Towards Morning | Page 8

the end their love had
triumphed, and every week a twenty-five pfennig piece was set aside
towards a dog-tax which was in theory to be Helmut's birthday present.
There was no very clear explanation for Schnautzchen's unusual and
slightly grotesque nomenclature except perhaps in the fact that he
himself was unusual and more than slightly grotesque. The
"Schnautzchen" may have had its origin in the raceless snub nose
which must have been derived from a pug ancestor the Fritz was
unquestionably utilitarian. One could not shout "Schnautzchen" with
any comfort and certainly not with dignity.
He was, in truth, not beautiful and not even young. He was a kind of
dog all to himself, baulking description, and the years weighed heavily
upon him. One saw that life had not been kind, and behind his dim
brown eyes was the sad knowledge of inexplicable human cruelty. He

shrank from men even from the Herr Amtschreiber and women he
tolerated wearily. He went with no one, followed no one, save his
chosen god. Helmut he loved. Helmut he followed. When the boy
played his strange games with his strange toys, the dog would sit by
and watch gravely. When Helmut ran, Fritz Schnautzchen girded up his
old loins and ran too panting but indomitable. In the hours which
Helmut spent in the Kindergarten Schnautzchen watched with Heini for
his return. Or sometimes Frau Felde would take them with her when
she went to fetch her son, but this was not often, because she was just a
little ashamed of both of them.
Between Heini and Fritz Schnautzchen there must have been some
alliance. It subtly excluded Helmut. They made it, as it were, over his
head and without his knowledge. But it was for his protection. They
were older and wiser with inarticulate wisdom, and they loved him.
They had their life from him and were ready to give it up for his sake,
and knowing this of each other they became comrades. There could
have been no other explanation for a dog's devotion to a rag doll.
As to Heini his attitude and his expression were less scrutable. He
embraced his ally as he embraced every one, with open arms and a
wide engaging smile.
With these two on either side of him, Helmut came through the
fairy-land of babyhood.
II
To Helmut his mother and father were grey people. They were the same
colour as the flight of stone steps which led up to their flat and the dim
hall and the faded sitting-room. For a long time he did not even realise
that they had features but recognised them by instinct from the midst of
other grey people. And they had a disconcerting knack of dwindling
and growing. For instance on Sunday in the big Lutheran Church in the
West-end Strasse they grew bigger, as though the slow rolling hymns
and packed mass of other dull clad people, singing with all their might,
reinforced them and gave them confidence and dignity. But after the
service when they walked out together in the forest which girdled the

town like a deep green sea, they faded again. They walked stiffly and
anxiously in their best clothes. They looked to right and left and bowed
to every one they knew, and talked about them in low tones, and the
vividness and straight tall strength of the trees made them colourless
and subdued.
But even when they were most faded, most grey, they were still
omnipresent. Heini and Schnautzchen were bright and definite realities,
but they came and went. His mother and father were about him always.
Like a low cloud they encompassed his going and his coming. He loved
them, but a queer pain mingled itself with his love. A nerve united
them to one another, but it was a nerve that ached under secret, constant
pressure. He knew, though, without reasoning that they were always
thinking about him, watching him, waiting. He felt that when they were
alone they talked about him, even when they talked of other things of
the Herr Geheimrat, or the Bureau Chef, or the hope of promotion, or
the cost of living, they looked at him as though he were the real
significance of these things.
Once when he had been playing with Schnautzchen and Heini his
mother had called him, and he had not instantly obeyed. At last when
he came, panting and rosy-cheeked, half laughing, half defiant, his
mother had put her hands on his shoulders and he had felt them tremble.
Her plain round face was close to his, and for the first time she came
out of her mist and he saw her clearly. He remembered her as she was
then ever afterwards, and for the first time too, he saw himself.
"Helmut you