A Gushing Fountain by Martin Walser

Author:Martin Walser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2015-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Follow Her

AS JOHANN CARRIED HIS brother’s bicycle down the back stairs shortly before six o’clock on Monday morning, he had no pangs of conscience. Josef wouldn’t be able to use his bicycle for the next two days anyway.

The yard looked desolate: the grass under the trees trampled flat, remnants of straw and sawdust everywhere, puddles from the rain that had also brought down more apple blossoms during the night. And no more La Paloma Circus. Late yesterday afternoon, Xaver Noll had come on his homemade miracle tractor and pulled all the circus wagons out of the courtyard. Typical that he did it, even though it was Sunday. He called himself godless. He marched in the parades in his black SS uniform. At the regulars’ table, they said he was the world’s smartest farmer. Besides being able to build for himself all the machines he needed, he heated his house with the gas from the liquid manure in his barn. Where else in the world would you find such a thing?

Johann had watched the departing wagons from the lavatory window. Of course, the circus people had come to the door before they left to pay the rent for the space. But Mother had waved them off: No, no, she wouldn’t take any money from them after what had happened. Frau Wiener tried to hug Mother, but Mother was able to fend her off because she was almost two heads taller than Frau Wiener. Anita shook everyone’s hand, Johann’s last.

“Well,” she said, “until next time.” She was wearing her wild sweater again with the red, white, and blue nap. Anita, Anita, he thought to himself. She even turned back and said, “Don’t forget all about me.” Johann nodded. “You either,” she added to little Anselm, who was watching it all from his mother’s hip as usual. Johann thought Anita should have said her sentence about not forgetting only to him, and not to little Anselm, too.

Later, the ringmaster and director of the circus came up to the restaurant, too, and thanked them even more profusely than Frau Wiener had that there was no rent to pay. “Dear lady,” he said, “I can only tell you that your generosity will never be forgotten! You will be in our prayers. Au revoir, dear lady.” Johann saw that his mother had the same expression on her face she wore when she had pains near her gallbladder.

Luckily, his mother had not called out as he crept along the upstairs hall whose every floorboard creaked. When he reached the stairs, he slid down the banister to avoid any further noise. If you snuck past Mother’s door at an unusual time of day, you could expect her to call out: Johann, is that you? She could tell Josef from Johann by the way each snuck past. And even when she slept, she was apparently able to hear everything going on in the hall.

Before he went to bed he’d unbolted the back door, and now he didn’t latch the door behind him but left it slightly ajar.

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