“Certainly, but we can’t pay you more. The economy is forcing our hand.”
“What’s it forcing you to do? Dumb down your newspaper and fire people who have worked for you for eighteen years?”
“Yes, that’s what times are forcing us to do! What you call dumbing down, Mr. Miermann, I call blooming. Newspapers need new blood. It’s not good for people to work here for too long.”
“Mr. Frächter, have you ever taken an interest in your audience?”
“No, Mr. Miermann. It’s unnecessary. Our readership notices nothing, unfortunately. Every year twenty thousand graduates leave universities having learned how to write essays in German. They’ll write for ten pfennigs a line. I might be exaggerating, but the days of the hotshot journalist are over. It depends on the position of each newspaper, not each individual.”
“You’re quite right, that’s why German journalists are held in such high esteem by the foreign press. The publishers are trying to raise the level of German journalism higher and higher since education is nonsense and getting to the bottom of things is ridiculous, but all the same, Mr. Frächter, it’ll be hard to avoid limping after the tabloids. I’m willing to print ‘Capitalist Rapes Girl,’ or ‘Rain for Eight Weeks, Socialists at Fault.’ But I’m not sure I can start straightaway.”
“Mr. Miermann, you’re telling me how to run a paper? Our circulation figures are rising and rising. Our street sales jumped by twenty thousand the day we premiered the most beautiful legs. The cosmetics page is unbelievably popular, and you can’t imagine for how little money Mr. Schulz puts it together for me.”
“I can give you German politics on the cheap. Perhaps I can even give you articles that are cheaper by the dozen.”
“Mr. Miermann, you’ve talked yourself into a rage. This is not advantageous to our negotiations. I propose a fixed salary of three hundred marks.”
“For how many articles?”
“Well, the usual!”
“That’s twenty-five marks an article?”
“Then just write less. By the way, you can leave immediately if you are unwilling to accept our conditions.”
Miermann climbed the stairs to his apartment on Würzburger Strasse. Emma, his wife, didn’t ask why he’d come home so early. She never asked him anything. She considered herself a simple housewife. She went into the kitchen and washed some radishes.
Miermann sat on the sofa and felt as if he had nothing to do. Miermann, who usually came home and asked, “Is there mail? Did someone call?” who was on the phone immediately, reading brochures, sitting at his desk, now sat quietly on the sofa, and looked out the window toward the west, gazing at the setting sun.
Emma went over to him and said, “It’ll be all right.” Miermann pulled her down on the couch and put his arm around her shoulders.
“I love you very much, you know,” he said.
They ate their dinner—bread, butter, cold cuts, tomatoes, radishes—and drank beer.
“Shall we go for a walk? It’s terribly hot this evening.”
Miermann went out with his wife. Dreadful, he thought. Würzburger Strasse, Geisbergstrasse; all of these brutal, hideous boxes for people. He felt as if the buildings were falling on him. And all the houses were full of nothing but worries from top to bottom without hope, belief, or knowledge. “They sleep much as the oysters live and die.”44
They encountered two Galician Jews on Motzstrasse. They wore silken caftans and soft black hats. One of them had a long black beard, the other a long red one.
“Have we become that much more beautiful, you with your blonde hair and blue eyes, and I with my books on romanticism and classicism? People don’t know what beauty is anymore.”
They arrived at Nollendorfplatz.
“Shall we have an iced coffee?” he asked.
“Oh no, I don’t need one. Let’s leave it.”
“Surely we can still afford an iced coffee?”
“Well,” Emma sighed. She was already budgeting in spirit, and was adjusting to the smaller income. The iced coffee was two lunch sandwiches.
They entered the café, sat down, and drank the iced coffee. They sat there for a long time. After an hour or so, it got very crowded. The waiters couldn’t keep up with the orders.
All of a sudden, a man began to shout loudly, “This is outrageous! I’ve been sitting here for an hour and no one’s come. What kind of business do you call that?! I didn’t come here to wait. I told the waiter three times, ‘A chocolate milk, an iced coffee,’ but he hasn’t brought them, he hasn’t come back! No one’s moved, no one’s come, I’m sitting here like a monkey! It’s outrageous!” He was frighteningly red in the face as he slammed his fist on the table and pounded his walking stick on the floor. “It’s outrageous! As if I wasn’t going to pay! What a state, what a state—look at how we’re treated!”
