by Leo Perutz
"You can afford to take it easy for another few days," Lola told him. "You needn't go back to work till the fifteenth, Father says."
"Back to the office and bang away at a typewriter?" Vit¬torin exclaimed. "I wouldn't dream of it. A hundred and eighty kronen a month, maybe two hundred next year if I'm lucky — you call that good money? I'd make more playing the violin in a cinema. Have you any idea how much people are earning these days?"
Lola perched on the edge of his bed.
"Listen, Georg," she said. "I meant to tell you this yesterday, but I hardly saw you. That cinema idea - you can't be serious. It's no kind of a job for people like us. I could sing for a living myself- my voice is good enough for a suburban music hall - and maybe I will, too. I'd sooner do that than marry Ebenseder." Her face darkened. "There was another row this morning, Georg. Father got terribly worked up - he's been so worried and irritable lately. I think they want to pension him off, you see, and he's only done seventeen years. It's awfully unfair, but don't let him know I've told you. He doesn't want it mentioned."
Herr Vit¬torin had been completely unbalanced by the nation's defeat, the collapse of the army, the overthrow of the monarchy and the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Unable to come to terms with the way things were going, he had become dogmatic, argumentative, and convinced that everyone was persecuting him. Devoid of legal training and incapable of grasping the nature of complex fiscal regulations, he had committed numerous blunders and applied incorrect scales of charges when working out the tax demands for which his department was responsible. When hauled over the coals, he had jumped to the conclusion that he was the victim of political intrigue and defended himself in a manner that only aggravated his position: he submitted a memorandum to higher authority in which he heaped his immediate superior with grave accusations. He not only called the man a schemer, an incompetent ignoramus, and an embezzler of government funds, but charged him with corruption, moral turpitude, and conduct unworthy of a public servant. The authorities promptly launched an inquiry which found that these charges were wholly unjustified. Herr Vit¬torin was urged to take early retirement, but insisted that he had no grounds for so doing. "I shall fight to the bitter end. What's right is right and nothing can change it."
Accordingly, he was suspended from duty and the final decision on his case referred to a disciplinary tribunal. At home he strove to maintain the pretence that nothing untoward had happened. He continued to leave home at nine each morning, complete with briefcase, and returned on the stroke of half-past three. The intervening hours he spent in small, secluded coffee houses, where he read the newspapers and adorned any passages that aroused his displeasure with exclamation and interrogation marks in blue pencil. Having read the papers from end to end, he engaged in muttered soliloquies or drafted interminable pleas for submission to the disciplinary tribunal.
"Pension Father off?" said Vit¬torin. "Ridiculous, Lola, you're always looking on the dark side. How old is he? Only fifty-four last summer, right? Anyway, what was this row about?"
"Oh, Ebenseder, as usual. Father shouted at me, didn't you hear? 'It's outrageous, the way you treat that man - I don't know what you think you're playing at! It's a miracle he still sets foot in this house. A decent, dependable, respectable man like that, and you don't appreciate him! That's the way you've always been: silly and inconsiderate and vain and irresponsible. You just can't go on like this!' I burst into tears and ran out of the room - my eyes are all puffy, can't you see? I do feel so sorry for Father all the same. When you came home, Georg, I thought at least you would back me up . . ."
"You'll have to be patient, Lola," Vit¬torin said, looking harassed. "Of course you can count on me. Herr Ebenseder isn't my cup of tea either, but you know I've got to go. I won't be so preoccupied when I get back, which will probably be in four or five weeks' time. I'll go to Father and have it out with him. 'Lola wants nothing to do with Herr Ebenseder,' I'll say. 'Either he stops coming here or we both move out, Lola and I.' And if he refuses to give way ..."
Lola smiled. "You mean well, Georg, I know, but the situation isn't as simple as you think. We can't just walk out on Father, not now. That wasn't what I meant to talk about, though - I don't know how I got on to the subject. I had something quite different to tell you. The night before last, when I was sitting alone in the living-room and thinking of going to bed, someone knocked at the door. It was Herr Bamberger, our lodger. He wondered if I could spare him a minute. Of course, I told him. Well, the long and the short of it is, he's heard that you're fluent in French and Italian, and that you know all about customs regulations and the freight business, and he thinks you may be just the man he's looking for."
