About the Author

Scribe Publications
MARRIED LIFE

David Vogel was born in 1891 in Satanov, Podolia (now Ukraine), and when World War I broke out he was living in Vienna, where he was arrested as an enemy alien. He emigrated to Tel Aviv in 1929, but left for Berlin after a year, and later settled in Paris. After the outbreak of World War II, he was imprisoned by the French as an Austrian citizen, and later by the Nazis as a Jew. In 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz, where he perished.

Title Page

PART ONE

PART ONE

The Meeting

1

1

In the passage the tap woke up with a roar. In an instant the noise filled all the space around, penetrating the rooms, which were still steeped in the half-light of dawn, and invading the sleeping body of Rudolf Gurdweill.

Perhaps the noise of the tap triggered off an unpleasant dream in Gurdweill a moment before waking, for the first feeling struggling inside him as his senses cleared was one of reluctance: probably the result of the dream, which remained there inside him, on the other side of consciousness.

For a moment Gurdweill lay listening with his eyes closed. But in the meantime the silence had returned and he heard only the click of a door closing in the corridor, picking it up belatedly — in the abstract, as it were — after the sound itself had already faded and died.

Then he turned to the windows and opened his eyes. He saw that the windows were already quite pale with the light of the approaching morning, which immediately increased his desire to go back to sleep. And as if he were fleeing from some danger, he quickly turned onto his right side and pulled the quilt over his head.

Down below, in Kleine Stadtgutgasse, a heavy wagon trundled past slowly, creaking mercilessly and shaking the windowpanes like an earthquake. ‘A coal-wagon from Nordbahnhof,’ concluded Gurdweill. Now he would never be able to go back to sleep. The creaking narrowed down to two or three maddeningly monotonous sounds, which went on repeating themselves with an idiotic obstinacy in his drowsy mind, although the wagon was quite far away by now, until it seemed to him that they were coming not from outside but from some corner of his own soul. In a sudden panic he jumped up and sat on the bed. He glanced around the room, which was not large, and his eyes fell on the sofa to his right, where his friend Ulrich was sleeping with his face turned to the wall. At the sight of his sleeping friend he felt suddenly and inexplicably wide awake. And the memory of what he had to do today came crowding into his mind, together with a feeling of oppression. ‘There’s nothing for it: I’ll have to go there whether I like it or not,’ he said to himself in resignation. He still had time to spare and he lay down in bed again, hoping that he might fall asleep for a little while. But as if to spite him his thoughts went on turning of their own accord around the same unpleasant business, and he could not stop them.

The room was filling with the fine, clear morning of an early spring day. Ulrich sat up and said something in a lazy whisper. Gurdweill pretended to be asleep. He did not feel like talking to anybody now. Through his half-closed lids he watched his friend dressing with negligent, mechanical movements that for some reason seemed to him jerky, absurd, and disconnected. ‘Man is a ridiculous creature,’ he concluded, ‘and his absurdity is particularly apparent when he is by himself …’

In the end it became difficult for him to go on lying there. He imagined the city streets bathed in the early-spring sunshine, and he wanted to be outside. Impatiently he waited for Ulrich to go to work. But the latter, as if to spite him, moved around more than usual this morning, going out into the corridor several times, taking a collar out of the wardrobe, putting it back and taking another one instead, and spending about half an hour cleaning his clothes.

It was about eight o’clock when Ulrich left. Gurdweill leaped out of bed and went over to the window. At the sight of the azure-blue April morning invading the little street, he was seized by a fit of high spirits. On a day like this it was good to be alive, to move about, to breathe. For the moment Gurdweill’s worries lost their sting; everything seemed easier. He returned to the bed, where his clothes were laid out on a chair, and quickly began to get dressed.

