The Drinker (5 page)

9

From the point of view of business, my trip to Hamburg was a great success: I was able to buy three truckloads of cordage at an incredibly low price, and we made quite a tidy sum out of this casual deal. Afterwards, I told Magda a lot of tales about how I had had to hunt for the old rope, but actually it had come my way quite by chance, as sometimes happens; I did not have to work for it at all. Still, I had to say something to justify being away for nearly five days. I did not once get drunk in Hamburg, I want to make that perfectly clear. But I got into the habit there of taking a little drink at any hour of the day, even early in the morning, a habit which is perhaps more fatal than an occasional heavy bout of drunkenness. I went about the beautiful city a great deal—the whole business was settled within half an hour on the second day—I went down to the River Alster and the harbour and among the wharves, tramped through the endless halls of the Altona fish market, attended an auction there, travelled out to Ohlsdorf and wandered through the famous cemetery for hours on end, and in between all this I would scuttle in and out of saloons to drink a glass or two of some clear or brown burning liquid. It put me in a good mood, did my stomach good, cheered my heart, allowed me to see the colourful teeming city through happy eyes, in short, it took me out of myself. I went through the days, not quite drunk, indeed very far from any real drunkenness, and yet never really sober; and whereas at the outset I had waited until ten or even eleven for my first tot of schnaps, by the last two days I was quite cheerfully ringing for the chambermaid and ordering her to bring me my first double brandy in bed by eight o’clock already. Breakfast tasted all the better for it.

During the return journey, for which I had provided myself with a good pocket flask, the best of resolutions matured in me. It was clear that I wouldn’t be able to keep on with this habit under Magda’s sharp eye, and after I had just taken a good swig in the toilet on the train, I felt it would be quite easy to give it up. After all it was only one or two little glasses every one or two hours, it ought to be easy enough to wean myself of that. Contrary to my expectation, the journey lasted longer than the contents of my flask, though I thought I had provided amply for it. In our station buffet (where I am not known) I had another couple of drinks and then set off home. I did not forget to buy a box of cachous at the chemists, to cover up the smell of alcohol. For I anticipated that, after such a long absence, a welcoming kiss from Magda would be inevitable. She received me amicably but coolly, she looked quizzically at me and found I had grown stouter, or a little puffy about the face, as she put it. This made me furious, but I didn’t show it. Instead I talked enthusiastically about how I had bought the cordage, about the beautiful city of Hamburg, the cemetery at Ohlsdorf, and also about an organ concert which I had heard (quite by accident) in St. Nicholas’ church. I proved thereby that I hadn’t only been sitting around in bars, but had led an interesting and lively existence and I actually succeeded, to some extent, in cheering up my all-too-serious Magda. She in her turn reported on the way business was going; she had started something new. She had been going out into the country nearly every day in our little car, and had bought up honey from all the bee-keepers, not only the honey they had on hand, but also the yield of the coming rape- and lime-blossom season. She had bought jars and wanted to add to our firm a department for the distribution of honey direct to the consumer. She started to talk to me about the wording of the advertisements and the newspapers in which our honey department was to be advertised.

I could hardly listen. I wasn’t actually tired, but I was so weary of all these things, of this unflagging busy-ness—all for nothing. Because what was the point of selling honey? None. People ate it, and then it was gone. It was like soap bubbles, a shimmering nothing enclosing a little air in a great deal of light. It burst, nothing remained, all was delusion and black magic! Ah, get away with you! Don’t talk so much, don’t natter all the time! Leave me in peace! What are you wearing yourself out for? There are hundreds of thousands and millions of firms in the world; do you think yours is important? It’s absolutely insignificant, even a fly wouldn’t take any notice of it! Yes, if I had some schnaps now, I might be able to listen to you with some attention. I could get some, too. I could get Else to fetch me a whole bottle from the nearest saloon, but it’s not possible because you’re sitting here nattering all the time. Because you’re sitting here in my life and so I can’t do what my life demands. No, no, of course I don’t mean it’s as bad as all that, I quite like her, Magda, but it would be awfully nice if she would just vanish into thin air for a while—the boring, eternally nattering cow!

In the course of this monologue I had talked myself into a towering rage. Now I suddenly stood up and to Magda’s astonishment brusquely remarked that I had a bad headache and wanted to take a walk for a quarter of an hour—no thank you, no company. And with that I was outside already, and it was really all the same to me what she thought or whether I had hurt her feelings again. I turned six or seven corners till I came to a district where I thought I was not known, and went into a little saloon and asked the fat bearded landlord for a double cognac. As I was knocking back the third one, for I wanted to make proper provision for the night, the landlord said slowly, “This is a bit unusual for you, Herr Sommer, I suppose you’ve got a cold, have you?” Angry to find myself so well known, I gave up the idea of a fourth drink and started for home. I sucked my sweet breath cachous and of course I was furious with Magda because she obliged me to drive away the delicious taste of the cognac with such sickly scented sweets.

