by Joseph Roth
Already a window flies up here and there; two voices converse. A humming makes the parquet on which we stand vibrate. A white light fills the lane, as if part of the moon had fallen into the narrow lane.
The white light came from a light, a searchlight, Bloomfield’s headlights.
And so Bloomfield arrived, like a night attack. The headlights reminded me of the war, I thought of ‘hostile aircraft’.
It was a big car. The chauffeur was entirely clad in leather. He got out looking like a creature from another world.
The car still vibrated a little. It was spattered with mud from the highway and about as big as a fair sized ship’s cabin.
I felt as I used to in the old days on the battlefield, when a general came to inspect us and I happened to be on company duty. Reluctantly I stretched, pulled myself together and waited. A gentleman in a driving coat stepped out, but I could not see his features distinctly. There followed another gentleman, carrying his coat over his arm. This second gentleman was distinctly shorter, and said a few words in English which I did not understand. I noted that the smaller of the two must be Bloomfield and that the other one, his companion, was carrying out an instruction.
So now Bloomfield was there.
‘That’s Bloomfield,’ I say to Zwonimir.
Zwonimir decides on the spot to verify this, walks across to the short gentleman and asks, ‘Mister Bloomfield?’
Bloomfield just nods, and glances at big Zwonimir who must seem to him like a church steeple.
Then Bloomfield turns back quickly to his secretary.
The porter had woken up and was wearing his cap again. Ignatz hurried past us.
Zwonimir did not forget to give him a clout.
In the bar the music had stopped. The little door was ajar and Neuner and Kanner were standing there.
Frau Jetti Kupfer came out.
‘Bloomfield’s here!’ said she.
‘Yes, Bloomfield,’ I say.
And Zwonimir shouted and danced on one leg, like a lunatic.
‘Bloomfield is here, ah, ah, ah!’
‘Quiet!’ whispered Frau Jetti Kupfer, and laid her plump hand on Zwonimir’s mouth.
Bloomfield’s secretary, with Ignatz and the porter, dragged the two big trunks into the lobby.
Henry Bloomfield sat down in the porter’s armchair and lit a cigarette.
Neuner came out. He was excited and the duelling scars glowed on his face as if they had been painted on in carmine.
Neuner went up to Bloomfield, who remained seated.
‘Good evening,’ said Neuner.
‘How goes it?’ said Bloomfield, not as if it were an enquiry, but a greeting.
He was not a bit interested.
Bloomfield – I could only see his profile – held out a thin and childlike hand to Neuner. It vanished without trace in Neuner’s great paw, like a knick-knack into a steamer trunk.
They were speaking German but it seemed unbecoming to listen in.
Ignatz arrived, talking hard and with a piece of pasteboard in his hand bearing a large black 13. He pinned the board in the middle of the door.
Zwonimir gave Ignatz a couple of slaps on the shoulder. Ignatz did not stir, he did not feel the slaps at all.
Frau Kupfer returned to the bar.
I would gladly have gone in myself for another half hour, but it seemed to me dangerous to let Zwonimir go on drinking.
We took up the lift by ourselves, without Ignatz for the first time.
Hirsch Fisch appeared in his underclothes. He wanted to go down to Bloomfield just as he was.
‘You must get dressed, Herr Fisch!’ say I.
‘How does he look? Has he put on weight?’ he asks.
‘No! He’s still thin!’
‘God, if old Blumenfeld knew all this!’ says Fisch, and turns back.
‘If one could kill Bloomfield,’ said Zwonimir, as he lay undressed.
But I do not reply because I know it is the alcohol speaking.
XIX
The Hotel Savoy seems to me different the next morning.
The excitement has overcome me, just as it has everyone else, and it has opened my eyes to a thousand little changes which I see greatly magnified, as if through a telescope.
