Foreign literature abridged. All works of the school curriculum in a brief summary
Heinrich Böll
Traveler, when you come to Spa
The car stopped, but the engine continued to purr for several minutes; somewhere a gate opened. Light entered the car through the broken window, and I saw that the light bulb in the ceiling was also broken into pieces; only its base stuck out in the socket - several glittering wires with the remains of glass. Then the engine stopped, and someone shouted on the street:
Dead here, do you have any dead here?
Damn it! Are you not going dark anymore? - the driver responded.
Why the devil should it go dark when the whole city is burning like a torch, shouted the same voice. - Are there dead people, I ask?
Don't know.
The dead are here, do you hear? The rest of us go up the stairs to the drawing room, understand?
But I was not yet dead, I belonged to the others, and they carried me to the drawing room, up the stairs. First, they were carried along a long, dimly lit corridor with green, oil-painted walls and bent, old-fashioned black hangers tightly embedded in them; on the doors there were small white enamel plates: “VIa” and “VIb”; between the doors, in a black frame, shining softly under the glass and looking into the distance, hung Feuerbach's "Medea". Then there were doors with signs “Va” and “Vb”, and between them a photograph from the sculpture “Boy Pulling Out a Splinter”, an excellent, red-glowing photograph in a brown frame.
Here is the column in front of the exit to the landing, behind it is a wonderfully executed model - a long and narrow, truly antique frieze of the Parthenon made of yellowish plaster - and everything else that has long been familiar: a Greek warrior armed to the teeth, warlike and scary, looking like a disheveled rooster. In the stairwell itself, on the wall, painted yellow, there was everyone from the Great Elector to Hitler...
And on the small narrow platform, where for a few seconds I managed to lie straight on my stretcher, hung an unusually large, unusually bright portrait of old Frederick - in a sky-blue uniform, with shining eyes and a large shiny gold star on his chest.
And again I lay rolled to the side, and now I was carried past thoroughbred Aryan faces: a Nordic captain with an eagle eye and a stupid mouth, a native of the West Moselle, perhaps too thin and bony, a Baltic scoffer with a bulbous nose, a long profile and the protruding Adam's apple of a movie mountaineer; and then we got to another landing, and again within a few seconds I was lying straight on my stretcher, and even before the orderlies began to climb to the next floor, I managed to see it - a monument to a warrior decorated with a stone laurel wreath with a large gilded Iron Cross upstairs.
All this quickly flashed one after another: I was not heavy, but the orderlies were in a hurry. Of course, everything could only have been my imagination; I have a strong fever and absolutely everything hurts: my head, my legs, my arms, and my heart is pounding like crazy - whatever you can imagine in such heat.
But after the thoroughbred faces, everything else flashed by: all three busts - Caesar, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, side by side, amazing copies; completely yellow, antique and important, they stood near the walls; when we turned the corner, I saw the column of Hermes, and at the very end of the corridor - this corridor was painted dark pink color, - at the very, very end, a large mask of Zeus hung above the entrance to the drawing room; but it was still a long way off. To the right, in the window, the glow of a fire was red, the whole sky was red, and dense black clouds of smoke solemnly floated across it...
And again I involuntarily turned my gaze to the left and saw the signs “Xa” and “Xb” above the doors, and between these brown doors, as if smelling of mustiness, I could see Nietzsche’s mustache and sharp nose in a golden frame, the second half of the portrait was covered with a piece of paper with the inscription “Pulling Surgery” "...
If it happens now... flashed through my head. If it happens now... But here it is, I see it: a painting depicting the African colony of Germany Togo - colorful and large, flat, like an old engraving, magnificent oleography. In the foreground, in front of the colonial houses, in front of the blacks and the German soldier, who for some unknown reason was sticking out here with his rifle, - in the very, very foreground, there was a large yellow life size, a bunch of bananas; there is a bunch on the left, a bunch on the right, and on one banana in the very middle of this right bunch there is something scratched, I saw it; I think I scribbled it myself...
