Erasmus's trouser pockets

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-36cd93f14e08442ca4264d31a46c92e9
# book_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# chapter_id: 1-erasmus-s-trouser-pockets
# chapter_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# book_page: 1 / 8
# chapter_page: 1
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

Erasmus is, in fact, my son. I should point out that he is healthy and of normal build. But when he is fully clothed, he sometimes has misshapen, threatening-looking bulges on his thighs.

When these have reached a certain size, my wife often comes in to me, quite cheerfully, and says, “You know, we need to empty out his trouser pockets again; a whole museum has accumulated in there!”

I may assume that my readers are generally familiar with the contents of an eight-year-old boy’s trouser pockets. There is hardly any movable object that cannot be accommodated quite well in such a pocket, and there is hardly any object that would not arouse the interest of such a secretive little observer of the world. Now, one must also imagine young Master Erasmus as a decided sanguine temperament, who, with the help of his imagination, places the most daring hopes on the fragment of a corkscrew.

Since many things remained unclear to us during the previous examinations, and we were unable to identify certain objects, this time we brought the esteemed owner of the trousers himself along for the inspection.

My wife has the garment on her lap; for the benefit of representatives of public morality, I note that the boy is, in the meantime, wearing a different pair of trousers.

The first thing my wife pulls out of the pocket is twine. I may likewise assume that this object is particularly popular among male youth, and that all other items brought to light from such a pocket tend to appear in a more or less interesting connection with it. By following the thread—to use a deliberately chosen expression—we then arrive at a heavily rusted, oval tinplate badge bearing the inscription “Patent.” That is already quite a valuable piece. I know that. I still remember the standard for such things quite well. Of course, I cannot determine that standard precisely; these are matters of collector’s value, after all.

“What does ‘Patent’ mean, then?” I ask.

“When someone has dressed so elegantly.”

“R-r-r-richtig!!

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-36cd93f14e08442ca4264d31a46c92e9
# book_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# chapter_id: 1-erasmus-s-trouser-pockets
# chapter_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# book_page: 2 / 8
# chapter_page: 2
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

We continue to follow the Ariadne thread and bring a notebook out of the labyrinth. This is now something truly extraordinary. Notebooks are of special value and use at this age. It is, of course, natural that one primarily notes down what one thinks about day and night, for example that one is invited to a friend’s house on October 9th for the apple harvest, or that Christmas is celebrated on December 25th. The ten pennies one received as a gift are also dutifully recorded as the foundation of a capital to be accumulated, but unfortunately are usually not crossed out again when they are transformed into chocolate after ten minutes. Of course, the pen and paper in this little booklet are of a quality that cannot be expressed in monetary terms, making it all the more advisable to write with a pointed steel pen on a flannel shirt; but Erasmus keeps a watchful eye on it.

“Where did you get that?”

“Hein Stieglitz gave it to me.”

“Why?”

“Oh – because I wanted to play with him.”

“Why did he want to play with you?”

“Oh – the others didn’t want to play with him.”

“Why not?”

“Because he came in first.”

“Aha. – But what does this mean?” I have opened the “notebook” and read on one page the highly enigmatic words “Käs Käse Käse la.”

“That’s French,” he explains with a touch of scholarly pride.

“French??” – – – – Aaaaaah – now a light dawns on me! He had his first French lesson today! According to the new method! The teacher spoke, but did not write on the board. Erasmus, however, proud of his notebook, took notes. Qu’est-ce que c’est que cela! – Voilà ce que c’est!

With the help of the binding thread, we now bring to light a small hinge from a folding lid, intimately connected to a piece of shoemaker’s pitch.

“But Erasmus! Piglet!”, my wife calls out, looking at her fingers with a grimace.

But he stares at her with an innocent, astonished look, as if to say: “Why? – What’s the matter?”

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-36cd93f14e08442ca4264d31a46c92e9
# book_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# chapter_id: 1-erasmus-s-trouser-pockets
# chapter_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# book_page: 3 / 8
# chapter_page: 3
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

For he still lives and weaves in the purest, most original pantheism; out of everything the earth offers, the unknown Creator breathes toward him – felt at first only dimly in the warmth of the heart and cheeks – and he presses the cleanest kitten as well as the most puddle-soaked street dog with equal love to his happy heart and his purest chemise.

He still stands on the naively genial standpoint of the equal rights of all chemical compounds, and the paradisiacal innocence that does not yet know what is clean and dirty has not yet been completely chased away by our aesthetic narrow-mindedness.

“What are you going to do with that piece of a beer glass lid?”

“Oh – if I find the lid for it, I’ll put it on my milk glass.”

“That’s an idea! Fabulous! – But let me know when you find the lid! – Can you even do something like that?”

