Joseph Roth - The Emperor's Tomb

My mother grew more reactionary by the day, especially the day I took out the mortgage on the house. Arts and crafts, Elisabeth, the lady professor, short hair, Czechs, Social Democrats, Jacobins, Jews, tinned meat, paper money, the stock exchange, my father-in-law — all these came in for her contempt and her vitriol. Our solicitor, Dr Kiniower, who had been a friend of my father’s, was now called, for simplicity’s sake: the Jew. Our maid was the Jacobin. The janitor was a sans-culotte, and Frau Jolanth Szatmary went by Keczkemet. A new personality turned up in our lives, one Kurt von Stettenheim, come all the way from Brandenburg and determined to bring arts and crafts to a waiting world. He looked like one of those men that these days pass for well-bred. By that I mean a mixture of champion tennis player and landowner from no fixed province, with a little maritime whiff of shipping magnate thrown in. Such men may come from anywhere: the Baltic, or Pomerania, or even the Lüneburg Heath. We were relatively lucky with ours: Herr von Stettenheim came from Brandenburg.

He was tall and sinewy, blond and freckled, he wore the inevitable duelling scar on his forehead, the sign of the Borussian fraternity and affected the monocle so anything other than indispensable that we had no option but to call it indispensable. I myself use a monocle on occasion for the sake of convenience, as I’m too vain to wear glasses. But there are certain faces — faces from Pomerania, from the Baltic, from Brandenburg — in which a monocle gives the appearance of being a superfluous third eye, not an aid to vision, but a sort of glass mask. When Herr von Stettenheim screwed in his monocle, he looked like Professor Jolanth Szatmary when she was lighting a cigarette. When Herr von Stettenheim spoke, and much more when he waxed wrathful, then the Cain’s mark on his forehead turned blood red — and the man got excited over everything and nothing. There was a perplexing contrast between his zeal and the words in which he expressed it, as for instance: “Well, I can tell you, I was gobsmacked,” or “I can only advise you: nil desperandum,” or “I’ll lay ten to one, and shake on it!” And more of the same. Evidently our mortgage wasn’t enough for my father-in-law. Herr von Stettenheim promised to invest heavily in the Elisabeth Trotta Studios. Once or twice my father-in-law brought us together. After all, because of the mortgage, he’d now “taken me on board,” as promised, in the arts and crafts industry. So he had to at least introduce me to the third member of our board. “I know a Count Trotta!” exclaimed Herr von Stettenheim after we’d barely exchanged two sentences. “You must be mistaken,” I said, “there are only Trottas raised to the barony — if indeed they are still alive!” “I remember now, he was a baron, the old Colonel.” “You’re mistaken again,” I said, “my uncle is District Commissioner.” “So sorry!” replied Herr von Stettenheim. And his scar flushed purple.

Herr von Stettenheim had the idea of calling our firm “Jolan Workshops.” And that was duly how it appeared in the company register. Elisabeth was drawing busily whenever I turned up in the office. She sketched baffling things, for instance nine-pointed stars on the walls of an octahedron or a ten-fingered hand executed in agate, to be called “Krishnamurti’s Benediction,” or a red bull on a black ground, called “Apis,” a ship with three banks of oars by the name of “Salamis,” and a snake-bracelet that went by “Cleopatra.” It was Professor Jolanth Szatmary who came up with the original ideas, and gave them to her to block out. Apart from that, there were the usual oppressive, hate-filled conventions of cordiality, all overlying our mutual resentment. Elisabeth loved me, of that I was certain, but she was afraid of Professor Szatmary, one of those fears that modern medicine likes to label and is helpless to explain. Ever since Herr von Stettenheim had joined the “Jolan-Workshops” as co-owner, my father-in-law and the Professor viewed me as a nuisance, a bump on the road to arts and crafts, capable of no useful labour and wholly unworthy of being made privy to the artistic and financial plans of the firm. I was just Elisabeth’s other half.

Herr von Stettenheim drew up prospectuses in many world languages, and sent them out in all directions. The fewer the replies, the more furious his zeal. The new curtains came in, two lemon yellow chairs, a sofa, ditto, with black and white zebra stripes, two lamps with hexagonal shades of Japanese paper, and a parchment map on which all cities and countries were marked by drawing pins — all of them, even the ones our company didn’t supply.

