“But one day I would find myself walled out from that world by a neighing collective laughter. For it happened, you see, that at the local school of our district (when I was still in the same class as my Cousin Wolfgang, who was only a few months older than I and slow in his intellectual development) I was led astray by the Tempter. In contrast to Cousin Wolfgang, I was not shy. Miss Fern had taught me a kind of trusting frankness that made me unsuspicious of, albeit reserved toward, strangers. I did not hide the fact that I knew all sorts of things, that I could read and write and even chat in dainty childhood French and fluent nursery English. Vast amazement on all sides; a few of my schoolmates quickly moved away from me, while the teacher (who smelled dreadfully of old clothes), with a self-conscious grin, pressed his scraggly chin into his collar, as an intention warmly fermented beneath the Adam’s apple and the diaphragm to cozen me into becoming an instrument of humiliation for my coarse school-mates.

“It was not yet in my nature to see through such political maneuvers—that was to be the first fruit of my education—and after calling attention to myself by boldly letting the small, naked worm of my finger push out from the compost that was the mass of pupils, I presumed to announce that I could even recite a few stanzas of a rather difficult and very beautiful English poem. Very well! Permission granted. I was planted in front of the blackboard. The teacher stood by his desk with a squashed smile, embarrassed, twisting his brownish-yellow cuff. Hurling out my arm toward him, raising an accusing finger against him, I commenced:

Has God, thou fool! work’d solely for thy good,

Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food

(now, as Miss Fern taught me, face the audience!)

Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,

From him has kindly spread the flow’ry lawn:

(arm and finger thrust toward the ceiling)

Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?

(shaking my head in ecstasy)

Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.

(taking a small step forward; then somewhat softer, more intimate)

Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat?

Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.

(again addressing the teacher, firm)

The bounding steed you pompously bestride

Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.

(thundering)

Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain?

The birds of heaven shall vindicate their grain.

(again to the audience)

Thine the full harvest of the golden year?

Pars pays, and justly, the deserving steer:

(proclaiming)

The hog that ploughs not, nor obeys thy call

Lives on the labours of this lord of all.

“Well, that was it. As I stood there, highly satisfied—Miss Fern would have praised me for an excellent recitation—there was silence. But then it broke loose. It began with one of the little friends with whom I was destined to sail out into the blue ocean of cheerful knowledge: an uncontrollable splutter emerged from his snot-clogged nostrils—and that was the signal for a collective discharge. They erupted. They howled and bawled with laughter. They doubled up, rolled over one another, curled up and through one another, pissed in their pants in fits of vulgar orgasm . . . and here I must try to be very clear in describing what this laughter produced in me. It will instantly put you on the wrong track if I tell you that my first emotion was erotic pleasure—yes indeed; I made the acquaintance of a feeling I had never known before, something that I now can name: mortification.