The World as I Found It (78 page)

They were drinking sherry, and Russell was telling of his woes with the boy, or rather about the woes of schoolmastering, which led to another short disquisition about the school and its educational methods. These, he said, were essentially eclectic, experimental and evolving, with new approaches being tried as others were discarded as impractical or ineffective. Of paramount political importance to him and Dora, Russell said, was that their school be as “uncoercive” as possible. Sitting back in his chair, Russell was saying:

The key, I think, is to reduce external discipline to a minimum. By setting the child largely free, he can, for the most part, learn on his own, and at his own speed. Not that it's easy. Trusting the impulses of children is often very difficult and trying, but we're convinced that this is the only really good way that children learn. You can't just
teach
democracy. We feel we must try, as a school, to
be
one. In fact, our school council is comprised of children and adults, each with only one vote.

And they don't take advantage of that? asked Moore.

Oh, sometimes they do, of course. The child who has been overdisciplined always does at first. For a week he may go wild, but usually he quickly gets over it, especially once he's been around the other children. Last year, the school council voted out all rules. We didn't oppose it. Russell smiled. For a day we had anarchy, but since everyone did what he pleased, the children saw they also had no regular meals, or bedtime stories, or anyone to mend their clothes. Two days later, tired, grubby and sick of jam and bread, they most gratefully voted back all rules. I must say it was an exceedingly valuable lesson. How many adults know what anarchy is really like?

As Russell had expected, though, Wittgenstein and Max looked dubious. Gulping his second sherry, Max said cheerfully, So they are free to burn down your little house.

Shed, you mean, corrected Russell.

Shed, house, sure. Max broke into a grin. They learn about fire!

Well, intoned Russell, with a look of irritation, this, I must say, is the exception. Rabe Peck is his mother's creation, not ours. Normally, when we have a child given to abnormal sexual fantasies — morbid preoccupations with sex or violence and the like — we encourage him to talk about it to his heart's content. The normal child usually quickly gets over it, but our shed burner, I'm afraid, is beyond that. We don't claim to be able to help children with problems of his magnitude. But again the problem is usually the parents. My friend A. S. Neill — the one who runs that allegedly daft Summerhill school the papers are always attacking — well, he has a boy of six who craps his pants six times daily. Neill's was the only school in England that would take him. Evidently the boy's mother, a quite wealthy, educated woman, ventured to teach the child by making him eat it.

Strangling the sherry decanter, Max said with a laugh, Give this burner to your friend Neill!

I'd like to! hoofed Russell agreeably. Everyone laughed — everyone but Wittgenstein.

Now Ludwig, continued Max, spilling a bit of sherry on the sideboard, Ludwig, he was a strong teacher in our town. Oh, he made the children learn good, but,
whack!
you know, when they do the bad things or will not hear. But they learned this way, the children.

We just discussed this on the train, Wittgenstein broke in petulantly. Max makes it sound as if all I did was keep order. In fact, I was part of the reform movement in Austria after the war. On the whole, it was very enlightened — very progressive, our system, especially compared to the drilling of the old state system. I disciplined, yes, but I took great pains always to be consistent. Consistency is what children need most. More than sheer brute discipline.

And
a certain amount of compulsion, agreed Russell with a knowing look and a nod to Max. Not to mention
sheer instruction
. This, I think, is where Dora and I differ with Neill and other liberal educators. As we've learned here — and rather painfully, I'm afraid — certain steps do have to be taken to impart a requisite amount of learning. Much as we want to create an atmosphere of freedom, we know that children can't completely be turned loose and be expected to get it all themselves. To our chagrin, we've also found that steps also have to be taken to keep the bigger ones from terrorizing the smaller ones, which inevitably means you're stuck with putting them in classes, as if you were breeding chickens. With a hapless smile, Russell added, Like it or not, the school really does become a kind of microcosm of the state, with all the same virtues and deficiencies. One wishes we didn't need the police and the army, but I'm afraid that, to some extent, this is the case. The mystery, it seems to me, is how to instill order and discipline without stifling the creativity that stems from these same chaotic, generative impulses. Seeing he was nigh on making a speech, Russell looked at Wittgenstein, then switched course. But as I recall, it was not the children but again the
parents
who were your problem. Russell laughed to himself. I'll never forget that one letter you sent me — the one you sent me in China? You know the one I'm referring to?

