J. Powers - The Stories of J.F. Powers

There was a fictitious feeling about sitting so casually with a man whose uncle had been president of an art academy. Renner himself had taught at the University of Vienna, had perhaps come into a little eminence of his own, but compared to his uncle he was small fry indeed. Achievement through violence or succession or cunning or even merit is common enough. But president of an academy of art — now there was an inscrutable honor, beyond accounting for, like being an archbishop (except in Italy), only more so.

A dark man in tweeds came in. Emil threw down his cards, rushed to meet him, and the two left at the table turned slowly to see. First disappointed, then a little disgusted, they turned up Emil’s cards on the table.

“My good friend, Mr Ross,” Emil purred. Mr Ross extended his hand and they stood there shaking, smiling at each other. Mr Ross finally got around to saying he came in for a glass. Emil went behind the bar and took down a bottle of brandy. Emil was still oppressing Mr Ross with his smile, but Mr Ross seemed to think it no more than right or less than real.

“Well, Renner,” I said. Renner, who had been watching them, began talking again — against his will, I thought, but anxious to get Emil and Mr Ross out of our minds.

“At the beginning of the last war — this was in Innsbruck — we had a geometry teacher, very droll. He’d get furious and throw the squares and triangles at the pupils. He also rode a horse, as if in battle, to school. He would say, ‘Miller, what color should I make this line?’—some line in geometry; he’d be standing at the blackboard. ‘Red,’ Miller would answer. ‘Why red, Miller?’ You see the pupils knew what to say, I among them. ‘Red for the blood of the Serbs, Herr Professor.’ ‘Very good, Miller! And this line, Scheutzer?’ ‘Yellow — for the enemy.’ ‘Very good!’ You know,” Renner said, “the man of action,” and was silent.

“I know.”

“Delightful task,” as one of the cheery English poets says, “to rear the tender thought, to teach the young idea how to shoot.”

I almost added that the geometry teacher, if living, must be cherished by the Fatherland today, but I thought better of it: such men are everywhere, never without a country.

Emil was begging Mr Ross to stay for a bite to eat. At first Mr Ross refused and then, overcome by the fervor of Emil’s invitation, he said he would look at the menu.

“You won’t need to look today, Mr Ross.” Emil rubbed his hands in polite ecstasy, became intent, his eyes glazed, as though savoring some impossible dream. “The pike,” he said, “is delicious.” But rare Mr Ross was reluctant to have pike. “Well, then!” Emil said, pretending outrage; he handed Mr Ross his fate in the menu. He folded his arms and waited scornfully.

Immediately Mr Ross proclaimed: “Chicken livers and mushrooms.”

Emil showed a suffering cheerfulness, shaking his head, the good loser. Plainly Mr Ross had divined chicken livers and mushrooms against all Emil’s efforts to keep them in the kitchen for himself. “Ah, they’re very excellent today, Mr Ross.”

All this playing at old world délicatesse seemed to annoy Renner too much. Slowly he began to ramble, his eyes fixed on Emil, as though it were all there to be read in his face. “You wouldn’t think a little stenographer would remember what you said for ten years back and write it down every night — and the day they sent for you (bring two suits of underclothes and a roll of toilet paper; we’ll do the rest) you’d hear it all then, also recordings they’d made of your telephone conversations… because there were little telephone operators like the little stenographer…” Renner stopped speaking when Emil went into the kitchen, as if the inspiration to continue were gone with Emil.

“Is Mr Ross Jewish?” I asked.

Renner nodded indistinctly.

On occasion I had wondered whether Renner was Jewish, always halfheartedly, so that I forgot what I was wondering about, and it would be a while before I wondered again. His being a refugee proved nothing so specific or simple as that: his species, spiritually speaking, tends to make itself at home in exile.

Emil came out of the kitchen with bread, butter, and a dish of beets.

“I don’t want those,” Mr Ross said — cruelly, it seemed to me, for Emil dearly wanted him to have them. Then it occurred to me that it was part of Mr Ross’s grand manner. He had considered the saving to Emil and his own loss in waving aside the bread, butter, and beets. It had been a telling act and there could be no turning back. Emil propitiated him with a devout and carefully uncomprehending look, such as he must have fancied appropriate to menials like himself and soothing to men of business like Mr Ross.

The Entrepreneur leaned forward and spoke passionately in German to the fat one, who agreed with him, nodding and grunting.

“Now what?” I asked Renner.

Renner listened further before venturing a translation. “Well,” he said finally, as though I would not be getting the whole story. “A certain man is a good bookkeeper, but not a good businessman.”

“But the Entrepreneur is?”

“He is.” Renner began to deliberate in a familiar voice, not his own. “It’s all right, this tobacco. But I”—a very capital I—“I would never pay twenty-five cents. I would pay, say, twenty.” He struck a match, touched the flame to his pipe, looked shrewd, and blew out a mouthful of smoke to close the deal. It was the voice of the superintendent where we both worked, and it was Renner’s theory, to which I subscribed, that the super haggled about everything because secretly he yearned to be a purchasing agent.

Renner watched the cardplayers. “The Entrepreneur has a very expressive head, too.” I could see what Renner meant. Seen, as now, from the rear, the Entrepreneur’s head was most expressive. I had noticed his face before; it was gross and uninteresting.

“In fact,” Renner said, “they are almost identical.”

“What?”

“Their heads par derrière , the Entrepreneur’s and the super’s. I think it’s mostly in the ears. They both have histrionic ears. Seismographic instruments. See. The Entrepreneur needs no face or voice or hands. His ears tell all.”

The back of the Entrepreneur’s head grimaced, his ears blushed, and his hand slapped a losing card on the table. He snarled something in German.

“You see!” Renner said. “Just like the super— dynamic! ” When Renner used a word like “dynamic” he thought he was very American.

I took out my pipe. Renner shoved the package of tobacco across the table. “Stalin imports tobacco from this country, did you know? No one else in Russia may.” A revealing sidelight, it seemed to me, and I hoped Renner’s source was obscure, if not reliable. “Edgeworth,” Renner said. “Stalin smokes only Edgeworth.”

“Think of the dilemma Stalin’s endorsement must constitute for the Edgeworth company,” I reflected. “One faction wants to launch the product as the choice of dictators.”

Renner took up the idea. “Another faction doggedly holds out for the common man.”

“Finally,” I said, slightly excited, “a futile attempt (by visionaries in the advertising department) to square the circle.”

“We can’t all be dictators,” Renner broke in like a radio announcer, “but we can all—”

“Exactly.”

A stocky man plodded out of the washroom. The cardplayers hardly noticed him. I could not help thinking of him in terms of deus ex machina , for we had not seen him before and we had been in the place too long. He stood in the middle of the floor, a crumpled, somewhat parliamentary figure, and said: