Both old Mr. Hoyser and his grandson Werner seemed much more likable than he had remembered them; as befitted his situation, the Au. hastened to correct and lay aside his prejudices and to assume the ominous Kurt Hoyser, whom he was meeting for the first time, to be a likable, quiet, modest fellow who had endowed his otherwise carefully chosen apparel with that soupcon of casualness that suited his quiet baritone voice. He bore a striking resemblance to his mother Lotte: the hairline, the round eyes. Had this man once really been the infant born under such dramatic circumstances who at the insistence of his mother had not been baptized; born in the very room where a Portuguese family of five now slept, and had he really, together with the far tougher-looking Werner (now thirty-five), rolled Pelzer’s own cigarette butts in new cigarette paper when they were all living in the Soviet paradise in the vaults, subsequently palming them off as “regulars” on the still resentful Pelzer?
A few moments of embarrassment ensued, it being obvious that the Au. was regarded as some kind of emissary, and some unavoidable explanation on the part of the Au. was needed in order to explain his visit. To obtain information, to obtain facts. There was no question—thus the Au. in his concise explanation—of sympathies, partisanship, offers, counteroffers. Only the actual state of affairs was of interest here, no ideology, no proxy, of any kind; he—the Au.—had been in no way empowered, nor was he interested in being empowered; the “person under discussion” had never once been introduced to him, he had merely seen her two or three times on the street, had never exchanged a single word with her, his desire was to conduct a research into her life, a piecemeal research perhaps, but no more piecemeal than necessary, his mission emanated from neither a terrestrial nor a celestial authority, it was existential: and noting for the first time on the faces of all three Hoysers, who had barely managed to listen to his discourse with polite attention, something approaching interest because, as was quite obvious, they appeared to sense in the word “existential” a purely material interest, the Au. felt obliged to present all aspects of the existential elements in the matter. Then, asked by Kurt Hoyser whether he was an idealist, he vigorously denied it; asked whether in that case he was a materialist, a realist, he denied this with equal vigor; all at once he found himself the target of a kind of cross-examination being conducted in turn by old Mr. Hoyser, Kurt, and Werner: they asked him whether he was an intellectual, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Rhinelander, a Socialist, a Marxist, liberal, for or against the sex-wave, the pill, the Pope, Barzel, a free economy, a planned economy; and finally, since—it being a sort of vocal barrage that forced him constantly to swivel his head in the direction of each questioner—he consistently and categorically answered all these questions in the negative, a secretary emerged without warning from a hitherto invisible door, poured him some tea, moved the cheese biscuits closer to him, opened a cigarette box and, by pressing a button, caused one of the apparently seamless walls to slide back; from the aperture she extracted three file folders and placed them on the table in front of Kurt Hoyser, with notepad, paper, and pipe beside them, before—a person of neutral prettiness who reminded the Au. of the businesslike efficiency with which in certain movies the requirements of bordello customers are attended to—she vanished, blond, medium-bosomed, once again through the door.
Finally old Mr. Hoyser was the first to break the silence: he lightly tapped the files with his crook-handled cane, letting it lie on the files to enable him to supply periodic rhythmic punctuation. “This means,” he said, and his voice held an undeniable note of wistfulness, “this means the end of a link, an association, an era that for seventy-five years has seen me closely associated with the Gruyten family. As you know, I was fifteen when I became Hubert Gruyten’s godfather—and now I, and with me my grandsons, am severing all ties, destroying the whole fabric.”
