Joseph Roth - The Wandering Jews

So he’s sent packing, and again, and again, and again. Till it dawns on the Jew that he has no option but to give false information for the correct impression. To stick to one name that might not be his but would be a plausible and believable name anyway. The police have given the Eastern Jew the idea of concealing a true but tangled set of circumstances behind bogus but tidy ones.

Everyone professes astonishment at the capacity of Jews to give false information. No one professes astonishment at the naive expectations of the police.

3.

The two career alternatives are peddler and installment seller.

A peddler carries a selection of soaps, suspenders, rubber goods, buttons, and pencils around in a basket strapped to his back. With that little portable shop on board, he calls on various cafés and restaurants. It’s advisable to think beforehand whether one will be welcome in a certain establishment or not.

To be a reasonably successful peddler also requires years of experience. The best bet is to go of an evening to Piowati’s, where the well-off clientele dunk kosher sausages in horseradish. Even the owner owes it to the Jewish reputation of his business to offer the peddler a bowl of soup. That’s a start. So far as the customers are concerned, if they are already full, they may be in a pleasantly benevolent frame of mind. Nowhere is kindness so intimately related to physical well-being as with the Jewish merchant. When he has eaten, and eaten well, he is even capable of buying suspenders, though he may stock them in his own shop. Generally, though, he won’t buy anything and will just give the peddler a small coin.

Of course, one should take care not to be the sixth peddler on a given evening to turn up at Piowati’s. Kindness tends to be exhausted after about three. I knew a Jewish hawker once who called on the same branch of Piowati’s at three-hour intervals. He had figured out that that was when the generations of eaters tended to succeed one another. If there was still the odd guest left from the previous sitting, the hawker was careful to avoid his table. He knew precisely where the boundary between generosity and irritation lay.

At a certain stage of drunkenness, even Christians may be kind-hearted. One may set foot in little local bars and cafés on a Sunday without fear. One will be teased a little and called names, but it’s all in good part. The more humorous individuals will take away one’s basket and hide it, and generally drive the hawker to the brink of despair. But nil desperandum ! These are nothing but expressions of the golden hearts of the Viennese. When it’s all done and dusted, he’ll be able to sell a picture postcard or two.

All his earnings will not be sufficient to feed him. Nevertheless the peddler will be able to keep a wife and children. He will send his children to middle school if they are gifted, and by the grace of God they are gifted. His son will one day become a famous lawyer, but the father who had to spend so much of his life as a peddler will want to go on peddling. Sometimes it transpires that the peddler’s great-grandchildren will be anti-Semitic Christian Socialists. These things happen.

4.

What is the difference between a peddler and an installment salesman? The former sells things for cash, and the latter on installment. The former requires a small “network” of clientele, and the latter an extended one. The former will only take the commuter railway, whereas the latter goes out on the city-to-city routes. The former will never make a businessman; the latter may.

An installment seller is only viable in a time of stable currency. The great Inflation drove all the installment sellers out of their sorry business.* They became money changers.

A money changer fared little better. When he bought Romanian leis, the rate went down. When he sold, it rose. When the dollar was high in Berlin and the mark was high in Vienna, he went to Berlin to buy marks. He returned to Vienna to buy dollars with the high mark. Then he took his dollars to Berlin to buy yet more marks. But no locomotive can keep pace with a falling mark. By the time he was back in Vienna, he had half what he set out with.

In order to make money the currency dealer would have to be in telephone contact with money markets all over the world. However, all he was in contact with was the black market where he was. Both the harmful effects and the connections of the black market have been greatly exaggerated. Blacker by far than the black market was the official exchange — innocent, whiter than white, and enjoying police protection. The black market was the dirty competition to an institution that was itself dirty. The currency dealers were whipping boys for the so-called honorable banks.

Only a handful of small currency dealers can ever have gotten rich.

Today most of them are what they were before: poor installment sellers.

5.

The installment seller’s customers are people with an income but no money. Students, petty officials, workers. Every week the installment seller makes the rounds of his customers to collect payments and make new sales. Since the needs of these little people are great, they buy a lot, relatively speaking. Since their incomes are very low, they pay little, relatively speaking. The installment seller is never sure whether to be pleased about new sales or not. The more he sells, the longer it will be till he gets his money.

What if he put up his prices? Then people will just go to the nearest department store; by now even small towns have them. The installment seller is cheaper for them, because he pays the train fare, which otherwise they would have to pay. With him they get the department store in their homes. He is more convenient.

And so life for him is inconvenient. If he wants to save on the train fare, he will have to go on foot, heavily laden. So it takes him a long time. He doesn’t get where he needs to get on time. On Sunday he needs to call on all the customers who owe him money. Saturday is payday, but by Monday they’ll be broke again. If the installment seller does take the train, it will cost him. He will get where he needs to get to, but often enough his customers will have blown their wages by Sunday anyway.

These are the occupational hazards of being a Jew.

6.

What other possibilities are open to an Eastern Jew? If he’s a worker, no factory will employ him. There are enough local people out of work. But even if there weren’t — they wouldn’t hire a Christian foreigner, let alone a Jew.

There are also Eastern Jewish artisans. Many Eastern Jewish tailors live in Leopoldstadt and Brigittenau. Jews are gifted tailors. But there’s quite a difference between having premises — a “fashion salon” even — in the Herrengasse, in the First District, and a workshop in the kitchen of a tenement in the Kleine Schiffgasse.

Whoever comes to the Kleine Schiffgasse? Anyone who’s not forced to go there would sooner pass it by. The Kleine Schiffgasse smells of onions and kerosene, herrings and soap, dishwater and rubbish, petroleum and cooking, mold and delicatessen. Dirty children play in the Kleine Schiffgasse. Carpets are beaten and featherbeds aired in its open windows. Goosedown drifts in the air.

In such a street lives the little Jewish tailor. If only it were just a matter of the street! His apartment consists of one room and a kitchen. And, according to the puzzling laws which God has established for the Jews, a poor Jewish tailor will have half a dozen children and only rarely an assistant. The sewing machine clatters, the iron is parked on the chopping board, he sits on the marriage bed to measure up his customers. Who would seek out such a tailor?

You really can’t claim that the Eastern Jewish tailor “sucks on the marrow of the native population.” He doesn’t take any trade away from a Christian tailor. He’s an expert at cutting fabric, his work is first-rate. Maybe in twenty years’ time he really will have a fashion salon in the Herrengasse, in the First District. If he does he will have earned it. Eastern Jews are no magicians. Anything they may achieve costs them effort, sweat, and hunger.