Slow Homecoming (26 page)
When at last he looks up, he sees that the child has sat down at some distance from both parents. Her face looks pale and severe in the distance. Far across the slope, blueberries sparkle in the sun. At the foot of the hill, a marshy pond. The light of this day is glistening bright, interspersed with great cloud shadows, and the three figures sit there like white tombstones.
Years later, in another summer, the man would approach the same mountain ridge, this time from the eastern plain over a road that often led through vineyards; and not in a car but on foot. And toward evening, when darkness had settled on the ridge, the slowly moving wayfarer suddenly saw himself sitting with the two absent ones in the distant inky blackness, just as in old legends kings sit enthroned on mountains. But he saw them not as kings, nor yet as a “family,” but as an abstract triad, cloaked in an impenetrable substance. This was the only mystical moment in which the man had ever seen himself in the plural, and only such moments engender myths: the eternal story. The illumination vanishes, but a certain exaltation remains. Still, the wayfarer makes his way across the high plateau toward the blue-veiled mountain chain, still busy with the thought that can never be carried to a conclusion: I am working on the secret of the world. And this spot, like the square long ago, has a name of its own that is lastingly associated with the child:
Le Grand Ballon.
Le Grand Ballon.
B
ut it was again through the child that in the following winter, a few months after their return to the city and the change of schools, the adult was brutally made aware of the hasty, impatient, and above all unrealistic nature of the striving for reconciliation that had guided him all his lifeâthough he remained convinced that this was the rational attitude.
ut it was again through the child that in the following winter, a few months after their return to the city and the change of schools, the adult was brutally made aware of the hasty, impatient, and above all unrealistic nature of the striving for reconciliation that had guided him all his lifeâthough he remained convinced that this was the rational attitude.
One day he received a letter with no return address.
In rather ornate and recondite terms (which, when the adult consulted the dictionary, proved to mean just what they were supposed to), this letter, in the name of “the one people,” threatened the child, as a descendant of that people's worst persecutors, with death.
In rather ornate and recondite terms (which, when the adult consulted the dictionary, proved to mean just what they were supposed to), this letter, in the name of “the one people,” threatened the child, as a descendant of that people's worst persecutors, with death.
In the general neighborhood of the “people's” school, the man had made the acquaintance of a few adults connected with it, whom he continued to see later on, and whom he came to know much more intimately than any strangers he had ever met before. Thus it didn't take him long to find out who had written about “dissecting, dismembering,” etc., inasmuch as “the millions of victims have not been raised from the dead,” and at the end of the threatening letter given himself an Old Testament name. Detective-like, he ferreted out the man's address, put a knife into his pocket, and started out, feeling ungainly but at the same time aware of being at the center of a historic event. In the cab he visualized the exact sequence of quick movements ending with the knife thrust to the heart; he saw himself before the act, standing magnificent in an attitude of sternest judgment (for which the long ride to the opposite bank of the river was perfectly appropriate); but no sooner has he crossed the letter writer's threshold than the grotesqueness of the situation crowds out all other thoughts. He doesn't kill. Not this time. Weakness in the wrist. He does actually, in a manner of speaking, drive the other into a back roomâwhere they just stand there with smug grins on their faces; both feeling rather flatteredâthe one, because his cleverness in locating the letter writer is admired; the other, because he is taken seriously. Together they leave the cold apartment and repair to the large cemetery nearby, where they trudge back and forth, talking
of everything under the sun, at the end of which they know they will never be enemies, or allies either, for that matter.
of everything under the sun, at the end of which they know they will never be enemies, or allies either, for that matter.
It was only on his way home alone in the darkness that the man began to understand what had happened. In a quiet street near his apartment he glimpsed, high up in the night sky, a single attic window with a peaceful reddish-yellow light in it. He stood still. Now at last he is seized with real indignationâor rather bitterness; and now he curses those non-beings who need history for their lives; he curses history itself and personally disavows it; here for the first time he gains a vision of himself alone with the child in the night of the century and in the empty crypt of the continentâand yet all this provides energy for a new kind of freedom to come. But from that day on, his dominant feeling with regard to the child's history is one of bitterness. This was the feeling closest to realityâalong with grief and joy.
