Grand Hotel

by Vicki Baum

  “I’m so accustomed to you—and another thing, do you know I forgot my razor and now I have to go to the barber every morning.”

  “So I saw,” the telephone replied. “You left it in the bathroom. But, tell you what—buy another. You can get them very cheap at any of the stores. It won’t cost more than being shaved every day, and it won’t be so tiresome for you.”

  “Yes. That’s true. You’re right,” Preysing said gratefully. “Where are the children? I’d like to say good morning to them.”

  The telephone mumbled unintelligible noises from the background and then it called out in a clear voice: “Morning, Pops!”

  “Morning, Pepsy,” Preysing called back joyfully. “How are you?”

  “Very well. How are you?”

  “I’m very well. Is Babs there too?”

  Yes, Babs was there too, and she too asked in her seventeen-year-old voice how he was, and whether it was a fine day and whether Pops was bringing them anything from Berlin, and the crocuses were out and Mulle would not let them play tennis even though it was quite warm and should Schmidt get the place ready. And then Mulle joined in, and then Pepsy, till at last the telephone shouted and laughed with three voices at once, and the telephone girl intervened and Preysing ended the conversation. He stood for a moment in the booth afterwards and, though he could not have put it into words, he felt that he held in his hands the warm sun on a window sill and the blue crocuses.

  He felt in better spirits when he left the booth. There were people who called General Manager Preysing a regular family man and they were not altogether mistaken. Next, he had another call put through and spoke with his bank. He spoke rather feverishly, for it was a question of covering the forty thousand for the reckless and even desperate commission he had given Rothenburger on his own responsibility. During these unpleasant ten minutes the general manager spent in Booth No. 4, Kringelein was walking down the stairs enjoying each step on the raspberry-red carpet that made his downward progress such a splendid and unusual experience, and finally arriving at the hall porter’s desk.

  Once more he had a flower in his buttonhole. It was the one from the evening before and after spending the night in his bedroom tumbler it was still moderately fresh. A white carnation. Kringelein felt that its spicy perfume added the last indispensable touch to his elegance.

  “The gentleman you were asking for yesterday has arrived,” the hall porter announced.

  “Which gentleman?” Kringelein asked in surprise. The hall porter looked in the book. “Preysing, General Manager Preysing of Fredersdorf,” he said and gave Kringelein’s peaked little face a sharp look. Kringelein breathed in so hard that it was almost a sigh.

  “Oh, yes, of course. He’s come? That’s good. Thank you. And where is he?” he asked with blanched lips.

  “In the breakfast room probably.”

  Kringelein walked away and pulled himself forcibly together. He held himself so erect that the small of his back curved in. Good day, Herr Preysing, was what he would say. Having a good breakfast? Yes, I am staying in the Grand Hotel too. Certainly. Have you any objections? Is it not allowed perhaps for a man like me? Oh, no. People like us can live as they please, just like others.

  Immediately afterwards he was thinking. Why this fear of Preysing? He can do nothing to me. I shall be dead very soon. No one can do anything to me. It was the same impish feeling of freedom that he had felt long ago in the Mickenau forest among the wild raspberries. Swelled with courage, he entered the breakfast room. He moved now with a certain confidence in these smart surroundings. He looked for Preysing. It was actually his intention to speak to him. He wanted to settle an account with him. That was precisely why he had come to the Grand Hotel.

  Good morning, Herr Preysing, he would say . . .

  But Preysing was not in the breakfast room. Kringelein strolled along the corridor. He looked into the reading and writing rooms, and sought him at the newspaper stand. He even went so far as to ask pageboy No. 14 where Herr Preysing was to be found. Nobody knew. They all shook their heads. Kringelein was now warmed up. He chafed at these hindrances. Arriving at the threshold of a room he did not yet know, he asked the telephone operator. “Excuse me, do you know Herr Preysing of Fredersdorf?” The man merely nodded. His head was too full of numbers to reply. He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. Kringelein went red, then white. For at that moment Preysing, lost in thought, was coming out of Booth No. 4.