But then the door to the drawing room opened with a jerk, and I swam under the mask of Zeus and closed my eyes. I didn't want to see anything else. The hall smelled of iodine, feces, gauze and tobacco and was noisy. The stretcher was placed on the floor, and I told the orderlies:
Put a cigarette in my mouth. In the top left pocket.
I felt someone else's hands rummaging in my pocket, then a match was struck, and there was a lit cigarette in my mouth. I took a drag.
Thank you, I said.
All this, I thought, does not prove anything. After all, in any high school there is a drawing room, there are corridors with green and yellow walls in which bent old-fashioned dress hangers stick out; after all, this is not proof that I am in my school if “Medea” hangs between “IVa” and “IVb”, and Nietzsche’s mustache between “Xa” and “Xb”. Sure, there are rules that say that's where they should hang. Internal regulations for classical gymnasiums in Prussia: “Medea” - between “IVa” and “IVb”, in the same place “Boy Pulling out a Splinter”, in the next corridor - Caesar, Marcus Aurelius and Cicero, and Nietzsche on the top floor, where already study philosophy. Parthenon frieze and universal oleography - Togo. The “Boy Pulling out a Thorn” and the Parthenon frieze are, after all, nothing more than good old school props passed down from generation to generation, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has taken it into his head to write “Long live Togo!” on a banana. And the antics of schoolchildren, in the end, are always the same. And besides, it is quite possible that the intense fever caused me to become delirious.
I didn't feel any pain now. In the car I was still suffering a lot; When she was thrown around on small potholes, I started screaming every time. Deep funnels are better: the car rises and falls like a ship on the waves. Now, apparently, the injection worked; Somewhere in the darkness they stuck a syringe into my arm, and I felt the needle pierce the skin and my leg felt hot...
Yes, this is simply impossible, I thought, the car probably did not travel such a long distance - almost thirty kilometers. And besides, you don’t experience anything, nothing in your soul tells you that you are in your school, in the same school that you left just three months ago. Eight years is not a trifle; after eight years, will you really know all this only with your eyes?
Heinrich Belle Traveler, when you come to Spa...
The story is told in the first person.
The car stopped. The voice commanded that those who were still alive be carried to the drawing room. There were painted walls on the sides, signs on the doors, and a photo from the sculpture between them. Next is a column, a sculpture, photographs. And on the small platform where we stopped there was a portrait of Friedrich. Then the hero was carried between Aryan faces and reached the next platform, where there was a monument to the warrior. They carried it quickly, but the hero had the thought that he had seen this somewhere. This is probably due to feeling unwell. Further down the corridor there were three busts of emperors, and at the end of the corridor, above the entrance to the drawing room, hung a mask of Zeus. And again there are signs on the doors, a painting by Nietzsche. The hero foresaw what should appear next. And indeed, he saw a map of Togo. He was carried into the drawing room, which had been converted into a surgery, and given a cigarette. The hero consoled himself with the fact that everything he saw could be in any gymnasium.
He felt no pain. He began to think that he was in the same gymnasium that he graduated from eight years ago. But how could he end up here, she’s far away. Closing his eyes, he again saw the whole string of objects. And he screamed. They gave him a cigarette again and told him that he was in Bendorf, which meant he was home. And he could say with confidence that he was at the gymnasium. They gave him water, but not much. There was little water, the city was burning. The hero looked around and realized that he was in the drawing room of a classical gymnasium. But there are three of them in the city, which one exactly. Artillery salvos could be heard outside the window. The hero began to continue examining the drawing room. His feeling did not tell him that he was in his native gymnasium. He began to remember how he learned to draw and write fonts. It was boring and nothing worked for him. And now he was lying and could not move his arms. He did not remember how he was wounded, and screamed again. The doctor and fireman looked at him. Then they took someone who was lying nearby and carried him behind a sheet, behind which a bright light was burning. The hero closed his eyes again and began to remember his school years. Everything here seemed cold and alien. The orderlies took the stretcher with the hero and carried him behind the blackboard, behind the sheet, where the light was on. And he noticed another coincidence, a mark from a cross above the door. Near the operating table stood a doctor and a fireman who smiled sadly. The hero saw his image in the lamp, and turning his head, froze. On the scribbled side of the board, he saw an inscription in calligraphic handwriting: “Traveler, when you come to Spa...”. It was his handwriting. Nothing he had seen before could be proof. And now he remembered how several times he tried to write this phrase, and each time he did not have enough space on the board. At that moment he was given an injection in the thigh, and he tried to get up, but could not lean. Having examined himself, he discovered that he had been unswaddled and had no more hands and right leg. He screamed. The doctor and fireman looked at him in horror and held him. He recognized the fireman as the janitor of his school and quietly asked for milk.
