The Complete Stories Read online

  "What weather!" the gentleman said in a low voice, shaking his head, consciously, it was true, but still in a slightly senile way.

  "Yes, indeed, and when one's supposed to be starting on a journey, too," Raban said, quickly straightening up.

  "And it isn't the kind of weather that will improve," the gentleman said and, in order to make sure of it once more for the last time, bent forward to glance in scrutiny up the street, then down, and then at the sky. "It may last for days, even for weeks. So far as I recall, nothing better is forecast for June and the beginning of July, either. Well, it's no pleasure to anyone; I for instance shall have to do without my walks, which are extremely important to my health."

  Hereupon he yawned and seemed to become exhausted, since he had now heard Raban's voice and, occupied with this conversation, no longer took any interest in anything, not even in the conversation.

  This made quite an impression on Raban, since after all the gentleman had addressed him first, and he therefore tried to show off a little, although it might not even be noticed. "True," he said, "in town one can very easily manage to go without what isn't good for one. If one does not do without it, then one has only oneself to blame for the bad consequences. One will be sorry and in this way come to see for the first time really clearly how to manage the next time. And even if in matters of detail. . . [Two pages missing]. . . "I don't mean anything by it. I don't mean anything at all," Raban hastened to say, prepared to excuse the gentleman's absent-mindedness in any way possible, since after all he wanted to show off a little more. "It's all just out of the book previously mentioned, which I, like other people, happen to have been reading in the evening recently. I have been mostly alone. Owing to family circumstances, you see. But apart from anything else, a good book is what I like best after supper. Always has been. Just recently I read in a prospectus a quotation from some writer or other. 'A good book is the best friend there is,' and that's really true, it is so, a good book is the best friend there is."

  "Yes, when one is young —" the gentleman said, meaning nothing in particular by this, merely wanting to indicate how it was raining, that the rain was heavier again, and that now it was not going to stop at all; but to Raban it sounded as though at sixty the gentleman still thought of himself as young and energetic and considered Raban's thirty years nothing in comparison, and as though he meant to say besides, insofar as it was permissible, that at the age of thirty he had, of course, been more sensible than Raban. And that he believed even if one had nothing else to do, like himself, for instance, an old man, yet it was really wasting one's time to stand about here in this hall, looking at the rain, but if one spent the time, besides, in chatter, one was wasting it doubly.

  Now Raban had believed for some time that nothing other people said about his capabilities or opinions had been able to affect him, on the contrary, that he had positively abandoned the position where he had listened, all submissively, to everything that was said, so that people were now simply wasting their breath whether they happened to be against him or for him. And so he said: "We are talking about different things, since you did not wait to hear what I was going to say."

  "Please go on, please go on," the gentleman said.

  "Well, it isn't so important," Raban said. "I was only going to say books are useful in every sense and quite especially in respects in which one would not expect it. For when one is about to embark on some enterprise, it is precisely the books whose contents have nothing at all in common with the enterprise that are the most useful. For the reader who does after all intend to embark on that enterprise, that is to say, who has somehow become enthusiastic (and even if, as it were, the effect of the book can penetrate only so far as that enthusiasm), will be stimulated by the book to all kinds of thoughts concerning his enterprise. Now, however, since the contents of the book are precisely something of utter indifference, the reader is not at all impeded in those thoughts, and he passes through the midst of the book with them, as once the Jews passed through the Red Sea, that's how I should like to put it."

  For Raban the whole person of the old gentleman now assumed an unpleasant expression. It seemed to him as though he had drawn particularly close to him — but it was merely trifling. . . [Two pages missing]. . . "The newspaper, too. — But I was about to say, I am only going into the country, that's all, only for a fortnight; I am taking a holiday for the first time for quite a long period, and it's necessary for other reasons too, and yet for instance a book that I was, as I have mentioned, reading recently taught me more about my little journey than you could imagine."

  "I am listening," the gentleman said.

