Chapter 8 Class Schedule

Klepp sometimes kills time by arranging schedules.He was always chomping on blood sausage and lentils while waiting for the table.This fact supports one of my thesis, which categorically proclaims: dreamers are gluttons.Klepp always struggles to fill his schedule.This fact proves another point of mine: only genuine lazybones can make labor-saving inventions. During the year, Klepp also spent more than two weeks working out his day schedule.He worked mysteriously for a long time at first, and he didn't come to me until yesterday, and took out a piece of paper folded nine times from his breast pocket and handed it to me.He was radiant and triumphant.Once again he made a labor-saving invention.

I glanced at the note briefly, and there was nothing new on it: breakfast at ten; Practice flute in bed for an hour; walk around the house playing bagpipes for an hour; play bagpipes in the open air in the yard for half an hour; in the next two hours, drink beer, eat blood sausage, or go to the cinema, changing every other day; Half an hour of inconspicuous propaganda for the illegal KPD before going to the cinema or over a beer, but without exaggeration.Playing music and dancing at the "Unicorn" restaurant three nights a week; on Saturday afternoon, drinking beer and promoting the German Communist Party moved to the evening, because it was scheduled to take a bath and massage on Green Street during this time; A girl for three quarters of an hour's hygienic surgery, then took the same girl and her girlfriend to Schwab's for coffee and snacks; Take snapshots in the photo studio; finally go to drink beer, eat blood sausage, and do publicity and entertainment for the KPD.

-------- ①The German Communist Party was banned on August 17, 1956, and the Federal Government of Germany filed an application for an injunction to the Federal Constitutional Court on November 16, 1951. Therefore, when Oscar narrated (before March 5, 1953), the German Communist Party was still legitimate political parties. I complimented Klepp on the curvilinear pattern he had carefully drawn around the form, asked him to make a copy for me, and asked him how he planned to fill the gaps.After thinking for a while, Klepp replied: "Sleep, or think about the German Communist Party."

Shall I tell him the story of Oscar's dealings with his first schedule? It started in Aunt Kaul's kindergarten, without danger.Hedwig Bronski picked me up every morning and took me and her Stefan to Aunt Kaur on Posadowski Road.There were six to ten of us toddlers (several of whom were chronically ill), and we all had to play there until we vomited.Fortunately, my drum can be used as a toy, and they can't force me to play with building blocks. As for the rocking horse, they only let me ride a drum knight in a paper helmet when they need it.My drum sheet is Aunt Call's black silk dress with a thousand buttons.I can safely say that I managed to unbutton and unbutton, undress and dress this thin, wrinkled lady on my drum several times a day, without any Think of her body.

We went for walks every afternoon, through the chestnut grove, into the forests of the Jeschken Valley, up the Erbsberg, past the Gutenberg Monument. Today, I still hope to take a walk on the picture book with Aunt Kaur's hand like thin paper. -------- ① Johannes Guttenberg (140-1467 or 1468), the inventor of German movable type printing, printed forty-two lines of the Latin Bible in 1455. We, eight, ten, or twelve toddlers, had to be harnessed.This harness is a light blue belt woven with woolen yarn that is used as a shaft.There are six wool bridles on the left and right sides of the woolen cart, which are put on twelve children.Hang a bell every ten centimeters.Aunt Kaur held the reins, and we galloped ahead like horses, jingling bells and babbling, while I beat the viscous drums through the suburban streets in autumn.Sometimes Aunt Kaur would make us sing "Jesus, I live for you, Jesus, I die for you", or "Star of the sea, I salute you"; when we sang "Mary, help "Ah" and "Sweet Virgin, Sweet" poured out to the clear air of October, all passers-by were moved by it.When we crossed the main street there was a break in the traffic, and when we crossed the road singing "Star of the Sea," the trams, cars, and carriages all stopped.Every time Auntie Kaul waved her tissue-paper rustling hand to the policeman directing the traffic and letting us cross.

"My Lord Jesus will reward you," she promised, her silk skirt fluttering. In the spring after his sixth birthday, Oskar had to leave the unbuttonable and unbuttonable Miss Kaur with him because of Stefan. This is really a pity for me .It's about politics, and when it comes to politics, there's violence.That day, we climbed Mount Ebbs again, and Aunt Kaur untied us from our woolen harnesses.There are new branches and leaves everywhere, and new vitality begins to appear among the treetops.Aunt Kaur sat on a moss-covered signpost, which marked the direction of several places, from which it took one to two hours to walk.Like a young girl who doesn't know what feelings spring has aroused in her, she sang tra la la la la, her head shaking convulsively, such movements can only be seen in the female guinea hen.She was weaving new harnesses for us, scarlet ones, but unfortunately I couldn't put them on any more, for at this moment there was a cry from the bushes, and Miss Cowl stood up hastily, holding the braiding, the red ones. With the wool trailing behind her, she walked towards the shouts and the bushes on her high heels.I followed her, and suddenly her wool became less red, because I saw that Stefan's nose was bleeding, a lot of blood.A boy named Lothar, with curly hair and bulging veins at the temples, was sitting on the chest of the weak, suffering Stefan, as if to crush his nose.