  At once Kringelein collapsed. His neck broke, as it were, at the nape and his head fell forward. His hollowed back relaxed. His toes turned in. His coat collar crept up his neck. His knees gave, and his trousers bagged in wrinkles over his sorry shanks. Within a second the prosperous and distinguished Herr Kringelein turned into the poor insignificant bookkeeper. It was a subordinate who stood there. He had forgotten, apparently, that he had only a few weeks to live and therefore had all the advantage over Herr Preysing, for whom there were still years of tribulation in store. Kringelein, the bookkeeper, stepped to one side and, with his back squeezed against the door of Booth No. 2, bowed and murmured with bowed head just as though he were at the factory, “I wish you good morning, Herr Generaldirektor.”

  “Morning,” said Preysing, and passed on without even seeing him. Kringelein stood there for a full minute, flattened against the wall, tasting the bitterness of his humiliation. He felt his pains, too, suddenly coming back; excruciating pains in that sick and moribund stomach that was secretly preparing the toxins of a lingering death.

  Meanwhile, Preysing went on into the Lobby, where the well-known commercial lawyer, Doctor Zinnowitz, already awaited him.

  •

  For two hours Doctor Zinnowitz and General Manager Preysing sat with their heads bent over papers in a quiet corner of the Winter Garden, which till midday was little frequented. Preysing’s briefcase was emptied of its entire contents, his ashtray was full of cigar ends and the backs of his hands were moist with sweat, as they always were under the stress of exacting business discussions. Doctor Zinnowitz, a short elderly gentleman with the face of a Chinese sorcerer, gave a little cough, as though he were about to make a speech in court, and tapping the bundles of papers in front of him with an authoritative air, spoke as follows:

  “My dear Preysing, it comes down to this, we enter the conference tomorrow at a substantial disadvantage. Our shares are in a bad way, both on paper and in fact.” (Here he tapped the list of quotations in the midday edition of the Berliner Zeitung, which a pageboy had just brought in. It showed a further fall of seven percent in Saxonia shares.) “Our shares are in a bad way and the psychological moment, if I may so express myself, for this critical interview has been ill-chosen. You know yourself, if the Chemnitz people say no tomorrow, it is all over with the amalgamation. The question can never be raised again. And it is very possible that they will say no, as things stand now. I don’t say it is certain, but it is possible. It is even probable.”

  Preysing listened with impatience. He was in a nervous state. The lawyer’s studied phrases irritated him. Zinnowitz always spoke as though he were at a board meeting, even when he was quite alone. When he rested his knuckles on the flimsy wicker table of the Winter Garden it instantly became the fateful green baize-covered table of a boardroom.

  “Should we call it off?” asked Preysing.

  “Calling it off is impossible without causing the worst impression,” observed Zinnowitz. “There is the further question, too, whether putting it off would be a gain or a loss. There are always chances that might be irretrievably lost by a postponement.”

  “What chances?” asked Preysing. He could not free himself of the foolish habit of asking questions he already knew the answers to. Hence any discussion in which he took part always strayed from the point and became something at once pedantic and confused.

  “You know the chances as well as I do,” said Doctor Zinnowitz, and his words sounded like a reproof. “It comes back of course to the situation with regard to the Engl
ish affair. Manchester, Burleigh & Son in Manchester—that in my opinion is the salient point. The Chemnitz Knitwear Company is after the English market for their ready-made goods. Burleigh & Son have this market to a great extent in their pockets. They have large and constant demands for finished cotton goods, but they themselves produce only the yarn, and they are eager to export their yarn to Germany and to import the finished articles in exchange. They have a great interest in coming to terms with the Chemnitz firm. As to why they do not simply go to them direct, that, my dear Preysing, you know as well as I do. The Chemnitz enterprise is not solid enough for these Englishmen. Its capital is too small. They hang back because they think the funding is not sound. It would be another matter if the Saxonia Company were to amalgamate with the Chemnitz firm. Burleigh & Son would then find the situation a promising one. The idea seems to be that, in that case, if you’ll forgive my saying so, your somnolent business would be freshened up and the somewhat too-enterprising Chemnitz firm would be sobered down. It comes to this, then, that Burleigh & Son are interested in the Saxonia Company only if it is amalgamated with the Chemnitz Company, and the latter will only amalgamate if you have the deal with Burleigh & Son and thus the English market, in your pocket. Nothing can be done till the agreement between you and the other side is completed. If I may give you my frank opinion, the negotiations must have been very incompetently conducted, otherwise we could not have got into such a blind alley. Who has been negotiating with Manchester?”