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During the first year at the new school the child was often unhappy. Yet one could not have conceived of a finer building or location. The building was small and full of twists and turns, yet as bright as a ship or a house on an island, and seemed to occupy a domain of its own, at sufficient distance from a large housing development. The garden surrounding it was irregularly shaped, offering plenty of hiding places for the not very numerous pupils. There were patches of tall grass or sand here and there, and chickens and other domestic animals in wire cages. Another part of it, fenced about as in an old manorial park, contained exotic shrubs and a miniature stone pool with bright-colored fish in it, and a small statue, overgrown with the same sort of foliage as the housefront.
Strangest of all, the road leading to the schoolâwhich branched off a busy thoroughfare heading out of the city, passed a few shop fronts and two or three imposing portals characteristic of the neighborhood, then narrowed abruptly and began to climb just a littleâwas unsurfaced from that point on, transforming itself into a dirt path, clay-yellow, eroded by the rain, and on both sides flanked by low walls like a sunken lane; here light and sounds are different from what they were a moment ago in the metropolis. And yet there is nothing rural about this Elysian meadow.
Strangest of all, the road leading to the schoolâwhich branched off a busy thoroughfare heading out of the city, passed a few shop fronts and two or three imposing portals characteristic of the neighborhood, then narrowed abruptly and began to climb just a littleâwas unsurfaced from that point on, transforming itself into a dirt path, clay-yellow, eroded by the rain, and on both sides flanked by low walls like a sunken lane; here light and sounds are different from what they were a moment ago in the metropolis. And yet there is nothing rural about this Elysian meadow.
Nevertheless, the child had at first to be literally pushed and pulled through the garden gate into the schoolyard. If the adult didn't escape down the path immediately after disentangling himself from her grip, she would try to fight her way back through the crush in the narrow doorway.
The children who went to this school were not children of “the one people” but children of the city, of the neighborhood, of a wide variety of parents. During the first few months the adult, too, thought the school, compared to that of the year before, rather deadening. One reason for thisâthough the school had only a kind of transitional status, its function being to prepare children for the state secondary schoolsâwas the blind learning of names without objects, which seemed to have the same effect on the child as ominous, though utterly unintelligible, official regulations. Later in the day the adult would see her at home, as she reeled off the lengths of rivers or the heights of mountains required for the next day's lesson, and time and again he would say to himself: Let it never be forgotten, let it be remembered till the end of time, with what wide-open, terror-stricken eyes
the children of the present day recite the so-called knowledge of mankind.
the children of the present day recite the so-called knowledge of mankind.
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Not until late spring did the child feel more at home in the school. With nothing particular in mind, only because he himself felt like it, the adult took her for walks around the neighborhood on warm evenings, and regularly they would turn off into the dirt path. Now the child sees her school deserted in the dusk. Sometimes the grumpy old woman who is the principal is watering plants out in front, raking the sand for the next day, and feeding the animals. The timbering in the walls is visible through the ivy. Far in the distance, the horns of calamitous motor vehicles. A rustling in the dark bushes. The sleeping chickens. The shimmering of the stone paths. “Could we stay here a little longer?”
