So after five hours I was free of my disgusting instructor and I could have saved myself that sudden outburst of antipathy that had been so ill-received by the doctor. But I was absolutely in despair over my brush-making that afternoon, and by evening I had not finished more than thirty-seven holes, and those badly done. That night for once I did not brood over myself and my adverse fate and Magda and the medical officer, but only about brush-making. But this must have been far more welcome to my head, for I fell asleep over it, and for the first time I had a fairly good night.
51
The days went by, one after another, and one day, before I had expected, I was a tolerable brush-maker. I had learned it, I made nailbrushes and hand-brushes and hair-brushes and dairy-brushes and windowsill-brushes. I could make brooms too, millet brooms and fine hair brooms. Eventually I learnt to make shaving-brushes and dusting-brushes and all kinds of paint-brushes. My fingers were now as skilled as Lexer’s, they took up just as many bristles as were necessary, neither more nor less, and the wire gave me no more trouble. Now when I met Lexer in the leisure-hour and he shouted at me in his shrill voice: “Well, Sommer, how many have you done?” I would answer: “Eight hundred holes,” or: “a thousand,” or even: “eleven hundred.”
Then Lexer would pull an angry face and yelclass="underline" “Are you trying to suck up to the bosses? You won’t get any better grub than the rest of us, you arse-creeper!”
But I did not work so hard in order to curry favour, I worked for my own satisfaction. Work passed the time for me; before I expected it, the key would rattle and the keeper’s voice cried: “Lunch-time!”
The days, long as they sometimes seemed to be individually, went quickly enough: a week, a month had passed, I said to myself: “Now I’ve been here a month already, now two, now nearly three.…”
Now that my hands did the work of their own accord, now that I no longer had to think and worry about it all the time, my mind was free to reflect and brood on my own fate. But work imparted quite a different tone even to this brooding. Sometimes I stood for a while by the window and looked out over the country, in which they were already cutting the corn, then bringing it in, then ploughing the stubble, then mowing the hay. I had a good bright cell which, so they told me, kept warm even in winter. I looked out, and when my heart plagued and urged me to get out into freedom again, it was probably the work which made me say to myself: “Patience, it’ll all come right. For the time being, let’s get on with finishing this lot of washing-up brushes!”
Yes, I enjoyed my work. It was humble work that, sure enough, any child and almost any of my feeble-minded companions could have done, but there is always consolation in a job well done, however insignificant it may be.
I had no fear of the punishment-cells now, nor of the work inspector; he occasionally came into my cell to take the finished work away, and he never said a hard word to me, but often: “Good, good, Sommer.” Or perhaps: “You needn’t do more than your quota, Sommer, it’s not necessary.”
And once he gave me a crust with jam on. When my first month’s work was finished, I lined up with the other workers outside the glass box and drew the tobacco which had been bought out of my “wages” (four pfennigs a day, one mark a month), namely, one packet of fine-cut and one packet of shag. Half the shag I swapped for a little pipe, for I did not want to roll cigarettes in newspaper like the others, it always either blazed up or else it charred and tasted horrible. The bowl of my pipe was quite small, it only held enough tobacco for ten or twelve pulls; that was fine, I could have five smokes a day and still last the whole month. Not that first month though, for I was still foolish and let myself be talked out of some of it, and lent some which I never saw again. I learnt, too, the dread which all property-owners have of thieves; nothing in the cells was safe from them, however cleverly it might be hidden. Constantly the agonised cry echoed through the building: “They’ve pinched my tobacco!”
So we were obliged to carry all our belongings about with us in our pockets, even the spoon which was our only eating utensil, much to the annoyance of the head-keeper, who complained of all the bulges in our clothes. I got myself a small box in which I kept all my possessions, a little salt, perhaps a saved-up piece of bread, my pipe and tobacco. I always had this by me, in the mess-room and the lavatory, in bed, and even on my visits to the doctor. Later, the kindly Qual who was working in the carpenter’s shop, made me a little wooden box with a sliding lid and a handle of string, and would take nothing for it. Yes, now I was really enrolled, I belonged, and to tell the truth, after those first few weeks of getting used to the place, I did not feel too bad about it. I became accustomed to starvation, constant quarrels, bad air and boils, and many of my companions who were unresponsive and dull I just did not notice any more. I belonged; and yet I did not quite belong, I was only “provisionally admitted”, and later I was merely “pending report”. One day, my hearing would be held, I would serve my sentence for uttering threats, and then—I hope, I hope!—I would be able to return to freedom. What I was going to do there, I did not know. It seemed fairly certain to me that I would not go home to Magda, nor did I want to work in my old business again.
The time I spent in my cell, this constant isolation, had made me rather shy of my fellow-men, I preferred to be in the narrow room among my brushes, and I thought with aversion of the noisy crowded streets of my home town. I had the notion of going to some quiet village and spending the evening of my life there as an unknown, rapidly-ageing man, in a quiet room in which I could go on making brushes.…
I imagined something of the sort. Yes, a little joy had come back to me, an almost cosy contentment filled me—this time is best compared with the time I spent in the wood-yard of the remand prison. True, Mordhorst was lacking here but I did not really miss him. Mordhorst had always been driving on, complaining and agitating—and now I was all for peace. This place was horrible, with its filth and meanness and envy, but that was how it was, and what was the use of rebelling against it? We prisoners, we patients, were not worth it.
At the end of the second month I swapped my whole packet of fine-cut tobacco for a rimmed magnifying glass and now I could always light my pipe, even in my work-cell, provided the sun was shining. I imagined myself richer and happier than ever before when I leaned by my window and smoked my little pipe. I felt I had never enjoyed my life so deeply or been so happy as here in my warm cell. Perhaps the contentment of my cell-mate Holz, his gift for extracting pleasure from the slightest things, had already affected me.
52
In the quiet peacefulness of those days, my interviews with the doctor were the only disturbing thing, and their effect lasted but a few days at most, before I had become completely at ease again and returned to my calm and agreeable condition. On the whole the interviews did not go favourably for me, though none were as bad as that first one. Unfortunately it was quite impossible for me to behave naturally with him, in my dealings with him I never achieved that freedom and self-assurance which, outside, would have been so much a matter of course for me. I was always oppressed by a dark sense of guilt, as if I had at all costs to hide something from him. I was never quite free of my fear of his hidden cunning and trickery; at the most innocent question I was hunted by one thought: “What’s he trying to trip me with now?”