The Sons (4 page)

“Ah, yes. To your friend,” said his father emphatically.

“Well, you know, Father, that I didn’t want to tell him about my engagement at first. Out of consideration for him—that was the only reason. You yourself know how difficult a man he is. I said to myself that someone else might tell him about my engagement, although he’s such a solitary
creature that that was hardly likely, but I wasn’t ever going to tell him myself.”

“And now you’ve changed your mind, have you?” asked his father, laying his enormous newspaper on the window sill and on top of it his eyeglasses, which he covered with one hand.

“Yes, now I’ve changed my mind. If he’s a good friend of mine, I said to myself, then my being happily engaged should make him happy too. And that’s why I haven’t put off telling him any longer. But before I mailed the letter I wanted to let you know.”

“Georg,” said his father, stretching his toothless mouth wide, “listen to me! You’ve come to me about this business, to talk it over and get my advice. No doubt that does you honor. But it’s nothing, it’s worse than nothing, if you don’t tell me the whole truth. I don’t want to stir up matters that shouldn’t be mentioned here. Since the death of our dear mother certain things have happened that aren’t very pretty. Maybe the time will come for mentioning them, and maybe sooner than we think. There are a number of things at the shop that escape my notice, maybe they’re not done behind my back—I’m not going to say that they’re done behind my back—I’m not strong enough any more, my memory’s slipping, I haven’t an eye for all those details any longer. In the first place that’s in the nature of things, and in the second place the death of our dear little mother hit me harder than it did you.—But since we’re talking about it, about this letter, I beg you, Georg, don’t deceive me. It’s a trivial thing, it’s hardly worth mentioning, so don’t deceive me. Do you really have this friend in St. Petersburg?”

Georg rose in embarrassment. “Never mind my friends. A thousand friends could never replace my father for me. Do you know what I think? You’re not taking enough care of yourself. But old age has its own rightful demands. I can’t do without you in the business, you know
that very well, but if the business is going to undermine your health, I’m ready to close it down tomorrow for good. This won’t do. We’ll have to make a change in the way you live; a radical change. You sit here in the dark, and in the sitting room you would have plenty of light. You just take a bite of breakfast instead of keeping up your strength properly. You sit by a closed window, and the air would be so good for you. No, Father! I’ll get the doctor to come, and we’ll follow his orders. We’ll change rooms, you can move into the front room and I’ll move in here. You won’t notice the change, all your things will be moved across the hall with you. But there’s time for all that later, go to bed now for a little, you must have some rest. Come, I’ll help you to take off your things, you’ll see I can do it. Or if you would rather go into the front room at once, you can lie down in my bed for the present. That would actually be the most sensible thing.”

Georg stood close beside his father, who had let his head with its shaggy white hair sink to his chest.

“Georg,” said his father in a low voice, without moving.

Georg knelt down at once beside his father. In the old man’s weary face he saw the abnormally large pupils staring at him fixedly from the corners of the eyes.

“You have no friend in St. Petersburg. You’ve always been one for pulling people’s legs and you haven’t hesitated even when it comes to me. How could you have a friend there, of all places! I can’t believe it.”

“Just think back a bit, Father,” said Georg, lifting his father from the chair and slipping off his dressing gown as he stood there, now quite feebly, “soon it’ll be three years since my friend came to see us last. I remember you didn’t like him very much. At least twice I even told you he wasn’t there when he was actually sitting with me in my room. I could quite well understand your dislike of him, my friend does have his peculiarities. But then later you had a good talk
with him after all. I was so proud because you listened to him and nodded and asked him questions. If you think back you’re bound to remember. He told us the most incredible stories of the Russian Revolution. For instance, the time he was on a business trip to Kiev and ran into a riot, and saw a priest on a balcony who cut a broad cross in blood into the palm of his hand and held the hand up and appealed to the crowd. You’ve told that very story yourself once or twice since.”

