The Pegnitz Junction Read Free

story about Bruno.”
    “Herbert,” she said suddenly, in her slow voice. “Do you ever think that nothing passes unobserved? That someone might be recording all your private expressions? The faces you think no one sees? And that this might be on film, stored away with tons and tons of other microfilm? For instance, your reaction to the porter – it wasn’t a reaction at all. You were sleepwalking.”
    “Who would want a record of that?” said Herbert.
“En quel honneur
.”
    “Read a story where Bruno has sisters and brothers,” said little Bert.
    “I’ll read after Strasbourg,” said Christine. She was too inexperienced to know this was a pledge, though Herbert’s manner told her so at once.
    “If Christine wants to study I’ll read,” he said.
    Oh, he was so foolish with the child! Like a servant, like a humble tutor with a crown prince. She would never marry Herbert – never. Not unless he placed the child in the strictest of boarding schools, for little Bert’s own sake. Was it fair to the child, was it honest, to bring him up without discipline, without religion, without respect, belief, or faith? Wasn’t it simply Herbert’s own self-indulgence, something connected with his past? It happened that little Bert’s mother had runaway. Not only did Herbert-the-amiable forgive his wife, but he sent her money whenever she needed it. In a sense he was paying her to stay away from little Bert. He’d had bad luck with his women. His own mother had been arrested and put in a camp when he was three. She had been more pious than political, one of a flock milling around a stubborn pastor. After she came home she would sit on a chair for hours, all day sometimes, munching scraps of sweet food. She grew enormous – Herbert recalled having to help her with her shoes. She died early and stayed in his mind as a bloated sick woman eating sugar and telling bitter stories – how the Slav prisoners were selfish, the Dutch greedy, the French self-seeking and dirty, spreaders of lice and fleas. She had gone into captivity believing in virtue and learned she could steal. Went in loving the poor, came out afraid of them; went in for the hounded, came out a racist; went in generous, came out grudging; went in with God, came out alone. And left Herbert twice, once under arrest, and once to die. Herbert did not believe for a second that the Dutch were this or the French were that; he went to France often, said that French was the sole language of culture, there was no poetry in English, something else was wrong with Russian and Italian. At the same time he thought nothing of repeating his mother’s remarks.
    Christine came up out of her thoughts, which were quite far from their last exchange. She said, “Everyone thinks other people are dirty and that they won’t cooperate. We think it about the Slavs, the Slavs think it about the Jews, the Jews think it about the Arabs …”
    Herbert said, “Oh, a Christian sermon?
En quel honneur?”
and stared hard at the two cigarettes lit by mistake and crowding the little ashtray. His mother’s life had never been recorded, and even if it had been he would not have moved an inch to see the film. Her life and her death gave him such mixed feelings, made him so sad and uncomfortable, that he would say nothing except “Oh, a Christian sermon?” when something reminded him of it.
    “ N ow, little Bert,” said his father at eleven o’clock. “We are almost at Strasbourg. I know you are not used to eating your lunch quite so early, but we are victims of the airport strikes and I am counting on you to understand that.” He drew the child close to him. “If there are shower-baths in the station …”
    “We’ll eat our plum tart,” said little Bert.
    “We’ll have to be quick and alert from the time we arrive,” said Herbert. He had more than that to say, but little Bert had put Bruno between his face and his father’s and Herbert had no wish to address himself to a bath