Group Portrait with Lady (49 page)

Mr. Werner and Mr. Kurt Hoyser seemed affected by these events from the insurance angle only. An embarrassing trialogue ensued on the subject of the damaged jacket. A spontaneous attempt by Werner to offer compensation for the jacket by an immediate and overgenerous cash payment was, so to speak,
nipped in the bud by a glance from Kurt; Werner’s hand had already gone to his wallet in the universally familiar gesture but was then withdrawn in astonishment. Such phrases were uttered as: “It goes without saying that we will reimburse you for a new jacket, although we are under no obligation to do so.” Such phrases as: “Compensation for pain and suffering,” “shock supplement”; insurance companies were named, policies quoted with their numbers, finally the poker-faced Trude, on being summoned, asked the Au. for his business card, and when it turned out that he did not possess one she made a note of his address in her stenographer’s notebook with a look of open disgust, her expression implying that she was being forced to handle a type of excrement whose stench was of a particularly revolting nature.

Here the Au. would like to say something about himself: he was not interested in a new jacket worth as much or even twice as much as his old one, he wanted his old jacket back again and, peevish though it may sound, he was genuinely attached to it and insisted that his garment be restored to its former condition; consequently, when the Hoyser brothers tried to talk him out of this by indicating the decline in the tailoring trade, he indicated that he knew of an invisible-mending expert, a woman who had already done several excellent jobs on his jacket. We all know the kind of people who, although no one has ever forbidden them to speak or ever would, suddenly say: “I’d like to say something,” or “May I say something?”—this was the kind of situation in which the Au. found himself, for at this stage of the negotiations he was finding it hard to preserve his objectivity; he refrained from mentioning the age of his jacket, the journeys he had made with it, and numerous scraps of paper he had stuffed into its pockets and taken out again, the small change in the lining, the bread crumbs, the
fluff, and should he actually tell them that, scarcely forty-eight hours ago, Klementina’s cheek had rested, albeit briefly, against his right lapel? Should he expose himself to the suspicion of sentimentality, when actually all he cared about was that concrete concern of the Western world expressed by Vergil in the phrase
lacrymae rerum?

The atmosphere was not nearly as harmonious now as it had been and might have been had the two Hoyser brothers showed the remotest understanding of the fact that a person is more attached to an old object than to a new one, and that there are some things in this world that cannot be assessed from the insurance angle. “If,” Werner Hoyser said at last, “someone drives into your old VW and, though he’s only obligated to reimburse you for its used-car value, offers you a new VW and you don’t accept it, I can only call that abnormal.” The mere suggestion that the Au. drove some ancient VW was an affront, although an unconscious one, an allusion to income bracket and taste which, not objectively perhaps, but subjectively, was of the nature of a humiliation. Will anyone find it offensive to learn that he—the Au.—emerged from his objectivity and stated in no uncertain terms that they could stuff their VW’s, whether old or new?—all he wanted was for his jacket, which had been ruined by a senile old roué, to be restored to its former condition.

Obviously such a conversation could lead nowhere. How can you explain to a person that you happen to be attached to your old jacket, and that you can’t take it off—as was being demanded, in order to assess the actual extent of the damage—because, damn it, life’s like that sometimes, you have a hole in your shirt, a tear caused by a Roman youth in a bus with his fishhook; also because the shirt is by now something less than clean, damn it, since in the service of truth you are forever moving about, forever making notes with pencils and ballpoint pens, and at night, dog tired, you fall into bed without
taking your shirt off? Isn’t restoration an easy enough word to understand? It may well be that people after whom parts of a city are named which they have built on their own land suffer a well-nigh metaphysical exasperation when obliged to acknowledge that there are apparently some things, even jackets, for which the owner cannot be compensated in money. There may well be a sad provocation in this—but those who have thus far been reasonably convinced of the Au.’s strictly rational attitude will also credit him with something that may sound incredible: in this confrontation
he
was the rational one, the quiet, courteous, albeit immovable element, whereas the two Hoysers became irrational, their voices exasperated, on edge, hurt, their—toward the end of this painful scene even Kurt’s—hands twitching continually in the direction where one might suppose their wallets to be—as if from in there they could extract jackets, beloved twelve-year-old jackets that are dearer to a person than his own skin and less replaceable, for skin is transplantable whereas a jacket is not; to which one is attached
without
sentimentality, simply because, in the final analysis, one is a member of the Western world and the
lacrymae rerum
have been drummed into one.

