A Poet?

It was the middle of February, and it was almost midnight.

Quiet had finally, for a short while, settled upon the Zeitungspalast, the proud seat of Vienna’s main newspapers situated close to the Ringstrasse. The lively bustle of the day, with its boisterous and fitful waves of movement, had gone silent. A lonely light from the windows on the third floor, where the editorial offices were located, shone into the fog and down onto the deserted street. Then it went out. The arcs of the electric streetlights over the driveway poured their light, white and almost as garish as a flash, over a waiting carriage and pair of horses. On the box, the coachman sat nodding his head; he was bundled up beyond recognition, in order to protect himself from the restless wind that staggered and lunged across the metropolis. The building’s portal stood open, but only rarely did someone scurry in or step out. Anyone needing to leave would pause for a bit, shivering and catching their breath, before venturing into the wintry night that was buffeted by frosty, formless exhalations. A few steps farther on and the darkness swallowed them.

All the lights were still burning in the night editor’s offices. Just now the compositor had left with some copy; now the issue existed, and the machines celebrated, although they were prepared for the last news items that a belated messenger or a dilatory telegram might yet bring. The stale air in the capacious room smelled of lacquer, oil, and printer’s ink. Only three people were still present. The night editor played absent-mindedly with a large pair of scissors; a reporter sat at a large lectern, dressed in a tailcoat, polishing a piece about a ball, which he apparently had not been able to get pretty and colorful enough yet. And, finally, there was one other man, about to leave, who stood at a small table as he scanned the most recent dispatches that had arrived in the last hour.

As he weighed every word for its worth and its gravity, his face bore a look of both concentration and superiority. When he finished with the final dispatch, he carefully put down the piece of paper and turned to go. A knock came at the door: loud yet irregular, perhaps anxious. The man who was writing looked up; the night editor closed his scissors with a loud snap. The two men looked at each other and said in the same instant: “That would be—Bernhofer.”

The new arrival, Josef Bernhofer, paused on the threshold and gazed for a moment into the bright light as if blinded. The warmth produced an expression of touching contentment on his careworn face. He was, obviously, very short-sighted; the way he hesitated, eyes blinking, as he used his finger to wipe the lenses of his bent spectacles, gave him a dreamy, humble look despite the fact that he had on a suit that was clean and, except for the wide cut of the pants, appropriate to the season. His posture was bad, and his shoulders slumped; his hair was unkempt, and tufts of it had gone gray. He limped slightly on his left leg, but in such a way that it looked to be more the consequence of a nonchalant habit than a physical infirmity. A certain air of polite shyness hung over everything that he did; this is frequently encountered in people who are always interacting with higher-ups but are not comfortable around their superiors. It’s like that with tutors of natural modesty in the houses of aristocrats. And thus he approached the night editor and brought forth from the breast pocket of his winter coat a neat sheet of paper covered in writing in blue ink: “If I may be so bold as to deliver another report. I hope it is suitable. There is a fire, sir.”

“A fire? Is that still the case? And no one’s brought me this yet?”

“I hope not. It was barely an hour ago, and it was quite a considerable blaze. They had to dispatch the steam engine, and a fireman received injuries that were not inconsequential. I proceeded with great haste. I was just on my way home when the flames erupted, and in a café I recorded everything most scrupulously.” And as he attempted a self-effacing smile, he continued: “Admittedly, I did not come here immediately. I know that the gentlemen here are open the longest.” With that he laid his account on the counter and bowed, to show that he was taking his leave.

“You there, Herr Bernhofer!” He heard himself summoned.

He grimaced and paused, betraying a certain trepidation. The third man—Dr. Ferdinand Wortmann by name, and the paper’s chief columnist by profession—had picked up the article and was now walking towards Bernhofer with it in his hand. He was small, almost a head shorter than the other man, but in this moment one could understand Bernhofer’s skittishness towards him. An awareness of power stood facing fatigue. He looked remarkably intelligent and very intense. He had pushed his glasses far up onto his forehead, and the deep indentations that the arms had left on his temples gleamed bright red. His eyes darted and sparkled, and his shapely hand—unadorned by jewelry save a wedding ring—passed through the short hair of his head and smoothed his trimmed, pointed beard. “Look here, Mr. Bernhofer!” he called out once more, in a bright and not unpleasant tone. The other two men in the office nudged one another and smiled at the next sentence: “We’ve got something…”

Bernhofer asked, self-consciously: “How may I be of service?”

“You’ve delivered a dispatch, Mr. Bernhofer,” he began, with withering politeness in every syllable, “which might be quite creditable, for what it’s worth. It’s actually none of my business, and I only took a look at it out of curiosity and because I happen to be here. The local”—and with that he gave an energetic shrug of his shoulders—“local business, I mean, is definitely not in my remit. You have, however, forgotten a detail in your otherwise, as noted, possibly admirable account. So please: where was the fire, Herr Bernhofer?”

“You mean it isn’t in there?” Bernhofer stammered with great consternation. “Next to the Augarten Bridge, of course!”

“Permit me this observation: it is not at all a matter of course that there happens to have been a fire precisely at the Augarten Bridge. And despite all the perspicacity that you are correct in ascribing to our editors—and indeed there is a great deal of that among them—you surely can’t be demanding that they guess this. Therefore: at the Augarten Bridge. With your permission, I will make a note of that here, and I’ll remind you of the first rule of journalism: Where, when, how—such is the way of the world. If you please.”

“This is inconceivable, Herr Doktor! Allow me to…” the other man stammered.

His antagonist waved him off: “So now you yourself find it inconceivable. You portray the fire here very beautifully, I will admit—very poetically and in a way that would be quite effective in a short story. But sir! You are not supposed to be telling stories to our readers—at least not for the present. And, again, to evaluate such would not be my affair. Our readers desire to know everything that transpires in the world, but only the facts, sir. So take that to heart: the facts and nothing but!”

“I shall take that to heart,” Bernhofer replied humbly. “Up to now, whenever the editors made use of me in periods of pressing work, people were always satisfied with my efforts.”

“They were?” Dr. Wortmann interrupted, almost violently. “I don’t know that they were. But what does that mean, anyway? It means your notices were published when they were serviceable, and when they did not fit the bill, someone tossed them out. Published and rewritten, to a greater or lesser degree; for your sake I will hope it was to a lesser degree. But does that give you any right or entitlement? Absolutely not. At a newspaper, there is no was. There is only is! It’s in your self-interest to stick to that. Do you understand? We live from the moment, and only the person who serves our interest well at the moment may abide with us and be our man—only he!”

“I understand,” Bernhofer answered, very quietly. His face blazed bright red, and humiliation left his breathing labored.

Dr. Wortmann took his seat and looked Bernhofer slowly up and down, searchingly: “You write verse, do you not? Or you have done so?”

“Yes!” the reporter mouthed.

The other man’s mouth wore a cheerful smile; you could see how he was reveling in his cleverness: “All I did was read your dispatch, and I knew it immediately. And you are married, are you not? And you have been for quite a while?”

“Yes!” the interrogated man flustered. “But how did you know that, Herr Doktor?”

Happy to his core, he rubbed his hands together: “One has eyes, and one has wits. There’s one thing I want to say to you: you are an impractical man, that’s why you write poetry, and that’s why you are in all probability married. And on top of that, you are poor. Now I can already tell, in addition, that at this moment you would like nothing more than to give me a thrashing, while I am actually angry at you, whom I scarcely know. You hate me, because I’m causing you pain. But I’m only doing this because I wish to be good to you: because I pity you your simple-mindedness. Yes indeed—your stupidity!” He drew out these words, savoring every syllable as he spoke them. “At home you have a woman in need, and you’re thinking about that situation as you forget about the most important thing. You don’t have what it takes in your head—and that’s where it must reside for a journalist. Perhaps you have what it takes in your heart. But that’s useless, good sir! Hear me well: that is useless, completely so!”

His excitement had caused him to leap to his feet. He gesticulated with his hands, his words came fast and loud, and he started to yell. Not for a moment, however, did he come across as strange; the point he was making here was, obviously, too serious for that. It was his newspaper and his profession, therefore the indignation that he obviously felt at this piece of foolishness was all too sincere. It was the same way with every folly that anyone committed in this silly world. He himself made no such errors; this much was certain: he has done nothing in his life that he’d like to see undone. His life was good because he was smart, and because he wished everyone the best from this position of his, he ranted and raved over inanities. Josef Bernhofer perceived this correctly, and, faced with this realization, his short-lived male anger, which had begun to rise up in him, waned. The flush on his cheeks faded, and he stood there, utterly pale and colorless, in front of the wrathful one. Wortmann noticed this and grew gentler.

“As I told you once already, I want the best for you. And therefore, sir, I give you this advice: Get your act together! Or better still: Give up this line of work if you can. You’re an educated man; take up something else! You can get ahead some other way. With something better, something more dignified. Something where you don’t have to subject yourself to knocks and blows from everyone. Something where you would only have one master. And now—” he broke off abruptly—“good night, gentlemen!” Briskly, and with long strides for someone of his short stature, he swept out of the room. The sound of the door thudding shut was heard. Then there was silence.

Josef Bernhofer remained standing in the same spot. He stared into space. He was so completely crushed that the others felt the amusement they’d been having at his expense give way to a deep and genuine commiseration. So the night editor picked up the poorly composed copy, which Dr. Wortmann’s pen had adorned with the necessary corrections, and gave it quite emphatically to a printer’s devil, along with the finally completed story about the big ball. His “Good night!” sounded warm and almost comforting; he walked Bernhofer to the door and shook his hand again.

But the reporter quickly threw on his winter coat and hastened after the mistreated man. “He was too hard on him this time,” he whispered. “It’s really too bad about Bernhofer. He’s a good man, he writes good German, and he used to have very good pieces. You could see how much effort he was putting into them. But now he’s always forgetting something.”

Back to him came this response: “I don’t know what’s happened to him.”

“I’m going after him. Today Wortmann almost scared me, even. How do you think he felt? And we don’t live far from each other at all, so I’m going to walk with him.”

The night editor nodded and returned, more pensively than usual, to his usual activity.

A few paces away from the building—as far as the electric lighting projected its uncertain glow—Fritz Grätzer caught up with his old schoolmate. He placed his hand on the man’s shoulder, and Bernhofer turned around with a look of agitated and anxious mistrust. But Grätzer locked arms with him, half condescendingly and half generously. “I’m going to the café. Will you join me?” Bernhofer shook his head no and yet did not have the strength to gainsay him decisively. His weakness annoyed him, but by the same token he took some secret pleasure in the invitation. They came to the Ringstrasse, which lay there extinct—with nothing but one horse-drawn buggy rolling homeward. The tinkling of its bells flew comfortingly through the stillness, and its blue lantern spread a bright and amiable light until it slowly pulled away and faded from sight. The whole world smelled of damp smoke, which left one’s chest feeling constricted. So many swathes of vapor billowed in the air that the houses across the street were barely visible. The gas lighting burned reddish, with a sad, humming sound. Every now and then a spectral fiaker appeared, moving fast, so the men were glad when they finally reached the small restaurant. The brightness and warmth inside did them good, and Grätzer was happy about being prudent and not leaving the disconcerted man to walk alone or go directly home.

The dining rooms were rather full, but there weren’t so many people that it was unpleasant. Black tailcoats and ball gowns predominated; from them one recognized that it was Fasching, the carnival season, and that a popular ballroom was nearby. There was a great deal of crisp laughter, and people were talking loudly and volubly. The two of them sat down at a little table in a window alcove, but before he did so, Grätzer made sure to check his appearance closely in one of the mirrors on the wall. He was satisfied with his appearance, as he had a right to be: a handsome man, of greater than average height, with a beard he kept so closely trimmed that the rosy skin of his cheeks glowed through the profoundly black hair; he was well fed and immaculately dressed. His life was obviously going well, so well that he would almost have had the right to take umbrage at a conventional question about how he was doing. Surely one look at him must lead to that conclusion! Everything was falling into place for him; he was flourishing. He could even be permitted the luxury of pitying some other poor devil. That was his only luxury, and he enjoyed availing himself of it frequently, including with the person who now sat across from him, this person whose utter poverty was on display here in this well-lighted place. A glass of mulled wine stood before him on the table, he was grasping it with both hands, and you could see the network of interwoven veins branching out across them, implying a greater number of years of life than Bernhofer actually had behind him. He sighed as he twirled the little spoon in his reddish drink, which had a heavy, intense aroma. He sighed as he raised it to his lips and took a sip. “This is a major, unreasonable expense,” he said quietly. “I don’t often treat myself to such. But, I don’t know, I just felt such a need for something strong! I was so tired…”

Fritz Grätzer, with an epicurean flair, tasted the cognac the waiter had brought. He nodded benevolently and with satisfaction. “You took the business with Wortmann too much to heart. It’s actually none of his business what you bring in. That’s a matter for other people.”

Bernhofer shook his head. “He hurt me a lot. But maybe the worst part is that he’s completely right. Yes, indeed: I’m not cut out for this line of work. I know that. But I have no other, by God! And I’d like to do something else. Move to an office job or something. It’s just that they won’t take me anywhere, and so I’m starting to get worried that I’m not suited for anything. I’m not accustomed to sitting quietly at a desk anymore, or to regular, daily toil. It’s hard to relearn that.”

“Yes, but you can pull yourself together, man!” Grätzer interjected, seated there like the incarnation of composure, strength, and self-confident ambition. Bernhofer looked at him; some memory or other must have occurred to him at that moment. He smiled subtly, almost derisively, and when he did so he looked really clever and almost witty. But this erratic light soon disappeared from his countenance. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a nearly empty packet of inferior tobacco. The contents were crumpled, little more than dust. He rolled himself a cigarette, stowed the rest away safely again, and spoke in a chagrined voice:

“I know I should pull myself together. And I’m trying hard to do just that, as God is my witness. But I can’t! It’s so strange.” He lowered his voice. “And for all of his cleverness, Dr. Wortmann didn’t have everything right. I don’t see too little; I see too much. And when I see too much, I think too much. For example, there is a fire, and then first off you’ve got the clusters of sparks flying up out of the smokestack, and then comes the smoke, thick and shapeless, and it’s just… smoldering like that, and out it comes, flying, reddish at first, then yellow—the smoke, that is. Finally it seems almost white. And then the fire department, their alarm signal—you hear it through all the street noise: powerful, commanding, and to some extent reassuring. Or it happens that somebody jumps into the water. What drove him to it? The people stand on the bank, gossiping away and shrieking over each other, and running after him. Finally the rescue squad: first the shrill, wailing whistle, and the green van that barrels up. And I want to put all that in my report. It all belongs in there, but it doesn’t work. That’s not how it works!” He put his cigarette down carefully and took another pious sip from his glass.

“But everybody knows that feeling!” Grätzer countered, as if he had the upper hand.

“I know that, too!” Bernhofer said, and smiled again. “And yet I still want to put all this detail out there. That’s one of my misfortunes. But not the real one. The main one is: I’m so terribly forgetful. I have so much pressure inside my head, at the back, all the way in the back, and it moves slowly forward and presses on my forehead so that I can’t collect my thoughts. I always feel like I have something else to say, or write, or do—something that’s more important than everything else, and I don’t know what it is. It has departed from my memory, left and gone forever, and I go looking for it. This feeling squeezes me, and grows stronger with every passing day.” He passed his hand through his hair, and on his face there was such a blank and lost stare that Grätzer could tell he was at this very moment trying to locate the disembodied apparition that so frequently rustled through his soul on its way to slipping away.

Bernhofer laced his fingers and cracked his knuckle joints. And then, still puffing staidly on his cigarette, he asked, completely out of the blue: “You know Raimund Förster, right?”

“Yes!” Grätzer answered vigorously, destroying the elaborate ring of smoke he had just exhaled into the air. “He was a very talented and capable man, I think. What became of him, and what makes you think of him right now?”

“An extremely capable and talented man. Yes. Always first in his class at the Troppau Lyceum. And he also amounted to nothing—the ‘also’ refers to me.” Those final words Bernhofer slipped in gratuitously. “His family came from quite a poor background, and hunger kept him away from his studies. But he was also a foolish fellow, and quite odd. He had this coin, you see, a ducat, and he kept it for many years. I believe it was a gift from his confirmation, or a Christmas present from someone he tutored. He never parted with it, even when things got awful for him. So, once I ran into him on Stephansplatz, he was walking back and forth, in front of a currency exchange, totally lost in thought, floundering. Dejected. I marveled at that, because he was always a cheerful fellow, as long as things weren’t going all too badly, or when he in his heart did not feel doom and gloom at his lack of advancement, or because no good tutoring jobs and no fellowships were coming his way, which led him to drown his sorrows—as cheaply as possible, of course.

“‘What are you up to, Förster?’ I asked him. And he said, ‘I sold my ducat.’ ‘And why are you so sad?’ Then he laid a hand on my shoulder—you know he studied history, and at the teacher’s college, he was the life of the party—and this is how he answered me: ‘Bernhofer, today I understood Napoleon at the Moscow River. So far from the homeland you do not sacrifice your last reserves.’ He turned on his heel and disappeared into a passageway leading to the old university.”

“So what? What does that have to do with you?”

“Don’t you understand?” He reflected for a few moments while attempting to roll a cigarette. It wasn’t working; no matter how much he breathed on the tobacco dust, it wouldn’t cohere, and the paper tore again and again. “My intentions were good,” he said at last. “I wanted this to be like the Bible says: you are dust, and you will turn to ashes. I have to parcel it out, you see. I can smoke away eight kreutzers’ worth per day. Do you have a cigarette, perchance?”

Grätzer didn’t, even though he was playing generous. The curiosity that accompanies his profession had stirred in him, and he had some cigarettes brought to the table.

