H. Adler: Panorama

Aunt Betti gets upset over such stupid talk, but even if she knows exactly what the answer is she never says so, saying only that she collected picture-postcards as a child, like so many other children back then, and Josef should do the same. Aunt Betti often says, “If you had a lot of cards you’d be a rich man, Josef. When you grow up, you could open up a panorama. All of us will come and watch your program.” Josef is deeply curious why his aunt has never opened up a panorama, for she always keeps her collection in thick albums, gladly showing them, though she never gives any photographs away, and no longer collects them. They are only memories of a golden childhood, she says, with which she was blessed, and as long as one is good paradise can be found on earth. “Maybe I should have opened a panorama, but then Uncle Paul came along and I married him. So nothing came of it, my child.” She has to help his uncle, she says, and hold down the home front, for Uncle Paul has been away at war for so long, though brave women hold everything together, while bad children destroy it all, the grown-ups having to repair it, and there’s a lot of complaining, for they end up not accomplishing much. “Your father has such skillful hands, golden hands, my child!” So says Aunt Gusti, who so admires the father, he being the finest man there is. “He is so nice to Grandmother. He’s a lovely son.” He scares Josef, who doesn’t have golden hands, meaning that perhaps he’s a bad child, his hands so often being black and his mother yelling “Dirty bird!” when she’s unhappy, at which Josef has to wash his hands. But the mother is seldom satisfied and takes to him herself with the nail brush, scrubbing until his fingers turn red, though none of it does any good, because Josef is dirty again before she knows it.

The father’s veins always stick out so. Whenever you look at his hands they appear blue and lavender, these veins, and there’s no gold in them, but they are the father’s hands, which earn for the family their daily bread. It’s all so hard. He has to slave away and put up with so much in his business, because the customers are always complaining about the goods, nothing is cheap enough, and it all must be the very best, everything served up in a jiffy, each having to be the first, though it takes forever for everyone to place an order, customers remaining the cross he has to bear. There’s also too much competition, none of whom can be trusted and all of them wanting to do the father in, the goods becoming ever more expensive, thus making it hard to get hold of them, he having to petition for them, the mother not wanting Josef to become a businessman, since it means nothing but trouble and results in only a bit of salt on dry bread. Every occupation today has it hard, because no one is satisfied, and each yanks the last morsel from the mouth of the other.

Perhaps one day better times will come which Josef will live to see. The children have to be brought up properly in preparation for them, for they must also engage in life’s battle, which is so hard, or so Aunt Gusti always thinks. She is a language teacher and has many students with whom she is also always angry when they don’t show up on time, which simply won’t do, for she doesn’t want to have to make up for lost time, there’s no way to, and what’s the point as soon as another child knocks when the hour is up and there’s nothing she can do despite her best intentions. And she has to be notified in a timely fashion when a child is sick, otherwise she’s sorry, she cannot make up the lesson, she is much too busy. Josef should also take English with Aunt Gusti, but she doesn’t want to teach him because he’s such an unruly child, and she doesn’t want to be constantly bickering with the father and the mother. “Perhaps when he is older and can pay better attention.” The mother is unhappy about it, but the father says, “I, too, never learned any language, and I still make an honest living.” Then the mother is quiet, because she knows that the father will get angry if anyone says anything to him, and he has enough worries already. Otherwise Aunt Gusti is very fond of Josef. He is often there when she gives lessons, sitting at a little table, in front of him a book or a toy with which he can play only at Aunt Gusti’s, she having bought it special so that he has something there, and then she gives him some other goody, such as gooseberries or hazelnuts or cookies, though he shouldn’t leave any crumbs. Then Joseph is on his own, but he also hears how his aunt teaches, how beautifully she explains everything—“fazur” is “father,” she says, “mazur” is “mother”—while most of the children are older than Josef, though they don’t pay attention all that well. Thus the aunt is often angry, scolding and yelling at them, though the children are never fresh to her, she simply wouldn’t stand for it, and Josef should see how she handles them. Yet the worst is when the students don’t have their assignments, or when they are lazy, for then his aunt is really mad and says with disgust, “You should be ashamed that your father is paying so much money for you. It makes no difference to me, but I’m not pleased, for though I am sure that you wouldn’t want to be called a thief, what you’re doing is probably worse than stealing.” Then the aunt asks what the words are in English, and it also makes her a bit upset when the children know only half of them. But sometimes when Josef knows the answer and the child does not he wants to say what it is, and he in fact says it, but Aunt Gusti doesn’t like that, it’s not right for Josef to speak up. “One shouldn’t speak if one is not spoken to!” He had often thought a great deal about that, because people always talk when they want to, but not at first, if they are asked something.

Children used to exist because they pleased their parents, but it has not been that way for a long time, because they are such a burden, and Josef doesn’t know why, in fact, children exist at all, nor does he want to have any, for he doesn’t even want to be a child, he wants to be a grown-up, because then everything is better, which is why people like Aunt Betti shouldn’t envy children, because grown-ups don’t have to be afraid, they can do whatever they want. But Josef is afraid, he’s afraid of animals, most of all of dogs, and he prefers to walk on the opposite side of the street, because dogs are mean. Josef is also afraid of thunderstorms and is amazed that grown-ups can stay so calm when it thunders, his mother even saying, “You silly, if you’re afraid of lightning that’s okay, because it can strike you. But thunder can’t harm anyone.” The mother says that Aunt Betti is also a little afraid, but she doesn’t want to show it, and that’s good, for you should never show that you are afraid if you are going to become a fine young man. But Josef is afraid nevertheless. He’s afraid of water that is deeper than up to his knees, he’s afraid of fire and won’t have anything to do with matches, and the grandmother says, “At least Josef won’t burn the house down.” More than anything, he is afraid of the night, the worst punishment being to lock him in the darkened bathroom, and it’s awful to have to lie at night in the darkened bedroom, not even the slightest bit of light coming through the door’s opaque glass pane, that being when all the terrible ghosts appear, and the ghosts make menacing threats and climb down into the room from the tiled stove, which has a beaked nib, and then the ghosts slowly cross the bureau and ever closer to the crib, lying down on the blanket and pressing upon it, and there’s peace as they approach his head and crouch down on the pillow next to Josef, though he can’t shoo them away, for they have no names. He also can’t tell anyone about them, for everyone says there’s no such thing as ghosts, though it’s good when at night his mother plays the piano, because the ghosts can’t do anything then.