When Ewald was twenty years old, he withdrew from the work force. He had had enough

His final break with the darkened outside world occurred in the autumn. I met him at Yuletide; after three months' sustained and successful total strike he was weary and worn, but still holding his head high—in his own way.

Ewald is not lazy. But just as there are objectors to military service, so there are objectors to work. One of them is Ewald. He lives in a building which has only one- and two-room apartments. He lives with his mother and grandmother. The building has no light in the stairwell, because the tenants immediately unscrew all new bulbs and replace them with their own burned-out ones. Thus they get light in their rooms, and in return reconcile themselves to the darkness on the stairs. Of course they often grumble about it, but their complaints are without bitterness.

Worse, of course, is the fact that the windows in the hall have no glass. Right after the war new panes were put in, but somehow they've gone again. In the cold season sheets of cardboard are used against the north wind, with the result that by day too the stairwell is dark as the grave.

The first time I visited the family, Ewald crept in and hid behind the Christmas tree. He thought I was one of those men. Ewald's life includes a great many men who are always trying to get him to work. It is as if this were the uppermost thing in their minds: that Ewald must work. In a country where it's the done thing to work until you hardly know your own name, the men see this as a very necessary thing: that Ewald must work. Unfortunately here in Germany it has long been the case that people are much better at working than at consuming. Everybody works, but it is only a very few who consume. Therefore Ewald too must work.

Those who are concerned to make him do something include many men from the state and the county. It is their job to see that Ewald is continually hounded, so that he'll notice that people want something from him. For Ewald himself doesn't want anything. At most he wants to sit a little or walk a little. Walk a bit and think his own thoughts. But people don't like him to do that.

Had he just acted as if he were doing something, they might have left him in peace. Had he just, for example, said at suitable intervals: "I want such and such" or "I must do such and such" or "It is very necessary that such and such be done," or best of all "It is imperative that so and so do such and such!" Then they would surely have respected him. But Ewald intuits in his youthful heart that nothing is necessary, and this knowledge has relieved him of the need to go around doing things.

Everybody else understands what is necessary, and they all bend their energies to doing it. It is only Ewald who doesn't understand this, and therefore the men must keep coming and talking to him. For the most part it is public men who come like this to help him, but sometimes it is uncles and cousins. And by and large Ewald is very patient when they come and talk to him. Only once is he said to have broken his silence. Otherwise he just greets them with a polite and respectful smile when they come. But he doesn't say anything, for he has nothing he wants to say. And he doesn't consider it necessary to say anything.

The one time he talked, he turned amiably to the public man whose job it is to get Ewald to work, and spoke in a gentle, rather flat voice as follows: "Well, I've never heard the like!"

As you see, Ewald has words in his power, but he cannot negotiate. With a somewhat ambiguous smile he lets most things be as they are. He doesn't believe that he knows what is the only right thing to do just now, thereby setting himself apart from the rest of humanity.

Thus he has become a tower of uselessness.

After Ewald had stayed behind the Christmas tree for awhile, he realized that I had no plans to incorporate him into the work force. So he came halfway out and observed me closely. I was deep in conversation with his grandmother, the aged gentlewoman and widow of Captain Widerhold. We were talking about the war.

This may sound depressing, but when Frau Widerhold talks about the war, it is the Boer War she means. That was the last war she took note of. All subsequent disturbances on our martial continent she has construed as various kinds of bad weather, poor harvests, or floods. As a very young girl the lady already showed signs of strong distraction, which got the upper hand entirely after her husband, the late lamented Captain Widerhold, while visiting Berlin circa fifty years ago was run over by a horse-drawn streetcar. She has received a pension from the German state ever since, and as an officer's widow is the family's breadwinner. The bread her daughter and grandson share with her is modest but assured.

The last thing she noticed before distraction overwhelmed her was the Boer War. And she is therefore under the impression that this war is still going on. Her standpoint with regard to the disturbances is surprisingly pro-English, though it was not always so. Only toward the end of the twenties did she realize that Krüger must be removed if there were ever to be peace again in Africa. And this opinion waxes stronger in her breast from year to year. Since 1948 she has been thinking about plans for a German intervention.