For once, a certain condensation is called for, since old Hoyser dilated a good deal—beginning roughly with the apples he used to pick at the age of six (ca. 1890) in the garden of Leni’s parents’ house, proceeding to a fairly minute description of two world wars (emphasizing his basically democratic stance), describing Leni’s various (political, moral, financial) mistakes and stupidities, and the lives of virtually all the characters presented here—a discourse lasting approximately an hour and a half that the Au. found somewhat tiring in view of the fact that he was already in possession, although via other channels, of most of the information. Leni’s mother, Leni’s father, the young architect with whom she had once gone away for the weekend, her brother, her cousin, the Dead Souls, everything, the lot—and it seemed to the Au. that not even the grandsons were listening with undivided attention—also “certain transactions that had been one hundred percent legal”—was hashed over with aggressiveness that was defensive rather than one-dimensional, almost in the style of Mr. Exalted; the piece of land given to Kurt in his infancy—here the Au. pricked up his ears—“when Mrs. Gruyten’s grandfather acquired it in 1870 from an emigrating farmer, had cost ten pfennigs a square yard in those days, and that was a charitable price, he could have got it for four pfennigs, but of course they always had to be the generous ones and, being a lunatic, he even rounded the price upward and instead of some five thousand marks planked down six thousand, which meant he was paying twelve pfennigs a square yard. Is it our fault if today each square yard is worth three hundred and fifty marks? If we take into consideration certain—as I believe—temporary inflationary trends, you might say the figure was actually five hundred, not counting the value of the building, which you can safely take as being equal to the value of the land. And believe me, if you brought me a buyer tomorrow who offered me five million, cash on the nail, I—we wouldn’t part with it, and now come here and look out the window.”
At this point he calmly used his cane as a grappling iron, hooking it into the loosely buttoned jacket of the Au., who at the best of times is in a constant state of anxiety over his loose buttons, and pulled him, not without unwarranted force and—it is only fair to say—not without a shake of the head from his grandsons, brusquely toward him, thus compelling the Au. to look out at the surrounding buildings which, with their nine, eight, and seven floors, were stacked around the twelve-story building. “Do you know,” this in an ominously soft voice, “do you know what they call this part of the city?” Head shake from the Au., who is not that observant of topographical changes. “They call this part of the city Hoyseringen—and it stands on land that for seventy years was simply allowed to lie fallow, until someone was good enough to present it to that young gentleman over there” (cane waved in Kurt’s direction, voice now mocking) “when he was an infant, and it was I, I, I who saw to it that it didn’t continue to lie fallow, in accordance with the saying that used to be preached to our forefathers: ‘Replenish the earth, and subdue it.’ ”
It was at this juncture that the old gentleman, who was, after all, of a venerable age, began to show signs of senility; although now openly aggressive himself, he interpreted the Au.’s attempts to disengage himself from the walking cane/grappling iron as aggressiveness on the Au.’s part, although the latter proceeded gingerly enough and, out of his concern for his buttons, with great restraint. Hoyser, Sr., suddenly turned brick-red and actually ripped off the button, thereby putting paid to a sizable fragment of well-worn tweed, and brandished his cane menacingly over the Au.’s head. Although the Au. is at all times prepared to turn the other cheek, this seemed to be an occasion calling for self-defense: he ducked out of reach and barely managed to weather the situation with dignity. Meanwhile, Kurt and Werner intervened appeasingly and, apparently summoned by the pressing of an invisible button, the blond, medium-bosomed efficiency-machine went into action: with a sangfroid both indescribable and inimitable she lured the old gentleman out of the office by whispering something into his ear, a procedure that prompted both grandsons to remark in one voice: “Trude, you’re the perfect Girl Friday!” Before leaving the sanctum (the Au. is not going to risk using the word “room�
� in this context for fear it might lead to libel charges), the old gentleman called back over his shoulder: “Hubert, that laugh of yours is going to cost you a pretty penny, and he who laughs last laughs longest.”
Mr. Werner and Mr. Kurt Hoyser seemed affected by these events from the insurance angle only. An embarrassing trialogue ensued on the subject of the damaged jacket. A spontaneous attempt by Werner to offer compensation for the jacket by an immediate and overgenerous cash payment was, so to speak, nipped in the bud by a glance from Kurt; Werner’s hand had already gone to his wallet in the universally familiar gesture but was then withdrawn in astonishment. Such phrases were uttered as: “It goes without saying that we will reimburse you for a new jacket, although we are under no obligation to do so.” Such phrases as: “Compensation for pain and suffering,” “shock supplement”; insurance companies were named, policies quoted with their numbers, finally the poker-faced Trude, on being summoned, asked the Au. for his business card, and when it turned out that he did not possess one she made a note of his address in her stenographer’s notebook with a look of open disgust, her expression implying that she was being forced to handle a type of excrement whose stench was of a particularly revolting nature.