  “My father-in-law,” Preysing replied quickly. That wasn’t true, and Zinnowitz knew it wasn’t true, for he was pretty well informed about the struggle for power in the Saxonia Cotton Company. He swept his hand over the table as though brushing Preysing’s reply aside.

  “I have been,” he went on, “keeping an eye on the enemy’s position in the meantime” (he liked to bring in the military expressions which he had learned as a captain in the reserve), “and I can tell you exactly how they feel about it. Schweimann has dropped any idea of amalgamation and Gerstenkorn has begun to waver. Why? The S.J.R. Group is putting out feelers to ascertain whether the Chemnitz people can be bought out—not amalgamated, but bought outright. Of course, Schweimann and Gerstenkorn would stay on as directors and be given salaried posts in addition, whereas now they are saddled with all the risks. On the other hand, if the affair with Burleigh’s were in black and white, then—such at least is my humble opinion—they would turn down the offer from S.J.R. and amalgamate with you. That’s their position. But what yours is with Manchester, there I am not quite so clear. I had a somewhat guarded letter from your father-in-law—”

  Once again, Preysing interrupted the lawyer’s clear exposition with a stupid question. “Is this offer from S.J.R. definite or only talk? How much have they offered?” he asked.

  “That is beside the point,” said Zinnowitz, who did not know. Preysing pushed out his underlip and his cigar with it. It was not at all beside the point, he thought. But he could not quite explain why.

  “The situation with Burleigh’s isn’t exactly bad,” he said hesitantly.

  “Not exactly good either, it seems to me,” the lawyer replied promptly.

  Preysing stretched a hand towards his portfolio, drew it back and then finally took hold of it. Taking the cigar out of his mouth, its end chewed to pieces, he at last, on the third attempt, pulled out a blue folder with filed letters and copies of the replies.

  “Here is the ongoing correspondence with Manchester,” he said quickly and held out the file of letters. He had no sooner done so than he regretted it. The backs of his hands were once more in a sweat. He began to play with a ring on his finger, a habit he had, but it got him nowhere. “In the strictest confidence, please remember,” he requested urgently. Zinnowitz replied only with a side glance as he read the letters. Preysing was silent. A gentle clatter could now be heard from the large dining room where the tables were being set. There was a savory smell in the air, as there is in every hotel all over the world just before lunch, a smell that makes you hungry before the meal and that is intolerable afterwards. Preysing was hungry. He gave a fleeting thought to Mulle at home. She would just be sitting down to lunch with the children.

  “Yes—” said Doctor Zinnowitz as he put the letters aside and looked thoughtfully and also absentmindedly at the bridge of Preysing’s nose.

  “Yes?” asked Preysing.

  “And now,” said Doctor Zinnowitz, continuing after a moment’s silence with his pronouncement, “I come back once more to the starting point. The negotiations with Burleigh & Son are still going on. Consequently we still have this trump card to play in our efforts to bring pressure on the Chemnitz people. If we postpone a meeting with them and Burleigh refuses to come to terms, as seems very possible from their last letter of February 27th, then we hold this trump card no longer. Then we shall have no cards to play whatsoever. We shall fall between two stools, instead of sitting on both of them.”

  A dark red flush suddenly sprang to Preysing’s wrinkled forehead; it became suffused with blood and his veins swelled. From time to time he had such crises of anger, of flushing and irascible vehemence.

  “All this talk makes no sense. We simply must have the amalgamation, and that’s that,” he shouted and brought his fist down on the table.

  Doctor Zinnowitz said nothing for a moment.

  “I imagine the Saxonia Company won’t go bankrupt, even failing the amalgamation,” he said.

