Kappler nodded towards the small groups of well-dressed people, like themselves, who were talking heatedly in the lounge of the Waldhaus, and Lilstein smiled with the satisfaction of having made a breakthrough, of seeing that Kappler was not far from sharing his own hostility to these people.
Not far from the corner where he and Kappler were talking, a man was sitting next to a woman in an easy chair, his name was Neuville and he was talking in a clear voice to a group of people who were standing, in his hand were several sheets of rolled-up paper, talking without being interrupted:
‘The unit designed to measure human work called the Neuville or the N unit is a universal unit representing the quantity of available physiological energy which can be expended by a normally constituted human being in one minute.’
Neuville did not talk as if he were addressing a public meeting, he spoke in a steady voice, slowly, without giving the impression that he was delivering a lecture, but rather that he was sharing the pleasure of such a satisfying definition, he was wearing a double-breasted tweed suit, loose-fitting, grey with a faint green thread running through it, the same kind of suit favoured by Lilstein’s father who, however, did not care for green thread on grey, but his mother said the green cheered it up and she had the last word, the man who was speaking in the steady voice had everything that life can offer, and to it he added a benevolence of word and look:
‘In measuring the quantity of available human energy, allowance is made for the appropriate amount of rest required when the human in question, under normal conditions, carries out the actions and makes the physiological effort demanded by the industrial tasks for which he has been fitted and trained, at a rate which is equal to three-quarters of the normal rate of physiological exertion during the course of a normal day’s work…’
A German woman stood drinking in Neuville’s words, from time to time the woman in the easy chair gave her a very blank look, Neuville went on:
‘… a level of exertion which must leave the worker still able to fulfil his familial and societal obligations, that is to expend each day the same amount of physiological energy without producing any deleterious effect on his health or individuality.’
Neuville, a man of clearly articulated speech, who used silences designed to enable the listener to ponder his words or examine his suit, like an actor who knows that no one will interrupt his monologue save to acquiesce. It was unbearable:
‘Taylor failed to take account of fatigue and the need to renew the strength required for working — only the Neuville Unit measures the phenomenon in its entirety.’
To Lilstein, it was intolerable, a hotel lounge is intended for conversation, these people listen to him before he’s even said anything, a servile bunch, shut this capitalist up, let him gather his lackeys around him somewhere else, Lilstein is sixteen, lashings of frustration to get out of his system, scandal, create a scandal, administer a public lesson to this mix of idealist visionary and evil bastard, he turns towards Neuville and hears him say:
‘To earn my crust when I was a young man in the USA, I worked behind the counter of a whiskey store.’
Now for the story of my success! Lilstein waits for the pause, in it he intends to ruin the speaker’s effect.
‘We sold three different kinds of bottle at three different prices, quarter dollar, half dollar and one dollar, it was my introduction to capitalism: for all three prices they got the same quantity of the same whiskey.’
Suddenly Lilstein tells himself that he can learn something from such cynicism and he too begins to listen.
One day, much, much later, Lilstein would say with the categorical certainty that only a man who has passed through Auschwitz then the Gulag can aspire to:
‘Capitalists are cynics.’
Smiles on the faces of the members of the Politburo’s Special Economic Committee. Lilstein continues:
‘They claim to lead crusades but basically they are cynics selling junk.’
More smiles. Lilstein goes on:
‘But the trick is that they put a value on that junk, while we, who reject cynicism, are stuck with junk which has no value at all.’
No smiles now, the men newly appointed to run the economy just wonder why they were being attacked like this, in the name of what other group could Lilstein be speaking, for wasn’t he a member of the group which had helped them up the ladder to their new responsibilities, Lilstein having even furnished them, thanks to his contacts, with invaluable information about capitalist products and techniques, why this observation about worthless junk? Was it an about-turn by Lilstein? A lurch in the direction of the reactionaries and fanatical advocates of heavy industry? Or was he in the process of reaching an understanding with some more advanced splinter group made up of irresponsible elements set on restoring capitalism on the specious argument that productivity is productivity? Or had he just been trying to be clever? He certainly had a reputation for never being able to resist a Witz, even of the sour variety. Difficult chap to keep a check on, just looks out for number one.
Long ago, in Waltenberg, the man talking about the Neuville system had added:
‘Three separate prices but it was always genuine whiskey, my first lesson in capitalism, everything is relative, as our young friend Tellheim would say.’
Lilstein had decided not to create a scene. Tellheim was a young physicist who’d been invited to this same Seminar in the spring of 1929 to give lectures on relativity, he spoke of lifts, two lifts moving in parallel over the façade of an immensely tall skyscraper, like the ones they have in America, when both start to move the passengers in Lift One drop various objects out of the window, umbrellas, hats, handbags, the objects fall, dropping away beneath them at a speed of 981 centimetres per second, that is at a speed which increases by 981 centimetres every second, assuming the absence of any kind of resistance.
Tellheim did not try to grab people’s attention, he just spoke of what he knew, that’s all, you felt you were there in the lift with him, you couldn’t stop yourself, and while Lift One starts going down in the normal way at the normal speed, Lift Two plunges into the void at a speed of 981 centimetres a second, impelled by the same force as the falling objects, which is to say the force of gravity, the passengers in Lift Two no longer feel their feet pressing down on the floor, their wallets cease to weigh anything in their pockets, and if they drop their hats, bags and brollies these objects remain suspended in mid-air before their very eyes, whether the hats be made of feathers or of lead.
And these passengers in Lift Two can see the objects dropped from Lift One floating just next to them, if you follow me, so that at exactly the same moment some passengers can see hats falling and others see them suspended in front of them, what does it take for a lift to be able to reach this speed? well, let’s say provided there’s no friction or resistance and that at the instant the lift started moving the cable snapped cleanly, a hypothesis that can easily be tested. Tomorrow evening, I’ll tell you about trains and how, to an observer standing on the platform, a train passes through the station less quickly than for an observer sitting in the train, and the day after tomorrow it will be the curve which is the shortest distance in the universe between two points.