Joseph Roth - Perlefter - The Story of A Bourgeois

I went once with Henriette to her village. She wore a hat with glass cherries and held her shoes and stockings in her hand, since the road was muddy. We walked through the fields, the crickets chirping and the glass cherries clinking. Henriette told me all sorts of things that Perlefter’s wife and the porter’s wife said — for example, that Henriette would be better off in a position with a childless couple. But Henriette feared her mother. Under another employer she might perhaps go astray. It seemed to me it was Henriette herself who was most afraid she would go astray.

She was red and flushed, and we were both hot. Then Henriette took off her hat, and it seemed to me that her hair was fragrant. Yes, it smelled very much like hay, meadows and dew. We stood still, and the wind caressed us. It was late spring, and one could already hear summer’s gallop.

Then Henriette told me that a new constable had arrived in the village when she was fourteen years old. He had been a handsome officer, fearless and with shiny buttons. So, I thought, Henriette loves a policeman.

But in the course of the conversation it turned out that this constable was a pretty despicable fellow. He had seduced three fourteen-year-old girls, taken their cash and disappeared.

I don’t know whether Henriette was one of those fourteen-year-olds. But I am practically convinced of it.

In the woods a solitary bird was warbling, and we argued about its type. I was two years younger than Henriette, yet she debated with me as if I had been the same age as she. She was the only person who had respect for me. I was a man.

I said it was a goldfinch. Henriette suggested an oriole.

I began to quarrel with her. But even though it really was an oriole and Henriette was right, I did not yield.

Finally she hit me, and I pushed her back, but I bumped into her soft breast, and my anger dissipated. I protested no longer and smiled as Henriette threw me to the ground and pounced on me.

We lay together in the woods, the wind was warm and fresh, and the oriole warbled. And we got carried away.

I was determined to marry her, but she cheated on me with a chimney-sweep, yet loved me still. The older I got the more she loved me. When I took leave of Perlefter she kissed me, and sometimes she came to me ‘just for a quick hello’.

Henriette could not marry the chimney-sweep, for she could not let go of the Perlefter family. She had announced her intentions and was already making preparations for the wedding. Then Frau Perlefter became sick. She had a weak heart. So Henriette stayed.

After that she chased after a man from the gas works. He even came into the kitchen on Sundays. But the reason for this was a suddenly flaring love for the two maids.

After that a policeman, a tailor and a mason came on to the scene. All of them wanted to marry Henriette. But she hesitated for quite a while, for she could not leave Perlefter’s house. The policeman died of pleurisy, the tailor disappeared from the picture and the mason fell off a table in his house and broke a leg. It was quite remarkable that the mason fell off a table despite having the chance to plunge from respectably high scaffolding on a daily basis. He made a fool of himself and fell off a table. Perhaps he had, at that moment, been thinking of Henriette. Henriette visited him once in the hospital, but she could not tolerate the smell of iodoform. She fainted and never returned.

Yet I knew she would come to me if I were bandaged and reeking of iodoform in the hospital. For Henriette had not forgotten me. She loved me more maternally, and the older I got the younger I appeared in her eyes.

I accompanied her more often to her native village. I carried her hat and, when it was wet, also her shoes and stockings. Once when her mother was sick, a second time when her stepfather died and a third when her uncle married his third wife. But we argued no more over the species of twittering birds. We consistently agreed about all things. We spoke about all our concerns, and sometimes I even related something from books I had read. Henriette was very proud of me and prophesized a great future.

We abstained but loved each other none the less.

I would have done anything for Henriette. But we didn’t use the familiar form of ‘you’ in front of others.

She suggested that I should turn my attention to Margarete.

I then had much money. Surely I was worth much more than those young men who came to the house.

‘I don’t need money,’ I said.

‘You’re a foolish boy!’ said Henriette.

So we walked peaceably next to each other and arrived at the village. I ate cheese and sour milk and porridge that Henriette cooked for me. Porridge was usually eaten only by the sick and by new mothers. Before I went to sleep Henriette squeezed my hand.

It was just around that time, when Fredy’s engagement party was to take place and when Perlefter had returned home from his bold flight, that a rich and widowed farmer courted Henriette.

When Perlefter heard about it, he said, ‘We cannot and must not stand in the way of their happiness!’ Frau Perlefter began to cry. She even began to feel ill and took bromide. But this time Henriette stuck by her decision to marry. She was attracted by the large farm and the role she would play in her village.

It was ambition.

The Perlefter family decided that Henriette could go off immediately after Fredy’s official engagement.

But Fredy’s official engagement depended on the engagement of his sister. Henriette, meanwhile, worked on sewing her trousseau. Every Sunday she went to the village. She brought back milk, butter, radishes, sauer-kraut and country bread.

She looked almost like her mother did many years before. One had to look at Henriette’s face for a long time to realize that she was once pretty.

By this time Henriette had a pale yellow face. Neither the joy of surprise, nor heat from the kitchen, nor a winter’s storm and wind could turn her cheeks red. They were emaciated cheeks. Her forehead jutted out and shaded her face, and deep within, like bay windows, lay her triangular-shaped blue, pale and hard-looking eyes.

And yet I still loved Henriette, and every day I was ready to marry her just as she was with her strong bony hands and skin that was like leather.

When Perlefter found out about my love he took me for crazy. He was speechless.

Perlefter was already two weeks at home. But he was still recounting stories of his travels. If one should believe him he had journeyed across the entire world. Yes, he was even rich in new artistic impressions. He had visited museums and studied paintings.

He appreciated only the dimensions of a painting. Perlefter liked to say, ‘Colossal! Such a painting!’ He was actually only describing its size. His highest praise was ‘As large as the wall!’

He sought to discover how long the painter of such a work had worked on it. Since returning home from his travels he read the art news for two hours a day. One time he went to an auction. He brought back to the house a painting of a dark-green sea on which a boat with two sailors rocked. He hung the painting in the salon and showed it to all his guests. ‘When I’m weary,’ he said, ‘I place a chair in front of the painting, sit myself down and study it. I could look at it for hours. This is art!’

Meanwhile, his daughter Karoline, the one they called Line, was annoyed. Yes, she was bold and said, ‘You don’t understand anything, Father!’ Then Frau Perlefter began to weep. She could not tolerate it when someone was offended.

But Perlefter didn’t concern himself with his daughter’s criticism. He regarded her as the least worthy of his children. ‘If someone has studied,’ said Perlefter, quite correctly, ‘one knows what one wants. God knows what will come of this Line! Frau Kempen hasn’t been around?’