Alfred Menazbach, Subletter

Alfred Menazbach was a somewhat complicated person. That is to say, he was not complicated in the manner of a unique, problematic phenomenon, because in 1939 there were a great many Menazbachs in Prague, but rather he set great store by appearing to be complicated.

The son of a prematurely retired middle school teacher, he graduated from high school with achievements modest in a way that put attending college out of the question. But since his father played cards every day with an officer in a big insurance company, the question of young Alfred’s cultivation resolved itself in this way: he became a trainee in the Prague branch of a foreign insurance company. But as he found little to savor in this work, he turned to good account the one thing that he really knew, stenography, and answered a classified ad in which The Prague Herald sought a permanent stenographer for the editorial office. And this was the field which young Menazbach would have tossed about in for life, had the Allies not made their blunder at Versailles after the First World War, and thereby subsequently created a new Tamerlane, who brought the republic of the Czechs and the Slovaks under the hooves of his horde on March 15th, 1939. With time Alfred rose from being one of the stenographers typing the chief editor’s letters to becoming part of the actual editorial staff. Even if during his employment at the Herald he never wrote even one article, other than  an occasional short report on a movie or a convention, he was nevertheless an editor. He gathered up the telephone and radio dispatches, and soon evolved into an artist in this sphere, who could simultaneously handle several telephones, read and translate the headlines coming in from the English press, and eat his second or third breakfast. This astonishing ability secured him his place, which otherwise was not always secure even for much older colleagues. He settled in very quickly and soon recognized that all kinds of work other than journalism were out of the question. To sit in the center of sensations, without the responsibility of producing his own thoughts, a secure career that allowed him to dress fashionably and randomly sample all the review copies of contemporary literary works—that was just what he had been looking for.

Alfred was anything but handsome—his somewhat too small head sat on a much too lanky body—but he knew how to veil the resulting insecurity through excessively certain judgments on anything and everything. He was admittedly anything but omnipotent—only the editor-in-chief was that—but he was omniscient, as satirically-inclined colleagues said. He was in the habit of speaking in axioms, in decrees, as it were, which must have been sufficiently bewildering to quickly procure him the hoped-for respect, at least among more simply organized fellow citizens.

At the same time every day he went from his apartment to the office—he had moved into a room in the Laufer family’s apartment in the house on Carp Street shortly after his arrival at the Herald—and at the same time to the coffeehouse for lunch, on Sundays drove into the country along the Moldau with whoever happened to be his girlfriend, on certain evenings presented himself at the Café Mánes, where it reeked of literature, because the men from the leading newspapers and the moderately bohemian people and later part of the immigrant community gathered there. He went to the theater, if his girlfriend insisted, and had a passion for movies, and like all Prague citizens loved the city of Prague with that love which, without a moment’s reflection, one brings to anything representing a bedrock of existence impossible to imagine life without. He was a Praguer, and even if he fell victim to the Anglo-Saxon mania when this became the fashion in Prague, dressed more English than the Prince of Wales, and threw himself with ardor into the study of the English language, on his body the English suit took on a Pragueish look, and in spite of all the lessons that he took, his English nonetheless remained a Prague English.

One day he had occasion to place a news report of no small importance to the Albanian government in a particularly good spot, and thereby became acquainted with an Albanian in the diplomatic service. When, in conversation, he now hinted at his wish to see something during his vacation more remarkable than Bohemian Switzerland, the Krkonoše Mountains, or Carlsbad, the diplomat said that the land of the Skipetars and the Arnauts looked very different from the spots just named. Menazbach conceded this and obtained a complimentary press ticket to Tirana.

The Menazbach who came back to the editorial offices after three weeks was a different man. Besides now being an expert on the economy, culture, and politics of the Balkans, he brought with him such an uncanny attachment to the Near East, or to whatever seemed Oriental to him, that in the office they now only called him the “Pasha from Kleinseite”, with reference to his origins in Prague’s Kleinseite district.

“Of course, in Albania,” or “Of course, in the Orient,” and—what he would most enjoy saying: “Of course, we in the Orient”—people heard these words from Menazbach again and again after the Balkan journey, and finally it was no surprise that it got on the nerves of a growing number. Alfred Menazbach, however, did not notice this, because he was an extraordinary man, who, unlike most Praguers, had breathed the cosmopolitan air of a provincial Balkan town. But because a person cannot become an Albanian by an act of will, after a certain time Menazbach chose another course, which likewise led to the Orient. He took up Zionism again, which during his string of Balkan spiritual adventures he had more or less suppressed. By chance he got hold of a book by a pan-Asiatically inclined Jewish essayist and had quickly and without intellectual exertion discovered the possibility of legitimizing his veneration of the Orient through his Jewish ancestry. “The Jews are an Oriental people,” he now began to proclaim out of what he had recently read, “and they must therefore return to the Orient!” The editor-in-chief gave him a skeptical look, and finally said: “Menazbach, I think you’ve gone meschugge. Did you get sunstroke in Albania or something, and only now are showing symptoms?” The weekly magazine editor on the other hand asked sympathetically whether as an infant he had perhaps been bathed in water that was too hot.

