Perlefter: The Story of A Bourgeois

IV

I have already mentioned that Perlefter controlled his house. He could control nobody else. Not his friends nor his employees. He could dominate only his family members, for they were even weaker, even more anxious, even more weak-willed than Perlefter himself. They lived in a wealthy household — for he earned and had money — and yet it was a poor household, filled with sighs, worries and bills. The family was convinced that Perlefter was overworked, that he did not sleep, that he was constantly struggling to earn his daily bread, that for him every expense brought new worries. Therefore the family spent not a single penny without concern. There was no joy in this house without underlying grief, no celebrations without pain, no birthdays without illness, no wine without bitterness. One cooked and baked, managed the wash and clothes, furniture, rugs and jewellery, but none of these things in sufficient quantity — on the contrary, it was just the bare minimum, never enough for anything. It was never, ever enough. There was fine cake but cut in such thin slices that one could not taste its quality. Good meat was purchased and chopped into tiny portions. A soup was cooked that would have caused a sensation if only one had the chance actually to taste it. Fourteen guests were invited, but the meal was just enough for twelve. In the ice box were the laughable leftovers, about which one worried as if over the fading life of a dying child. There lay, still and timid, a plate of miserable heaps of butter, yellow and melting into a puddle, awaiting its end. The children’s leftovers were rescued from their plates at lunch and the meat chopped up and used to make dinner. Somewhere within closed cabinets dry yellow cake awaited a special occasion. Such an occasion came. It was realized that the cake might endanger the teeth of the guests. Accordingly it was put into the oven to soften, but instead it got charred. It came to the table blackened with a hard carbonized crust. One had to scrape away the crust with a knife. The apples shrank smaller and smaller; they became puckered and the size of cherries. Old oranges grew mouldy and became silvery. The cheapest fruit was purchased. The plums had splits, and their reddish flesh swelled like that of a wounded person. Over the course of time the Emmental lost its moisture and was hard as the wood that Perlefter bought. From twenty different bottles you could gather altogether sixty drops of liquor. In the cigar boxes, which were intended for guests, could be found only one layer of cigars. The curtain ropes were broken for months. One closed the curtains by hand, pulled them together, but they didn’t work as desired; they refused. All objects were in a state of permanent opposition. The doors creaked. They had cracks the width of a finger and let the cold air through. Into the large furnace were placed tiny pieces of coal. The humidifier didn’t work. The best carpets lay rolled up in the attic, covered with a bunch of newspapers. Torn linoleum was spread on the tables. The pretty red-velvet chairs were covered in white linen, like furniture corpses eerily awaiting their funeral. The flower vases lacked their bases. The coffee service had only nine cups; the tenth was cracked. Near the crystal fruit bowl lay its broken handle. After being worn down through so much use the knives had thin and flexible blades like fencing foils. They were blunt and had to be sharpened daily in the kitchen on the edge of an earthenware pot. The piano was ever out of tune, for Perlefter had bought the cheapest one — one of the oldest — at half price. It was a bargain. The gramophone was hoarse; the records lay worn and dusty in an old cylindrical case. Two pendulum clocks stood, both missing their weights. The alarm clock rang only once a week and only when one was not expecting it, usually after midnight. The doorbell did not work, and on the door was ever the reminder ‘Knock loudly!’ All the family’s umbrellas were broken. The locks on all the suitcases had to be opened by force, because every family member had lost his or her key. There was a clothing stand that could not find its balance and constantly swayed, even if it carried no clothes.

In the drawers of the commode lay the children’s still, dead pocket watches next to broken hairpins and dusty yellow tobacco residue. In the inkwells the ink was dry, no more than a black crust. The quills splayed as soon as one put them to paper. There was colourful stationery in all shades; purchased in cheap cigar shops, it was as porous as blotting paper. The postal scale was out of balance. The pencils could not be sharpened, for the lead consisted entirely of fragments and the wood was brittle and fibrous. In the bathroom cold water streamed out of the hot tap and vice versa. The bath towels were frayed. An old mousetrap did not snap shut any more. Inside hung a bait of such a composition that even a hungry rat would be deterred. The laundry cart was missing its right front foot. To steady it a couple of bricks from his son Alfred’s set of toy building blocks had been placed underneath. On the mantle stood a plaster ballerina without arms. Under the mirror in the girls’ room hung a wreath of pink paper flowers. They didn’t throw it out because they felt sorry for it. They liked all broken, defective and useless things. From the proud row of encyclopaedias was missing the volume ‘Buddha to Cologne’.

