Collected Stories Page 11

  And so here was the enemy, fresh and gay in his shore-going clothes, a ledger under his arm, probably containing a statement of the hours worked and the wages due to the stoker, and he was openly scanning the faces of everyone present, a frank admission that his first concern was to discover on which side they stood. All seven of them were already his friends, for even though the Captain had raised some objections to him earlier, or had pretended to do so because he felt sorry for the stoker, it was now apparent that he had not the slightest fault to find with Schubal. A man like the stoker could not be too severely repressed, and if Schubal were to be reproached for anything, it was for not having subdued the stoker’s recalcitrance sufficiently, since the fellow had dared to face the Captain after all.

  Yet it might still be assumed that the confrontation of Schubal and the stoker would achieve, even before a human tribunal, the result which would have been awarded by divine justice, since Schubal, even if he were good at making a show of virtue, might easily give himself away in the long run. A brief flare-up of his evil nature would suffice to reveal it to those gentlemen, and Karl would arrange for that. He already had a rough and ready knowledge of the shrewdness, the weaknesses, the temper of the various individuals in the room, and in this respect the time he had spent there had not been wasted. It was a pity that the stoker was not more competent; he seemed quite incapable of decisive action. If one were to thrust Schubal at him, he would probably split the man’s hated skull with his fists. But it was beyond his power to take the couple of steps needed to bring Schubal within reach. Why had Karl not foreseen what so easily could have been foreseen: that Schubal would inevitably put in an appearance, if not of his own accord, then by order of the Captain? Why had he not outlined an exact plan of campaign with the stoker when they were on their way here, instead of simply walking in, hopelessly unprepared, as soon as they found a door, which was what they had done? Was the stoker even capable of saying a word by this time, of answering yes and no, as he must do if he were now to be cross-examined, although, to be sure, a cross-examination was almost too much to hope for? There he stood, his legs a-sprawl, his knees uncertain, his head thrown back, and the air flowed in and out of his open mouth as if the man had no lungs to control its motion.

  But Karl himself felt more strong and clear-headed than perhaps he had ever been at home. If only his father and mother could see him now, fighting for justice in a strange land before men of authority, and, though not yet triumphant, dauntlessly resolved to win the final victory! Would they revise their opinion of him? Set him between them and praise him? Look into his eyes at last, at last, those eyes so filled with devotion to them? Ambiguous questions, and this the most unsuitable moment to ask them!

  ‘I have come here because I believe this stoker is accusing me of dishonesty or something. A maid in the kitchen told me she saw him making in this direction. Captain, and all you other gentlemen, I am prepared to show papers to disprove any such accusation, and, if you like, to adduce the evidence of unprejudiced and incorruptible witnesses, who are waiting outside the door now.’ Thus spake Schubal. It was, to be sure, a clear and manly statement, and from the altered expression of the listeners one might have thought they were hearing a human voice for the first time after a long interval. They certainly did not notice the holes that could be picked in that fine speech. Why, for instance, had the first relevant word that occurred to him been ‘dishonesty’? Should he have been accused of that, perhaps instead of nationalistic prejudice? A maid in the kitchen had seen the stoker on his way to the office, and Schubal had immediately divined what that meant? Wasn’t it his consciousness of guilt that had sharpened his apprehension? And he had immediately collected witnesses, had he, and then called them unprejudiced and incorruptible to boot? Imposture, nothing but imposture! And these gentlemen were not only taken in by it, but regarded it with approval? Why had he allowed so much time to elapse between the kitchen-maid’s report and his arrival here? Simply in order to let the stoker weary the gentlemen, until they began to lose their powers of clear judgment, which Schubal feared most of all. Standing for a long time behind the door, as he must have done, had he deliberately refrained from knocking until he heard the casual question of the gentleman with the bamboo cane, which gave him grounds to hope that the stoker was already despatched?

