Joseph Roth: Perlefter: The Story of A Bourgeois

We know that Perlefter has several servants in the household, but not until Chapter V do we learn the name of one, Henriette. Kroj was already at Perlefter’s when Henriette began to work for him at the age of eighteen (at one point Kroj references the fact that Henriette was then thirty years old and had arrived twelve years earlier). Kroj was two years younger than Henriette, so he was sixteen when she arrived, most likely not too long after he himself arrived in Vienna.

There are references to Kroj having served in the war and received medals and being taken to the club so Perlefter can show him off, probably around 1919 or so. Perlefter’s flight also takes place shortly after the First World War, probably around 1919 or 1920. Logically speaking, if the main action in the second half of the book takes place after Perlefter’s flight, 1919 at the earliest, then that would be fifteen years after Kroj’s arrival, placing Henriette’s arrival twelve years earlier, around 1907, and thus Kroj’s age at arrival in Vienna in 1904 to be twelve (if he was sixteen in 1907).

The most glaring chronology issue in the book seems to be centred on Perlefter’s flight. When he leaves, the wind from the propeller is described as knocking down the children, which would lead one to believe they are small; the description of a fussy ‘young Perlefter boy’ refusing to eat eggs and being given chocolate for dinner the evening of the flight seems to indicate the Fredy is a mere child. Similarly, Kroj at one point says of Fredy ‘at the time of Perlefter’s flight, he was just beginning to grow and be healthy’. However, although Perlefter is supposedly gone for a little over two months, when he returns the children are all seemingly grown and of marriageable age.

Another chronology puzzle surrounds Perlefter’s relative Leo Bidak. We are told in Chapter VIII that he arrived from San Francisco with his family at the age of forty-two, having missed the war (and presumably Perlefter’s flight as well). Presumably this is during the early 1920s, but the narration immediately flashes back to Bidak’s youth in Odessa and carries forward to a time when he and Kroj are friends, which is also presumably before the war. The book ends with the unfinished Chapter X, where Bidak goes to see Perlefter, but we know, based on the narrator’s earlier statement, that he has not left Europe for America by this point, so this must have taken place about 1914 or earlier. One puzzling statement, if taken at face value, is the mention of Bidak having lived through ‘several earthquakes’. In the early twentieth century, aside from the devastating 1906 quake, the only other one to hit San Francisco occurred in 1911. If we hold Roth to his word, chronologically speaking, that would place Bidak abroad for at least thirteen years, to have survived multiple tremors. Other Bidak-related clues are the fact that he married at twenty-three and then within four years had six children. If it is around 1921 when Bidak arrives from the USA, then it would have been 1902 when he married. The actual last action to take place in the book is Bidak’s arrival itself at the beginning of Chapter VIII, about which we know nothing further. What follows is entirely a flashback or recounting of Bidak’s early years, in which Perlefter makes only a cursory appearance.

The reader will also note that Kroj’s father seems to have met the exact same fate as Bidak’s father, a duplication Roth surely would have corrected had he finished the manuscript.

Perlefter is very much a product of its time, both the larger era in which it was written and Roth’s personal chronology. By this point in his career he already had enjoyed success as a journalist, completed several novels and enjoyed a growing reputation in the German-speaking world. By 1929 Roth was poised for even greater success, both literary and commercial. For all the flaws inherent in an unfinished manuscript, and despite its relative lack of plot and abrupt ending, Perlefter is a remarkable book. Roth paints a number of deliciously ironic characters and, fragment or not, has left us with a work both enjoyable and satisfying to read.

Richard Panchyk

2013

My name is Naphtali Kroj.

The city in which I was born is no city at all compared with those in Western Europe. Fifteen hundred people lived there. Among these were a thousand Jewish merchants. A long street connected the station with the cemetery. The train came once a day. The travellers were hop merchants, for our city lay in a hop-growing region. There was a large hotel and a small one. The large one had been built by Wolf Bardach.

His mother was the operator of the steam baths. She died, age fifty-four, from a mysterious disease, a victim of her occupation. Her son, who had studied in the West and who wanted to become a notary, sold the steam baths so he could construct the Hotel Esplanade. He wanted the hotel to look very Western European — yes, even American. To this aim the hotel had to have at least six floors and four hundred rooms.

Futile were the reasonable comments of the many Jews that four hundred strangers would never come to our city. Herr Bardach himself designed the plans. He sent for many men from the great cities of the region. He wore golden pince-nez, a badge of his education, on a silk band. He stood bareheaded, his fat form squeezed into a grey coat, with a stick in his hand when the sun was shining and with an umbrella when it was raining. He had such a sturdy building frame constructed that even with his great weight he could climb upon it without causing it any damage.

As the third storey was completed he noticed that he had no money left.

He sold the property and his plans to the rich Herr Ritz for less than a couple of thousand and, deeply ashamed, set off clandestinely for Vienna to become a notary.

Herr Ritz sent for an engineer, one who sought a great deal of money and was not content with six storeys. He built seven. As the seven storeys were completed the bricklayers in the entire region celebrated. The engineer drank schnapps, walked along the edge of the scaffolding and fell off. His body was so battered that one could not determine whether he was Christian or Jewish. They buried him on the narrow pathway separating the Christian and Jewish cemeteries. Later on the wealthy Herr Ritz purchased him a marble gravestone to compensate.

The hotel was given the name Hotel Esplanade, a name written in gold letters. Herr Zitron from America, whom the people said was a dealer in women, became the hotel manager. It had 450 rooms. But, as the whole world knew that the builder had fallen, no tourists came.

Now back to me. I am the son of a cab driver. There were twenty-four cabs in our city, one for each hour of the day. My father had cab number 17. To this day I love that number.

My father drove every day to the train station to pick up travellers. He was a strong, bearded man without an education. The only noticeable features of his face were the bulbous red nose and the reddish beard. His short brow and his moist blue eyes were shaded by the leather peak of his sports cap. Owing to his profession, he unfortunately drank a great deal. Sometimes when there was no train he had to drive visitors around our area all day long. He stopped at every inn. My father drank schnapps to keep himself warm. Because he was affordable, reliable, brave and able-bodied he had the most customers. He feared neither wolves nor robbers. And the more he travelled, the more he drank. One night, as he returned home without any passengers from a remote inn, his horse and carriage became stuck in a snowdrift, and he passed out immediately.

The next morning he was found frozen to death.

My mother was already long dead. I was glad to inherit the horse and carriage, although I had already learned something, namely reading and writing from Professor Tobias. He was a little old man. When he was young he had a bouncing step. As an old man he walked on tiptoe rather than shuffle along.