The Emigrants

Though Mother is long reluctant to let us out of the home, Leo and I are sent to the day nursery when we are four or five. We do not need to go till after morning prayers. It is all very straightforward. The Sister is already in the yard. You go up to her and say: Frau Adelinde, may I have a ball, please? Then you take the ball across the yard and down the steps to the playground. The playground is at the bottom of the broad moat that circles the old castle, where there are now colourful flower beds and vegetable patches. Right above the playground, in a long suite of rooms in the almost completely deserted castle, lives Regina Zufrass. As everyone knows, she is a terribly busy woman and is always hard at work, even on Sundays. Either she is looking after her poultry or you see her in amongst the beanpoles or she is mending the fence or rummaging in one of the rooms, which are far too big for her and her husband. We even saw Regina Zufrass up on the roof once, fixing the weather vane, and we watched with bated breath, expecting her to fall off at any moment and land on the balcony with every bone in her body broken. Her husband, Jofferle, jobs as a waggoner in the village. Regina is none too pleased with him, and he for his part, so they say, is frightened to go home to her. Often people have to be sent to look for him. They tend to find him drunk, sprawled out beside the overturned hay-cart. The horses have long been used to all this and stay patiently by the up-ended waggon. At length the hay is loaded back on and Jofferle is fetched home by Regina. The next day, the green shutters at their windows remain shut, and when we children are eating our sandwiches down in the playground we wonder what can be going on in there. And then, every Thursday morning Mama draws a fish on the waxed paper she wraps the sandwiches in, so that we won't forget to buy half a dozen barbels from the fish man on our way home from the kindergarten. In the afternoon, Leo and I walk hand in hand along the Saale, on the bank where there is a dense copse of willows and alders, and rushes grow, past the sawmill and across the little bridge, where we stop to look down at the golden ringlets round the pebbles on the riverbed before we go on to the fish man's cottage, which is surrounded by bushes. First we have to wait in the parlour while the fish man's wife fetches the fish man. A fat-bellied white coffeepot with a cobalt blue knob is always on the table, and sometimes it seems as if it fills the whole room. The fish man appears in the doorway and takes us straight out through the slightly sloping garden, past his radiant dahlias, down to the Saale, where he takes out the barbels one by one from a big wooden crate in the water. When we eat them for supper we are not allowed to speak because of the bones, and have to keep as quiet as fish ourselves. I never felt particularly comfortable about those meals, and the skewed fish-eyes often went on watching me even in my sleep.

In summer, on the Sabbath, we often take a long walk to Bad Bocklet, where we can stroll around the colonnaded hall and watch the fashionably dressed people taking coffee; or, if it is too hot for a walk, we sit in the late afternoon with the Liebermanns and the Feldhahns in the shade of the chestnut trees by the bowling alley in Reuss's beer garden. The men have beer and the children have lemonade; the women can never decide what they want, and only take a sip of everything, while they cut up the Sabbath loaves and salted beef. After supper, some of the men play billiards, which is thought very daring and progressive. Ferdinand Lion even smokes a cigar! Afterwards they all go to the synagogue together. The women pack the things up and as dusk falls they make their way home with the children. Once, on his way home, Leo is wretched because of his new sailor's outfit, made of starched bright blue and white cotton — mainly because of the fat tie and the bibbed collar that hangs over his shoulders, sporting crossed anchors which Mother sat up very late embroidering the night before. Not until we are sitting on the front steps, by which time it is already dark, watching the storm clouds shift in the sky, does he gradually forget his misery. Once

Father is home, the candle made of many interwoven strands of wax is lit to mark the end of the Sabbath. We smell the little spice-box and go upstairs to bed. Soon dazzling white lightning is flashing across the sky, and the crashes of thunder set the whole house shaking. We stand at the window. There are moments when it is brighter than daylight outside. Clumps of hay are afloat on the swirling waters in the gutters. Then the storm passes over, but presently returns once more. Papa says it cannot make it over Windheim woods.