The baker came but three times a week with fresh bread. They preferred to eat it dry and withered, claiming that fresh bread was harmful to the stomach. Old sardines in open cans were refreshed with lemon juice. Marinated herring, however, they ate too soon, before the flavour had soaked in. Breaded cutlets were made that fell apart on the plates. There was cauliflower soup without the cauliflower. Bunches of radishes lay in the kitchen. Only Perlefter himself was allowed to eat them, as long as they were fresh. For only Perlefter himself lived in affluence. He ate the best soups, the largest and freshest cakes, the specialities, the fresh bread (even though it was harmful); his liquor filled entire bottles; his inkwells were filled to the top with good, flowing blue ink; his pencils lay secure in a shut drawer and were made of the finest material; his bath towel was given to him every morning from the chest (for he would not use the tattered ones); and upon the sofa where he took his afternoon nap there was no white linen. Perlefter was annoyed with his wife’s thrift and the miserly disorder in the house, yet was himself the cause of this frugality. For only out of concern about him and out of fear that he might overwork himself in order to provide new things did they keep the old and broken-down furniture and extend their frugality to such things as useless paper garlands. Perlefter, however, did not sigh over the difficult life. His good wife came to the most natural conclusion. Ah! She didn’t know that the only reason he came home was because no place else could he find such willing ears that were fine-tuned to his trials and tribulations. He unloaded all his suffering at home and then became annoyed that his house resembled a mortuary.

Outside of the house Perlefter indulged himself in numerous luxuries. At home he absolutely eschewed all delicacies such as chocolates, figs or crystallized fruit. For he wanted to show that he was ‘not a pig’ and he feared that a father who doles out sweets loses authority over his children. On the way home, however, he happily stopped at the confectioner’s and had himself a bite to eat. Sometimes chocolate could be found in his coat pocket in rustling tin foil. This chocolate was usually discovered by his oldest daughter. She came smiling to Perlefter, who then said, ‘Oh dear! I meant to bring this to you! I completely forgot about it! Perhaps, come to think of it, I even ate half!’ And she didn’t doubt his word.

Only his son, who was known as Fredy, enjoyed as many freedoms as Perlefter. Around the time when Perlefter took off in the aeroplane he began to grow and become healthy. When I had arrived he was a cry-baby. Eventually he grew into a mischievous and stupid boy. I really noticed changes as the years passed. Yes, they passed, and Fredy grew. His voice slid into those depths of melancholy descant to which notes of barbarism and sentimentality lend a manly tone. Fredy developed a gradual inclination towards servant girls and in equal measure developed his muscles. He had friends. They came to the house on Saturday afternoons — young men with slicked-back hair in excellent suits with golden bracelets and silk handkerchiefs in their left jacket pockets; young men with smooth faces and abbreviated foreheads. They played whist, they brought liqueur with them, nothing but sweet liqueurs, and amused themselves with confectionary and smoked cigarettes, inhaling each pull with evident pleasure. I never heard them speak of literature. From the pockets of their coats, which were visible in the corridor, protruded colourful magazines dealing with sports, love and ‘society’. The young men read fashion magazines. They wanted to look like tailors’ models, and they succeeded. It was precisely these young men who set the tone of the city. With a magical swiftness they passed the examination that opened the door to admission into the different universities around the country. Were they not so rich one would have to believe that they were brilliant. Together they joined rowing clubs, they played tennis, they did gymnastics and fencing, some had horses, and they all said they had genuine horseman’s legs even if they had, actually, been bowed by a combination of nature and birth into the high life. Each wore a badge in his buttonhole. They were the sons of the Moderate Party and consequently had no political convictions. Young people in bad circumstances are radicals, as they blame the political system for their personal misfortunes. These young men, however, had it so good that to them all political viewpoints were the same. They were thus the future of the Moderate Party. It is an error to believe that the moderate parties of all countries have no future. So long as there are those who can afford the luxury of indifference there will also be moderate people. One might have said that these young men were reasonable enough to remain in the middle. It was actually more like satisfied enough. They were protected on all sides, as they had not severed any ties. They were not strong opponents, nor did they have any.

