The rainbow never sets

"I just can't." "Well, we'll see about that. Next weekend you'll stay in Posen and you will learn your vocabularies, and do a lot of English home work."

I was devastated and burst out into tears. Not to be able to go home for the weekend was just about the hardest punishment I could get. But Vater could be very hard. Nothing would move him from that verdict. I felt like a condemned prisoner. My brother and cousins could go home, and I had to stay!

Yet, as hard as I tried, I could not make myself learn English. The motivation was simply not there. Instead of learning English, I went to the swimming pool in the river Warthe, or to the pictures. The latter called for some ingenuity on my part, as Vater would require us to write down regularly detailed accounts of what we had spent during that week, as he gave us 'spending money' not 'pocket money'. I think I must have been using then what is called 'creative book keeping'. There seemed to be a lot of money spent on copybooks and ink, and pencils, and tram journeys, and I imagined that Vater would not notice. Whether he did, is another question, but he never let on.

It happened several times that I was not allowed to come home. Eventually Vater told Tante Else, and she kept an eye on me, but I am not sure that my English improved. I must have felt destined to fulfil Frau Vogee's prophecy: that I would never learn English.

The following year our class had another English teacher. I can't remember his name, but we called him 'The Englishman'. He was of small stature, very wiry and lively, and he made English an interesting subject. He taught us all sorts of English ditties and songs, and surprise, surprise, my English improved considerably. Instead of sixes I brought home threes and twos.

Unfortunately for me, this joy didn't last very long. I think before the year was over, 'The Englishman' was transferred and Vogee was back with us. Tough luck. But I do believe that from then on Vater knew that it had something to do with the teacher, and not solely with me.

In mathematics I came top of the class with another student. We seemed to alternate in coming first. Our teacher was excellent and we got on very well. I also liked our teacher of Biology and Geography, so these subjects became favourites of mine. I think I needed a challenge, and these teachers were able to make the subjects interesting. Latin was introduced in third year and I did not have any problems with that either.

One day during Latin, it was the last period of the day and a lot of classes had already gone home, we suddenly heard 'bump, bump', outside our classroom window. All eyes turned to the window, including Mr. Müller's, and as we were watching, slowly the shape of a leather suitcase appeared, let down on a rope from the classroom above. Mr. Müller was rather annoyed about the disturbance. He opened the window, hauled the suitcase inside, untied the rope, and put the suitcase under his desk. About

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