Marianne Fritz - The Weight of Things

Berta fled to the bedroom with Rudolf, and Wilhelmine waddled into the kitchen, returning with a rag to wipe up the calamity. “It’s repulsive! Repulsive! He really is a bit old for this sort of thing!”

Ferdinand Wolf nodded knowingly and declared, “Yes. Yes. Raising children. Hard work. It’s not so easy. I know. You have to be resourceful. You really do. It’s hard work indeed.”

Wilhelm looked at his colleague Ferdinand Wolf, bursting with gratitude, and Wilhelmine said irately, “That doesn’t change the fact that it is something she has to deal with!” And with a stern, sideways glance at Ferdinand Wolf: “The hard work, that is.”

“I WAS JUST DREAMING …”

Rudolf hung on the cross. Around him stood scattered groups of people, all of whom pinned him in their withering gaze. “Where’s my mother?” Rudolf cried from the cross.

“Your mother is in her grave,” a faceless voice answered him from the multitude, and Berta became conscious of herself lying under the earth, a few meters from the cross. She tried to shift her coffin lid and to cry out with all the force of her love:

“Rudolf! I’m still alive! I’m coming! Wait for me! Be patient! I’ll get you down from there! Rudolf!” The dreaming Berta observed this other Berta, as powerless and voiceless as a corpse in her fruitless struggle.

“Where’s my mother?” Rudolf cried a second time and looked down onto the nearby hillock where there was no cross and no flowers, only shoveled up dirt, as on a molehill. A figure without a face, a torso on two legs, pulled away from the group and said, “There she lies. Let her rest. It’ll be over soon. You’ll understand when the sun has reached its zenith.”

After the headless figure had spoken, the scattered groups merged into a single human mass. All of them had their heads at their sides, holding them in their hands and resting them on their hips. Each head was the same as the others. And all the heads resembled helmets.

“What did I ever do to you?” Rudolf cried. And since no one answered him: “Why am I hanging here on this cross? Why?”

One headless creature after another stepped forward out of the mass of people. The voices of women, girls, men, and boys drowned out one another in turn:

“You can’t catch a ball.”

“You can’t play an instrument.”

“You can’t even sing.”

“You always fall down.”

“Your nose bleeds.”

“You have two left hands.”

“You can’t do your sums.”

“You can’t even remember the Ten Commandments.”

“You can’t write on your own.”

“You can’t even copy things down.”

“All you can draw are animals, and houses, just barely — you can’t draw people with two hands, ten fingers, two feet, and a head. Your people have five eyes and monstrous mouths. Your people have seven heads or no head, twenty-three fingers or none at all.”

“You can’t catch frogs.”

“You can’t even make it to the bathroom when you need to go.”

“You’re a bed-wetter.”

“You can’t throw a punch.”

“You don’t know how to fight.”

“You’re a weakling.”

“You always have diarrhea.”

“You bite your nails.”

“You stutter when the teacher asks where you’re from.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“You can’t swim.”

“You’re a crybaby.”

“You grind your teeth at night.”

Rudolf yelled down from the cross, “But I’m not a bad person!”

And the headless ones answered him in a chorus, “You are good for nothing.”

The people put on their helmets, now they had heads again, only one still stood there headless, then stepped forward and pointed at the sun, saying, “It is done. The sun is at its zenith,” and then it threw its helmet on Berta’s grave, and a tremor bore through Rudolf’s body like a bark beetle through wood. But the scream that Berta always waited for in the leafless season, that one definitive scream, never came.

And Berta Schrei shouted for her son, and a ghastly thousandfold echo rang out of the earth, and the mass of people, already dissolving, scattered in all directions, with each person running for dear life. Voiceless Berta shouted down the hurricane-like storm that seemed to have driven, in a matter of seconds, grayish black banks of clouds from all four corners of the earth to gather above the cross where Rudolf was hanging.

When the clouds burst and the rain began to lash down, everyone had already fled into their homes and hovels, and Berta’s cry told them that Rudolf’s life had slipped away. His head hung down, and the hard rain battered shut the lid of Berta’s coffin, which had finally, momentarily, come open. Berta knew she had died before she’d been able to shelter Rudolf from the terrible weight of things.

HUNTING SEASON IS HUNTING SEASON

The chauffeur and Come-hither-boy Wilhelm Schrei telephoned to Donaublau from Felsenstein. In one of the apartments behind the filth-gray façades, which gave the narrow alley the aspect of a ravine, Berta Schrei, mother of two children, housewife, and helpmeet, grabbed the receiver.

“So. So. As you say. Hunting season is hunting season. I understand. Of course, Wilhelm. I’ve always understood that. Wilhelm, are you unhappy with me?”

And.

“Yes. As you say. Everything’s in order here. That’s right.”

And.

“If four weeks have already passed, then two weeks will certainly pass too.”

And.

“So. So. But there’s no need for that. Everything here is exactly the same. Why should you worry? All that’s changed is Berta and Rudolf are back in school. As you say. That’s right.”

And.

“No. Nothing new, it’s just that I’ve gotten a letter asking me to go to the school. On account of our little girl.”

And.

“Why shouldn’t the letter mean something good? Isn’t Berta a quick learner?”

And.

“But of course I’m going. Why should I get worked up about it?”

And.

“I wanted to tell you something else. The resemblance, Wilhelm, the resemblance. What’s that? You have to go? So. So. No. It’s nothing special. Of course. You shouldn’t keep him waiting. If they have orders for you, then they have orders for you. Of course. As you say.”

And.

“I know. Yes. Yes.”

And Berta laid the receiver back down in the cradle as tears ran down her face.

Wilhelm’s three days in Felsenstein had turned into five days, five days into seven, and one week into two, then three, then four, and now six.

Five hundred kilometers away, the chauffeur and Come-hither-boy Wilhelm Schrei was being kept exceedingly busy. Naturally, hunting season began much earlier for his employer than it did for all the other dignitaries summoned to the Mueller-Rickenberg hunting lodge, many of whom Wilhelm transported there himself. Moreover, hunting season imposed a number of supplementary duties. And, of course, Wilhelm Schrei was thoroughly devoted to his profession.

THE DRAGGING OF THE SCHOOLBAGS

Berta, who slept badly whenever Wilhelm was off being a chauffeur and Come-hither-boy, had grown used to Rudolf shuffling off glumly each day on his walk to school, and then returning home disheartened. She saw no point in sharing this information with Wilhelm, in treating it like news, since the truth was that every year, as soon as the summer holidays were over, Rudolf started back up with his skulking.

What did seem worthy of attention, at least at first, was Little Berta’s dragging her schoolbag behind her by its strap. She seemed more and more like Rudolf every day. The children’s mother always knew exactly when they were headed home from school: she could hear their bags being dragged along the street, a peculiar noise that bore into her ears like some sort of grim portent. Whenever she heard it, she would have to clutch the table tight and hold her breath to keep from losing her composure. Little Berta would then open the apartment door, skulk past her mother into the bedroom, and sit down in a corner to stare off into space.