“Thanks. That’s kind of you,” Bernhofer continued after a bit. He was as pleased as punch, having finished the remainder of his mulled wine. “But I find it amazing that you haven’t grasped the way in which my admittedly unkind joke about Foerster applies to me. It’s actually very simple. It amounts to this: As smart as we might consider ourselves, we actually understand things only when we experience them directly, on our own skin. For him, that pathetic ducat—listen to the way I talk, as if I had piles of them lying around—anyway, for him that ducat was the same as the Old Guard was for Napoleon. And so you know—I was a mathematician, but I’ve nosed around in a lot of corners—I’ve done a lot of thinking about the struggle between machines and manual labor—”

“I’ve never gone in for that sort of thing,” Grätzer interjected.

Again, the sage and yet sad smile. “You’ve simply never found it necessary to worry about this sort of thing. You received an allowance from your family, and you followed Bismarck’s advice and missed your calling at the right time. You wasted no time on matters that didn’t concern you, and things always went smoothly for you. With me, it was different. And so I can say: now that things are coming to a head, I understand struggle. Because I’m in one. The newspaper is a machine. A lot of people work with you there, and all of them for the same reason: they want to get the news out. So every field has its reporters, and everyone finds something, and everyone takes something away from me. If I get wind of something and earn anything at all in normal times, then it’s only by chance and it counts as an absolute miracle. That happens rarely and it’s getting rarer. Thus you run yourself silly through the streets, and there’s no time to rest, not even for a minute, not at home nor anywhere else, because at precisely that moment something could happen, something that is substantial but nobody else knows about. And—but all you get is grief and hurt feelings.” His voice faltered. He rapped his glass hard and asked: “I’ll order another punch?”

“As you wish,” Grätzer responded magnanimously.

They had to wait. A new group came in. A group left. A fair amount of noise arose from the closing of doors, and the calls of the waiters, all of whom were preoccupied with the new arrivals or the departing guests. Finally they brought the mulled wine, and Bernhofer quickly began drinking it. “You mustn’t take me for a bounder or a boozer,” he stated apologetically. “But I’ve eaten almost nothing today. I left home early, and the whole time I felt like something was chasing me. But now—this is more like it.” He rubbed his hands together.

“You’ve eaten almost nothing?” Grätzer exclaimed, genuinely moved for the first time. “But that’s awful! And doesn’t your thoughtless wife also bear part of the blame if things are so rough for you, a man who is yet capable of big things?”

Bernhofer shook his head: “My marriage is not an imprudent one. And my wife”—now there was a quiet, peaceful light in his eyes—“my dear wife is good and kind and content, too. Admittedly, less so than she once was. Sometimes it seems like she has changed, in comparison with earlier. But no wonder. I would not wonder about that at all. At this point, you know, when everything is changing from how it used to be, when things are getting worse and worse, why should she stay as she was? That would be asking too much. One has to be fair: open-minded towards life and fair towards oneself.”

“And so if you do that, what comes of it?”

“More than you might think, Grätzer. Above all, you bear up better under what befalls you when you tell yourself to add and subtract, bad and good, and always take the one from the other. That’s what matters. Make sure you do it properly, and the bill will be correct.”

Fritz Grätzer felt the need to make a joke. “And yet it’s better not to have to rely on tricks of arithmetic,” he said, laughing properly at that.

Bernhofer laughed, too, out of politeness. “There are people who don’t need to do it. But I had to learn how to do it, and although I know about the other side, too, I can tell you this: I’m now thirty-three years old and things are looking up for me. Perhaps there is still some good left for me I don’t know for sure. But I have to confess: I’ve had a lot of good luck in life. A lot of good luck.”

The corners of Grätzer’s mouth twitched, but he restrained himself. “And yet you’re faring so badly?”

Bernhofer shook his head: “I wasn’t complaining. It’s a long story.”

“We’ve got time. Pray tell!”

The reporter raised his glass. Behind them, people were toasting and cheering, and at the same moment that they clinked glasses with each other, he drained his cup to the dregs. Then he continued: “It’s a long story, and quite an ordinary one. I’ll keep it as brief—and as truthful—as humanly possible. I’ve had too much good luck. My parents were part of my life for a long time, so long that I was their pride and joy, and things stayed that way, for I was always a quiet man who worked a great deal. Pubs meant nothing to me, but the library did, and I read whatever came my way there. That’s why my parents were pleased with me, and whenever one of my poems appeared in print, they clipped it out, and they affixed them all to blank sheets of paper in a little book. I found them eventually. They never asked about what was going to happen with me after that. I was always studying something, and that would have to led to something! I believe, too, that they had these somewhat mystical ideas about my future profession. I was forever learning a little something; I did tutoring, and that provided me with walking-around money. Ultimately there was a big pot of money there, and so they were of the opinion that I could parlay this into a whole life, safe and sound, doing anything I liked and was good at.

Well, they died. Both of them. Pretty quickly, one after the other—in the same month. I can’t even tell you how that made me feel. Let’s just say that since then, I’ve felt sympathy for every stray dog, and even for lap-dogs, and I feed them when I can. One shouldn’t spare the rod with a child, my grandmother always said. But I was spared it. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wasn’t cut out for a teaching position. Teaching is fine one-on-one, as in private tutoring, although even with that I had to work up a lot of courage so the boy wouldn’t notice that I was actually afraid of him. But a group of children would terrify me because either they’d be afraid of me or they’d make fun of me. It shouldn’t be like that, either way. I didn’t feel like I was on solid ground, and they sense that immediately. And there’s no fun; the order of the day is to obey. So I did my probationary year and was very happy to have it behind me. There was no chance for a position in my field. I used to—and still do—become easily rattled, plus my memory isn’t all that cooperative. What’s more, I wasn’t all that dependent upon earning money. What my parents left to me was enough, and I was often touched when I would flip through their account-books and see the way they put money aside for their one and only, month after month, and how my mother had designated money for things in advance, the best way she could. I think I can see her again right now. No one heard her make a sound her whole life. She swallowed her tears and laughed only in secret, to herself, but if you saw her doing it, your heart would melt and jump for joy. And she had such beautiful hands and the neatest handwriting you can imagine.