A still further provocation was seen in the Au.’s going down on his hands and knees on the parquet floor and slithering about in search of the scrap of material that had been ripped out with one of his buttons, for obviously he was going to need this when he went to the invisible mender’s. His final rejection of any kind of compensation and his offer to have the jacket invisibly mended at his own expense while indicating that this might be classified as a business expense, since he was here on business, wasn’t he, was also taken as an affront; money was no object, etc. Oh what a chain of misunderstandings! Is it really so impossible to believe that a person merely wants his jacket back, his jacket and nothing else? Must this immediately place one under suspicion of fetishistic sentimentalism?
And finally, is there no higher economy which should make it an offense simply to discard a jacket that has been darned, invisibly mended, is still eminently wearable, and gives pleasure to the wearer, simply because one has a bulging wallet and wishes to avoid annoyance?

At last, after this annoying interlude that had noticeably impaired the initial harmony, they got down to business: to the three file folders that evidently constituted Leni’s dossier. Again some condensation is merited of all the things that were dished up again about “Aunt Leni’s sloppy ways,” Aunt Leni’s unrealistic attitude, Aunt Leni’s faulty child-rearing methods, the company Aunt Leni kept—“and so that you won’t think we’re prudish or old-fashioned, or not progressive, the point here is not the lovers, not even the Turks or the Italians or the Greeks—the point is that the property is showing a profit of almost 65 percent less than it should; the proceeds from a sale alone, if wisely invested, could yield an annual revenue of forty to fifty thousand marks, probably more, but we wish to be fair so we will take the lower figure as a basis for argument—and how much does the building yield? If we deduct repairs, costs of administration, and the consequences of the asocial occupancy of the ground floor, where Aunt Leni lives and positively scares away a better class of tenant—thereby ruining the rent level—how much does the building yield? Less than fifteen thousand, barely thirteen or fourteen.” Thus Werner Hoyser.

Followed by Kurt Hoyser (condensed, verifiable from the Au.’s notes), who maintained they had nothing against foreign workers, they had no racial prejudices, but one must be consistent, and if Aunt Leni were to declare her willingness to
accept
rents at the going rate, then one would be prepared to discuss opening up the whole building to foreign workers, space to
be rented by the bed, by the room, Aunt Leni to be appointed manageress and even supplied with rent-free accommodation and a monthly cash allowance; the trouble was that she was collecting—and this really was madness and contrary to the conclusions reached even by socialist economic doctrine—she was collecting in rents exactly what she was paying out herself; it was only for her sake that the rent had been kept at DM.2.50 a square yard and not in order that others should profit by it; for instance, the Portuguese family was paying DM.125 for 50 square yards, plus DM.13 for use of bath and kitchen, the three Turks (“Of whom one, of course, more often than not sleeps with her, which means that their room is occupied by two persons only”) are paying DM.87.50 for 35 square yards, whereas the Helzen couple are paying DM.125 for 50 square yards, plus the DM.13 each, “and then she’s crazy enough to calculate her share of kitchen and bath at double-occupancy rate because she’s keeping the extra room for Lev who, as we know, is being temporarily housed free of charge.” And the last straw was the fact that she was charging the unfurnished rate for furnished rooms; and that, mind you, was nothing as harmless as some anarchistic-Communist experiment—that was undermining the market; without being too unfair, one could easily squeeze 300 to 400 marks a room, with use of bath and kitchen, out of the building. Etc. Etc.