Such were these young men. Those of them who claimed the spirit fancied themselves to be homosexual, although they liked young girls better. They made off with girls, too, if nobody noticed. As for the young Fredy Perlefter he was still wavering over which sex to choose. But after it became clear to him that he would carry on his father’s business he decided upon normal sexual intercourse. It was good to see, as the true nature of the young man gradually broke through. He shed the illness of his childhood days like one outgrows old clothes and in the course of several months became a hero and a sportsman. At the same time his face was also changing, becoming ever more the old, round and slightly girlish face of Perlefter. Fredy’s eyes were also colourless and played the events of the world without surprise, wonder, love, compassion or bitterness. With a fearlessness that left him unfazed he plunged into various hazardous sports, and while his family feared for him he won first prize in swimming, track and field and winter sports, and his foolish face graced the illustrated newspapers. I believe that he had no idea he was placing himself voluntarily in the proximity of Death and was not sensible enough to have fear. He had only ambition. He wanted to be the spoiled darling of the family and remain that way, achieving it indirectly by means of heroism. Thus he and his father, in different ways, both arrived at the same goal. Fredy liked to complain about sore muscles. He had ‘trained’ too hard. He showed several bruises. For weeks he had an arm in a black sling. His mother fed him. One had to hold his jacket and put his socks on for him. After he had definitively decided on the female sex he slept with one of the servant girls and earned himself his first sexually transmitted disease, of which he was quite proud and of which the entire family knew but about which nobody spoke. The servant girl left the house and took a silver service along with her. For weeks this service was the topic of conversation. The oldest daughter maintained that it was silver plate and a wedding gift from Herr Hahn who gave nothing real. Frau Perlefter cried anyway. For her it was silver. To annoy his sister Fredy said that he himself had seen the mark. It was silver. Frau Perlefter’s widowed sister, who delighted in the losses of others, confirmed Fredy’s assertion.

Fredy loved to recount his various adventures. There was always something happening wherever he found himself. Horses bucked, automobiles crashed into each other, old women were crushed under the wheels, streetcars ran out of power, drunks fought each other, a girl dropped a milk pot. There was nothing too trivial. Everything that happened was worth recounting. Fredy recorded in a notebook the various jokes he had heard. He read some of them out. The others, he said, were unsuitable for women. Nevertheless he was asked to tell them. He recounted them in a low voice, and his sisters acted as if they had not heard. Regardless, they left the room immediately after the punch-line. Fredy rode every morning in the hippodrome. By lunchtime he claimed he could not sit. A gallop had ‘upset’ him. He drank his soup standing. After the meal he sat down. He had forgotten the galloping. He was regarded within the wide circle of family as a dangerous heart-breaker. He struck up a conversation with young girls in front of the department store. Then he wrote them letters. He showed these missives to his sisters.

‘You’re not going to believe it!’ he said. ‘This Margot is from one of the best houses.’

Frau Perlefter was convinced that all the daughters of the bourgeois houses were in love with Fredy. At one point he made the acquaintance of a Hungarian journalist named Roney. Herr Roney was looking for a wealthy man for a singer named Ilona. He found Fredy Perlefter, and all three were satisfied. Ilona didn’t like Fredy at all. He didn’t love her either. But her name was in the newspapers and on the billboards. The Perlefter family went to films in which she played a supporting role and to the cabarets in which she sang. Ilona was not so young any more. Her picture stood on Fredy’s writing-table along with a couple of letters written in large stiff strokes on pale purple paper. The letters lay there, casually strewn across his desk, and his sisters secretly read them. Fredy came home and said bitterly, ‘You’ve already read my letters!’ but was actually pleased.

