by Vicki Baum
Now, however, Gerstenkorn removed his fat bourgeois thumbs from the armholes of his waistcoat and began to state his opinion. Gerstenkorn, with his brush-cut square head and bronchitic voice, was a clear and ready speaker. He made use of every available dialect in order to say what he wished in the most direct way. His business talk was spiced with expressions from the dialects of Saxony, Berlin, Mecklenburg and from Yiddish.
“And now stop a bit and let the grown-ups talk,” he said without taking the cigar from his mouth, and this had the desired effect of making his casual way of speaking even more casual. “You’ve told us now what the Saxonia is good for and that we knew already. It doesn’t hold water, all the same. We’ve gone into all that with our principal shareholders and the upshot was to think twice and twice again before we went in for the amalgamation. They don’t see any fun in pulling hot chestnuts out of the fire for your cotton business. So now you have it straight. Our position has improved appreciably since you first approached us. Yours has remained stationary, if I am not to be rude and say it has deteriorated. Under the circumstances—to speak plainly, my dear Preysing—the amalgamation has lost its attraction for us. We have come here this morning with instructions in our pockets under these circumstances to let the negotiations drop. At the time you first approached us, it was a different story.”
“We didn’t approach you,” Preysing said quickly.
“How can you say that, man? You did approach us. Doctor Waitz, please give me the correspondence. Here we are—on September 14th you approached us by letter.”
“That’s not correct,” Preysing persisted obstinately, and he made a grab for the file of papers in front of Zinnowitz. “We did not approach you. Our letter of September 14th followed upon a personal exchange of views instigated by yourselves.”
“If you talk of instigating, why, your old man sounded me out in strict confidence as between old friends a good month before that.”
“We did not approach you,” said Preysing. He clung to this fact, which was a mere side issue, as if it were of vital importance. Zinnowitz tapped a warning note with his narrow feet under the table. Abruptly Gerstenkorn let the matter drop. He smoothed the green tablecloth with his square hands. “Right,” he said. “Bon! Then you did not approach us, if you prefer. And whether you did or not, the circumstances then were not the same as now. You will not deny that, Herr Generaldirektor?” (The change from the familiar to the official style sounded threatening.) “At that time we had reasons for wishing a close connection with the Saxonia Cotton Company. What reasons have we today?”
“You need more capital,” said Preysing, quite accurately. Gerstenkorn swept this aside with two of his fingers.
“Capital! Capital! We have only to issue shares to have all the money we want chucked at us. Capital! There’s one thing you forget. You had your time during the war. You were able to do well with military uniform material and blankets. Now it’s our turn, eh? We don’t need capital. We need cheap raw material so that we can profit to the full with our new process, and we need new outlets for export abroad. I’ll tell you the company views quite frankly, Herr Generaldirektor. If the amalgamation were of any help to us in this respect, then we’d be for it. Otherwise not. Now, please, if you have anything to say?”
Poor Preysing! If he had anything to say! Now had come the point he had been afraid of ever since climbing aboard the local train at Fredersdorf. He threw a timid glance across at Zinnowitz, but Zinnowitz was examining his well-tended bloodless fingernails and made no reply.
“It is no secret that we have excellent connections abroad. To the Balkans alone we export cleaning cloths amounting to an annual value of sixty-five thousand marks,” he said. “It stands to reason that in the event of an amalgamation we would do everything in our power to open up a bigger foreign market for your products too.”
“Are there any circumstances that would enable you to give this assurance a more definite form?” asked Doctor Waitz from lower down the table. He even rose halfway from his seat as he said it. This was a habit contracted in his former activities as counsel for the defense in criminal proceedings. Wherever he might be, he always looked as though he wore a barrister’s gown and he had not lost the tone with which he used to browbeat nervous witnesses. The general manager allowed himself to be browbeaten.
“Can you tell me what circumstances you mean,” he answered with his miserable habit of asking what he knew already.