“Yes – it’s really easy!”

“Mmmm.”

That’s right. Even as a little boy, I copied all the crafts and skills of every craftsman. Everything was so nice and easy. I would have loved to be a carpenter, a locksmith, a blacksmith, a shoemaker, a mason, a hatmaker, a painter, and everything else besides. When my imagination had designed a work, it was already finished, and I played with it. I planed without a planer, glued without glue, painted without a brush, soldered without a soldering iron and flame, and shod the wildest horses – all in my imagination. And the works of our imagination play more gracefully with us than we do with the most real things. Even with fame, power, and money, it’s more fun to play in the imagination than in reality. “Everything repeats itself only in life –“

So just enjoy your glass lid.

Now that we have also pulled a harmonica, a small alcohol thermometer, and a soldier from the lead cavalry out of that bag, we notice a German five-pfennig coin on the lance of this Ulan – pardon: – a North German five-pfennig coin!

A terrible premonition grips my nerves.

“What’s that for?” I ask.

“I collect them,” he explains innocently.

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-36cd93f14e08442ca4264d31a46c92e9
# book_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# chapter_id: 1-erasmus-s-trouser-pockets
# chapter_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# book_page: 4 / 8
# chapter_page: 4
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

“My son,” I say, placing my fatherly hand on his shoulder with a gesture of solemnity, “I by no means want to suggest that it’s impossible for collectors of stamps and tram tickets to have some other idea in mind. Man should not be arrogant: what do we know, for example, about the soul life of a guinea pig or a tree frog! But I will not tolerate stamp collecting by an heir of my blood. In that matter I allow myself to be a despot. If you want to collect beautiful things – very well! If you want to collect educational things: animals, plants, and the like – also fine! But stamp collecting is outright anti-culture, and that will mean disinheritance in my case.” (The boy’s face changes color.) “You know how it goes: First comes the Cricri and the monocle, then collecting stamps and tram tickets, and finally clericalism, without anyone noticing the transitions!”

My wife has meanwhile started to unpack the other bag and, along with various seashells and trouser buttons, has also brought to light a crushed capsule from a wine bottle.

“And what do you want to do with that?”

“I want to sell it.”

“Sell it?”

“Yes, Willy Steinmann says that if you have a pound of it, you can sell it, and I want to save up that money, and then I’ll see to it that I get more and more until I’m really rich.”

Aah – so that’s why the wind is whistling!

He has evidently fallen for those “benevolent” stories in which it is always told how someone, as a six-year-old boy, picked up every single pin, reserved every goose feather for a future pillow, and thus eventually became an enormously wealthy and famous merchant. I have never been able to shake off the conviction that these stories were invented by speculators, bank directors, executors of wills, swindlers, and similar people in order to distract others from the real issue. My boy – if you are your parents’ son, you will soon cast out this “foreign drop in your blood”; I have no fear of that. Collecting pins is not in the family.

“So, and when you are ‘really rich’ – what then?”

“Then I’ll buy cows and oxen and a geography book.”

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-36cd93f14e08442ca4264d31a46c92e9
# book_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# chapter_id: 1-erasmus-s-trouser-pockets
# chapter_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# book_page: 5 / 8
# chapter_page: 5
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

“So.” For me, it was always a castle. I wanted to build one if I were rich. I can still see the broad, shimmering marble staircase, on whose top step I stand like a grand seigneur, only to descend with noble composure the next moment. Or I lay stretched out on a bed of rest, watching white clouds drift through blue skies through tall arched windows – slowly – so slowly. Or I stood on the drawbridge, high up on horseback, fist pressed against my thigh, and in a single glance saw valleys and mountains, forests and streams. I am almost inclined to believe with Lessing that there is a rebirth in this world, that we appear on this earth more than once. Perhaps that is why we have these faint, distant, mysterious memories that we cannot explain. And I fear – I fear: I was – perhaps in the thirteenth century or so – a somewhat busy young gentleman.

Since then, I have still had a strange inclination to earn my living by gazing at floating clouds and riding through rushing valleys.

While these memories flit past my inner vision like the flight of swallows, my wife suddenly lets out a loud scream and jumps up from her chair. She must have come across something dreadful; for she is naturally very courageous. She would snatch her child from the lion’s jaws like that famous mother from Florence. It must be something more terrible than a lion. And so it is.

It is a “Common Dung Beetle”, Geotrupes stercorarius, which my wife has flung from her fingers and which is now slowly crawling across the floorboards.

“Ooh, my beetle!”, laments Erasmus.

The little creature had escaped from a matchbox and had made itself at home in his trouser pocket. While my wife still has a slightly white face, Erasmus has picked up the animal and lets it crawl over his fingers with almost scientific composure and open-mindedness.