Searched here:
- traveler will come when you go to the spa summary
- traveler when will you come to the spa summary
- Traveler when will you come to Spa
7 CLASS
HEINRICH BELL
TRAVELER, WHEN YOU COME TO THE SPA...
(abbreviated)
The car stopped, but the engine was still loud; somewhere a large gate opened. Light flew into the car through the broken window, and then I saw that the light bulb under the ceiling was broken into pieces, only the scroll was still sticking out in the socket - several flickering darts with the remains of glass. Then the engine stopped, and a voice came from outside:
Dead men here. Are there dead people there?
“To hell with it,” the driver swore. - Are you not doing eclipses anymore?
An eclipse will help here when the whole city is on fire! - shouted the same voice. - Are there any dead people, I ask?
Don't know.
The dead are here, have you heard? And the rest go up the stairs to the drawing room, understand?
Yes, yes, I understand.
And I was not yet dead, I belonged to the others, and they carried me up the stairs.
First they walked along long, dimly lit corridors, with green, oil-painted walls, into which were embedded black, crooked, old-world clothes hooks; then doors emerged with enamel signs: 6-A and 6-B, between those doors hung, affectionately gleaming under glass in a black frame, Feuerbach’s “Medea” with a look into the distance; then there were doors with signs: 5-A and 5-B, and between them - “Boy taking out -” - a lovely photo with a reddish tint in a brown frame.
And now there is the column in front of the exit to the staircase, and the long, narrow frieze of the Parthenon behind it... and everything else that has long been familiar: a Greek hoplite, armed to the toe, powerful and menacing, looking like an angry rooster. On the estate itself, on the wall painted yellow, they all stood proud - from the Great Elector to Hitler.<...>
And again my stretcher fell, they floated past me... now examples of the Aryan breed: a Nordic captain with an eagle look and a stupid mouth, a female model from the West Mosel, a little lean and bony, a Baltic bad laugh with a bulbous nose and the dark-colored long profile of a supreme leader from the movies ; and then the corridor stretched out again... I managed to see it too - a table with the names of the fallen, intertwined with a fireplace laurel wreath, with a large golden Iron Cross at the top.
All this went by very quickly: I’m not heavy and the orderlies were in a hurry. It’s not a miracle if I dreamed of it: I was burning all over, everything hurt - my head, my arms, my legs; and my heart was pounding as if frantically. What can you imagine in your delirium!
And when we passed the exemplary Aryans, everything else emerged behind them: three Pogrudians - Caesar, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius... And when we turned the corner, the Hermes Column appeared... On the right in the window I saw the glow of a fire - the whole sky it was red, and black, thick clouds of smoke solemnly floated across it.<...>
And again, I casually glanced to the left, and again I saw doors with signs: 01-A 01-B, and between these brown doors, as if soaked in soot, I saw Nietzsche’s mustache and the tip of his nose in a golden frame - the second half of the portrait was covered with paper with the inscription: “ Light surgery."
If now, - flashed through my head, - if now. And here he was, he had already seen it - a view of Togo... a wonderful oleography... in the foreground of the picture there was a large, life-size bunch of bananas - a bunch on the left, a bunch on the right, and it was on the middle banana in the right basket that there was something... it's scratched; I saw this inscription because, it seems, I scrawled it myself.<...>
The doors of the drawing room opened wide, I moved there under the image of Zeus and closed my eyes.