Schweimann who sat opposite him had not so far opened his large flexible ape’s mouth. He opened it now.
“The reference is to the proposed understanding with Burleigh & Son,” he said without more ado. Gerstenkorn held a long cigar ash trembling on the end of his cigar in the keenest suspense.
“Unfortunately I am not in a position to make any statement on that matter,” Preysing answered at once. He had prepared this reply long beforehand and learned it by heart.
“Pity,” said old Gerstenkorn. Whereupon there was a general silence lasting several minutes.
The bottle of water rattled on the tray because a bus was going by outside, and the surface of the water catching a ray of sun threw trembling rings of light on to the frame of the portrait in oils of the founder of the Grand Hotel. Preysing’s brain worked feverishly during these seconds. He did not know whether Zinnowitz had shown those ominous copies of the letters—now so entirely meaningless and unjustifiable—to the Chemnitz people. Once again he had that unclean and uncomfortable feeling in his hands. His unshaven chin began to itch in a ridiculous way. From the corners of his eyes he threw his legal adviser a questioning and imploring glance. Zinnowitz, as though to soothe him, closed the lids of his oblique and sagacious Chinese eyes. This was an extremely obscure gesture. It might mean yes. It might mean no. It might mean nothing whatever. Preysing pulled himself together. I must see it through, he thought— though it was more a sensation than a thought.
“Gentlemen,” he said, standing up—for the velvet-upholstered chair made his backside feel hot and uncomfortable. “But, gentlemen, we must after all stick to the main point. The basis of all negotiations between us so far was our credit balance and the standing of the Fredersdorf company. You have had every opportunity to look into that matter. Counselor Gerstenkorn has satisfied himself personally as to the state of our enterprise, and I must draw the line at vague and imponderable elements being brought into the discussion today. We are not speculators. I certainly am not a speculator. I deal with facts, not with rumors. It is no more than a stock-exchange rumor that we are planning a business arrangement with Burleigh & Son. I have had to contradict it once already and I cannot admit that—”
“You can’t take in an old hand like me with a tale like that. We all know what such denials are worth,” Gerstenkorn threw in. Schweimann perked up. He sniffed with dilated nostrils and ape’s mouth as though he already scented export possibilities with England.
Preysing began to lose his temper. “I refuse,” he shouted, “I refuse to have this affair with England mixed up with the business before us. I am not going to reckon on castles in the air. I have never done it and for our company, it isn’t necessary. I reckon with facts, with actualities, with figures. Our balance—here it is,” he cried, and with the flat of his hand he struck the file of papers before him three times. “This is what counts and nothing else. We offer what we offered from the first, and if your company suddenly finds that it is not enough, then I’m sorry.”
He pulled himself up in alarm. He had galloped off like a runaway horse over a bog. I’ll end by scaring them off with my noise, he thought in horror. I ought to keep them in hand and instead of that I’m bungling the business. He poured out a glass of water and took a drink. It was heavy, tepid, and tasteless as castor oil. Zinnowitz smiled faintly and tried to put things right.
“Mr. Preysing is conscientious to an exemplary degree,” he said. “I don’t know whether his scruples about allowing the affair with Manchester to be brought into the discussio
n in any way are unjustified or at any rate exaggerated. Why should not a matter that looks so promising be thrown onto the scales, even though it is not yet signed in black and white?”
“Why? Because I could not answer for it,” interrupted Preysing.
Zinnowitz would gladly have stepped on his foot if he had been in a position to do so. As it was, he raised his voice and talked the general manager down. Preysing sat down again on the warm plush seat and said no more. He had been on the point of disclosing the truth. Very well, he thought, if Zinnowitz would not let him have his say, then let the famous commercial lawyer see for himself what he’d gotten into. The affair was going badly. It had gone badly already. It was already dead, already buried. Negotiations broken off. Right. Good. He offered the honest terms that a sound concern and an honest man had to offer. But that was not what people wanted nowadays. They wanted their hypothetical arrangements, their wild rumors, their manipulated booms with nothing behind any of it but hot air. Knitted goods, jumpers and sweaters and colorful socks from Chemnitz, he thought bitterly. He could see them now at that very moment—all these multicolored and frivolous articles of fashion conquering the world on the bodies of equally frivolous young girls.