Since Fredy ‘had something’ with Ilona, he entered into those wonderful circles where art blends with sin and justifies it. Behind the scenes it was quite different. Outside the boundaries of middle-class society much was not only permitted but also desirable. ‘Art’ legitimizes even debauchery. Through his relationships within the arts Fredy put the whole family into an adventurous mood. Fredy used up half of Frau Perlefter’s spending money. He wore, henceforth, silk shirts and gave his opinion on his sisters’ clothing. He must have known what attracted those women living in that world in which the main thing was the effect, the effect about which people would gossip. Frau Perlefter and her daughters were far removed from wishing to be such a woman as Ilona. But to be mistaken for an Ilona in certain circumstances was the dream of the Perlefter girls. There came a free spirit to their clothes, a new rhythm in their lives; their appearance received a fantastic boost; they let each other tell jokes without embarrassment any more and spoke with frank gestures of truths which for girls of good families should be but fairy-tales.

Yes, with the entry of this Ilona into Fredy’s life a lot changed. One even spoke about his long and torturous sexually transmitted disease, and Frau Perlefter, feeling left out, asked Fredy all kinds of discrete details. The boy had to invent them in order to avoid losing his reputation. He had made love to Ilona three times and endured her and her friends for three months. The letters stopped. He began speaking to young girls again, and as he had already indulged in the realm of the arts he no longer wrote to girls who were the daughters of wealthy citizens but, rather, to the denizens of the theatre world. Within the family, however, reverence and awe for the first in the series of artists, Fräulein Ilona, were preserved. Quite often a family member came across her name in the newspaper, spoke her name aloud, and distant relatives who were reliant upon Perlefter’s good will came to tell that they had heard and read of Ilona’s latest ventures.

Fredy didn’t cry over her. She had given him what he needed: calm at home and validation of his reputation as a seducer. He went to the summer resorts and the winter spas and received innocent postcards from his sports partners. The family took each harmless greeting as a clandestine confession of love. Fredy’s actual affairs were with hotel chambermaids and a generally available widow whom he considered the great love of his life. The Perlefters had no anxiety that their son would forget himself and marry a pretty woman without any money. They knew him, the family, and they trusted in the power of the blood.

And it truly seemed that Fredy was letting his eyes roam over the daughters of the land in order to locate love and a dowry to defray its cost. It was clear to him that he must have an attractive wife. Although she should have money she should also be generally pleasing to men. There existed this type of girl in the world, and Fredy courted them. He spoke with them about respectable things. He read a couple of books to acquire potential topics of conversation, and he believed that I could be a valued guide for him in these matters. I recommended history books to Fredy, for I believed that the best way to impress educated women was by spouting forth dates. I had no experience with educated young women. But I soon learned from Fredy that they were bored by historical dates. I picked up a book on art history and recommended a conversation about paintings. These women didn’t go to museums on their own. I resorted to natural history. Fredy read the chapter in which the piquant processes of the science of procreation and reproduction are detailed and was henceforth no longer reluctant to discuss natural history. And he would have luck with it, for he soon began to court a young girl whose father owned a majority stake in the Hinke Beer Brewery. It seemed that Fredy’s scientific references made an impression on the girl. Fredy was invited ‘to the house’. He brought a bouquet of flowers, and he went by automobile. I have never in my life seen a bouquet like that. It was expensive, discrete and exotic, and yet it was still winter. Who knew from what garden these flowers had come? Perhaps they cemented the relationship.

Everyone awaited Perlefter’s return. A celebratory atmosphere spread through the house as if in anticipation of joyous events. Fredy received no more letters. Suddenly he had grown and was ready to become engaged. While I squandered my formative years with useless thoughts, he grew into mature adolescence and positioned himself into a profitable marriage. He was a splendid boy, and he fulfilled his destiny in an exemplary fashion and to everyone’s satisfaction.