Panorama (39 page)

But only Robert gets cocoa with an egg and three lumps of sugar mixed in. The father drinks two cups of coffee, but in reality it’s just a couple of drops, most of it is milk, no one else liking it that way, though the mother makes it for the father. The mother just drinks a cup of tea without milk or anything else, she doesn’t want to get fat. Madame drinks coffee, but just the opposite of the father, meaning lots of coffee and hardly any milk, though she does take four lumps of sugar, but she drinks only one cup. Lutz drinks cocoa or coffee, he preferring that much more, for it forms no skin on the top as cocoa does, which disgusts him, though the mother says that the skin is the healthiest part, it’s the fat from the milk, but he always fishes out the skin, liking best to do it with two fingers when the mother isn’t looking, though sometimes she keeps an eye on him, and then he uses a spoon, some part of the skin remaining in the cocoa and swimming horribly around on its surface. Irwin, meanwhile, prefers tea, for he likes to drink it all down like the mother, she making sure that he takes some milk with it and enough sugar, which is two lumps, but instead of milk he asks for lemon, which the mother allows because at least there are some vitamins in tea, which is important and healthy.

When everyone has gathered and settled on a breakfast drink, the father having put away the paper and everyone ready to begin, quite often Irwin has still not arrived, which means Anton or sometimes Lutz has to go see if he’s still in bed or in the toilet, for though Lutz calls out Irwin! Irwin!, most
of the time he is still in bed, which can often lead to a huge fight, since Irwin doesn’t like taking orders from Lutz, telling him, “To hell with you and shut your trap!” Lutz then cannot return to breakfast, Irwin won’t allow it, he doesn’t want Lutz to tell on him, as that would be a violation of brotherly love, and if he does Irwin will thrash him and not play Ping-Pong with him for a week, so all Lutz can do is wait and keep pestering his brother as to whether or not he’s going to get up. Eventually the moment comes when the mother shows up with Madame, who has to be there in order for Irwin to finally stir, though at first the women yell in both German and French that he should get out of bed, to which Irwin answers that he won’t get up in front of Madame, he never rises in a room with women in it except for his mother, so Madame must leave, as he slowly begins to lift himself, testing his mother’s patience, though she nonetheless waits until he’s in the bath, Anton keeping watch at the door to make sure that he doesn’t disappear again, and when he finally appears at the breakfast table the father is almost pale with anger, and hardly says a word, which then upsets the mother, she maintaining that the father doesn’t concern himself with anything and leaves everything to her.

Josef asks if Irwin then ends up late for school, but the latter says that hardly ever happens, as the father takes him in the car with him on the way to work, the chauffeur having to make only a brief detour. Josef then asks the boys to show him their other room, where they talk some more. They lead Josef into a large room, which is much too richly decorated, the floor covered with a thick carpet, paintings hung on the walls, as they sit down, and Lutz states when asked that he quite likes going to school, though he likes vacations even better, while Irwin cannot stand school, most of the boys are stupid, all the teachers are stupid, and he’ll be happy when he can finally leave school for good. As for what Irwin wants to be when he grows up? A lawyer, of course, that’s a fantastic profession, the mother wanting him to do it as well, while the father says that a good law firm is a gold mine, Irwin wanting to head one someday, he loves court cases, since they are exciting, and you can earn a lot and quickly, without having to slave from morning till night. Josef wants to know how Irwin knows all this. He has heard it from a number of people, all you need is a good head, and it’s nowhere near as risky as the market, which would have caused the father to
collapse more than once if he didn’t have nerves of steel, though he always manages to succeed somehow, having invested in many different areas so that he always has something left when some other segment collapses.

