Panorama (4 page)

J
OSEF 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.”

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.