“What? What in the world does that mean? Hell and damnation, I slave from morning till night and when I make a brilliant sale all I get in this hole is reproaches! Go out to the villages yourselves and try—”
“Heinrich,” Georg interrupts him mildly, “we know you work yourself to the bone. But today we’re living in a time when every sale makes us poorer. For years there has been an inflation. Since the war, Heinrich. But this year the inflation has turned into galloping consumption. That’s why figures no longer mean—”
“I know that myself. I’m no idiot.”
No one says anything to that. Only idiots make such statements. And to contradict them is useless. That is something I have learned on the Sundays I spend at the insane asylum. Heinrich gets out a notebook. “The memorial cost us fifty thousand when we bought it. You would think that three-quarters of a million would mean a neat little profit.”
He is dabbling in sarcasm again. He thinks he must use it on me because I was once a schoolteacher. That was shortly after the war, in an isolated village on the heath—nine long months until I made my escape, with winter loneliness howling like a dog at my heels.
“It would have been an even bigger profit if in place of the magnificent cross you had sold that damned obelisk out there,” I say. “Your late father bought it for even less sixty years ago when the business was founded—for something like fifty marks, according to tradition.”
“The obelisk? What’s the obelisk got to do with this? The obelisk is unsalable, any child knows that.”
“For that very reason,” I say, “no tears would be shed if you had got rid of it. But it’s a pity about the cross. We’ll have to replace it at great expense.”
Heinrich Kroll snorts. He had polyps in his thick nose and gets stuffed up easily. “Are you by any chance trying to tell me that it would cost three-quarters of a million to buy a memorial cross today?”
“That’s something we’ll find out soon enough,” Georg Kroll says. “Riesenfeld will be here tomorrow. We’ll have to place a new order with the Odenwald Granite Works; there’s not much left on inventory.”
“We still have the obelisk,” I suggest maliciously.
“Why don’t you sell that yourself?” Heinrich snaps. “So Riesenfeld is coming tomorrow; well, I’ll stay and have a talk with him myself. Then we’ll see where prices stand.”
Georg and I exchange glances. We know that we will keep Heinrich away from Riesenfeld even if we have to make him drunk or pour castor oil in his morning beer. That honest, old-fashioned businessman would bore Riesenfeld to death with his war experiences and stories of the good old times when a mark was still a mark and honesty was the mark of honor, as our beloved field marshal has so aptly put it. Heinrich dotes on such platitudes; not Riesenfeld. For Riesenfeld, honesty is what you demand from someone else when it’s to his disadvantage, and from yourself when you can gain by it.
“Prices change daily,” Georg says. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Really? Perhaps you, too, think I got a bad price?”
“That depends. Did you bring the money with you?”
Heinrich stares at Georg. “Bring it with me? What in blazes are you talking about? How could I bring the money when we haven’t even made delivery? You know that’s impossible!”
“It isn’t impossible at all.” I reply. “On the contrary, it’s common practice today. It’s called payment in advance.”
“Payment in advance!” Heinrich’s fat snout twitches contemptuously. “What does a schoolteacher like you know about it? In our business how can you demand payment in advance? From the sorrowing relatives when the wreathes on the grave haven’t even begun to wilt! Are you going to demand money at such a moment for something that hasn’t been delivered?”
“Of course! When else? That’s when they’re weak and it’s easy to get money out of them.”
“They’re weak then? Don’t make me laugh! That’s when they’re harder than steel! After all the expense for the coffin, the pastor, the grave, the flowers, the wake—why, you couldn’t get so much as a ten-thousand advance, young man! First, people have to recover! Before they pay they have to see what they have ordered standing in the cemetery and not just on paper in the catalogue, even when it’s been drawn by you with Chinese brushes and genuine gold leaf for the inscriptions and a few grieving relatives into the bargain.”
Another example of Heinrich’s personal tactlessness! I pay no attention. It is true that I not only drew the tombstones for our catalogue and reproduced them on the Presto mimeograph machine but also painted them to increase their effectiveness and provided them with atmosphere: with weeping willows, beds of pansies, cypresses, and widows in mourning veils watering the flowers. Our competitors almost died of envy when we produced this novelty; they had nothing but simple stock photographs, and Heinrich, too, thought the idea magnificent at the time, especially the use of gold leaf. As a matter of fact, to make the effect completely natural I had embellished the drawings of the tombstones with inscriptions emblazoned with gold leaf dissolved in varnish. I had had a splendid time doing it; I killed off everyone I hated and painted tombstones for them—for example, the beast who was my sergeant when I was a recruit and who is still living happily: “Here after prolonged and hideous sufferings, having seen all his loved ones precede him in death, lies Constable Karl Flümer.” This was fully justified; Flümer had treated me outrageously and had sent me twice on patrols from which I had returned alive only by chance. I had ample reason to wish him the worst.
“Herr Kroll,” I say, “allow us to give you another short analysis of the times. The principles by which you were raised are noble, but today they lead to bankruptcy. Anybody can earn money now; almost no one knows how to maintain its purchasing power. The important thing is not to sell but to buy and to be paid as quickly as possible. We live in an age of commodities. Money is an illusion; everyone knows that, but many still do not believe it. As long as this is so the inflation will go on till absolute zero is reached. Man lives seventy-five per cent by his imagination and only twenty-five per cent by fact—that is his strength and his weakness, and that is why in this witch’s dance of numbers there are still winners and losers. We know that we cannot be absolute winners; but at the same time we don’t want to be complete losers. If the three-quarters of a million marks you settled for today is not paid for two months, it will be worth what fifty thousand is worth now. Therefore—”
Heinrich’s face has turned dark red. Now he interrupts me. “I am no idiot,” he declares for the second time. “And you don’t need to read me lectures. I know more of practical life than you do. And I would rather go down honorably than exist by disreputable profiteering methods. As long as I am sales manager of this firm the business will be conducted in the old, decent fashion—and that’s all there is to it. I rely on my experience, and it has stood us in good stead so far; that’s how it will continue in the future! It’s a rotten trick to spoil a man’s pleasure in a fine business deal! Why didn’t you stick to your job as arse-drummer?”
He snatches up his hat and slams the door behind him. We see him vigorously stamping off, knock-kneed and bow-legged, a half-military figure with his bicycle clips. He is in formal retreat to his accustomed table at Blume’s Restaurant
“That bourgeois sadist wants to get fun out of his work,” I say angrily. “Imagine that! How can we carry on our business except with pious cynicism if we want to save our souls? That hypocrite wants to get pleasure out of haggling over corpses and actually considers it his hereditary right!”
Georg laughs. “Take your money and let’s be on our way.