I didn't want to see anything else.<...>
The drawing room smelled of iodine, feces, gauze and tobacco and there was a hubbub.
The stretcher was placed on the floor, and I told the orderlies:
Place a cigarette in my mouth, at the top, in my left pocket.
I felt someone groping in my pocket, then they rubbed it with a cheesecake, and there was a lit cigarette in my mouth. I took a drag.
Thank you, I said.
Everything where, I thought, is not proof. In the end, in every gymnasium there are drawing rooms, corridors with green and yellow walls and crooked, old-fashioned hooks in them; ultimately, the fact that “Medea” hangs between 6-A and 6-B is not proof that I'm at my school. Apparently, there are rules for classical gymnasiums in Prussia, which say that this is where they should hang... After all, the jokes are the same in all gymnasiums. Besides, maybe I started delirious due to the fever.
I didn't feel any pain. I felt very bad in the car... But now, perhaps, the injection began to work.<...>
This can’t be possible, I thought, the car simply couldn’t travel such a long distance - thirty kilometers. And one more thing: you don’t feel anything; no instinct tells you anything, only your eyes; not a single feeling tells you that you are in your school, in your school, which you left just three months ago. Eight years - don’t worry, would you really, after studying here for eight years, know everything about yourself only with your eyes?<...>
I spat out the cigarette and screamed; when you scream easier, you just need to scream harder, screaming was so good, I screamed like crazy.<...>
What?
“Drink,” I said, “and another cigarette, in my pocket, at the top.”
Again someone touched my pocket, rubbed a match again, and they stuck a lit cigarette in my mouth.
Where are we? - I asked.
In Bendorf.
“Thank you,” I said and took a drag.
Apparently, I’m still in Bendorf, that is, at home, and if I didn’t have this terrible fever, I could say for sure that I’m in some kind of classic
gymnasiums; at least that I am at school is indisputable. Didn’t that voice below shout: “Those remaining in the drawing room!” I was one of the rest, I was alive, the living, probably, made up the “rest.”<...>
Finally he brought me water, again the scent of tobacco and onions wafted over me, I involuntarily opened my eyes and saw a tired, old, unshaven face in a firefighter’s uniform, and an senile voice said quietly:
Drink, buddy!
I started drinking, it was water, but water is a wonderful drink; I could feel the metallic taste of the cauldron on my lips, I realized with pleasure that there was still a lot of water there, but the fireman suddenly took the cauldron away from my lips and walked away; I screamed, but he didn’t look back, he just shrugged his shoulders tiredly and walked on; the wounded man lying next to me calmly said:
There's no point in making noise, they don't have water, you see.<...>
What city is this? “I asked the one who was lying next to me, Bendorf,” he said.
Now there was no longer any doubt that I was lying in the drawing room of a certain classical gymnasium in Bendorf. There are three classical gymnasiums in Bendorf: the Frederick the Great gymnasium, the Albert gymnasium and - maybe it would be better not to say this - but the last, third, was called the Adolf Hitler gymnasium.
Wasn’t there such a bright, such a beautiful, huge portrait of old Fritz hanging on the staircase in Frederick the Great’s gymnasium? I studied in that gymnasium for eight years, but couldn’t such a portrait hang in another school in the same place, so bright that it immediately caught the eye; as soon as you step on the second floor?<...>
Now I heard heavy guns firing somewhere... confidently and measuredly, and I thought: expensive guns! I know it's mean, but that's what I thought... For me, there's something noble about guns, even when they're firing. Such a solemn moon, just like in that war that they write about in picture books... Then I thought how many names would be on that table of the fallen, which, perhaps, will be nailed here later, decorating it with an even larger golden Iron Cross and adding more large laurel wreath. And suddenly it occurred to me that when I was actually at my school, my name would stand there, carved into stone, and in the school calendar next to my name it would be written Left school for the front and died for...”