Here the Au. would like to say something about himself: he was not interested in a new jacket worth as much or even twice as much as his old one, he wanted his old jacket back again and, peevish though it may sound, he was genuinely attached to it and insisted that his garment be restored to its former condition; consequently, when the Hoyser brothers tried to talk him out of this by indicating the decline in the tailoring trade, he indicated that he knew of an invisible-mending expert, a woman who had already done several excellent jobs on his jacket. We all know the kind of people who, although no one has ever forbidden them to speak or ever would, suddenly say: “I’d like to say something,” or “May I say something?”—this was the kind of situation in which the Au. found himself, for at this stage of the negotiations he was finding it hard to preserve his objectivity; he refrained from mentioning the age of his jacket, the journeys he had made with it, and numerous scraps of paper he had stuffed into its pockets and taken out again, the small change in the lining, the bread crumbs, the fluff, and should he actually tell them that, scarcely forty-eight hours ago, Klementina’s cheek had rested, albeit briefly, against his right lapel? Should he expose himself to the suspicion of sentimentality, when actually all he cared about was that concrete concern of the Western world expressed by Vergil in the phrase lacrymae rerum?
The atmosphere was not nearly as harmonious now as it had been and might have been had the two Hoyser brothers showed the remotest understanding of the fact that a person is more attached to an old object than to a new one, and that there are some things in this world that cannot be assessed from the insurance angle. “If,” Werner Hoyser said at last, “someone drives into your old VW and, though he’s only obligated to reimburse you for its used-car value, offers you a new VW and you don’t accept it, I can only call that abnormal.” The mere suggestion that the Au. drove some ancient VW was an affront, although an unconscious one, an allusion to income bracket and taste which, not objectively perhaps, but subjectively, was of the nature of a humiliation. Will anyone find it offensive to learn that he—the Au.—emerged from his objectivity and stated in no uncertain terms that they could stuff their VW’s, whether old or new?—all he wanted was for his jacket, which had been ruined by a senile old roué, to be restored to its former condition.
Obviously such a conversation could lead nowhere. How can you explain to a person that you happen to be attached to your old jacket, and that you can’t take it off—as was being demanded, in order to assess the actual extent of the damage—because, damn it, life’s like that sometimes, you have a hole in your shirt, a tear caused by a Roman youth in a bus with his fishhook; also because the shirt is by now something less than clean, damn it, since in the service of truth you are forever moving about, forever making notes with pencils and ballpoint pens, and at night, dog tired, you fall into bed without taking your shirt off? Isn’t restoration an easy enough word to understand? It may well be that people after whom parts of a city are named which they have built on their own land suffer a well-nigh metaphysical exasperation when obliged to acknowledge that there are apparently some things, even jackets, for which the owner cannot be compensated in money. There may well be a sad provocation in this—but those who have thus far been reasonably convinced of the Au.’s strictly rational attitude will also credit him with something that may sound incredible: in this confrontation he was the rational one, the quiet, courteous, albeit immovable element, whereas the two Hoysers became irrational, their voices exasperated, on edge, hurt, their—toward the end of this painful scene even Kurt’s—hands twitching continually in the direction where one might suppose their wallets to be—as if from in there they could extract jackets, beloved twelve-year-old jackets that are dearer to a person than his own skin and less replaceable, for skin is transplantable whereas a jacket is not; to which one is attached without sentimentality, simply because, in the final analysis, one is a member of the Western world and the lacrymae rerum have been drummed into one.
A still further provocation was seen in the Au.’s going down on his hands and knees on the parquet floor and slithering about in search of the scrap of material that had been ripped out with one of his buttons, for obviously he was going to need this when he went to the invisible mender’s. His final rejection of any kind of compensation and his offer to have the jacket invisibly mended at his own expense while indicating that this might be classified as a business expense, since he was here on business, wasn’t he, was also taken as an affront; money was no object, etc. Oh what a chain of misunderstandings! Is it really so impossible to believe that a person merely wants his jacket back, his jacket and nothing else? Must this immediately place one under suspicion of fetishistic sentimentalism? And finally, is there no higher economy which should make it an offense simply to discard a jacket that has been darned, invisibly mended, is still eminently wearable, and gives pleasure to the wearer, simply because one has a bulging wallet and wishes to avoid annoyance?
