The next day my main worry was whether I could get free between ten and eleven o’clock. And I decided to do it by hook or by crook, even if it cost me my job.
But that morning there was a rather special excitement at the ministry, the reason for which the secretary had let slip was coming redundancies. Actually this was nothing new, as they had been talking of redundancies even before me, and it had been repeated during my time at the ministry, and yet there was always a reason to take on new staff from time to time. Why the secretary’s words had such an effect just that day was at first incomprehensible to me. The secret whisperings of others seemed strange to me, which I hadn’t noticed before.
“They talk about it for a while, and then everything stays the same, like today,” I said to a colleague who was sitting at the same table with me.
“No, now there’s something real behind it,” he replied, “and the first ones to get the sack will be the ones who came last and don’t have a wife or children.”
“So you and I will be among the first to go,” I concluded.
“Not I,” he contested, and added, jokingly or sarcastically, “Today I registered, and with God’s help I might be doing a baptism in a few weeks. So if they can just wait a little, I’ll soon be a father.”
“Then I’d better hurry too,” I tried to parry with a joke, “if that’s supposed to help.”
“They don’t want that,” he replied, now quite seriously. “They’d rather sack people from the ministry than have them take a wife.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“Me?” he shrugged. “Why would everyone have to do what I do? Believe me, dear friend, our combined salary with my wife is less than ours on our own without a salary.” Since I didn’t understand this, my colleague went on to explain. “Let’s say you lose your job, how much will you be short to live on in a month? It’ll only be for a while, I think, as you’re bound to find something else. This is how I would calculate it: ten crowns for a room, right? Fifteen crowns for food, would that be enough?”
At the time that sum seemed small to me, but now I would tell my colleague that you can get by on less, as long as you bear in mind that you mustn’t walk much, or you won’t last. I can say that on the basis of my own experience. But I didn’t say anything then, so my colleague was free to carry on: “We’ll put five crowns for amusements, you understand: a cheap cinema sometimes, upper back row at the theatre, a couple of times at the café even, a little piece of cheap scented soap, a box of tooth powder, sauna a couple of times a month, on the cheapest day of course – in other words, quite a decent living for people like us, and taken together the shortfall is thirty crowns a month, if you don’t end up in some job. But do you know how it is with a wife? You take your salary from the ministry, and if you start living, by the end of the month the shortfall is forty or fifty crowns. Now just calculate which is more profitable – salary with a wife or no salary and no wife. Now believe me, my dear colleague, as far as salary goes, it’s not worth running after a wife. But of course, if you have other reasons… Because there are women who earn on their own, or who have assets – well now! That’s quite another matter.”
“But how can you be so sure, if you only registered today?” I was keen to know.
“I just told you that I registered today and in a few weeks we’ll have a baptism,” he replied. “I mean I’ve been married for quite a while, so why shouldn’t I know? You’ve been getting book learning all the time, I’ve been learning from life, and what’s more I’m quite a few years older than you. I got this job here through my wife.”
“Oh I see!” I said, as if amazed.
“Of course,” he affirmed. “And through my wife I know about the redundancies at the right time, so we could register at the appropriate moment. For if a man has the right wife, he does everything at the right time – bear that in mind! A woman, if she’s the right one and loves properly, is like a boa constrictor round your neck, you can’t get rid of her so easily.”
“And I don’t want to,” I said, for my part.
“Quite right: you don’t want to, that’s the main thing,” he assured me, and then asked, “but how do you know all this?”
“Some lady told me recently,” I replied. “She assured me that if a woman can get her arm around a man’s neck, then –”
“Then it’s like jiu-jitsu,” laughed my colleague. “Quite right! Just like that!”
“Not just like that, but the idea’s the same,” I explained.
“Well, what are we talking about, if the idea’s the same,” he said. “The idea’s the main thing.”
That was our conversation during the break, while I was itching to go to the boss to get some leave between ten and eleven o’clock. While chatting and itching, though, I was debating with myself: if there really will be redundancies now, as has long been threatened, then I will probably be the first one to get the boot, as my colleague thought. So what am I seeking from Erika’s grandfather, what can I tell him, if I am a decent person at all and if I’m not completely senseless? Do I go and tell him that I love his granddaughter madly, or do I go to ask that same granddaughter’s hand in marriage? To do the first is stupid, and to do the second is criminal or ridiculous, if today or tomorrow I’m going to lose the job I have.
Yet I had to go and ask permission, because I couldn’t fail to go; I had wanted and promised to. But now it all seemed to me downright incomprehensible and senseless. I was being led like a blind man somewhere, as if some woman already had really put her arm around my neck. Or should those words only be understood metaphorically? There was nothing for it: I had to go.
And I did go, although my heart was turning cold within me. Even coming away from my boss, there must have been something unusual about my face, because everyone looked at me quizzically and my colleague joked from his desk, “You mean: register or baptise first?”
“No, just to arrange a loan,” I replied.
“A smart man after all!” sighed my colleague. “To borrow and have fun, it’s worth it, but to love and then get married, nah…!” He didn’t finish, and I left.
On my way my feet took one step forward, two steps back, so to speak. Looking back now, I cannot wonder enough at myself, my state of mind and my understanding. I had dreamt of such a moment in the past, and in my head and heart I had everything wonderfully ready to say to that unknown old gentleman, so that he would grant the hand of his granddaughter whether he liked it or not. So why all this reluctance to go, and why was my state of mind almost sinking to hopelessness? Maybe it was the discussion at the lunch table at home recently? Or my colleague’s sarcastic joking chit-chat this morning? Or was my state of mind really depressed by the knowledge of the coming redundancies and the possible loss of my job? But until today I hadn’t really appreciated that job anyway, and I’d been thinking of finding a better one, to enable a more decent way of life. So why did I no longer hope for that job? Was it because even the present bad one threatened to vanish? So was I a chancer, driven by nature or love, who believed in greater winnings soon, if he manages to gain smaller ones that vanish with his latest failure and the loss of all other hopes?
At Erika’s home she opened she door herself. She was already wearing a coat and hat, as if hurrying off somewhere, but was only awaiting my arrival. Anxiously she whispered to me, along with her greeting, beseeching, “But ask grandfather nicely! Be sweet to him!”
As I took off my overcoat, she went to announce me. Her speech and every and action betrayed her extreme excitement and she appeared to be very pleased when she finally took me to her grandfather, only to disappear.
“Through here, please,” she told me, as I composed myself in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror, framed in mahogany. Grandfather was waiting for me in a smaller, office-like room, after I’d passed through a spacious hall, which was piled high with redwood furniture, as if they didn’t want to leave space for any people to live or exist in. A single glance at this wealth and finery – for that is how I appreciated it then, and still do now, with slight adjustments – and my already grim mood immediately changed into one of despair. Certainly I must have loved that fair-haired girl madly at that time, and that love must have been much deeper than I can even explain to myself now, otherwise I would probably have turned on my heels, grabbed my coat and hat from the peg, and run out the door without a word. For what was the point in my appearing before that unknown old gentleman if I had the slightest wit to assess my own situation, past and future? But I didn’t have that wit, or if I did have it – for otherwise why did my heart sink so low within me? – then I was driven crazy and completely stupefied by a much stronger force than human wit.