  Everything was clear enough now and Schubal’s very behavior involuntarily corroborated it, but it would have to be proved to those gentlemen by other and still more palpable means. They must be shaken up. Now then, Karl, quick, make the best of every minute you have, before the witnesses come in and confuse everything!

  At that very moment, however, the Captain waved Schubal away, and at once – seeing that his case seemed to be provisionally postponed – he stepped aside and was joined by the attendant, with whom he began a whispered conversation involving many side glances at the stoker and Karl, as well as the most impressive gestures. It was as if Schubal were rehearsing his next fine speech.

  ‘Didn’t you want to ask this youngster something, Mr Jacob?’ the Captain said in the general silence to the gentleman with the bamboo cane.

  ‘Why, yes,’ replied the other, with a slight bow in acknowledgment of the Captain’s courtesy. And he asked Karl again: ‘What is your name?’

  Karl, who thought that his main business would be best served by satisfying his stubborn questioner as quickly as possible, replied briefly, without, as was his custom, introducing himself by means of his passport, which he would have had to tug out of his pocket: ‘Karl Rossmann.’

  ‘But really!’ said the gentleman who had been addressed as Jacob, recoiling with an almost incredulous smile. The Captain too, the Head Purser, the ship’s officer, even the attendant, all showed an excessive astonishment on hearing Karl’s name. Only the harbor officials and Schubal remained indifferent.

  ‘But really!’ repeated Mr. Jacob, walking a little stiffly up to Karl, ‘then I’m your Uncle Jacob and you’re my own dear nephew. I suspected it all the time!’ he said to the Captain before embracing and kissing Karl, who dumbly submitted to everything.

  ‘And what may your name be?’ asked Karl when he felt himself released again, very courteously, but quite coolly, trying hard to estimate the consequences which this new development might have for the stoker. At the moment, there was nothing to indicate that Schubal could extract any advantage out of it.

  ‘But don’t you understand your good fortune, young man?’ said the Captain, who thought that Mr. Jacob was wounded in his dignity by Karl’s question, for he had retired to the window, obviously to conceal from the others the agitation on his face, which he also kept dabbing with a handkerchief. ‘It is Senator Edward Jacob who has just declared himself to be your uncle. You have now a brilliant career in front of you, against all your previous expectations, I dare say. Try to realize this, as far as you can in the first shock of the moment, and pull yourself together!’

  ‘I certainly have an Uncle Jacob in America,’ said Karl, turning to the Captain, ‘but if I understand rightly, Jacob is only the surname of this gentleman.’

  ‘That is so,’ said the Captain, encouragingly.

  ‘Well, my Uncle Jacob, who is my mother’s brother, had Jacob for a Christian name, but his surname must of course be the same as my mother’s, whose maiden name was Bendelmayer.’

  ‘Gentlemen!’ cried the Senator, coming forward in response to Karl’s explanation, quite cheerful now after his recuperative retreat to the window. Everyone except the harbor officials laughed a little, some as if really touched, others for no visible reason.

  ‘Yet what I said wasn’t so ridiculous as all that,’ thought Karl.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ repeated the Senator, ‘you are involved against my will and your own in a little family scene, and so I can’t but give you an explanation, since, I fancy, no one but the Captain here’ – this reference was followed by a reciprocal bow – ‘is fully informed of the circumstances.’

  ‘Now I must reall
y attend to every word,’ Karl told himself, and glancing over his shoulder he was delighted to see that life was beginning to return to the figure of the stoker.

  ‘For the many years of my sojourn in America – though sojourn is hardly the right word to use of an American citizen, and I am an American citizen from my very heart – for all these many years, then, I have lived completely cut off from my relatives in Europe, for reasons which, in the first place, do not concern us here, and in the second, would really give me too much pain to relate. I actually dread the moment when I may be forced to explain them to my dear nephew, for some frank criticisms of his parents and their friends will be unavoidable, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It is my uncle, no doubt about it,’ Karl told himself, listening eagerly, ‘he must have had his name changed.’

  ‘Now, my dear nephew has simply been turned out – we may as well call a spade a spade – has simply been turned out by his parents, just as you turn a cat out of the house when it annoys you. I have no intention of extenuating what my nephew did to merit that punishment, yet his transgression was of a kind that merely needs to be named to find indulgence.’

  ‘That’s not too bad,’ thought Karl, ‘but I hope he won’t tell the whole story. Anyhow, he can’t know much about it. Who would tell him?’

  ‘For he was,’ Uncle Jacob went on, rocking himself a little on the bamboo cane which was braced in front of him, a gesture that actually succeeded in deprecating any unnecessary solemnity which otherwise must have characterized his statement, ‘for he was seduced by a maidservant, Johanna Brummer, a person of round about thirty-five. It is far from my wishes to offend my nephew by using the word “seduced”, but it is difficult to find another and equally suitable word.’

  Karl, who had moved up quite close to his uncle, turned round to read from the gentlemen’s faces the impression the story had made. None of them laughed, all were listening patiently and seriously. After all, one did not laugh at the nephew of a Senator on the first possible opportunity. It was rather the stoker who now smiled at Karl, though very faintly, but that was satisfactory in the first place, as a sign of reviving life, and excusable in the second place, since in the stoker’s bunk Karl had tried to make an impenetrable mystery of this very story which was now being made so public.

  ‘Now this Brummer,’ Uncle Jacob went on, ‘had a child by my nephew, a healthy boy, who was given the baptismal name of Jacob, evidently in memory of my unworthy self, since my nephew’s doubtless quite casual references to me had managed to make a deep impression on the woman. Fortunately, let me add. For the boy’s parents, to avoid alimony or being personally involved in any scandal – I must insist that I know neither how the law stands in their district nor their general circumstances – to avoid the scandal, then, and the payment of alimony, they packed off their son, my dear nephew, to America, shamefully unprovided for, as you can see, and the poor lad, but for the signs and wonders which still happen in America if nowhere else, would have come to a wretched end in New York, being thrown entirely on his own resources, if this servant girl hadn’t written a letter to me, which after long delays reached me the day before yesterday, giving me the whole story, along with a description of my nephew and, very wisely, the name of the ship as well. If I were setting out to entertain you, gentlemen, I could read a few passages to you from this letter’ – he pulled out and flourished before them two huge, closely written sheets of letter-paper. ‘You would certainly be interested, for the letter is written with somewhat simple but well-meant cunning and with much loving care for the father of the child. But I have no intention either of entertaining you for longer than my explanation needs, or of wounding at the very start the perhaps still sensitive feelings of my nephew, who if he likes can read the letter for his own instruction in the seclusion of the room already waiting for him.’

  But Karl had no feelings for Johanna Brummer. Hemmed in by a vanishing past, she sat in her kitchen beside the kitchen dresser, resting her elbows on top of it. She looked at him whenever he came to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water for his father or do some errand for his mother. Sometimes, awkwardly sitting sideways at the dresser, she would write a letter, drawing her inspiration from Karl’s face. Sometimes she would sit with her hand over her eyes, heeding nothing that was said to her. Sometimes she would kneel in her tiny room next the kitchen and pray to a wooden crucifix; then Karl would feel shy if he passed by and caught a glimpse of her through the crack of the slightly open door. Sometimes she would bustle about her kitchen and recoil, laughing like a witch, if Karl came near her. Sometimes she would shut the kitchen door after Karl entered, and keep hold of the door-handle until he had to beg to be let out. Sometimes she would bring him things which he did not want and press them silently into his hand. And once she called him ‘Karl’ and, while he was still dumbfounded at this unusual familiarity, led him into her room, sighing and grimacing, and locked the door. Then she flung her arms round his neck, almost choking him, and while urging him to take off her clothes, she really took off his and laid him on her bed, as if she would never give him up to anyone and would tend and cherish him to the end of time. ‘Oh Karl, my Karl!’ she cried; it was as if her eyes were devouring him, while his eyes saw nothing at all and he felt uncomfortable in all the warm bedclothes which she seemed to have piled up for him alone. Then she lay down by him and wanted some secret from him, but he could tell her none, and she showed anger, either in jest or in earnest, shook him, listened to his heart, offered her breast that he might listen to hers in turn, but could not bring him to do it, pressed her naked belly against his body, felt with her hand between his legs, so disgustingly that his head and neck started up from the pillows, then thrust her body several times against him – it was as if she were part of himself, and for that reason, perhaps, he was seized with a terrible feeling of yearning. With the tears running down his cheeks he reached his own bed at last, after many entreaties from her to come again. That was all that had happened, and yet his uncle had managed to make a great song out of it. And it seemed the cook had also been thinking about him and had informed his uncle of his arrival. That had been very good of her and he would make some return for it later, if he could.

