Herr von Stettenheim had the idea of calling our firm “Jolan Workshops.” And that was duly how it appeared in the company register. Elisabeth was drawing busily whenever I turned up in the office. She sketched baffling things, for instance nine-pointed stars on the walls of an octahedron or a ten-fingered hand executed in agate, to be called “Krishnamurti’s Benediction,” or a red bull on a black ground, called “Apis,” a ship with three banks of oars by the name of “Salamis,” and a snake-bracelet that went by “Cleopatra.” It was Professor Jolanth Szatmary who came up with the original ideas, and gave them to her to block out. Apart from that, there were the usual oppressive, hate-filled conventions of cordiality, all overlying our mutual resentment. Elisabeth loved me, of that I was certain, but she was afraid of Professor Szatmary, one of those fears that modern medicine likes to label and is helpless to explain. Ever since Herr von Stettenheim had joined the “Jolan-Workshops” as co-owner, my father-in-law and the Professor viewed me as a nuisance, a bump on the road to arts and crafts, capable of no useful labour and wholly unworthy of being made privy to the artistic and financial plans of the firm. I was just Elisabeth’s other half.
Herr von Stettenheim drew up prospectuses in many world languages, and sent them out in all directions. The fewer the replies, the more furious his zeal. The new curtains came in, two lemon yellow chairs, a sofa, ditto, with black and white zebra stripes, two lamps with hexagonal shades of Japanese paper, and a parchment map on which all cities and countries were marked by drawing pins — all of them, even the ones our company didn’t supply.
On evenings when I came to collect Elisabeth, we wouldn’t talk about Stettenheim or Jolanth Szatmary or arts and crafts. That was agreed between us. We spent sweet, full spring nights together. There was no doubt about it: Elisabeth loved me.
I was patient. I waited. I waited for the moment when she would tell me of her own volition that she wanted to be all mine. Our flat on the ground floor waited.
My mother never asked me about Elisabeth’s intentions. From time to time she would drop a hint, as for instance: “Once you’ve moved in,” or “when we’re all living under the same roof,” and suchlike.
At the end of summer, it turned out that our “Jolan-Workshops” were not bringing in any money whatsoever. Moreover, my father-in-law hadn’t had any luck with his “other irons.” On the advice of Herr von Stettenheim, he had taken a punt on the Deutschmark. The Deutschmark fell. I was to take out a second, much larger, mortgage on our house. I discussed it with my mother, who didn’t want to know. I talked to my father-in-law. “You’re useless, I always knew it,” he said. “I’ll have to have a word with her myself.”
He went to my mother, not alone, but in the company of Herr von Stettenheim. My mother, who was intimidated, sometimes even intolerant of strangers, asked me to wait. I stayed at home. The miracle happened; my mother took to Herr von Stettenheim. During the negotiations in our drawing room, I even thought I saw her leaning forward ever so slightly, to catch his abundant and superfluous speech more clearly. “Charming!” was my mother’s verdict. “Charming!” she said once or twice more, in response to perfectly ordinary remarks from Herr von Stettenheim. He too — it was his turn — gave a lecture on arts and crafts in general, and the products of the “Jolan-Workshops, Ltd” in particular. And my dear old mother, who surely understood no more about arts and crafts now than she had a long time ago from hearing Elisabeth discuss them, kept saying: “Now I understand, now I understand, now I understand!”
Herr von Stettenheim had the good manners to say,
“Columbus’s egg, ma’am!” And like an obedient echo, my mother repeated: “Columbus’s egg! We’ll take out a second mortgage.”
To begin with, our lawyer Kiniower was against it. “I warn you!” he said. “It’s a hopeless business. Your father-in-law, I happen to know, has no money left. I’ve made inquiries. That Herr von Stettenheim is living on the money you are managing to raise. He claims to have a share in Tattersall in the Berlin Tiergarten. My colleague in Berlin informs me that is not the case. As truly as I was a friend to your late lamented Papa: I speak the truth. Frau Jolanth Szatmary is as little a professor as I am. She has never studied at any of the academies in Vienna or Budapest. I warn you, Herr Trotta, I warn you.”
