Joseph Roth - Perlefter - The Story of A Bourgeois

While Herr Perlefter was in the sanatorium, recovering from the calamities that had afflicted his house, there landed on one of the European coasts Leo Bidak with his wife and six children along with his entire fortune, which one could fit in a straw basket and still have room to spare. I knew Leo Bidak from my childhood and from my home town. He was related to Alexander Perlefter, who granted no special significance to this family link. Leo Bidak came from San Francisco. He had survived several earthquakes and had missed the European world war. He left to earn money, but he returned as a beggar, and he once again sought ‘a reason for existence’ after having had to give up several existences on both sides of the ocean.

He was forty-two years old, a family man, and he had experienced much and learned nothing. He’d had a few different jobs, and not one of them had he mastered to perfection. In his youth he had been a longshoreman in Odessa. Back then he could still break thick paving stones on his knee and balance a Cossack sabre on his fingertip, crack a hazelnut between his fingers and uproot young trees with one hand. He was so strong that he was compelled to demonstrate his prowess, and since dock work did not strain him enough he supplemented it through fights in saloons and quiet alleys. On Sundays he appeared as a wrestler in a circus and followed the rules just as minimally as the laws of the country, which he despised, because he was one of those unusual people for whom the state was a stupid institution that robs liberty. Consequently Leo Bidak had not only the authorities for enemies but also professional associations, and as he had never belonged to the Association of Athletes he was considered in the sports world to be a querulous outsider who won all the prize competitions without paying any contributions, enjoying all the privileges without subjecting himself to the obligations. In addition, Bidak was a favourite of the crowd, who had no qualms when he made a mistake and forgave all his illegal moves while others who did the same were booed out of the arena. And so Leo Bidak had to fend for himself, a rebel within his own profession, unclassifiable in any category or species, lonely and mighty, averse to society and his own confederates, against both worlds. He was short and fat; his hands were round and soft with short fingers like those of a child, and yet his grip was firm. These hands were like iron when they were clenched into fists. I once saw Bidak’s palms and was amazed at their clear and simple lines, the likes of which I have never encountered in anyone else. There were three heavy furrows, two lateral creases and a long line. Everything else was smooth, like a palm of sanded skin. According to the rules of palmistry Bidak had at least 150 years to live, without sickness, without pain, without complications. His hands were tools; when he wasn’t working or hitting they hung there limp from his strong round wrists like a pair of hammers.

Even his face was simple. It consisted of a low forehead, tiny blue eyes, a short nose, a small but wide chin and two strong cheeks, on whose surface muscles could be seen flexing. Behind the forehead lived the simplest of minds: the eyes had nothing else to do except look out for danger; the nose needed only to smell, the mouth only to eat. Even Leo Bidak’s hair was only there to meet the requirements of nature. It had no colour. It was neither thick nor thin, neither hard nor soft, and Bidak wore it as God let it grow, falling down over his forehead or cut very short, depending on whether or not he had money to go to a barber.

For Bidak had no money, and he earned only a little. The wages he made at the circus he drank and gambled away. Three dice of human bone rattled constantly in his right trouser pocket. He won at games only when he was drunk; he lost when he was sober, and that is why he never came into money, because he spent whatever he had. He lost on the street whatever else he put up — paper, watches, a pencil, smooth pebbles, keys and tools. He needed the stones to practise marksmanship. He had such skill with slingshots that he could hit a specific windowpane on a moving train. On free afternoons he went out into the fields through which the train crossed, lay down in the grass and made a mental note when he heard a train coming to hit the third or fourth or fifth windowpane of the third to last car. He always hit it. That behind the windowpane people sat he knew. That he might unknowingly hit one delighted him much. Sometimes he flew a kite made out of newspaper. He carried a ball of hard dark-blue twine in his pocket, twine that he, with his small, wide and sharp teeth he could chew through and with which he could sew his clothes and also his boots.

For a time he was a driver for a distillery, and the smell of alcohol dazed him so much that he became drunk without drinking. He knew how to deal with horses, for his father had been a driver, owner of a wagon and two white horses, of which one died in its youth and the other reached an advanced age and after the death of old Bidak was able to serve three more masters. The elder Bidak drank heavily and froze to death one winter on the road, in a ditch into which both horse and carriage had fallen. He left his son an old house, a barn and a large Rosskopf clock that could go for three days without winding. Horse, wagon and sleigh were bought by the bearded Coachman Manes, who, now with two horses, experienced an unexpected windfall, gaining many customers and procuring a new whip with a handle of hard leather and a six-knotted leash. Bidak did not like the driver Manes. Leo went to his mother’s relatives in Russia and was a worker in a port instead of what he would have been entitled to: horse, wagon, sleigh and customers and a new whip to crack.

As driver for the distillery Leo one day fell asleep in his seat, drunk from the alcohol fumes; the horse became frightened, a child got under its hooves and Bidak was fired. He joined a sugar and tea wholesaler and was charged with unloading and stacking the large black-packaged sugar loaves. He learned a great trick: he could carry half a hundredweight at once thanks to a contraption that he himself had invented, a small wooden stairway with three steps that hung on his back and carried ten sugarloaves on each step. A wrestler came to visit him at work once, and Bidak hit him in the head with an entire load of sugar. The athlete was dead on the spot.

This murder happened in the gloomy hallway that connected the offices of the trading house with the warehouse, at a time when only a hard-of-hearing senior accountant was still present. He had heard neither the quarrel nor the fall of the sugar and the wrestler. Bidak dragged the dead man to an adjacent property, pocketed his belt as a souvenir and buried the body. Then he returned to work. The senior accountant had missed him and called for him, and because he had not come Leo Bidak was dismissed. A week later there was a story in the sports pages about the sudden death of the wrestler. At that point Leo Bidak made his way to the West.

In Perlefter’s city lived Bidak’s aunt, named Frida Sammet. She owned a laundry and pressing establishment, which she herself operated. Her husband, who was able to write the occasional verse of poetry, had a gentle nature and was abused and subjugated by his wife. He was a silent and witty man with no job but with many talents. He once wanted to be a writer, and he had even already published a work, a book for shy young men on writing love letters which found many readers and buyers. Herr Sammet was in favour of practical themes. He wrote a pamphlet about foot-and-mouth disease, about the souls of dogs and a protest against compulsory vaccination. He occupied himself with the occult, hypnosis, eye care; he owned a microscope and a furnace; he believed in a perpetual-motion machine and in alchemy, and he often read the encyclopaedia and foreign dictionaries. He did not allow himself to miss a single foreign word, pursued each to its origins, and in this way came to a disorderly but extensive knowledge. His wife was at times very proud of her educated husband, especially when she spoke to strangers. At home she scolded him and forced him to perform humiliating chores. At ten o’clock he had to be lying in bed, at seven in the morning arisen; he was not allowed to drink any alcohol, could smoke only three cigarettes a day, could not eat cured meats, nor herring, nor onions, nor fresh bread, nor roasted potatoes — all the treats for which Herr Sammet longed. He hated his wife — which would surprise nobody. The hatred connected them as a chain binds two inmates. Nevertheless they developed similar faces over the years. Both had narrow, withered cheeks. The difference was that Herr Sammet’s mouth was a friendly curve. Frau Sammet’s mouth, however, was like a long, narrow and greatly faded brush stroke. Her voice was sharp and thin like a sword. Herr Sammet’s voice was imperceptible. He always spoke silently, like someone who has lost his vocal cords.