The Pupil

by Slush

Madame Gresben sat luxuriating quietly in the hot sun. The satisfying sound of pencils scratching on paper combined with the gentle murmurs from the nearby Inn river in a pleasant medley. It seemed to induce in her a kind of torpor. Glancing down at the wristwatch it was apparent the children still had five minutes remaining on their compositions. How lovely the summer was, these idylls certainly shook off any lingering doubts about outdoor classrooms. At first it was true — she had been opposed to them. Dr Lurzweig had slowly won her over insisting and cajoling in that charming way of his. Tugging at her resolve with the corners of his smile. He was so persistent ! Endlessly extolling the virtues of the open air. She suspected it was a ruse designed to increase the amount of time they spent alone together. No matter, he was pleasant enough to be around. Especially on long walks. The only problem was that damn craft mistress Shrader. Crafty all right ... with those ‘home made’ skirts and voluminous blouses! And to top it off these ridiculous conical ‘sun hats’ the children were forced to wear. What an idea! Bobbing irregulary from side to side. Sitting askew on various heads. Mocking her with their oblique absurdity! It looked as though she were presiding over a class of dunces. That woman had gone too far ... beads of sweat could be seen pouring from brows, fingers uneasily snaked up to scratch heads. It was a class of fidgets! Shrader, she decided, was a sadist. ‘Shradist’, yes, that would be her private name for the woman from now on. It was almost inconceivable that Professor Weiss had added his weight to the proposal. ‘The Principal without principles’ she thought of him as. Well, enough was enough. “TWO MINUTES” she shouted at the class.

This would never have occurred at the Innsbrucken School, but then again neither would outdoor classes. In a way she felt a pang of regret for the austere days of only three months ago. Accepting this post was risking her career, no two ways about it. Perhaps one of her students would one day make her proud. It seemed unlikely. The lure of the mountains was strong however, and glancing round at the open fields she felt a kind of natural reassurance washing over. Anyway, village life was hardly dull. There was sufficient controversy to fill the memoirs with rampant tales of local intrigue. “ONE MINUTE” she yelled, watching the frantic pencils reaching exhaustion. She thought about poor old Klara. The husband, Alois, was a piece of work. Always drunk and bleating about the milkman or the postman or whoever he thought might take his Klara from him. He showed his affection in strange ways too, emblazoning her face with fist shaped brands of ownership. Poor Klara. She felt sorry for Klara’s small boy too. That—s right! she thought. April the twentieth. It was the little blighter’s birthday. She must make a fuss of him, poor wee thing. He could read out his story first. Yes. In fact she would be glad to hear it, he was such a romantic little fellow. Always dreaming about something or other. No doubt a reaction to the harsh realities of home life. “PENS DOWN!” she said, and the class gave in with a collective sigh.“O.K. first up we’ll have young Mr Schicklgruber ... you may begin”. “Miss, can I please take off my hat ?” came the reedy voice of the child. “ Certainly, every body can take their hats off if they wish. Now let’s all hear your story young Adolf”.

Lili reached up to remove the hateful hat. So did Max and Eva and Wolfie and Karel. They smiled, a shared, relieved smile, as a fresh breeze rushed across their hot, wet foreheads, drying the swollen drops of sweat. Lili shook the heavy mass of her hair from the back of her neck, feeling the others imitate her actions. She smiled again, inwardly this time, not sharing it. You could never tell who was going to lead, from day to day. Today, out here in the soft grass beside the river, she could feel them all waiting for her move. So she shook her hair slowly from side to side, and four other golden heads did the same. She stretched her long, pale limbs and four other young bodies followed suit. She saw the sudden, annoyed look Madame Gresben flicked at Karel, suspicious as always of their synchronised movements, and quickly turned her attention to little Adolf, reading another one of his interminable fairy stories. All of them gazed intently at his pathetic figure, weedily backlit by the hot sun, until she felt the new teacher relax and return her attention to the storyteller.

Eva had an itch, Lili could feel it intensely. She let go control, and Eva gratefully scratched away. Then they all joined together again, and Lili heard them all in her head, begging for fun, for some mischief in the torpid afternoon.

Just what she’d been waiting for!

Pretending reluctance, she gazed at the clouds, then the bees floating lazily through the elysian classroom, then let her eyes wander vacantly across the looming alps.

“Lili!” they chorused in her head as one.