I remember, said Wittgenstein with a rueful expression. When I wrote that the Trattenbachers were rotten?

“Wicked” is the word I remember.

I said wicked? Wittgenstein asked. Well, if I did, I was wrong — they were much too small to be called
wicked
.

Oh, they was not so bad, scoffed Max, growing more sociable with the warmth of the sherry. Why bad? These people have no money after the war — you English see to that. And they fear of this one, he said with a nod to Wittgenstein. Sure. They fear him because they think he is rich and talks like rich. Then something occurred to him, and he said excitedly, Ludwig! Do you tell them how you fixed the big train engine?

What's this? asked Russell.

Wittgenstein frowned, then said, A locomotive had broken down. It was the only train linking the village with a mill on which the village heavily depended. Several engineers came to look at it and said it couldn't be fixed — not in the village. They said it would have to be shipped back in pieces to Wiener Neustadt. For the village this would have been ruinous. Wittgenstein sat there like an engine idling, then hurried the story to conclusion, saying,
So
, I asked to examine the train. And after an hour, he said with a shrug, I fixed it.

Max threw his hands up delightedly. Oh! Oh! He found a way, this one! He found a way! God, the tongues start to do this, said Max, clacking his fingers together. That was when Ludwig's trouble starts with this people. That was the start, sure.

Moore, intrigued now, asked, But how did you fix the engine, Wittgenstein?

With the hammers, interjected Max.

Sledgehammers, corrected Wittgenstein, acting as if this were nothing. I saw the engine was frozen. So I positioned Max and ten other men around the train with sledgehammers. And then I had them strike certain spots at different intervals to set up a sympathetic frequency — a rhythm to free the structure.

Moore almost upset his sherry. Can't you see him, Bertie? he said with a sideways look at Russell. Conducting them all like a great glockenspiel?

Sure! Max sat nodding. They think Ludwig is crazy. Max touched his forehead zanily, then went on, Half the people, they are there to laugh at him, such a rich crazy man. This one who thinks he is so smart, you know, with this boom-boom, tink-tink. And, then … Max's eyes got big. The train engine,
it moves
! And they
looked
at him, these peoples, and they get all quiet. Sure, they think he is — Max touched his head again, this time superstitiously. And then,
ffssst!
Like that, off Ludwig is. Gone!

My God, said Russell, raising his eyes. They must have thought you performed a miracle, Wittgenstein.

This was too much. Wittgenstein was disgusted. Nonsense! It was no miracle. Please …

Wittgenstein had just managed to change the subject when they were interrupted by a knock. It was Russell's son, John, who ran to his father and said in a breathless whisper, Daddy, Mrs. Bride says you're to come to dinner now. She says everything will be mush if you don't. Are you coming?

We're coming, said Russell, standing up. Tell her we'll be sitting down in five or ten minutes. Have you called your mother?

Mr. Higgins says she's coming now.

Good.

As the boy ran back, Russell turned to his guests and explained, Mr. Higgins is an American friend of Dora's. He's been spending the past few days with us.

Oh? Standing nearest the host, Dorothy perked up with polite interest, naturally expecting that Russell would say something more about this other guest who would be at dinner. But, oddly, Russell said nothing, and Dorothy, wanting to break the awkward silence that followed, remarked, Your John seems a lovely boy.

Russell sprang to life at this, saying after a moment's hesitation, You know, I do hate to brag, but he is. And fearless — God! Fearless of heights, water, horses.
My
fear is that he will be destroyed in the next war.

It was queer how this came out, to mix morbidness with such enthusiasm. Russell did not say “next war” as anything but a certainty, but to Moore and Wittgenstein, who felt no such certainty, it sounded only cranky and political, part of his unpleasant, propagandizing side.

R
USSELL AND HIS GUESTS
were just starting down the hall to dinner when John ran back to his father and solemnly asked a word with him.

