Perlefter: The Story of A Bourgeois

III

It happened at this time that the Society for the Advancement of Tourism took note of Perlefter’s beneficent work and as a result decided to name him as an honorary member. An honorary member, as you might be aware, has no obligations but many privileges. Perlefter told of this advancement with a sigh. ‘This is another thing that will cost me money!’ said Perlefter, although it was something that cost no money at all. It was, on the contrary, a thing that brought many conveniences with it. Herr Perlefter received a permanent sleeping-car berth; a place was reserved for the honorary members of the Society for the Advancement of Tourism. Herr Perlefter developed a desire for travel.

He loved changing his whereabouts frequently. He loved to travel. He would have liked to journey to unknown regions had he been able to take risks. Alas, he disliked taking risks, as one already knows from what I have said previously. He never made a journey without being sure that the return would be safe and easy. And he never went without indicating a business necessity as the reason. He was embarrassed, in fact, about the pure pleasure he derived riding the train into the world. Otherwise he would have to admit that travel afforded him pleasure. But he wanted it to seem that he was forced to go.

He wanted to be able to say, ‘I have to leave again! Ach, this endless travelling!’ It was endearing to him that his family once again asked, with sadness, ‘Can’t you postpone your travels?’ And Perlefter would answer, ‘Unfortunately I have to go next week. When don’t I have to go? For all I care there should be no railways in the world. To me home is the safest place. Travels only cost money and bring in nothing! One writhes sleeplessly in a strange bed all night long, becomes annoyed about the packing, doles out tips and has no conveniences.’

In truth, however, Perlefter had nowhere so much comfort as in a hotel, even though his tips were not very large. He liked the abundance of warm water and white linen, the breakfast in a great and carpeted hall. He liked the salon music during the afternoon tea and the bustle of the greater world, the mystery of strangers and this atmosphere out of which an adventure could spring at any moment.

An adventure? Was Perlefter an adventurer? Had he not fear of adventures?

I should insert here a general reflection about the complex nature of humans. People can have a very anxious nature and still derive pleasure out of their own anxiety. A man can be cowardly and yet long for situations in which his courage is put to the test. Yes, it is even possible that people long for what they fear. People are very strange.

And if Perlefter was a very ordinary man he was also a very strange man. He wanted, namely, not to be ordinary. He wanted very much to be a hero. He wanted to master each situation, and I know with great certainty that he himself had to suffer most on account of his own cowardice. He himself didn’t know how much he suffered. He wanted admiration but had to be content to be pitied.

Was he really waiting for an adventure? Not necessarily! There could be an assault, a theft, a strange note. Perlefter distrusted all the people whom he encountered on his travels. He shuddered when he read about robberies in the newspaper. There were no harmless faces in the world. All faces were masks. Once they fell away murderous grimaces were revealed. Therefore Perlefter was not fond of travelling alone. On the platform he looked for acquaintances. If he found one with the same destination he would be willing to pay them a quarter of his money. A travelling companion received Herr Perlefter’s entire affections. He compelled everyone he met on the train to visit his compartment. I, too, have gone with Perlefter.

Perlefter was a nervous traveller. He could not stand it when those sitting across from him looked his way if he did not know them. Therefore he buried his face in his coat. As soon as he entered the car he put on his travel cap, a green-checked travel cap. The top had a button that had become loose and hung crookedly as if dead. Then he buried himself in the newspaper. Only when he travelled did he read the other sections of the journal. Then he became annoyed and looked out the window. Here nature interested him.

Yes, I know you will perhaps not believe me. I assure you, Perlefter was a nature enthusiast. He went into the corridor, pressed his forehead against the windowpane and was wistful when he saw the wide fields, entirely indifferent as to whether they were still bearing ears of corn or whether they had been ploughed. Even snow-covered landscapes made him mournful. In the morning he loved the sunrise, the fog that slowly lifted from below and then quickly dissipated. Perlefter presumably thought of another life when he might have farmed a bit of land. He had a city-dweller’s longing for the open country, that of one who wants to be located in the countryside but cannot live without a water closet.

