Martha shook Helene off. She went red and said nothing. Their mother took Helene by the arm and forced her down on her knees.
What nonsense! I don’t like to hear you sound so delighted, child. The work won’t be easy, you know. Then she let go and Helene was able to stand up again.
Untroubled, Helene looked at her mother. She wasn’t surprised to find that Selma thought the work difficult; after all, her mother very seldom entered the rooms housing the printing works — she had probably never seen type being set, and from a distance the business must seem to her mysterious. Helene thought of the clicking and quiet chuffing of the press, the crunch of the rollers. How differently people could see something! What appeared all right to the typesetter made Helene uneasy. She had a clear picture of herself spacing the letters and words properly at long last, with the gaps between them ensuring harmony and clarity. The idea of operating the big press on her own was exciting. She had often wanted to improve on the typesetter’s work.
Selma was watching Helene. Those shining eyes seemed uncanny to her. The child’s joy made her seem even taller and more radiant than usual.
What you lack, said her mother sternly, is a certain sense of proportion. Her voice was cutting, every word finely judged. You don’t understand the natural order of things. That is why you find it hard to recognize order among us all. Subordination, my child, is important and you’ll be able to learn it from our typesetter. Subordination and humility.
Helene felt the blood rise to her face. She lowered her eyes. Darkness and light broke apart, colours blurred. She had no idea yet what to say in reply. The kaleidoscope went round and round, several times a rusty nail moved near some walnut shells, you never knew when that nail or those shells might come in useful. It was some seconds before she had a clear picture inside her again. Her mother, who as Helene now saw was wearing the violet satin ribbon, looked all done up like a present. The violet bow shook as Mother spoke. It wants to be undone, Helene thought, it really does. Helene scrutinized the maternal landscape, consisting as it did of remnants of clothes, feather dusters encrusted with black blood at the ends of the quills, pillowcases with cherry stones coming out of the holes in their corners and mountains of old newspapers. She could not make out the summit from which her mother was trying to tell her something about understanding the established order of things. Helene could not raise her eyes to meet her mother’s. She looked for help to Martha, but this time Martha did not come to her aid.
Within a few weeks Helene lost her veneration for the pièce de résistance in her father’s printing works. The platen press, which bore the brand name Monopol, no longer inspired awe in her but demanded physical effort. While the typesetter, who was too small for his legs to reach the pedal from her father’s stool, skilfully raised one of those short legs and kept the pedal in motion by kicking it vigorously, at Helene’s first attempts she couldn’t move it a millimetre. Although she could work the sewing machine and had no difficulty in keeping it going by stepping on the treadle, the Monopol press obviously called for a man’s strength. Helene put both feet on the pedal and pushed down. The wheel simply jerked forward once. The typesetter laughed. Perhaps he’d like to show her how to clean the rollers, said Helene sharply, looking pointedly at the thick layer of dust lying on them.
She wasn’t going to accept that she wasn’t physically strong enough to learn to use the press. As soon as the typesetter had left in the evening, she went over to the Monopol and practised with her right leg. She leaned on the paper holder and trod down and down again, until the big wheel was turning faster and faster and the friction of the rollers made a wonderfully deep sound. She was sweating, but she couldn’t stop.
By day the typesetter showed her how to use the stitching machine, the pressing machine and the stapling machine. He taught her assiduously, as he had been told to do, but he kept saying, with a twinkle in his eye, that the Monopol would obey only its master. And since her father had gone away, he obviously felt that he was its master now. The certainty that, as he thought, he was indispensable cheered the typesetter.
No one knew that over the past few years a friendly working relationship had developed between the typesetter and Helene. He was the first adult to take her seriously. Ever since she began helping with her father’s accounts at the age of seven, and now, because he was away in the war, had taken over the purchase of supplies as well as the bookkeeping, the typesetter had treated her with great respect. He called her Fräulein Würsich. Helene liked that. And he accepted all her calculations without demur.
Even when Helene could not comply fully with his request for higher wages after the war, nothing about his friendly attitude changed. He discussed the work on hand with her. And if one of the machines needed servicing, he referred back to Helene, particularly now that her mother was disappearing into the upper part of the house for months on end, closing the net curtains and turning her back on the windows. Helene liked the typesetter. It was she who would go up to the kitchen, search the pantry, look round several times to make quite sure no one could see her and fold newspaper to make a paper bag, fill it with pearl barley, put semolina into another bag and finally place a cucumber, a kohlrabi and a handful of nuts in a third. When she found the huge cardboard box of sugar cubes on the top shelf of the pantry one day, she unhesitatingly tore a page off the Bautzen Household Calendar, wrapped a heap of cubes in it and gave that to the typesetter too.
As soon as he had left in the evening Helene went back to practising on the Monopol press in secret. After a few days she practised with her left leg as well as her right. She practised until she couldn’t go on. And when she couldn’t practise any more she practised overcoming not being able to practise any more, and got on with it. In the evening she could feel how strong her legs were growing, and next morning she felt an unaccustomed tugging in them. She knew what it was, but before now she had only ever heard boys say they had cramp in their legs.
One evening she sat high up on her father’s stool, which was fixed to the floor. To her surprise she didn’t even have to stretch her legs; the stool could have been made specially for her. She put both feet on the pedal and trod away. She had to pull in her stomach firmly, which caused a pleasant, tickling sensation; she felt a fluttering inside, as if she were on a swing. She was reminded of Martha’s hands and Martha’s soft breasts.
Only when Selma Würsich asked, a few weeks later, whether her daughter had learned all about the printing press now, did the typesetter demonstrate the cutting machine to her. So far he had avoided even taking her anywhere near it. A dark presentiment now took shape in his mind. He looked at her fair hair, which she wore plaited into a thick braid, and found that he could bring out the words only reluctantly. His comments were brief. First open it. Then adjust it. The typesetter placed the rulers one above the other like battens. Place the paper here.
Without a word of apology, the typesetter pushed Helene slightly aside and showed her, in silence, how she must first knock the stack of paper together and then straighten it to fit it into the machine. As he saw it, the cutting machine was dangerous, not because Helene was a tender young girl of only just thirteen, but because now she could operate all the machinery, everything but the Monopol press.
Mother told Mariechen to roast a joint of beef with a thyme-flavoured crust for Martha’s twenty-second birthday. As always when there was meat, she ate none of it herself. No one discussed her reasons, but her daughters agreed in thinking they were to do with certain dietary regulations. There was no kosher butcher in Bautzen. It was said that the Kristallerer family asked the butcher to slaughter meat specially for their needs, and there was a rumour that they even took him their own knives for the purpose. But Mother obviously didn’t feel comfortable about getting such things done if everyone in town would know about it. And perhaps she meant it when she said she simply didn’t like meat.