At last, after this annoying interlude that had noticeably impaired the initial harmony, they got down to business: to the three file folders that evidently constituted Leni’s dossier. Again some condensation is merited of all the things that were dished up again about “Aunt Leni’s sloppy ways,” Aunt Leni’s unrealistic attitude, Aunt Leni’s faulty child-rearing methods, the company Aunt Leni kept—“and so that you won’t think we’re prudish or old-fashioned, or not progressive, the point here is not the lovers, not even the Turks or the Italians or the Greeks—the point is that the property is showing a profit of almost 65 percent less than it should; the proceeds from a sale alone, if wisely invested, could yield an annual revenue of forty to fifty thousand marks, probably more, but we wish to be fair so we will take the lower figure as a basis for argument—and how much does the building yield? If we deduct repairs, costs of administration, and the consequences of the asocial occupancy of the ground floor, where Aunt Leni lives and positively scares away a better class of tenant—thereby ruining the rent level—how much does the building yield? Less than fifteen thousand, barely thirteen or fourteen.” Thus Werner Hoyser.
Followed by Kurt Hoyser (condensed, verifiable from the Au.’s notes), who maintained they had nothing against foreign workers, they had no racial prejudices, but one must be consistent, and if Aunt Leni were to declare her willingness to accept rents at the going rate, then one would be prepared to discuss opening up the whole building to foreign workers, space to be rented by the bed, by the room, Aunt Leni to be appointed manageress and even supplied with rent-free accommodation and a monthly cash allowance; the trouble was that she was collecting—and this really was madness and contrary to the conclusions reached even by socialist economic doctrine—she was collecting in rents exactly what she was paying out herself; it was only for h
er sake that the rent had been kept at DM.2.50 a square yard and not in order that others should profit by it; for instance, the Portuguese family was paying DM.125 for 50 square yards, plus DM.13 for use of bath and kitchen, the three Turks (“Of whom one, of course, more often than not sleeps with her, which means that their room is occupied by two persons only”) are paying DM.87.50 for 35 square yards, whereas the Helzen couple are paying DM.125 for 50 square yards, plus the DM.13 each, “and then she’s crazy enough to calculate her share of kitchen and bath at double-occupancy rate because she’s keeping the extra room for Lev who, as we know, is being temporarily housed free of charge.” And the last straw was the fact that she was charging the unfurnished rate for furnished rooms; and that, mind you, was nothing as harmless as some anarchistic-Communist experiment—that was undermining the market; without being too unfair, one could easily squeeze 300 to 400 marks a room, with use of bath and kitchen, out of the building. Etc. Etc.
Even Kurt Hoyser seemed embarrassed to bring up a subject “that I must touch on if we’re going to be businesslike”: the fact was that, of the ten beds, only seven actually belonged to Leni, one still belonged to Grandfather, a second one to the deeply injured Heinrich Pfeiffer, and the third to his parents, the Pfeiffers, “whose very hair stands on end when they think of what may be going on in those beds.” In other words, Leni was violating not only incontestable economic laws and usage rights, but also ownership rights, and since by this time the Pfeiffers found it quite impossible to negotiate directly with Leni, they had designated Hoyser, Inc., as trustees of their ownership rights to the beds: there were therefore not only personal but legally assigned rights to be preserved, in other words the affair had acquired an additional dimension in which matters of principle were at stake. Granted, of course, that the bed belonging to Heinrich Pfeiffer was the one given him by Aunt Leni’s mother during the war “while he was waiting to be called up,” but a gift was a gift; moreover, in the eyes of the law a gift was an irrevocable transfer of property. Furthermore—the Au. was free to make what use he liked of this—it was hard to see why all the tenants and/or subtenants should be employed by the city garbage-collection and/or street-cleaning departments.
Group Portrait With Lady Page 39