In the evening, on his way home, he met Freddy. Freddy looked heavier than usual, and astonishment showed in his frozen eyes. His small cap only made his large, bald head the more prominent.
“We must celebrate,” Karl said.
“Celebrate what?” Freddy responded.
“Hochhut’s business has collapsed.”
“I hadn’t heard. I was out in the country. An epidemic of smallpox has been raging there for two weeks.”
“In that case, let it be officially known to you that the old center has been saved, and we must rejoice.”
“I’m ready,” he said like one easily persuaded.
They sat in Kirzl’s bar and drank cognac. Karl now liked Freddy’s simple company. Not many years before he and Martin used to look down on him, reminding him that he had only passed his tests with the help of tutors. Now Karl noticed: that while his body had gotten fat, his face hadn’t been spoiled. From a distance he looked like a merchant, dragging his feet to the door of his shop. His wife Flora had slimmed down to an irritating, boyish thinness. And although at one time she had tried very hard to hide her limited education, in recent years she no longer feared voicing any foolishness that popped into her head. Freddy suffered, but he hadn’t the strength to fight back or divorce her. He enveloped himself in layers of fat, to thicken the barrier between them.
Karl looked at him fondly, as if he had rediscovered in his companion a rare conjunction of innocence and devotion. Now he knew for certain that if he fell ill, Freddy would treat him like a brother and would not rest before getting him back on his feet.
“I miss my sister,” Freddy revealed that night. Karl remembered Freddy’s sister well. She used to run into the house every time he approached. In contrast to her brother, she did excellently in school and had graduated with outstanding grades. But her parents hadn’t appreciated her achievement. They refused to send her to the university. Before long, she had married a rich boy who soon squandered his entire inheritance. Finally they were forced to flee to America. Her life abroad had not been easy. At first she wrote Freddy long, detailed letters, but when her parents died, she stopped. Karl remembered her big, round eyes, full of soft wonder. In those years, Jewish girls had no sway over his heart. He was sure they were all bitter and mean.
“I would like to visit her,” Freddy confessed.
“You must go soon.” Karl spoke with strange assurance.
“My wife won’t let me,” Freddy said in a recently acquired country accent.
“You mustn’t listen to her. There comes a time when a man must say to himself: enough! You’ve got to find a replacement as soon as possible. There are plenty of doctors. If necessary, we’ll get one from Hofstadt.”
“Thank you,” said Freddy, bowing his head.
“Your sister Frieda is a precious soul, and we must watch over her.”
“Fortune hasn’t been kind to Frieda.”
“You must go to her soon. A visit from you will help her.”
“I think you’re right.”
“You mustn’t lose time. Just find a replacement and sail away.”
“You always find the right expression: ‘just sail away.’ That hadn’t occurred to me,” said Freddy, a smile lighting his face.
“Not always.”
“It’s hard for me to express myself. I can never find the words. That’s always been my weakness.”
They parted at nine. Karl wasn’t drunk, but his spirits were high. Freddy’s company had moved him. He felt sorry for that innocent soul, so much abused by his thin and ambitious wife—as well as by the coarse peasants who woke him at all hours. Lock the door and put a watchdog at the gate, and don’t let the peasants drag you out of the house, he wanted to shout, but his throat was blocked for some reason.
“We must see each other more often,” he said, embracing his friend.
“Yes, absolutely,” said Freddy.
“I’ll come and get you.”
“Thank you.”
“We must see each other more often,” Karl repeated, and something of his friend’s awkwardness clung to him.
CHAPTER
19
Hochhut now sought the company of his old school friends, and Karl was one of those he turned to. His arrogance, an arrogance of stone, had been shattered. He stooped at the entrance of Karl’s office, like one of the old merchants. Karl tried to ignore him but couldn’t. Help me, said Hochhut’s sad posture.
