My true father’ – for an instant Oscar stopped open-mouthed – ‘would have thrown his arms around me, he would have summoned my mother to come. What’s the matter with you, Father?’
‘I suggest you go and eat with your true father then. It promises to be much more agreeable.’
‘He will come, give him time. He can’t fail. And Mother will be there too. And Franz, whom I’m going to fetch now. Everyone!’ And with that Oscar barged into the door, as though to force it open, though it swung effortlessly.
Once he’d arrived at Franz’s lodgings, he bent down to the little landlady with the words, ‘It’s all right, the engineer is asleep, I know,’ and without paying any attention to the woman who, unhappy in view of the late visit, continued to pace uselessly back and forth in the corridor, he opened the glass door which shuddered as though he had touched it at some sensitive spot and called out boldly into the middle of the room which was almost completely dark: ‘Franz, get up! I need your advice. But I don’t want to stay here, I want to take a walk. Also I want you to come and eat with us. So hurry up.’ ‘At your service,’ came the reply from the engineer on his leather sofa, ‘but what are we doing first – getting up, eating, walking or advising? I expect there are some other things I’m overlooking as well.’ ‘Above all, Franz, no jokes. That’s the most important thing of all, I forgot to say.’ ‘Well, I can oblige. But as for getting up – I’d rather eat twice on your behalf than get up once.’ ‘Now, up you get! No resistance.’ Oscar grabbed his friend by the lapels and pulled him into a sitting position.
‘I say, you do mean it, don’t you. Respect.’ He rubbed his eyes with both little fingers. ‘Tell me, has anyone ever bodily lifted you off a sofa like that?’ ‘Go on, Franz,’ said Oscar with a grimace, ‘go on and get dressed. I’m not an idiot to go waking you for no reason.’ ‘Nor am I an idiot for sleeping with no reason either. I was on night-shift yesterday, and I missed out on my afternoon nap today as well, on account of you.’ ‘What?’ ‘Oh, I’m just annoyed by how little attention you pay me. Not for the first time either. Of course, you’re a student with no commitments, free to do as you please. Not everyone’s so lucky. Then surely to goodness you have to pay a bit of respect to others. I am your friend, but that’s not what keeps me in my job.’ He demonstrated by waving the palms of his hands about in the air. ‘Doesn’t the eloquence rather suggest that you’ve had more than enough sleep,’ said Oscar, who was braced against a bedpost, from where he eyed the engineer as though he had more time than before.
‘What do you want me to do? Or, if you like, why did you wake me up?’ asked the engineer, scratching at his throat behind the goatee beard, in that closer intimacy one has with one’s body after sleep. ‘What I want you to do,’ said Oscar, tapping the bed frame with his heel. ‘Very little. I told you what it was from the corridor: to get dressed.’ ‘If you mean to suggest by that, Oscar, that your news is of very little interest to me, then I’m bound to say you’re right.’
‘So much the better, because in that case the fire it will light in you will be lit all by itself, and won’t rely on our friendship at all. Your advice will be clearer too. I need clear advice, please bear that in mind. And now if you happen to be looking for your collar and tie, they’re over on the armchair.’ ‘Why, thank you,’ said the engineer, beginning to put them on. ‘Perhaps you are a reliable person after all.’
The Village Schoolmaster
Those, and I count myself among them, who find an ordinary mole disgusting, would probably have died of disgust if they had seen the giant mole that was spotted a few years ago in the vicinity of a small village which thereby gained a measure of fleeting fame. Now, admittedly, it’s long since sunk back into obscurity, like the whole episode, which has remained a riddle, not that any very great efforts have been undertaken to explain it, and which – as a consequence of the baffling neglect of precisely those minds that should have devoted themselves to it, but instead devoted their energy to the explanation of things of much less consequence – has been forgotten for want of a detailed investigation.
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