But since Menazbach did not let the idea go, the editor-in-chief intervened once more. “Look, my friend,” he said, “of course everyone can have whatever opinion he wants. I’ve got my own, after all. You can be a Zionist. I even bought a family ticket for the Jewish university ball, as you know. But there are limits. It’s true there are a couple million idiots who insist there’s a ‘Jewish Question,’ but tell me, what’s that got to do with me? You know how long there’s been a Herald, and that’s fourteen years anyway, and in all that time the word ‘Jew’ has never once been used in its columns. Don’t forget that and don’t talk nonsense, at least not in the office.”

Menazbach was about to respond, but the chief did not give him a chance to speak: “What do you need Palestine for? In God’s name stick with Albania. The Balkans don’t raise eyebrows, and no one will say that the Jews are Albanian nationalists. But Jewish nationalists, you know, sounds somehow inflammatory. . . Menazbach, leave it be. Even if some circles think you can’t just set aside your Jewishness—I expressly deny that, since my father of course has already done it, with prudent foresight. Why rub it in people’s faces that you’ve had the bad luck to have the wrong family tree?”

The chief’s words made little impression on him. Not because he had it in him to play the hero, but quite simply because Zionism was a lifeline, the only remaining option for being different from the others.

A year later it so happened that a Zionist gymnastics club in Austria was organizing a group tour of Palestine. Menazbach fell in with them. He was thoroughly excited by the prospect of seeing the Orient again, even if the thought of having to abandon Prague, the coffeehouse, the editorial office, and the smooth harmonies of his days bothered him a little. His girlfriend, a strapping brunette, seemed to sense this, because she asked if he wouldn’t rather drop his travel plans. “Or maybe,” she said, “take me along, so that you’ll still have a piece of Prague with you.” Alfred recoiled. The thought of allowing himself to be constrained by a witness while telling tales about his journey afterwards was anything but agreeable to him. He abruptly broke off relations with her.

The trip was a disappointment. He experienced the superficial Europeanization of the Orient in all its intensity, and as it was intellectually impossible for him to see into the depths of things, he thought with longing of Albania. Moreover, since the resident Jews rejected the redemptive imperialism of the three-week tourist, who attempted to give them tips on every subject, from rendering lavatories odorless to newspaper layout, and because they advised him not to expose his position at the Herald for long to the uncontrollable, fateful changes underway, he turned to the Arabs. But since here he ran up against complete incomprehension of his redemptive intentions, especially as every camel driver seemed a Pasha to him, and as in every Arab barbershop he sought the hidden mysteries of the East, his summer excursion ended in perfect failure.

But when he arrived in Prague again, he was an expert on Palestine and Arabia and said only: “We in Arabia. . .” And a small dagger from a bazaar in Yafo, where it had served to open watermelons, lay as a letter opener among the telephones that surrounded him, and was quickly promoted to the dagger of one of the most dangerous desert brigands.

God only knows how Menazbach would have progressed in his ardent struggle to unite the distant Orient with his Prague environs, if one day—it was shortly after Munich, shortly after the metamorphosis of Masaryk’s Republic into a caricature—the editorial department’s attendant, Wenceslas III, had not informed Herr Menazbach that two gentlemen wanted to speak with him.

“Who are they?” he asked, taking the receiver from his right ear.

“Didn’t say,” Wenceslas III answered, helping himself to a Menazbachian cigarette.

“How do they look?”

“Sudeten,” answered Wenceslas III, as one from the more cultivated classes would have said something like “not our kind.” It was shortly after the cession of Sudetenland to Germany.

Menazbach took the receivers from both ears and asked, “What did they say?”

“Well,” said the attendant, “they just look as though they came from Gablonz or Eger. They look like Nazis.”

“And they want to talk to me? Are you sure you’re not mistaken, Wenceslas III?”

“Not in the least. They said they want to speak with Herr Menazbach.”

Menazbach was frightened. What do the Nazis want with me? Did the article on the demonstration against Munich that the chief sent me to report on end up incurring the Nazis’ displeasure? Dachau! The horrifying word went through his brain. Weren’t abductions of the Nazis’ opponents and deportations over the not too distant German border on the rise? Even during the First Republic weren’t anti-Nazis shot right in the middle of the country? Professor Lessing, whom they’d killed, occurred to him, and still others who had disappeared without a trace. A cold dread gripped his throat.

“Tell them to wait a minute. I still have to take a scheduled call.”

