H. Adler: Panorama

It’s fairly quiet in the panorama. Except for the little bell that announces the change in pictures, you only hear the guests coming and going, or a stool scraping, now and then a couple of words someone might whisper to his neighbor. You hardly ever hear the attendant. Thus the world you normally live in is turned off, and has in fact passed away. Another world is risen, which neither reading nor studying nor even dreams can manifest. Nonetheless, Josef can step only a little way into the other world, though he cannot take part in it. If he shoves his knee forward he immediately bumps up against the wooden cabinet. Soon it’s clear how little is allowed. Everywhere there are barriers, nowhere can you immerse yourself entirely. Josef sees the other world, but it doesn’t care about him. It consists only of parts that are put together. The only way for it to be different would be for the pictures to move, to continue on and flow into one another, yet each is presented on its own and is clearly separated from the next. The other world is a program that is immensely beautiful, but nothing more. Next week the program changes, and so on week after week. There is no whole, only individual pieces without end. Even today’s program has no proper end but just repeats itself over and over. There are perhaps sixty, maybe eighty pictures, though there certainly are not a hundred. Eventually a picture comes along that has been there already. Josef doubts this at first, but after the next chiming of the little bell another picture appears that is also familiar. The grandmother still looks on. She starts to get restless on her chair. After the little bell strikes again and a third picture arrives that most certainly has been there already, the grandmother turns to Josef. “It’s over, my dear. We’ve seen that one already. We have to go.”

The grandmother stands. The attendant is already there and lifts Josef down; the grandmother helps and takes the boy by the hand. Then the attendant pulls back the curtain. In the lobby the daylight is so strong that the grandmother warns, “Child, close your eyes!” She doesn’t have to say anything, for Josef squints and allows himself to be led out almost blind. The grandmother doesn’t let on how much it all pleased her, but says, “Be careful, and watch where you’re going.” Josef doesn’t know whether the warning is about the spectacle in the panorama or the way that leads home.

JOSEF HEARS HOW MISBEHAVED THE CHILDREN ARE, SINCE THAT’S ALL THEY seem to talk about, nothing but trouble for the parents and teachers of the world. “Josef, don’t you hear?” Yes, he hears, and the voices run around and have long, dirty spider legs, and indeed bad things can sometimes happen. “Pay attention, Josef! Didn’t you hear what I said?” He always hears it. “Now be quiet!” The nagging continues, but no child wants to behave. “If only you would understand! It’s for your own good!” Then Aunt Gusti gets mad, but that does no good, and the children get dirty, and everything gets dirty, and yet they continue to talk back, a result of disobedience, the same old song with Josef, as Aunt Gusti yells, “Don’t you talk back to me!” Don’t do that, she says, don’t be so smart, and don’t tell lies, that’s the worst of all. “You’ll get a long nose if you tell lies!” That’s what Josef has to listen to, nor can any child be left alone, and Josef reacts badly because he is so angry. On the way home from school he is bad and gets into scrapes with ruffians, which is unfortunate, but then how can he be expected to sit up straight and be ready to learn in school. “Yes, he is a gifted child,” Fräulein Reimann says, but terribly scatterbrained and inattentive. Children pick up bad habits from others, but there’s no excuse for that, and so the aunt watches him like a hawk, but it does no good, not even at home. There the father is always so high-strung at meals, and the father must be spared any disturbance, yet Josef wriggles in his chair and the mother says, “Can’t you sit still for a single moment?” But Josef can’t do that. He holds his knife wrong and his fork, and that makes the mother unhappy, because she has shown him so often, but he has no manners whatsoever at the table as he screws up his face and wrinkles his nose. The mushrooms are so delicious, as well as the carrots, even though the war is on, but the father doesn’t like mushrooms, either, and the grandmother says, “One shouldn’t make faces in front of children!” When she was young, everything was much more strict, you certainly weren’t allowed to leave anything on your plate, and yet Josef is not allowed to say “I don’t want any more!” because a child is in no position to do that, and yet he does, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