  Raban was silent and, standing there so straight, put his hands into his overcoat pockets, which were rather too high. Only after a while did the old gentleman say: "This journey seems to be of some special importance to you."

  "Well, you see, you see," Raban said, once more supporting himself against the doorpost. Only now did he see how the passage had filled up with people. They were standing even around the foot of the staircase, and an official, who had rented a room in the apartment of the same woman as Raban had, when he came down the stairs had to ask the people to make way for him. To Raban, who only pointed at the rain, he called out over several heads, which now all turned to Raban, "Have a good journey" and reiterated a promise, obviously given earlier, definitely to visit Raban the next Sunday.

  [Two pages missing]. . . has a pleasant job, with which he is indeed satisfied and which has always been kept open for him. He has such powers of endurance and is inwardly so gay that he does not need anyone to keep him entertained, but everyone needs him. He has always been healthy. Oh, don't try to tell me.

  "I am not going to argue," the gentleman said.

  "You won't argue, but you won't admit your mistake either. Why do you stick to it so? And however sharply you may recollect now, you would, I dare wager, forget everything if you were to talk to him. You would reproach me for not having refuted you more effectively now. If he so much as talks about a book. He's instantly ecstatic about everything beautiful. . ."

  Translated by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins

  The Judgment

  IT WAS a Sunday morning in the very height of spring. Georg Bendemann, a young merchant, was sitting in his own room on the first floor of one of a long row of small, ramshackle houses stretching beside the river which were scarcely distinguishable from each other in height and coloring. He had just finished a letter to an old friend of his who was now living abroad, had put it into its envelope in a slow and dreamy fashion, and with his elbows propped on the writing table was gazing out of the window at the river, the bridge, and the hills on the farther bank with their tender green.

  He was thinking about his friend, who had actually run away to Russia some years before, being dissatisfied with his prospects at home. Now he was carrying on a business in St. Petersburg, which had flourished to begin with but had long been going downhill, as he always complained on his increasingly rare visits. So he was wearing himself out to no purpose in a foreign country, the unfamiliar full beard he wore did not quite conceal the face Georg had known so well since childhood, and his skin was growing so yellow as to indicate some latent disease. By his own account he had no regular connection with the colony of his fellow countrymen out there and almost no social intercourse with Russian families, so that he was resigning himself to becoming a permanent bachelor.

  What could one write to such a man, who had obviously run off the rails, a man one could be sorry for but could not help. Should one advise him to come home, to transplant himself and take up his old friendships again — there was nothing to hinder him — and in general to rely on the help of his friends? But that was as good as telling him, and the more kindly the more offensively, that all his efforts hitherto had miscarried, that he should finally give up, come back home, and be gaped at by everyone as a returned prodigal, that only his friends knew what was what and that he himself was just a big child who sh
ould do what his successful and home-keeping friends prescribed. And was it certain, besides, that all the pain one would have to inflict on him would achieve its object? Perhaps it would not even be possible to get him to come home at all — he said himself that he was now out of touch with commerce in his native country — and then he would still be left an alien in a foreign land embittered by his friends' advice and more than ever estranged from them. But if he did follow their advice and then didn't fit in at home — not out of malice, of course, but through force of circumstances — couldn't get on with his friends or without them, felt humiliated, couldn't be said to have either friends or a country of his own any longer, wouldn't it have been better for him to stay abroad just as he was? Taking all this into account, how could one be sure that he would make a success of life at home?

  For such reasons, supposing one wanted to keep up correspondence with him, one could not send him any real news such as could frankly be told to the most distant acquaintance. It was more than three years since his last visit, and for this he offered the lame excuse that the political situation in Russia was too uncertain, which apparently would not permit even the briefest absence of a small businessman while it allowed hundreds of thousands of Russians to travel peacefully abroad. But during these three years Georg's own position in life had changed a lot. TWO years ago his mother had died, since when he and his father had shared the household together, and his friend had of course been informed of that and had expressed his sympathy in a letter phrased so dryly that the grief caused by such an event, one had to conclude, could not be realized in a distant country. Since that time, however, Georg had applied himself with greater determination to the business as well as to everything else.

