“Please don’t stand on ceremony, fire away …”
“You’ll have to water down your passions a little, and the cat’s way of life could perhaps serve as an example in this respect. It’s an animal with a positive outlook on life. A sophisticated operator. I’ve never known him to have the slightest romantic inclination; I’ve never seen it fascinated by characteristically childish and absurd nighttime adventures on the tiles. On the contrary, it is ready to use every trick in the book to guarantee high-quality nourishment. That’s most impressive. It differentiates between different brands of frankfurters, eats eggs only if fried, likes tea with lemon, like the Slavs, and is dangerously sweet-toothed. It’s a wonderful, exceptional cat and only lacks one talent to be really man-like: the ability to write newspaper articles.”
“I see … That’s clear enough.”
“I think it’s a pattern to follow. It may be that some friends, Tassin in particular, will think we are flippant, superficial guys with little in the way of refinement. Too bad …”
With that we heard the doorbell, and shortly Sr Tassin in person walked in through the office door with a bundle of papers under his arm. He usually resided in Vienna, but frequently came to Berlin, which was the main center for Russian émigrés of every stripe. Politics brought him here, though he also had his own small lines of business. We’d first met him in Madrid where he translated Russian novels for the 30-cent Espasa Calpe series.
Tassin had come to suggest a business project. It was the first on our horizon after the creation of the Renten-Marken. He had come to suggest we translate Kropotkin’s Ethics for a big publisher in Buenos Aires. Xammar winked and grinned at me
As Tassin insisted on maximum professionalism, the job wasn’t as simple as it seemed at first. We had a trial run to test our way of working. Tassin sat in front of the Russian edition of the book and began to translate out loud using a mixture of French and German. Xammar sat in front of the typewriter and turned the verbal flow from Tassin into South American Spanish style and grammar. I was responsible for ensuring that the work’s philosophical vocabulary was accurate and, to an extent, for bolstering the content. It was a complex method of working but was the only solution if we were to attain the degree of authenticity the Argentine publisher required. It was a method that created really comic situations. When Tassin came across a thorny problem, he opened his mouth like a child and seemed as innocent as a lamb. When this happened, he inevitably looked up at the cat sleeping on top of the cupboard. Equally, Xammar sometimes struggled to find the right turn of phrase and the typewriter would stutter to a halt. Then his eyes also turned towards the cat. Of the three translators, my task was the most taxing, both because of the intrinsic difficulty of my role and my lack of experience. I would often grind to a halt, and, guided by the same mechanism driving the others, I’d stare at the cat. It was strange to see the three of us intermittently silent, perplexed and pensive, staring at the dozing, aloof cat.
“Yes,” said Tassin, “it is a rather long-winded, difficult method. I expect we’ll spend a lot of time staring at this cat. However, we don’t have any choice. Above all, our translation must be clear. This renowned author has written a book that is extraordinarily infantile. He has written an anti-Darwin ethics. The Russian is defending a thesis contrary to the idea of natural selection and the struggle for survival. He finds the lives of animal species display a constant effort to help each other and an astounding degree of selfless generosity. Do you see, the translations of books of this nature, that are infantile and dangerous, must be transparent, because even minimal obscurity will prompt a disproportionate number of bombs to be thrown …”
Sr Tassin advanced a good sum of money on account and we thus had almost solved our first month under the Renten-Mark. It was a positive outcome.
Now we had secured this first phase, Xammar decided it was imperative to strengthen our social standing. To that end he bought a top-rate pedigree dog. His hunch was that a person owning a pedigree dog in a city earns lots of kudos, and particularly in a German city where dogs are held in such high esteem.
“You’ll soon see what I mean,” Xammar would say. “After three or four days taking the dog for a run under the trees and round and about, everyone in the neighborhood will know a gentleman with a wonderful dog lives here. When you walk along the street, people will say, “That’s the gentleman who owns that wonderful, intelligent dog.” When you go shopping, the shop assistant or the young lady will say: “You, sir, are the man who owns that dog, that fantastic dog …” And they will give you a fetching smile. You have become that gentleman who has that dog, etc … and your standing goes up a number of notches. If one day you buy a pound or two of butter and don’t have enough money, they’ll turn a blind eye. I mean, how could they not trust a man who owns such a fine dog, etc …? A single prerequisite. It must be a great dog, must look in every way the genuine, certified pedigree item. It must be a pure-blood.
And that was how he came to buy the renowned Pekingese that was to bewitch the bourgeoisie of a good slice of the Kantstrasse. In an era of inflation everyone with the means bought whatever they could: dogs, cats, walking sticks, dollars, houses, and ties. When the currency became scarce, most of these purchases were put back on sale. The renowned Pekingese belonged to a married couple who would later become our close friends. They sold their dog because they had no choice. They were amenable on the spot. It was agreed we could take the dog immediately, but that we would pay for it in installments. The Pekingese belonged to the type known as the Maltese or Peke-a-tese and was absolutely charming. The dog was tiny, snub-nosed, and irascible with bulging round eyes that were so fierce they made you tremble and a head of hair worthy of a great, misunderstood man of letters. Its instincts were completely spontaneous and he had a worldview yet to be softened by any notion of warmth or tenderness, the ingredients necessary for leading a communal life. Rare was the day when its owner didn’t have to compensate one or two humble citizens whose pants had suffered from the terrible Peke-a-tese’s sharp white teeth. He did so without protest, because he knew that with every incursion his dog’s prestige grew. Some citizens found it quite natural for the dog to shred their pants, considered it to be such a pure expression of his pure blood that they refused to listen to apologies or accept payment for repairs to their pants.
“That’s what you call a real, genuine dog,” they would say, “and it would make my day to own one like it.”
They were completely calm and objective, at least in relation to the canine race in general and to the Pekingese in particular.
However, I used to tell my friend that, as he did have to pay out now and then, he might prefer to own a lion or at least a leopard. He replied in a melancholy tone that he had already tried that but had fallen foul of municipal regulations.
When I walked into the flat, the dog sniffed me, looked at me rather rudely, but decided to let me breathe in peace. My colleague told it in German that I was the uncle of the house. It didn’t react. It walked anxiously round the office, jumped on to an easy chair and lay there. A few seconds later it was sleeping as if nothing was amiss. A short while later the cat came for a leisurely prowl, in a withdrawn, absentminded, distant frame of mind. When it saw me, it looked up at me with an air of voluptuous disdain and its eyes surveyed me from head to toe. This idiot’s back, it must have been thinking. Time flies and life is ever the same dreary dream …