About half an hour later Gurdweill was ready, and he descended the stairs from the third floor with a buoyant step. Outside, he was enveloped in the mild morning air, which had a distinctive, undefinable smell, vaguely calling to mind pretty girls who had not yet reached maturity. Everything seemed renewed. The pavement had already been sprayed, and the tiny puddles between the cracks were invisibly evaporating and adding freshness to the air. The wagons, the cars, the trams, the terrace houses, and the people too — everything shone joyfully in the pristine rays of the sun. Nursemaids in frilly caps and starched white aprons pushed their carriages with a kind of secret pride, as if the bonny, smiling babies were the fruit of their own wombs. Gurdweill walked along Nordbahnstrasse and then turned into Praterstrasse. The shop windows were so seductive that he felt a pressing desire to go into each and every one of them and buy all kinds of things, whether he needed them or not, to get into conversation with all the shop assistants and joke with them light-heartedly. And another desire awoke in him too: to stand in the middle of the street and throw a cascade of gold and silver coins at the street urchins, and to rejoice in their happiness. But all this was beyond his powers; all he had in his pocket was one schilling and a few groschen. And so Gurdweill strolled down the broad, bustling Praterstrasse, looking into the eyes of the passers-by with exaggerated friendliness, as if he had some glad tidings to bring to each and every one of them, until he reached Ferdinand’s Bridge. He approached a crowd of people who were clustering at the railing, pushing forward and looking down.

‘A young girl,’ said a bulky, clean-shaven man, turning to his neighbour. ‘She couldn’t have been more than eighteen. I saw her with my own eyes when they pulled her out.’ He said it with a certain complacency, as if he were boasting that he had seen the Japanese emperor with his own eyes.

‘Alive?’ a reedy voice enquired.

‘Not a chance! Dead as a doornail.’

‘This generation!’ interrupted a middle-aged woman in a faded old hat, carrying a bag in her hand. ‘They’re all teetering on the edge. Nothing means anything to them: either they kill themselves or they kill each other. Yesterday a man killed his wife in our own building. Stabbed her to death in broad daylight! She was gone in a second, the poor thing. She never made a sound.’

Gurdweill pushed his way to the railing, where two policemen could be seen on the embankment below, standing guard over the drowned girl draped in black, and preventing the circle of curious onlookers from coming any closer. Despite the sudden weakness that had flooded him, Gurdweill went down to the embankment and pushed through the crowd until he was close to the dead girl. Underneath the black cloth, which was not big enough to cover her body, her auburn hair peeped, matted and lifeless, along with a bit of pale-blue forehead, which seemed as hard as granite; and on the other side, the toe of a brown shoe, wet and slimy, which had obviously been in the water for many days. The swelling under the cloth seemed big enough for two bodies, and the ground around it was soaked with water. Gurdweill could not tear his eyes away from the black-draped lump. His heart pounded violently.

In the meantime the hearse arrived and swept the onlookers aside. When they lifted the body, the head of the drowned girl was exposed for a moment. There was a scar on the left cheekbone, but the skin of the scar was no different in colour from the rest of the face. The nose seemed excessively long to Gurdweill. ‘There’s no need for the nose to be so long’ — the pointless thought flashed through his brain, when the wagon suddenly moved off and someone dug his elbow into his ribs, causing him to feel a short, dull pain. Gurdweill roused himself and remembered that he was in a hurry. He glanced once more at the wet ground in front of him and the smooth waters of the Danube reflecting the blue sky and scraps of white clouds, and began climbing the steps with the dispersing crowd. He suddenly felt very tired, as if after back-breaking physical labour.

‘It’s no good to be dead on a beautiful spring day like this, young sir, no good at all!’ suddenly exclaimed an old woman, stooped over and walking at his side. And she immediately added, as if it were a sure remedy against death: ‘And now I must hurry home to make dinner for my sons.’

But the beauty of the spring day had been spoiled for Gurdweill. With downcast eyes, his hands stuck in the pockets of his open coat, he walked gloomily along the asphalt pavement by the canal. Within a few minutes he reached the end of Rotenturmstrasse and turned into it. Outside the nearby booksellers, he came to a halt and, without interest, read the names of some of the new books in the window; then he glanced at his watch, saw that it was a quarter past ten, and resolutely entered the shop.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ asked a red-headed young man with black horn-rimmed spectacles.

Gurdweill asked to see Dr Kreindel.

The young man disappeared into the passage opposite the door and immediately returned.

‘Dr Kreindel is busy at the moment. If you would be good enough to wait a few minutes, over here,’ and he indicated a chair.

This delay was not at all to Gurdweill’s liking. He hated waiting more than anything. But he was eager to get the whole thing behind him, and so he sat down on the chair, firmly resolved not to wait for more than fifteen minutes.

