by Stefan Zweig
In this awkward situation, the idea of consulting our old business records occurred to me, to look up former customers from whom I might be able to get a few items if they happened to have duplicates. A list of old customers is always something of a graveyard, especially in times like the present, and it did not really tell me much: most of those who had bought from us in the past had long ago had to get rid of their possessions in auction sales, or had died, and I could not hope for much from the few who remained. But then I suddenly came upon a bundle of letters from a man who was probably our oldest customer, and who had surfaced from my memory only because after 1914 and the outbreak of the World War, he had never turned to us with any orders or queries again. The correspondence—and I really am not exaggerating!—went back over almost sixty years; he had bought from my father and my grandfather, yet I could not remember him ever coming into our premises in the thirty-seven years of my personal involvement with the family business. Everything suggested that he must have been a strange, old-fashioned oddity, one of that lost generation of Germans shown in the paintings and graphic art of such artists as Menzel and Spitzweg, who survived here and there as rare phenomena in little provincial towns until just before our own times. His letters were pure calligraphy, neatly written, the items he was ordering underlined in red ink, with a ruler, and he always wrote out the sum of money involved in words as well as figures, so that there could be no mistake. That, as well as his exclusive use of blank flyleaves from books as writing paper and old, reused envelopes, indicated the petty mind and fanatical thrift of a hopeless provincial. These remarkable documents were signed not only with his name but with the elaborate title: Forestry and Economic Councillor, retd; Lieutenant, retd; Holder of the Iron Cross First Class. Being a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, he must therefore, if still alive, be at least eighty. However, as a collector of old examples of graphic art this ridiculously thrifty oddity showed unusual acumen, wide knowledge and excellent taste. As I slowly put together his orders from us over almost sixty years, the first of them still paid for in silver groschen, I realized that in the days when you could still buy a stack of the finest German woodcuts for a taler, this little provincial must have been assembling a collection of engravings that would probably show to great advantage beside those so loudly praised by the nouveaux riches. For what he had bought from us alone in orders costing him a few marks and pfennigs represented astonishing value today, and in addition it could be expected that his purchases at auction sales had been acquired equally inexpensively.
Although we had had no further orders from him since 1914, I was too familiar with all that went on in the art trade to have missed noticing the auction or private sale of such a collection. In that case, our unusual customer must either be still alive, or the collection was in the hands of his heirs.
The case interested me, and on the next day, that’s to say yesterday evening, I set off for one of the most provincial towns in Saxony; and as I strolled along the main street from the station it seemed to me impossible that here, in the middle of these undistinguished little houses with their tasteless contents, a man could live who owned some of the finest prints of Rembrandt’s etchings, as well as engravings by Dürer and Mantegna in such a perfectly complete state. To my surprise, however, when I asked at the post office if a forestry or economic councillor of his name lived here, I discovered that the old gentleman really was still alive, and in the middle of the morning I set off on my way to him—with my heart, I confess, beating rather faster.
I had no difficulty in finding his apartment. It was on the second floor of one of those cheaply built provincial buildings that might have been hastily constructed by some builder on spec in the 1860s. A master tailor lived on the first floor, to the left on the second floor I saw the shiny nameplate of a civil servant in the post office, and on the right, at last, a porcelain panel bearing the name of the Forestry and Economic Councillor. When I tentatively rang the bell, a very old white-haired woman wearing a clean little black cap immediately answered it. I gave her my card and asked if I might speak to the Forestry Councillor. Surprised, and with a touch of suspicion, she looked first at me and then at the card; a visitor from the outside world seemed to be an unusual event in this little town at the back of beyond and this old-fashioned building. But she asked me in friendly tones to wait, took my card and went into the room beyond the front door; I heard her whispering quietly, and then, suddenly, a loud male voice. “Oh, Herr R. from Berlin, from the great antiques dealers there… bring him in, bring him in, I’ll be very glad to meet him!” And the little old lady came tripping out to me again and asked me into the living room.
I took off my coat and followed her. In the middle of the modest little room an old but still-vigorous man stood erect. He had a bushy moustache and wore a frogged, semi-military casual jacket, and he was holding out both hands in heartfelt welcome. But this gesture, unmistakably one of happy and spontaneous greeting, contrasted with a curious rigidity in the way he held himself. He did not come a step closer to me, and I was obliged—feeling slightly alienated—to approach him myself in order to take his hand. As I was about to grasp it, however, the way he held both hands out horizontally, not moving them, told me that they were not searching for my own but expecting mine to find them. And the next moment I understood it all: this man was blind.