  ‘And now,’ cried the Senator, ‘I want you to tell me candidly whether I am your uncle or not?’

  ‘You are my uncle,’ said Karl, kissing his hand and receiving a kiss on the brow. ‘I’m very glad to have found you, but you’re mistaken if you think my father and mother never speak kindly of you. In any case, you’ve got some points quite wrong in your story; I mean that it didn’t all happen like that in reality. But you can’t really be expected to understand things at such a distance, and I fancy it won’t do any great harm if these gentlemen are somewhat incorrectly informed about the details of an affair which can’t have much interest for them.’

  ‘Well spoken,’ said the Senator, leading Karl up to the Captain, who was visibly sympathetic, and asking: ‘Haven’t I a splendid nephew?’

  ‘I am delighted,’ said the Captain, making a bow which showed his military training, ‘to have met your nephew, Mr. Senator. My ship is highly honored in providing the scene for such a reunion. But the voyage in the steerage must have been very unpleasant, for we have, of course, all kinds of people traveling steerage. We do everything possible to make conditions tolerable, far more, for instance, than the American lines do, but to turn such a passage into pleasure is more than we’ve been able to manage yet.’

  ‘It did me no harm,’ said Karl.

  ‘It did him no harm!’ repeated the Senator, laughing loudly.

  ‘Except that I’m afraid I’ve lost my box –’ and with that he remembered all that had happened and all that remained to be done, and he looked round him and saw the others still in the same places, silent with respect and surprise, their eyes fixed upon him. Only the harbor officials, insofar as their severe, self-satisfied faces were legible, betrayed some regret at having come at such an unpropitious time, and t
he watch which they had laid on the table before them was probably more important to them than everything that had happened in the room or might still happen there.

  The first to express his sympathy, after the Captain, was curiously enough the stoker. ‘I congratulate you heartily,’ he said, and shook Karl’s hand, making the gesture a token of something like gratitude. Yet when he turned to the Senator with the same words the Senator drew back, as if the stoker were exceeding his rights; and the stoker immediately retreated.

  But the others now saw what should be done and at once pressed in a confused throng round Karl and the Senator. So it happened that Karl actually received Schubal’s congratulations, accepted them and thanked him for them. The last to advance in the ensuing lull were the harbor officials, who said two words in English, which made a ludicrous impression.

  The Senator now felt moved to extract the last ounce of enjoyment from the situation by refreshing his own and the others’ minds with the less important details, and this was not merely tolerated but of course welcomed with interest by everyone. So he told them that he had entered in his notebook, for consultation in a possible emergency, his nephew’s most distinctive characteristics as enumerated by the cook in her letter. Bored by the stoker’s ravings, he had pulled out the notebook simply to distract himself, and had begun for his own amusement to compare the cook’s descriptions, which were not so exact as a detective might wish, with Karl’s appearance. ‘And that’s how to find a nephew!’ he concluded proudly, as if he wanted to be congratulated all over again.

  ‘What will happen to the stoker now?’ asked Karl, ignoring his uncle’s last remarks. In his new circumstances he thought he was entitled to say whatever came into his mind.