  Perhaps during his mother's lifetime his father's insistence on having everything his own way in the business had hindered him from developing any real activity of his own, perhaps since her death his father had become less aggressive, although he was still active in the business, perhaps it was mostly due to an accidental run of good fortune — which was very probable indeed — but at any rate during those two years the business had developed in a most unexpected way, the staff had had to be doubled, the turnover was five times as great; no doubt about it, further progress lay just ahead.

  But Georg's friend had no inkling of this improvement. In earlier years, perhaps for the last time in that letter of condolence, he had tried to persuade Georg to emigrate to Russia and had enlarged upon the prospects of success for precisely Georg's branch of trade. The figures quoted were microscopic by comparison with the range of Georg's present operations. Yet he shrank from letting his friend know about his business success, and if he were to do it now retrospectively that certainly would look peculiar.

  So Georg confined himself to giving his friend unimportant items of gossip such as rise at random in the memory when one is idly thinking things over on a quiet Sunday. All he desired was to leave undisturbed the idea of the home town which his friend must have built up to his own content during the long interval. And so it happened to Georg that three times in three fairly widely separated letters he had told his friend about the engagement of an unimportant man to an equally unimportant girl, until indeed, quite contrary to his intentions, his friend began to show some interest in this notable event.

  Yet Georg preferred to write about things like these rather than to confess that he himself had got engaged a month ago to a Fräulein Frieda Brandenfeld, a girl from a well-to-do family. He often discussed this friend of his with his fiancée and the peculiar relationship that had developed between them in their correspondence. "So he won't be coming to our wedding," said she, "and yet I have a right to get to know all your friends." "I don't want to trouble him," answered Georg, "don't misunderstand me, he would probably come, at least I think so, but he would feel that his hand had been forced and he would be hurt, perhaps he would envy me and certainly he'd be discontented and without being able to do anything about his discontent he'd have to go away again alone. Alone — do you know what that means?" "Yes, but may he not hear about our wedding in some other fashion?" "I can't prevent that, of course, but it's unlikely, considering the way he lives." "Since your friends are like that, Georg, you shouldn't ever have got engaged at all." "Well, we're both to blame for that; but I wouldn't have it any other way now." And when, breathing quickly under his kisses, she still brought out: "All the same, I do feel upset," he thought it could not really involve him in trouble were he to send the news to his friend. "That's the kind of man I am and he'll just have to take me as I am," he said to himself, "I can't cut myself to another pattern that might make a more suitable friend for him."

  And in fact he did inform his friend, in the long letter he had been writing that Sunday morning, about his engagement, with these words: "I have saved my best news to the end. I have got engaged to a Fräulein Frieda Brandenfeld, a girl from a well-to-do family, who only came to live here a long time after you went away, so that you're hardly likely to know her. There will be time to tell you more about her later, for today let me just say that I am very happy and as between you and me the only difference in our relationship is that instead of a quite ordinary kind of friend you will now have in me a happy friend. Besides that, you will acquire in my fiancée, who sends her warm greetings and will soon write you herself, a genuine friend of the opposite sex, which is not without importance to a bachelor. I know that there are many reasons why you can't come to see us, but would not my wedding be precisely the right occasion for giving all obstacles the go-by? Still, however that may be, do just as seems good to you without regarding any interests but your own."

  With this letter in his hand Georg had been sitting a long time at the writing table, his face turned toward the window. He had barely acknowledged, with an absent smile, a greeting waved to him from the street by a passing acquaintance.

  At last he put the letter in his pocket and went out of his room across a small lobby into his father's room, which he had not entered for months. There was in fact no need for him to enter it, since he saw his father daily at business and they took their mid-day meal together at an eating house; in the evening, it was true, each did as he pleased, yet even then, unless Georg — as mostly happened — went out with friends or, more recently, visited his fiancée, they always sat for a while, each with his newspaper, in their common sitting room.