She was still waiting for me, probably she wanted to inveigle me into further discussion about her boring honey, but I went straight to the bedroom, and only muttered a few sullen words, pretending that I still had a bad headache. Then I quickly fell asleep.

But in the middle of the night, shortly after one o’clock, I stood barefoot in the larder again, in my pyjamas, and emptied in quick succession what was left in the three bottles, and while I had the last bottle at my lips, I realised with a terrible certainty that I was lost, that there was no salvation for me, that I belonged to alcohol, body and soul. Now it was quite immaterial whether I kept up some appearance of seemliness and moral responsibility for a few days or weeks—it was all over, in any case. Let Magda come and catch me drinking. I’d tell her to her face that I’d become a drunkard, and that she had driven me to it, she and her infernal efficiency!

But she didn’t come. So I left the three bottles standing there empty, and put the corks beside them. Let them all know, Magda, Else, everybody, it was all the same to me!

But then, towards morning, I felt so heavy-hearted that I got up again, virtually licked the last few drops out of the necks of the bottles, filled them with water, half- or three-quarters full as the case might be, corked them and put them back in their old place. And so I gained two or three days’ grace.…

10

Following this, I went to the office fairly regularly and did a certain amount of work, not for the pleasure of it, but because it was an old habit not easily broken, and because I felt ashamed of myself in front of Magda. Magda had grown very quiet; we only discussed the most essential things now. The only time we showed any animation was when some third person was present—Hinzpeter or Else or a client. Then we could even joke together, and the good-humoured tone of our early married life seemed to have returned, but hardly had the door shut behind this third person, than we fell silent immediately, my face froze and Magda began to rummage among some papers. During this time she constantly kept near me. Not that she would walk with me to the office, but five or ten minutes later she would appear without fail. The running of the house was left entirely in Else’s hands. Naturally this supervision had not the slightest effect on me, I did as I liked, that is to say, I drank when I wanted to. From my customary small nips I had passed on to taking long pulls out of the bottle. I always kept a bottle in my desk at the office and another in the corner of the bathroom cupboard at home. I enjoyed smuggling these bottles in under Magda’s eyes, as it were, in my brief-case or even in my trousers pocket covered by my jacket. Whenever I replenished my store, I experienced a real feeling of happiness, as if I had grown richer. At the very slightest sign of thirst I could take a drink. At home in the bathroom it was simple enough, but in the office, which Magda shared with me, there were difficulties sometimes. I would sit for several minutes, turning over in my mind some pretext to send her outside. Once, when I couldn’t think of anything, right in her presence I went as far as to set the uncorked bottle on the floor—the desk hid me from sight—and then I dropped my india-rubber and started fussily to look for it, ending up on all fours under the arch of my desk, where, delighted at my own cleverness, I sent a considerable amount of cognac gurgling down my throat.

I changed my mind almost hourly about the extent to which Magda could see through me. As a rule, I was firmly convinced that she guessed nothing, but at other times, when I was bad-tempered and irritable, I was almost certain that she was completely aware of what I was up to. Sometimes I would moodily pace up and down the office, constantly passing Magda’s place; then I was evil, as I called it, not for any special reason, not even on account of Magda, but I was just evil, as downright bad and wicked as a man can be, that’s how evil I was, and I was looking for a pretext to start quarrelling with her. In this quarrel I wanted to find out for certain whether she knew all or nothing, and if she knew all, then I wanted to drop the last pretence of decorum. Right in the presence of my neat, sober, efficient wife, I wanted to get blind raving drunk, to put my feet up on the desk, to sing coarse and dirty songs and use obscene expressions. What utter satisfaction to drag her down into the filth with me, to make her see: this is the one you used to love, and this is what your love has made of him.…

I paced up and down even more rapidly, I no longer felt ashamed, I threw her fierce challenging glances, and then, just before I broke out, she always got up and left the office. But I stared after her, I stared furiously at the brown grained door, I clenched my fists, I ground my teeth. “Run away again, you coward. But that’s what you’ve made of me, you and your efficiency!” Finally I sat down at my desk again, had a good drink, and grew tired and gentle.