And what does Lutz want to become? He doesn’t yet know for sure, though his mother would love for him to become a doctor, since he’s interested in nature. He wants to show Josef his butterfly collection, in which there are not only butterflies he has bought from a catalog, but also many he has caught himself, he having also raised caterpillars down in the conservatory, though once Anton wasn’t paying attention and threw out an entire case of specimens. Lutz would like to become a natural scientist, for he wants to go on an expedition, like Sven Hedin to Tibet or Nansen aboard the
Fram
, where he could take part in such an adventure and collect animals. But Irwin says that Lutz is very childish—a natural scientist, that’s a romantic occupation, you can’t make much money at that, and Lutz will end up a stupid teacher like old Wentzel at school, whom they call Papa Wutzl, he talking very slowly as he says that he can’t ever let himself get excited, he has a heart condition, and whenever someone gives him trouble he never yells, but says, just you wait boy, I’ll deal with you when your parents come in for a conference, and then he makes the test as hard as possible. Lutz protests that Papa Wutzl gives the best lectures, if only you paid attention to them, everything is immediately understandable, and he is especially good at zoology, as when he talked about antelopes and giraffes, the class right now studying ruminants. Yet Irwin makes fun of Lutz for being impressed by stupid Papa Wutzl, as Irwin is bored to death by zoology, though luckily he doesn’t have to study it this year, for as far as he was concerned all those critters could just as well disappear, especially if they’re of no use at all, while Lutz with his dumb love of animals will let a mosquito sit on his hand so that he can observe how the beast drills and drills in order to drink his fill, or most likely bring home a bedbug in order to see how it bites, what nonsense! Lutz, however, says that mosquitoes don’t bite, but rather they press a liquid out of their suction tube, and the liquid and blood mix together, and then the mosquito sucks that down, though only the female does so, the male nourishing itself on plants, all of it wonderfully arranged by nature, which is why no one should kill mosquitoes, but if they should bite all you need do is press out the poisonous liquid and then it won’t itch as much.

Irwin says that now Josef can see what a foolish romantic Lutz is. Josef, however, doesn’t find anything foolish at all, for if that’s what interests Lutz, then it’s fine. Irwin doesn’t agree and finds it childish, though perhaps Darwin was a great natural scientist who once said a few smart things about man being descended from the apes, and if you looked at most people and how stupid they were, then it was easy to believe Darwin. Lutz replies spiritedly, no, that’s only what dumb people say, Darwin said something completely different. Josef stands up for Lutz, reminding Irwin that it would be unfortunate if everyone wanted to become a lawyer. Irwin counters that he wasn’t saying that Lutz should study the same thing as him, medicine is indeed a useful subject, or he could even become a veterinarian, even though he wouldn’t necessarily like to have a veterinarian for a brother, but if Lutz can’t keep his hands off those critters, then at least be a veterinarian, though what is that compared with a real doctor, or a specialist, such as an eye doctor or a neurologist? Mother says that through new research you can see that everything has to do with nerves, the only exceptions being contagious disease such as strep throat, measles, or venereal disease, where disease is carried from one to another if you are not careful enough. But Lutz responds that there is a slew of doctors, but good natural scientists are rare, and that’s what he wants to be and nothing else.

Irwin says that it’s obvious that Lutz is indeed childish, for first you need to have talent, and then you can do whatever you want, but Lutz responds in a wounded manner, saying, “Mother says that you’re nothing but an egotist who thinks about nothing but money! Yet one shouldn’t only think about money!” No, that’s not all Irwin thinks about, but first you need to have some, then you can afford to do what you want, because how is Lutz going to study zoology if someone doesn’t buy his books for him, it costs a lot more than what Irwin likes to do, which is go to the movies or the operetta, he having seen
Die Bajadere
three times, because it was such a terrific production. Josef then asks if Irwin also likes to go to concerts or the opera. No, that’s too boring, you can just as easily hear it on the radio, Father had a fantastic vacuum tube set, though no one really listens to it, Father dialing in the news and the market report, or the weather forecast for the following day, while Madame sometimes listens to French programs, Lutz searching around as well, though Robert is not allowed to touch the set, for he once
turned the knobs so hard that it could not be repaired. Mother, meanwhile, can’t stand the radio, because she shrieks like a stuck pig at the slightest background noise, though she doesn’t notice if someone deliberately opens up the cabinet in the next room and turns the radio on and off, setting off a series of cracks and pops in the set that sound like a thunderstorm or machine-gun fire, yet she can’t stand to listen to jazz even if it doesn’t contain such rattling, especially any band with American Negroes singing, for then the mother begins to rage like a madwoman until someone turns it off. Once more Josef tries to turn the conversation to serious music, but Irwin refuses, he finds most of it to be stupid, and even the audience is bored, pulling joyful faces and clapping like mad at the end, Mother loving it all and saying that Father should go with her, though he says he needs his rest, and so most often Madame goes alone, though the last tutor accompanied her, he being an idiot.