Everyone present was deeply frightened by the man’s unrestrained shouting. The manager was summoned. He was very polite, and said placatingly, “My dear sir, you’ll be served straight away. What will you have?”
But the man wouldn’t stop screaming. His wife tried to calm him down, but he became more and more enraged. It was deeply alarming. He grabbed a chair and banged it on the floor.
“I don’t want anything anymore. If you still think I want something, I’ve been waiting for three hours and now I’ve snapped. Enough is enough. I don’t want anything anymore. It’s over. I called, the waiter simply didn’t come, he left us sitting there, didn’t wait on us. It’s outrageous! Outrageous!”
Miermann said to his wife, “He came straight from a political gathering.”
The manager said apologetically, “Every evening, when the movies are done with the Roofs of Paris, we’re slammed for fifteen minutes. I can’t hire more waiters just for that.”
Everyone made soothing gestures. After a while, Miermann and Emma got up and walked down Kleiststrasse. Just before the first crossing, Miermann suddenly said, “I feel sick!” At once, he staggered and fell. Emma, frightened, knelt down, propped him up, and held his head. He squeezed her hand and moved his lips. From them came words unspoken for thirty-five years, the age-old dying prayer of the ancient Jews: “Shmah yisroel, adonoi elohenu adonoi echod.” “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
“Amen,” said Emma.
“Come,” he said.
But she had to let him go. She cried out for help.
A taxi driver got out of his cab and brought Miermann to the doctor who lived in the next house over. He pronounced Miermann dead. Emma wanted to take her husband home. The chauffeur lifted him into the car. As he lay silent next to her, Emma grew fearful of the man with whom she had shared twenty-four years of her life, and opened the window to the chauffeur. The breathing stranger was a comfort next to the corpse. Emma cried. If he could only have taken her with him! What would she do in this life without any duties?
She was soon at home and called her doctor. He arrived, diagnosed a heart attack, and left instructions. Emma stayed up with the man she had loved. It occurred to her that she should exact revenge upon those who had wronged him. Miermann’s old fighting spirit awoke in her, and she called up Öchsli. She told Öchsli what had happened and added that Öchsli should announce it to all the papers but make sure that the Berliner Rundschau didn’t catch wind of it. Only after she had undertaken the revenge of a journalist’s wife did she surrender to her grief, the recognition of her boundless loneliness.
“Come,” he’d said. Shouldn’t she come, mustn’t she come, wasn’t it her duty to come? She was half mad when Öchsli came to see her in the morning and made sure she went to bed.
All the morning papers except the Berliner Rundschau reported on Miermann’s death. Every newspaper dedicated at least twenty lines to him, and the Berliner Tageszeitung ran an eighty-line essay. There was no word in the Berliner Rundschau. As expected, this caused a greater upset than Miermann’s death.
“I don’t understand what kind of news servic
e we have,” Frächter said to the editor in chief of the local news. “How can we not know about the death of the most important editor on staff?”
The old curmudgeon said, “If you take away all my colleagues . . .”
Someone in the arts section who had heard that Miermann had died on the way home from a party angrily said, “With my salary, I can’t afford a tuxedo or frequent the circles in which one learns of such things.”
A midday paper contained dark hints of suicide. The radical evening papers printed large headlines:
DRIVEN TO DEATH!
Meanwhile, Heye had written a very moving obituary.
But the fake news had to be disproved. Frächter, worrying that word of the firing might get out and be shouted from the rooftops, wired Emma a thousand marks, since he assumed that this had likely been arranged by her. Then Frächter had an extra bone to pick with the head of the wire service.
The funeral was arranged for September 2. Emma, who had heard her husband’s last words, wondered if it might not be better to bury him next to his parents at the Jewish cemetery in Weissensee. But Miermann had left Judaism behind long ago, and in his will she found clear directions that he wished to be buried in the Waldfriedhof cemetery.