If I said that I only went on working from force of habit, that is not quite correct—one should not hide one’s light under a bushel. Through the alcohol, I lost much of my dignified reserve, I could gossip far more freely with my country clients, we slapped each other on the back, told jokes—always looking round to make sure Magda was nowhere about—and thus I managed to bring off a number of unusually advantageous deals. I now liked to do something that I had never done before, something for which I had considered myself too dignified and my firm too respectable; I would go with my country customers into some little saloon, and there, over a scarred lime-wood table on which our glasses left wet rings, we talked a great deal, drank still more, and often I managed to buy at most advantageous prices from my half-drunken clients. When I got back to the office again and notified Hinzpeter of these transactions so that he could enter them into the books, I noticed the looks which this dry little adding-machine exchanged with my wife, but I only laughed.

However, one morning, after a deal in which I had properly soaked the bailiff of a large farm and had talked him into selling me a whole truckload of peas at half the regular market price, well, that morning I heard the sound of excited conversation in the yard, and when I went to the window I saw the bailiff, sober now, talking wildly to my wife and Hinzpeter. I stared through the glass for quite a while, and thought to myself: “Yes, go on talking, be as sober as you like, but you can’t talk away that signature you put on the deal last night!”

Now Magda spoke and he nodded and shook his head and stamped his foot and suddenly he looked across to me and must have seen me behind the glass and, would you believe it, the fellow raised his arm and shook his fist at me, in front of my wife and Hinzpeter, and shouted a term of abuse, that sounded something like “Old swindler!” I waited and waited for Magda to turn the insolent fellow out of the yard, but she only spoke quietly to him and after a while the bailiff let his fist drop and they resumed their discussion. I was disgusted at my wife’s spinelessness, and after a while, as they still went on talking, I sat down at my desk, opened a certain compartment and fortified myself. After a further lapse of time, during which I had sat thinking of nothing, the door opened and Magda came in, looking very pale, a brief-case in her hand. She put the brief-case on the desk, and started to rummage about among the papers, otherwise it was perfectly quiet in our office, and the alcohol went gently around inside me and made me feel peaceful and contented. But suddenly Magda dropped the papers, let her head fall on to the desk and burst wildly into tears. I was perfectly helpless, had no idea what to do, and anyway in my present agreeable condition I was much too lethargic to do anything. I just said rather feebly: “What’s the matter? Do calm yourself, Magda. I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that!”

But she raised her head and started at me with streaming eyes and cried: “It’s too bad! It’s not enough that you’re blind drunk every day, you have to bring the firm into disrepute! Everybody’s saying that we’re not to be trusted any more, and that we’re out to cheat people …”

“Halt, stop, Magda,” I said slowly, and suddenly I was pleased that things had come to a head at last, and I was determined to spare her nothing.

“Halt, stop, Magda,” I said. “Not too much at a time! As far as being blind drunk every day is concerned, I’d like to ask you whether you’ve ever seen me stagger about or heard me stammer? I quite admit I take a little drink now and then, but I can stand it. It helps me to think clearer. People who can’t stand alcohol should avoid it. But that’s not me. Look,” I said slowly, and opened that certain compartment in my desk, “here we have a bottle of brandy that was still full at nine o’clock this morning, and now about a third is gone, a good third, let’s say. But am I staggering about? Can’t I manage my limbs? Am I muddled in the head? I’m ten times clearer than you! I wouldn’t allow any jumped-up muck-ox to call my wife a swindler. I’d knock his teeth in!” I shouted suddenly, and then continued more calmly. “But you went on talking to him, and calmed him down, and if I know you and that frightened old hen Hinzpeter, you either washed out that deal with the peas or else raised the price.”

I looked at her ironically.

“Of course we did,” she cried, and now she dried her tears, and looked at me without love or affection. “Of course we did. We’ve cancelled the deal, but we’ve lost a good client for ever.”

“Is that so?” I answered, still more ironically. “You’ve cancelled the deal. Of course, I’m just the lowest office boy here, and what I put my name to is just a scrap of paper! I’ll tell you one thing, Magda. If Mr Bailiff Schmidt of the Fliederhof doesn’t fulfil his agreement to the last hundredweight, I’ll summons him, and I’ll win my case. Because an agreement’s an agreement, any lawyer will tell you that. And if he has accepted my low offer, that’s his fault, not mine. I didn’t make him drunk, but he tried to make me drunk, and if he fell into his own trap, it’s not my fault. And, Magda,” I said, and now I got up from my chair, “I’d have you know that I’m the boss here, and if agreements are going to be cancelled, I’m to be asked, and no one else. It doesn’t suit me that you play yourself up here, and try to ride roughshod over me, with all this talk about being blind drunk when I’m as sober as an eel in the water and ten times more clever and more efficient than you are. I’m the boss here, and you’re not going to push me around. Get back to your pots and pans, I won’t interfere with you there. I didn’t ask you to come here, but now I’m asking you to go.”

