† Kahlenberg: a hill outside Vienna, affording celebrated views of the city.
‡ Sadová, or Königgrätz: the decisive battle in 1866 of the Austro — Prussian War.
§ Lissa: sea-battle in the Adriatic in the same war.
∥ Heuriger: newly made white wine, drunk and celebrated in the hills around Vienna.
¶ Die Ahnfrau (The Ancestress), Grillparzer’s play of 1817.
** Burying himself alive: Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, (1500–1558), who retired to the monastery of St. Yuste where he died.
62. The Bitter Bread
Day breaks, and the poor man wishes he could prolong the night. It is December, admittedly, so the day begins late, but it is still too early for him. Mornings are bad, but with the passage of time the poor man has learned that they need to be withstood, because the day is waiting. Not all days are as bad as their advance guard, the morning. Some, a rare few, have been surprisingly favourable, others, most, have been decidedly bad. But you can’t judge the day from the morning.
It is a tiny fourth-floor hotel room, with scarlet wallpaper, patterned with yellow sunflowers. A nearby church clock strikes eight. There is a rushing in the pipes, because a tenant on the first or second floor is running a bath. Now the poor man taxes the running water himself. For two weeks the same towel has been hanging over the brass rail. The towel is soiled by the dirt of the past days, the bearable, the ordinary, and the decidedly bad days. The bedding too is four weeks old. But in the morning you don’t absolutely have to look at it, and at night you can’t see it, because the overhead light fixture lights only the middle of the ceiling, it is there mostly for the benefit of flies. The spiders lurk in dark corners, behind thick grey webs of their own making, probably waiting for the poor man to switch off the light and feel his way, barefooted from the door to bed. Then the flies will be trapped in the webs, and will be rolled up, sucked dry and eaten. Because there is no creature that does not rob, steal, kill, eat and live. Only the poor man needs money, otherwise he cannot live.
That a poor man — of all things — needs money is no longer new. A poor man needs at least a small amount of money, it’s the rich man who needs a lot. But it’s easier for a rich man to get a lot of money than for a poor man to get a little; and it may be the same with spiders. The ones that are in advantageous corners with large densely woven nets will catch more flies. But even that is of little comfort to the poor man.
Least of all on Thursdays, and today is a Thursday. Because on this day the hotel presents its bill. If he had been able to pay a month in advance, then he wouldn’t have to be in weekly dread of the landlord, and even Thursday might be bearable. As it is, though, it is very bad; and the worst aspect of it is the morning. And today, as already stated, is a Thursday.
Even so, the poor man washes, as he did on Tuesday and Wednesday before, and tries to find an unsoiled corner of the towel to dry himself on. But a towel has only four corners, and all are dirty. Not to speak of the middle.
His coat hangs on the doorknob, because the coat hook is so loosely anchored in the plaster that it can only manage to support his hat. The poor man puts his hat on, and only gets into his coat on the way down. He doesn’t lock his room. He takes the key out, though, because he has to hand it in downstairs. He doesn’t lock the room, out of rebellion against poverty, and as if someone on the stairs or anywhere would say to him: You really should be careful, you know. And as if he, the poor man, would get a chance to reply: There’s no reason to. I’ve nothing to steal. But it doesn’t occur to anyone to warn a poor man of thieves.
Everything the poor man has by way of possessions, he takes with him. It fits into a little suitcase, and one can’t even claim that everything in the suitcase belongs to him: the pencils, the shirt-patterns, the collar studs, the rolls of thread, the rayon stockings, the soaps, the flacons of perfume: everything is his “on commission”. First he has to sell the wares, hand over what they fetch, and only then will he get a little money. The poor man checks his wallet, where he keeps his notebook. That contains his most important “recommendations”, which is to say, names and addresses of people who are rumoured to have more money than a poor man, and at least enough for them to lock their rooms. These people have been recommended to the poor man. But people don’t want to risk making themselves unpopular with their friends. They think it will do less harm to the poor man if he makes himself unpopular.
Without these “recommendations”, one really wouldn’t know where to bend one’s steps on leaving the hotel. As it is, one has at least a direction, and it’s probably better to go a little higher, because hope lasts longer the higher up the recommendations live. On the first floor, so thinks the poor man, he will encounter only disappointment.
He sets himself to sell a dozen pencils. One wouldn’t believe that pencils fetch more than collar studs for instance, or how hard they are to sell. If the poor man had ever been able to say he had sold a dozen pencils, then he could say he had clinched a deal. As it is though, selling only one pencil at a time, he tells himself he can rely on retail customers. And he adds: nowadays. The times are bad, no question. For rich people, perhaps. The poor man moves into their area by saying: nowadays.
This Thursday though seems to want to herald a better phase. One “recommendation” buys eighteen pencils and six shirt buttons and tells the poor man not to come again for two months. Two months is a very long time for a well-off person, licking his finger and flipping the pages of his pocket calendar. That’s all. But for a poor man, two months are two eternities. If someone wanted him to come back the day after tomorrow, even tomorrow, he wouldn’t be able to promise. You never know from where you’ll be coming home at the end of a day. The poor man doesn’t even know whether he’ll be coming home at all. He walks into a bistro, drinks a cup of coffee, dunks a croissant. He doesn’t quite give in to the pleasure of it, as he knows it’s a Thursday.
But it’s a good Thursday. Because before the onset of evening — and in December the days are so short, they’re over almost before they’ve begun — the poor man has sold three pairs of ladies’ stockings and has an order for three shirts (with attached collars). Who knows what he could sell, if only it wasn’t Thursday, and also December 29th. Because on that day the poor man has to go round to the police. He has a document that has his name on it and where he comes from and where he lives. But what it doesn’t say is how long he can stay there, and where he’s allowed to go.
He is told nothing. He waits. Then he puts down his suitcase, and stands at a counter, and an official stamps his paper immediately; so quickly that the poor man is tempted to ask the official if he could use a couple of pencils. Luckily the poor man thinks twice about that, and he walks off. What else does he need? He can pay the rent. He can stay another fortnight. He can afford a sausage, a piece of cheese, a bottle of beer. The poor man is full of optimism. And on a Thursday.
He goes home, pays his bill, goes up to his room, and lies down in his bed. Today he doesn’t even turn the light on: that’s how contented the poor man is.
Parisier Tageszeitung, 3 January 1939
63. Furlough in Jablonovka
The village of Jablonovka nestles in my memory like a jewel. Sometimes I am able to produce it, its thatched huts painted a pale blue wash, its one dwelling that was almost town-like because it had a shingle roof and a brown wooden door and two shallow steps leading up to it: just two. The white church with its tin dome stood on the little hill, in the middle of its fenced-in graveyard, a short way beyond the last of the dwellings — or a short way before the first of them, depending on where you were coming from. Left of the church gate was the bell tower, with its one big bell flanked by two junior bells. Behind the huts that stood on the twice-round village street, there was a slight incline, and a few of the huts seemed to be slowly scrambling up the hill. I was last in Jablonovka three months ago. It was 10 October, on a silvery morning that couldn’t make up its mind whether to be warm or cold. Spots of thin mist lay over the stubble fields.