Grinning, she turned her attention back to young Adolf. Everyone knew about him; hopeless child of a hopeless marriage; son of the most unpopular man in the village.

Pushing, creeping, rubbing at the edges of his mind, she led them all inside his unconscious thought. They watched his eyes rise from the page of his composition to gaze helplessly over their golden and pink perfection grouped loosely in the middle of the class. Lili giggled silently at the widening of his eyes and the little catch of his breath as he struggled to complete his story, all the while the five of them seemed to glow brighter and brighter in a blinding halo. Closing his eyes, as if in pain, like a little pale puppet boy with a silly, black hand-made wig, he faltered and stopped reading and reached out towards his teacher.

Madame Gresben took his moist tiny hands in hers, bending over his face with concern. Lili released the glow, so no-one else would see, but they stayed with their new quarry, ready to tease him again with what he could never have.

“I think you should put your hat back on, liebchen,” they heard Madame’s murmer as she popped the hated cardboard back on his head.

“Hurrah Lili!” the congratulations ran through her mind on the trail of their bubbling laughter. Lili grinned, well pleased with her first effort.

“I think everybody should pop their hats back on, I’m afraid,” the teacher said to the class.

“Oh no! Lili, you idiot!” they joked and groaned at her as they reached for the scratchy hot cones.

Lili reddened under her hat, sweat already forming again under her hair. You’ll pay for that, ratface schicklgruber, she thought.

Alois stumbled for probably the tenth time since he’d left the house, landing hard on the stony ground. This time he didn’t get up right away. Instead of wasting precious energy hauling his bloated body upright he put it to better use and pulled a tarnished hipflask from his pocket, painfully unscrewed the cap and took a long and greedy swallow. It was the last of the sherry. The sun was beating the top of his pockmarked head like his wife’s nagging voice. In fact, he thought, grinning with grim satisfaction at his own powers of imagination, the sun was just like his damn wife — hot, mean, angry, yellow ... oh fuck it. He hauled himself painfully to his feet and headed further up the slope.

Nothing was the same. It had all started going wrong — when? He couldn’t remember. It seemed his wife had always been a nagging bitch. And now that Gresben woman had threatened to report him to the police, his son Adolf was a probably going to turn into a fag, his elbows hurt, he’d run out of booze ... and when he ran out of booze everything else no longer worth putting up with. It was time to do something about it all. He’d spent too much time sitting on his fat arse letting other people call the shots.

Alois paused, stared quietly for a moment at the sharp line where the hilltop met the cloudless sky, then let out a protracted, echoing belch. With a brief smile he continued walking.

And another thing. Where the fuck was he going anyway? One minute he was sitting inside,cool, comfortable on the couch daydreaming about Madam Gresben’s spectacular arse; and the next he was out in the hot sun like a dung beetle, pushing his body in the direction of the school. He knew one thing for sure though, and that was stay away from that place and that woman — she’d made her reaction plain and he wasn’t about to invite another stinging slap and a torrent of spit and abuse.

His feet took him to the top of the hill anyway. He could hear children’s voices on the other side.

He’d know what to do when he got there.

Adolf chewed on the end of his pencil until the bitter taste of lead caused him to cough. He quickly hushed it- hoping to avoid more unneccessary attention from Madame Gresben. Her overprotective ministrations only made things worse. He could see Lili, her long blonde hair — each strand a flaxen thread. Of course she was sitting behind him — but he could see her. He could always see her. Even at home locked in his room — he only had to close his eyes and she was there. In his imagination she no longer hautily teased, but caressd and giggled. He longed to write the stories — not the silly nursery rhymes of compostion — but the fantastic dark stories he composed in his head all those hours he spent in his room. But Madame Gresben would never understand. None of them would.

And so he sat, bowed with humiliation, rubbing away at the headache which threatened to grab hold. Longing to remove the heavy cardboard hat, but knowing he could not. So long as the hats were in place they couldn’t do it to him anymore. Madame Gresben was waiting for Kurt to read out his effort — some stupid story about an auto crash which resulted in unneccessary death and carnage. That boy had no imagination. But — as Adolf well understood— imagination was not important. What was important was to be tall; with pale hair and blue eyes. Somehow that physical perfection embraced respect and power. Adolf pushed his pallid brown fringe under his hat. One day- that’s what he would be — the tallest and blondest of them all.