"Who told him I speak French and Italian? It strikes me as odd that he should be so well-informed about me — I've hardly exchanged a word with the man. Do you know him well?"
"I see him now and again, of course, because I clean his room. Herr Bamberger is a nice, quiet, retiring person. He seems to have taken a great shine to Vally - she chats to him sometimes. Perhaps it was she who told him about you."
"All right, go on. Where do I come in?"
"He has a lot of commercial dealings with foreigners -Italians and people from the Balkans. Up to now he's had to transact all his business in coffee-houses, but he'll have his own office from the first of next month. He's very keen to have a private word with you. He'd get plenty of applicants, of course, but in your case he knows who you are. He couldn't pay you much to start with, he says, because his own resources are very modest, but he's sure he'll make a success of things, and later on he'll offer you a partnership."
"Ah, I knew there'd be a catch! He wants me to work my fingers to the bone but he doesn't want to pay me anything. It's always the same old story: promises come cheap. How naive you are, Lola!"
"All the same, George, you ought to have a word with him some time. I'm not trying to talk you into it, of course — these things are a closed book to me — but if you're really set on giving up your job . . . Herr Bamberger makes a good impression, believe me. He looks like a man who knows exactly what he wants."
"Good heavens, it's gone eleven, I must dash! All right, I'll give your Herr Bamberger the once-over, but I'm pinning no hopes on him and I don't fall for empty promises. Human beings are unscrupulous swine, all of them, I know that now. One lives and learns, Lola dear, one lives and learns."
They were sitting side by side in a window alcove in the Dom-café. Franzi, who had finished her lunch, asked for a cigarette. Vit¬torin opened his case and held it out.
"I've still got a few Russian left - help yourself. They're the ones with the mouthpiece. Go on, take one. It's Crimean tobacco. In Siberia we also smoked Chinese tobacco. There was a very high-grade, expensive kind with an unusual aroma, but that was unobtainable. I only knew one man who smoked it."
Vit¬torin fell silent. He endeavoured to hold his cigarette in a special way, clamped between his ring finger and the tip of his little finger, but he couldn't do it properly and gave up.
"I must be back in the office by one," Franzi said, "but I've got a lot to tell you first. Do you know the latest? That young man from Agram got in touch again!"
Vit¬torin was drifting away from her, she could tell. She was no longer at the centre of his thoughts, she sensed that more and more distinctly every day and was frightened of losing him for good. Vaguely aware that some strange, hostile force was luring him away, she was determined not to give him up without a fight. Hoping to hold him and rekindle his waning love, she had boasted of imaginary flirtations and pretended that various men were ardently pursuing her. One of her most successful inventions, and the one she employed most often, was a Croatian medical student who tried to woo her in Viennese dialect. He had almost become flesh and blood, and she made him show up in Vienna as often as required. In addition to the Croatian student there was a sentimental giant, a courier from the Swedish Legation who sang superbly to the guitar, and a shameless young bar
on who wanted to install Franzi in an apartment and take her travelling with him.
"The young man from Agram?" Vit¬torin said absently. "The medical student, you mean? Is he back in Vienna?"
"Yes, just imagine, he called me at the office two days ago, even though I'd already forbidden him to do so twice - I told you, remember? I don't like being rung up by all and sundry, my boss might disapprove. Anyway, I said to myself, just wait, you Croatian pest, today you're going to get a flea in your ear, but he was so nice and amusing on the phone I hadn't the heart. 'Hello there, sweetheart,' he said, 'I can't wait to see you again. How are you, and how's that old scoundrel of a boss of yours?' He's terribly familiar on the phone, you see, because he knows I can't really tell him off."
Franzi paused for a moment. She searched Vit¬torin's face but failed to find what she sought. He was listening with an air of complete indifference.