In particular Perlefter could not live without this superior feature of civilization. He had once read of all the various means of contagion, and he feared needing to use public facilities. He avoided them so long as he sat on the train. If, however, he really had to go, it took him half an hour to make all of the necessary preparations. He took soap, hand towel, reading material and eau-de-Cologne with him and went first to check all the bathrooms. He sought the cleanest one for his purposes, and when he returned he looked like a newborn, freshly washed and cheerful and soap-scented, with a new cigar between his pursed lips.

The other passengers caused him great distress. They smoked too much or they opened the window, and that created dangerous draughts which Perlefter asserted had already cost many a traveller’s life. Even at home Perlefter monitored the air. ‘There’s a draught!’ he would say abruptly, for he feared the draught, and he imagined that the air was chasing him. Oh, what couldn’t come from a draught? A toothache, lumbago, eye inflammation, ringing of the ears, sore throat, lung infection and, when one went to the toilet, stomach flu, intestinal catarrh and diarrhoea. Perlefter was knowledgeable about all diseases, for he felt embattled and surrounded by them; he studied them in order to fight them, avert them and prevent them. He liked to read the encyclopaedia and popular medical brochures.

Sometimes ‘something flew into his eye’. It was a cumbersome operation, involving a clean handkerchief, water and a hand mirror. But then followed reservations about the cleanliness of the handkerchief. Perlefter sought solace in a short nap to forget.

That was but a small excitement. The great adventure failed to materialize. Later these little excitements grew in Perlefter’s memory into great adventures. Thus he recounted, ‘Recently, as I looked out of the window, a large pebble of coal flew into my right eye. Everybody else got off at the next station to search for a doctor. I, however, put myself to sleep, fell asleep, as my eye began to tear up and did not want to stop, and when I awoke the fragment of coal was gone; it had just blown away!’

‘How fortunate!’ celebrated the family.

There were adventures that Perlefter did not recount to the family. One will immediately know of what type these adventures were when I add that he only spoke about them in the company of men — or, more accurately, gossiped.

I touch here on a topic that is quite complicated, one which I would have liked nothing better than to leave alone were it not so critically important, were it not absolutely indispensable in furthering the knowledge of Perlefter’s ordinariness. Yes, I would prefer to leave the whole thing alone. I am embarrassed about the actual and principal adventures of Herr Perlefter, about offering them up to the general public and revealing things that only took place in obscurity. But shame alone does not hinder me. I confess that I cannot assess whether I will succeed in explaining and justifying the adventurous life of my hero, whether it will come across as believable but also generally understandable. Yes, it remains a mystery even to me where Perlefter got the courage to seek pleasures that truly embodied danger and, worse still, to expose himself to dangers that cost money.

And they did cost money. Perlefter was in no way so tempting that women threw themselves at his feet. No! Perlefter had to pay well above the worth. And therefore it seems to be human nature that the drive for love is stronger than the drive for frugality. Probably even the most timid of men, such as Perlefter, lose any anxiety once the hour has struck for their passion. And certainly a man’s virtue is not his most reliable companion. The whole elaborate and painstaking construction that is morality collapses all at once. How simply marvellous the ease with which the pieces can fit together and rise up again.

Perlefter often had moments that one might call weak but which were actually his strongest. Perlefter had a longing for women. By luck, there were women in the world who had a longing for money. And, by luck, Perlefter had money.

I am familiar enough with Perlefter’s taste to be able to say that he liked size in a woman: volume and weight. His preference was blondes over brunettes and black-haired women. Perhaps, in fact, definitely, he made no distinction between fake and natural blondeness. No, he could not distinguish fake from natural; he might as well have been colour blind, as he took no notice of make-up and mistook the red of the lips for an abundance of blood and the advanced techniques of love for natural passion.

The reader might ask why Perlefter came to conjure up dangerous situations. But the situations exercised power and force over Alexander Perlefter. He could not resist. He was overcome by the opportunity.