On the last days of the school year, it gave the child pleasure to pass through the gate in the morning when no one else was there, stroll around in the garden, and exhibit herself to the next arrivals as “the first.” In the following year, there were times when the child was reluctant to go home with the adult in the afternoon and would have preferred to stay outside the schoolhouse playing with the others. There, in what had become for her a particular place, she now found herself in good or at least satisfactory company, forgot her solitary brooding, but preserved her sensibility. In the winter, when she went to the mountains with her class, she hardly suffered at all from homesickness (which had dealt her progenitor well-nigh incurable wounds). On her first night away from home she had been one of the last in the dormitory to start crying, and even then it had only been “to keep the others company.” It didn't trouble her that the teachers at school were sometimes unreasonably strict;
sometimes, in fact, she welcomed this as special attention. When faced with injustice, she expressed surprise (which, come to think of it, is a rather effective form of revolt); and as time went on, the lessons lost their earthbound heaviness and even became a sort of game, contrasting with the rest of the day; opening a copybook couldâfor the adult as well when “hearing her lessons”âoffer a clear bright vista.
sometimes, in fact, she welcomed this as special attention. When faced with injustice, she expressed surprise (which, come to think of it, is a rather effective form of revolt); and as time went on, the lessons lost their earthbound heaviness and even became a sort of game, contrasting with the rest of the day; opening a copybook couldâfor the adult as well when “hearing her lessons”âoffer a clear bright vista.
At the commencement exercises the following summerâafter the second year at the little schoolâthe adult detects a physical change in the child. He has got into the habit of regarding her as awkward and helpless. But now she is taking part in a kind of round dance in the garden; from the very first step she is self-assurance personified; and in this dance she isn't just one among others; no, as soon becomes evident, she is leading the round, without the slightest glimmer of the embarrassment the onlooker had feared. It is she who signals “faster” or “slower” or “change direction.” And in the onlooker's afterimage, her air of quiet triumph makes the entire garden group amid the clouds of schoolyard dust burst into flaming color.
No doubt the transfiguration was largely a product of leave-taking, for on the same day the little school ceased to exist and its pupils went off in different directions. The following fall they dispersed to many different state schools.
T
hey moved to a suburban house on a hill across the river. The new, state school was outside the city limits, not far from a main railroad line to the sea. The adult
felt that the change would be bearable for the child; indeed, he was optimistic because the building and its location were similar in many respects to those of the beloved “little school.” Here, too, the ivy-covered façade and the dark timbering of the walls suggested a country inn or manor rather than a school. And, likewise, the interior, the layout of the classrooms, the windows looking out on the garden, whose trees with their aerial roots, bushes, and underbrush offered the same sort of hiding places as the old garden (except that everything was a little bigger). One of the paths was even unsurfaced like the path leading to the other school, and also sloped gentlyâcouldn't that be expected to make the child feel at home?
hey moved to a suburban house on a hill across the river. The new, state school was outside the city limits, not far from a main railroad line to the sea. The adult
felt that the change would be bearable for the child; indeed, he was optimistic because the building and its location were similar in many respects to those of the beloved “little school.” Here, too, the ivy-covered façade and the dark timbering of the walls suggested a country inn or manor rather than a school. And, likewise, the interior, the layout of the classrooms, the windows looking out on the garden, whose trees with their aerial roots, bushes, and underbrush offered the same sort of hiding places as the old garden (except that everything was a little bigger). One of the paths was even unsurfaced like the path leading to the other school, and also sloped gentlyâcouldn't that be expected to make the child feel at home?
But the child froze at the sight of the new school, and time did not dispel her revulsion; indeed, it increased from day to day. Here the evening-walk formula was ineffectualâyes, the school grounds were a place of peace, but in the morning the placeless misery was back again. (Anticipatory strings of anguish spittle on her breakfast roll.) At first, school friends came to the house, but unmistakably avoided her the next day in class. And the childâwho was not yet eightâknew the reason why. “They hate me because I'm German.”
But that wasn't the worstâthe hostility that could be expressed in words wasn't so bad; what hurt her most was being ignored, being shoved aside, looking in vain for a placeâthe most dreaded part of the day became the “recess.” When the adult called for her in the late afternoon, she almost always, even if she was in some remote corner, saw him coming.