Then Josef is among his toys and someone says, “Only street urchins drag their toys around like that!” All of them are ruined because he bangs around with them and he takes everything out of the chest. “This room is a complete mess!” Anna is not there to follow Josef around and pick up after him just because he’s so lazy, and one can preach a thousand times about how much money the toys cost, the father having to work so hard for it, he doesn’t just go out and steal it. Yet it never does any good, and then the parents are unhappy, but Josef is also unhappy, and he told Aunt Betti so, but she just laughed, saying that healthy children are always cheerful, and Josef is healthy, so he can’t be unhappy. He should just come along, for he hasn’t been out for a walk all day, but he doesn’t want to go for a walk. “I don’t want to, because I’m tired!” The aunt gets angry and says, “You always have an excuse! Now come along! Otherwise there will be trouble!” And so there’s nothing he can do, Josef has to follow along, and yet outside in the park it feels better. There he runs around on his own, and Bubi and Ludwig and the other children are also there, but the grown-ups shout, “No horseplay!” But eventually they have to leave, even when it’s finally nice out, as Josef pleads, “Please, just a while longer!” No, otherwise Father will be angry, the gruel will get cold, so come along and let’s go, and then Josef is home and has to wash his hands after the mother yells at him to do so, after which comes supper, followed by the washing up, all of it done in a frightful hurry. Then Aunt Gusti observes, “It’s about time for the children to finally be in bed!” But even though Josef gets into bed he doesn’t want to, he wants a story. It’s horrible when he’s so alone, alone the entire night — oh, it’s just awful, what he really needs is for the mother to hold his hand and give him a kiss. But then she leaves, and everything is dark and scary, Josef can’t get to sleep for the longest time, and yet once again morning is there and Josef is woken up, and he’s so tired that he doesn’t want to get up, but the mother nonetheless yells, “Quick! Quick!” And once again it’s a new day, and once again comes the yelling, but they do so only because of how much they love him, they really mean well, Aunt Gusti often says so. And then he’s off on his way to school, as he remembers what Fräulein Reimann taught last year in first grade, the first song they had learned, five tones that ran up the scale and five that ran down: “Clean, bright, and polite / Suits all children right.”

That’s the way it always sounds to Josef, he hears that, and all the children in the park and in the school hear it as well, and perhaps spinning such yarns does indeed make for better children, something that worked for model children in years past. Supposedly they still exist, but it must be rare indeed, the aunts now and then pointing out a child to Josef who is much better behaved than he is. But they are only examples that don’t really exist, and Josef believes in them a little only because he always hears about them, and therefore they must be true. Even Josef wants to be better, but he can see that it’s not going to happen the way that he wants, and he has to keep pressing himself, though it does no good. He is surrounded by everything, he is always in the middle of it all, and everything stares at him, the grownups and everything else. But it doesn’t help that he likes to be on his own, that’s not allowed, even if he’s allowed to go to school on his own and doesn’t have to be picked up, that’s not the same thing, or if he’s allowed to play on his own, that’s also not the same, because no one ever seriously believes that he can be completely free and on his own. It’s obvious to him that he’s not at all allowed to do what he wants, for someone is always watching and the day is totally arranged for him, and there’s nothing Josef can do about it. He sees this for himself whenever he yells, “But I want to!” because soon that’s the end of it, and someone says, “A child must obey!” Therefore Josef can’t want anything himself, because if he misbehaves he’ll be punished and get no reward. But being rewarded doesn’t please him, and he ends up feeling sorry for having broken whatever reward is given him, having done so deliberately because he is so angry that his heart nearly bursts. Yet he doesn’t let his anger show, which is why it hurts so, and then the toy is broken, and unhappiness returns because of what he has done, and he often thinks how bad he really is, though he is indeed unhappy and remembers how Aunt Betti said, “Children are often such a bother these days.” And Josef always hears so much of what the grown-ups say, and it must surely be clever, for grown-ups know, they know everything, but a child is always in the wrong and in the way of grown-ups, except when he is also big. Then the child earns money and no longer brings home report cards, the parents waiting for the day when report cards no longer matter. The grown-ups, they have it easy and are not anxious, it’s the children who are anxious, for there’s only so much that can be done for them, the little chicks, who indeed are always anxious, but are all right, for they run to mother hen, though Josef can’t hide under her feathers, but rather in the feathers of the bed, where he feels afraid, for that’s where he’s alone. But when he goes to the grown-ups because he feels so alone and wants to ask them something the first thing they say is “Ask more politely!” Then he says, “How do the fish do it? How can fish breathe in water through their gills?” And Aunt Betti says, “You’re such a question box. Look it up in your natural-history book!”—“But what about the carp at Frau Robitschek’s? She took a hammer and hit the carp on the head. The carp slipped out and landed on the ground. And he was still alive. Even though he wasn’t in the water.”