There were no customers in the bookshop. From time to time the red-headed assistant climbed a ladder and rummaged busily among the rows of volumes on the shelves, bringing down a pile of books and placing them on the tables below. Next to the entrance, in the cashier’s booth, a young woman sat reading. She paid no attention at all to Gurdweill, who was sitting not far from her. In order to pass the time, he tried to read the names of the volumes on the shelves opposite him, on the other side of the long table stacked with books, straining his eyes in the effort. From outside, the muffled roar of the city reached his ears. Without any obvious connection, he suddenly remembered the wet ground on the banks of the Danube after they had lifted the body of the dead girl, and his heart contracted. Sitting here and waiting suddenly seemed completely superfluous and pointless. He placed his squashed brown hat on his knees and began rummaging through his pockets for a cigarette, but found nothing. Unthinkingly he turned to look at the young cashier. ‘She seems completely absorbed in her book,’ he said to himself. ‘I wonder if I can distract her by staring hard enough.’ He fixed his eyes in a concentrated stare on a certain point on her cheek, close to the ear. After a moment the cashier really did become distracted: she passed her hand over her dark-gold hair, cut like a boy’s, rubbed her ear, and in the end she turned to Gurdweill and looked at him absent-mindedly. From the expression on her face, it looked as if she were trying to remember something she had forgotten. Then she began reading again. Pleased with his experiment, Gurdweill stood up, as if inspired by a new courage, and informed the assistant that he had no time to wait any longer.

The assistant led him through a narrow passageway, lit by an electric bulb and stacked with boxes reaching to the ceiling on both sides, and, after knocking briefly, ushered him into the owner’s office. Dr Kreindel, who was sitting behind a large desk facing the door, jumped up at their entrance as if bitten by a snake.

‘How many times have I told you not to disturb me while I’m working!’

‘The gentleman has already been waiting for some time,’ the assistant said apologetically, indicating Gurdweill.

It was only now, apparently, that Dr Kreindel noticed Gurdweill’s presence. After dismissing the assistant with a sweep of his hand, he gave Gurdweill an appraising look and asked him what he wanted, with a trace of his former anger still in his voice.

‘My name is Gurdweill,’ he responded dryly. ‘I presume that Dr Mark Astel has already spoken to you about me.’

‘Ah, yes, of course!’ he said, immediately changing his tone and exposing two gold teeth in the front of his mouth as he spoke. ‘Dr Astel, I remember perfectly. Please sit down.’ He indicated a chair next to the desk. ‘So, you want to work for my firm! Very good. What does Goethe say: The love of books is a clear sign of … et cetera, et cetera … You write yourself, if I’m not mistaken?’

‘No,’ Gurdweill cut him short. ‘I don’t write at all.’

‘No? I was told … Never mind, never mind, it doesn’t matter in the least. On the contrary, it’s even better. Much better. Kleist says: Writers are always … et cetera, et cetera. I’m sure you know the end of the quotation …’

Gurdweill sat looking at Dr Kreindel’s fat face, from which it was hard to tell whether he was speaking seriously or making a joke. The man’s sharp little eyes, which lurked under a low brow, were extremely disagreeable to him. An oppressive feeling gave rise to the idea that he would have to spend eight hours a day with this man, day after day, for half a year, a year, and perhaps even longer. He felt a sudden urge to spit on the whole business and get up and leave immediately. But he stayed where he was. He had been out of a job for six months: his sources of loans were running out. He didn’t have the courage to reject the possibility of employment out of hand.

Dr Kreindel went on. ‘I imagine you are a student of philosophy, sir. A very interesting subject! I love philosophy; I studied it for three semesters … And I’m ashamed to admit that once upon a time I even wrote a book on the link between Kant and Spinoza … Don’t be alarmed, the book was never published. A youthful peccadillo with no harmful consequences. In any case I have remained faithful to philosophy to this day. My stocks consist mainly of books on philosophy. You’ll find a rich collection here, and all at your disposal, my dear sir, all at your disposal.’