“But then things got bad. I couldn’t get used to the taverns. Sure, when I used to go there now and then to celebrate something, it was nice. But now—daily! I was so sad, and no one cared. They imbibed and carried on there as if there weren’t a person in their midst who wasn’t feeling festive. And that hurt. I have no relatives, so I was twenty-four years old and running around as an orphan, crying and puling as I poured out my misery to everyone. That was strange, you know.

“But there was, in the same building as me, living above the main hallway, a widow with her daughter. Sometimes I would see the girl; she had something so bright about her that she was very attractive. We interacted a bit, the way neighbors invariably do. Let’s say one neighbor can’t find the key to the water main, or needs the one for the attic, which the other person happens to have at that moment. In short, there’s always some occasion. My mother had gotten along very well with both of them and had been especially full of praise for the girl. And that meant something, for she was stingy with praise. But because I didn’t want to retain my apartment—it was too large and too expensive for me alone—I was standing in the entranceway one time, looking at the little notices hung up there, so that maybe I wouldn’t have to leave altogether the building where I felt so comfortable. And there actually was one hanging there, with everything spelled perfectly, stating that for a man of the better sort an attractive room with an educated family was to be had, if need be with full board. Actually they were my neighbors; I bustled back upstairs and we quickly concluded the arrangements. They were also in mourning; their son had died. I took his room and was soon living with them as if we’d long been friends.

They were quiet people, so it was a good fit. Especially the girl, Helene: she was like a hobgoblin, one of those little household sprites that does everything but wishes to be neither seen nor praised. She worked all day long, and it was a joy to observe the way she did embroidery. She was unbelievably fast at it, and in the house nothing was left undone. I soon learned that she sold her work. In that way, and with what I paid, the household operated smoothly and comfortably. I, at least, could never have wished for anything better, and”—here he let out a deep sigh—“I wish I could have another situation in life that good. Whenever I finished writing something, I read it aloud and she listened with sweet attentiveness. In short, I could no longer imagine my life without her, and—”

“And that’s how they reeled you in,” Fritz Grätzer heedlessly, coldly, completed his thought.

Bernhofer gave him a choleric look. “Reeled me in? That’s an ugly and, I’m tempted to say, vulgar word. But you didn’t mean it that way, did you? The happiness that she brought me! A pretty girl, and educated, and supremely frugal—and what was I? I had my diplomas and my certifications, but they wouldn’t stop us from starving to death. They weren’t even worth as much as the wax seals that were still stuck on them. She could have easily found a better man. But it turned out that she liked me, too.”

“You forgot one thing, Bernhofer. You had means.”

This made the other man uneasy, and he began to splutter as he looked for the right words. “Means? She also had means. Not a lot of wealth, but still, she wasn’t a beggar. Oh no, she was not a beggar whom you had to marry simply out of pity. But you want to hurt me; all you want to do is inflict pain on me. Everyone has it in for me. Why? Am I too much for this world? I did nothing to you. And when I think now that she’s sitting there at home, eaten up with worries and maybe without anything for supper, and I’m indulging here and treating myself to drinks, then for somebody to say something bad like that about her, it makes me want to hurt myself. Yes, it really does!” And he abruptly banged his head on the wooden table while moaning, “I’m scared to go home. By God, I am afraid of going back there. Oh, what kind of life is this!”

“For God’s sake. You’re not going to make a scene, are you?”

Bernhofer looked at him with red, moist eyes. “No,” he answered. He smiled and said, “I do still know what is proper. In public places one doesn’t make a scene. One behaves decently and leaves sorrows, like dogs, out on the street. But anyway, shall we be off?”

With singular and conflicting sentiments, Fritz Grätzer had listened intently to the story of this deteriorating man. He felt sincerely sorry for him, but that did not invalidate his conviction that there is actually no bad luck in the world—that in most cases what one calls bad luck is nothing more than the consequence of lack of judgment plus haste. His comrade’s misery awoke in him some kind of vague titillation. He saw how bad things could be for someone, and at the same time how well things had turned out for him, now that he lived in comfortable circumstances and had a bright future ahead of him. He was hungry to find out more; these were fragments from Bernhofer, but they gave no insight into the decisive question of how things had managed to reach this point. But he did not want to ask. Every question carries with it a certain obligation, and on their way home, there could yet be quite a bit more to spill out of Bernhofer’s tortured soul. So he paid his tab, while Bernhofer gave him a curious and hopeful look. But when Grätzer started to put his coat back on, tranquilly, something akin to hatred boiled up in the other man, poor devil. Was he waiting to be asked? No, I won’t give him the pleasure! He scraped together the money he had on him, and found that it was just enough, so when Grätzer turned around and said, as if thinking better of it: “The cigarettes—” He demurred with trembling hand and quivering lips: “No, no, I’ve got it!”

The part of the Ringstrasse that the two of them needed to traverse is, at night, perhaps the bleakest stretch of them all. To their right, jumbled and black, lay the expanse of the Stadtpark, with drab fencing stretched all along its front. Then to their left loomed a gray, subdivided bulk: the proud Parkring palaces. The occasional small street punched through their facades, only to peter out in secret. Then, past the entrance to the Third District, there resounded from the railroad embankment that intersected the street a hollow roar and a distant clanging, so indeterminate that there was no way of knowing if it was some nocturnal sound borne up by the wind or a train that was actually rolling into the vast world.

Now and then they crossed paths with a late-night reveler. They came to the forlorn parade ground in front of the Franz Josef Barracks: it gave an impression of immense size, and then, beyond it, massive and menacing, with its terraces and outside staircases and wall projections where darkness was encased, was the mammoth building itself. At last, the brighter sight of the Aspernbrücke, with the lions in front of it, holding their shields, and the water of the canal, which, very shallow and choppy, flowed along as chunks of ice glinted white on its surface. At this point, Bernhofer paused and pointed to the water: “This is the site of my first newspaper article. I wish I’d never made it. But it was a good piece of work, and all the papers ran it exactly as I’d written it, and I was so happy and thought I’d finally landed something that my wife and I could live on. Mostly I was glad for her sake; I would have liked so much for her to finally see better times.”

