He paced up and down within the confines of the office. Tobler had gone out on business and would probably not return home all day. If only that Herr Johannes Fischer did not choose this particular day to pay a visit—that would be exceedingly awkward.
This Johannes Fischer had responded by letter to their advertisement “For Capitalists,” writing that he would in all likelihood be paying a visit to Bärenswil in the very near future to examine the inventions in question.
What a delicate, almost feminine handwriting the man had. Compared to it, Tobler’s writing appeared to have been scratched out with a walking stick. Such a slender and delicate script already hinted at great wealth. Nearly all capitalists wrote just like this man: with precision and at the same time somewhat offhandedly. This script was the handwritten equivalent of an elegant easy bearing, an imperceptible nod of the head, a tranquil expressive hand motion. It was so long-stemmed, this writing, it exuded a certain coldness, certainly the person who wrote like this was the opposite of a hot-blooded fellow. These few words: concise and courteous in their style. The politeness and succinctness extended even to the intimate format of his blindingly white letter paper. This Herr Joseph Fischer had even been wearing perfume when he first introduced himself to them from a distance. If only he didn’t come today. Tobler would deeply regret this, indeed, it might even happen that this annoyance would infuriate him, driving him into a frenzy. But in any case, Joseph had been given instructions to show and explain everything to the gentleman when he arrived, and Tobler had particularly impressed on him that he was under no circumstances to allow this Herr Fischer to depart again but must attempt to detain him until Tobler’s return. It might well be that this apparently quite elegant stranger would accept a cup of coffee, for it had by no means been established that he was too fine for this. Such a charming summer house as the Toblers possessed was certainly worthy of serving as a spot of peaceful contemplation and pleasure for anyone at all, even for persons of the highest rank and grandeur. This capitalist, then, need only come trotting along; after all, Joseph felt, adequate preparations had been made for his visit.
All the same he felt rather apprehensive.
How pleasant he found his life here, by the way, when Herr Tobler was out. After all, the presence of a boss—even if he was the nicest person in the world—required one’s constant vigilance. When the boss was in good spirits, one felt perpetually afraid that something might transpire that would transform his lordship’s cheerful mood into its diametrical opposite. When he was nasty and vicious, one had the more than bitter duty of considering oneself the lowliest scoundrel because one involuntarily saw oneself as the miserable cause of the master’s ill-humor. When he was even-tempered and composed, it was clearly one’s function to avoid inflicting even the slightest, most threadbare little injury to this equanimity, so that not even the tiniest crack or crevice might appear woundingly upon its surface. When the master was in a jesting mood, one instantly became a poodle, as the task at hand required one to imitate this droll creature and nimbly catch all the jests and jokes in one’s mouth. When he was kind, one felt like a miserable wretch. When he was rude, one felt obliged to smile.
The entire house was a different one when the master was absent. Frau Tobler, too, seemed to be a quite different woman, and as for the children—particularly the two boys—their relief at the absence of their strict father was visible at quite some distance. A certain anxious quality was gone when Tobler was away. Gone, too, was a sense of gravity and tension.
“Am I an utterly spineless clerk?” Joseph thought. Then Silvi arrived, the older of the two little girls, and called him to lunch.
In the afternoon—Joseph was just sitting over his coffee and chatting with Frau Tobler—a gentleman entered the garden and walked through it to the house.
“Go to the office, someone’s coming,” the woman said to the assistant.
Joseph ran off in a hurry and had just reached the door to the office when the stranger intercepted him. In a pleasant voice, the newcomer asked whether he had the honor to be standing before Herr Tobler in person. No, Joseph replied, feeling somewhat embarrassed, Herr Tobler was off on a business trip, and he himself was only the clerk, but, please, if the gentleman would be so good as to come in.
The gentleman said his name. “Ah, Herr Fischer!” Joseph exclaimed. He bowed before Herr Johannes Fischer somewhat too gladly, somewhat too gleefully, and at once was conscious of his error.
The two of them now entered the drafting office, the capitalist leading the way, where Herr Fischer immediately began to make inquiries with regard to technical matters, while looking around him in all directions with a certain air of superiority.
Joseph elucidated the Advertising Clock. He brought out a real-life model of the same, placed it on the table before the eyes of his guest for inspection and at the same time set about illuminating the profit potential of this creation to his visitor, who was avidly observing everything around him.
The stranger, who appeared to be listening with interest, asked as he surveyed the eagle wings attached to the clock whether there might have been some slight miscalculation—as easily could happen in such cases—in determining the amount of revenue that would be raised through these advertisements. Had, he asked, any such commissions already been secured?
He pursued his line of questioning with equanimity. And he appeared to have become somewhat pensive, which Joseph, perhaps too hastily, interpreted as a good sign.
The employee replied that this sum could hardly be seen as inflated, on the contrary, and that a most satisfactory quantity of commissions had already come in.
“And the clock costs how much?”