Meanwhile Georg had succeeded in lowering his father into the chair again and carefully taking off the knitted drawers he wore over his linen undershorts and his socks. The not particularly clean appearance of his underwear made Georg reproach himself for having been so neglectful. It should certainly have been his duty to see that his father had clean changes of underwear. He had not yet explicitly discussed with his fiancée what arrangements should be made for his father in the future, for they had both silently taken it for granted that he would remain alone in the old apartment. But now he made a quick, firm decision to take him into his own future home. It almost looked, on closer inspection, as if the care he meant to devote to his father there might come too late.

He carried his father over to the bed in his arms. It gave him a dreadful feeling to observe that while he was taking the few steps toward the bed, the old man cradled against his chest was playing with his watch chain. For a moment he could not put him down on the bed, so firmly did he hang on to the watch chain.

But as soon as he was laid in bed, all seemed well. He covered himself up and even drew the blanket higher than usual over his shoulders. He looked up at Georg with a not unfriendly expression.

“You’re beginning to remember my friend, aren’t you?” asked Georg, giving him an encouraging nod.

“Am I well covered up now?” asked his father, as if he couldn’t see whether his feet were properly tucked in or not.

“So you like it in bed, don’t you?” said Georg, and tucked the blanket more closely around him.

“Am I well covered up?” the father asked once more, seeming to be peculiarly intent upon the answer.

“Don’t worry, you’re well covered up.”

“No!” cried his father, so that the answer collided with the question, and flinging the blanket back so violently that for a moment it hovered unfolded in the air, he stood upright in bed. With one hand he lightly touched the ceiling to steady himself. “You wanted to cover me up, I know, my little puppy, but I’m far from being covered up yet. And even if this is the last bit of strength I have, it’s enough for you, more than enough. Of course I know your friend. He would have been a son after my own heart. That’s why you’ve been betraying him all these years. Why else? Do you think I haven’t wept for him? And that’s why you’ve had to lock yourself up in the office—the boss is busy, mustn’t be disturbed—just so that you could write your lying little letters to Russia. But fortunately a father doesn’t need to be taught how to see through his own son. And now that you thought you’d pinned him down, so far down that you could plant your rear end on him so he couldn’t move, then my fine son decides to up and get married!”

Georg looked up at the terrifying image of his father. His friend in St. Petersburg, whom his father suddenly knew so well, seized hold of his imagination as never before. He saw him lost in the vastness of Russia; at the door of his empty, plundered warehouse he saw him. Amid the wreckage of his storage shelves, the slashed remnants of his wares, the falling gas brackets, he barely stood upright. Why did he have to go so far away!

“Pay attention to me!” cried his father, and Georg, al
most absentmindedly, ran toward the bed to take everything in, but froze halfway there.

“Because she lifted up her skirts,” his father began to flute, “because she lifted her skirts like this, the revolting creature”—and mimicking her, he lifted his shirt so high that one could see the scar on his thigh from his war wound—“because she lifted her skirts like this and this and this you went after her, and in order to have your way with her undisturbed you have disgraced our mother’s memory, betrayed your friend, and stuck your father into bed so that he can’t move. But can he move, or can’t he?”

And he stood up quite unsupported and kicked his legs about. He shone with insight.

Georg shrank into a corner, as far away from his father as possible. A long time ago he had firmly made up his mind to watch everything with the greatest attention so that he would not be surprised by any indirect attack, a pounce from behind or above. At this moment he recalled this long-forgotten resolve and then forgot it again, like someone drawing a short thread through the eye of a needle.

“But your friend hasn’t been betrayed after all!” cried his father, emphasizing the point with stabs of his forefinger. “I’ve been representing him here on the spot.”

“You comedian!” Georg could not resist shouting, realized at once the harm done, and, his eyes bulging in his head, bit his tongue—though too late—until the pain made his knees buckle.

