2

THE UNCLE

Karl soon got used to his new circumstances in his uncle’s house, and his uncle was also very kind to him in every little matter, so Karl never had to learn from bitter experience, which is the lot of so many when they begin a new life in a new country.

Karl’s room was on the sixth floor of a building, whose five lower floors, and three more which were subterranean, were taken up by his uncle’s business concern. The light that came into his room through two windows and a balcony door never ceased to astound Karl when he emerged from his little bedroom in the morning. Think of where he might have had to live, if he’d climbed ashore as a poor little immigrant! His uncle, from his knowledge of the immigration laws, even thought it highly probable that he might not have been admitted into the United States at all, but would have been sent straight back again, never mind the fact that he no longer had a home. Because one couldn’t look for pity here, and what Karl had read about America was perfectly correct in this regard; here the fortunate few seemed quite content to enjoy their good fortune with only the pampered faces of their friends for company.

A narrow balcony ran along the entire length of the room. But what would probably have been the highest vantage point in Karl’s hometown here did not afford much more than a view of a single street, which ran in a dead straight line between two rows of lopped-off houses until it vanished in the distance where the massive forms of a cathedral loomed out of the haze. In the morning and evening, and in his dreams at night, that street was always full of swarming traffic. Seen from above, it appeared to be a swirling kaleidoscope of distorted human figures and the roofs of vehicles of all kinds, from which a new and amplified and wilder mixture of noise, dust and smells arose, and all this was held and penetrated by a mighty light, that was forever being scattered, carried off and eagerly returned by the multitudes of objects, and that seemed so palpable to the confused eye that it was like a sheet of glass spread out over the street that was being continually and violently smashed.

Cautious as the uncle was in all things, he urged Karl for the moment, in all seriousness, to avoid all manner of commitments. He was to absorb and examine everything, but not allow himself to be captured by it. The first days of a European in America were like a new birth, and while Karl shouldn’t be afraid, one did get used to things here faster than when entering the human world from beyond, he should bear in mind that his own initial impression did stand on rather shaky feet, and he shouldn’t allow them any undue influence over subsequent judgements, with the help of which, after all, he meant to live his life. He himself had known new arrivals, who, instead of sticking by these useful guidelines, would for instance stand on the balcony for days on end, staring down into the street like lost sheep. That was certain disorientation! Such solitary inactivity, gazing down on an industrious New York day, might be permitted to a visitor, and perhaps even, with reservations, recommended to him, but for someone who would be staying here it was catastrophic, one could safely say, even if it was a slight exaggeration. And the uncle actually pulled a face each time when, in the course of one of his visits, which he made at unpredictable times but always once a day, he happened to find Karl on the balcony. Karl soon realized this, and so he denied himself, as far as possible, the pleasure of standing out on the balcony.

After all, it was far from being the only pleasure in his life. In his room there was an American writing desk of the very finest sort, one of the kind his father had been longing for for years, and had tried to find at an affordably cheap price at various auctions, without ever having been able to afford one with his small means. Of course his desk was nothing like those so-called American desks that turn up at European auctions. For instance the top part of it had a hundred different compartments of all sizes, so that even the President of the Union would have found room for each of his files in it, but even better than that, it had an adjuster at the side, so that by turning a handle one could rearrange and adjust the compartments in whatever way one wanted or needed. Thin lateral partitions slowly descended to form the floors of newly created compartments or the ceilings of enlarged ones; with just one turn of the handle, the appearance of the top would be completely transformed, and one could do it either slowly or at incredible speed, depending on how one turned the handle. It was a very modern invention, but it reminded Karl vividly of the nativity scenes that were demonstrated to astonished children at the Christmas Fairs at home. Karl himself, warmly dressed, had often stood in front of these nativities, and had incessantly compared the turning of the handle, which an old man performed, with the effect it had on the scene, the halting progress of the three Kings, the shining star of Bethlehem and the shy life in the holy stable. And always it had seemed to him as though his mother standing behind him wasn’t following the events closely enough and he had pulled her to him, until he felt her against his back, and he had drawn her attention to various more subtle manifestations by loud shouts, say a rabbit that was alternately sitting up and making to run in the long grass at the front, until his mother put her hand over his mouth and presumably reverted to her previous dullness. Of course the desk hadn’t been designed to recall such things, but the history of inventions was probably full of such vague connections as Karl’s memory. Unlike Karl, the uncle was not at all pleased with the desk, but he had wanted to buy Karl a proper desk, and all desks were now fitted with this contraption, which had the added advantage of being inexpensive to mount on older desks. Still, the uncle kept urging Karl preferably to avoid using the adjuster at all; to back up his advice the uncle claimed that the machinery was very delicate, easily broken and very expensive to repair. It wasn’t hard to see that such claims were mere excuses if one reminded oneself that it was very easy to immobilize the adjuster, which the uncle never did.

