German fiction -- Translations into English; Short stories, German -- Translations into English
“Now this was to be observed,” he continued, “that just so much as the
brothers differed, one from the other, the more they seemed to cling
to each other. In Big L, indeed, one did not notice it so much; he
was always sullen and displayed no feeling; but Little L could never
conceal anything. And because Little L felt conscious of this, how much
better he himself was treated by the other cadets, it made him sorry
for his brother. When we took our walks around the courtyard, then one
could see how Little L would look at his brother from time to time, to
see if he, too, had some one to walk with. That he prompted his brother
in class and allowed him to copy from himself when sight-exercises were
dictated was all a matter of course; but he also took care that no one
teased his brother, and when he observed him quietly from the side, as
he often did, without drawing his brother’s attention to it, then his
little face was quite noticeably sad, almost as if he were a great care
to him--”
The old man pulled hard at his pipe. “All that I put together for
myself afterward,” said he, “when everything happened that was to
happen; he knew at the time much better than we did how matters stood
with Big L, and what was his brother’s character.
“This was, of course, understood among the cadets, and it helped Big L
none the more, for he remained disliked after it as before, yet it made
Little L all the more popular, and he was generally called ‘Brother
Love.’
“Now the two lived together in one room, and Little L, as I said, was
very clean and neat; the big one, on the contrary, was very slovenly.
And so Little L fairly made himself servant to his brother, and it
turned out that he even cleaned the brass buttons on his uniform
for him, and just before the ranks formed for roll-call would place
himself, with clothes-brush in hand, in front of his brother, and once
more regularly brush and scrub him--especially on those days when the
‘cross lieutenant’ was on duty and received roll-call.
“Well, in the morning the cadets had to go down into the court for
roll-call, and there the officer on duty went up and down between the
lines and inspected their uniforms to see if they were in order.
“And when the ‘cross lieutenant’ attended to this, then there reigned
the most woful anxiety throughout the company, for he always found
something. He would go behind the cadets and flip at their coats with
his finger to make the dust fly, and if none came, then he would lift
their coat-pockets and snap at them, and so, beat our coats as much as
we would, there was sure to be left some dust lying on them, and as
soon as the ‘cross lieutenant’ saw it, he would sing out in a voice
like that of an old bleating ram: ‘Write him down for Sunday report,’
and then Sunday’s day off might go to the devil, and then that got to
be a very serious matter.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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