Chapter 4

Jason Philip Schimmelweis had been obliged to give up his house by the museum bridge. He could not pay the rent; his business was ruined. By a mere coincident it came about that the house on the Corn Market had a cheap apartment that was vacant, and he took it. It was the same house in which he lived when he made so much money twenty years ago.

Was Jason Philip no longer in touch with modern business methods? Had he become too old and infirm to make the public hungry for literary nourishment? Were his advertisements without allurement, his baits without scent? No one felt inclined to buy expensive lexicons and editions de luxe on the instalment plan. The rich old fellows with a nose for dubious reading matter never came around any more. Jason Philip had become a dilatory debtor; the publishers no longer gave him books on approval; he was placed on the black list.

He took to abusing modern writers, contending that it was no wonder that the writing of books was left exclusively to good-for-nothing subjects of the Empire, for the whole nation was suffering from cerebral atrophy.

But his reasoning was of no avail; his business collapse was imminent; in a jiffy it was a hard reality. A man by the name of Rindskopf bought his stock and furnishings at brokers’ prices, and the firm of Jason Philip Schimmelweis had ceased to exist.

In his distress Jason Philip appealed to the Liberal party. He boasted of his friendship with the former leader of the party, Baron von Auffenberg, but this only made matters worse: one renegade was depending upon the support of another. This was natural: birds of a feather flock together.

Then he went to the Masons, and began to feel around for their help; he tried to be made a member of one of the better lodges. He was given to understand that there was some doubt as to the loyalty of his convictions, with the result that the Masons would have none of him.

For some time he found actual difficulty in earning his daily bread. He had resigned his position with the Prudentia Insurance Company long ago. Ever since a certain interpellation in the Reichstag and a long lawsuit in which the Prudentia became involved, and which was decided in favour of its opponents, the standing of the company had suffered irreparably.

Jason Philip had no other choice: he had to go back to bookbinding; he had to return to pasting, cutting, and folding. He returned in the evening of his life, downcast, impoverished, and embittered, to the position from which he had started as an ambitious, resourceful, stout-hearted, and self-assured man years ago. His eloquence had proved of no avail, his cunning had not helped him, nor his change of political conviction, nor his familiarity with the favourable turns of the market, nor his speculations. He had never believed that the order of things in the world about him was just and righteous, neither as a Socialist nor as a Liberal. And now he was convinced that it was impossible to write a motto on the basis of business principles that would be fit material for a copy book in a kindergarten.

Willibald was still the same efficient clerk. Markus had got a job in a furniture store, where he spent his leisure hours studying Volapük, convinced as he was that all the nations of the earth would soon be using this great fraternal tongue.

Theresa moved into the house on the Corn Market with as much peace and placidity as if she had been anticipating such a change for years. There was a bay window in the house, and by this she sat when her work in the kitchen was done, knitting socks for her sons. At times she would scratch her grey head with her knitting needle, at times she would reach over and take a sip of cold, unsugared coffee, a small pot of which she always kept by her side. Hers was the most depressed face then known to the human family; hers were the horniest, wrinkliest peasant hands that formed part of any citizen of the City of Nuremberg.

She thought without ceasing of all that nice money that had passed through her hands during the two decades she had stood behind the counter of the establishment in the Plobenhof Street.

She tried to imagine where all the money had gone, who was using it now, and who was being tormented by it. For she was rid of it, and in the bottom of her heart she was glad that she no longer had it.

One day Jason Philip came rushing from his workshop into her room. He had a newspaper in his hand; his face was radiant with joy. “At last, my dear, at last! I have been avenged. Jason Philip Schimmelweis was after all a good prophet. Well, what do you say?” he continued, as Theresa looked at him without any noticeable display of curiosity, “what do you say? I’ll bet you can’t guess. No, you will never be able to guess what’s happened; it’s too much for a woman’s brain.” He mounted a chair, held the paper in his hand as if it were the flag of his country, waved it, and shouted: “Bismarck is done for! He’s got to go. The Kaiser hates him! Now let come what may, I have not lived in vain.”

Jason Philip had the feeling that it was due to his efforts that the reins of government had been snatched from the hands of the Iron Chancellor. His satisfaction found expression in blatancy and in actions that were thoroughly at odds with a man of his age. He held up his acquaintances on the street, and demanded that they offer him their congratulations. He went to his favourite café, and ordered a barrel of beer for the rejuvenation of his friends. He delivered an oration, spiced with all the forms of sarcasm known to the art of cheap politics and embellished with innumerable popular phrases, explaining why he regarded this as the happiest day of his eventful life.

He said: “If fate were to do me the favour of allowing me to stand face to face with this menace to public institutions, this unscrupulous tyrant, I would not, believe me, mince matters in the slightest: I would tell him things no mortal man has thus far dared say to him.”

Several months passed by. Bismarck, then staying at his country place in Sachsenwald and quarrelling with his lot, decided to visit Munich. There was tremendous excitement in Nuremberg when it was learned that he would pass through the city at such and such an hour.

Everybody wanted to see him, young and old, aristocrats and humble folk. Early in the morning the whole city seemed to be on its feet, making its way in dense crowds out through the King’s Gate.

This was a drama in which Jason Philip had to play his part: without him it would be incomplete. “To look into the eyes of a tiger whose claws have been chopped off and whose teeth have been knocked out is a pleasure and a satisfaction that my mother’s son dare not forego,” said he.

His elbows stood him in good stead. When the train pulled into the station, our rebel was standing in the front row, having pushed his way through the seemingly impenetrable mass of humanity.

The train stopped for a few minutes. The Iron Chancellor left his carriage amid deafening hurrahs from the assembled multitude. He shook hands with the Mayor and a few high-ranking army officers.

Jason Philip never budged. It never occurred to him to shout his own hurrah. An acidulous smile played around his mouth, his white beard quivered when he dropped the corners of his lips in satanic glee. It never occurred to him to take off his hat, despite the threatening protests all too audible round about him. “I am consistent, my dear Bismarck, I am incorruptible,” he thought to himself.

And yet—the satisfaction which we have described as satanic seemed somehow or other to be ill founded: it was in such marked contrast to the general enthusiasm. What had possessed this imbecile pack? Why was it raging? It saw the enemy, the hangman, right there before it, immune to the law, dressed in civilian clothes, and yet it was acting as though the Messiah had come to town on an extra train!

Jason Philip had the feeling that Bismarck was looking straight at him. He fancied that the fearfully tall man with the unusually small head and the enormously blue eyes had taken offence at his silence. He feared some one had told him all about his political beliefs.

The scornful smile died away. Jason Philip detected a lukewarm impotency creeping over his body. The sweat of solicitude trickled down across his forehead. Involuntarily he kneed his way closer to the edge of the platform, threw out his chest, jerked his hat from his head, opened his mouth, and cried: “Hurrah!”

He cried hurrah. The Prince turned his face from him, and looked in another direction.

But Jason Philip had cried hurrah.

He sneaked home shaking with shame. He drew his slippers, “For the tired Man—Consolation,” on his feet. They had become quite worn in the course of his tempestuous life. He lay down on the sofa with his face to the wall, his back to the window and against the world.