with my sisters into the circle of his own children. In dismay we fumbled off the remainder of our clothing and felt the warm air on the whole of our skin. My parents had got up from their garden chairs and were completely overcome by what was happening. And we now found out what we could have found out any day that summer, though it neverreturned, how alive we became in our nakedness. We felt the grass, leaves, earth, and stones with all our pores and nerves, romping and shouting with joy, we lost ourselves in a brief dream of unsuspected potentialities. On one other occasion Fritz W. intervened in my life. It was years later. I came home with my school report, which contained one terrible sentence, in face of which my whole being seemed to crumble. I made great detours with this sentence, did not dare go home with it, always looked to see if it had not suddenly disappeared, but it was still there, clear and distinct. When I finally reached home, because I did not have the courage to ship out as cabin boy to America, Fritz W. was sitting with my parents. What’s that glum face for, he called out to me. Is it a bad report card, my mother asked in her concerned voice and my father looked toward me as if he saw all the troubles of the world piling up behind me. I passed the report to my mother, but Fritz snatched it out of my hand and read it and broke into peals of laughter. Not promoted, he cried, and slapped himself on the thighs with his powerful hand. Not promoted, he shouted again, while my parents looked in consternation first at him, then at me, then he drew me to him and slapped me on the shoulder. Not promoted, just like me, he said, I stayed in the same class four times, all gifted men have had to repeat classes at school. With that my deathly anxiety dissolved, all danger passed. No longer could my parents’ shocked faces work themselves into a rage, no longer could they reproach me with anything, for after all Fritz W., this hard-working and successful man,had removed all stigma from me and even thought me worthy of special honor. These two encounters with Fritz W. were the highlights of my childhood, for they showed me how different the course of my life could have been under other circumstances, and they showed me the wealth of unexpended happiness that was in me and still lies within me beneath the boils and matted hair. When my puberty began, my mother again forced me onto the white guitar-shaped sacrificial bowl on which I had already sat in Green Street, this time to clean my penis. With soap, warm water, and cotton wool my mother tried to force back the foreskin, one hand holding my genitals, while the other pressed and urged the all too tight skin. I had half fainted with pain and humiliation by the time the tip of my penis was laid bare and my mother had washed away the smegma that had collected under the foreskin. Later I asked her what it was, the white slime that sometimes leaked out of me at night, I knew well enough, but I wanted to provoke her, by pretending ignorance I taunted her, and she answered, that’s dirt, you must keep yourself clean, absolutely clean, the dirt comes from all those dirty thoughts you have. For a long time I could not rid myself of the feel of her hand grasping my penis. In bed of an evening it twitched and reared up, it throbbed and swelled up and burned. A furious hatred of this organ seized me, I would have liked to chop it off, but the voluptuousness that accompanied these painful movements increased and I gave way to them even if as a result of this surrender my hair and my teeth should fall out and my face becovered with boils. This alloy of pain and pleasure set its stamp on the fantasies of my dissipations. I imagined myself imprisoned by violent, barbaric women who bound me and overwhelmed me with their cruel caresses. You need more fresh air, people said, when they noticed my hollow eyes, you need exercise and company. And so I was given a uniform, a neckerchief,
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