Zinnowitz talked on. Flamm the First had sunk again into a professional lethargy. Gerstenkorn and Schweimann, however, scarcely listened to a word he said. They had their heads together and were whispering loudly in a very discourteous way.
“Perhaps our friend Preysing,” the lawyer was saying, “carries his scruples too far. His company is said to be on the point of concluding a very favorable agreement with the excellent old firm of Burleigh & Son. And what has Preysing to say? He resists the imputation as though he were being accused of bankruptcy. Granted that it is actually no more than a rumor—all the same, there is no smoke without fire, as we all know. And an old businessman like Gerstenkorn will agree that some rumors are worth more than many a signed agreement. But as legal adviser for many years past to the Fredersdorf firm, I may be permitted to say that the rumor foreshadows perfectly definite arrangements. You must forgive me, my dear Preysing, if I don’t maintain the same inflexible discretion as you do. It serves no purpose to deny that negotiations of a far-reaching kind have already proceeded a long way. It may not be possible to say today whether they will reach their desired conclusion. But they are in existence and every bit as much a fact as any in your balance sheet. In my opinion, it reflects the highest credit upon Herr Preysing that he refuses to throw this affair into the scales as an asset of his company in this quixotic fashion. Nothing could be more straightforward and gentlemanly. But it gets us no further. So you will pardon me if I take these gentlemen into our confidence in this matter.”
Zinnowitz floundered on with his conciliatory discourse, interspersing a number of “thoughs” and “seeing thats” and “notwithstandings” and “on the other hands.” Preysing had gone pale; he could tell from the prickling sensation as the blood drained from his temples that he must be as white as a sheet. So, he thought, Zinnowitz has shown them the letters. Good God, but that’s swindling. It isn’t far from actual fraud. “Negotiations irrevocably broken off. Brösemann,” he thought, and he saw the blue-black and blurred writing of the telegram. He put his hand into the breast pocket of his gray business suit, where he had stowed the telegram, but then pulled it out again as if from a hot oven. If I don’t get up at once and tell them what’s happened, there’ll be no end of a muddle, he thought and he stood up. And if I do tell them, they will break it off, there will be no more talk of amalgamation and I can go back to Fredersdorf as the scapegoat, he thought, and sat down again. In the vain hope of accounting for this aimless and irresolute movement, he poured himself some more of the nauseating water and swallowed it down like medicine.
Schweimann and Gerstenkorn, meanwhile, had cheered up considerably. They were a couple of extremely wily businessmen. Their attention had been caught by the vehemence with which Preysing had tried to negate and to exclude the English affair. Their keen noses scented something behind this—exports, profits, competition perhaps. Gerstenkorn whispered his thoughts into Schweimann’s large right ear: “In the case of anyone else a denial like this would be as good as saying yes. But in the case of this blockhead Preysing it might even be possible that he is simply telling the truth—” Gerstenkorn broke in roughly: “There’s no object in our legal friend talking himself hoarse,” he said leaning over the table. “Before we say any more, I must ask Herr Preysing to tell us plainly how far the negotiations with Burleigh & Son have gone.”
“I refuse,” said Preysing.
“I must insist on it, if I am to continue the discussion,” said Gerstenkorn.
“Then,” said Preysing, “I beg you in any further discussion to regard that matter as nonexistent.”
“Am I to conclude then that all prospects of an agreement with Burleigh & Son are over?” asked Gerstenkorn.
“Conclude what you like,” said Preysing.