Grownups have their ways of hiding despair; in a child it is always noticeable; and the sight of a child who has given up hope was unbearable. He felt, with something
approaching urgency, that his charge must be taken out of school; and once in those months when, to his own surprise, he said aloud that they could perfectly well manage by themselves, without other people, an almost uncanny cry, or sigh, of agreement came from the child's innermost soul.
approaching urgency, that his charge must be taken out of school; and once in those months when, to his own surprise, he said aloud that they could perfectly well manage by themselves, without other people, an almost uncanny cry, or sigh, of agreement came from the child's innermost soul.
He reflected: hadn't he learned something from the image of the child dancing around with other children?
No, the child did not belong to him alone. She needed a larger community; she was not only capable of “social life” but made for it. That was the right way, the right community existed, there could be no question of turning back.
A strange repetition of that dance brought certainty. A teacher from the “little school” had died, and one November evening the adult took the child from the suburb back to the old city neighborhood to attend the funeral service. Nearly all the former pupils had come to the church with their parents, and even during Mass the children, most of whom had not seen one another since the commencement exercises, kept turning to exchange looks. In the somber, vaulted church, not only the children's clothes seemed strangely brighter than those of the grownups, but their faces as well, and everything about them; or was that only because the grownups sat so still? Afterwards, when the mourners gather outside the church, children's voices are just about the only sound to be heard. The children scream, laugh aloud, grab hold of one another, run shouting among the soft-spoken mourners, who make no attempt to stop the dance, but are perhaps more deeply moved by the wild merriment all about them than they were by the funeral service. It's an unusually bright evening, with a shining yellow full moon overhead and the demonic dancing of the children down below. Parting comes hard, a disentangling
of intertwined arms and legs, which had briefly belonged to a single body. It's late by the time the child is sitting in the suburban bus, almost alone with the adult. She is exhausted yet wide awake, and undoubtedly in seventh heaven. Most of all, she's surprised: suddenly seeing all those old friends, being greeted by them with such joy, and in dancing completely forgetting the teacher's death. The light inside the empty night bus is very white. They cross the bridge. The river is at high water and looks unusually wide and dark, with here and there a glimmer of moonlight and the top of a submerged bush. To the adult, the child's face, glowing with life and enthusiasm as she sits there reliving the hour spent with the other children, is a picture of tragic beauty.
of intertwined arms and legs, which had briefly belonged to a single body. It's late by the time the child is sitting in the suburban bus, almost alone with the adult. She is exhausted yet wide awake, and undoubtedly in seventh heaven. Most of all, she's surprised: suddenly seeing all those old friends, being greeted by them with such joy, and in dancing completely forgetting the teacher's death. The light inside the empty night bus is very white. They cross the bridge. The river is at high water and looks unusually wide and dark, with here and there a glimmer of moonlight and the top of a submerged bush. To the adult, the child's face, glowing with life and enthusiasm as she sits there reliving the hour spent with the other children, is a picture of tragic beauty.
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The dead teacher had been especially fond of the child, and after the funeral it dawned on the adult that what repelled the child about the new school was not its “state” characterâas he had overhastily concluded on the strength of his own past experienceâbut her class teacher, who was not right for her (for her alone?). It came to him that there is a kind of passionless, lifeless friendliness (without life-giving will to exert power or influence) which, coming from a teacher, can have the effect of hostility and unkindness. In this he may have recognized his own self-absorbed absence and realized what an inhuman effect it could have. (To make matters worse, some teachers live their whole lives without the vaguest notion of what a child is. They talk to a childâvoicelessly; look at it, unseeing; and all their calm and patience with children in general is nothing but indifference.)
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After the first term, the child gave up her resistance to the new school and from then on hardly spoke of daily
happenings. She even seemed to accept her lot. But sometimes, when she looked up at him, the adult detected an air of resignation such as he had hitherto seen only in the eyes of one, much older personâa look suggesting the saddest, most extreme constraint.
happenings. She even seemed to accept her lot. But sometimes, when she looked up at him, the adult detected an air of resignation such as he had hitherto seen only in the eyes of one, much older personâa look suggesting the saddest, most extreme constraint.