  “No, certainly not. There is no question of bankruptcy,” Preysing said heatedly. “But we would have to retrench. We would have to pay off some of the employees in the spinning mills. We would have— but what’s the good of talking? I have got to put the amalgamation through. That’s what I’m here for. I have to put it through, and that’s that. It’s not only—there are other reasons. There is the question of the effect on the management of the business. You understand what I mean. After all, it is I who have made the factory. It is all my organization. That being so, I want to have the credit for it. The old man is getting on. And I don’t hit it off with my young brother-in-law. I tell you that quite frankly. You know him, of course—well, we don’t hit it off. He has brought newfangled ideas with him from Lyons that don’t fit in with my notions of doing business. I am not for bluff. I don’t care for sharp practices. I make my decisions on a solid basis. I don’t build houses of cards. As long as I am here I intend to be reckoned with—”

  Doctor Zinnowitz looked with keen interest at the hot-tempered general manager, who was beginning to talk irresponsibly. “You are well known in the trade as a model of business propriety,” he remarked politely, and there was a hint of patronage in the tone of his voice. Preysing broke off. He took the blue folder and stuffed it back into his briefcase with trembling hands.

  “We agree, then,” said Zinnowitz. “The conference will take place tomorrow and we will do all in our power to get the draft agreement signed. If only I knew—”

  “Listen,” he continued after a moment’s silent reflection. “Will you allow me to take one or two of the letters away with me? Some of the more promising ones, you understand, dating from the earlier stages of the negotiations? I am seeing Schweimann and Gerstenkorn this afternoon. It would do no harm if—of course, I wouldn’t show them the whole correspondence, only some of it—”

  “Impossible,” said Preysing. “We have promised Burleigh & Son to regard the matter as strictly confidential.”

  Zinnowitz smiled at this. “But it’s already common knowledge in any case,” he said. “However, as you think best. It is your responsibility. Now is the time to show your mettle. Everything might turn on skillful negotiations with the Manchester people. It is the one issue on which we stand a chance of straightening out this somewhat involved affair with the Chemnitz firm. The thing would be to let one or two of the letters fall into Schweimann’s hands, quite casually, quite by accident. A selection, needless to say. A few copies. But—as you please. It is your responsibility.”


  Once more Preysing was faced with a responsibility. The advance of forty thousand for Rothenburger’s purchase of shares still weighed heavily on him. He had a twinge of heartburn caused by nervous agitation, and his temples throbbed feverishly.

  “I don’t like it. It’s dishonest,” he said. “The negotiations with Chemnitz began long before the affair with Burleigh’s, nor was there a word said about it between us and Gerstenkorn. Now suddenly everything is made to turn on it. If the Chemnitz people are willing to accept us only as an appendage of the deal with England—and that is what it looks like—we are not going to the length of letting them look through our correspondence. I wouldn’t hear of it—”

  As stubborn as a mule, thought Doctor Zinnowitz, and he snapped the lock on his briefcase. “As you please,” he said, tight-lipped, and got up to go.

  Suddenly Preysing gave in.

  “Have you anyone who could make copies of a few of the letters? I might let you have a few carbon copies. The original letters must on no account pass out of my hands,” he said in a loud and imperative voice as though he had to shout someone down. “It would have to be somebody whose discretion could be relied upon. I have some notes to dictate too, that I shall need for the conference. I don’t care to employ the typists supplied by the hotel. You always have the feeling that they give away business secrets to the hall porter. It would have to be right after lunch.”

  “No one in my office would have time, I am afraid,” Zinnowitz said coolly and rather surprised. “We have several big cases currently, and they have been working overtime in the office for weeks past. But wait a bit—you could have Flämmchen. Flämmchen would do. I’ll have them call her.”

  “Who—did you say?” asked Preysing, on whom the name made an unpleasant impression.

  “Flämmchen. Flamm the Second. Sister of Flamm the First. You know her, don’t you? She’s been with me for twenty years. Flamm the Second often helps us out when we have more typing on hand than the office can manage. I have taken her with me when I have had to go away on business and Flamm the First could not be spared. She is very quick and intelligent. I should have to have the copies by five o’clock. Then I’ll manage it quite unofficially, as I am having dinner with the Chemnitz gentlemen. Flämmchen can bring the copies direct to the office. I’ll telephone at once to Flamm the First to tell her to send her sister here. What time have you engaged the conference room for tomorrow?”