And I still didn’t know why, and I didn’t know for sure yet, I was at my school, I now wanted to find out about it.<...>
I looked around again, but... My heart did not respond. Wouldn’t it have started calling even then if I had ended up in that room where I spent eight whole years drawing vases and writing fonts? Slender, beautiful, exquisite vases, beautiful copies of Roman originals - the art teacher always placed them on a stand in front of us - and all kinds of fonts: rondo, plain, Roman, Italian. I hated those lessons above all else in the gymnasium, I spent hours perishing with boredom and was never able to properly draw a vase or write a letter. And where did my curses go, where did my burning hatred for these stiff, seemingly rotting walls go? Nothing in me blinked, and I silently shook my head.
I erased it every now and then, sharpened the pencil, erased it again... And - nothing.<...>
I didn’t remember how I was wounded, I knew one thing: that I wouldn’t move my arms or my right leg, only my left, and even then only half-covered. I thought maybe they had tied my arms so tightly to my body that I couldn’t move them.<...>
Finally, a doctor stood in front of me; he took off his glasses and, blinking, silently looked at me... I clearly saw behind the thick glasses large gray eyes with barely moving pupils. He looked at me for so long that I looked away, and then quietly said:
Wait a minute, it's your turn soon.<...>
I closed my eyes again and thought: you must, you must find out what kind of wound you have and that you are really in your school.<...>
The orderlies entered the hall again, now they picked me up and carried me there, behind the board. Once I swam past the door and, as I swam, I noticed another sign: here, above the door, there once hung a cross, as the gymnasium was also called the School of St. Thomas; They later removed the cross, but in that place on the wall there was a fresh dark yellow mark left from it. Then they angrily repainted the entire wall, and the mark... The cross was visible, and if you looked closely, you could even see an uneven mark on the right end of the crossbar, where a beech branch had been hanging for years, which the watchman Birgeler had been clinging to.<...>All this flashed into my dining room in that brief moment while I was being carried behind the board, where a bright light was burning.
They put me on the operating table, and I clearly saw myself, only small, as if shortened, at the top, in the clear glass of the light bulb - such a short, white, narrow scroll of gauze, as if a chimeric, fragile cocoon; that means it was my reflection.
The doctor turned his back to me and, leaning over the table, rummaged through the instruments; an old, overweight fireman stood in front of the board and smiled at me; he smiled tiredly and mournfully, and his overgrown, expressionless face looked as if he was sleeping. And suddenly, behind his shoulders, on the unerased other side of the board, I saw something that for the first time since I found myself in this dead house, my heart responded... There was an inscription in my hand. At the top, in the highest row. I know my hand; seeing your letter is worse than seeing yourself in the mirror - much more likely. I could no longer doubt the identity of my own letter... There it is, still there to this day, the expression that we were told to write then, in that hopeless life that ended just three months ago: “Traveler, when will you come in Spa...”
Oh, I remember, I didn’t have enough board, and the art teacher shouted that I didn’t calculate it properly, took large letters, and then, shaking his head, he wrote in the same font below: “Empty, when you come to Spa... »
It was written there seven times - in my script, in Latin script, in Gothic italics, in Roman, in Italian, and in rondo: “Traveler, when you come to Spa...”
At the doctors' quiet call, the fireman stepped back from the board, and I saw the entire statement, only a little spoiled, because I did not calculate properly, chose large letters, took too many points.
I was embarrassed, feeling a prick in my left thigh, I wanted to get up on my feet and couldn’t, but I managed to look at myself and saw - they had already unwound me - that I didn’t have both arms, I didn’t have my right leg, that’s why I immediately fell on his back, because now he had nothing to lean on; I screamed; the doctor and the fireman looked at me in fear; and the doctor just shrugged his shoulders and again pressed the plunger of the syringe, slowly and firmly went down; I wanted to look at the board again, but the fireman was now standing very close to me and replacing it; he held me tightly by the shoulders, and I heard only the spirit of grease and dirt that came from his uniform, I saw only his tired, sorrowful face; and suddenly I recognized him: it was Bergeler.