Thus it was arranged.
It was a beautiful summer day: birds sang, butterflies flew about, all the flowers were bright and perfectly lovely. Being laid to rest here was a fitting departure. As expected, many people had come. Many of his female readers, who hadn’t paid attention when it had been vitally necessary, now came and brought flowers. All of his colleagues were there: Frächter from the publisher’s office, Miss Käte Herzfeld, Miehlke from the composing room, the theater critics, politicians, relatives, friends, Dr. Krone, Oberndorffer, Lambeck, and Mr. and Mrs. Tradt-Augur. Lieven went around and shook everyone’s hand with great feeling. Aja Müller wore her black hat far back on her strawberry-blonde head and flitted from one distinguished guest to the next. It was an elegant society event. She made her rounds and was pleased by who she met. It was no different from an evening at Margot Weissmann’s. Lieven made sure he was in the vicinity of Möglein, the theater director, and Heinrich Wurm in Frächter’s. The organ played Bach. Frächter slowly stepped forward, and said:
“Dear friend, we stand before your coffin deeply saddened. Today, we are bringing my closest, most treasured colleague to eternal rest . . .”
He spoke of his friendship with Miermann and delivered a subtle analysis of his character. “He was,” so Frächter said, “a truly great editor, a man who always stood behind an issue, a man who treated the work and words of others like his own. This was his great modesty, a modesty derived from great knowledge, a true universitas. His books and poetry may have remained unread, but he was ever more widely read as a journalist: he was a journalist by calling, not by profession.”
Every word could be underlined.
“We publishers,” he concluded, “we publishers know that the writer, the journalist, the mind is everything for the company. We publishers—businessmen, as it were—are merely the handmaidens of the journalist and the spirit. Ultimately, content matters most: it is the core, not the shell. And so I bow to an exemplar of the spirit, a paragon of journalism, one of the last, wise, true servants of the written word, who grow ever rarer and rarer. Peace be with him!”
Many others spoke after Frächter, mostly presidents and deputies. A deputy of the association of independent academics, at which Miermann had often been a guest speaker; a deputy of the Berlin magistrate’s office; the president of the Berlin theater critics’ society; a deputy of the theater association; a deputy of the German writer’s guild; a deputy of the national press union.
They all said the same thing: “Mr. Georg Miermann belonged to our association since 1899 and was an active member. He was always available when his advice was required. We and our members will miss him greatly, and we thank him beyond the grave for all the help he gave us.”
In the meantime, the journalists jotted down the names of the attendees.
At last, Lieven stepped forward and said: “My friend.” He gave an eloquent and thoughtful speech intended for the theater directors, the publishers, and the beautiful women, for the note in the evening papers: “In the end, Lieven, the well-known playwright, delivered a lengthy speech in recognition of the great journalist’s work.”
Gohlisch and Miss Kohler visited his grave. They thought of Miermann at Augur’s child’s funeral, and of this vanity fair that had sprung up between the trees, birds, flowers, and the dead man.
“The only people who spoke were the kind he couldn’t stand,” Gohlisch said.
“As always, you’re completely right,” Miss Kohler said.
Frächter stood in front of the cemetery entrance and generously offered Gohlisch, Miss Kohler, and a few others who had joined them a ride home in his car.
34
The grand opening of the Käsebier theater
THAT VERY same evening, the Käsebier theater had its grand opening. Suppliers from all across Berlin delivered incredible floral arrangements. The show began at eight forty-five. The great arrival began at eight. Almost everyone who had attended Miermann’s funeral that morning was present. The Muschlers shared a very large table with the Frechheims and a few other friends. Margot Weissmann came with her Spaniard. Aja Müller was there with her latest. Frächter with his fiancée, Ella Waldschmidt—the wedding was in three days—, Gohlisch, Lambeck, Lieven, Countess Dinkelsbühl, Mr. von Trappen, Hersheimer the banker, Käte Herzfeld, Gabriele Meyer-Lewin. Miermann was missing. Young Schrade had finally gone under. It was a muggy summer night. Aja Müller looked grand.