In the first few days, there were of course frequent conversations between Karl and his uncle, and Karl had mentioned that he had played the piano at home, not much but with enjoyment, although he only knew the basics, which his mother had taught him. Karl was well aware that to mention this was tantamount to asking for a piano, but he had already seen enough to know that his uncle didn’t need to economize. Even so, his wish was not immediately fulfilled, and it wasn’t till a week later that the uncle said, and it sounded like a reluctant admission, that the piano had arrived and if Karl wanted to he could supervise its move up to his room. It was an undemanding job, but really no more demanding than the moving itself, because the building had its very own service lift, in which a whole removal van might have fitted with ease, and this lift carried the piano up to Karl’s room. Karl could have gone on the same lift as the piano and the removal men, but since there was an ordinary lift just next to the other, standing empty, he took that, using a lever to remain constantly at the same level as the other lift, and looking through the glass walls at the beautiful instrument that was now his own. When it was installed in his room, and he played a few notes on it, he was seized with such a crazy joy that instead of continuing to play he leaped up and gazed at it from a distance, standing with his hands on his hips. The acoustics of the room were excellent, and that helped to take away his initial unease at living in an iron house. In fact, though the building might look very iron from outside, inside it one had not the slightest sense of its iron construction, and no one could have pointed to any features of the decor that were anything other than completely cosy. In the early days, Karl had high hopes of his piano playing, and while lying in bed, at any rate, he thought it might have a direct effect upon his American environment. But it did sound very peculiar when, with the windows letting in the noisy air from outside, he played an old ballad from his homeland, which the soldiers sing to each other in the evenings as they lean out through the barrack windows gazing at the dark square outside – but then, when he looked out on to the street, it was just the same, a tiny piece, no more, of a gigantic circulatory system that couldn’t be arrested without understanding all the forces operating on its totality. The uncle put up with his piano playing and made no objection to it, especially as, quite unprompted, Karl only rarely allowed himself the pleasure of it. Yes, he even brought Karl the scores of American marches and of course of the national anthem, too, but it couldn’t just have been love of music that made him one day ask Karl perfectly seriously if he wouldn’t care to learn the violin or the French horn as well.

But naturally Karl’s first and most important task was learning English. A young teacher from a trade school would appear in Karl’s room at seven in the morning, to find him already seated at his desk, among his notebooks, or else walking up and down the room, committing something to memory. Karl understood that he couldn’t learn English quickly enough, and that his rapid progress at it was also his best way of pleasing his uncle. At first the English content of his early conversations with his uncle had been confined to hello and goodbye, but he was soon able to increase the English portion of their conversations, and also to move on to more personal subjects. The first time Karl recited an American poem to his uncle one evening – the subject of it was a conflagration – it made him quite sombre with satisfaction. They both stood by a window in Karl’s room, the uncle looked out into the darkened sky, and in sympathy with the verse, he slowly and rhythmically clapped his hands, while Karl stood beside him with expressionless eyes and struggled with the difficult poem.

The more Karl’s English improved, the more inclined the uncle was to introduce him to his circle of acquaintances, decreeing that his English teacher should always accompany Karl. The very first acquaintance to whom Karl was introduced was a slim young man of astounding suppleness, whom the uncle ushered into Karl’s room with a whole shower of compliments. He was obviously one of those millionaire’s sons who from their parents’ point of view have gone wrong, and whose life was such that no normal person could have followed so much as a single day of it without pain. As though in recognition of this, there was about his lips and eyes a continual smile for the good fortune that seemed to have been granted to him, to those he met and indeed to the whole world.

