Not I Read Free Page B

my departure from school. Like so many things it was lost in the confusion of the end of the war, so I can no longer recapture its tone of ecclesiastical bureaucracy. But the sentences struck me like blows, from which even the cutting marginal comments of my father could not protect me. This is more or less what was written there:
Joachim F. shows no intellectual interest and only turns his attention to subjects he finds easy. He does not like to work hard. His religious attachment leaves something to be desired. He is hard to deal with. He shows a precocious liking for naked women, which he hides behind a taste for Italian painting. He displays a noticeable devotion to cheap popular literature; in the course of an inspection of his work desk shortly before he left, works by Beumelburg and Wiechert were found. That a volume of Schiller’s plays was lying beside them does not make the find any better, since dramatic literaturedemands much less effort than philosophical pieces. He is taciturn. All attempts by the rectorate to draw him into discussion were in vain. It is not impossible that J. will still find the right path. We wish it for him—and for you.
    My father had put a note with the report. On it was written, in contrast to his usual strict manner: So that you have something to laugh at in these serious times . He had underlined the phrase about my lack of intellectual interest and written in the margin: I don’t understand. Dr. Hermann and the others in charge of the house seemed sensible people when I met them last year . My mother, for her part, had noted: Wolfgang got an outstanding report when he left. You’re not so dissimilar! What does he do that’s different? I wrote back: Here at the Reich Labor Service I’m constantly being reproached by my superiors, because I spend almost every free minute reading. A couple of days ago, after some clumsiness while putting up a tent, one called me “an educated idiot.” What does one learn from that? School reports are Seich ( rubbish ) 3 , as they say in Alemannic dialect .
    At the beginning of July 1944 my time with the labor service came to an end. I was drafted into an air force unit in Landau an der Isar. Chance had it that I made a friend on the first day. Reinhold Buck from Radolfzell was quite brilliant, with a temperament that swung between severity, delight, and the demonic. The hours hespent over scores and notebooks were proof of the effort it cost him to come to rest. He wanted to be a conductor and was obsessed by music. So it was inevitable that even as we were making up our beds we got around to themes and composers who had for a long time been his passion as well as mine. A little later, as the whistles were blown for first roll call, we stood next to one another and missed one command or another, because we were talking about Beethoven’s piano sonatas. The lieutenant who was inspecting the ranks and had picked up a couple of fragments of our conversation asked Reinhold in which major key Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was composed and received the answer: “In none. It was composed in D minor. And, if I may add, the opus number is 125.” The officer was pleasantly surprised. “But you don’t have a clue about anything?” he said, turning to me. “I do,” I contradicted him in an unmilitary manner. “But more about literature.” The lieutenant thought for a moment. “Then tell me off the top of your head the last line of ‘The Erl-King.’ ” Without hesitation I answered, “ In seinen Armen das Kind war tot ” (In his arms the child was dead). From that day on he called us “the professors” when he ordered us to fetch coffee or clean the latrines.
    After duty, which here, too, consisted of mindless infantry training, we became engrossed, evening after evening, in our passion for debate. We got excited about Mozart and his taste for alla turca , inspired by the Turkish Wars and the contemporary fashion for coffee-drinking in the late