As he stared off towards the murky green hills — half hidden behind a tall stone wall — he had the sudden overwhelming feeling that things were about to get a lot worse. Somehow Lili was not finished with him yet — not that day. And before that feeling had properly set he saw him.

Walking — no staggering — through the dull black iron gates. Bile tickled his throat as he struggled with hate, embarrassment and fear. And somewhere deep inside a small voice pointed out that perhaps his father had not forgotten his birthday after all.

Kurt had stopped reading — just at the point where our hero had been well and truly consumed by flames from the gas exposion. Five giggles split the air — then stopped an quietly as thay had started. Madame Gresben called the class to order — then turned to face the distraction, patting her skirt firmly over her hip as she did so.

“Herr Shicklegruber. This is most ... unexpected.“

Alois continued to stumble down the path. Adolf could now plainly see the erythematous eyes and swollen lips. His father , as usual, had consumed too much schnapps. He continued until he stood opposite Madame Gresben — and she stepped back from the stench of sweat and alcohol. Another small chorus of giggles. Then Adolf felt a faint stirring — as if something had cooled the air by a few degrees. To his horror he noticed that Lili, Max, Eva, Wolfie and Karol had removed their cones. He felt the soft breeze as it slipped past — and watched it buffet the receding hairs on his father’s head.

Powerless, he waited to see what would happen next.

... You imagine, correctly, that you are a great war hero returning home triumphant.

Dr Lurzweig’s Astronomical Class had been interrupted by a cry. The children stood looking up from their star-maps to the distant hillside where Madame Gresben’s class was being held.

You stand before us victorious, a giant, a man commanding respect, an Olympian. Your beautiful wife stands before you and awaits your greeting.

Dr Lurzwieg grabbed the telescope from young Fritzel’s frail hand and aimed it at the source of the cry. A blurry double-vision racked into focus and revealed a scene of some small horror.

... You have forgotten the great beauty of your wife’s legs and now can think only of planting kisses upon them as a reward for all life’s hardships.

Lurzweig’s palm sweated as the vision of the oaf ravaging his kline frau wiped all thought from his neatly organised mind. He threw down the eyeglass and bolted like a springbok. His legs worked like steam pistons as he tried to reduce the distance to mere seconds. Lurzwieg knew that even if he were a bird he would still be minutes away.

... You are enjoying the sensual feeling of your wife’s skin, almost forgotten after years of fighting, when you notice a child giggling to one side. It is your son, but not the son you remember, this little shit that stands before you is not the son you want signpost your life after you are gone. This little shit is a caricature of you, a mocking reminder of your total failure to produce the goods. You have ignored your wife’s protestations to continue and now watch her run off to make the dinner. You feel the anger rising inside like a tide, you feel a fury that blocks your throat like a fist, you don’t want to break this boy for his pathetic disrespect for your manhood you just want to erase him from the book of life. Indeed, as you bend down and pick him up you are amazed that he weighs nothing, he is like a dead leaf.

Eva’s itch was back. More intensely than before. Not just a physical itch. A psychic one. And it was threatening the moment.

... You grab him by the ankle and swing him through the air. You swing him. You twirl and swing.

It was not working. The big oaf just stood there, the boy above his head. He was swaying, dazed, while the boy’s mouth, opened wide, screamed a silent scream.

What was Eva up to? This was the supreme moment, the moment of cleansing, the moment of erasure of the line of Schicklegruber, and notice to all other grubs and grubers that their time had come.

What was Eva ... The bitch! She was sabotaging it! She was ...

Lili started scratching. So did the other girls. Faces contorted, they dug their nails into their arms and scored deep welts into them. They drew blood from their cheeks.

With a roar, the figure of Doctor Lurzweig, moving at a speed she would never have believed possible, burst through the class and at Adolf’s father, who fell instantly and unprotestingly to the ground, where he lay still.

“Mein Gott,” said Dr Lurzweig, blinking suddenly, staring at his felled quarry.

But Lili was staring at her would-be victim. He had landed on his feet, one hand raised high as if in command, with its palm towards the class. Beside him stood Eva, face flushed and defiant.

“Heil,” said the mouth of young Adolf, working as if somehow mechanised. “Heil,” he said, louder, his back straightening, his head thrown back, while Lili and the other girls quailed, assailed by a sudden, overwhelming dread. “Heil,” he shouted, and his voice carried across that Alpine valley, echoing from mountain walls and carrying into people’s homes so that they looked up as if summoned. “Heil,” he called again.

“Heil Eva.”