I Confess (35 page)

"Please sit down," said Dr. Freund. "I have only come to tell you that a new student is going to join you today.

His name is Martin Frank. He is a friend of mine and Fve known him for a long time."

"Oh!" cried the young teacher, beaming. "How nice!"

She really seemed pleased. She probably didn't know whom she was welcoming so joyously, I thought, but then decided that of course she knew and was pleased in spite of it. Or perhaps because of it.

I saw Dr. Freund leave the classroom; then I heard him enter the projection room. He came and stood beside me. "Now watch," he said softly.

The teacher had meanwhile turned to face her classj "Listen," she said. "This boy, Martin Frank, whom the Herr Direktor has just said is going to join us, seems to be a very likeable boy. I've heard a lot about him, and I know you're going to get along wonderfully. He has only one fault."

"What's wrong with him, Frau Lehrerin?'* A little girl with black braids was asking.

"He doesn't think right," said the young teacher. "He thinks people don't like him. He thinks everybody is his enemy."

"What nonsense!" cried one of the boys.

"Of course it's nonsense," said the teacher, "but that's the way it is. One really has to feel sorry for the poor fellow. It must be terrible to feel that nobody likes you. But after Martin has been with us for a while," the young teacher went on, "he will see how wrong his thinking is. At first, though, it's not going to be easy. I can imagine a situation in which he'll say to himself—and of course be wrong—Toni is going to beat me up during recess. And before I let him beat me up, /'// beat him up. So during recess, Martin may try to beat up Toni, who of course doesn't have a thing against him." The teacher paused and looked from one to the other. "And what will happen when Toni decides next time around that he'll beat up Martin?"

"Martin will think he was right and that Toni really doesn't like him," cried one of the little girls.

"That's right," said the teacher. "I see you've understood me. Martin will believe that his thinking was right. But it was wrong,"

"But then what am I supposed to do?" a fat boy asked; Toni, I imagined. "I can't just let Martin beat me up."

"Of course not," said the teacher. "But there's something else you can do. You can take preventive measures.'*

"Preventive measures?"

"Yes. Get there ahead of him. Be nice, friendly, helpful. If you're all that way, right from the start, then he can't believe you don't like him. And with that you will have helped him a little toward freeing himself of his wrong thinking."

Dr. Freund plucked at my sleeve. "Come on. We must go. Martin will be here any minute."

We went back to his office where Martin.was already waiting for us. Now he looked pale and scared, "Well, Martin, how was it in the city?"

"Horrible, Herr Doktor."

"Horrible? Why?"

"Such a lot of people." Martin shrugged. He never looked at me at all.

"And what was wrong with all those people, Martin?"

"None of them liked me."

"Well, then you must be glad to be back here with us. Everybody's waiting for you here."

A knock on the door. "Come in," cried Dr. Freund.

The door opened and two children walked in—fat Toni and the little giri with the black braids. "What is it?" asked Dr. Freund.

''Herr Doktor," said the little girl, "our teacher has just told us that Martin Frank is going to be in our class today, so we thought we'd ask if he was here already and whether we could welcome him."

Martin was obviously stunned. He stared at the little girl. Dr. Freund rose, smiling. "Well, that's a happy coincidence." he said. "You've come just at the right time. This is Martin," and he pushed Martin forward gently as

he said to him, ''You see, I told you the truth. Everybody here is waiting for you."

Both children were smiling. "Hm," said Martin, looking thoroughly confused.

"Let me introduce you," said Dr. Freund. "This is Martin, and this is Toni, the president of Class II B, and this is Ilse. She's vice-president."

Toni and Ilse shook hands with Martin. "Welcome!'* said Ilse. "We're happy to have you with^us," said Toni.

"So," said Dr. Freund, rubbing his hands. "And now that you're here, I won't have to take Martin up to you. You can manage that just as well yourselves, can't you?"

"Of course, Herr Doktor."

"Good." Dr. Freund nodded. "So go along, Martm. I'll be seeing you."

My son looked helplessly from one child to the other. •"You mean you want me to . . ." he began hesitantly.

