Marianne Fritz - The Weight of Things

Berta Schrei would wipe away the trail the schoolbag had left behind on the floor.

Once it had been only Rudolf who dragged his schoolbag, now it was Little Berta too, and so inevitably the floor would be soiled anew each day, the rug pushed out of place. No sooner had Berta wiped away her daughter’s mess than Rudolf would drag himself in, skulk past, just as glum and silent, and sit in a corner of the bedroom staring into space, unruffled by his sister’s presence there.

But now even Little Berta’s retreat into the bedroom was no longer news.

Once Berta had wiped away the traces left behind by Rudolf’s schoolbag, she went into the bedroom herself.

“So. So,” she said. “That rain just won’t let up.”

Nothing.

“Papa called.”

Nothing.

“He’s doing well.”

Nothing.

“He’s very busy.”

Nothing.

“Would you like to come to the table for lunch?”

Nothing.

“Surely you’re hungry?”

Nothing.

“Well now. I just mean. It’s time to eat.”

Little Berta raised her head, glared past her mother toward Rudolf, and said, “She just means. She always just means. I mean, I mean. She really isn’t right in the head.”

Rudolf shrugged and kept quiet.

“But a person has to eat, no? I mean, isn’t that so?”

Rudolf glared past his mother to Little Berta and said, “You’re right.”

Little Berta shrugged and kept quiet.

Berta said, “So. So.” And after a long pause for thought: “Even if I’m not right in the head,” and she tapped her left temple, “am I not still your mother? Am I not always your mother?”

Little Berta replied drily, without changing her expression, “Unfortunately.”

Rudolf shrugged.

“I got a letter,” Berta said.

Rudolf looked up at his mother for a moment and then went back to staring blankly ahead; he droned, “You can save yourself the trip. The teacher’ll just tell you she’s dumb,” and he pointed at Little Berta. “That’s the whole story.”

“What?” asked Berta. “Who’s supposed to be dumb?”

“That one there! Who else?” And Rudolf pointed at Little Berta, who, like him, was glowering straight ahead.

“Rudolf, what are you talking about? Our Berta is a quick learner. Isn’t that right, Berta? Aren’t you a quick learner?”

Little Berta pursed her lips and said, “What can you expect, with a mother like that.”

“Where did you learn to speak this way?”

“From me,” Rudolf answered and scratched the back of his head. “And I heard it from Aunt Wilhelmine.”

“So. So,” Berta said, and considered. “But I was always a quick learner. Straight A s. Yes. Yes. Look now! All A s on my transcript. You don’t believe me? Ask Aunt Wilhelmine then. You’re being unfair. I was never dumb. Never!”

“So. So,” said Little Berta, and grinned maliciously; but then she hunched over and shivered with an overwhelming sense of defeat. Rudolf rose up from his corner, walked stiffly over to Little Berta, patted her shoulders, awkwardly caressed her hair, looked down at his sister with the expert eye of a specialist — for he was a specialist in the matter of defeat — and said, “Don’t take it like that. You get used to it.” A moment later, the little boy, the specialist in matters of defeat, crashed past his mother and out of the bedroom. He ran through the living room and off down the hallway.

He was truly frantic. At that time of year, diarrhea permeated his day-to-day life as breathing permeates prayer.

THE CONVERSATION WITH THE TEACHER

The conversation with the teacher ended the same as the one with the principal. But Berta still couldn’t understand. She stood gawking at the teacher as if she’d been clubbed over the head, staring at her in the hope that in the next moment, or the moment after the next, at least, the teacher would offer some consolatory words about her and the little girl she had brought into the world.

“My dear Mrs. Schrei. Maybe Berta really is a quick learner. However, in view of the circumstances. I have forty children in my class. I can’t just concentrate on one individually until, sooner or later, most likely later, she’s ready to show me she has at least some notion of what one plus one might equal …”

“But Little Berta knows that!” her mother countered, and the teacher shrugged ruefully.

“But she doesn’t know it when I ask her. And I can’t know what’s going on in her head. She doesn’t even know the name of the city where she was born, the city where she lives. I can’t worry myself constantly over what’s going on in her mind. Just try and imagine, worrying constantly over forty little minds. It’s impossible! Utterly impossible! Now, I know this isn’t exactly an ideal solution. But how can I get through my material if I have to worry what’s going on in each of forty little minds? It simply can’t be done.”

“Give her another year. I know Rudolf was a bit of a bad student from the beginning. But Berta. Isn’t Berta a quick learner? Hasn’t it always been that way? Why should things be different now?”

“My dear Mrs. Schrei. You’re giving this little transfer too much significance. What’s really happened, after all? Berta’s changing classes. That’s it. Try to look at the whole thing as a kind of organizational matter. It really is nothing. It says nothing about Berta’s future development. She may yet grow up to be a Madame Curie!”

“No. I just can’t accept it. You can’t turn my daughter into a special student. That’s something you just cannot do! I always got straight A s, Miss, and my daughter will also get nothing but straight A s. That I promise you! On my life: I will make sure of it. Just one more year. A year!”

“Calm down, Mrs. Schrei. Please, don’t get so worked up …”

“My Berta is going to be placed in a special school! My Berta is supposed to be an idiot! And I should calm down?”

The teacher tried to console Berta Schrei with sympathetic words as Berta walked out of the classroom, waving her hands.

In a trance, she walked in the direction of Allerseelengasse 13, bravely choking back her tears. But hardly had she taken the first step onto the sidewalk of her street than the shame of it all shook her and the defeat streamed from her eyes, and it was more blind than seeing that she stumbled along Allerseelengasse, till she made it to building 13.

THE USUAL, WILHELM, THE USUAL

After her conversations with the principal and the teacher, Berta stopped upbraiding her daughter. She no longer bothered to remind Little Berta to cinch her schoolbag tight or to carry it up on her back.

Whenever Wilhelm called from Felsenstein to find out what was new, Berta told him that everything was the same.

She didn’t mention how Little Berta was skulking around the house like Rudolf, dragging her schoolbag like some heavy, nearly immovable burden, and she likewise neglected to mention their daughter’s transfer to a special school.

When Wilhelm asked whether she had gone to see the teacher and, if so, what the latter had wished to tell her, Berta replied, “The usual, Wilhelm, the usual.” She also failed to mention Little Berta’s transformation from conscientious and motivated to slovenly and utterly indifferent.

There was a time when, if Little Berta’s fountain pen had slipped from her hand, or if she’d dripped a small blot of ink in her notebook, she would rush to rewrite its entire contents in a fresh one, and very neatly at that. Her once precise, rounded, and actually quite beautifully formed letters seemed now to jut up and down every which way across the page. One would lean to the left, another to the right; there wasn’t a single example of a letter keeping within its prescribed lines. Little Berta’s writing trailed upward, downward, ran aground on ink blot after ink blot, and she would say laconically, without fail, about each assignment she worked on: “I can’t do it.”