sitting, and raised his eyebrows. Everyone turned to him. Kurt sat leaning forward, smiling right into the Professor’s face, as if he shared his opinion that the clever are in the habit of laughing. He was glad, he found, that the moment of showdown between him and Kupfer had come so soon.

“Gerber!” said Kupfer slowly. “You may be one of those who shed tears afterwards.”

With that, so far as Kupfer was concerned and much to the regret of Kurt and the class, the subject was closed. Soon he concluded his address with the words: “I don’t need you to show mathematical genius, and I won’t demand the impossible of you. What I do want, you can all easily achieve by dint of hard work and goodwill. Anyone who cannot or will not achieve that is immature, and only the genuinely mature will pass the final examination, the Matura. I give you my assurance today that in this crucial year there will be no acts of mercy. Anyone who happens to have reached the eighth year as the result of an act of mercy will have a very hard time with me. I would prefer weak students to leave the school at once. I will not have the Matura degraded to a mere formality, not I. In particular, I advise those who hope to make up for their laziness by impudence to be on their guard. You will do best not to take me on. Now you know more or less how you must behave in my class. Regular lessons begin at eight a.m. tomorrow.”

Professor Kupfer turned round and picked up his coat. Suddenly he remembered something.

“And as to the seating plan—is that how you were sitting last year?”

A few students were bold enough to answer with a loud “Yes”.

“Very well. It can stay the same for now. Only someone will have to move into Berwald’s place now that it’s vacant… let’s see… Lengsfeld, all right? Oh, and who is missing there, in the same row as Gerber. That’s right, Weinberg. He can stay. I want a seating plan of the whole class tomorrow. Who has good handwriting?”

“Reinhard… Kaulich… Not me… Severin.”

“Oh, agree among yourselves who does it!” said Kupfer in sudden annoyance, turning to leave. The class immediately rose to their feet and stood without a sound, but once Kupfer had closed the door behind him, hubbub broke out.

The eighth-year students milled around in agitation, unable to make up their minds about Kupfer. For neither the “He’s not so bad” group nor the larger “He’s an absolute bastard” group could cite any evidence for their opinions except that they had just expressed them. Volubility had to make do for the absence of logic.

Kurt Gerber took no part in this debate. He sat there thinking of Lisa and only Lisa. He was indignant that Kupfer had even spoken her name. And the fact that he would have no further occasion to do so made him very anxious. Lisa Berwald had left the school. Why? And why hadn’t she told him?

Someone clapped him on the shoulder with a heavy hand; it was the bearlike Kaulich, with a satisfied grin on his broad face.

“Well done, Scheri, you let him have it!”

Meanwhile some of the others had joined them. Nowak said, “That wasn’t a great idea of yours. Why do you have to get across everyone right away? What do you get out of it?” A number of students agreed with him, others didn’t. “It’s a good thing for God Almighty Kupfer to find he can’t go too far.”

Kurt, thinking things over, asked as casually as possible, “Does anyone know what all this about Lisa Berwald is?”

Several answers came in. “Left school.—I heard she’s going to get married soon.—Not a bit of it, she’s simply sick and tired of this place.—Can’t say I blame her.”

“If you ask me, young Lisa’s no fool—she’s fed to the teeth with swanning round school,” versified Pollak, bowing to his laughing audience. Most of the students were in good humour now, and they decided to go to the morning concert at the bandstand in the municipal park. Kurt was in no mood for it. He unobtrusively slipped away and went home.

Full of dissatisfaction in general, he turned his back on the day’s events, dragging his feet.

At home, he flung himself on the sofa. Might as well sleep off a foul day like this. If you didn’t have to go to school. And today he didn’t.

