Beneath The Wheel (1906) by Hesse Hermann

Author:Hesse, Hermann [Hesse, Hermann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

The spell that death had cast over the monastery was soon broken. The teachers were giving reprimands again, the doors were again being slammed and little thought if any was devoted to the former occupant of Hellas. Several boys had contracted colds while standing around that melancholy pond and lay in the infirmary or ran about in felt slippers with shawls wrapped around their throats. Hans Giebenrath had withstood the ordeal intact in health, but he looked older and more serious since the day of misfortune. Something inside him had changed. The boy had become an adolescent, and his soul seemed to have been transferred to another country, where it fluttered about anxiously, knowing no rest. This change was due not so much to shock or sorrow over Hindu's death but to his having suddenly become aware of what he had done to Heilner.

Heilner lay with two other boys in the infirmary. He had to swallow hot tea, and there was ample time to arrange his impressions of Hindinger's death for possible future use in his poetry. Still, he did not seem overly intent on writing poetry at the moment, for he was languishing and said hardly a word to his fellow patients. His isolation, a consequence of his prolonged roomarrest, had wounded and embittered his sensitive spirit. He could not go long without communicating his feelings and thoughts. The teachers kept a sharp eye on him as a dissatisfied troublemaker; the students avoided him; the tutors treated him with mocking goodwill, and his friends Shakespeare, Lenau and Schiller showed him a different, mightier and more spectacular world than his present oppressive and humiliating surroundings. His Monk Songs, which at first had struck only a melancholy note of isolation, gradually turned into a collection of bitter and hate-filled verses about the monastery, his teachers and fellow students. He took sour pleasure in his martyrdom, derived satisfaction from being misunderstood, and felt like a young Juvenal with his ruthlessly irreverent monk's verses.

Eight days after the burial, when the two others had recuperated and Heilner was alone in the infirmary, Hans paid him a visit. His greeting sounded timid as he pulled a chair to the bedside and reached for Heilner's hand. Heilner turned morosely toward the wall and seemed quite unapproachable. But Hans refused to be put off. He held on to the hand he had grasped and forced his former friend to look at him. Heilner looked at him with a sneer.

"What are you after anyway?"

Hans did not let his hand go.

"You've got to listen to me," he said. "I was a coward at that time and I let you down. But you know what I'm like: I had made up my mind to stay at the top of the class and if possible to graduate at the head of it. You call me a grind; all right, perhaps that's true. But that was my kind of ideal. I just didn't know any better."

Heilner closed his eyes, and Hans continued in a very soft voice: "You see, I am sorry.

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