“Milk,” I said quietly...
Translation Yes. Grief
Heinrich Böll
Traveler, when you come to Spa
The car stopped, but the engine continued to purr for several minutes; somewhere a gate opened. Light entered the car through the broken window, and I saw that the light bulb in the ceiling was also broken into pieces; only its base stuck out in the socket - several glittering wires with the remains of glass. Then the engine stopped, and someone shouted on the street:
Dead here, do you have any dead here?
Damn it! Are you not going dark anymore? - the driver responded.
Why the devil should it go dark when the whole city is burning like a torch, shouted the same voice. - Are there dead people, I ask?
Don't know.
The dead are here, do you hear? The rest of us go up the stairs to the drawing room, understand?
But I was not yet dead, I belonged to the others, and they carried me to the drawing room, up the stairs. First, they were carried along a long, dimly lit corridor with green, oil-painted walls and bent, old-fashioned black hangers tightly embedded in them; on the doors there were small white enamel plates: “VIa” and “VIb”; between the doors, in a black frame, shining softly under the glass and looking into the distance, hung Feuerbach's "Medea". Then there were doors with signs “Va” and “Vb”, and between them a photograph from the sculpture “Boy Pulling Out a Splinter”, an excellent, red-glowing photograph in a brown frame.
Here is the column in front of the exit to the landing, behind it is a wonderfully executed model - a long and narrow, truly antique frieze of the Parthenon made of yellowish plaster - and everything else that has long been familiar: a Greek warrior armed to the teeth, warlike and scary, looking like a disheveled rooster. In the stairwell itself, on the wall, painted yellow, there was everyone from the Great Elector to Hitler...
And on the small narrow platform, where for a few seconds I managed to lie straight on my stretcher, hung an unusually large, unusually bright portrait of old Frederick - in a sky-blue uniform, with shining eyes and a large shiny gold star on his chest.
And again I lay rolled to the side, and now I was carried past thoroughbred Aryan faces: a Nordic captain with an eagle eye and a stupid mouth, a native of the West Moselle, perhaps too thin and bony, a Baltic scoffer with a bulbous nose, a long profile and the protruding Adam's apple of a movie mountaineer; and then we got to another landing, and again within a few seconds I was lying straight on my stretcher, and even before the orderlies began to climb to the next floor, I managed to see it - a monument to a warrior decorated with a stone laurel wreath with a large gilded Iron Cross upstairs.
All this quickly flashed one after another: I was not heavy, but the orderlies were in a hurry. Of course, everything could only have been my imagination; I have a strong fever and absolutely everything hurts: my head, my legs, my arms, and my heart is pounding like crazy - whatever you can imagine in such heat.
But after the thoroughbred faces, everything else flashed by: all three busts - Caesar, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, side by side, amazing copies; completely yellow, antique and important, they stood near the walls; when we turned the corner, I saw the column of Hermes, and at the very end of the corridor - this corridor was painted dark pink - at the very, very end, above the entrance to the drawing room, hung a large mask of Zeus; but it was still a long way off. To the right, in the window, the glow of a fire was red, the whole sky was red, and dense black clouds of smoke solemnly floated across it...
And again I involuntarily turned my gaze to the left and saw the signs “Xa” and “Xb” above the doors, and between these brown doors, as if smelling of mustiness, I could see Nietzsche’s mustache and sharp nose in a golden frame, the second half of the portrait was covered with a piece of paper with the inscription “Pulling Surgery” "...
If it happens now... flashed through my head. If it happens now... But here it is, I see it: a painting depicting the African colony of Germany Togo - colorful and large, flat, like an old engraving, magnificent oleography. In the foreground, in front of the colonial houses, in front of the blacks and the German soldier, who for some unknown reason was sticking out here with his rifle, - in the very, very foreground, a large, life-size bunch of bananas was yellowing; there is a bunch on the left, a bunch on the right, and on one banana in the very middle of this right bunch there is something scratched, I saw it; I think I scribbled it myself...