The moment the door closed shut behind the attendant, Menazbach tore the receiver from his head, took his hat, and left the office as quickly as possible through the back door of the print shop.

He could have spared himself this exit, because the two gentlemen had not come for political reasons at all. The pair, father and son, were Herr Menazbach’s haberdashers, who, owing to the political uncertainty, were worried about their outstanding bills, and in the course of their collection tour through Prague had also come to the editorial offices.

Menazbach told no one of the experience—which anyway soon cleared itself up—but he put his ear to the ground. What he heard from his acquaintances and colleagues did not at all correspond to his view of things. “Please, now,” said the paper’s foreign policy man, who was already writing when Badeni bore down on the Czechs under the Empire, “you surely don’t believe that this business can go on for long. Even if the Western Powers made concessions in Munich, you’ll see. Eden will replace Chamberlain, and Hitler will back right down.” And the head waiter in the Kaffee Central, who traded stamps with the French ambassador’s chauffeur, said with the air of one informed straight from the source: “In the next ten days France will muster ten divisions in Alsace. Then Herr Doctor will see how the Nazis shit themselves, if you will pardon the expression.” Even the leader of the communist cell in the print shop spoke in this spirit: “You don’t have anything to fear, Herr Doctor. Even if the imperialistic powers tumble, Russia stands firm. You can bet your life on it!” Only Herr Mautner said tersely: “If I had money, I’d send it quick as possible to Switzerland, and if I had a passport, I’d leave on the next train.” In spite of all the bromides with which people tried to make the uncomfortable situation bearable to each other, Menazbach found this situation thoroughly oppressive. In the meantime it had become a question of days until he and his Jewish colleagues would be sent flying from the newspaper, and here and there stones already flew at Jewish shops.

“Well,” laughed the editor-in-chief with a somewhat strained laugh, “you Jews have a legend that an underground corridor leads from the Old New Synagogue right to Jerusalem. When the Nazis come, you simply walk into the synagogue and make a beeline for Jerusalem.”

Lately a silent rage against the chief had taken hold of Menazbach. He did not know that all this scoffing was only a mask behind which stood a nameless fear, born of complete confusion.

“‘You’?” Menazbach flared up. “Why do you always say ‘you’? Do you think the Nazis will consider you an Aryan? I’m afraid you’re going to sink with us, if it should come to sinking.”

Then all at once the chief editor’s sarcasm cracked, and he screamed: “I will not sink! Do you hear, Menazbach? I will not! I will remain sitting here in this chair, where I’ve sat for fourteen years. I have a sick wife and two daughters and not a koruna put by. You know what that means? You’re a single man. You can begin a new life wherever. For all I care you can become a locksmith or a stonebreaker. But me? Me, with a bullet wound through my lungs and fifty-five years on my back?”

Something rose up in Menazbach. Sweat appeared on his brow. Had it already come to this? No, he didn’t want to become either a locksmith or a stonebreaker, not here and not anywhere, not even in Palestine. He wanted to stay here, in these eternally dim, somewhat musty, rooms, wanted to go on hearing the rhythmic thumping of the rotary press under his feet, go on plucking sensational news from the ether and drawing a paycheck on the first of the month, but he did not want to come into any direct contact with history, and certainly did not want to be its object.

“You think,” he stuttered, “you think that they’re really coming?”

“No, I don’t want to think it. I forbid myself from thinking it,” said the chief, having calmed down a little. “If I believed it, I’d have to go crazy or hang myself from the transom. . . Have you ever seen a hanged man, by the way? Horrible, when the head with the purple face hangs so peculiarly to the right, strange to say almost always to the right, and the tongue sticking out from between the lips. . .” He was pacing back and forth in the room, then suddenly stood still before Menazbach, grabbed him by the tie and screamed: “But I will not go crazy! Hitler will not drive me crazy, I tell you! I have a wife and two daughters, and besides I have a weekend cottage out in Kuchelbad, and my wife is so pleased when there are free tickets for the opera and she has a good day without pain. . .That’s all supposed to end because someone wants it to, who’s never in his life seen either me or my wife? Do you think it will stop? Say something, Menazbach. . . Say at least that Hitler’s not coming!”

A dark horror had seized Menazbach. “No, I don’t believe he is,” he stammered, and felt a sickly sweat on his palms. He ran out, ran into the street. The sun stood in the sky. A quiet cheerfulness hung in the air. Then when he turned into the Nardoní and a couple of fellows went by with the until recently banned swastikas in their buttonholes, he knew that he was not dreaming. The specter sat in Prague already. It had not yet extended its hand, but already one’s heart was about to stand still, and, who knows, tomorrow it might really extend the hand fatal to all life. Who knows? At this moment Menazbach knew it already.