It is possible that the chambermaids on the three bottom floors are wearing the same caps as yesterday and the day before, but to me it seems as if their caps and aprons had been freshly starched, as they are before a visit by Kaleguropulos. The floor waiters are wearing fresh green aprons and not a single cigarette butt is to be found on the red carpet of the staircase. It is uncannily clean and one no longer feels at home. One misses well known corners where dust is wont to gather.
A spider’s web in one corner of the afternoon lounge was pleasantly familiar to me. Today my web is missing from its corner. I know that the balustrade on the stairs made my hand dirty, but today it is cleaner than it has ever been, as if it were made of soap.
I believe that the day after Bloomfield’s arrival one could have eaten off the floor. It smells of liquid floor polish, as it used to at home in the Leopoldstadt on the day before Easter.
There is a holiday feeling in the air. It would seem perfectly natural for the bells to ring out.
If someone were suddenly to make me a present, there would be nothing remarkable about it. On days like this one ought to receive a present.
In spite of which, a thin rain was falling outside and the rain was full of coal dust. It was a continuous rain which hung over the world like a curtain. People’s umbrellas bumped together and everyone wore their coat collars turned up. On rainy days like this the town assumes its true appearance. Rain is its uniform. It is a town of rain, a comfortless town. The wooden sidewalks become slippery, the duckboards squelch when one treads on them, like damp leaky soles.
The yellow, sluggish muck in the runnels dissolves and flows sluggishly away. Every raindrop carries a thousand particles of coal dust and these lie on the faces and clothes of the people. This rain could penetrate the thickest clothes. There was a big housecleaning in Heaven and the buckets were being emptied over the earth.
On days like this one is forced to stay in the hotel, sit in the afternoon lounge and look at the people.
The first train from the west arrived at noon and brought three strangers from Germany.
They looked like triplets, they were given one room for the three of them – number 16, I heard – and they could all of them have fitted quite well into one bed, like triplets in a cradle. All three wore raincoats over summer jackets, they were all the same size; they were all the same size and their pointed little potbellies came from the same firm. They all had little black moustaches, small eyes, checked caps with peaks and umbrellas in umbrella cases. It was a wonder they did not mix each other up.
The next train, which came at four in the afternoon, brought a gentleman with a glass eye and a young curly-haired man with knock knees.
And at nine in the evening came two more young gentlemen with thin-soled pointed French shoes. These were men of the latest pattern.
Rooms 17, 18, 19 and 20 on the mezzanine were occupied.
I met Henry Bloomfield at five o’clock tea.
I had Zwonimir, who was chatting with the army doctor, to thank for this. I was sitting beside them, reading a newspaper.
Bloomfield comes into the lounge with his secretary and the army doctor at our table greets him. As he starts to present Zwonimir, Bloomfield says, ‘We’ve met already,’ and shakes hands with us both.
His little childlike hand has a strong grip. It is bony and cool.
The army doctor talks away in a loud voice and expresses interest in conditions in America. Bloomfield says very little. His secretary answers all the questions.
His secretary is a Jew from Prague, Bondy by name. He speaks courteously and answers the army doctor’s silliest questions. They talk about prohibition in America. What can one do in a country such as that?
‘What does one do in America whe
n one is sad – without alcohol?’ asks Zwonimir.
‘One plays the gramophone,’ says Bondy.
So this is Henry Bloomfield.
I had pictured him quite differently. I had thought that Bloomfield would have the face, the clothes, the gestures of a new America. I thought Bloomfield would be ashamed of his name and his birthplace. No, not at all. He talks about his father.
Drinking only harms a drunkard, old Blumenfeld used to say and Henry Bloomfield, his son, still knows the sayings of his old Jewish father.
He has a small, doggy face and big horn-rimmed spectacles. His grey eyes are small but not shifty as small eyes so often are. His are steady and penetrating.
Henry Bloomfield looks at everything carefully, his eyes learn the world by heart. His suit is not of American cut and his thin, small figure is elegant in an old fashioned way. A tall white ruff would have suited his face.
