Work Text:
„Hallo. Mein name ist William Hamish Adler H. Ich bin 8 Jahre alt und das hier ist meine Aufsatz. Ich soll etwas von meiner Familie erzählen. Ich darf nicht meinen letzten Nachname schreiben. Das ist ein Geheimnis. Meine Eltern leben nicht zusammen aber sie lieben trotzdem einander und ich wohne hier in Berlin mit meiner Mutter. Mein Vater ist sehr berühmt aber weil er manchmal für die Englische Regierung arbeitet und weil er viele Feinde hat, darf niemand von mir wissen….. „
We’ll translate into English:
“Hello. I’m William Hamish Adler H. I’m 8 years old and this is my essay. I’m supposed to tell something about my family. I’m not allowed to write my last surname. That is a secret. My parents do not live together but they love each other despite of that and I live here in Berlin with my mother. My father is famous but because he sometimes works for the English Government and because he has a lot of enemies, nobody must know about me.
When my father is going to retire, he has promised my mother and me that we can come to England and live with them for a while.
First about me: I’m rather tall for my age: 145 cm and rather thin: 30 kg. I have dark brown curled hair, a few freckles and I’m rather pale. My eyes are 3 different colours: gray, blue and green.
My mother is very beautiful. She is rather pale too and has “chestnut” hair. That is a sort of red-brownish colour. She works as a consultant. She is a bit taller than me.
My “Papa” who lives together with my father in a flat in London says that I have my father’s eyes. But then my father just snorts and says it is the utmost rubbish to say, as he still has got his own! Then my papa just laughs. My papa and my father live together and they have been married since before my birth, but they didn’t have a wedding and a party until last month.
Sometimes my papa and my father work together and sometimes they don’t. I have lived together with them the last 6 summer holidays. But I have visited them before. When we live there in their flat, my mother and I live in a bedroom upstairs and my papa and my father live in the bedroom downstairs. It is their house and there is a nice old lady, who lives at the ground floor. She is very nice and often makes cookies. When I’m in London at my father’s house, he teaches me to play a violin. I’m rather good at it now and father is proud of me. He says that when I have learned to play as well as him, I’ll get his violin. It is a very special violin. It’s called a “Stradivarius”. My violin is a violin made for children, because my hands are not big enough yet. My father has large hands with long fingers and when you touch them you can tell that he plays a violin a lot, because he has calluses on his left hand's fingers.
My father is tall and dark. He’s got black hair with just a very few gray hairs at his temples. He doesn’t like when my papa mentions them. He is rather thin too, but he has lot of muscles, he is pale and he has got a lot of scars, mostly on his back. So does papa. Sometimes father has to stay in bed and then he gets his food from a plastic bag. It is called “IV”. It is because he once got very ill, when he tried to save people together with papa once before I was born. It is wrong to say “tried” as they succeeded, but what they did, is a secret. It has done though that they are “sirs” know. I’ve investigated what it means, and it means that the Queen had rewarded them.
My papa is shorter than my father and has blond and gray hair. He gets rather tanned in the summer and his teeth are very white. His eyes have wrinkles when he laughs and he is very good at telling bedtime stories when I can’t sleep. And he has got very soft hands. I can’t tell what job he has. Not because I do not know, but I’m not allowed.
I have my granny and my granddad too. They live out in the country. They like very much when we visit them. But we don’t stay for long, because it is a bit boring to visit them.
Sometimes my mother is there too. But not always. And then I just stay by father and papa.
We visit a lot of places in London and sometimes we visit my uncle. I’m not allowed to mention his name either. In the beginning I didn’t think he liked me, but then I did beat him in chess and now he likes me. Even more because I was the reason for his wedding last month too.
My father has taught me how to notice a lot of things. Like his hands. He calls it to “observe” instead of just “seeing.” And I observed my uncle's secretary last year. She had different haircuts and different hair colours every time we visit my uncle, but her weight and eye-eye-nose ratio (it is the measurements between eyes and eyes-nose: it makes a triangle) didn’t change.
And I observed my uncle and her the last time we visited my uncle and I asked him why he didn’t marry her. He just looked at me very coldly and asked me very politely why I thought it would be a good idea. When he does that, I have observed that people get very afraid and stop asking questions, but I’m not afraid of him and I answered: “Because your pupils are dilated and your heartbeat goes up and so does hers when you are near each other. You both try to disguise it but the signs are there. Doesn’t it mean that you are in love?” And then my uncle just stared at me, put his hand over his eyes and sighed: “Oh my god. You are so much your father’s son.”
Well of course I am. But I think my uncle meant that I’m very much like my father. I’m not sure it was a praise. My father and my uncle disagree a lot sometimes. And then my papa tells them to behave in a very quiet voice. But they both look at him and behave.
It was a wonderful wedding last month and I had to wear a very formal suit. My father tried to explain to me why it was necessary to wear such rather unpleasant clothing, but my papa was better at explaining and told my father that he should buy a really nice one for himself because it would be handy later on. And then my father and my papa made a big surprise, because they wanted to get re-married in the church too.
When they got married in the first place - the first time, it was not allowed to be in a church, but now it was. So they decided to make it a two-couple-marriage. The invitations were sent last summer and this summer they would have the wedding. Uncle and Andrea and father and papa would be married in the church near granddad's and granny’s house.
There was a big party afterwards. It was at a castle and there were more than 200 guests. My mother was there too and I asked her if she was sad, but she said no and after my father and my papa had danced the waltz, she danced with my father too. They were really good dancers and that was uncle and Andrea too.
Later my uncle found me and said that we needed to talk. He told me that he now would have his own children and that they would be my cousins and that he would have to alter his will, since I would not be the only heir anymore. He then asked me if I understood and I nodded and said: “I could just have kept my mouth shot, uncle!” And then he looked at me for a while and said that he was sorry for underestimating me and I told him that it was a rather common mistake to do that about me. Then he just looked at me and said that he would never do that again.
I can’t tell more about the wedding because I was ordered to bed. Having 3 parents of which 2 of them are geniuses and one is a very observant man, doesn’t make it easy to delude them and besides I was tired too.
That was a bit about me and my family.
William Hamish Adler H.”
_________________________________
“To the headmaster M. Schmidt
As you can see this is what I got from William. I haven’t talked to him yet but I’m concerned. I know he lives with a single parent, his mother, and I know that such children make up fantasies about their father, when they do not have one. But this is more troublesome. His “father” is a hero, famous, rich and is a part of a famous rich family, and William fantasies about a Stradivarius too. Have you considered that he maybe should have some help? And who wrote this essay? I doubt that an 8 year old boy could have written this without help.
Amanda Heisst”
___________________
“Dear Fraülein Heisst
As I have more information available than you, I can assure you that William is fully capable of writing an essay like that and that every single word is the truth. He would even be able to write the essay in German (as he has done), English, French, Russian or Italian. His parents have refused to have him tested but if he was tested, he would be off scale. He is capable of a lot more than he shows, but let him just pretend that he is just a bright little boy instead of a genius. And therefore just give him his essay back and don’t ask him to read it out loud in front of the others. If you want to reward him somehow then ask him to bring his violin.
Best regards
Headmaster M. Schmidt”