"Poland!" he yelled with a fist, "Poland!" Five minutes later, Aunt Kaur put us all in the light blue harness again—only I was free, and was taking her place. Red yarn—she said a prayer in the presence of all of us, usually between sacrifice and incarnation: "Shame! full of remorse and pain..." -------- ① Two parts in the Catholic Mass ceremony: Jesus' sacrifice to the Father on the cross and the consecrated bread and wine turned into Jesus' body and blood (incarnation). Afterwards, we descended Mount Ebbs and stopped in front of the Gutenberg Monument.Pointing to Stefan, who was weeping and blocking his nose with a handkerchief, she said softly, "He's a Polish kid and he can't be responsible for that." On Aunt Kaur's suggestion, Stefan no longer to her kindergarten.Oskar, who was not Polish and did not particularly like Stefan, declared solidarity with him.It's Easter and they're going to have us try it in elementary school.Dr. Hollatz, who wore wide-brimmed horn-rimmed glasses, judged that there was no harm in doing so, and offered his opinion: "It won't do little Oscar any harm."

Jan Bronski planned to send his Stefan to a Polish public primary school after Easter.He has made up his mind, and no one can dissuade him.He repeatedly told my mother and Matzerath that he was a Polish civil servant.He worked in the Polish post office, and he did a good job, and the Polish state paid him not badly.In short, he was Polish; and when the application was approved, Hedwig became a Polish citizen.Furthermore, a bright, above-average child like Stefan can learn German at home.As for little Oscar—when he mentioned Oscar, he always sighed a few times. Like Stefan, he was already six years old. However, it should be tried anyway.Compulsory education is compulsory education - as long as the school does not raise objections.

The school expressed doubts and asked for a doctor's certificate.Horatz said that I was a healthy child. From my stature, I seemed to be only three years old. Although I still stuttered, my intelligence was by no means inferior to that of a five- or six-year-old child.He also talked about my thyroid and more. Whatever checks were made, whatever experiments were done—I was used to it all, and I was very peaceful, unconcerned, even friendly, especially since no one wanted to take my drums away.The snakes, toads, and various embryos collected by Horatz were all destroyed. All those who checked and tested me for me still remembered and lingeringly feared.

Only at home, even though it was the first day of school, I had to let the diamond in my voice show its power, because Matzerath knowingly insisted that I not carry the drum to the Pesta across the Fröber meadow Lozzie school, insisted I leave the drum at home. He finally set his hands to grab this thing that didn't belong to him, something he couldn't handle. To be honest, he really has no nerves to play with this drum!With a roar, I cracked an empty vase in two, which was said to be a real antique.This real vase, Matzerath's favorite, fell to the carpet in real fragments.When he saw it, he raised his hand to beat me.At this moment, my mother jumped up, and Jan stepped between the two of them - it was a coincidence that he happened to be walking by my house with Stefan, carrying a paper bag.