On evenings when I came to collect Elisabeth, we wouldn’t talk about Stettenheim or Jolanth Szatmary or arts and crafts. That was agreed between us. We spent sweet, full spring nights together. There was no doubt about it: Elisabeth loved me.

I was patient. I waited. I waited for the moment when she would tell me of her own volition that she wanted to be all mine. Our flat on the ground floor waited.

My mother never asked me about Elisabeth’s intentions. From time to time she would drop a hint, as for instance: “Once you’ve moved in,” or “when we’re all living under the same roof,” and suchlike.

At the end of summer, it turned out that our “Jolan-Workshops” were not bringing in any money whatsoever. Moreover, my father-in-law hadn’t had any luck with his “other irons.” On the advice of Herr von Stettenheim, he had taken a punt on the Deutschmark. The Deutschmark fell. I was to take out a second, much larger, mortgage on our house. I discussed it with my mother, who didn’t want to know. I talked to my father-in-law. “You’re useless, I always knew it,” he said. “I’ll have to have a word with her myself.”

He went to my mother, not alone, but in the company of Herr von Stettenheim. My mother, who was intimidated, sometimes even intolerant of strangers, asked me to wait. I stayed at home. The miracle happened; my mother took to Herr von Stettenheim. During the negotiations in our drawing room, I even thought I saw her leaning forward ever so slightly, to catch his abundant and superfluous speech more clearly. “Charming!” was my mother’s verdict. “Charming!” she said once or twice more, in response to perfectly ordinary remarks from Herr von Stettenheim. He too — it was his turn — gave a lecture on arts and crafts in general, and the products of the “Jolan-Workshops, Ltd” in particular. And my dear old mother, who surely understood no more about arts and crafts now than she had a long time ago from hearing Elisabeth discuss them, kept saying: “Now I understand, now I understand, now I understand!”

Herr von Stettenheim had the good manners to say,

“Columbus’s egg, ma’am!” And like an obedient echo, my mother repeated: “Columbus’s egg! We’ll take out a second mortgage.”

To begin with, our lawyer Kiniower was against it. “I warn you!” he said. “It’s a hopeless business. Your father-in-law, I happen to know, has no money left. I’ve made inquiries. That Herr von Stettenheim is living on the money you are managing to raise. He claims to have a share in Tattersall in the Berlin Tiergarten. My colleague in Berlin informs me that is not the case. As truly as I was a friend to your late lamented Papa: I speak the truth. Frau Jolanth Szatmary is as little a professor as I am. She has never studied at any of the academies in Vienna or Budapest. I warn you, Herr Trotta, I warn you.”

The “Jew” had little black watering eyes behind a skewed pince-nez. One side of his grey moustache was jauntily curled up, the other dangled despondently down. It looked like an expression of a divided nature. And indeed, he was capable of ending a long, gloomy conversation full of talk of my imminent financial doom, with the cry: “But everything will turn out for the best! God is a father.” That was a sentence he liked to repeat in any difficult circumstances. This grandson of Abraham, heir to a blessing and a curse, frivolous as an Austrian, melancholy as a Jew, full of emotion but only to the point where emotion can become a danger to oneself, clear-sighted in spite of his wobbly and crooked pince-nez, had over time become as dear to me as a brother. I often dropped in on him in his office, for no particular reason or occasion. On his desk he had photographs of his two sons. The elder had fallen in the war. The younger was studying medicine. “His head is full of social nonsense!” complained Dr Kiniower. “How much more important a cure for cancer would be! I’m afraid I’m maybe getting one myself, here, on the kidney! If I have a medical student for a son, then he should be thinking of his old father, and not of saving the world. Enough with saviour already! But you’re about to save the arts and crafts! Your Mama wanted to save the Fatherland. She put her fortune in war bonds. There’s nothing left but a paltry insurance policy. Your Mama probably imagines it’s enough for a ripe old age. She’ll get through it in a couple of months, I’m telling you. You don’t have a job. Probably you’ll never have a job. But unless you start earning money, you’ve had it. My advice to you is: you have a house, take paying guests. Try and make your Mama understand. This mortgage won’t be the last, I’m sure of that. You’ll be wanting a third, and then a fourth. Believe me! God is a father!”