At this they were all silent for nearly a minute. Flamm the First discreetly turned the pages of her steno pad and the slight rustle of the paper broke the stillness in the conference room. Preysing looked like an aggrieved infant. From time to time, from behind his managing director’s face, there appeared the face of a dull and obstinate little boy. Zinnowitz, feeling that everything was over, was drawing little resigned triangles on the cover of a file of papers with his malachite fountain pen.
“Then I suppose there’s nothing further to be said for the present,” Gerstenkorn said finally. “I suppose we may as well conclude our little discussion. We can always continue it in writing.”
He got up, and his chair made grooves in the thick pile of the oriental carpet in this very handsome conference room. Preysing, however, kept his seat. He took out a cigar with elaborate care, and with elaborate care cut off its end; then he lit it, took a pull and began to smoke with an abstracted and deeply meditative expression on his face. His cheeks were reddened by tiny little veins.
There is no doubt that General Manager Preysing was a thoroughly decent man, a man of principle, a good husband and father, a man who stood for organization and order and fixed respectability. His life followed an orderly routine. It lay open to inspection like a map, and the sight of it could not fail to please. It was a life of card indexes, of red tape, of many pigeonholes and much hard work. He had never yet committed the least impropriety. Nevertheless, there must have been a bad spot in him somewhere, a minute nucleus of moral disease that was destined to get hold of him and bring him low. Yes, there must, in spite of everything, have been just the merest trace of some inflammation, some microscopic speck on the irreproachable civic purity of his moral waistcoat . . .
He uttered no cry for help at this fatal moment when the conference broke off, though his plight was bad enough now to justify a cry for help and succor. He stood up gripping his cigar between his teeth, as he felt for something in his vest pocket with a sensation of complete drunkenness.
“A pity,” he said casually, amazed at the careless tone of his voice, as it issued from his mouth past his cigar. “Great pity. What is deferred is done with. So that’s the end of that. And now that you have broken off, I don’t mind telling you that we put through the agreement with Burleigh & Son last night. I got the news early this morning.”
He drew out his hand from inside his jacket, and in it was the folded telegram: “Negotiations irrevocably broken off.” A sense of childish and triumphant roguery came over him as he stood there, after having told this thundering lie which bordered on downright fraud, with the telegram before him on the green table. He did not even know whether he wished to bluff them or merely to make an effective exit out of the mess into which he had got himself. Schweimann, the more impulsive of the two Chemnitz people, made an instinctive grab for the telegram. Preysing, however, very quickly and with an almost ironical smile, raised his hand from the table, unfolded the telegram, folded it up again and put it back into his pocket
quite deliberately. Doctor Waitz, farther down the table, looked foolish. Zinnowitz whistled. The one thin piping note came very oddly from his sagacious Chinese lips.
Gerstenkorn began to laugh and wheeze. “My good fellow,” he coughed. “My dear fellow! You’re a good deal smarter than you look. You certainly led us by the nose. Come on, now we must go on talking about this.”
He sat down. The general manager remained standing for a few seconds with a sense of emptiness; all his joints had gone hollow and, as he felt a strange weakness taking hold of him and extending to his knees, he sat down too. He had lied for the first time in his life and in a manner that was perfectly stupid and senseless and bound to be found out. At the same time, and, indeed, precisely because of that, he had at last got his head above water after many fruitless attempts. Suddenly he heard himself talking and now he talked well. A strange and until now quite unknown intoxication took possession of him, and everything he now said had vigor and power and energy. The founder of the Grand Hotel stared down at him full of admiration. Flamm the First bent her old-maidish face over her pad and took it all down in shorthand—for now that a final settlement seemed to be approaching, every word was important.
Preysing remained in this new and inspired state until the end of the conference, which went on for three hours and twenty minutes longer. It was only when he grasped the malachite green fountain pen to append his signature at the side of Gerstenkorn’s to the draft agreement, that he noticed his hands were once more moist and singularly unclean . . .