The stories are written in the first person and take place during the Second World War. In the title of the work, Belle uses the first lines of the famous epitaph to the three hundred Spartans who died defending themselves from the Persian invasion.
The ambulance in which the hero is located drove up to the great gate. He saw the light. The car stopped. The first thing I heard was a tired voice asking if there were dead people in the car. The driver cursed at the fact that there was so much light everywhere. But the same voice that asked about the dead noticed that there was no need to make an eclipse when the whole city was on fire. Then they spoke briefly again: about the dead, where to put them, and about the living, where to carry them. Since the hero is still alive and aware of this, he is carried along with the other wounded to the drawing room. First he sees a long corridor, or rather its painted walls with old-fashioned coat hooks; then doors with signs that hang on classrooms: “6 A, 6 B,” etc., then reproductions of paintings between these doors. The paintings are glorious: the best examples of art from antiquity to modern times. There is a column in front of the entrance to the landing, and behind it is a skillfully made plaster model of the Parthenon frieze. On the staircase there are images of the idols of humanity - from ancient ones to Hitler. The orderlies carry the stretcher quickly, so the hero does not have time to realize everything he sees, but everything seems surprisingly familiar to him. For example, this table, intertwined with a fireplace laurel wreath with the names of those killed in the previous war, with a large gold Iron Cross on top. However, he thought, perhaps he was only dreaming of all this, for “everything hurt me - my head, my arms, my legs, and my heart was pounding like crazy.” And again the hero sees doors with signs and plaster copies of the busts of Caesar, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius. “And when we turned the corner, the Hermes Column appeared, and further, in the depths of the corridor, the corridor here was painted pink, even in the depths, above the doors of the drawing room, hung a huge image of Zeus, but it was still far away . To the right, in the window, I saw the glow of a fire - the whole sky was red, and black, thick clouds of smoke solemnly floated across it.” He noticed and recognized the beautiful view of Togo, and the bunch of bananas depicted on it in the foreground, even the inscription on the middle banana, because he himself had once scratched one. “The doors of the drawing room opened wide, I fell there under the image of Zeus and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see anything else... the drawing room smelled of iodine, feces, gauze and tobacco and there was a hubbub.”
The stretcher was placed on the floor. The hero asked for a cigarette, someone put it already lit in his mouth. He lay there and thought: everything he saw was not proof. Not proof that he ended up in a school he left just three months ago. Apparently, all gymnasiums are similar to each other, he thought, perhaps there are rules that say what exactly should hang there, internal regulations for classical gymnasiums in Prussia. He couldn’t believe that he was in his home school because he didn’t feel anything. The pain that had tormented him so much on the way in the car had probably gone away due to the effect of any medications that were administered to him when he was screaming. Closing his eyes, he remembered everything he had just seen, as if in delirium, but he knew so well because eight years is not a small thing. Namely, for eight years he went to that gymnasium, saw those classical works art. He spat out his cigarette and screamed. “... when you scream, it becomes easier, you just need to scream harder, screaming was so good and I screamed like a catechumen.” Someone leaned over him, he did not open his eyes, he only felt warm breath and “a sickening smell of tobacco and onions,” and a certain voice calmly asked why he was shouting. The hero asked for a drink, again a cigarette and asked where he was. They answered him - in Bendorf, that is, in his hometown. If it weren’t for the fever, he would have recognized his gymnasium, he would have felt something that a person should feel for his native place, thought the hero. Finally they brought him water. Reluctantly opening his eyes, he saw in front of him a tired, old, unshaven face, a firefighter's uniform, and heard an old man's voice. He drank, enjoying even the metallic taste of the pot on his lips, but the fireman suddenly took the pot away and walked away, not paying attention to his screams. The wounded man lying nearby explained: there is no water in them. The hero looked out the window, although it was darkened, “behind the black cufflinks there was a glow and flickering - black on red, like in a stove when you add coal to it.” He saw that the city was burning, but he did not want to believe that it was his hometown, so he once again asked the wounded man who was lying nearby: what city is this? And again I heard - Bendorf.