"Well," she went on, "now for a little fun, I thought to myself, so I asked him, all innocent, 'Are you staying here long, Herr Milosh? Will you still be in Vienna on the first of December?' I haven't told you this, but my parents are planning a week-end trip to the country at the end of the month -you know, to visit my uncle, the one with the farm at Gloggnitz - and they're looking forward to it immensely. They leave on Saturday and they won't be back till Monday. I'm giving our old maidservant the day off and sending her home to her family, which means I'll have the apartment all to myself. I didn't say that to the young man from Agram -naturally not, because he might have got the wrong idea. And now comes the worst part. Guess what the fellow said?"
"Well?"
"He laughed and said, 'Of course I'll still be in Vienna on the first of December, sweetheart, why do you ask? Will you be all on your lonesome, by any chance? That would be terrific - I could pay you a visit.' Well, I was flabbergasted to think he'd figured it out so quickly. And then it occurred to me how nice it would be if you could spend the Sunday with me, Georg. You could simply tell your family you were going away for the day, and if the young man from Agram rang the bell you could go to the door and ask what he wanted, and he'd have to clear off. Wouldn't that be a laugh?"
Vit¬torin, looking at her, detected a timid plea and an unspoken promise in her eyes.
"We'd be together for a whole day, all by ourselves," she said softly. "We've never been that lucky before, Georg."
He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him. She didn't resist, and for a while they sat snuggled up together.
"Of course I'll come," he whispered, "-that's definite. You've no idea how much I'll look forward to it."
"Ssh, Georg, the waiter's looking. So it's settled, then. You'll keep the day free?"
"It's a date. By the way, Franzi, have you heard from your Baron again?"
Franzi brushed the Baron aside with a dismissive gesture; she didn't need him any more.
"Oh, him," she said. "Yes, he wrote to me, but I sent his letter back — unopened, of course. I know perfectly well what he's after. Goodness, I must get a move on, the boss will be grumbling already. What about you, though? You haven't told me a thing. Are you going back to your old job?"
Impatiently, Vit¬torin stubbed out the remains of his cigarette in the ashtray.
"Back to the old routine?" he said. "No fear! You don't think I want to sit behind a typewriter from morning to night for a hundred and eighty kronen a month, do you? That's all over — I'm worth more than that. I'm not going back at all. They can think what they like, they've seen the last of me."
Franzi shook her head.
"Surely you won't just fail to turn up, Georg? That would be crazy of you. You'll get three months' salary if you give them proper notice — it's standard practice in all big firms these days. Three months, let's see . . . You'd be making them a present of over five hundred kronen. Very generous of you, I must say!"
He stared at her, nonplussed. That way of acquiring the money he needed had never occurred to him.
"You're absolutely right, of course," he said. "Five hundred and forty kronen aren't to be sneezed at. Yes, you're right, I won't pass up the money - I'll go and see them today."
Some rapid mental arithmetic told him that half the sum in question would get him to the Russian border. Vienna-Radkersburg-Belgrade-Bucharest-Galatz, and from Galatz across the frontier to Tiraspol. It made sense.
He rose.
"You're absolutely right," he repeated. "I'd better call them right away and ask if the managing director's still there. Where's the phone?"
"Over in the billiard room, third door on the right," Franzi told him. "Hold on, I'll come with you - I can just spare another two or three minutes."
Once inside the phone booth she let him kiss her and kissed him back while billiard balls clicked and dominoes clattered and waiters bustled from table to table with midday editions still inky from the press. Then she stood there for a moment, smiling happily as if her kiss had permanently vanquished the dark, alien, mysterious force that aspired to deprive her of her beloved.
"Mundus Incorporated, International Forwarding and Warehousing Agents for Danubian and Overseas Freight" was housed in an unlovely building with dismal little windows and mortar and plaster flaking off its dirty grey walls. It had always looked that way, the management never having set any store by outward appearances. Although nothing had changed, Vit¬torin felt like a stranger as he entered the premises from which he had last emerged at the outbreak of war, a youthful figure attired in the uniform of an officer cadet.