“Why did you catch it?”

“For a beetle collection.”

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-36cd93f14e08442ca4264d31a46c92e9
# book_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# chapter_id: 1-erasmus-s-trouser-pockets
# chapter_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# book_page: 6 / 8
# chapter_page: 6
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

“Well – you know – I don’t really think that’s necessary. You can just look at it properly. And then you can find it again every year in countless numbers. If it were something rare, I wouldn’t say anything. What is rare must always be protected. But you don’t understand that yet. So: I think you’ll let it go, right? Other dung beetles want to live too.”

With a quick, searching glance he looks into my eyes, then he smiles and furtively examines his hands. Today they have been washed for the second time and are dirty for the third time. He uses them unashamedly and diligently when, in house and garden, field and forest, he immerses himself in the study of nature.

We have increasingly noticed a strangely consistent redness on the objects that came from the second bag, most recently on the matchbox, as well as on my wife’s right hand. Now we are also getting close to the origin of this color: a considerable piece of vermilion has evidently spent a few days in this room, covering its walls with a uniform red.

Finally, there is also a beautifully polished, egg-shaped pebble from the seashore.

“What is that?”

“That’s a lucky stone.”

“A lucky stone?” –

That could be true. Whoever rejoices in such a stone is happy.

“Where did you leave the pretty little silver coin you had the other day?”

“Oh, I gave it to Georg Petersen; he’s going to give me eighteen flags and twenty-five lances in exchange for it.”

His eyes light up.

* * * * *

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-36cd93f14e08442ca4264d31a46c92e9
# book_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# chapter_id: 1-erasmus-s-trouser-pockets
# chapter_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# book_page: 7 / 8
# chapter_page: 7
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

Yes, these are the kind of moments that make one’s heart grow a little bigger and one’s eyes – excuse me! – grow a little warmer. For one thinks of the many times this young man will still be betrayed in his life. What will his good faith cost him yet! One wonders if one is not doing wrong when one tells a child: “Always be true!” – if one is not making him defenseless. One would so like to see him follow the commandment of truthfulness, and one sees all the suffering that then awaits him. So, to tell the eight-year-old: “Be careful not to be deceived!”? – No. No. Better leave it to time, which after all warns even the most innocent. For some things, of course, take a lot of time. And then, man is also ingeniously constructed in such a way that he places a strangely high value on not learning from the mistakes of others, but on being deceived himself.

And then it is also advantageous to allow oneself to be moderately deceived and lied to. Of course, too much of anything is bad. He who is too easily deceived eventually leads honest people astray. They then say: “Well – if he himself doesn’t want it any different – –” One cannot believe how ruinous a single trusting soul can be for a whole group of rather decent people. But otherwise –: The noble people are quite right: Allowing oneself to be moderately deceived is a matter of nobility. He who sells a coat for forty marks for fifty marks, he who sets up a gentleman in the lower or higher horse trade, or he who intrigues a rival’s drama off the stage so that he can snatch a little more fame and royalties – and who, in all this, stubbornly tells himself that cleverness and advantage are on his side and only on his side – well, who would not grant such a poor devil the small pleasure of deception?!

One pays, according to one’s means, the ten pennies or the ten gold pieces or the ten brown notes, and when one notices the deception, one laughs to oneself and rejoices that one is not a fool; and what one feels sorry for is only the poor fellow who is now perhaps quite proud of his “coup”.

My wife and I have decided to provide the young gentleman with his own drawer so that he can build his children’s world in it.

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-36cd93f14e08442ca4264d31a46c92e9
# book_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# chapter_id: 1-erasmus-s-trouser-pockets
# chapter_title: Erasmus's trouser pockets
# book_page: 8 / 8
# chapter_page: 8
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

Judging from my own youth, however, he will prefer the pocket. The relationship to things here is a more intimate one. Everything is also ready for the first touch and neatly arranged: spinning tops, dung beetles, apples, and shoemaker’s pitch. And then – the main thing! – it is not laid out openly for all to see. Although we proceeded with the utmost discretion regarding Prince Erasmus’s secret treasure and bravely suppressed our laughter – he seemed to perceive our actions as an indiscretion. It was a matter of shame for him. And one should not intrude upon the land of a child’s soul; one must proceed with care so that they themselves invite one in. When their delight becomes truly great, they will do so.

A delicately constructed world, the children’s paradise! A single harsh breath from the cold world of adults – and a thousand blossoms fall from its trees at once. There is a wonder as small as a penny, round like the sun and glowing softly like the moon; you move it a little – and hidden colors shine forth: the transparent green of the North Sea, the red of the evening sky . . . But let a few wrong and rough fingers come upon it and throw it disdainfully onto the table – then it is a miserable mother-of-pearl button! – – – –