Henry Bloomfield drinks his mocha very quickly and leaves half a cup. He sips it rapidly like a thirsty bird. He breaks a little cake in two and leaves half of it. He has no patience with food, neglects his body and concerns himself with matters of importance.
He thinks in terms of great enterprises, this Henry Bloomfield, old Blumenfeld’s son.
Many people come past and salute Bloomfield. Bondy, his secretary, would always jump up, sharply, as if on an elastic band, but Bloomfield always remained seated. It seemed as if courtesies on Bloomfield’s behalf were also included in Bondy’s secretarial duties.
To some of them he offered his little hand, but to most he just nodded. Then he would stick his thumb in his waistcoat pocket and drum with the other four fingers on his waistcoat.
Sometimes he yawns, but not so as to be noticed. I only observe that his eyes begin to water and his glasses grow cloudy. He polishes them with an enormous handkerchief.
‘Little big’ Henry Bloomfield seemed a very sensible man. The only American thing about him was that he lived in room 13. I do not believe his superstition to be genuine. I have noticed how a lot of sensible people deliberately affect some small eccentricity.
Zwonimir was unusually quiet. He had never been so quiet. I was worried that he might be turning over the possibility of killing Bloomfield.
Suddenly Alexander appears, bows very deeply, doffs his new felt hat. He smiles knowingly at me, so that everyone must gather that these are Alexander’s friends sitting here.
Alexander crosses the room once or twice, as though looking for someone.
In fact he has no one to look for.
‘America, then, is an interesting land,’ said the stupid army doctor, because there had been a pause in the conversation.
And he went on with his old grumble, ‘In this town one rusticates, one’s skull is glued on and the brain dries up.’
‘But not the throat,’ I say.
Bloomfield gave me a grateful look. Not a line on his face showed that he was smiling, just that his eyes bothered to look up over the rims of his spectacles and thus acquired a mischievous expression.
‘Are you strangers here?’ asked Bloomfield, looking at Zwonimir and myself.
It was the first question Bloomfield had asked since arriving.
‘We’re soldiers returning home,’ say I, ‘only stopping here for fun. We want to continue our journey, my friend Zwonimir and I.’
‘You must have been a long while on the way,’ put in the courteous Bondy.
He was a superb secretary. Bloomfield needed only to hint and Bondy at once put Bloomfield’s thoughts into words.
‘We’ve been six months on the road,’ say I, ’and who knows how much longer it will be?’
‘Did you have a bad time as prisoners?’
‘The war was worse,’ says Zwonimir.
Little more is spoken on this day.
The three travellers from Germany come into the lounge, Bloomfield and Bondy excuse themselves and sit down to a table with the triplets.
XX
The triplets’ special line was dealing in fireworks. This I learned from the floor waiter the next day. They were not brothers, but interests in common had made brothers of them.
A number of people arrived from Berlin, Bloomfield’s last stopping place. They followed him.
After two days Christopher Columbus came.
Christopher Columbus was Bloomfield’s barber. He was part of Bloomfield’s luggage and would follow later.
He is a garrulous fellow, German by origin. His father had been an admirer of Christopher Columbus and had thus christened his son. But the son with a famous name became a barber.
He has a good business sense, and good manners. He introduces himself to everyone as Christopher, Columbus Mister Bloomfield’s barber. He speaks good German with the accent of the Rhineland.
Christopher Columbus is tall and slim, with curly fair hair and good-humoured eyes as blue as glass.
He is the only better class barber in this town and in the Hotel Savoy, and because he does not squander his money and because he would otherwise be bored he decides to open a barber’s shop in the hotel, and enlists Bloomfield’s help to obtain permission.
There was in fact a small room empty alongside the porter’s lodge. Pieces of luggage belonging to guests were always lying there waiting for their owners’ departure or, if they were away for a day or two, waiting for their return.
Ignatz told me that Christopher Columbus wanted to set himself up in this room.
He succeeded, for Columbus was an adroit fellow. Thin and slender as he was, he seemed to fit into any old corner. It was generally his fate in life to spot holes and then fill them. Probably this accounted for his becoming Bloomfield’s barber.