The young man, one Mr Mak, suggested, with the uncle’s express approval, that they go out riding together at half past five in the morning, either in a riding school, or in the open air. Karl was a little loath to agree to this as he had never in his life sat on a horse, and wanted to learn to ride a little first, but in the face of the urgings of his uncle and Mack, both of whom said it was just for pleasure and a healthy form of exercise, nothing artistic, he finally agreed. It meant, unfortunately, that he had to get out of bed by half past four, and he often regretted that, because he seemed to be afflicted by a veritable sleeping sickness here, probably a consequence of having to be on his toes all day – but once in his bathroom, he quickly got over his regret. The sieve of a shower extended over the whole length and breadth of the bathtub – which of his former schoolmates, however rich, had anything like that, still less all to himself – and Karl would lie stretched out, he could even spread his arms in the tub, and let streams of warm, hot, warm and finally ice-cold water descend on him, all or part, just as he liked. As he lay there in a kind of half-sleep, what he liked best was to feel the last few drops falling on his closed eyelids, and then open them, and let the water run down his face.

Waiting for him at the riding school, where the lofty automobile of his uncle dropped him, would be his English teacher, while Mak invariably only turned up later. He could afford to, because the truly animated riding would only begin once he was there. Didn’t the horses leap out of their doze on his entry, didn’t the whip crack more percussively through the arena, while the surrounding gallery was suddenly populated by various spectators, grooms, riding pupils, or whoever they were? Karl used the time before Mack’s arrival for some very basic riding exercises. There was a long tall man who could reach the highest horseback almost without raising his arm, and he always gave Karl that fifteen-minute preparation. Karl was not overly successful with him, a pretext for learning English lamentations, which he kept uttering in a breathless way during this tuition to his English teacher, who was always leaning on the same doorpost, generally dog-tired. But almost all his frustration with riding would disappear when Mak arrived. The tall man was dismissed, and soon nothing would be heard in the still half-dark hall except the sound of galloping horses, and little was seen except Mak’s raised arm as he gave Karl some order. After a delightful half an hour of this had passed almost like sleep they called a halt, Mak was in a tearing rush, he said goodbye to Karl patting him on the cheek if he were particularly pleased with his performance, and disappeared, in too much of a hurry even to go out through the door with Karl. Karl then took the teacher in his car, and they drove to their English lesson, usually by some roundabout way, because the big street, which actually led straight from the uncle’s house to the riding school, was so choked with traffic that they would have lost too much time. He didn’t have the company of the English teacher for very much longer, because Karl reproached himself for dragging the tired man along to riding school to no purpose, as the English communication with Mak was on a very simple level, and so he asked his uncle to relieve the teacher of this duty. After some thought, the uncle agreed.

It took rather a long time before his uncle decided to give Karl any insight at all into the nature of his business, though Karl often asked him about it. It was a sort of commissioning and forwarding business, of a kind that Karl thought probably didn’t even exist in Europe. The actual business consisted of intermediate trade, but not delivering goods from producers to consumers or even to retailers, but the supplying of goods and raw materials to the great factory cartels, and from one cartel to another. It involved buying, storing, transporting and selling on a vast scale, demanding constant telephone and telegraph communications with its customers. The telegraph room was not smaller but actually larger than the telegraph office of his home town, through which Karl had once walked guided by a fellow pupil who knew his way around it. And wherever one looked in the telephone room, the doors of telephone booths were continually opening and closing, and the sound of so many telephones ringing was quite bewildering. The uncle opened the door of the nearest booth, and in the fizzing electric light sat an employee, quite indifferent to the sound of the door, his head gripped by a steel band that clamped the headphones to his ears. His right arm lay on a little table, as though it was particularly heavy, and only the fingers holding a pencil moved with inhuman speed and fluency. He spoke very sparingly into the tube and one often saw that he wanted to make some objection to the speaker, or to ask him some question, but certain words he heard forced him instead, before he could say anything, to lower his eyes and write. It wasn’t his job to talk, as the uncle quietly explained to Karl, because the information that he was gathering was also simultaneously being taken down by two other employees and then collated, so that errors were as far as possible eliminated. Just as Karl and his uncle were stepping out of the door, an apprentice slipped in and emerged with the completed message on a piece of paper. People were criss-crossing the middle of the floor, in all directions, at great speed. No one offered a greeting, greetings had been abolished, each one fell into the tracks of the man ahead of him and kept his eyes on the floor, across which he wanted to make as rapid progress as possible, or else he picked up, at a glance, single words or figures from the fluttering piece of paper he held in his hand.