“Yes, but how is it that you came down so far in the world when you both had assets? Bad management, was it?”

“What? Well, it’s quite simple! When there’s enough money to last only as long as nothing comes up, then there’s no way things will work out. For something always comes up. Such is life. My mother-in-law died; her pension had run out, and her illness was expensive, and the first florin that you take out of your personal assets pulls the second one along with it, and it goes on and on like that. Soon there’s no stopping it. She departed at the right time. She saw us when we were happy, so happy in fact that I have to say that as far as I’m concerned, I don’t regret a single hour of our marriage. Then children arrived. They’ve moved out, thank heavens. They are gone. But they cost us so much! And on top of that, you don’t get to keep them—that doubles the pain. And my wife was sick for a long time after the second birth, and I didn’t have the heart to cut corners when it was possibly a matter of life and death. And you catch on slowly to how you’re eating yourself out of house and home. It’s utterly imperceptible, but you can calculate how long it’s going to last: months, weeks, days. And you look for a position, or even just for parttime work as a tutor, and you’re spending money again: for advertisements, or for a go-between. Because you lose your head when you see calamity heading your way, slowly, just step by step, ever nearer, closer and closer. Then suddenly it’s right there in front of you, staring you straight in the face, calm and glassy-eyed. Aaargh!” he cried out in anguish.

“Then a time comes when you are out in the street. The wind whistles around you, as if you’d been exposed to it your whole life. And then when you’re searching for a source of income and people catch on that you’re relying on it, they act all pure, like they are dispensing grace by permitting you to earn a kreutzer, and they squeeze and pinch you so hard you want to scream. And at the beginning I was still proud and I had the feeling that I was, despite everything, better than those people who were treating me so dreadfully. But you lose your wits over it all, and you start to take your joy in anything you can find. You keep your head down all the time, just to keep a chunk of bread in your hands—bread you are barely able to get. Oh, they truly deflate you, and no matter how hard you defend yourself or how strong you are, when they have you where they want you, they let you know it straight away. ‘Bow down, drop your last bit of self-confidence, and do better work than you did earlier, or let yourself be bullied, if you want anything from us.’” The memory of these insults burst through repeatedly, and Bernhofer almost couldn’t bear it. “And you can forget how things used to be and what you used to want. But maybe only when I am dead, people will eventually recognize that I could’ve earned more money and easily done better work than all those people who looked down on me so much. Perhaps, perhaps! And it presses down on me and robs me of my ability to think, and I end up neglected and ill, like you see me now. If I’m good for nothing, it’s no longer my fault.”

It made Fritz Grätzer uncomfortable to stand there with this unnerved man, who was looking down unceasingly at the collisions of the surging blocks of ice, so he turned away and picked up his pace. But Bernhofer came with him and kept talking, revealing layer after layer of his unhinged soul, with a grim and unwelcome but overpowering feeling that he had to show, even if it was to this extremely unsympathetic person, the innumerable deep wounds from which his life was oozing, trickling away drop by drop:

“Anyway, I can’t get this out of my head: my initiation to journalism was a case of suicide. That has to mean something. It wasn’t just by chance. But my wife! I know with certainty that she’s still awake now, and will keep on embroidering until I get home, so that she earns something too, according to her abilities. And then she’ll lie to me that she can’t fall asleep till I get home, and she doesn’t complain, doesn’t cry about our great hardships, and she doesn’t talk about them. And I can’t bear this, and won’t tolerate it, because it’s unnatural. And she’s still proud of me, too—and how can that even be, given how much heartache I’ve caused her? How is it that she still wants to take care of me, that to her I don’t seem to be the bottom of the barrel? That’s all a mystery to me still. And how it will all end, and what happens after that? Those things are never far from my mind. On top of it all, I’m supposed to write all these dispatches! And I’m not supposed to be forgetting things. There’s too much going on in my head, and too much in my heart; and I don’t have even the courage to address it when the woman who actually suffers even more than I do never even grumbles. If she would just grumble once, then I would know what needs to happen. If only I were devout! She is, and I think it’s a great help to her. But I’m not, and how could I be now?”

Grätzer had the feeling that he needed to say something. “If only someone would turn up who could take up your cause!”

What about you? You who are always boasting about your high-placed connections and pretending to be my old friend—will you do it? Would you put in a single word for me anywhere? These thoughts flashed through Bernhofer’s mind. But he was no fan of reproaches, so he said, “There’s nobody to do it. And what’s the point?” This was his simple, craven response.

The two men stopped. Fritz Grätzer rang the bell on the front door of his building. “Good night! Don’t lose hope so quickly,” he said in his unctuous and nasally voice; then he disappeared swiftly into the vestibule. Inside, he slowed down as he mounted the wide, comfortable steps that led to the second floor and his apartment. Halfway up, he paused and even dithered for a few moments about whether or not he should turn around. One thought tugged at his heartstrings: only a desperate man speaks the way Bernhard had just spoken to him—someone who is finished with life and is taking stock of everything. But he pushed this out of his mind. What could he do, even in the worst-case scenario? Who knows where Bernhofer had already walked to? And finally: In a few hours, anyway, more about him will come to light. So why get all upset now and go back out and get all involved? And so he continued on his leisurely way upstairs.

Bernhofer, as it happened, was still lingering on the street. He felt hollow and numb on the heels of the excitement of the previous hours. He looked around and found himself in a strange neighborhood; the night was making a fool of him, and he felt duped by the warren of small streets. He plodded along, keeping a lookout for the river. He was a long way from his lodgings and he had to get back home, however much he dreaded doing so. With steps that were uneven but quick and probing, he then walked parallel to the water and looked out at the ice, which sometimes dammed up at that point. The large chunks would make loud scraping noises; they rubbed and ground quietly against each other before finally thrusting each other along. He felt overpowered and was drawn to their game. Over them fell beams of light onto the dark currents. They extended across the snow-covered banks and divided the water into black fields edged with light; the drifting ice took turns flashing, almost turning the white light into color; and then they floated on downstream. At one point Bernhofer even paused so that he could get a better view of their play. All of a sudden he turned around, a shiver passed over his soul, and he twitched irresistibly. He thought instantly of the superstition: When this happens to you for no apparent reason, then you have just stepped over your grave. But no—not death! This black thought, which until then had cowered in the deepest recess of his soul, now rose up mightily and cast its shadow over Bernhofer’s entire being.

