Joseph Roth - Perlefter - The Story of A Bourgeois

Was he really waiting for an adventure? Not necessarily! There could be an assault, a theft, a strange note. Perlefter distrusted all the people whom he encountered on his travels. He shuddered when he read about robberies in the newspaper. There were no harmless faces in the world. All faces were masks. Once they fell away murderous grimaces were revealed. Therefore Perlefter was not fond of travelling alone. On the platform he looked for acquaintances. If he found one with the same destination he would be willing to pay them a quarter of his money. A travelling companion received Herr Perlefter’s entire affections. He compelled everyone he met on the train to visit his compartment. I, too, have gone with Perlefter.

Perlefter was a nervous traveller. He could not stand it when those sitting across from him looked his way if he did not know them. Therefore he buried his face in his coat. As soon as he entered the car he put on his travel cap, a green-checked travel cap. The top had a button that had become loose and hung crookedly as if dead. Then he buried himself in the newspaper. Only when he travelled did he read the other sections of the journal. Then he became annoyed and looked out the window. Here nature interested him.

Yes, I know you will perhaps not believe me. I assure you, Perlefter was a nature enthusiast. He went into the corridor, pressed his forehead against the windowpane and was wistful when he saw the wide fields, entirely indifferent as to whether they were still bearing ears of corn or whether they had been ploughed. Even snow-covered landscapes made him mournful. In the morning he loved the sunrise, the fog that slowly lifted from below and then quickly dissipated. Perlefter presumably thought of another life when he might have farmed a bit of land. He had a city-dweller’s longing for the open country, that of one who wants to be located in the countryside but cannot live without a water closet.

In particular Perlefter could not live without this superior feature of civilization. He had once read of all the various means of contagion, and he feared needing to use public facilities. He avoided them so long as he sat on the train. If, however, he really had to go, it took him half an hour to make all of the necessary preparations. He took soap, hand towel, reading material and eau-de-Cologne with him and went first to check all the bathrooms. He sought the cleanest one for his purposes, and when he returned he looked like a newborn, freshly washed and cheerful and soap-scented, with a new cigar between his pursed lips.

The other passengers caused him great distress. They smoked too much or they opened the window, and that created dangerous draughts which Perlefter asserted had already cost many a traveller’s life. Even at home Perlefter monitored the air. ‘There’s a draught!’ he would say abruptly, for he feared the draught, and he imagined that the air was chasing him. Oh, what couldn’t come from a draught? A toothache, lumbago, eye inflammation, ringing of the ears, sore throat, lung infection and, when one went to the toilet, stomach flu, intestinal catarrh and diarrhoea. Perlefter was knowledgeable about all diseases, for he felt embattled and surrounded by them; he studied them in order to fight them, avert them and prevent them. He liked to read the encyclopaedia and popular medical brochures.

Sometimes ‘something flew into his eye’. It was a cumbersome operation, involving a clean handkerchief, water and a hand mirror. But then followed reservations about the cleanliness of the handkerchief. Perlefter sought solace in a short nap to forget.

That was but a small excitement. The great adventure failed to materialize. Later these little excitements grew in Perlefter’s memory into great adventures. Thus he recounted, ‘Recently, as I looked out of the window, a large pebble of coal flew into my right eye. Everybody else got off at the next station to search for a doctor. I, however, put myself to sleep, fell asleep, as my eye began to tear up and did not want to stop, and when I awoke the fragment of coal was gone; it had just blown away!’

‘How fortunate!’ celebrated the family.

There were adventures that Perlefter did not recount to the family. One will immediately know of what type these adventures were when I add that he only spoke about them in the company of men — or, more accurately, gossiped.

I touch here on a topic that is quite complicated, one which I would have liked nothing better than to leave alone were it not so critically important, were it not absolutely indispensable in furthering the knowledge of Perlefter’s ordinariness. Yes, I would prefer to leave the whole thing alone. I am embarrassed about the actual and principal adventures of Herr Perlefter, about offering them up to the general public and revealing things that only took place in obscurity. But shame alone does not hinder me. I confess that I cannot assess whether I will succeed in explaining and justifying the adventurous life of my hero, whether it will come across as believable but also generally understandable. Yes, it remains a mystery even to me where Perlefter got the courage to seek pleasures that truly embodied danger and, worse still, to expose himself to dangers that cost money.

And they did cost money. Perlefter was in no way so tempting that women threw themselves at his feet. No! Perlefter had to pay well above the worth. And therefore it seems to be human nature that the drive for love is stronger than the drive for frugality. Probably even the most timid of men, such as Perlefter, lose any anxiety once the hour has struck for their passion. And certainly a man’s virtue is not his most reliable companion. The whole elaborate and painstaking construction that is morality collapses all at once. How simply marvellous the ease with which the pieces can fit together and rise up again.

Perlefter often had moments that one might call weak but which were actually his strongest. Perlefter had a longing for women. By luck, there were women in the world who had a longing for money. And, by luck, Perlefter had money.

I am familiar enough with Perlefter’s taste to be able to say that he liked size in a woman: volume and weight. His preference was blondes over brunettes and black-haired women. Perhaps, in fact, definitely, he made no distinction between fake and natural blondeness. No, he could not distinguish fake from natural; he might as well have been colour blind, as he took no notice of make-up and mistook the red of the lips for an abundance of blood and the advanced techniques of love for natural passion.

The reader might ask why Perlefter came to conjure up dangerous situations. But the situations exercised power and force over Alexander Perlefter. He could not resist. He was overcome by the opportunity.

He was overcome by every situation. He loved women but, still more and actually, that which heralds women, that in which they are wrapped. He loved women’s clothes. Of women’s clothes a specific type. He loved undergarments. Certainly he could not resist any women who appeared before him in underwear. For he could not even resist the magazines on whose covers appeared colour photographs of half-dressed women. This literature accompanied Herr Perlefter on his travels and prepared him for the mood that is necessary for the moral foundations of a man to waver and fall and allow him to fall with it.

In various cities Herr Perlefter knew the addresses of available women who, as masseuses, midwives and beauty-salon owners, came under his consideration. Herr Perlefter noted these addresses cryptically, so that no strangers could decode them, in his leather pocket calendar on the penultimate page, just below the Jewish holidays. In each city Perlefter had a certain hotel, a very specific hairdresser, a very specific passion. He paid gladly but moderately. After all, he had to be willing to invite the lady to a theatre, a concert, a cinema or an opera in order to complete the adventure.