He felt in his breast pocket. Yes, the passport was there. Go! The attempt must be made. He hailed a car. “British consulate,” he said. During the trip, he reflected. At the last ball for the press he had met a legation secretary from the British delegation. But what the devil was the fellow’s name? The name did not come to him. He would have to count on being lucky.

He was lucky. Just as he entered the office, the man he was looking for came in through the other door and immediately recognized him. He had a three-month tourist visa for Palestine, Menazbach said, but was only down there for three weeks. Was he approved for the remaining nine weeks, that is, could he receive a new visa? The Englishman made an apprehensive face but promised to make the matter palatable to the consul.

The next morning the messenger from the consulate brought the passport with the visa. At the same time the postman came with a letter from the Herald’s board of directors, in which it was communicated that as a consequence of the well-known political reorientation, Herr Alfred Menazbach, as of the moment of the letter’s receipt, was no longer a member of the paper’s editorial staff. But Menazbach did not mentally grasp the letter’s contents, because as he ripped open the envelope the postman said: “Have you heard yet, Herr Doctor? A half hour ago the police brought the Herald’s chief editor and his whole family to the morgue. The apartment was full of gas. What’s more, him they cut down from the transom. Just like the tailor Kratochivl the other day in the Manesova.”

Menazbach was not listening. He ran into his room, slammed the door shut in front of the perplexed postman, and threw himself on the bed. Now the specter had extended its hand! No, don’t close your eyes, because when he closed his eyes even for an instant, he saw hanging from the transom a man, whose head lay on his right shoulder, with a purple face and his tongue between his lips. . . The specter. . . Oh God, the letter there, he had forgotten it. . . So that’s over, being an editor. . . A locksmith or stonebreaker. . . No, no, under no circumstances! A man with his abilities?

He ran down the stairs into the street, ran without a goal down Paris Street right to the Moldau quay. Fell onto a bench. Buried his face in his hands. His thoughts bit at each other’s heels. What now? one asked another, where to now? Palestine? A Zionist for years, now it’s time to take appropriate steps! Break stones? Prague: The quiet streets of his childhood over in Kleinseite, Huss Street, Malta Square; remarkable adventures on Kampa Island, Týn Courtyard, Alchemists Alley; drinking wine with girls up in the Vikárka, the editors wandering carelessly from one coffeehouse to another. Only the day before yesterday he had the bagpipe-playing Slovak in front of Bata-Haus play his favorite song for a koruna: “Andulko, mé díté, vy se mi tuze líbíte”; and after the coffeehouse the somehow exciting scent of the fresh black ink in the print shop and the dull, consistent thumping of the machines to the rousing beat of the song, “We Are the Masters of the World.” Oh, Master of the World, crush them before they come here to Golden Prague!

He jerks up his head, because once again a man hangs from the transom. Now he recognizes him: It is the chief editor. The corpse blinks, purses its lips as if about to whistle, and then breaks into a gloating laugh: Well, who was right? Me or you, Menazbach?

A shout thrusts itself from Menazbach. He springs up, steps on someone’s foot. The someone roars in his face: “Watch out, Jew-pig!” That brings Menazbach back to reality. He wants to say something in response, anything at all. A thing that had nothing to do with conscious intent compels him to spit into the middle of the other’s face. Then he runs off. A stone thrown after him just misses him when he turns into the Kaprova. Without moderating his pace, he runs down the street, up the stairs, into his room, tears the briefcase with the money from the armoire—the packed suitcase has been at Wilson Station since yesterday—shoves the puzzled Herr Lautner out of the doorway with a hoarse, “Best of luck and many thanks!” and bolts down the stairs, up the street, and into the station. Alfred Menazbach departed at 1:17. A few hours later the Germans, greeted at the Powder Tower by Sudeten Nazis with swastika flags, marched over Graben and into Wenceslas Square.

Herr Menazbach was one of the last to cross the border. Herr Menazbach arrived three weeks later, after several detours, in Tel Aviv, the port for Jerusalem. Herr Menazbach had been lucky. Herr Menazbach sighed, but he did not sigh as a returning Oriental, but rather, strangely, as one who had suddenly become European. “We in Prague, you know,” he said to the porter, who did not understand a word of German, to say nothing of Czech, “we’re used to cleaner streets, bigger newspapers, ventilated bathrooms, police who don’t have the top button on their uniforms open. . . Of course, naturally, this is the Orient!”

Herr Menazbach had switched his idol. Only when he suddenly remembered the chief editor did he become abject for a moment and realize with a sudden shock that the Prague he idealized now, just as in Prague he had once idealized the Orient, no longer existed, and that when it came right down to it, Europe was a bloody pile of muck. However he said this to no one, because he finally contracted the English disease again, and as a matter of principle began to answer Hebrew questions only in English. And this English was the great, lifelong souvenir he had taken with him from Prague. For it was a Prague English.