The “Jew” had little black watering eyes behind a skewed pince-nez. One side of his grey moustache was jauntily curled up, the other dangled despondently down. It looked like an expression of a divided nature. And indeed, he was capable of ending a long, gloomy conversation full of talk of my imminent financial doom, with the cry: “But everything will turn out for the best! God is a father.” That was a sentence he liked to repeat in any difficult circumstances. This grandson of Abraham, heir to a blessing and a curse, frivolous as an Austrian, melancholy as a Jew, full of emotion but only to the point where emotion can become a danger to oneself, clear-sighted in spite of his wobbly and crooked pince-nez, had over time become as dear to me as a brother. I often dropped in on him in his office, for no particular reason or occasion. On his desk he had photographs of his two sons. The elder had fallen in the war. The younger was studying medicine. “His head is full of social nonsense!” complained Dr Kiniower. “How much more important a cure for cancer would be! I’m afraid I’m maybe getting one myself, here, on the kidney! If I have a medical student for a son, then he should be thinking of his old father, and not of saving the world. Enough with saviour already! But you’re about to save the arts and crafts! Your Mama wanted to save the Fatherland. She put her fortune in war bonds. There’s nothing left but a paltry insurance policy. Your Mama probably imagines it’s enough for a ripe old age. She’ll get through it in a couple of months, I’m telling you. You don’t have a job. Probably you’ll never have a job. But unless you start earning money, you’ve had it. My advice to you is: you have a house, take paying guests. Try and make your Mama understand. This mortgage won’t be the last, I’m sure of that. You’ll be wanting a third, and then a fourth. Believe me! God is a father!”
Herr von Stettenheim called regularly on my mother, rarely announcing himself in advance. My mother received him warmly, sometimes even rapturously. With grief and astonishment I watched as the old, stern and pampered lady indulged his coarse witticisms, his tawdry expressions, his catchpenny gestures, and approved, praised and relished them. Herr von Stettenheim was in the habit of bringing his left wrist up to his eye to look at his watch, with a terrifying abrupt movement of his elbow. Each time he did it, I imagined him poking a neighbour in the eye. His way of extending the pinkie of his right hand when he picked up his coffee cup — that finger on which he wore his great lunk of a seal ring, with a seal that resembled some sort of insect — reminded me of a governess. He spoke in that guttural Prussian that sounds as though it’s coming out of a chimney instead of someone’s throat, and seems to hollow out even the occasional words of importance that he said.
And that was the man my dear old Mama had fallen for. “Charming!” she called him.
XXVIII
He gradually made an impression on me too, though to begin with I failed to notice. I needed him; if only for my mother’s sake I needed him. He represented a connection between our house and Elisabeth. In the long run, I couldn’t stand between two women, or even three if one included Professor Szatmary. Ever since Herr von Stettenheim had so surprisingly found favour with my mother, Elisabeth sometimes came to our house. My mother had merely intimated that she didn’t want to see Jolanth. Who, incidentally, was slowly distancing herself from Elisabeth. That too was partly to the credit of Herr von Stettenheim, and was another reason for me to be impressed with him. I got used to his unexpected manners (I found them less alarming, over time), his speech which was always two or three shades noisier than the room required. It was as though he didn’t understand that rooms came in different shapes and sizes, a sitting room and a station hall, for instance. In my mother’s drawing room, he spoke with that rather too hasty voice that simple people fall into on the telephone. On the street he frankly shouted. And since everything he said was invariably vapid, it sounded twice as loud. For a long time I was surprised that my mother, who could be caused physical pain by a loud voice, a needless sound, any display of street music or parades, was able to tolerate and even take enjoyment in the voice of Herr von Stettenheim. It was only a couple of months later that by chance I was able to find out why this was.