Now there was no longer any doubt that he was lying in the drawing room of the classical gymnasium in Bendorf, but he did not want to believe that this was exactly the gymnasium where he studied. He recalled that there were three such gymnasiums in the city, one of them “maybe it would be better not to say this, but the last, third, was called the Adolf Hitler Gymnasium.”
He heard the cannons firing and liked their music. “Those guns hummed soothingly: dull and stern, like quiet, almost sublime organ music.” He heard something noble in that music, “such a solemn moon, just like in that war that they write about in picture books.” Then I thought about how many names would be on the table of the fallen that would be nailed here later. Suddenly it occurred to me that his name would also be carved into stone. As if this was the last thing in his life, he certainly wanted to know whether this was “and” the gymnasium and that drawing room where he spent so many hours, drawing vases and composing different fonts. He hated those lessons more than anything in the gymnasium and perished for hours from boredom and was never able to properly draw a vase or write a letter. Now everything was indifferent to him, he could not even remember his hatred.
He did not remember how he was wounded, he only knew that he could not move his arms and right leg, and his left only slightly. I hoped that they were tied so tightly to the body. He tried to move his hands and felt such pain that he again screamed in pain and rage that his hands would not move. Finally the doctor leaned over him. A fireman stood behind him and quietly said something in the doctor’s ear. He looked at the guy for a long time, then said that it would be his turn soon. They carried the board where the light was shining to a neighbor. Then nothing was heard until the orderlies tiredly carried the neighbor out and carried him to the door. The guy closed his eyes again and told himself that he had to find out what kind of wound he had and whether he was really at his school. Everything that his gaze rested on was far away and indifferent, “as if I had been brought to some museum of the dead into a world deeply alien to me and uninteresting, which for some reason my eyes recognized, but only the eyes themselves.” He could not believe that only three months had passed since he had been drawing here, and at recess, taking his sandwich with jam, he went downstairs to the watchman Bergeler to drink milk in the cramped closet. He thought that his neighbor must have been carried to where the dead were laid; maybe the dead were carried to Bergeler’s small room, where there once was a smell of warm milk.
The orderlies picked him up and carried him behind the board. A cross once hung above the doors of the hall, which is why the gymnasium was called the School of St. Thomas. Then “they” (the Nazis) removed the cross, but in that place there remained a fresh trace, so distinct that it was visible better than the cross itself. Even when the wall was repainted, the cross appeared again. Now he saw what follows from the cross.
Behind the board there was an operating table, on which the hero was placed. For a moment he saw himself in the clear glass of the lamp, but it seemed to him that he was a short, narrow scroll of gauze. The doctor turned his back to him, fiddling with his instruments. The fireman stood in front of the board and smiled, tiredly and sadly. Suddenly, behind his shoulders, on the unerased second side of the board, the hero saw something that made his heart respond for the first time: “... somewhere in his hidden corner a fear emerged, deep and terrible, and it began to beat in my chest - on the board it was written by my hand." “There it is, still there, that expression that we were told to write then, in that hopeless life that ended just three months ago: “Traveler, when you come to Spa...”. He remembered that he didn’t have enough board then because he didn’t calculate properly and took big letters. I remembered how the art teacher shouted then, and then he wrote it himself. Seven times it was written there in different fonts: “Traveler, when you come to Spa...” The fireman retreated, now the hero saw the whole expression, only a little spoiled, because the letters he chose were too big.
He felt a prick in his left thigh, he wanted to rise on his elbow and could not, but he managed to look at himself: both arms were missing, and his right leg was missing. He fell on his back, because there was nothing to lean on, and screamed. The doctor and fireman looked at him in fear. The hero wanted to look at the board again, but the fireman stood so close, holding him tightly by the shoulders, that he obscured it, and the hero saw only his tired face. Suddenly the hero recognized the fireman as the school watchman Birgeler. “Milk,” the hero said quietly.