‘You really have achieved a lot,’ said Karl, on one of his visits to the business, the full inspection of which must take many days, merely to take in each individual department.

‘And, you know, I set it all up myself thirty years ago. I owned a little store in the harbour district, and if five chests were unloaded there in the course of a day, that was a lot, and I would go home feeling very full of myself. Today I own the third largest warehouse in the port, and that shop now serves as the canteen and tool room for the sixty-fifth group of my dockworkers.’

‘It’s like a miracle,’ said Karl.

‘Things develop very fast over here,’ said the uncle, terminating the conversation.

One day his uncle turned up just as it was time for dinner, which Karl was about to eat by himself as usual, and told him to get into a dark suit and eat with him and a couple of business friends of his. While Karl was changing in the room next door, the uncle sat down at his desk and looked through an English exercise Karl had just completed, slammed his hand down on the desk and called out, ‘Really excellent!’ His dressing seemed to go better when he heard that praise, but in fact he was now pretty confident of his English.

In his uncle’s dining-room, which he remembered from the evening of his first arrival, two large fat gentlemen rose to greet them, the one was a certain Green, the other a certain Pollunder as became clear during the conversation. It was his uncle’s habit never to say very much by way of introduction, and to leave it to Karl to find out essential or interesting things about people. Over dinner, only private business matters were discussed – it was a good opportunity for Karl to master some business expressions – and Karl was left in peace to get on with his dinner, like a child for whom the most important thing is that it should eat its fill, but afterwards Mr Green leaned across to Karl, and evidently at pains to speak slowly and clearly, asked Karl about his first impressions of America. In the deathly silence that followed Karl replied, giving the occasional look at his uncle, pretty fully and tried to please his listeners by using some New Yorkish expressions. At one such expression all three gentlemen burst out laughing and Karl was afraid he had made some blunder, but no, he had, as Mr Pollunder explained, said something very felicitous. In fact, he seemed to conceive a special fondness for Karl and while the uncle and Mr Green returned to their business discussion Mr Pollunder had Karl move his chair closer to him, first asking him questions about his name, where he was from and the journey here, and then, to let him relax, he talked hurriedly, coughing and laughing, about himself and his daughter, with whom he lived on a little estate outside New York where he was only ever able to spend the evenings because he was a banker and his work kept him in the city all day. Karl was cordially invited to come out to this country estate, such a recent American as Karl must surely need to recover from New York from time to time. Karl asked his uncle for permission to accept this invitation, and his uncle, apparently happily, gave it, though without stipulating or raising the question of a date, as Karl and Mr Pollunder had expected him to do.