We'll only be a moment, said Russell to the others. With that, he led the boy, all huffy and disheartened, to a nearby alcove and listened for a minute before sending him off with several carefully chosen words and a squeeze on the shoulder.

It was a thoroughly ordinary transaction between a father and son, but again Wittgenstein felt that sense of loss and envy, that longing that he had felt outside earlier, when he had first seen the two of them together. What a cruel contradiction, not to desire women and yet to desire a son: to Wittgenstein it seemed that one impulse should have canceled the other. Even then, six years after it had happened, Wittgenstein still found it hard to believe that he had once asked a man to let him adopt the man's own blood.

The boy Wittgenstein had asked to adopt was Franz Kluck, a poor farmer's son. Franz was the most gifted pupil Wittgenstein ever had in Trattenbach. Every night after school, in the little room he occupied above the barren grocery, Wittgenstein gave Franz and a few other of his brightest boys additional lessons in Latin and Greek, geometry, biology, German literature. At eleven, Franz could recite Schiller and Goethe, write Latin verse in hexameter, discuss Pythagoras, identify local rocks and plants and follow a topographical map. At home, his father, who was drunk whenever he could scrape up the money, beat him for coming home late and ridiculed him for his airs — for reading books and for speaking correct German and not the local dialect. Franz's three older brothers were as terrified of their father as they were jealous of their brilliant little brother. Their father encouraged them to pound sense into Franz, and the beatings were especially vicious when he was drunk and urging them on. In an effort to force the boy to drop his stupid books and confront real life, the brothers once mashed his face into steaming hot guts. Sitting on him, they poured schnapps down his throat and tickled him till he blacked out. Several expensive books Wittgenstein had lent the boy returned with broken bindings and shit-splattered pages from having been heaved against walls or flung into the pigyard. Once, after Franz had accidentally left the door open, his father made him stand for hours in the freezing cold without a coat. Not long after that, Herr Kluck went on a binge and nearly burned down the house.

Most nights after their study sessions, Wittgenstein would walk the boy part of the way home. The slender mountain road was dark but strewn with interesting rocks, and the sky was usually swarming with stars. It seemed they were always stooping or pointing, or examining something by the light of a match, but inevitably as they approached Franz's house the boy would grow anxious and depressed. Wittgenstein knew how he felt — he had felt much the same as a boy. He knew the silence and tensed shoulders, the sick stomach. More, he knew the resentment that turned back in on a boy, especially a brilliant one, compounding the senseless pain of adult whims and cruelty into a circuitous and self-fulfilling logic: imagining biting back the dog that had bit you, then in guilt biting yourself more bitterly than the dog ever could.

Franz knew his stars because he knew the night. Knowledge of constellations came later, once one saw a logic, a fatal organizing pattern, to one's life. Then came the obsessive building, the spiraling systems, the fantastic and oppressive apparatus to account for what could not possibly be put right, or justified. For Franz, it was the father who, in one breath, could punish him for an open door and in another declare his sovereign father's right to burn down his own house if he liked. For Wittgenstein, it was the father whom he could remember once calling him a pig for eating three of the doughnutlike
Krapfen
. His voracious father, on the other hand, might eat four or five at a sitting without being branded a pig, and for no better reason than because
he
was a
Vater
.

Wittgenstein understood this night-entranced boy; he understood him all too well. As a boy, Wittgenstein, too, had made a study of the stars, especially after Hans killed himself in Cuba. Winter stars, the boy had found, were hypodermic — hot, piercing and fearfully accurate — but the summer stars, especially, he imagined, the southern stars of Cuba, were warm and hypnagogic, like overripe blooms, like bitter drugs and pistols clumsily aimed. Wittgenstein could remember habitually pinching himself under the table in his father's august presence, finding that the smaller pain, which he could control, tended to blunt the larger one, which he could not. When this failed, there was the roof, where he could peer out as through a tube into that vast and mindless sky in which so much music had been lost and wasted, wasted as Hans had himself been wasted, leading the boy to fear that the world, which seemed resoundingly closed, would run out of numbers or melodies or places to bury people, until life itself was exhausted as he himself was exhausted by the father in the study below, coaxing moans from the boy-sized cello cradled between his knees.