He looked at his watch: a valuable old-fashioned one he had held onto for a long time. The final heirloom from his parents that was still in his possession. Strange—he suddenly thought of how his wife could sell it, in the event of his unexpected death. It was strange, and it disconcerted him, the way suddenly all of his thoughts had to do with death. And in the midst of these deliberations—which were so amorphous that they were nothing more than an indecipherable shadow play sweeping through his brain, overheated as it was by the punch and the recollections of his suffering—in the midst of this, he grew furious at himself for spilling his soul and its grievances before such a flighty companion, whom he did not like and had never liked. Why was that? Suddenly a reason came to mind, one that caused his cheeks to burn red with shame. No, it wasn’t actually possible. He couldn’t have sunk so low as to bare his deepest secrets to a man he found repellent, only to avoid being condemned. This was paradoxical, mad, but he nonetheless pressed his forehead into his hands as if that would tamp down the hammering in his temples. And yet he still wheezed and struggled for air. In him awoke hatred of that man in front of whom he had humiliated himself so pointlessly, yet so prodigiously—and a hatred towards himself. In addition, a harsh wind, which had just kicked up, billowed downstream towards him. It swept away the fog, and in the distance one could see the illuminated arches of the bridges spanning the dim Danube, and he saw prostitutes who were crossing from one district of the city into another. He didn’t know why, but the traditional greeting used by hunters occurred to him. One of the women walked up to him, blocked his path, and looked him insolently right in the face. Then she laughed and turned away as she made a short whistling noise. Usually an encounter of that type filled him with disgust; on this occasion he felt soft and plaintive. On and on he went downstream, past two more bridges, past another set of barracks, the red brickwork of which poked up supernaturally into the darkness with its battlements and little towers. The tall buildings on the other side of the Danube Canal had vanished. There were almost no more buildings to be seen. Then came lumber-yard after lumber-yard; their pungent smell filled the air. And finally he was home. Before he went up the stairs, he walked into the courtyard and peered upwards. Towering above the cobblestones, one lighted window still stood guard. He looked up at it and sighed.

Worn out, but not sleepy in the least, he made his way upstairs. In the foyer he carefully shed his shoes, so that he wouldn’t wake the people from whom they were sub-letting their room. His wife was still awake. She came to the door and greeted him with a kiss, the type that habit, masked as geniality, gives and receives. Their bed was orderly and clean and already pulled back. A day-bed had also been made up for the night. But the room was quite bare: you could smell the heavy exhalations of the petroleum lamp, which was turned down to its lowest possible setting. The room seemed spacious, even though it scarcely sufficed for two persons; someone with a good aesthetic sense, continually aggrieved at the inadequacy of the means at hand, had made efforts to decorate the walls and windows. He sat down at the table, and without a word she placed a plate of food in front of him. The embroidery frame and almost finished work lay in her lap. She looked at him in silence. He thought, however, that he saw a restless, hungry light in her eyes—eyes that were otherwise very pretty and calm and brown. She looked comfortable, and had already gotten ready for bed. In her every action was calm, a certain security, and charm, along with a bit of careless fatigue, which clashed with her shiny hair, curled and unruly, and the inexhaustible love of life that slumbered and dreamt deep in her eyes. With a gesture that was all but violent, he shoved the plate away. “I don’t want any. Have you already eaten?”

She smiled subtly, and all the lovelier for it; it returned to her a reflection of her youth: “Of course! I couldn’t very well wait. How should I know what time you’ll make it back here to Wolfsaugasse?”

“Were you embroidering this whole time?”

“Not the whole time. Of course I have to see to it that I earn something. But in between, I read. Some of your things, too, Josef!”

“Well, did you enjoy them?”

She gave him a serene and heartfelt look. “You know I love your writing. There’s something in it that touches me so. It’s like dawn, a sweet-sounding dawn. I like it. I’m captivated by your writing, I think, like the passing of clouds. One minute they have form and shape, and then, when you watch them, they lose it. And I also know your heart is tied up with these things and is invested in them. Your good heart, with an outlet for its woe.”

“An outlet for woe—but without any listening ear,” he groaned to himself.

“Somebody will listen. Have patience!”

“You don’t believe that yourself anymore.”

She winced and blinked and then tears rapidly filled her eyes as she looked his way. “But Josef!”

“No, you don’t believe it anymore. I don’t believe it anymore. But we lie to ourselves. We are so badly off that we keep up this comedy, so that we aren’t completely adrift and don’t completely give up on one another. But it doesn’t help, and it can’t continue. Our faith is gone.”

She looked at him, horror-stricken. “But that would be terrible! You didn’t come up with anything today either? Things went badly, yet again?”

“Like always,” he responded bitterly. “And it will go on like this. Until the end.”

“But Josef, one must… Still, one must…”

He enjoyed being relentless. “One must be truthful and see things as they are.”

She held the back of her hand to her forehead and said, “You have to think of God. I’ll admit it seems like He has forgotten us, as I’ve become insufferable to Him, because I come to Him far too often with far too many entreaties. But I can’t wait much longer for things to improve. I can’t. I just can’t!”

So there it was. The complaint he’d been hoping to hear. It came rolling out of the depths of his wife’s being, feverishly and impetuously!

And she went on: “If you could only land a position somewhere. Even the most menial one, as a clerk! I never would’ve thought that I’d wish such a thing on you, never! I was too proud of you.”

“You were?”