“Yes, of course I’ve been playing a comedy! A comedy! That’s the perfect word for it! What other consolation was left for your poor old widowed father? Tell me—and while you’re answering me may you still be my loving son—what else was left to me, in my back room, plagued by a disloyal staff, old to the very marrow of my bones? And my son strutting through the world, closing deals that I had pre
pared for him, turning somersaults in his glee, and striding away from his father with the composed face of a man of honor! Do you think I didn’t love you, I, from whose loins you sprang?”

Now he’s going to lean forward, thought Georg; if only he would topple over and smash to pieces! These words went hissing through his brain.

His father leaned forward but did not topple. Since Georg didn’t come any closer, as he had expected, he straightened himself up again.

“Stay where you are, then, I don’t need you! You think you have the strength to get yourself over here and that you’re only hanging back because you want to? Don’t be too sure! I am still much the stronger. All by myself I might have had to give in, but your mother has given me her strength, I have established a fine connection with your friend, and I have your customers in my pocket!”

“He has pockets even in his undershirt!” said Georg to himself, and thought that with this observation he could expose him for a fool for all the world to see. He was able to cling to that thought for no more than a moment, for in his distraction he kept on forgetting everything.

“Just try linking arms with your bride and getting in my way! I’ll sweep her from your side, you don’t know how!”

Georg grimaced in disbelief. His father only nodded in the direction of Georg’s corner, affirming the truth of his words.

“How you amused me today, coming in here to ask if you should tell your friend about your engagement. He knows all about it already, you stupid boy, he knows it all! I’ve been writing to him, for you forgot to take my writing things from me. That’s why he hasn’t been here for years, he knows everything a hundred times better than you do yourself, with his left hand he crumples up your letters
unopened while with his right he holds mine and reads them through!”

In his exhilaration he waved his arm over his head. “He knows everything a thousand times better!” he cried.

“Ten thousand times!” said Georg, to make fun of his father, but in his very mouth the words turned deadly earnest.

“For years I’ve been waiting for you to come with this question! Do you think I’ve concerned myself with anything else? Do you think I’ve been reading my newspapers? Look!” and he threw Georg a page from a newspaper that had somehow found its way into the bed with him. An old newspaper, with a name entirely unknown to Georg.

“How long it’s taken you to grow up! Your mother had to die—she couldn’t live to see the happy day—your friend is going to pieces in Russia, even three years ago he was yellow enough to be thrown away, and as for me, you can see what condition I’m in. You have eyes in your head for that!”

“So you’ve been lying in wait for me!” cried Georg.

His father said pityingly, in an offhand manner: “I suppose you wanted to say that earlier. But now it is no longer appropriate.”

And in a louder voice: “So now you know there is more in the world than just you. Till now you’ve known only about yourself! An innocent child, yes, that you were, truly, but still more truly have you been a devilish human being!—And therefore take note: I sentence you now to death by drowning!”

Georg felt himself driven from the room, the crash with which his father collapsed onto the bed behind him still rang in his ears as he fled. On the staircase, which he rushed down as if its steps were an inclined plane, he ran into the cleaning woman on her way up to do the morning tidying of the
apartment. “Jesus!” she cried, and covered her face with her apron, but he was already gone. Out the front door he bolted, across the roadway, driven toward the water. Already he was clutching at the railing as a starving man clutches for food. He swung himself over, like the accomplished gymnast he had been in his youth, to his parents’ pride. With weakening grip he was still holding on when he spied between the railings an approaching bus that would easily cover the sound of his fall, called out in a faint voice, “Dear parents, I have always loved you,” and let himself drop.

At that moment an almost endless line of traffic streamed over the bridge.

AS KARL ROSSMANN, a boy of sixteen who had been packed off to America by his poor parents because a servant girl had seduced him and got herself a child by him, stood on the liner slowly entering the harbor of New York, a sudden burst of sunshine seemed to illumine the Statue of Liberty, so that he saw it in a new light, although he had sighted it long before. Her arm with its sword rose up as if newly stretched aloft, and around her figure blew the free winds of heaven.