Professor Artur Kupfer, on the other hand, was extremely satisfied with the day, as indeed he was with almost all days in the school year. After two empty summer months—empty because he had gone around like one human being among others and not a god among school students, because there was no one he could cause to tremble before his omnipotence, because the many people he saw could not be forced into what his need for domination required—after this period of exile he flung himself body and soul into the empire now restored to him. He had felt warm enjoyment of that first “Sit down”, he had caressed it in advance with his palate and tongue and lips, like a man sucking the last fibres of fruit off a peach stone before spitting it out. But Kupfer hadn’t spat anything out. It had passed his lips lovingly (and therefore gently), not a peach stone to be thrown away, more like a little diamond of incalculable value, successfully brought over the border by a jewel-smuggler who now lets it slip out of his mouth with care and trembling delight. Kupfer felt a similar tremor of delight. During the annual summer exile he was always tormented by the same sombre fear: that while he was away everything could have changed, that after his return to the throne, suddenly, for some unfathomable reason, “Sit down” would no longer mean “Sit down”, and when he commanded his subjects to sit down they might stay on their feet, or walk around the room. It was an agonizing fear, and he couldn’t understand it; he felt it was pointless, and yet it brought him terrible visions on many a sleepless night. When, on holiday in mountainous country, he came to a peak whose height failed to meet his imperious expectations after one such night, he had wanted to tell it, “Unsatisfactory, sit down!” but next moment had felt ridiculous in the fact of that great, silent entity standing there in icy immobility, letting it be known that it was not about to move, and even before the command was given announcing that it was not minded to carry it out—rather like a defiant school student. And he, Kupfer, had therefore been obliged to refrain from giving the order at the last moment, so he hated that mountain and hated the entire landscape and hated all the people he encountered. Most of all he hated Kurt Gerber, whom he happened to meet there and who could not yet be told to “Sit down!” But soon, soon—oh, soon he would be telling students to sit down, sit down, sit down…

And now his hour came. He said, “Sit down” and many human beings, a whole room full of them, sat down. He spoke the names of those human beings, and each of them stood up and announced, “Here”. As a whole and as individuals they were at his disposal again. Nothing had gone wrong while he was away, it all worked. He gave orders, and his orders were obeyed. He called, and he was answered. He said, “I want peace and quiet!” and there was peace and quiet. He spoke—and was surrounded by the bright light of authority and radiant perfection. God Almighty Kupfer.

He knew that was the students’ nickname for him. He also knew that nothing can be done about nicknames. So he was determined to live up to his, and since he succeeded in that, he had no objection to hearing it. Yes, he was God Almighty Kupfer, and he was a jealous god, avenging the sins of the students even unto the third and the fourth semester that he forced them to spend in the same class… He was also a slave to his vanity, and would not tolerate the slightest offence to it. And he was anxiously intent on issuing commandments to avert anything that might impair his omnipotence. He was well disposed only to students who looked up at him in obsequious humility, who pitifully begged him for mercy when all was not well with them, and thanked him, bowing low, when it was. Moreover, his splendour hung only from a thread, depending on a single, tiny decision: were they going to believe in him or were they not?

Since the students did believe in him, he was God Almighty to them. He was considered a great authority on mathematics, particularly descriptive geometry. His textbook of descriptive geometry with exercises, in four parts (to him, “in four parts” meant as good as twice the usual number of fists to hit with) was set for study in almost all high schools, so that his name as an expert was accepted without question by the students. He consolidated his position in every lesson. There was no way anyone could contend with him. Kupfer was Kismet. He had built up a reputation for invincibility, and now it went before him into every new classroom, opened the door to him, sat at the teacher’s desk and spread universal fear. When Kupfer entered the room he had only to take over from his reputation by replacing it with himself. He was, in a way, a body cast by his own shadow instead of vice versa, he was the justification of what was expected of him, and he had no difficulty in proving his point. He did it convincingly. Anyone who dared to make a fuss was inexorably struck by one of his thunderbolts, and there was no lightning conductor. Kupfer himself seldom uttered threats. Usually a glance, a gesture, a tone of voice, the course of a test gave warning of what lay ahead, and it was like a doctor’s final diagnosis of an incurable sickness. You were doomed. Any flicker of the flame of life—a good word put in for you, a test passed—was only a flash in the pan, a delusion. The adder never relaxed its bite, never let you go. And slowly the deadly venom spread through its victim, who felt that his legs were getting weaker and weaker, and that he was sure to sink to the ground at exactly the appointed time.

Some made desperate attempts to save themselves at the last minute, lowering themselves to grovel mindlessly, doglike, licking up the saliva dripping from the victor’s slavering jaws, or tried to resist the inevitable with hands raised in pleading, writhing and whimpering beneath the knee weighing down on their chests, immersing themselves in their books, crazily hammering facts into their hot heads with fevered haste—only to find out, standing before the examiner with cheeks that did not owe their pallor to fear, and eyes red but not from weeping, that unfortunately it had all been too late. Yes, there were some like that. Others gave up the race and fell by the wayside. Resigned, they let themselves drift towards the end with a weary smile and received the verdict with a nod of the head. “I knew that ages ago.” But as for a student who in answer to Kupfer’s nasal, “Well, let’s see who’s going to draw the short straw here!” would reply, “I only want to try it out, I’m ready to have a go!”, a student who would fight to the end and emerge from the battle the same as he had been at the start of it—no such student existed.