I had been speaking very seriously and deliberately, and while I was speaking it had become clearer and clearer to me that I was right in every respect, and she was wrong. Now I sat down again.

Magda had been looking at me very attentively while I was speaking, as if she wanted to lip-read every word I said. Now that I had finished, she said: “I can see it’s no use talking to you any more, Erwin. You have lost all sense of right and wrong. The Count had told the bailiff that he would lose his job if this drunken agreement wasn’t cancelled at once, and you would be summoned for fraud.…”

“Let him try!” I cried ironically. “Of course, you’re impressed by a Count, just because he calls himself blue-blooded. But I don’t care that much!”

I snapped my fingers.

“Let him summon me! He’ll soon find out his mistake!”

“Yes,” cried Magda again, “it’s all the same to you whether your good name gets dragged through the mud in court. Unfortunately I’m forced to realise that now. But I give up talking to you about it. Schnaps has destroyed all sense of justice in you. But I would like to ask you something else, Erwin.”

“Go on, then,” I answered sullenly, but I was very much on the alert, for I anticipated that nothing good was coming. She took a deep breath and looked fixedly at me, then she said.

“Are you still a man of your word, Erwin? I mean, will you still stand by what you once promised me?”

“Of course I will,” I answered sullenly, “for instance I would keep to an agreement, whether I was drunk or sober at the time it was settled.”

She took no notice of my irony.

“When you were going to Hamburg,” she said, “you promised me faithfully you would come to the doctor’s with me. Will you keep your word, will you come with me to see Dr Mansfeld this afternoon?”

“Stop,” I said excitedly, “you’ve got things mixed up again, Magda! I never promised you to go to the doctor’s in any event, I only promised to do so if I came back ill. But I have come back perfectly healthy.”

“Yes, so healthy,” said Magda bitterly, “that the night you came back you emptied every bottle in my larder. And since then you haven’t been sober for a minute. But I see you don’t want to keep your word.”

“I would keep my word, but in this case I haven’t given any word, not like that.”

“But Erwin,” Magda began again, but quietly now, “why do you struggle so against having yourself examined for once by the doctor. If it’s as you say and the doctor confirms it, then everything’s all right … but if not …”

“Well, what then?” I asked ironically.

“… then something will have to be done about your health. Because you’re ill, Erwin, you’re so ill, you have absolutely no idea …”

“Oh, stop it,” I said, rather bored. “You won’t get round me that way. You talk soft to me, but I can see by your eyes that you don’t mean well. I’m not going to allow my wife to order me about, however efficient she may be.”

“I don’t want to order you about at all …”

“Oh, please: first you cancel my contracts, then I’m supposed to go to the doctor’s because you imagine some nonsense, finally you’d like to take my place as boss here, eh? During my absence you’ve been making yourself quite comfortable in my chair, haven’t you?”

“All right then,” she said, and now her eyes had a really wicked gleam, and no trace of mildness was left in her voice, “you don’t want to, you don’t want to do anything but drink and cause trouble. But I’m not going to allow you to ruin me and the firm. Ruin yourself as much as you like. But then I’ll have to take other steps …”

“Take them, take them,” I said sarcastically, “and see how you get on.… By the way, would you be good enough to tell me what steps you happen to be thinking of?”

My irony made her beside herself with rage.

“Certainly I’ll tell you,” she cried furiously. “First of all I’ll get a divorce …”

“Well, well,” I laughed. “So you’re going to get a divorce. I didn’t know I’d given you grounds for divorce yet. But that can probably be rectified—and what else have you in mind?”

But she had had enough.

“You’ll see,” she said, and sat down again at her desk and her papers.

“I can wait,” I answered.

I took the brandy bottle and laid it with my uneaten sandwiches in the brief-case.

“Get this quite clear: by law everything belongs to me. You had nothing when we married. House, furniture, business: all mine!”

I laughed as I saw her furious gesture of protest.

“Yes, you enquire from a lawyer first, then you’ll think again about a divorce, and now,” I said, and took my hat from the hook, “I’ll leave my firm on loan to you. Be very industrious, dear Magda, and cancel plenty of nice contracts, and … why, what’s the matter? Are you trying to give
me
grounds for divorce?”

My sarcasm had made her frantic with rage. She had snatched up the nearest thing to hand, a blotter, and thrown it at me. I only just managed to dodge it. She looked at me, trembling, white as a sheet. I thought it best not to provoke her any more, I put the blotter back in its place, and left the office.