One of the widow Widerhold's peculiarities is that she never gets out of bed. To her all hours of the day are 5 AM, and she does not think it fitting for an officer's wife to be up so early.

So we were talking about the war. And this calmed Ewald. It always arouses his trust that people have time to talk strategy with his grandmother.

"The only chance is to attack General Krüger from the north!" cried the lady, sitting up in bed: "We must get him into a two-front war! If worst comes to worst the English should be allowed the opportunity to attack him from bases in the German colonies."

She blinked her eyes a few times, then opened them wide.

"In fact I've been thinking quite a lot about how we ought to put our colonial territories at their disposal. I have written several letters to the Kaiser about this."

The Captain's widow whispered the last words so that Ewald shouldn't hear them. Then she suddenly fell asleep.

The youth had given up his idleness and was now passing the time with the only work which afforded him pleasure: With amazing dexterity he was cutting centimeter-high animals out of a piece of old writing paper. As they were finished he folded them lengthwise and positioned them on the mahogany table. He made six little lambs, after that a lion, and finally a cow.

When I praised him, he smiled. It was a smile which said that this was one of his lesser arts. Then he cut six more little lambs, another lion, another cow. Once again six lambs, yet another lion, yet another cow. Suddenly it was clear to me that he never cut anything else, never any other animals but these, and that he always produced them in the same proportion: Six lambs to one lion.

Ewald's mother, the former piano teacher Fräulein Widerhold, had been silent the whole time. Now she sent him an admiring look, but I think we were both thinking the same thing:

"Suppose there had been a job cutting six lambs, a lion and a cow!" The lambs were best. Then the cows, and finally the lions. Some of the lions were pretty bad, white and sickly as they were. A superficial observer could easily get the idea that every batch consisted simply of eight lambs.

He went on cutting all afternoon, and as he worked his mother told me what had happened that fall.

It began with the men coming. Ewald must work, they said. And he let himself be talked into it, meek as he was. He would get pay for it, and kind treatment. The men already had a job ready for him—that's how nice they were.

In a saddlemaker's workshop Ewald had his first meeting with the world of work. But the smell of leather bothered him. The smell of hides made him deathly sad. It wrung the zest for life out of him like juice out of a lemon. Ewald's soul was so constituted that it could not stand the smell of leather, but nevertheless he stood it for two days.

The morning of the third day he had a fainting spell. After that he went home.

So the men came to see him again: Ewald must work. Now they had a job for him with a tailor. Again he submitted.

At the tailor's workshop he quickly collapsed. The fainting fit occurred after a few hours, and the anxious journeymen found him passed out on a pile of lining fabrics.

The next day Ewald stayed home. And there could hardly be any doubt that he had broken with the tailor's trade.

But the men came back. After all, it was their job to make Ewald work. Now he was taken to a music store. It was not until four days later that he fainted. And this time too the unconscious youth was found on soft padding, stretched out on a run of The Music Lover. The lady who found him had been forewarned, and stuck the swooner with a gramophone needle, whereupon Ewald arose and left the business.

When he got home, he fainted again. Probably as a reaction to the break.

And so for the fourth time this harassed family was sought out by the job placement people. And with a sick smile Ewald now accompanied them to a stationer's. His first task consisted of washing the floor.

Ewald took a bucket of boiling soapy water, and inaugurated his employment by emptying it over the proprietor's feet. That was the sort of accident which can happen to anybody. But Herr Fleissig, that was the proprietor's name— Herr Fleissig didn't understand such things, and is said to have spoken very disparagingly about Ewald's character, abilities and ancestry. And he is said to have talked for a long time before he discovered that he was speaking to an unconscious person.

On the dry part of the floor Ewald lay in a faint. That was his last placement.

A short time afterward he reached the age of twenty, and since that day he has resisted every attack from the men.

But I often think of Ewald with doubt and wonderment: who knows whether he doesn't have a purpose in life?

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This page added September 2000