In a peaceful hour, when he was once again able to question her, the child told him she didn't like herself anymore. The others weren't so bad, she said; but “there's just something wrong with me.”
The next day the man went to see the class teacher, as he had done a few times before; he tried his best to keep calm but was unable to avoid such words as “loneliness,” “despair,” “exclusion,” which in the foreign language may have sounded even more stereotyped than in his own. All at once, he noticed that the lady facing him did notâin the fullest senseâunderstand. A strange expression, which the petitioner would never forget, crept into the teacher's faceâthere was amusement in it, and, intermittently, outright contemptâthe look of a person living in an airtight world, where such a thing as “forsakenness” was inconceivable.
In that moment, his mind was made up; midterm or not, the child would leave the school that very day. (An unconcealed grin on the face of the teacher, who, however, hands out leaflets for a faraway cause.) But on the other hand she would not spend a single day at home with the adult. From this interview he goes straight to another school, which is also near the railroad tracks, but on the other side. The one thing he knows about it is that it bears the name of a saint, who has his statue in the paved yard.
This school partakes of a religious tradition which in his childhood immersed him in deadly chill, belief in ghosts, and hatred of the intellect, but on his way there
this does not trouble him; what he sees in it now is glorious color, fervor, neighborliness, childlike innocence, joy of life, and mystical unity, a view justified by the millennial history of the church (or at least by its basic writings). Living alone with him, the child had absorbed little of any tradition (except for a few Bible passages, in which only the events counted and no reference was made to the underlying meaning). A few times they had gone to Mass togetherâon one occasion the child had even remarked that the people had been “so good” to herâbut as a rule they had been bored stiff at the very first sound and deeply offended by the mechanical, unfeeling demeanor of the false present-day priests and the equally evil, heartless, mindless voices of the false present-day faithful.
this does not trouble him; what he sees in it now is glorious color, fervor, neighborliness, childlike innocence, joy of life, and mystical unity, a view justified by the millennial history of the church (or at least by its basic writings). Living alone with him, the child had absorbed little of any tradition (except for a few Bible passages, in which only the events counted and no reference was made to the underlying meaning). A few times they had gone to Mass togetherâon one occasion the child had even remarked that the people had been “so good” to herâbut as a rule they had been bored stiff at the very first sound and deeply offended by the mechanical, unfeeling demeanor of the false present-day priests and the equally evil, heartless, mindless voices of the false present-day faithful.
Nevertheless, on his way along the railroad tracks, the man is convinced that the school at the sign of the saint will now be the right place for the child; and he knows in advance that they will have to accept the child, that if there's no room for her, they will make room.
It's a bright cold morning in March. Behind a lone, broad-branching cedar, a smoky, tumultuous sky. Down in the chasm, the whistling, whirring, roaring of express trains; and cityward, the river, with its seemingly frozen meanders glinting through the jumble of buildings, lies like a sleeping giant. The adult quickens his step, as did the man approaching a decision according to the historian; rings at the wrong door, is taken to the right one, and there, sure enoughâwith his more stuttered than spoken appealâhe is successful. The very next morning, the misery school on the other side of the tracks is abandoned forever, and the child, convinced by the adult's enthusiasm that she will be happy, slips willingly, even gratefully, into the new surroundings. It was only a change
of schools, but for once it seemed a matter of life and death.
of schools, but for once it seemed a matter of life and death.