Things were worse than people had imagined. Factory after factory, the whole chain of sawmills, had collapsed. Hochhut’s house was put up for sale, and the man, once so intimidating, now walked about humiliated and abandoned. A horde of creditors, lawyers, accountants, and brokers all swooped down and seized his properties. In the beginning he had raised his voice and driven them away, but not for long. Disaster followed upon disaster, and soon the creditors took hold of everything. Now of course they reminded him of his Jewishness, and his refusal to finance the renovation of the church.
“What am I to do?” Hochhut stood in the door of Karl’s office. For a moment they looked at one another, and a crack opened in the wall that separated them. Hochhut was three years Karl’s senior. In gymnasium he had been known not for his learning but for his business acumen. Even then he had run a kiosk near the school gate. In time he expanded it into a buffet. He quickly saw that three hundred hungry mouths are a sure source of income. While everyone else was given over to the whims of youth, his brain swarmed with problems of supply and demand. By the end of the school year, when he was not yet eighteen, he already owned a thriving business. From the start, one business led to another, like a seedling yielding a forest.
Karl had never been in Hochhut’s home, but he remembered his parents well. His father was a quiet but friendly man, the owner of a small shop in the center. His mother was tall and ambitious. All her life she had dreamt of big cities, seashores, and elegant hotels, but nothing came of all those daydreams. She remained tied to her home, helping her husband in the store, occasionally surprising her neighbors with some unusual garment. She loved her only son without restraint, and until her last days she spoke of him with extreme admiration.
Two years after finishing gymnasium, he converted. His parents had hesitated at first, but in the end they joined him. For this they suffered greatly. Their relatives shunned them. When Grandma Hochhut learned of her son’s deed, she sat in mourning for him, as if he were dead. His parents bore their shame in silence. Their compensation was their son’s successes. His name was known throughout the empire. Hochhut, who stood no more than five foot three, who was bespectacled and bald, was known as the Great Hochhut, the Omnipotent Hochhut.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Hochhut. “I don’t know what to do,” he murmured again. When Karl didn’t respond, he added, “I’m frightened.”
“Of what?” Karl asked.
“All my businesses have collapsed. What am I to do now?” He could barely stand.
“The bankruptcy court judge will seize them. It’s no longer your concern. You did what you could. It’s no longer your worry.”
“Am I to do nothing?” He suddenly smiled.
“The court will take care of it. You need rest.”
“And me—what is to become of me?” Hochhut opened his eyes wide.
“You need rest,” he repeated.
“Why is everyone cursing me?” he asked.
“There’s no shortage of rotten people.”
“I’m afraid of them.”
“You have nothing to fear. You didn’t murder anyone. You tried to develop the area, and indeed you did develop it. You took on a great mission. Very few people take on challenges like that.”
“Did I?” he said, chuckling.
“You did great things in the region. Many people will attest to that.”
“Then why am I so frightened?” he asked, the laughter frozen on his lips.
Karl understood: the man at his side was no longer Hochhut but what remaine
d of him. Yet Karl still did not trust the man.
“Why am I so frightened?” Hochhut muttered again, his voice trembling. Now he resembled his father when he held his forehead or wrung his hands.
“You need rest. You must sleep. You’ve had some hard days.” Karl tried to approach.
Hochhut didn’t move. Karl took his arm, saying, “I’ll walk with you. You have nothing to fear.”
“They won’t attack me?”
“Certainly not.”
At first he thought of taking him home, but then he remembered that Hochhut’s house had been impounded, so he decided to take him to his own home. But Hochhut refused to cross Hapsburg Boulevard. He claimed that his enemies were hiding in the trees, waiting to ambush him. Karl’s promises that no harm would befall him were useless. Hochhut was in the grip of dread.
Eventually, Hochhut went with Karl, but not in the direction of his house. Instead, they headed toward the hospital. Karl tried to distract him, but Hochhut wasn’t listening. At the corner of Hapsburg Boulevard and the Poets’ Street, Hochhut’s old voice returned to him for a moment. He spoke of two serious mistakes he had made in his life. The first was forcing his parents to convert. The second was the premature sale of two forests in the Tyrol.
