H. Adler - Panorama

Therefore Josef starts again in the fourth grade, though Herr Neumann had said that in Umlowitz all the classes learn the same things, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the fourth or the fifth grade, while Josef thinks that it would be such a disgrace at home, though here it’s not a disgrace, because the children of the village know so much, yet no one thinks it a disgrace that Otto is still in the first grade. In the fourth grade there are sixty boys from the surrounding area, Herr Lopatka in his first year of teaching here, a very nice teacher with a black mustache that dips and rises like a swallow’s wings when he speaks, which looks funny. Class is held only five days a week, Wednesday being free so that the children can help their parents, though often there’s no class on Saturday, either, and all the children go barefoot to school when it’s not too cold, their feet always dirty, even Josef now going barefoot and it not even hurting when he walks on stones, though Otto and the little boys and girls go barefoot most of the time in order to save wear and tear on their shoes and socks. At night Poldi prepares a large tub of hot water in order to give Otto and Josef a good washing, though only once a day, for you aren’t at all expected to wash up as much as in the city, even though you get much dirtier in Umlowitz.

Josef told Herma that no one learned anything in school, even if Herr Lopatka was a very good teacher, for the children can’t understand what he says, though Josef can, but when it comes time to practice writing no one knows what he is supposed to write. The teacher had said the children should write down what they see in the classroom, to which all the children made such puzzled faces, holding their pens as they looked around, though the paper remained empty, no one having written down anything except Josef, who had listed everything in the classroom, the teacher praising him and saying that the other children should still be writing something down, though all they put down was “Our Classroom,” as they wrote “Writing Practice” in brackets underneath, the date also set down in the margin as the teacher had instructed at the start of the lesson. Now the lesson was over, the teacher saying, “Today we’ll have to skip natural history and spend the next hour doing our writing practice.” During the break the teacher stayed in the classroom and in chalk wrote out a writing exercise on the right side of the board, underlining some words twice, simply writing out others, then on the lefthand side of the board he wrote out another exercise that was not exactly like the one on the right but somewhat similar, as he underlined some words twice as well. When he finished, the break was already over, after which the teacher divided the class into four groups, not the way they were arranged on the benches but instead mixing them up, each boy counting off one, two, three, or four, so that each one knew which exercise he was meant to copy down. Once the teacher had finished dividing them up, he asked each student again which group he was in and, once the children finally knew, he told them they should begin copying down the exercise, but slowly and neatly, so that no one made any mistakes and wouldn’t make the teacher upset at having to make corrections. But at the close of the class not all of them had finished, and the teacher said that his patience was wearing thin, he couldn’t wait any longer, at which he gathered up all the exercises, the children glad that the whole thing was finally over. Later, when the teacher handed out the graded exercises, Josef got an A, most of the children receiving bad grades because their penmanship was so poor.

This is the way that you learn in Umlowitz, and not a single teacher cares whether you hold the pen right or not, so Josef continues to hold it the wrong way and never learns the way the principal believes he should, he soon becoming bored with school, Herma having spoken with Herr Neumann, who then asked Josef whether he’d like to help out in the fields and become a herder. Josef replied that he’d love to, and so Herr Neumann said that he could and came to an agreement with Herr Lopatka, who understood completely that it was not his fault, and that all that was needed was for Josef to show up once in a while in order to see what he knew, so that Principal Bolek didn’t complain. Then Josef became almost a family member, he liking Herma the most, and then Otto, and then Herr Neumann, who has a large shop where you can buy almost anything. To get to it, you climb two steps to enter through a glass door, and as you open it a little bell rings first in the kitchen, which is behind the shop, and to which the bell is wired, making a ting-a-ling-a-ling so that Herr Neumann or Arthur or someone else can immediately be there to serve the customer, though usually someone from the family is in the shop, or at least Leopold the clerk, a tall, thin man. The store is long and narrow, with a wide aisle through the middle, the shelves rising to the right and left, the goods stored behind them and wherever there is space, though not where customers can reach directly for them, one being able to buy almost anything at Herr Neumann’s, much more than is listed on the sign outside the door, where JAKOB NEUMANN is written in big letters, while in smaller letters below there appears VICTUALS, TEXTILES, HARDWARE. There is also candy, red and white peppermints and other sweet things, as well as sour pickles, which float in a big barrel from which you fish them out with a pair of wooden tongs, as well as spices, fennel the farmers’ favorite, for they like it in their bread, there also being lots of other grocery items, barley and cornmeal, beans and lentils, as well as cans and pots, harnesses for the horses, and scythes, and sickles and spades and shovels and pliers and nails, as well as buttons and darning cotton, knitting needles and sewing needles, lots of fabric like the kind that the farmers’ wives like, which is measured with a wooden yardstick, and scales, as well as soaps and powders and toothbrushes, lovely candles, brown soup powder, normal salt and red salt licks, writing paper and picture-postcards of Umlowitz, one of which shows a panoramic view of Umlowitz with the Thomasberg in the background, the central square, the church, the school, the power station, other items being pencils, pens, and notebooks, slippers and stockings, Herr Neumann having the biggest store in Umlowitz, not even Herr Iltis having as large a store, though there things are properly displayed as in the city, while Herr Neumann says the way things are displayed isn’t everything, but rather what matters is good and prompt service, and that you understand your customers and have the right connections.

Herr Neumann’s store smells of all his goods, a sweet, pungent smell that Josef likes very much. Up front the store is well lit, in back it’s darker, so that an oil lamp is always kept burning there, because the electric light works mostly just at night, Rudolf saying that they had done a bad job in designing the power station, for it runs on an oil turbine, and one can never get enough oil, nor is it economical, for electricity is still much too expensive. Some people have no electric lights whatsoever, while others do indeed, though they rarely use them and prefer to buy oil for their lamps or candles, Herr Neumann not having a single electric light in his entire house, not even upstairs in the living quarters, for one hardly spends much time there except to sleep, everyone instead spending time in the kitchen, which is quite large. Rudolf says that the power station should have been designed much more practically to use waterpower, but no one thought of it, and now it’s too late, and many years will pass before someone decides to build a power station that uses water. And so an oil lamp burns in the store, Leopold always having to fill it with oil, clean the wick, and keep the lamp in good working order. Each morning Leopold sweeps up in the store, fills a large bucket of water, then takes the funnel he uses to fill the oil or vinegar and plunges it deep into the water, holding his thumb over the hole, as he walks through the store and behind the shelves to spray water in arcing lines that look like lots of off-kilter bicycle wheels, after which he takes wood shavings and strews them around, the floor as clean as it gets, for it is always gray and greasy.