"Yes, Martin," said Toni. "The other children would like to meet you too." He took Martin's hand. Use flung her thin arm around his shoulders, and thus they led a silent Martin out of the room. The door fell shut; we were alone. I said, "I presume the children were sent down to do this."

"Naturally," Dr. Freund replied happily. "Now come on, the performance isn't over."

We hurried back to the projection room. We had just reached the small windows when there was a knock on the door in the classroom. "Come in," cried the young teacher.

Ilse and Toni led Martin into the room. At the same moment every child in the room rose, smiled at Martin, who seemed overcome, and cried out, "Good morning, Martin!"

Martin's restless eyes fluttered. He passed the back of his hand across his nose, cleared his throat and said something that sounded like a grunt.

The teacher walked up to him. "Well, at last!" she

cried happily. "You certainly kept us waiting, Martin. Where have you been all this time."

"At the ... at the ... I had to see the doctor," he finally managed to say.

"Aha." The teacher nodded. "But now you're here and are going to stay." As she spoke she led him forward gently until he was standing in front of her dais. "And now we've got to find a nice seat for you." She stopped, looked around. "For goodness sakes! There's something we've forgotten. Martin doesn't have a seat."

"What do you mean, Frau Lehrerin?" cried one of the boys, jumping up. "Of course there's a seat for him. We cleared this one," and he pointed to an empty desk next to his.

The teacher slapped her forehead as if vexed with herself. "How could I have forgotten? Of course. Martin, look!" And she led him to the desk beside which the boy was standing.

Martin swallowed heroically. He couldn't believe his eyes. The desk was covered with a piece of shelf paper. On it the children had drawn a wreath of flowers in colored crayons. In the middle of the wreath the word "Welcome!" was printed in large red letters. Martin was speechless. All the children were watching him. No one spoke.

"Do you like your desk, Martin?" asked the teacher.

Another deep grunt issued forth from a desperate Martin.

"You don't like it?"

"Yes, I do." The words were almost inaudible. He looked from one child to the other. "Thank you," he finally managed to say softly.

"So," said the teacher. "And now sit down, Martin. We're doing arithmetic. You can start right in with us."

"I . . ." Martin began and stopped.

"What is it?"

"I don't have any school things with me.'*

*T[ have a notebook you can have," cried one of the boys. "Here you are. And you can keep it."

"And here's a pencil," said Martin's neighbor. "I don't need it. You can have it."

"Th ... thanks," mumbled Martin. With his forefinger he was tracing the colored flowers. He wasn't looking at anybody; his shoulders were shaking.

"So you'll write with pencil today, not with ink," said the teacher. "That's all right, isn't it?"

Martin nodded wordlessly.

'Trau LehrerinI" cried Ilse.

"What is it, Dse?"

"Martin doesn't have to write in pencil. I have a second pen for him." She walked over to Martin. "And look,'* she said.

In the upper right hand comer of the desk the children had fashioned a lid out of cardboard. It was secured to the desk with a thumbtack. Ilse removed the thumbtack, Ufted the flap and revealed the inkwell underneath it. She dipped her pen into it and handed it to Martin, who took it.

"There,'' said the teacher, going back to the blackboard. "And now we can go on with the lesson."

The children wrote. So did Martin, without hesitation. In a short while his pen was dry. "Now watch," said Dr. Freund, who was standing behind me.

I saw MartLQ hesitate, then slowly, carefully, he removed the thumbtack, lifted the cardboard hd, dipped his pen into the inkwell, closed the hd again with the thumbtack and went on writing.

"Did you see that?" Dr. Freund sounded overjoyed. "He didn't rip off the lid. He opened and closed it again so as not to damage his beautiful new desk."

I had a lump in my throat.

Martin wrote. After a while he opened the lid again carefully, dipped in his pen and closed it again. He repeated this procedure solemnly throughout the entire lesson. I stood at the Uttle window and watched him. I

thought of the child Martin had tried to hang and the live mouse he had taped down, and I thought of Yolanda.

"Shock," said Dr. Freund. "I knew we wouldn^t get anywhere without it. Now, of course, we must wait for the first relapse."