Even from my childhood I had always been uncomfortable facing someone blind; I was never able to fend off a certain shame and embarrassment in sensing that the blind person was entirely alive and knowing, at the same time, that he did not experience our meeting in the same way as I did. Now, yet again, I had to overcome my initial shock at seeing those dead eyes, staring fixedly into space under bushy white brows. However, the blind man himself did not leave me feeling awkward for long; as soon as my hand touched his he shook it powerfully, and repeated his welcome with strong and pleasingly heartfelt emotion. “A rare visitor,” he said, smiling broadly at me, “really, it’s a miracle, one of the great Berlin antiques dealers making his way to our little town… however, it behoves us to be careful when one of those gentlemen boards the train. Where I come from, we always say: keep your gates and your purses closed when the gypsies are in town… yes, yes, I can guess why you seek me out… business is going badly these days in our poor country; now that our unhappy land of Germany’s come down in the world, there are no buyers left, so the great gentlemen of the art world think of their old customers and go in search of those little lambs. But I’m afraid you won’t have much luck here, we poor old retired folk are glad if we can put a meal on the table. We can’t match the crazy prices you ask these days… the likes of us are finished with all that for ever.”
I told him at once that he had misunderstood me; I had not come to sell him anything, I just happened to be in this neighbourhood, and didn’t want to miss my chance of calling on him, as a customer of our house over many years, and paying my respects to one of the greatest collectors in Germany. As soon as I said, “one of the greatest collectors in Germany”, a remarkable change came over the old man’s face. He was still standing upright and rigid in the middle of the room, but now there was an expression of sudden brightness and deep pride in his attitude. He turned towards the place where he thought his wife was, as if to say, “Did you hear that?” and his voice as he then turned to me was full of delight, with not a trace of the brusque, military tone in which he had spoken just now; instead it was soft, positively tender.
“That’s really very, very good of you… and you will find you have not come here in vain. You shall see something that can’t be seen every day, even in the grandeur of Berlin… a few pieces as fine as any in the Albertina in Vienna or in that damn city of Paris… yes, if a man collects for sixty years he comes upon all kinds of things that aren’t to be found on every street corner. Luise, give me the key to the cupboard, please!”
But now something unexpected happened. The little old lady standing beside him, listening courteously and wi
th smiling, quietly attentive friendliness to our conversation, suddenly raised both hands to me in an imploring gesture, at the same time shaking her head vigorously, a sign that at first I failed to understand.
Only then did she go over to her husband and lightly laid both hands on his shoulder. “Oh, Herwarth,” she admonished him, “you haven’t even asked the gentleman if he has time to spare to look at your collection. It’s nearly lunchtime, and after lunch you must rest for an hour, you know the doctor expressly said so. Wouldn’t it be better to show our visitor your things after lunch, and Annemarie will be here as well then, she understands it all much better than I do, she can help you!”
And once again, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she repeated that urgently pleading gesture as if over her husband’s head, leaving him unaware of it. Now I understood her. I could tell that she wanted me to decline an immediate viewing, and I quickly invented a lunch engagement. It would be a pleasure and an honour to be allowed to see his collection, I said, but it wouldn’t be possible for me to do so before three in the afternoon. Then, however, I would happily come back here.
Cross as a child whose favourite toy has been taken away, the old man made a petulant gesture. “Oh, of course,” he grumbled, “those Berlin gentlemen never have time for anything. But today you’ll have to find the time, because it’s not just three or five good pieces I have, there are twenty-seven portfolios, one for each master of the graphic arts, and all of them full. So come back at three, but mind you’re punctual or we’ll never get through the whole collection.”
Once again he put out his hand into the air, in my direction. “I warn you, you may like it, or you may be jealous. And the more jealous you are the better I’ll be pleased. That’s collectors for you: we want it all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else!” And once again he shook my hand vigorously.
The little old lady accompanied me to the door. I had noticed a certain discomfort in her all this time, an expression of anxious embarrassment. But now, just before we reached the way out, she stammered in a low voice, “Could you… could you… could my daughter Annemarie join you before you come back to us? That would be better for… for various reasons… I expect you are lunching at the hotel?”
“Certainly, and I will be delighted to meet your daughter first. It will be a pleasure,” I said.
And sure enough, an hour later when I had just finished my lunch in the little restaurant of the hotel on the market square, a lady not in her first youth, simply dressed, came in and looked enquiringly around. I went up to her, introduced myself and said I was ready to set out with her at once to see the collection. However, with a sudden blush and the same confused embarrassment that her mother had shown, she asked if she could have a few words with me first. I saw at once that this was difficult for her. Whenever she was bringing herself to say something, that restless blush rose in her face, and her hand fidgeted with her dress. At last she began, hesitantly, overcome by confusion again and again.