A strange porter sleepily reached for his cap. Coke was being loaded in the yard. On the stairs and in the gas-lit corridors Vit¬torin passed young men with unfamiliar faces. One of them stopped him and politely inquired which department he wanted - Reception was on the second floor. He mumbled an inaudible reply and walked on.
At last he saw a face he knew: that of the managing director's old clerk, who might have been mistaken for a retired judge when playing billiards after office hours in the little coffeehouse across the street. He greeted Vit¬torin like a friend from happier times.
"Why, if it isn't Herr Vit¬torin! What a nice surprise! So you're back already. How long has it been? Let me see, you joined up in 'fifteen - no, 'fourteen, just after the ultimatum. Who would have thought it would end this way? Tragic, really tragic. All those youngsters gone, and for what, I ask you? Still, it's a real pleasure to see you again, Herr Vit¬torin. If you'd come next week you wouldn't have found me here. I'm retiring - yes indeed, retiring after forty years with the firm."
"I expect you're quite glad to be retiring after forty years," said Vit¬torin. "Will you be staying in Vienna?"
"Glad?" the old man replied, continuing to sort and tidy the files on his little desk. "Yes and no. The place just isn't what it was. Nothing but new people and new faces — doctors of law wherever you look, and I can't get all their names into my head. As for staying in Vienna, not me-not with this inflation. I've got no children, so there's nothing to keep me here. I'm going to my wife's relatives in Vorarlberg. You get more for your money in the country. I've got a bit put by — enough for a cottage and maybe a patch of garden as well. Another week, and then it's goodbye to Vienna."
Vit¬torin inquired if the managing director was free. The old clerk shook both his hands again with a touch of emotion before padding off silently into the inner sanctum to announce him.
The managing director gave Vit¬torin a kindly, cordial reception. He congratulated him on his safe return "post tot discrimina rerum", as he eruditely phrased it, and expressed satisfaction that the firm should have regained the services of such a valued employee. Vit¬torin was given no time to reply. They must bestir themselves, said the managing director. Diligence was the order of the day. There was plenty of work to be done now that international trade links had been restored, albeit not in full measure. Austria's economic war wounds must be healed. The new era had brought new problems in its wake; that was why everyone, irrespective of status, must pull his weight. Vit¬to
rin would be temporarily assigned to the accounts department, his erstwhile post as assistant French-language correspondence clerk having unavoidably and understandably been filled by someone else.
The managing director spoke in a quiet, courteous tone, accompanying his remarks with economical but expressive gestures. Vit¬torin, standing stiffly at attention, stared through him and heard nothing. A peculiar thing had happened to him. He had flirted with an idea: he had tried to imagine -just for a moment, purely to pass the time - that he was standing in another office far away, and that the shadow on the wall was Selyukov's. The notion became too strong to suppress - he couldn't shake it off. Snow was drifting down outside, Grisha polishing the samovar behind the door, the stove flickering fitfully. Books littered the desk, uppermost among them a French novel whose frontispiece depicted a naked woman playing with a tiger cub. Over in Hut 4, his comrades would be waiting for news. Selyukov looked up with his tongue caressing his upper lip and the lamplight falling on his slender, tanned hand. And then:
"Conduct unbecoming to an officer - the French call it boch-isme. You may go. Pashol."
The bastard, humiliating me like that! Why did I stand for it? I should have slapped him in the face and braved a firing squad. If only I'd slapped him in the face! Too late - it's too late now . . .
"You seem unpleasantly surprised," said the managing director. "Don't misunderstand me: it's only a temporary arrangement. You mustn't think ..."
Vit¬torin came to. The past was releasing its hold on him. No, he told himself, it isn't too late. It's simply a question of money, of a few hundred kronen. One I get them - once I manage to raise them - we'll speak again, Mikhail Mikhailov-ich Selyukov.
"You mustn't think," the managing director went on, "that the firm intends to dispense permanently with your knowledge of foreign languages and your practical experience in the correspondence department. That isn't so, I can assure you. We shall bear you very much in mind. Meantime, report to your new head of department, Herr Schodl, tomorrow or the day after, and leave the rest to me."