Joseph attempted to clarify this, too, to Herr Fischer, in the course of which—he himself did not know why—he began to stutter. Uncertain as to how he should comport himself, he was about to light a comforting cheroot, but then dismissed this sudden craving as not entirely seemly. He blushed.
“I can see,” Herr Fischer said, “that this appears to be an admirably planned and, it seems to me, already quite well organized enterprise. Might I be permitted to take a few notes?”
“Please do!”
Joseph had in fact intended to say: By all means, please do. But his voice and lips were refusing him the service necessary for speaking nicely. Why? Was he agitated? In any case, and this he felt distinctly, he had prepared himself very well to propose that the gentleman might find it agreeable to have a cup of coffee in the garden.
“My wife is waiting at the bottom of the hill,” the other remarked offhandedly. He was writing some things in an elegant notebook. All at once he was finished. Joseph had the unflattering impression that the capitalist hadn’t put particular effort into these aids to memory. He was about to open his mouth to say that he would just dash down the hill in a jiffy and invite the lady waiting there to join them.
Herr Fischer said that he regretted not having been able to meet Herr Tobler in person. This was a shame, but he hoped that this pleasure would not be denied him for long. In any case, he thanked Joseph most kindly for the considerate information he had provided. Joseph tried to get a word in.
“What a pity,” the other resumed. “I would with the greatest probability have been able to commit to something definite. The Advertising Clock is quite appealing to me, and I am of the opinion that it will bring a profit. Would you be so kind as to communicate my regards to your employer? I thank you.”
“We could also …”—Was that Joseph who was unable to speak any better?
Herr Joseph Fischer had made a brief bow and departed. Should Joseph run after him? What was he at this moment? Should he smite his own forehead? No, it appeared that what he had to do was return to the summer house and the nervously, expectantly waiting woman, and tell her how irresponsibly he had failed to “keep his wits about him.”
“This is unfortunate, most unfortunate,” he thought.
When he arrived at the summer or coffee hou
se, Frau Tobler was just in the middle of giving Walter, the boy, a good thrashing. She was weeping, and remarked how awful it was that she had such monstrous children. This scene filled the clerk’s heart with melancholy: On the one hand a weeping, enraged woman, and on the other an ironically waving and leave-taking capitalist, and as a backdrop the foreboding of Tobler’s disapproval.
He sat down again at the place he’d hurriedly left ten minutes before and poured himself another cup of coffee. He thought: “Why not have some when it’s there? All the self-denial in the world cannot avert the approaching storm that is about to break over my head.”
“Was it that Herr Fischer?” the woman asked. She had dried her eyes and was peering down toward the main road. And indeed Herr Fischer was still standing there. He and the lady with him appeared to be enjoying the view of the Tobler property.
“Yes,” Joseph replied. “I tried to make him stay, but it was impossible, he said he absolutely had to leave. But in any case we have his address.”
He was lying! How shamelessly the falsehoods rolled off his tongue. No, he had not done everything in his power to detain Herr Fischer. If he now claimed to have done so, this was simply a cheeky, frivolous lie.
Frau Tobler said worriedly that her husband would be angry with them, she knew quite well how he reacted to these things.
Both were silent for a while. Silvi, the girl, was sitting on a garden stone, singing faint, foolish notes. Frau Tobler ordered her to be silent. How warm it was, sunny, all yellow and blue. The financier could no longer be seen.
“You must be a little frightened,” said the woman and smiled.
“Oh, a little fear,” Joseph replied defiantly, “that’s the least of it. Besides, Herr Tobler can send me away if he wants to.”
He shouldn’t speak like that, she said, it was neither right nor proper, and in fact such comments could only cast a rather poor light on his character. Naturally he was a bit frightened now, that was plain to see. But he should calm down, “Carl” would certainly not devour him. There would be a mild thunderstorm this evening, that was all, and for this he should prepare himself.
She gave a bright, pretty laugh and went on speaking.
She had, she said, always had an excellent understanding of the respect her husband was able to inspire in other people. For those who did not know him well there was something almost terrifying about him, this was true, and she was speaking now in all earnestness and knew very well what she was saying. But she herself didn’t have the slightest fear of Tobler.
“Really?” Joseph said. He was calmer now.
“Really I don’t,” she prattled on. She’d have to be a fool to be capable of deceiving herself in this regard. Even her husband’s most horrendous fits of rage appeared to her more comedy than tragedy, and she always burst into laughter—she herself didn’t rightly know why—whenever he treated her unkindly. She had never thought this a peculiar trait in herself, it had always seemed perfectly natural, but she knew quite well that there were people whose eyes and mouths would pop open with astonishment were they to witness such a thing, at the thought that an apparently anything but independent woman like herself could dare to find the behavior of her husband comical. Find it comical? Oh, sometimes she found it not the least bit amusing when Tobler would come home and take out on her the whole collection of bad feelings the world had impressed on him; on such occasions, she found it necessary to ask God to give her the strength to laugh. As for the rest, one gradually became accustomed to being rebuked and scolded, even if one was only an “anything but independent” woman. Even a woman of this sort could now and then give serious thought to the things of this world, for example she was thinking just now that the tumult awaiting the two of them this evening would not last particularly long but rather, as was always the case with storms of this nature, would soon die down.