"Forget it, Alfred," he said calmly.Seeing Jan's blue eyes and my mother's gray eyes, Matzerath suppressed his anger, put his hands down and put them in his trouser pockets. Pestalozzi School is a newly built four-story building, a rectangular box with red bricks and a flat roof, with modern decorations such as colorful brushed stucco and murals.It was built by the suburban district government with many young children at the outcry of the social democrats who were still quite active at that time.The suitcase, apart from its smell and the brushed stucco and murals of youngsters playing sports, was to my liking. -------- ①Youth School, an artistic style that emerged in the fields of architecture, arts and crafts and painting in Germany between 1890 and 1905, opposed to the inheritance of tradition and advocated the renewal of life style. On the gravel-paved empty field outside the gate, there are small unnatural trees, and green shoots are sprouting from the tops of the trees.The small trees were supported by an iron rod bent like a bishop's crooked staff.Mothers flocked from all directions, holding colorful cone-shaped paper bags in one hand and pulling their children in the other. Some of them yelled and some behaved.It was the first time for Oscar to see so many mothers rushing towards one direction.It was as if they were going to a fair, where they sold their first or second-born children. As soon as you enter the lobby, you can smell this school smell, which is often described, so it is more familiar to people than any other brand-name perfume in the world.On the marble floor in the hall, there are four or five granite stone jars erected eclecticly. There are many springs at the bottom of the jars, and they spray high water columns at the same time.A group of children, some of my own age, were crowding around me, and they reminded me of the sow of my uncle Vinzent in Bissau, who sometimes lay on her side and endured her equally thirsty, vicious pigs. The piggies swarmed up. The children leaned over the water tanks, their hair hanging in front, and opened their mouths to catch the vertical jets of water that rose and fell.I don't know if they are playing or drinking water.Sometimes the two children straightened up at the same time, puffed their mouths, and impolitely sprayed the warm water in their mouths, which must have been mixed with saliva and crumbs, into each other's faces.When I walked into the front hall, I casually glanced at the gymnasium on the left through the open door. I saw leather saddle horses, climbing poles, climbing ropes, and the terrible horizontal bar that always seemed to force others to do big spins on it. I couldn't help getting really thirsty, so thirsty that I couldn't control it, and I really wanted to drink a sip of water like other children.Mom took my hand.Ask her to carry Oscar, who is as tall as a three-year-old child, to the water tank?I don't do that.Even with my drum under my feet, I couldn't reach the jets of water.I jumped lightly, over the edge of one of the tanks, and glanced in to see leftovers of greasy bread badly clogging the drain and forming an unsanitary deposit at the bottom of the tank.I don't feel thirsty anymore.Although my mind once felt that my mouth was dry and my lips were burnt, it was only when my body lost its way among the sports equipment in the desert of the gymnasium as if I was actually there. Mom led me up the monumental staircase dedicated to giants, through echoing corridors, and into a room with a sign on the door that read: Class A, Grade One.The room was full of kids my age.The mothers of the children stood in a row under the wall facing the window, holding multicolored cone-shaped paper bags with tissue paper tied at the top, the bags were longer than I was tall.It is a tradition to carry it on the first day of school.My mother is no exception. When I took her by the hand and entered the house, the little reds and their mother laughed out loud.A fat boy wants to beat my drum.In order to avoid singing broken glass, I had to kick him in the shin several times, kicking the urchin to the ground, and his clean-haired head hit the desk.I got my mom slap on the back of the head for it.The urchin cried out.I didn't yell, of course, because I only yelled when someone was trying to take my drum away.My mom did feel embarrassed to make this appearance in front of so many mothers.She pulled me to the first row of desks by the window.Needless to say, the desk is too tall.However, the further back, the bigger the desks, the rougher the little red guys, and the more freckles on their faces. I am content, sitting securely, as I have no reason to be uneasy.It seemed that my mother was still embarrassed, trying to squeeze in among the mothers.In front of other mothers like her, she may be ashamed of what I call stunted growth.They put on faces proud of their wild boys, as if with good reason, but they also grow up too fast for my feeling. I couldn't look out at the Fröbel Meadow from the window because the window sill was taller than I was, just as the school desk was too tall for me.I would love to have a look at the Flebel Meadows.I know that the Boy Scouts, under the leadership of Greff the Greengrocer, are encamped there, playing card games and doing all the good things Boy Scouts do.That's not to say that I'm going to glorify camp life with the same exaggeration they do.All that interested me was the image of Greff in shorts.He made them wear the uniform of Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, because he loved boys who were tall, thin, with big eyes, albeit pale. -------- ① Baden-Powell (1857~1941), British general and military writer, author of "Boy Scouts". It's really worth seeing, but I can't see the damn architectural structure, so I can only look up at the sky, and finally get satisfaction from it.There are always new clouds moving from north to southeast, as if there is some special attraction in that