But one day when Martin was on his way for morning recess, he found two of his comrades in a fight with Franz at a street corner; in fact they had already overcome him, thrown him down, and were pummeling him with their fists. At this time Martin had begun to read Indian books, so that he at once saw in Franz a parallel to the noble redskin and did not want to miss so favorable a chance of making him his ally against other rowdies. He therefore advanced and represented to his comrades how cowardly it was to fight two against one, said that Franz lived in his street and was a very decent rowdy, and proposed that they let him go in peace. While he thus drew the attention of his comrades, Franz managed to get up and run away.
In return Martin got all the licking intended for Franz. Furthermore he had to endure the scorn of his comrades for being the friend of a rowdy. And the next time he met Franz on the street in front of the dyer’s gate, the latter tripped him so that he fell into the gutter, then gave him a bloody nose, tore his books apart, swore at him frightfully, and ran off.
He had not understood that he was supposed to be a noble redskin. But this Franz was not a rowdy of the usual sort; he was a thoroughly awful rowdy.
XI
Martin entered the high school.
Here everything was strange and cold. Gray walls, long corridors. The school yard was like the desert of Sahara. When the bell rang for the first recess, Martin slipped off by himself so as to escape his new comrades. But the next recess they gathered around him in a ring, surveying him for a while in silence, till finally a little red-haired boy with a broad pate opened his mouth to ask, “What sort of devil are you?”
At these words Martin had a dark premonition that a new stage of his life was beginning. He had been as happy as a plant in the earth, as is every little child with kind parents and a good home. Now the doors were opened upon an entirely new world, a world where one could not get on by the same simple means that his father and mother had shown him: i.e., by being polite and friendly towards all he met and never taking advantage of others. Here the thing was to decide quickly and firmly in what case one should use one’s fists, in what one should take to one’s heels, and under what circumstances one could benefit by cunning and deceit. It was not long, either, before Martin got the way of things. He suddenly remembered various curses and ugly words that he had heard from the bridge-tender’s assistant in the country, and he missed no opportunity of fitting them in here and there in conversation with his associates wherever he thought they would go. In this way he became sooner acquainted with the other boys, and they in return enlightened him in much that a newcomer might find useful: e.g., which of the teachers flogged and which only gave bad marks; that the worst of all was Director Sundell, who had mirrors in his spectacles so that he saw what was done behind his back and always wore galoshes so that he couldn’t be heard in the corridors; that “Sausages” was decent, though he marked hard, but that “The Flea” was a damned sneak.
XII
So year was added to year, and the new buried the old, while Martin was slowly initiated into the twofold art of life, to learn and to forget. For as the gambler in order to keep on till the last coin has run through his trembling fingers must forget his losses in the hope of future gains, so humanity, the gambler by compulsion, finds that the greatest art is to forget and that upon this depends everything.
Martin forgot. The Red Turk, who had long since wearied of jumping, was as much forgotten as if he had never been. And Uncle Abraham, who had given him to Martin and who had hanged himself with a stove-cord one rainy day, when he didn’t find it worth the trouble to live any more, was soon forgotten as well, though he now and again came up in Martin’s dreams as a dark and disturbing riddle. But while the boy was forgetting, he learned. A third of the truth was transmitted by the teachers, and another third was given by his comrades, who soon helped him to lift the veil under which was hidden the Sixth Commandment and everything pertaining to it. They made free use of the Scriptures in their researches. They explained precisely what it was that Absolom did with his father’s concubines on the roof of the palace before all the people, and they reveled with Ezekiel over the abysmal sin of Ahala and Ahaliba. But although both of these thirds were given him with an admixture of errors and lies, and although the final third—which was perhaps the most important and which it was his task to search out for himself sometime—had not yet begun to occupy him; yet nevertheless every day widened the chinks experience tore through the