So far Kupfer had always won just as he wanted. He had come to take that for granted, and coolly took note of his success. When he had carefully crushed his victim between the millstones of his intentions he felt no triumph, either noisily vaunted or relished with hidden malice. He did not rejoice. Quietly, with gentle regret, he established the fact that it must necessarily turn out like this. That meant that in a way he was apologizing to the victim, to the spectators watching the victim’s sacrifice, and also, if very seldom, to himself.

The manner of his victory also determined the style of his attack. Kupfer did not come up from behind. He did not need to lull the chosen victim into a sense of security and then strike unexpectedly—after all, his victory was certain from the start. He was also careful not to use flagrantly obvious methods, not to do anything that could be shown to be more incorrect than was tacitly admitted to be his due as the more powerful party in the contest. What he needed came his way as if by chance, and he made use of it to the utmost extent that the rules allowed. Nothing was too slight to arouse his ire and bring it into action. Seizing the most inconspicuous opportunities and using them for his own ends sometimes allowed him to dispense with the more conspicuous kind, thus suddenly giving himself the appearance of generous objectivity.

He did not mind exactly where he struck; there were other ways open to him.

He paid great attention to his point of departure. He chose his victim like a gourmet selecting the tastiest of game; he sought out the choicest parts of the roast, and carved it up with a relish that was satisfying in itself. He consumed those who were wholly incapable of achievement, entirely stupid, as side dishes, swallowing them just as they came to hand. They offered no stimulation, and he was not particularly concerned with them. Their written tests were easily marked “Unsatisfactory”, and to make doubly sure he followed that up with his dreaded venom-tipped arrow: the questions he asked in class as they sat at their desks which, if they went unanswered (and only then), counted towards their exam results. Otherwise he wanted nothing to do with such students, the scrapings of the barrel, and ignored them. He fixed his eye all the more keenly on the main objects marked out for destruction. Weaklings who might have collapsed at the first hurdle never to recover, hysterical students who might have done something unexpected in a sudden fit of fury, the naturally indifferent with the hide of an elephant—he steered clear of those with a sure instinct. He wanted students who were firmly based. There was a special piquancy when one of them also came of a wealthy family or had a reputation for special intelligence. In that case, those who were not equipped with either money or brains gleefully kept track of Kupfer’s progress. And there was something else that, to his advantage, set him apart from all other teachers—or rather could have set him apart if he had not taken it too far: it was a matter of total indifference to him whether his victim was male or female. He was so indifferent that even the greatest misogynists in the eighth year felt uncomfortable when he snapped at a girl student and, further stimulated by her tears, bombarded her with patronizing remarks through the entire lesson. Ultimately, however, even that helped to surround him with an armour of incorruptibility that kept off all his adversaries, including the shrewdest. God Almighty Kupfer had no weak spots; students were all alike to him…

And he would have liked to see them all dressed alike as well. He wanted to be the only person present who was elegantly clad. Even wearing a new tie in one of his lessons was enough to earn you an “Unsatisfactory”, because that was tantamount to claiming an unseemly advantage over him. Kupfer would tolerate no such thing, and was furious with anyone who ventured to claim it. This attitude sometimes brought some idiot son of a patrician into his clutches, or an oaf wearing a deliberate grin because he enjoyed protection in high places. Kupfer, with unwavering tenacity, would wrest him from the hands that protected him and bring him to grief. Because that looked legal, it earned him the respect or even the admiration of those students who, from the first, had got themselves into a reasonably secure position by consistent diligence. But Kupfer himself preferred students who, because he seemed to like them, did not know why: the reason was that with his goodwill towards them and the latitude he allowed them, he only wanted to spur on the enslaved to new hatred, a hatred that became darker and darker and more and more helpless. So he dallied with his students, sowing envy and resentment among them, ensuring that they did not form a united front against him, playing off one against another and calculating the points he had won with cold pleasure. They served his purposes far beyond the hours of lessons. And in his lessons, their inferiority left the despicable creatures known as students with no option but to be the tools he used to bring his absolute power into action, dominating them by such means. In fact it was never clear to him for what work exactly they were to be his tools. It was at this point that the equation was reduced to zero. Infinity—not of the kind where parallels intersect—intervened in Kupfer’s calculations and made one factor stand out. The word for that factor was sense.