direction.I held the drum between my lap and the drawer of my desk, though it had no intention of drifting with the clouds.The back of the chair was supposed to be used as a backrest, but it supported the back of Oscar's head.The so-called classmates behind me chattered, yelled, laughed, cried, and acted wildly.They threw balls of paper at my back, but I didn't turn my back; I thought the purposeful clouds were worth watching, but not the hysterical morons with grimacing faces. A woman—she later identified herself as Miss Sporenhower—entered the classroom, and First Grade A fell silent.I don't need to be quiet because I'm already quiet, almost lost in myself, anticipating what's to come.To be honest, Oscar never felt the need to look forward to what was coming because he didn't want to be a distraction.Instead of anticipating, he sat at his desk, knowing by feel that his drum was still in place, reveling in contemplating the clouds behind, or rather in front of, the panes that had just been wiped at Easter. Miss Sporlenhower's attire was indecent, and she was dressed like a shriveled man.Her disfigurement was made worse by her narrow, stiff shirt-collar, which, as far as I could see, could be removed and washed, which constricted her throat so tightly that it wrinkled her neck.As soon as she stepped into the classroom in her flat pumps, she immediately wanted to please, and asked, "Shall we sing a little song, dear children?" A babble answered her, but she took it to be their agreement, for she then made a gesture, setting her voice high.She sang the song of spring, "May Has Come," even though it's only mid-April.The group of guys behind me, who are ignorant of the lyrics and lack the basic sense of the simple rhythm of this ditty, didn't wait for her to make a gesture, they roared and sang indiscriminately, shaking the plaster on the wall fell down. Despite her sallow complexion, her cropped hair, and a man's cravat peeking out from under her collar, Miss Spollenhower made me feel sorry.I turned my head away from looking at the clouds—they were obviously not in class today—and pulled the drum stick from under my suspenders in a jiffy, striking the beat of the song loudly and clearly on the drum.But the guys behind me have no sense of rhythm, they lack this hearing ability.Miss Spollenhower alone gave me a nod of encouragement, smiled at the mothers standing against the wall, and winked at my mother in particular.I took this as a signal, and continued typing with confidence, first simple and then complex, until I had fully displayed all my skills.The gang behind me had long since stopped their savage yelling.I imagine now that my drum is lecturing, teaching this group of students, turning my classmates into my students, because Spollenhower is now standing at my desk, looking at me intently. hands and drumsticks.She doesn't look clumsy like that, but she can see that she has reached the state of ecstasy.She smiled and tapped her hands on the table to my beat.In that brief minute she had become a not unsympathetic old girl, who had forgotten her calling as a teacher, and who had emerged from the image which she was usually obliged to clumsily imitate, became human, that is to say. , becoming childish, curious, complex and amoral. However, when Miss Spollenhower could not imitate the beat of my drum immediately and correctly, she relapsed.A foolish low-paid character suddenly calmed down—female teachers sometimes can’t help but do this—and said: "You must be little Oscar. We have heard a lot about you." Less. What a good drummer you are! Isn't that so, boys? Isn't our Oscar a good drummer?" The children yelled, the mothers huddled closer, and Miss Sporenhower went on as usual. "But," she said in a false voice, "now we're going to keep the drum in the classroom locker. It's tired and going to bed. You can take it back after class." Before she could finish these false words, she stretched out her short-manicured governess' fingernails to grasp my drum with ten short-nailed fingers--God knows, it never tires, Also don't want to sleep.First I hugged it tightly, wrapped my arms in the sleeves of the thick sweater around the red and white drum body, and stared at her, as she persistently shot out the old public elementary school carved out of a mold. The gaze of the governess, therefore, I also used my gaze to penetrate into the depths of Miss Sporenhower's heart, and found a lot of interesting material, enough to write three chapters of immoral anecdotes.But I forced myself not to peek into her inner life, because my drum was under threat.As I shot my penetrating gaze between her shoulder blades, I detected a hairy mole the size of a Gulden on her well-kept skin. -------- ① Gulden, a silver coin commonly used in Germany from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Or because she felt that my eyes had peeped into her inner world, or because my voice scratched her right eyeglass lens, although it didn't break it, but still gave her a small warning, in short , she no longer uses naked violence - it has turned her knuckles white - maybe she can't stand the sharp sound of scraping the mirror, which gives her goosebumps.Trembling, she let go of my drum and said, "Oscar, you are so naughty!" and gave my mother a reproachful look, which made my mother hardly know where to look.Giving up my always-awake drum, she turned and walked to her desk on the heels of her flats, and pulled out another pair of glasses from her purse—probably she wore them to school—with a firm with a single motion, took the spectacles scraped by my voice—like fingernails on a window pane—from her nose, as if I had broken hers, and, One pair was placed on the nose, and the body straightened, making the bones rattle.She put her hand into her purse again and said to everyone at the same time: "Now I will read you the timetable." She took a stack of notes from the pigskin purse, took one for herself, and passed the rest on