Panorama by H. G. Adler

the children will too easily become like wild animals because the mothers have no help and have to worry about everything for themselves. Uncle Paul also enlisted andhas been wounded at Vilna, Aunt Betti sighing deeply and saying, “The fact that the people don’t want to sue for peace is a cross to bear!” As for little Ernst, whose hair is as long as a little girl’s and looks as beautiful as a doll his mother adores in a storefront window, his father fell in Serbia at the very start of the war, three years ago, though his mother still goes around in black and says to everyone, “I live only for Ernst, he’s the apple of my eye.” Indeed, Ernst continues to look just like an apple, fresh and pure, himself not allowed to play with the other children in the park, though Bubi’s mother once said to Josef’s mother, “That’s too much. It’s not good for the child.” Josef’s father, meanwhile, had been enlisted for a brief time, then he was discharged because he is somewhat frail. He once had a problem with his lungs and his eyes are weak, the eye doctor saying, “It’s a hereditary condition, which Josef got from his father.” But the father suffers a great deal during the war, because he must work twice as hard in the store, and he can find no help to hire, which is why he’s so late getting home, which makes the mother angry, but when he has to go into the store on Sunday morning she can’t say anything, for he says, “There’s no other way to do what has to be done. Times are tough, Mella. Be reasonable!”
    The mother also contributes a lot to the war effort, serving as a volunteer nurse and often working at the new high school that has been converted into a military hospital. The mother is good at massage, the wounded like her, and they often come to visit once they are better, many of them poor men who have lost an arm or a foot, often still covered in large bandages. Sometimes the mother takes Josef along to the hospital, the huge gymnasium having been turned into an orthopedic ward, where the mother usually does therapy with the wounded and helps them exercise, sometimes a little party happening in the ward as well, such as on the emperor’s birthday or when there is a visit by the proconsul’s wife, who is so nice, everyone running after her and calling her “Countess.” The mother takes a white overcoat with a red cross on it, as well as another pin that says VOLUNTEER NURSE , the mother also wearing a white bonnet that is as stiff and bright as the father’s collars. The mother does what she can, because it is her duty to the fatherland to do something for the war effort when she herself cannot fight, and the emperor is fighting for what is right. That’s what the children learn in school, the principal exhorting them to buy war bonds, though Josef’s fatherdoesn’t want to, and when Josef asks if he can he is told, “That’s for rich people. I have to work hard in order that you grow up hale and hardy.” Josef asks, “But is what you do also for the emperor?”—“For the emperor, and for you as well.” Then the father explains how he is fulfilling his responsibilities by tutoring the war blind to make grocery bags, the war blind making wonderful bags out of paper leather, which they then sell in order to support themselves. The mother has also bought some of them, as have other women, including Bubi’s mother and Ludwig’s mother, though Aunt Gusti says that you can buy better ones in the store and for less, but you should still buy them from the war blind, since they are so poor, and you can never cherish your sight enough, Josef having the good fortune to wear glasses, whereas the blind live in an eternal night.
    Sitting under the stairs with his eyes closed, Josef thinks that he knows what it’s like to have your eyes shot out. That’s why it’s good that the father demonstrates how to cut paper leather, how one weaves it and glues it in order to make a bag. Everywhere,