People hardly realised that the barber was making a joke of a famous name. Only Ignatz knew it, and the army doctor and Alexander.
Zwonimir asked me, ‘Gabriel, you are an educated man. Did Columbus discover America, or not?’
‘Yes.’
‘And who was Alexander?’
‘Alexander was a Macedonian King and a great explorer.’
‘I see. I see,’ said Zwonimir.
In the evening we come across Alexander in the afternoon lounge.
‘What do you think of this barber Columbus?’ laughed Alexander. ‘Of all things he calls himself Columbus!’
Zwonimir gives me a quick glance and says, ‘It’s not really too bad that a barber calls himself Columbus. But you call yourself Alexander.’
This was a shrewd blow and Alexander says nothing.
From time to time I say, ‘Zwonimir, let’s go on our way.’
But just now Zwonimir does not wish to. Now Bloomfield is here and life grows more interesting day by day. Strangers arrive from Berlin with every train. Merchants, agents, good for nothings. Bloomfield draws everyone. Columbus the barber shaves away busily. The luggage room looks friendly with two big wall mirrors and a marble basin. Columbus is the most skilful barber I have ever seen. In five minutes he has finished. His hairdressing is done by the latest methods, with a long razor. One never hears the snip of scissors in his shop.
God knows where Zwonimir raised the money for us both. Our room bill was high by now. Zwonimir did not think of settling it. Every night before going to sleep he placed his money under his pillow. He was afraid I might steal it.
We lived almost as well as Bloomfield and went to the soup kitchen when we were in the mood. And when we were not we ate in the hotel. And our money never ran out.
Once I said to Zwonimir, ‘I’m packing and going my way on foot. If you don’t want to, then stay here!’
Whereupon Zwonimir cried: real tears.
‘Zwonimir,’ I said, ‘this is my last word. Look at the calendar. Today is Tuesday and a fortnight today we’re on our way.’
‘Certainly,’ says Zwonimir and gives his oath on it, aloud and formally, although I have not asked him to do so.
XXI
On the afternoon of that very day Bondy, the secretary, asked me to come for a moment to
Bloomfield’s room.
Bloomfield needed an additional secretary for the duration of his stay. One had to be able to sort visitors into those who were useful and those who were a nuisance, and to deal with each kind.
Did I know of anyone, asked Bondy.
No, I knew of no one, except Glanz.
But, at this, Bloomfield makes a gesture of dismissal with his hand. The gesture signified that Glanz was not for him.
‘Won’t you take the job?’ says Bloomfield. This was no question. Bloomfield by no means spoke in tones of enquiry, but as though he were talking to himself about matters on which he had often expressed his opinion.
‘Let’s see,’ I said.
‘Well, then, tomorrow in your room, perhaps you could … what is your room number?’
‘703.’
‘Please start tomorrow. You shall have a secretary.’
I take my leave and can feel Bloomfield looking at me as I go.
‘Zwonimir,’ I say, ‘I’m now Bloomfield’s assistant.’
‘America!’ says Zwonimir.
It was my duty to listen to these people, to evaluate them and their projects and to produce written reports for Bloomfield on each day’s visitors.
I made notes on the appearance, position, business and proposals of each visitor and gave a full description. I dictated to a girl with a typewriter and took a lot of trouble.
After the first two days Bloomfield seemed satisfied with my work since, when we met, in the afternoons, he would nod to me very benevolently.
It had been so long since I had last worked that I enjoyed myself. It was an occupation which suited me, since I was left to my own devices and was responsible for all that I reported. I was at pains to report nothing more than was necessary. Even so, from time to time I would deliver a novel.
I worked from ten to four. Every day five or six or more visitors would call.
I knew very well what Bloomfield required of me. He wanted a check on himself. He did not rely on his judgement in every case – also he did not have time to analyse every problem – and he wanted a confirmation of his own observations.
