His father did lean forward but did not tumble. Since Georg had not come any nearer, as expected, his father righted himself again.
“Stay where you are, I don’t need you! You think you still have the power to come over here and only hold back of your own free will. Don’t fool yourself! I am still stronger by far. Alone I may have had to yield, but Mother left her strength to me, your friend has joined me in a splendid alliance, and I have your clientele here in my pocket!”
“He even has pockets in his nightshirt!” Georg said to himself, and believed that this remark could render his father ridiculous before the whole world. But this thought stayed with him only a moment, because he always forgot everything.
“Just bring your fiancée around here on your arm! I’ll sweep her from your side, you don’t know how quick!”
Georg grimaced in disbelief. His father merely nodded at Georg’s corner, assuring the truth of his words.
“How you amused me today, coming to ask me if you should tell your friend about your engagement. He already knows it, you stupid boy, he knows everything! I’ve been writing because you forgot to take away my writing things. That’s why he hasn’t come here for years, he knows everything a hundred times better than you; he crumples your unread letters in his left hand while he holds up his right hand to read my letters!”
He flung his arms over his head in his enthusiasm. “He knows everything a thousand times better!” he cried.
“Ten thousand times!” said Georg, to ridicule his father, but the words came out of his mouth deadly earnest.
“For years I’ve been waiting for you to come to me with this question! Do you think I’ve been interested in anything else? Do you believe I read newspapers? Look!” and he threw at Georg a sheet of newspaper that had somehow been swept into the bed. It was an old newspaper whose name was entirely unfamiliar to him.
“How long you fought off your adulthood! Your mother had to die, she couldn’t witness the joyous day; your friend is rotting in Russia, three years ago he was already yellow enough to toss out, and as for me, you can see how I’m faring. You can see that much!”
“So you’ve been waiting to pounce on me!” cried Georg.
In a pitying tone, his father casually remarked: “You probably meant to say that earlier. Now it’s beside the point.”
And then louder: “So now you know what else existed in the world outside of you, before you knew only about yourself! Yes, you were a truly innocent child, but you were even more truly an evil man!—And for that reason, I hereby sentence you to death by drowning!”
Georg felt forcibly driven from the room, the crash of his father falling to the bed still rained down on him as he fled. On the stairs, which he slipped down as he would a hill, he ran into the cleaning woman, who was on her way up to do the morning tidying. “Jesus!” she yelped, and covered her face with her apron, but he was already gone. He leapt from the door and across the road, driven toward the water. Already he clung to the railing like a starving man to food. He swung himself over, like the outstanding gymnast he had been in his youth, the pride of his parents. He was still clinging with a weakening grip when he spied an approaching motor bus through the railings that would easily dampen the sound of his fall; he softly called out: “Dear parents, I have always loved you,” and let himself drop.
At that moment an unending stream of traffic crossed over the bridge.
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The Stoker: A Fragment
AS SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD KARL ROSSMANN, whose poor parents had sent him off to America because a maid had seduced him and then had his child, sailed into New York harbor on the now slowly moving ship, he saw the Statue of Liberty, which he had already been watching from far off, stand out as if shining in suddenly brighter sunlight. The arm with the sword 1 reached up as if freshly thrust out, and the free breezes blew around the figure.