But the very next day Karl was summoned to one of his uncle’s offices – there were ten of them, just in this one building – where he found his uncle and Mr Pollunder lounging rather silently in two armchairs. ‘Mr Pollunder,’ said his uncle, whom it was difficult to recognize in the evening gloom, ‘Mr Pollunder has come to take you up to his estate, as we discussed yesterday.’ ‘I didn’t know it was going to be for today,’ replied Karl, ‘otherwise I should have been prepared.’ ‘If you’re not ready, then perhaps we’d better put off your visit for another time,’ said the uncle. ‘What kind of preparations!’ exclaimed Mr Pollunder. ‘A young man is always prepared.’ ‘It isn’t on his account,’ said the uncle to his guest, ‘but he would have to go up to his room, and that would delay you.’ ‘There’s plenty of time for that too,’ said Mr Pollunder, ‘I allowed for a delay, and left work early.’ ‘You see’, said the uncle, ‘the kind of inconvenience your visit has caused already.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ said Karl, ‘but I’ll be back in a trice’ and was just on his way. ‘Don’t be in too much of a hurry,’ said Mr Pollunder. ‘You haven’t caused me the slightest inconvenience, on the contrary your visit will make me very happy.’ ‘You’ll miss your riding-lesson tomorrow, have you cancelled that yet?’ ‘No,’ said Karl. The visit he had been looking forward to was becoming a burden, ‘I didn’t know –’ ‘But you still intend to go?’ the uncle asked. The amiable Mr Pollunder came to his assistance. ‘We can stop by at the riding school on our way and sort it out.’ ‘That’s an idea,’ said the uncle. ‘But Mak will still be expecting you.’ ‘Not exactly expecting me,’ said Karl, ‘but he will be there.’ ‘Well?’ said the uncle, as though Karl’s reply hadn’t made the slightest justification. Once again Mr Pollunder intervened: ‘Klara’ – this was Mr Pollunder’s daughter – ‘is expecting him too, tonight, and surely she takes precedence over Mak?’ ‘Absolutely,’ said the uncle. ‘So run off to your room,’ and he banged the armrest of his chair, almost involuntarily, a few times. Karl was already at the door when the uncle fired one more question at him: ‘But you will be back in time for your English lesson tomorrow morning?’ ‘Oh!’ Mr Pollunder exclaimed, and spun round in his chair in astonishment, inasmuch as his bulk made it possible. ‘can’t he even stay for tomorrow? I’d bring him back on the morning of the day after.’ ‘That’s out of the question,’ replied the uncle. ‘I can’t permit his studies to be affected. Later on, once he’s established in an orderly, professional way of life, I’ll be very glad to allow him to accept such kind and flattering invitations as yours even for longer periods.’ ‘What contradictions!’ thought Karl. Mr Pollunder was sad now. ‘It’s almost not worth it, just for one evening.’ ‘That was what I thought too,’ said the uncle. ‘But you have to take what you can get,’ said Mr Pollunder, laughing again. ‘I’m waiting for you,’ he called to Karl, who, as his uncle didn’t say anything this time, rushed off. By the time he got back, ready to go, he found his uncle had gone, and only Mr Pollunder was left in the office. Mr Pollunder happily shook him by both hands, as though to be sure that Karl really would be going with him. Hot himself from rushing about, Karl shook both Mr Pollunder’s hands, he was looking forward to going on the excursion. ‘Was uncle really not angry at me for going?’ ‘Oh no! He didn’t really mean it. It’s just that he cares about your education.’ ‘Did he tell you himself that he didn’t mean what he said earlier?’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Pollunder in a drawn-out way, to prove that he was incapable of lying. ‘It’s strange how reluctant he was to give me permission to visit you, even though you’re his friend.’ But even Mr Pollunder, though he didn’t admit it, couldn’t find an explanation either and both pondered the matter for a long time afterwards as they drove through the warm evening in Mr Pollunder’s car, though their conversation was on other things.

They sat close together, and Mr Pollunder held Karl’s hand in his while he talked. Karl wanted to hear all about Miss Klara, it was as though he felt impatient on account of the long drive, and believed that by listening to Mr Pollunder’s stories he would be able to arrive earlier than he really could. Although he had never before driven through the streets of New York at night and the noise pulsing over pavements and roads and changing direction like a whirlwind was more like a distinct element than something caused by men, as Karl tried to follow Mr Pollunder’s every word, he concentrated all his attention on Mr Pollunder’s dark waistcoat, which had a gold chain calmly draped across it. From the streets where people, showing an open fear of arriving late, hurried their steps and drew up outside theatres in speeding vehicles, they passed some transitional areas and then reached the suburbs, where their car kept being diverted off on to side-streets by mounted policemen, as the main thoroughfares were all occupied by striking metalworkers, and only the most essential traffic could be allowed to pass at the crossroads. When their car emerged from one of the dark echoey side-streets on to one of these main avenues that was as broad as a whole square they saw in endless perspective on either side of them a great column of people walking in tiny steps, their massed voices more in unison than a single human voice. In the empty lanes one occasionally saw a policeman on a horse, motionless, or the carriers of flags and banners spanning the whole street, or a workers’ leader surrounded by colleagues and shop stewards or an electric tram car, which hadn’t managed to flee in time, and was now standing there dark and empty with the driver and conductor sitting on the platform. A long way away from the actual demonstration stood little groups of onlookers, all of them reluctant to leave the spot, even though they had no idea of what was going on. But Karl rested happily against the arm Mr Pollunder had thrown around him, the conviction that he would shortly be a welcome guest in a well-lit, high-walled, dog-guarded country house making him very happy, and even if he could no longer, on account of his growing sleepiness, follow every word of what Mr Pollunder was saying to him, he did still pull himself together from time to time and rubbed his eyes to check whether Mr Pollunder had noticed his sleepiness because that was what he wanted to avoid at all costs.