III
The principal charm of childhood consists in the fact that every creature down to the household pets is friendly and kindly disposed toward children; for out of this arises a feeling of security which disappears with the first step out into the hostile world and never returns. This is especially the case among the lower classes. The child cannot play before the door without being presented with a flower by the neighboring servant-maid who has been sent across the street to make a purchase, or to draw water. The fruit-woman throws it a cherry or a pear out of her basket, or a prosperous burgher perhaps even gives it a small coin with which it can buy itself a roll. The driver cracks his whip in passing; the musician as he goes by draws some tones from his instrument, and whoever does none of all these things at least asks its name and age, or smiles at it. To be sure, the child must be kept neat and clean.
My brother and I came in for a bountiful share of this goodwill, especially on the part of the tenants of our house, our special neighbors who were almost as much to us as our mother and more than our severe father. In summer they had their work and could not pay much attention to us, but then at that season it was not necessary that they should, as we played in the garden from early till late, from one bed-time to the next, and the butterflies were company enough. But in winter, in the rain and snow, when we were confined to the house, almost everything that entertained and enlivened us came from them.
The wife of the day laborer, Meta by name, was a gigantic figure, somewhat bent forward, with a stern Old-Testament face, of which I was vividly reminded by Michaelangelo's Cumæan sybil in the Sistine Chapel. She usually came over to us at twilight in the long winter evenings, with a red cloth wound around her head, and stayed until the lights were lit. Then she told us stories of witches and goblins, that sounded more impressive from her lips than from any other. We heard of the Blocksberg and the witches-Sabbath; the broomstick, so contemptible in appearance, acquired a weird importance, and the dark hole in the chimney, which in every house, and therefore in ours also, can be misused in such malignant fashion by the powers of hell and their handmaids, inspired us with dread. I can still remember perfectly the impression made upon me by the story of the wicked miller's wife, who transformed herself at night into a cat, and how I consoled myself with the fact that in the end she did indeed receive due punishment for this wicked prank. The cat, namely, when once starting out on her nightly walk, had a paw chopped off by the miller's apprentice, who thought she looked suspicious, and the next day the miller's wife lay in bed with a bloody right arm minus a hand.
When the light was lit we usually went over to neighbor Ohl's, and in his room we certainly felt more at ease than in Meta's company. Neighbor Ohl was a man whom I have never seen cross, no matter how often he had occasion to be so. With an empty stomach, indeed with what in his case meant more, an empty pipe, he danced, sang, and whistled something for us whenever we came; and in spite of his considerably reddened nose—which, according to a tale of my mother's, I once wished for longingly when looking up at him while being danced upon his knees—and in spite of the felt cap tapering to a point, which he wore continually, his always friendly, merry face still gleams before me like a star. There had been a time when he was the only mason in the place and the employer of from twenty to thirty journeymen, of whom many later set up as masters and took the work away from him. At that time, so it was said later, he could have assured himself a future free from care if he had not visited the bowling alley too often, and loved a good glass of wine too well. But whoever bore evil fortune as he did, could not be reproached for careless enjoyment of the good. I cannot think of him without emotion; how would it be possible for me to do sot He once, at fair-time, presented my brother and me with a kettle-drum and a trumpet which he had, with the greatest difficulty, obtained on credit from the toy merchant, and as his poverty did not permit him to pay off the small debt until much later, he had to submit to being dunned for it years after, when I, already tall and knowing beyond my years, was walking at his side. He was inexhaustible in inventing ways to amuse us, and as with children nothing is necessary but goodwill, he never failed to do so. It was a source of great delight to us when he took a piece of chalk in his hand, sat himself down with us at his round table and began to draw-mills, houses, animals, and all sorts of other things. At the same time he cracked the merriest jokes, which still resound in my ears. Even the chief of his pleasures was not one for him if we did not share it. It consisted in drinking slowly a half jug of brandy, in remembrance of better days, and in smoking a pipe at the same time, on Sunday morning after the sermon and before dinner. We each had to have a thimble full of this brandy or he did not enjoy it himself. The drink was certainly not the best thing for us, but the quantity was small enough to prevent disastrous consequences. My father, however, forbade this kind of Sunday treat when he came to find out about it. This troubled the good old man exceedingly, but did not prevent him, I am forced to add, from having us drink with him again; only this took place quite secretly, and he urgently recommended us to keep out of our father's way, so that he should not have occasion to kiss one of us and thus discover the transgression. It was a kiss, to wit pressed upon my father's lips, that had betrayed the secret the first time.
Sometimes one or the other of his two unmarried brothers, who as a rule tramped around the country and were probably good-for-nothings, would spend the winter with him. They always found a ready welcome and remained until the spring or hunger drove them away. He never turned them out. Small as his piece of bread might be he gladly divided it once again, but when he had nothing at all, then indeed he could not give away anything. It was a regular treat for us when Uncle Hans or Johann arrived, for they brought news of the world to our nest. They told us of woods and their adventures in them; of robbers and murderers whom they had escaped from with great difficulty; of the dark giblet stew which they had eaten in lonely forest-taverns, and of men's fingers and toes which they pretended to have found at last in the bottom of the dish.
The swaggering, parasitic brothers-in-law were extremely unwelcome to the housewife, for she did not bear the burden of existence as light-heartedly as her husband did, and she knew they would not leave again so long as there was a piece of bacon hanging in the chimney; but she contented herself with complaining in private, and at times pouring out her heart to my mother. She, too, was fond of us children, and in summer, as often as she could, she presented us with red and white currants, which she, in turn, begged from a stingy friend. I, however, avoided her too close proximity, for she made it her business to cut my nails as often as it was necessary, and I detested this on account of the prickly feeling in the nerve ends which it caused. She read the Bible diligently, and long before I could read it myself I received from her my first strong, nay terrible, impression from this gloomy book, when she read to me out of Jeremiah the horrible passage in which the angry prophet foretells that in the time of great distress the mothers would slaughter their own children and eat them. I can remember yet with what terror this passage inspired me when I heard it, perhaps because I did not know whether it referred to the past or to the future, to Jerusalem or to Wesselburen, and because I was myself a child and had a mother.
IV
In my fourth year I was sent to a primary-school. It was kept by an old spinster, Susanna by name, of tall and masculine stature, with friendly blue eyes, which shone forth like candles from out a pale grayish face. We children were planted around the walls of the spacious chamber which served as school-room, and which was rather dark. The boys were on one side, the girls on the other; Susanna's table, piled high with school books, stood in the middle, and she herself, a white clay pipe in her mouth and a cup of tea before her, sat behind it in an ancestral arm chair which inspired no little respect. Before her lay a long ruler, which, however, was not used for drawing lines but for chastising us when we were no longer to be held in check by frowning and clearing of the throat. A cornucopia full of currants, destined as a reward for extraordinary virtues, lay beside it. The raps, however, fell more regularly than the currants; indeed, the cornucopia, sparingly as Susanna made use of the contents, was sometimes completely empty; we thus learned Kant's categorical imperative sufficiently early.
Children large and small were called up to the table from time to time, the more advanced pupils for instruction in writing, the multitude to repeat their lessons and to receive raps on the fingers with the ruler, or currants, as the case might be. A sullen maid-servant, who even occasionally took a hand in inflicting punishment, went up and down the room, and was at times occupied in a most unpleasant manner with the youngest pupils, for which reason she kept sharp watch that they should not partake too freely of the sweet things which they brought with them.