Lutz disagrees, saying that he was not an idiot, he was very clever and there was nothing really wrong with him, but Irwin explains that Lutz doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he was an awful guy who had at first talked so pompously that Mother didn’t realize how stupid he was, and thus she was so taken with him that she said he could be the next Goethe, Anselm Liebrecht his name. The guy had lived here and was so poor that two of Father’s suits had to be altered for him, a new coat was purchased for him, the seamstress had made him new pants, and Father had given him some ties that were still in good shape. At night the guy sat up in his room, Mother warning him that he would ruin his health if he studied and read all night long, though he really didn’t study but wrote poetry, some of which a journal in Bruex had published, though Mother wanted him to bring out an entire book, to which Liebrecht said that he had often tried to in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but no publisher wanted to, poetry never sold, only one publisher from Bodensee having written to say that he would like to publish Liebrecht’s poetry if he would pay for two hundred copies, but Liebrecht didn’t have the money for that. Then Mother had the idea to set up a subscription, but that angered Father, who asked if he should trade such stock on the market, and that Mother should not make herself look so ridiculous, at which she was deeply hurt, since she already had transcriptions of all the poems, she wanting to publish the best of them at her own
expense and surprise Liebrecht with them for New Year’s, they being hypersensitive stuff about love and nature and dreams, while on the parents’ anniversary and other special occasions he had put together a bunch of childlike stuff that Robert could learn by heart and recite, turning to Irwin and Lutz with such poems as well. Lutz didn’t say anything, but Irwin had spoken the truth, namely that such stuff didn’t interest him at all, even if it was a detective novel or the kind of books you’re not supposed to read because they excite the nerves too much, which is why they are hidden behind the first row of books on the shelf, but no matter, for he naturally didn’t read such books, though Lutz yells, “Don’t lie! You read them. Mother herself once caught you at it!”

Irwin shouts, “Don’t believe him! I don’t read any forbidden books! I only read Edgar Wallace and other crime novels. Mother never forbids those.” Josef asks what happened to the poet-tutor. Irwin had indeed told him that he was not at all interested in poetry, he had plenty enough in school, where he had to learn such garbage, but the guy could see that there was no way to make any money from it, after which Liebrecht left the house immediately, as what Irwin was saying was a deep insult, which because he is the son of Herr Director he could get away with in making fun of the poor poet, though the art of poetry rises above all such crudeness, and perhaps one day Irwin will remember all this once Liebrecht is at last famous, for he certainly will have a great following, every little note of his will be collected. None of this impressed Irwin, however, for poets were all starvelings, even Schiller was poor, despite writing his popular poem “The Bell” and
William Tell
, Goethe the only exception, he having come from a good family, and himself a lawyer and privy councillor and even a government minister. Hearing this, Liebrecht was deflated, howling like a fool that he had had enough, he couldn’t take it anymore, he was sick of this house, and he would quit immediately if Irwin didn’t apologize, but Irwin didn’t apologize, then the guy had accosted Mother and said he couldn’t spend another day in this house, to which Mother said she found that a bit ungrateful, she had treated him like her own son, so why quit on the spot? Then he yelled out, “Because of Irwin!,” and Mother began to laugh, saying he was nothing but a young ruffian whom no one took seriously, and why wasn’t it enough for Anselm that Mother appreciated him, though she would speak with Irwin, for someday
he will discover the beauty of art, something that the tutor also needed to inspire in him, maybe showing him how to write a poem, and the power of the material as captured in the form of poetry. Mother had said all this, for she liked to talk about art and had heard it all before in lectures she had attended, sometimes inviting artists to visit, total starvelings, who make only paintings and sculptures, Josef can even see the stuff throughout the whole villa, she inviting as well one or two literary people or someone from the theater, in addition to critics and a couple of women who marveled at it all.