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The child finished out the year at the denominational school and stayed on for the following year (when it would have been time in any case to transfer to a so-called secondary school). It was not the school of schoolsâthat lay behind her, it had gone out of existence (and the dirt walk had been surfaced). But the simplicity did the child good. The children came of different kinds of families but were all from the immediate neighborhood, and in this the suburb, which at first had seemed to merge undifferentiated with the surrounding communities, showed its individual, still rural character. And there was something “common” about this school which, as it turned out, did the child a world of good. She surprised the adult by showing that it suited her to be common now and then. At first the adult wanted to make her stop saying certain supposedly silly things, which, to make matters worse, she seemed to spout under remote control, but then he saw that the most idiotic jokes and turns of phrase helped the child in the group games of which she had so long been deprived. And another thing he liked was that there was never the slightest indication of piety; was a pious child even conceivable?
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All in all, the child's life in that period, in contrast to the preceding years, was shaped not so much by her hours in school as by the time spent at home, during most of which the adult was her only company. Often, each was alone on a different floor. Someone who visited now and then remarked later that they had struck him at first as “rather sad figures,” and that it took him some time to notice that they were not unhappy at all but
actually quite cheerful and pleased with themselves. And the adult, too, reflected at a later day that he had never felt so close to perfect bliss as at that time.
actually quite cheerful and pleased with themselves. And the adult, too, reflected at a later day that he had never felt so close to perfect bliss as at that time.
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But the great conflict of all those years in the foreign country became more and more pervasive, and the harmonious aspects of their life together did not enable him to think it away. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the adult began to feel at home in the foreign language; the child, however, who had quickly learned to handle it better than many native children, disliked speaking this second language. It became clear that so-called bilinguality was not an unmixed blessing, that in the long run it could lead to a painful split. At home with the adult, the child never used the foreign language (or at the most in jest); all day long in school, however, she heard not a single word of her home language. When the adult saw her with native children out of school, he hardly knew his child. In speaking the foreign language, she put on a different voice, different gestures and facial expressions. The foreign manner of speaking brought with it a whole set of foreign, marionette-like movements, in which he discovered not just fear but panic (a phenomenon that may have been so prevalent as to seem hardly worth mentioning). In any event, a release of tension was always evident when the child came home to her first language. Once again she found her tongue, her body relaxed, she looked quietly around her. She herself told the adult how she had to “get ready inside” for the second language, and in particular adjust her voice.
During the school year the conflict was often forgotten; but it turned to disaster at the end of vacation, which the child always spent in her own country. The misery of the return to the wilderness of foreign signs and sounds
was unparalleled; and of all foreign parts, there was none more glacial than this foreign-language suburb.
was unparalleled; and of all foreign parts, there was none more glacial than this foreign-language suburb.
Her first days back made it plain to the adult that she would have to be taken to a place where her native language was spoken, and as soon as possible (though this step was regularly postponed, because by the following morning the misery was usually dispelled by the house, the nooks and crannies in the garden, the usual sights and itineraries). And wasn't it reason enough to return home that in five years in the foreign country she had not made friends with a single native child, but only with other foreign children, mostly from other continents and of different races?
No more shilly-shallying, the child would return to the place of her first language. The decision had become possible because the adult now saw the need for a change in his own life as well. Because of the child (who really did not leave him time for a project of any length), he had gradually forgotten his old ambition and sunk into a more and more pleasurable idleness. If he had a clear conscience, it was not only thanks to the child but also to the foreign surroundings, in which no one asked him about his occupation. Here, in a manner of speaking, he was a “licensed foreigner,” which fell in with his existential ideal. There was no compelling need to work, since sufficient money remained from earlier exertions. On long walks through the many overlapping suburbs, a marvelous landscape spread out before him; years later he could have sketched a perfect map of those suburbs. Wasn't this the life? How would it be to undertake no new work but just remain sequestered with the child (looking after her to the best of his ability) in the clearing named “abroad”; sequestered in a foreign suburban house near the foreign school; hidden in the ups and downs of
the admirably deserted suburban streets, from the high points of which the metropolis below could be seen to glitter in forever-new moments of eternity?
the admirably deserted suburban streets, from the high points of which the metropolis below could be seen to glitter in forever-new moments of eternity?
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