“Ach, I don’t know what I’m saying. I mean, I still am. How I wanted to economize! I didn’t want anything to go to waste! I was never reckless, and I wanted to keep on embroidering and make my contribution that way. And I wanted you not to be stuck at the low level at which you started. A man who has learned so much! If only you could get something secure, so we didn’t have to live this way. Do people fall off the roof when you walk by, or do you hear it first when a disaster occurs somewhere else? It’s horrible to have to live from the awful things happening in our world. And it is so sad to keep going backwards, without advancing, not even by one step, not even one time. It’s killing me, Josef. It’s going to be the end of me. These thoughts are making me crazy! Most of the time I’m completely alone. And I don’t like the people we live with, so I can’t socialize with them.”

“Previously you spoke differently about these things.”

“Because I don’t want to think it will always be like this. I don’t want that. I’d rather—”

He stood up and walked to the window. “So close to heaven, and yet no star to be seen,” he murmured.

She stood next to him. “Penny for your thoughts.”

They spoke very quietly, and in this exchange of words lay something terribly abject and unsettling, a whiff of provocation, as if they were terrified at themselves and the thoughts they were expressing.

“About the final things.”

“Ah. What are the final things?”

He bent over to her ear and she could feel his hot breath: “Death…”

“Oh, merciful Jesus! Josef!”

His hand was resting on her hip. “Yes! We cannot live together. My revolver has six bullets in it. Do you want to die with me, Leni?”

She staggered away from him; her eyes were as big as saucers. She sat down on the bed, clasped her hands before her, and said heartrendingly: “No, no Josef—”

“And why not? Isn’t it better that way?”

“No, no! I won’t do it. I don’t want to die in the afterlife after I die in this life.”

“At my hands, Leni?”

“Did I say anything like that? No, no, I won’t do it. I’m too young for that. Am I really so lost? Things can get better. I could make my own way. Alone. I could do domestic labor for someone, if need be. I can do a lot of things, actually. If I just had a bit of money—enough to pay the interest for a while—I could buy myself a sewing machine, and not on credit, where you can never get out from under it. I’m supposed to die now? No, no. I won’t do it!”

She was so agitated by the thought of death by her own hand that she almost screamed. He felt her breaking with him after ten years of shared life. Breaking free of him in this decisive moment.

He fell to his knees before her and wrapped his arms around her almost passionately: “Good night, Leni!”

She rubbed his head, which lay in her lap, and she ran her fingers through his hair: “It’s not true, Pepi. No, no!”

The lamp had gone out. The only light in the room was the pale gleam from the snow-covered roofs outside. Josef Bernhofer lay on the day-bed and stared into the darkness between his wife and himself. She was unable to sleep properly, rolling over frequently and whispering in her half-slumber. He remained completely motionless, as all sorts of confusing thoughts ran through his head. Occasionally he would doze off, only to jolt upright after a short while in sudden horror, and this would leave him rattled, until for a few more minutes fatigue overwhelmed him. The rest of the night passed in this manner. In the earliest, anxious moments of morning he got out of bed. His wife heard him banging around in the room and then pulling a chair over to the table. Alas, he wanted to work, and she’d long ago gotten used to lying there very still while he did so. Because of her exhaustion, she could also scarcely move. Soon she felt a kiss on her forehead and she heard the door open. It seemed to her that he was gone too long after that; he usually never went out before breakfast. She got up and looked around. On the table there were several letters, already sealed and addressed. She leapt to her feet with great distress in her eyes and her soul. That’s when she saw his watch. He never went out without it. It was hanging in its spot. Her heart started skipping beats; she let out a piercing cry and tumbled unconscious to the floor.

It was around 2 pm, and Dr. Wortmann had just finished his work on the evening edition of the paper. He was looking forward to the bright sunshine out on the Ringstrasse, which promised the opportunity for a pleasant stroll before his meal. And then an assistant brought him a letter. A woman he did not know, sobbing but otherwise attractive and still young, had dropped off the letter. Dr. Wortmann opened it skeptically and a loose piece of paper fell out. He read aloud:

ESTEEMED HERR DOKTOR:

Far be it from me to take a great deal of Your Lordship’s time without adequate reason. My sole intention is to extend to you, in a fitting manner, my best and most sincere thanks for the great service you rendered to me yesterday evening. I had become a despondent man—so much so that I could no longer even screw up the courage to drain the chalice of my sufferings with one mighty swallow, but rather was just nipping at it, drop by drop. And then, circumstances led me to find that courage. I cling no longer to a sad life, one that could be termed completely destroyed, nor am I clinging any longer to a profession for which I can only fear that I have no talent whatsoever. Today I conclude things, and by the hour that finds you reading this, I will no longer exist, and my wife will be an utterly abandoned orphan, deprived of any and all means. I did possess such a wife, even though I could not wear the wedding ring any longer, since it had been sold—but you correctly recognized this. I trust that she will have an easier time getting on alone in the world than with me, and I hope now that out of your Lordship’s benevolence you will be, to some degree, helpful to her in buying a sewing machine—either through your emphatic recommendation to the Concordia Press Club, or perhaps by means of a collection among your Lordship’s colleagues, with the additional remittance of whatever honoraria I have coming to me—for, with it, she hopes to be able to earn the bare minimum, just to keep body and soul together. The man who is severe is also good. This is my hope, and comforted by this thought I remain, and die,

Your ill-fated

Josef Bernhofer.”

Deeply moved, Dr. Wortmann read these lines. Now he picked up the second document. It was in the form of a newspaper item:

Suicide. This morning, the body of a man aged circa forty years was found in the Prater, next to the Krieau harness-racing track. The unfortunate man, who had killed himself with a shot to the temple from his revolver, was identified by documents at the scene as Josef Bernhofer, PhD, who had been occasionally employed of late as a reporter by newspapers in this city. Lack of sustenance and fear of the future could have pushed the married man into death.

With a red pen in his hand, Wortmann skimmed this report, which was every bit as clear as the letter was confusing. Then he tossed down the report with a look bordering on anger. “This is terrible—now that the man can write, he goes and shoots himself.” He picked up piece of paper, and wrote reflectively:

For the widow of the—

Then he scratched out various words, and he wrote instead For the wife of, but that did not please him either. Finally, this:

For the widow of our poor colleague, Joseph Bernhofer.

He signed it, and then entered a handsome sum as the first contribution.