“Aja Müller in very long gloves,” said Mrs. Muschler.
“Like Yvette Guilbert in her younger days,” said Uncle Gustav.
“Everyone’s here,” said Mrs. Muschler, very excited.
“Well, at the opening,” said Muschler, skeptical.
“Look, even Lambeck!”
“Lambeck, so what, Lambeck? The theater critics haven’t come. D’you see Ixo or Öchsli?”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“They’ll still come, I’m certain.”
Gohlisch was standing by himself. Finally, he spotted Käte Herzfeld.
“Good evening, Miss Herzfeld,” Gohlisch said. “We saw each other not too long ago.”
“A terrible occasion,” said Käte.
“I owe him so much.”
“It’s such a shame. Somehow he couldn’t cope with life, but he was a wonderful man.”
“Yes,” said Gohlisch pensively. “You know, only the vaudeville critics came.”
“How interesting! Öchsli isn’t there, and neither is Ixo?”
“I don’t see anyone. They sent a third-rate crop of young kids. No art critics, either.”
“That’s quite interesting. You know, Mr. Gohlisch, I’m beginning to think he’s complete garbage.”
“I think that’s unfair. Of course, he’s not as important as he was made out to be. But it’s not his fault others overestimated him.”
“Oh, he’s just a foolish man without a clue about the present. What use do we have for a cabaret that’s not political?”
Aja Müller shrieked, “Gohlisch, my duckie, my peacock feather, my golden pheasant, why don’t you call me anymore? Don’t you love me?”
Ella Waldschmidt greeted Käte Herzfeld: “How are you doing?”
“Thanks, as well as to be expected in such times.”
“Of course, of course. Give me a call sometime.”
Frächter looked like he’d arrived.
The Käsebier literature had been put out in the lobby. Willy Frächter, Käsebier, a Singer from Berlin: Who He Is, and How He Came to Be. Next to him, Heinrich Wurm, Käsebier from the series “Darlings of the Public.” The Käsebier picture book by Dr. Richard Thame. Käsebier Cartoons, put together by Gödovecz. Otto Lambeck: Käsebier, An Essay.
Frächter stood with Gohlisch. “I don’t feel co
mfortable about that book sitting out there,” he said. “I’d much rather disown it.”
Gohlisch sat with Oberndorffer in the concert hall.
“Well, how do you like the room?” Oberndorffer asked.
“I don’t know, there’s so much wood, and all these carvings from 1918.”
“Oh well. Take a look around.”
The edges of the ceiling had been painted in hues of silver and gold. Below, the room had been paneled with carved wood. A piece of cornice ran around the ceiling in zigzags from 1918, and large lamps, golden semicircles connected to silver rectangles, flanked the stage.
“Aren’t those carvings odd! But I had nothing to do with it.”
“Well,” said Gohlisch, “we’re galley slaves, after all.”
Öchsli arrived too late. “Hullo Gohlisch, how’re you? I ended up coming, I thought it cruel they left Käsebier to be torn apart by our newest scribe.”
Käsebier appeared in front of the curtain and greeted his guests. But Berliners are stiff; it didn’t work. They laughed a little. But no one called out a kind word. There was no rapport.
A few dancers and a shadow artist came on, followed by an eccentric man on a unicycle who dashed on and off stage loudly ululating, and cycled over a round tabletop in an exceptionally amusing fashion.
A very competent singer sang a few songs, but everyone had heard something similar before. It was rather poor planning to put on such an effective ghost scene before the break. A midnight spook in which a skeleton danced the foxtrot.
During the break, Waldschmidt said to Lambeck, “We’re facing very difficult times. I don’t feel good about the future. Only a grand coalition can lead the government. Everything else means chaos. It’s looking very bad. We’ve all lived beyond our means, especially economically.”
Lambeck nodded.
“If the election results in a minority for the grand coalition, our only option will be dictatorship. And who knows how other countries will react to a radical election. Credits may be revoked.”
Meanwhile, Käte was standing by Margot Weissmann.
“Enchantée de vous voir,” Margot said to Käte because of the foreign gentleman.
Käsebier Takes Berlin Page 26