“My mother has sent me to see you… she told me all about it, and… and we have a request to make. You see, we would like to inform you, before you go back to see my father… of course Father will want to show you his collection, and the collection… the collection, well, it isn’t entirely complete any more… there are several items missing… indeed, I’m afraid quite a number are missing…”
She had to catch her breath again, and then she suddenly looked at me and said, hastily: “I must speak to you perfectly frankly… you know what these times are like, I’m sure you’ll understand. After the outbreak of war Father went blind. His vision had been disturbed quite often before, but then all the agitation robbed him of his eyesight entirely. You see, even though he was seventy-six at the time he wanted to go to France with the army, and when the army didn’t advance at once, as it had in 1870, he was dreadfully upset, and his sight went downhill at terrifying speed. Otherwise he’s still hale and hearty: until recently he could walk for hours and even go hunting, his favourite sport. But now he can’t take long walks, and the only pleasure he has left is his collection. He looks at it every day… that’s to say, he can’t see it, he can’t see anything now, but he gets all the portfolios out so that he can at least touch the items in them, one by one, always in the same order; he’s known their order by heart for decades. Nothing else interests him these days, and I always have to read the accounts of all the auction sales in the newspaper to him. The higher the prices he hears about the happier he is, because… this is the worst of it, Father doesn’t understand about prices nowadays… he doesn’t know that we’ve lost everything, and his pension will keep us for only two days in the month… in addition, my sister’s husband fell in the war, leaving her with four small children. But Father has no idea of the material difficulties we’re in. At first we saved hard, even more than before, but that didn’t help. Then we began selling things—we didn’t touch his beloved collection, of course, we sold the little jewellery we had, but dear God, what did that amount to? After all, for sixty years Father had spent every pfennig he could spare on his prints alone. And one day there was nothing for us to sell, we didn’t know what to do, and then… then Mother and I sold one of the prints. Father would never have allowed it, after all, he doesn’t know how badly off we are, how hard it is to buy a little food on the black market, he doesn’t even know that we lost the war, and Alsace and Lorraine are part of France now, we don’t read those things to him when they appear in the paper, so that he won’t get upset.
“It was a very valuable item that we sold, a Rembrandt etching. The dealer offered us many, many thousands of marks for it, and we hoped that would provide for us for years. But you know how money melts away these days… we had deposited most of it in the bank, but two months later it was all gone. So we had to sell another work, and then another, and the dealer was always so late sending the money that it was already devalued when it arrived. Then we tried auctions, but there too we were cheated, although the prices were in millions… by the time the millions reached us they were nothing but worthless paper. And so gradually the best of his collection left us, except for a few good items, just so that we could lead the most frugal of lives, and Father has no idea of it.
“That’s why my mother was so alarmed when you came today—because if he opens the portfolios and shows them to you, it will all come out… you see, we put reprints or similar sheets of paper in the old mounts instead of the prints we had sold, so that he wouldn’t notice when he touched them. If he can only touch them and enumerate them (he remembers their order of arrangement perfectly), he feels just the same joy as when he could see them in the past with his own eyes. There’s no one else in this town whom Father would think worthy of seeing his treasures… and he loves every single print so fanatically that I think his heart would break if he guessed that they all passed out of his hands long ago. You are the first he has invited to see them in all these years, since the death of the former head of the engravings department in the Dresden gallery—he meant to show his portfolios to him. So I beg you…”
And suddenly the ageing woman raised her hands, and tears gleamed in her eyes.
“…We beg you… don’t make him unhappy… don’t make us all unhappy… don’t destroy his last illusion, help us to make him believe that all the prints he will describe to you are still there… he wouldn’t survive it if he only suspected. Maybe we have done him an injustice, but we couldn’t help it. One must live, and human lives, the lives of four orphaned children as well as my sister, are surely worth more than sheets of printed paper. To this day, what we did hasn’t taken any of his pleasure from him; he is happy to be able to leaf through his portfolios for three hours every afternoon, talking to every print as if it were a human being. And today… today would perhaps be the happiest day of his life; he’s been waiting years for a chance to show a connoisseur his darlings. Please… I beg and pray you, please don’t destroy his happiness!”
My account of her plea can
not express the deep distress with which she told me all this. My God—as a dealer I have seen many such people despicably robbed, infamously deceived by the inflation, people who were persuaded to part with their most precious family heirlooms for the price of a sandwich—but here Fate added a touch of its own, one that particularly moved me. Of course I promised her to keep the secret and do my best.
So we went back to the apartment together—on the way, still full of my bitter feelings, I heard about the trifling amounts that these poor women, who knew nothing of the subject, had been paid, but that only confirmed me in my decision to help them as well as I could. We went up the stairs, and as soon as we opened the door we heard the old man’s cheerfully hearty voice from the living room. “Come in, come in!” With a blind man’s keen hearing, he must have heard our footsteps as we climbed the stairs.
“Herwarth hasn’t been able to sleep at all, he is so impatient to show you his treasures,” said the little old lady, smiling. A single glance at her daughter had already set her mind at rest: I would not give them away. Piles of portfolios were arranged on the table, waiting for us, and as soon as the blind man felt my hand he took my arm, without further greeting, and pressed me down into an armchair.
“There, now let’s begin at once—there’s a great deal to see, and I know you gentlemen from Berlin never have much time. The first portfolio is devoted to that great master Dürer and, as you’ll see for yourself, pretty well complete—each of my prints finer than the last. Well, you can judge for yourself, look at this one!” he said, opening the portfolio at the first sheet it contained. “There—the Great Horse!”