Later, he spoke of all the enemies ready to ambush him in the Royal Grove. A thin, awful laugh sealed his lips. Not far from the hospital he said to Karl, “I want to tell you a secret. Swear not to tell anyone. Do you promise?”
“You have my word of honor,” said Karl.
“I have another little factory in Italy. It’s registered in my Aunt Sylvia’s name. No one knows about it, and it stands a good chance of expanding. But don’t tell a soul, do you promise me?”
“On my word of honor.”
“If things turn out right, I can reopen some of the factories that have collapsed. It’s not a big operation but it’s stable. I can shift the focus over there for a while. Aunt Sylvia doesn’t even know there’s a factory in her name. You do believe me, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“My enemies in the Royal Grove must be rounded up immediately. The City Council must issue an order. I have given a great deal to this city. I deserve something in return.” For a moment his old face returned, assured and arrogant. He grabbed Karl’s arm and said, “You mustn’t abandon me. Tell them that I’m under your protection.”
Once he was in the hospital he relaxed. He didn’t resist. The doctor on duty, Dr. Meisler, his old classmate, knew immediately why he was there and embraced him.
“I knew that one day you’d get me,” Hochhut joked. “But no injections. I’m afraid of injections.”
“You have nothing to fear. I’m on your side.”
“I thank my kind and generous classmate. I thank the whole staff,” said Hochhut, bowing.
Karl once again saw that the Great Hochhut, the Omnipotent Hochhut, was no longer among the living. The man who had bowed was merely his shadow, and soon that shadow too would fade.
“Hochhut came to my office today,” he said in a dry tone, as if he were standing before the City Council and reporting on a survey of the water system. “I immediately saw that he wasn’t well and I decided to bring him here.”
“That’s absolutely correct,” said Hochhut, chuckling.
“It’s good that you came here,” said Dr. Meisler.
“And now they’re going to give me an injection,” said Hochhut, twisting his shoulder. “I hate injections.”
“No one will do anything to you. Just rest for a while,” said the doctor.
“I’m not tired,” said Hochhut.
“Yes, you are tired.” Meisler spoke to him as if he were a child.
“And what will Karl do? I can’t leave him. He was a big help to me.”
“Karl will visit you. I’m sure he’ll come to visit you.”
“And I’ll stay here?”
“Exactly. You have nothing to worry about. Everyone is very nice here.”
When Karl returned home, Gloria saw that his face was different. She quickly served him a hot meal but didn’t dare ask him anything. Karl washed his hands and, without saying a word, sat at the table. Later, he told her, in a choked voice, about the state he had found Hochhut in and about their walk to the hospital.
“I never imagined that a strong man, a man who had managed great factories, could be so frightened.” Gloria sat close by his side, trying to catch every syllable he uttered. A strong light, a strange light, flickered on Karl’s face, and Gloria saw that something of Hochhut’s dread had seeped into him.
CHAPTER
20
Hochhut’s shadow wouldn’t fade from Karl’s eyes. On his way home, along Hapsburg Boulevard, he could hear his thin laughter, that frightening trace of Hochhut’s mighty presence, filtering through the naked trees. Sometimes it seemed that a bit of that laughter was clinging to him also.
It was difficult to speak about this fear to Gloria. Hochhut’s illness had seeped into him. He would see Hochhut getting up from his sickbed and attacking his creditors, but usually he saw him as he had been that afternoon in his office: stooped, helpless, frightened.
Once a week he went to the hospital to ask about Hochhut. His illness, it appeared, had grown worse, and Meisler no longer allowed Karl to see him. In the silenced sawmills, the bankruptcy receivers walked about unhindered, like lords; and creditors lay in wait on all sides, vultures eager to feast on a carcass.