  It surprised Georg how dark his father's room was even on this sunny morning. So it was overshadowed as much as that by the high wall on the other side of the narrow courtyard. His father was sitting by the window in a corner hung with various mementoes of Georg's dead mother, reading a newspaper which he held to one side before his eyes in an attempt to overcome a defect of vision. On the table stood the remains of his breakfast, not much of which seemed to have been eaten.

  "Ah, Georg," said his father, rising at once to meet him. His heavy dressing gown swung open as he walked and the skirts of it fluttered around him. — "My father is still a giant of a man," said Georg to himself.

  "It's unbearably dark here," he said aloud.

  "Yes, it's dark enough," answered his father.

  "And you've shut the window, too?"

  "I prefer it like that."

  "Well, it's quite warm outside," said Georg, as if continuing his previous remark, and sat down.

  His father cleared away the breakfast dishes and set them on a chest.

  "I really only wanted to tell you," went on Georg, who had been vacantly following the old man's movements, "that I am now sending the news of my engagement to St. Petersburg." He drew the letter a little way from his pocket and let it drop back again.

  "To St. Petersburg?" asked his father.

  "To my friend there," said Georg, trying to meet his father's eye. — In business hours he's quite different, he was thinking, how solidly he sits here with his arms crossed.

  "Oh yes. To your friend," said his father, with peculiar emphasis.

  "Well, you know, Father, that I w
anted not to tell him about my engagement at first. Out of consideration for him, that was the only reason. You know yourself he's a difficult man. I said to myself that someone else might tell him about my engagement, although he's such a solitary creature that that was hardly likely — I couldn't prevent that — but I wasn't ever going to tell him myself."

  "And now you've changed your mind?" asked his father, laying his enormous newspaper on the window sill and on top of it his spectacles, which he covered with one hand.

  "Yes, I've been thinking it over. If he's a good friend of mine, I said to myself, my being happily engaged should make him happy too. And so I wouldn't put off telling him any longer. But before I posted the letter I wanted to let you know."

  "Georg," said his father, lengthening his toothless mouth, "listen to me! You've come to me about this business, to talk it over with me. No doubt that does you honor. But it's nothing, it's worse than nothing, if you don't tell me the whole truth. I don't want to stir up matters that shouldn't be mentioned here. Since the death of our dear mother certain things have been done that aren't right. Maybe the time will come for mentioning them, and maybe sooner than we think. There's many a thing in the business I'm not aware of, maybe it's not done behind my back — I'm not going to say that it's done behind my back — I'm not equal to things any longer, my memory's failing, I haven't an eye for so many things any longer. That's the course of nature in the first place, and in the second place the death of our dear mother hit me harder than it did you. — But since we're talking about it, about this letter, I beg you, Georg, don't deceive me. It's a trivial affair, it's hardly worth mentioning, so don't deceive me. Do you really have this friend in St. Petersburg?"

  Georg rose in embarrassment. "Never mind my friends. A thousand friends wouldn't make up to me for my father. Do you know what I think? You're not taking enough care of yourself. But old age must be taken care of. I can't do without you in the business, you know that very well, but if the business is going to undermine your health, I'm ready to close it down tomorrow forever. And that won't do. We'll have to make a change in your way of living. But a radical change. You sit here in the dark, and in the sitting room you would have plenty of light. You just take a bite of breakfast instead of properly keeping up your strength. You sit by a closed window, and the air would be so good for you. No, Father! I'll get the doctor to come, and we'll follow his orders. We'll change your room, you can move into the front room and I'll move in here. You won't notice the change, all your things will be moved with you. But there's time for all that later, I'll put you to bed now for a little, I'm sure you need to rest. Come, I'll help you to take off your things, you'll see I can do it. Or if you would rather go into the front room at once, you can lie down in my bed for the present. That would be the most sensible thing."