to the mothers, mine included.Finally, she read to the restless six-year-olds what was printed on the schedule: "Monday: Religion, Writing, Arithmetic, Games; Tuesday: Arithmetic, Calligraphy, Singing, Nature; Wednesday: Arithmetic, Writing, drawing, drawing; Thursday: local lessons, arithmetic, writing, religion; Friday: arithmetic, writing, games, calligraphy; Saturday: arithmetic, singing, games, games." When Miss Spollenhower read out the timetable, it was like reading an inalterable sentence of fate.She read through this product of the public school teachers' congress, in a rigid voice, without omitting a single letter, and then softened as she thought of her normal school education.With a burst of joy as an educator, she exclaimed, "Now, dear children, let's re-read it together. Please—Monday?" The little red guys roared, "Monday." She went on: "Religion?" The baptized savages bellowed the word "religion."Instead of shouting with my own voice, I beat the syllables of the word "religion" on the drum. Spollenhower read aloud, and the group behind me roared. "Write!" I tapped on the drum twice. "Arithmetic!" Two more times. As if answering a litany, Sporlenhower in front of me said, and the group behind me roared.This game is absurd, and I have to put on a serious face and beat my drum appropriately to the syllables, until Sporenhower - I don't know whose orders - jumped up , obviously furious - but not because of the wild boys behind me.It was me who made her flush with excitement, Oscar's innocent drum was a stumbling block for her, and she had difficulty pulling me, the rhythmic drummer, into prayer. "Oscar, you have to pay attention to my reading! Thursday: country class?" I put aside the word "Thursday" and only tapped the syllables of the word "country class" four times①, "arithmetic" and " "writing" twice, and the word "religion" not four times with its syllables, but three triplets according to the theological principle of the Holy Trinity and the salvation of one person. -------- ① "Country class" and "religion" below are four-syllable words in German. However, Spollenhower lacked sharp discernment.She hates drums, no matter how you beat them.Like the previous time, she stretched out ten fingers with bald nails, all ten fingers down, to catch the drum. However, before she touched my drum, I had uttered the glass-breaking cry, knocking down the top pane of the three oversized windows in the classroom.The middle pane of glass fell victim to my second cry.The warm spring breeze blows into the classroom without any hindrance.With a third cry, I destroyed the lower pane of glass; this one was purely superfluous, entirely due to my exuberance, because the upper and middle panes had already been defeated by Sporenhower at the first sight. After a while, she withdrew her paw.God knows, if Oskar had noticed that Sporlenhower was in a panic, he would have acted smarter and stopped showing his temper-which is also quite problematic from an artistic point of view-call out the last A row of glass.Who knows where she conjured a cane.Anyway, it appeared suddenly, quivering in the spring-scented classroom air.She wields the cane in this mixed air, giving it resilience, making it eager to open other people's skin, making whistling noises, one after another, forming countless rustling curtains , wanting to satisfy both the beater and the beaten.She hit my desk with a cane, and the ink in the vial burst into a purple fountain.I refused to stretch out my hand to beat her, so she beat my drum.She hit my iron sheet.She, Spollenhower, beats my tin drum.What reason does she have to fight?Why did she play my drum if she wanted to?Aren't there some dirty wild boys behind my back?Do you have to beat my drum?She doesn't know the art of beating drums, she doesn't know anything at all, what reason does she have to harm my drums?See what kind of fierce light is in her eyes?What kind of beast is preparing to beat people?What zoo did it escape from?What food is it looking for?What to grab next? ——Beast nature also got into Oscar's body, I don't know which abyss it climbed up from, it got through the heel of the shoe, the heel, climbed higher and higher, controlled his vocal cords, and made him let out a sound of beastly love The shouts were enough to shatter the stained glass of a Gothic church. In other words, I uttered a double cry and reduced Sporenhower's two spectacle lenses to dust.There was a spot of blood under her eyebrows, her eyes were slitted behind the lensless frames, she stepped back blindly, and finally began to wail in an ugly, unrestrained manner for a public school teacher. strength.At this moment, the group of boys behind me were too frightened to make a sound, some of their teeth were fighting, and some got under the desk.A few sneaked from one desk to another, sidling up to the mothers.Did they know that this was a disaster, so they wanted to hit the perpetrator, and they were going to rush to catch my mother.If I hadn't left the desk with my drum in my arms, they would have beat my mother up. I walked past the half-blind Sporlenhower to my mother surrounded by Furies, took her by the hand, and dragged her out of Class A of the first grade. classroom.We walked through echoing corridors, down stone stairs built for giant children, past spouted granite vats with breadcrumbs and shivering boys under the horizontal bars in the gymnasium with its doors open.Mom still holds the note in her hand.Out of the gates of the Pestalozzi school, I took the note from her hand, and the schedule was turned into a meaningless little ball of paper. The photographer stood between the pillars at the door, waiting for the first-graders and mothers to come out with paper sacks.Oscar agreed to let him take a picture of himself and the paper bag that had survived the scuffle and hadn't been lost.The cameraman had Oscar stand in front of a blackboard as a background; the blackboard read: My first day of school.