Beneath the Wheel Read Free

isn’t, Hans. It just isn’t. Don’t even think of it. And now give my regards to your father and take heart.”
    Hans watched him walk off. Then he turned around to see where the shoemaker had gone. What was it he had said? Latin wasn’t all that important, provided your heart was in the right place and you trusted in God. A lot of help he was. And now the pastor, too, of all people! He couldn’t possibly look him in the face again, if he failed.
    Feeling depressed, he arrived home and went into their small garden. Here stood a rotting summer-house in which he had once built a rabbit hutch and raised rabbits for three years. Last fall they had been taken from him, on account of the examination. There had been no time left for distractions.
    Nor had he been in the garden itself for some time. The empty rabbit cage looked dilapidated, the small wooden water wheel lay bent and broken by the conduit. He thought back to the time when he had built these things and had had fun with them. Even that lay two years back—an eternity. He picked up the small wheel, tried to bend it back into shape, but it broke completely and he flung it over the wall. Away with the stuff—it was all long over and done with. Then he suddenly remembered August, his friend from school, who had helped him build the wheel and cage. Whole afternoons they had played here, hunted with his slingshot, lain in ambush for cats, built tents and eaten raw turnips for supper. Then all the studying had left him no time. August had dropped out of school a year ago and become apprenticed to a mechanic; since then, he had come over to see Hans only twice. Of course, he too had less free time than before.
    Cloud shadows hastened across the valley. The sun stood near the mountain edge. For just a second the boy felt like flinging himself to the ground and weeping. Instead he fetched the hatchet from the shed, swung it wildly with his thin arms, and smashed the rabbit hutch. The boards splintered, nails bent with a crunch, and a bit of mildewed rabbit feed from last year fell on the ground. He lashed out at it all as though this would crush his longing for the rabbits and for August and for all the old childish games.
    â€œNow, now. What’s going on there?” his father called from an open window.
    â€œMaking firewood!”
    He gave no further reply but tossed the hatchet aside, ran through the yard to the street and then upstream along the river. Outside town, near the brewery, two rafts lay moored. He used to untie them and drift downstream for hours on warm Sunday afternoons, excited and lulled by the sound of water splashing between the loosely tied logs. He leaped across to the rafts, lay down on a heap of willows and tried to imagine the raft untied, rushing forward, slowing down in calmer waters along the meadows, coasting along fields, villages and cool forest edges, underneath bridges and through open locks, bearing him along and everything the way it used to be when he fetched rabbit feed along the Kapferberg, fished along the shore by the tanneries, without headaches and worries.
    Tired and moody, he returned home for supper. Because of the imminent trip to Stuttgart, his father was wrought up and asked him at least a dozen times whether his books were packed, and his black suit laid out, and if he didn’t want to read a grammar on the trip, and if he felt well. Hans gave terse, biting replies, ate little and soon bade his father good night.
    â€œGood night now, Hans. Make sure you sleep well. I’ll get you up at six. You haven’t forgotten to pack your word book, have you?”
    â€œNo, I haven’t forgotten to pack my dictionary. Good night, Father.”
    In the dark, he sat for a long time in his room. That was the only solace the whole examination business had brought him—a small room of his own. Here he was his own master, undisturbed. Here—obstinately, ambitiously—he had battled