Gurdweill suddenly succumbed to an attack of growing melancholy, for which he could see no evident reason. Impatiently he turned to the window on his right, which overlooked a smallish courtyard, a hand-barrow with its shafts resting on the ground, and a blind wall whose upper half was illuminated by yellow sunshine. He felt quite indifferent to the results of the interview. All he wanted was to be far away from here, from this room with its stale, mouldy smell, as if it had not been aired for years, and from this peculiar creature with his meaningless chatter and fictitious quotations, for whom he already felt a definite hostility, as if he had known and disliked him for years. Coming to a sudden decision to put an end to the interview at once, he turned to face his interlocutor. And then something very strange happened to Gurdweill: instead of Dr Kreindel’s face he saw the alabaster face of the drowned girl, as he had seen it before on the banks of the canal; he saw it quite clearly with the scar on the cheekbone and the matted auburn hair. A shiver ran down his spine. He stood up and sat down again. He looked closely at Dr Kreindel’s face, and this time he saw it as it was, with its long nose and dark, fleshy chin.

‘My nerves are playing tricks on me,’ he said to himself. ‘That’s all it is — nerves.’ Then he remembered the fictitious quotations, and a weak smile flashed across his face as it occurred to him to respond with a learned quotation of his own.

‘Yes, indeed,’ he said solemnly, ‘the book trade is a noble calling. As Mitzelberg says: The treasures of the human mind find their salvation … et cetera, et cetera …’

‘Hee-hee, who did you say, Mitzelberg? Well said, sir! Or should I say — well said, Mitzelberg!’ And suddenly coming to the point: ‘The matter has not yet been decided. Concerning your employment in my firm, that is to say. First we have to decide if we need additional staff. If you will be kind enough to drop by in a few days’ time — in two weeks’ time, shall we say, in the morning — I should be able to give you a definite reply.’

Gurdweill said goodbye and left. He was unwilling to admit to himself how pleased he was at the negative result of the interview. As always in similar circumstances he felt as if he had been saved at the last minute from a prison sentence. He needed a job and he had done his duty. What could he do if fate placed obstacles in his way? If only he didn’t have to feed his accursed stomach!

It was after ten. Gurdweill felt a disagreeable dryness in his mouth, which came, presumably, from his empty stomach. At the same time he was dying to smoke a cigarette. He crossed Rotenturmstrasse and turned into a side street, where he stood still and counted the coins left in his pocket from the day before. Then he counted them again, although he already knew exactly how much he had. The schilling would do for a simple meal, and the rest for cigarettes. He bought a packet of cigarettes and lit one. For a moment he considered going home to work, but immediately decided against it. It would be a shame to lose a single minute of this lovely day. He found himself passing a little park and sat down on a bench. He leaned back luxuriously and put his hat down next to him.

Beside him sat a ragged old man with a mangy grey beard, making himself a cigarette from the filthy butts lying on a crumpled old newspaper in his lap. Absorbed in his task, with his head bent over the newspaper, he did not notice Gurdweill looking at him.

‘Who knows’ — the thought came unbidden into Gurdweill’s mind — ‘who knows if I won’t end up one day like this old man … And so what if I do? What difference does it make?’

He took out a cigarette and offered it to the old man, saying with exaggerated politeness, ‘Allow me, sir, to offer you a cigarette.’

For a moment the old man seemed to hesitate, then he stretched out his hand and took it. He turned it over and examined it gleefully on all sides, stuck it between his lips and removed it to look at it again, and then tore off a bit of newspaper, wrapped it carefully around the cigarette, and put it in the pocket of his ragged coat.

‘A thousand thanks, young sir! May God reward you! I’ll keep it for tonight, before I go to sleep. That’s when it tastes the best — when I’m in bed at night.

‘Would you believe it,’ he immediately continued, ‘I went to see a doctor once, in the hospital at Neuhaus, a long time ago, ten or twelve years, and he told me to stop smoking. “It’s poison,” he said. He was a clever man. “Every mouthful of smoke you swallow,” he said, “leaves a black spot inside you as big as a thumbnail.” He actually showed me the spot on a white handkerchief. I saw it with my own eyes. But I couldn’t stop smoking. I stopped for half a day and that was the most I could manage.’

And he went back to rolling his cigarette.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

Enjoyed this preview? ❤️ Do not stop here!

Read the complete book free online → 🔗

Continue reading now on BooksBarbecue and discover every page!

Love reading? Bookmark BooksBarbecue.com for more amazing books!

Happy Reading!