At night he would have a few drinks with Gloria and tell her about the office. It was hard for him to keep the outside world at bay. The people in the city hadn’t forgotten his opposition to the destruction of the old market, and at every opportunity they reminded him of his sin. Karl wasn’t afraid. He was prepared once more to stand up and proclaim a scoundrel anyone who stole an old man’s livelihood. In her heart Gloria knew that his stubbornness would damage his career, but she was proud of him. He was once again a fearless boy, who would annoy not only his parents but also his adversaries. The nights with Gloria were an intoxicating blend of memory and oblivion, of what had been and of what would be. Were it not for the arrival of morning, it would have been even more extraordinary.
He kept his distance from Martin. It was hard for him to put up with Martin’s drunkenness and nasty comments. Karl wanted to reproach him about that, but he couldn’t find the strength.
One evening, on his way home, he ran into Martin.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Martin accused.
“Why do you say that?”
“That’s the feeling I have.”
“That’s nonsense. I have no secret to keep from you.”
Later, they sat in the Green Eagle and drank cognac. They spoke Hochhut’s fate. Formerly, Martin had been Hochhut’s legal advisor, drafting contracts and representing him in court. In time they parted because Hochhut wanted to insert intentionally ambiguous clauses in his contracts, mainly to gain time. His power lay in his manipulation of time.
“He was at war with the principle of time,” Karl said, trying to get to the heart of the matter.
“No. He wasn’t that philosophical. He was just always exploiting the interval between purchase and sale. That was his genius. I was a young lawyer and for a while I didn’t see what he was up to. I’m sure he was deceiving everyone.”
“Then what happened?”
“I suppose he lost his sense of timing.”
“Is there any hope?”
“It’s already too late, I imagine.”
“He hated Jews, didn’t he?” said Karl, turning up the heat on a different burner.
“They bothered him a lot.”
“And he couldn’t overcome his hatred.”
“It was too deep.”
“Once I wanted to scold him for his extreme hostility to the Jews, but he appeared so sure of himself that I started wondering if he wasn’t right,” Karl admitted.
“Well, he had been talking about modernizing the old center for a long tim
e.”
“Without taking the people into account.”
“Yes, that’s true. He saw the Jews, as long as they remained Jews, as the enemies of humanity.”
“Strange.”
“Not really. We abandoned them too.”
“For different reasons, it seems to me.”
“Come, now. Let’s face it: we didn’t like them. They revolted us.”
“That’s a very harsh statement.”
“But it’s true.”
“I’m not so sure,” Karl disagreed.
“Why, then, did you convert?”
“For my career, to tell you the truth.”
“Let me understand this, Karl: You changed your religion because you wanted to rise up the ranks?”
“Correct.”
“A person converts for a promotion? I left the Jews because their whole way of thinking—their character and their behavior—disgusted me.”
Karl sensed that his friend was somehow trying to trap him. That evening he had no strength to fight. Leave me alone, he wanted to tell Martin. Why torment me? Why poison our friendship? But he couldn’t, and Martin kept pounding away: “And what did Father Merser say to you about that?”
He wanted to say that he hadn’t told the priest about his secret. Instead he replied, “Father Merser understood me.”
“That surprises me.”
“He understood me,” Karl repeated.
Karl realized that Martin had now trapped him. Fear fell upon him, as in a nightmare.
“I have to get home,” Karl said, rising from his chair.
“Too bad. I’d like to talk about this some more,” Martin badgered.
When Karl returned home, Gloria knew by his expression that his day had been hard. She served him hot soup and didn’t ask a thing.
“Martin was very crude,” Karl said without raising his head.
“Yes, I passed him the other day on the street. He looked tense.”
“One mustn’t speak that way.”
“In the village they say: ‘Keep away from tense people, the wolf dwells within them.’ ”
“Tonight he murdered our friendship in cold blood. I should have responded. I’m furious that I didn’t.”
The Conversion Page 11