He was overcome by every situation. He loved women but, still more and actually, that which heralds women, that in which they are wrapped. He loved women’s clothes. Of women’s clothes a specific type. He loved undergarments. Certainly he could not resist any women who appeared before him in underwear. For he could not even resist the magazines on whose covers appeared colour photographs of half-dressed women. This literature accompanied Herr Perlefter on his travels and prepared him for the mood that is necessary for the moral foundations of a man to waver and fall and allow him to fall with it.

In various cities Herr Perlefter knew the addresses of available women who, as masseuses, midwives and beauty-salon owners, came under his consideration. Herr Perlefter noted these addresses cryptically, so that no strangers could decode them, in his leather pocket calendar on the penultimate page, just below the Jewish holidays. In each city Perlefter had a certain hotel, a very specific hairdresser, a very specific passion. He paid gladly but moderately. After all, he had to be willing to invite the lady to a theatre, a concert, a cinema or an opera in order to complete the adventure.

But Perlefter had no interest in public performances of any kind. Everything he saw in the theatre irritated him because it meant nothing to him; he hated the cinema because it was so dark, and he found that he had to pay too much money for the pleasure of watching the agitated shadow-players. Music cut through him like a knife. He became insane with pain. He couldn’t even tolerate the harmless but detailed piano-playing of his daughter, even though her teacher insisted that she had talent. Perlefter wanted there to be absolute quiet. Music disturbed his thoughts, his plans for the hours ahead. It weakened his lust, his appetite, all his bodily desires, dazed him and tranquillized his critical thinking. The destinies of others, even if only theatrical representations, were of no importance to him; he was interested only in his own. He worried only about his own fate. There was no room for anything else. Everything else just cost money. With ordinary seats one could not be content. Perlefter had to buy box seats.

But even as great and numerous the pains with which the travelling Perlefter had to contend in purchasing his pleasure, the homecoming Perlefter thought only of the pleasures and no more of the sorrows. The happiness was wrapped in grief that became reduced in his memory like a shell of bittersweet taste around a core that remained more permanently. Perlefter forgot about the expenses, the theatre, the concerts, the operas and the cinema. He recalled only the blonde women and spoke only of them. And although it was practically always the same it seemed to him as if they were ever new, ever chance and mysterious encounters.

‘Suddenly’, he recounted to a few interested friends in the club, ‘who sits down at my table, right up against me, but a large blonde, a curly-haired blonde in a low-cut dress with a dazzling white neck, and of her bust I’d rather not say anything! She orders caviar rolls, and as she eats, I tell you, as she continues to look over at me, I realize how many drinks she’s downed. Well, I need not say more.’

Perlefter actually enjoyed his experiences less than the memories of his experiences. As he chewed them over and recounted them he spun a nostalgic gloss around the experiences, of the type one culls from memories and by which they are enrobed, and that was when he first became the bold adventurer, conqueror of women and heartbreaker. As soon as he returned home he delighted in his courage and his deeds. As he conquered his way through his pocket calendar he could already hear himself telling of his conquests, reliving his memories, and it was actually only from his memories that he created adventures. He was like a man who lives for his diary. Perlefter, however, kept no diary.

Yes, he liked to travel. He could not deny, though, that he had to overcome various fears along the way. Although he never admitted it to anyone — and when the occasion arose he freely mocked the superstitions of his wife, the cook and his daughters — he was himself superstitious. He feared a train collision, especially if the porter who took his baggage wore the number thirteen. When Perlefter ascended to his compartment his primary concern was just that there be no collision. Further, he would search with his eyes for the emergency brake. He usually inspected the locomotive before boarding. He knew nothing about the engines of steam trains. Thus he was pleased with the big powerful wheels, the lustrous letters and numbers, the levers, screws and valves, and he sought to fathom whether it was a machine of the latest style or the penultimate one. His investigation of the locomotive reassured him, but he was still far from being certain. Other trains could come, signals and switches could be wrong or the engineer could be drunk. Perlefter prayed silently, quickly, but intensely.