8

The "shock" remained with Martin. A week passed without any sign of a relapse. He obviously felt right in his new surroundings, he went to school gladly every morning and I accompanied him because the school was quite some distance away from us and he didn't know the way yet. At any rate, that was my excuse for accompanying him. To be honest, I was magically attracted to Dr. Freund. I longed to be near him, I loved talking to him, and when I was in his presence, I was at peace. While Martin was attending his various classes, I sat in Dr. Freund's office and listened to him talk about his problem children, his anxieties, his successes and failures. We also spoke about Martin.

"I don't want you to have any illusions about the boy," he told me. 'The relapse will come. It always does. We will have many relapses before we have a cure." He threw up his hands. "My God, how easy healing would be if the first success were a lasting one! Unfortunately this is never the case. Because it is always achieved, as in Martin's case, by a shock. And a shock only startles, it doesn't heal."

Martin's attitude toward me didn't change. He seemed aware of my existence, but he spoke to me only when necessary. In the evening, when we got home, he did his

homework and went to bed. Now he washed himself. Dr. Freund had persuaded him to. It was a strange time, as I think back on it now. I would have had every reason to be desperate about my plans that had gone awry. But I had no longing to go away, I had quieted down incredibly in these few days of my acquaintance with Dr. Freund. It was on November 11 that there was a letter for me in the morning mail. A summons. To appear on November 14, at ten o'clock, at the police station in the first district for the purpose of "supplying informatioru"

I went there in a most unusual frame of mind which had been preceded by many hours of cogitation. I faced my chances dispassionately. "For supplying information . . .'* Anything could lie hidden behind these words. I really couldn't have expected my crimes to remain forever unsolved. The police must have come upon a clue as a result of some mistake made by me, somehow, somewhere. Now they would question me, once, twice, over and over again. Perhaps I would be smart enough to answer their questions to their satisfaction, perhaps not.

Of course I could still resort to flight. But in aH probability, if they were in the least suspicious of me, they had already notified the border and I would walk into a trap. Also I no longer had the rashness of earlier days; I had grown sluggish and tired and knew that I was sicker. My breathing was more labored^ my headaches were more frequent. I could rid myself of them easily with Mord-stein's morphine. Still, I wasn't the man I used to be; I too had changed. In all probability it was Dr. Freund who

had changed me. His words, spoken on that first night, remained with me. One couldn't run away all the time. In every life there came a day on which one had to stop and stand with one's back to the wall and face reaUty. I was tired of running away.

I went to the police station. I had to wait a long time. There were quite a few people ahead of me. I sat in a dirty, cold passageway beside the door to which I had been told to come. I was in that faraway mood in which anything goes. It was Uke the way one feels about life when one is slightly tipsy. I didn't give a damn about anything. Perhaps the morphine had taken its toll. I was so calm that I was able to start a quite interesting conversation with a man who arrived ten minutes after me and sat down beside me. He seemed about forty-five; he was shabbily dressed and sympathetic. I liked him right away.

"It's taking a long time today," he said patiently.

"Yes."

"Have you been here often?"

"No."

"I was just wondering. I've had to come several times."

"Is that so?"

"Yes."

The conversation was petering out when he suddenly decided to introduce himself. "My name is Hohenberg."

"Pleased to meet you," I said, as we shook hands. "My name is Frank."

"Are you here because of your child too?" he asked, a little shyly.

"No. Why?"

"You have no children?"

"Y ... yes," I said slowly. "A son."

"I do too." He nodded several times. "My God, if I had ever thought. . ." he stopped speaking and sighed.

"Is anything wrong with your boy?"

"Everything is wrong with my boy," he said dully. "His name is Herbert. He is ten years old. He was a good boy until a while ago, then the devil must have got into him.

You can't ima^e what we've gone through with him, my wife and I. Especially my poor wife."

"Is Herbert iU?"

"Yes, Herr Frank. Not physically. I think his soul is sick."

"His soul?"

"Yes. My wife and I are convinced that's it Something changed him."

"In what way?"

Hohenberg looked around nervously, then he whispered, "He's been expelled from school."