Even Kurt Hoyser seemed embarrassed to bring up a subject “that I must touch on if we’re going to be businesslike”: the fact was that, of the ten beds, only seven actually belonged to Leni, one still belonged to Grandfather, a second one to the deeply injured Heinrich Pfeiffer, and the third to his parents, the Pfeiffers, “whose very hair stands on end when they think of what may be going on in those beds.” In other words, Leni was violating not only incontestable economic laws and usage rights, but also ownership rights, and since by this time the Pfeiffers found it quite impossible to negotiate
directly with Leni, they had designated Hoyser, Inc., as trustees of their ownership rights to the beds: there were therefore not only personal but legally assigned rights to be preserved, in other words the affair had acquired an additional dimension in which matters of principle were at stake. Granted, of course, that the bed belonging to Heinrich Pfeiffer was the one given him by Aunt Leni’s mother during the war “while he was waiting to be called up,” but a gift was a gift; moreover, in the eyes of the law a gift was an irrevocable transfer of property. Furthermore—the Au. was free to make what use he liked of this—it was hard to see why all the tenants and/or subtenants should be employed by the city garbage-collection and/or street-cleaning departments.

Here the Au. intervened by pointing out that the Helzen couple were
not
employees of the garbage-collection department: Mr. Helzen was a municipal employee in a fairly senior position, Mrs. Helzen pursued the honorable calling of cosmetician, and the Portuguese lady Ana-Maria Pinto was employed at the counter of a self-service restaurant in a reputable department store; he had personally picked up meatballs, cheesecake, and coffee at her counter and checked her calculation of the cost, which had turned out to be accurate. With a nod Kurt Hoyser acknowledged this correction but added that there was a further point in which Aunt Leni had not behaved in a financially responsible manner: she was in perfect health and fit to work for another seventeen years or so, but at the foolish promptings of her mixed-up son she had given up her job in order to look after the three Portuguese children, singing to them, teaching them German, letting them help in her “daubings,” keeping them all too often—as the records proved—out of school, just as she had done with her own son. The fact was, there was a whole “raft” of delinquencies to be taken into account, and it so happened that anyone coming into conflict with the law was regarded by his fellows as suspect, and it also
so happened that garbage collecting and street cleaning were regarded as the lowest occupations, a fact that had a debasing effect on the social attractiveness of the building and, in consequence, on the rents.

All this was delivered in a quiet tone of voice, with reasonable argumentation, and made sense. The annoyance over the jacket had long been forgotten, merely continuing to smolder in the Au. who, involuntarily fingering his beloved garment, found there was considerable damage to the interlining and, further more, could feel that the tear in his shirt caused by the Italian boy had got bigger. But for all that there were good tea, cheese pastries, cigarettes, there was still the superb view through the picture window, and there was something reassuring about the fact that Werner Hoyser was constantly confirming his brother’s statements by means of rhythmic nods, in a kind of scansion of the periods, commas, hyphens, and semicolons—the result being a blend of psychedelic and jazz elements that seemed to harmonize remarkably well.

Here we must comment on the empathy of Werner Hoyser, who no doubt felt that the Au., brimful as he was of such lower-middle-class motivation as discretion, would dearly like to broach a topic that was on the tip of his tongue: Lotte Hoyser, who was, after all, the mother of these two self-assured young men.

So it was he—Werner—who did not shrink from broaching the subject of this “regrettable and unfortunately total estrangement”; there should be no pretense, he felt, one should analyze the fact in a businesslike manner, perform a psychic if painful operation, since he knew that contact existed between the Au. and his mother, possibly even mutual understanding, whereas the mutual understanding between him, his brother, Grandfather, and the Au. was, as a result of a “regrettable but in fact trivial occurrence,” now “out of balance.” He wanted to make the point that he was totally incapable of understanding
why a person should prefer a worn-out tweed jacket from a third-rate manufacturer, but he had been brought up in the tradition of tolerance and was prepared to exercise that tolerance, even if only because of the Rhineland motto “Live and let live”; he was also incapable of understanding the very obvious antipathy toward such a popular and ubiquitous automobile as the VW, he had himself acquired a VW for his wife as a second car, and when his son Otto, now twelve, graduated in another six or seven years and started going to university or began his military service, he was going to buy a VW as a third car. Well, never mind all that, now about his mother.