Then something extraordinary happened. As Perlefter was ordering his ticket one day the Society for the Advancement of Tourism explained to him that there was now an opportunity to fly on an aeroplane. Would Herr Perlefter wish to fly? It was a publicity flight and of extraordinary importance, if Perlefter would care to participate. Perlefter said yes immediately. Indeed, he had no idea how he got to the point where his own courage overtook him. A minute later he was so terrified, as if realizing he had just looked Death straight in the eyes. What had he done? Was he a pilot? How did he come to put his life in danger for an organization that did not really concern him? And yet he was afraid to back out. He would become a hero out of fear. I have been told that such was the case for many a hero.

That afternoon I came by looking for Perlefter. It was past four o’clock. He had been expected there by three o’clock. He arrived at five. He was unrecognizable. On his head he wore a brown leather cap. A large green pair of goggles with square lenses lay on his forehead. He came in smiling, into the room in which everyone was sitting at the table drinking chocolate. Everyone stood up, shocked. I had never seen Herr Perlefter like this before.

He sat down at once, talked loudly, ate and drank more than usual and told of his flight.

‘I simply must. I can’t help it!’ he said. ‘This is the consequence of honorary appointments. I’ll never accept another. But if I turn down such an honour with which mortal danger is associated! It’s a publicity flight. Three aeroplanes will take off. I will sit in the first. It is to be hoped that nothing will happen.’

Frau Perlefter began to sob gently. She wanted to call it off. The children did not allow her near the telephone. During the evening they rang up all the near and far relatives of the family and reported to them in detail about Perlefter’s undertaking. Frau Perlefter secretly summoned the family doctor to come. Perlefter was still being examined at nine o’clock. The doctor said, ‘Not too much to eat and not too little. The heart is fine. Don’t look out the window, so that you won’t suffer from motion sickness.’

There was a young engineer in the family, a nice young man who understood nothing of aeroplanes as he had interest only in architecture. Nevertheless he was expected to intervene in all technological matters in Perlefter’s house. He was forced to repair clocks, electric lights and telephones and to check the drains. Perlefter had, in fact, once helped this young man out. The young man’s outstanding virtue was his thanks.

He came over on this occasion. He was given a cup of chocolate. In exchange he gave a lecture on aircraft. He had intended to join the air force during the war. But before he could be trained world peace was achieved. The young man recounted anecdotes of the air officers. It calmed the Perlefter family to see a young man, still alive, healthy and unscathed, drinking chocolate, despite having almost been a pilot.

The family lawyer was also consulted, a walrus-moustached attorney named Dr Nagl who had a fondness for servant girls and thus always entered through the kitchen. He came, explained the airline’s liability provisions and advised — cold and heartless as lawyers are prone to be — that a last will and testament be drawn up. Perlefter’s wife began to sob once again.

Another relative showed up, one who had not been invited, the poor seamstress who had married her carpenter. She dared not ask the reason for all the excitement. Although everyone else was drinking chocolate she was given tea, and they pretended to look for a lemon. But on this evening the lemons were all gone. She drank it all the same, an old stale tea with beads of glistening foam on the rim of the cup.

They paid no attention to the seamstress. Herr Perlefter lay down on the sofa and smoked. He let his ashes fall lustily on to the carpet, and his wife indulged him. Perhaps, she thought, this would be the last time he could recline so comfortably on the sofa.

Perlefter’s thoughts, however, revolved around the immediate future. He envisaged his scattered bones and imagined them being collected and cremated. Perlefter had specified in his will that his remains should be cremated. He was afraid of cemeteries and especially of cemeteries in winter. When he imagined himself as a corpse lying under metres of snow he felt like he was standing outside without a woollen coat. He would rather be burned than to freeze.

Perlefter was also certainly thinking of the hereafter. For he rose suddenly from the sofa, motioned me in the next room and spoke. ‘You could do me a favour. Two weeks ago I heard that the wife of our cousin Kroj is sick with pneumonia. Take this money to him straight away. Have you time?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have nothing but time to take some money to Kroj. Incidentally, Frau Kroj is perhaps already dead.’

