The Twins Read Free Page B

standards. From time to time he goes over to spit into a blue bottle that is then closed tight so that the angry spirits can’t escape. Afterwards, as a reward for her efforts, she is allowed to help with the cash. She deals tattered inflation notes into piles of ten with swift fingers – the balance runs into billions – until a fiery rash on her fingertips brings this pastime to a close.
    Every Monday morning before lessons begin, the teacher pierces the pupils with her gaze and asks in an insinuating tone, ‘Which one of you was not in church yesterday?’ Silence prevails, nobody stirs, until Anna raises her finger. ‘Me.’ Immediately Lotte’s higher , brighter voice follows, ‘Me too.’ ‘Then you are the devil’s children ,’ decrees the mistress knowingly. The sisters see their excommunication reflected in the other children’s eyes. ‘But you are still far too young,’ their father protests when they inform him of the traditional duty to attend children’s mass on Sunday mornings , ‘you wouldn’t understand a word of it.’ They have never seen either him or Aunt Käthe go inside a church. Each Sunday they implore him; they can no longer bear the annihilating look of the teacher nor their classmates’ teasing. Finally he puts his mug of beaten egg down on the table and rests his hands on their shoulders. ‘Tomorrow,’ he promises, ‘I’ll go to school with you.’
    But when they are on the way, one on each side, it seems more as though they have to protect their father, so feverish and fragile does he look in his black coat that sways roomily about his thin figure. Leaning heavily on his stick, he has to pause every ten steps to breathe. The tap of the stick on the cobbles echoes behind him – a chain of echoes that prevents him from falling. They go inside the school building; he gestures to them to wait for him in the corridor and knocks on the classroom door. The mistress, thoroughly unsettled by the unusual interruption, invites him in with forcedcourtesy. Leaning side by side against the wall, Anna and Lotte fix their gazes on the door and listen. Suddenly their father’s hoarse voice lashes out above the mistress’s, which is struggling to maintain its self-control. ‘How dare you! To children who are weaker than you!’ Anna and Lotte look at each other dumbfounded. They straighten their backs; they no longer need to lean against the wall. A delightful, against-the-grain strength flows through them. Proud, triumphant, self-assured – they cannot put a name to it but it is there. Thanks to him.
    The door swings open. ‘Come in,’ he says, suppressing his coughing. Anna crosses the threshold first, quickly followed by Lotte. They stand by the blackboard. The mistress is not on the floor in small pieces. Yet it looks as though her spine has snapped in several places. She grips her desk, with bowed head and sagging shoulders. The pupils, motionless on the benches, look up shyly and respectfully at their father, whose handling of the stage management is faultless. ‘Right,’ he pushes Anna and Lotte gently towards the teacher, ‘and now apologize to my daughters, and that goes for the whole class.’ The mistress eyes them obliquely. Her gaze immediately slides away again, as though it has come into contact with something unclean. ‘I am sorry,’ she says without feeling, ‘for what I said to you. It won’t happen again.’ A silence falls. What now? Could anything be added to the mistress’s humiliation? ‘And now I’m taking them home with me,’ they hear their father’s voice above them, ‘but they will be here again tomorrow. If I get to hear of anything like this ever again I shall be back.’
    Fortunately the mistress kept the promise that had been exacted from her, because he would not have been able to carry out his threat. He is already much less able to cope with the trench warfare raging in his lungs. A new slide: stretched out on the sofa like a romantic poet,