She got to her feet. There was something serene and ironic about her at this moment.
Joseph ran quickly up to his tower room. He felt a need to be alone with himself for a moment. He wanted to hastily “put his thoughts in order,” but he was unable to find a suitable and calming train of thought that might have accomplished this. And so he made his way back down to the office, but even there he couldn’t shake off this sinister, shameful feeling. In an attempt to overcome it, he made a bee-line for the post office, although it wasn’t time yet. Marching and using his legs calmed and comforted him, and the sight of the friendly, picturesque world reminded him of the triviality and insignificance of his agitation. In the village he drank a glass of beer to get the humorous tone back in his voice; a certain insensibility this evening would serve him well, he thought. When he returned home, he immediately set about watering the garden with the help of a long rubber hose. The thin stream of water described a beautiful high arc in the evening air and fell splattering upon the flowers and grasses and trees. If there was something that could calm a person, it was watering the garden: during this work he felt a peculiarly cozy and cohesive sense of belonging to the Tobler household.
He who’d just been so diligent in tending the garden could surely not become the object of particularly dire imprecations.
For dinner there was baked fish. It was utterly impossible to have eaten baked fish just a moment before and then immediately afterward find oneself the most miserable of human creatures. These two things simply could not be reconciled.
What a beautiful evening it was yet again. How could one have caused Tobler’s enterprises to incur losses on such a splendid evening?
The maid carried a burning lamp into the summer house. No, in the light of such a pretty, friendly lamp, it was quite reasonable to expect that Herr Tobler would not take the missed visit of Herr Fischer too violently to heart.
Finally Frau Tobler requested that Joseph give her a ride on the swing. She seated herself on the plank, Joseph pulled back on the ropes affixed to it, and the swing commenced its back-and-forth motion. This was such an attractive sight that the thought of Tobler now arriving to disturb all these images was light-heartedly cast aside.
At around ten o’clock in the evening, Frau Tobler heard footsteps ascending the gravel path in the garden—they were “his.”
How strange it is: the moment one hears the footsteps of a familiar person, it is as if the one approaching is already there in the flesh, and so his real appearance somewhat later is no longer ever a surprise, no matter what he’s looking like.
Tobler was tired and irritable, but this was not surprising, he was always like this when he came home. He sat down, heaved an audible sigh—he was portly enough that climbing the hill had cost him some effort—and demanded his pipe. Joseph leapt into the house like a man possessed to fetch the desired item, happy to be able to avoid his employer for at least half a minute.
When he returned carrying the smoking utensils, the state of things had already changed. Tobler looked dreadful. His wife had quickly told him everything. She was now standing there—displaying unheard-of pluck, it seemed to Joseph—gazing calmly at her husband. He was looking like someone who doesn’t dare curse for fear he will do so too immoderately.
“So Herr Fischer was here, I am told,” he said. “How did he like our products?”
“Very much!”
“The Advertising Clock?”
“That one he especially liked. He said that it appeared to him to be a most excellent enterprise.”
“Did you draw his attention to him the Marksman’s Vending Machine as well?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Herr Fischer was in such a big hurry, because of his wife, who was waiting down at the garden gate.”
“And you left her waiting there?”
Joseph was silent.
“Why did I have to hire such a dunderhead as a clerk?” Tobler shouted, incapable of holding back for another instant the rage and professional misery consuming him. “Now I must suffer the misfortune of being betrayed by my own wife and a good-for
-nothing assistant. Not even the devil could do business under these circumstances.”
He would have shattered the petroleum lamp with his fist if Frau Tobler had not, thank goodness, moved it slightly to one side the moment before his hand came crashing down.
“You don’t have to get so worked up,” his wife cried, “and I forbid you to say I am betraying you. I haven’t forgotten where my parents’ house is, and if you keep acting this way, I’ll go back to them. Joseph doesn’t deserve to be abused like this either. Send him away once and for all if you think he has harmed you, but don’t make such scenes.”
As an “anything but independent” woman, she had naturally been weeping as she spoke these words, but what she said most certainly had the desired effect. Tobler became calmer almost at once, and the “storm” began to die down. Together with Joseph, Tobler began to deliberate as to what could be done to keep the assets of Herr Johannes Fischer from slipping through their fingers. They would have to telephone him first thing in the morning.
In the lives of certain businessmen, the telephone plays a major role. Mercantile coups are, as a rule, most successful when they are initiated telephonically.
The very thought that they could telephone this Herr Fischer the next morning caused their hopes, both Tobler’s and Joseph’s, to revive. How could it be possible, given the availability of such resources, that this business would come to nothing?
And Tobler, after announcing his arrival by telephone, would at once board the train and set off for the capital so as to pay this “escaped bird” a personal visit.
The Assistant Page 7