‘Impossible!’ cried Herr Perlefter. ‘To be sure, she’s still alive!’

‘But what if she’s dead?’

‘Don’t even consider it! She can’t be dead! One can’t die so easily!’

‘Oh yes, one can die easily from pneumonia!’

‘Stop it,’ yelled Perlefter. ‘One shouldn’t make jokes about such serious matters.’

Then I took the money to Herr Kroj.

Kroj was a cobbler. The Perlefter family let him resole all their old boots. Herr Perlefter often claimed that Kroj demanded too steep a price and the stranger shoemaker in the neighbouring house was significantly cheaper. Nevertheless all the worn-out shoes found their way to this relative, the cobbler Kroj. It was Kroj’s lifelong dream to be able personally to make a pair of shoes for Herr Perlefter. Perlefter, however, covered his needs through the Karlsbad firm of Leiduck and Co.

When I arrived at the cobbler’s I could smell vinegar, leather and sweat. Behind a partition lay a groaning Frau Kroj. I rang the shop bell, and Kroj came out in slippers.

‘Well, see here,’ said Kroj. ‘A visitor.’

‘How’s your wife?’ I asked.

‘She’s already costing me more money than I’ve got. She’s been sick six weeks now!’

‘I thought only two weeks? Didn’t you write to our cousin Herr Perlefter two weeks ago?’

‘No, it’s been six weeks since I wrote to him. He hasn’t helped me.’

‘He’s sent you this money!’

‘Oh really? He’s a fine man!’

Then I returned to Perlefter’s. He stood on the balcony of his house awaiting my return. He shouted to me, ‘Is she still alive?’

‘Yes, she’s alive!’ I cried back.

When I got inside Perlefter radiated joy. Now he was confident that nothing would happen to him, even if he flew over the ocean in a burning airship. He led me into the parlour. We drank wine, and Perlefter said, ‘That’s life!’

But we had not spoken at all about life.

The next morning I went to the airfield. Frau Perlefter was there with all the children along with Dr Nagl, the young man who had not become a pilot and the chauffeur, who placed a fur coat in the aeroplane. Frau Perlefter had red eyes. Herr Perlefter stood near the pilot and looked confusingly similar to the pilot. The other passengers arrived in ordinary clothes. They took Perlefter for the pilot and asked, ‘Is everything in order?’

Herr Perlefter smiled because he recognized all of them. The gentlemen had met each other somewhere before. They were all honorary members. They wondered about Perlefter’s outfit and asked whether he had flown often previously.

‘This is my sixth time,’ said Perlefter with conviction.

At ten o’clock the propellers began to spin, and Perlefter’s children were thrown to the ground by the wind. The gentlemen climbed in, drew their handkerchiefs and waved. The propellers stopped spinning. Everyone climbed out again. It was embarrassing to both the travellers and their escorts that the aeroplane had not yet taken off. Herr Perlefter kissed his wife once more then gave the chauffeur his hand, for he believed that kindness to others kept one alive. The chauffeur was visibly surprised. Finally the propellers rattled again, and the gentlemen waved conclusively, Perlefter’s round face looking out from the window. I will never forget it.

His wife began to sob. She wanted to catch another glimpse of her husband, but he had already ascended to an altitude of three hundred metres. The spectators all craned their necks towards the flying honorary members, but then the large bird vanished behind a red brick wall that restricted their view of the horizon.

Perlefter was flying. Perlefter had flown away.

His family returned home and invited me to lunch ‘so it won’t be that lonely’. So we sat and ate scrambled eggs, as the roast on this frightful day was burnt. The young Perlefter boy seemed unwilling to eat any scrambled eggs. He was given a chocolate bar, although everyone knew that he had a bad stomach through eating too many sweets. Nevertheless they let him, as I said, eat chocolate.

Late in the night came a telegram: Landed safely. Your father. The postman received a tip, and we could hear his joyful footfalls upon the steps.

Herr Perlefter stayed away from his loved ones for more than two months. Let us leave him living abroad for the time being while we dedicate ourselves to his house and family.