Kupfer was satisfied with this solution. He thought no more about it, and did not want to put infinity to the test (sometimes it felt quite close, like a black chasm promising an unpleasant outcome if you fell into it). Nor was it necessary to do so. He carried weight all the same, or perhaps for that very reason. Class after class, young people with the blood pulsing through them, who became a rigid bulwark against all doubt at his behest, came again and again to confirm that to him with subservient nods. And he needed that confirmation, and even the smallest of the evidence of it they gave, he held the thought of them lustfully close, as excited as if he were possessing a naked, pleading woman…

Because he had been given that confirmation again today, after a long period of abstinence, with immediacy and at full force, seasoned by a promising little episode, Professor Artur Kupfer was extremely pleased with his day. He had managed the prelude to the Gerber case excellently. “You may be one of those who shed tears afterwards,” he had told him. It had been a hint and at the same time a clever retort, and on top of that it followed on from what he had said. He could indeed have dismissed him with an even wittier play on words, since the German noun Gerber means a tanner (“Gerber, we’ll tan your hide for you,” he could have said, or something like that; tee-hee), but he kept that for another time. It did not escape him, just as Gerber would not escape him. That young Gerber! Kupfer looked forward to dealing with him like a child looking forward to a new toy; he was going to ruin him. It was not least for that reason that Kupfer had campaigned to have himself appointed class teacher for the eighth-year students. Over the years, when the teachers complained of some new misdeed of Gerber’s, declaring themselves powerless in the face of his unruly behaviour, so different from that of the other students—over the years Kupfer had always said, with insulting surprise, “It amazes me, my dear colleague, that you can’t cope with such a stupid, brazen boy as that!” And when it was pointed out to him that Gerber was by no means stupid, but by far the most intelligent of his class, if not in the entire school, nor was he brazen, he just had a way of expressing his opinion that did not belong at a school desk, and above all he was not exactly a boy but, on the contrary, so mature that it was impossible to decide to fail him, Kupfer would say dismissively, “I don’t believe it.” (He was referring to the information that a student was intelligent; the utter implausibility of this circumstance made all else an illusion.) “If I were ever to get young Gerber in my class, I’d soon bring him into line. Not that I’d wish that on him.” But he did, and now his wish had been fulfilled. Mattusch had firmly turned down the idea of carrying on as class teacher to “that unruly gang”; Rothbart, the next to be considered, had too heavy a workload; Hussak was too young, Prochaska too old—and so Kupfer became class teacher for the eighth-year students. Now they’d see what he was capable of! So, too, thought several other professors; the leniency so far shown to young Gerber went against the grain with them. They were curious to see the outcome of the duel that had been announced, and their thoughts followed Professor Artur Kupfer, who was to be judge of the case, to the eighth-year classroom… where on the very first day, young Gerber revealed his own weaknesses first by failing to pay attention, and then with an impudent interruption. So much for his famous intelligence! You fool, Kupfer would have liked to tell him, you don’t seem to have any inkling of what lies ahead of you. But he did not say it out loud. The retort he had in fact given was more elegant. And feeling rather sorry that the Gerber case might not be nearly as complicated as he had expected, Kupfer had left the classroom.

On the stairs, he met Professor Seelig. “My dear colleague,” he said, “tell me what you really think of Gerber.”

“Gerber? An unusually talented young man. There’s not really much left for him to do at school—”

“Are you so sure of that?”

“Well, I know that he doesn’t exactly shine in your subjects. But he’s probably not going to practise a profession in which he’ll need them. In other respects, however, he is—”

“He also strikes me as impudent. I’ve heard this and that about him. You yourself said, Seelig—”

“Oh well… that’s nothing to speak of. Yes, he’s a little wild. However—and here I speak from experience, my dear Kupfer—that’s probably nothing but his natural youthful temperament. The opportunities open to him here at this school simply aren’t enough for him. Fundamentally, so far as I can judge, my dear Kupfer, it’s easy enough to get on with him, you have only to—”

“Well, time will show!” rasped Kupfer, and he said a quick goodbye to his colleague.

Kupfer took short steps, thinking that his slightly rocking gait was still a satisfactory test of the elasticity of his muscles. As he walked along the streets he looked straight ahead, so that he could intentionally fail to see anyone who might be expected to address him. Kupfer never returned a greeting. He was the first to greet those whose company he wanted to cultivate, and took no notice of the others—most of them were school students anyway. He ignored them, however, in such a way that they did not know whether he didn’t want to see the greeting or really hadn’t seen it. Consequently his anxious students would greet him a second and a third time and still get no reaction. However, if one of them did not try to greet him at all, Captain Kupfer immediately took him to task, and disciplinary procedures followed.