Читать книгу The Goose Man - Jakob Wassermann - Страница 39

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Benno Jordan was now a senior in the gymnasium and had begun to play mischievous pranks. He also declared that he was no longer minded to tolerate the tyranny of the school, and that he had not the slightest desire to enter the university. He was a wilful, obstinate boy with a marked tendency to sociability. He paid a great deal of attention to his clothes, and was proud of his handsome face.

After repeated conversations with the seventeen-year-old boy, Jordan decided to get him a job as a clerk in the offices of the Prudentia. He discussed the situation with the general agent, and Alfons Diruf gave his consent. Benno began his work at fifty marks a month.

When Jordan would come home of an evening, the first thing he would hear from Eleanore was that Benno had an engagement with some of his friends, and that they were in the Alfas Garden, or in the Wolf’s Glen, or in Café Merkur, where the orchestrion, then a new invention, was being played for the first time.

“Lord, what is to become of the next generation?” said Jordan, quite worried. “All they think about is having a good time. Why, I never in my whole life thought of merely amusing myself.”

Anxious about Benno’s behaviour, Jordan called on the chief of the clerical department. The little man with the waxened, weazened, face expressed himself as quite satisfied with the new employé. Jordan took him by the hand; it was his way of displaying gratitude. And he was grateful, though it was hard for him to subdue a feeling of solicitude. He recognised the boy’s external amiability, but felt convinced that this merely covered and concealed a decayed soul.

Alfons Diruf was obese and gloomy. His clothes were made in Paris, and on the ring finger of his left hand was a brilliant diamond.

Since the Prudentia had introduced the so-called workmen’s insurance, the number of clerks on its payroll had been increased by about twenty-five thousand. Of these eighty-four were under Diruf’s direct supervision. They were located in three rooms of a house in Fürther Street. They were pale and they were silent. Diruf himself had a private office which resembled the boudoirs of a woman of the world. The curtains were of blue silk, a bathing nymph by Thumann hung on the wall, and the whole place smelled of musk.

Three times a day he would leave his fair retreat, and, with the mien of disgust, make the rounds of the clerks’ quarters. When they saw him coming, heads ducked, hands scurried across the books, feet stopped scraping, and all whispering died out.

He gave the impression of a man who hated his job, but in reality he loved it. He liked the clerks because of their servile docility and their famished faces. He liked them because they came promptly every morning and went away every evening tired as tired could be, and because day after day, year in and year out, they sat there and wrote, wrote, wrote.

He liked the inspectors because day after day, year in and year out, they did a great deal of work for a very little money. He liked the agents and sub-agents who made it possible for the company to issue hundreds of new policies every day. He liked their dirty clothes and tattered boots, their hungry looks, their misleading but effective line of talk, and their sad faces.

The special bait of the workmen’s insurance was the small premium, carrying with it a small policy. In this way the man of small means was to be educated in thrift. As a rule, however, the small man realised, when it was too late, that the agent had promised more than the company could do. He became distrustful; his weekly savings were so scant that it was impossible for him to pay his premiums regularly; with the expiration of each week it became increasingly difficult to make up the back payments, and, before he knew precisely what had happened, his policy had been declared void, and the money he had paid in on it confiscated.

In this way the company made millions. It was the pfennigs of the poorest classes that constituted these millions, made the dividends rise higher and higher, increased the army of clerks, and filled the pockets of the agents.

These agents were recruited from the scum of human society. They were made up of bankrupts, decadent students, gamblers, topers, and beggars. They came from the ranks of those who had been pursued by misfortune and who bore the marks of crime. No one was too small or too bad.

Alfons Diruf, however, saw that it would vastly improve the credit of the company if to this list of outcasts he would add a few eminently respectable citizens. He consequently went out on his own responsibility, and looked for help. His quest brought him to Jason Philip Schimmelweis.

“It’s a gold mine,” he said; “you work for an ideal, and you get something out of it for yourself. Ideals, incidentally, that are not profitable are idiotic.” With that he blew the smoke of his Havana cigar through his nose.

Jason Philip understood. It was not necessary to flatter the leader and politician that was admittedly in him. He nearly ran his legs off working for the company. Alfons Diruf loved this socialist bookkeeper, after a fashion.

Inspector Jordan saw however that the countless brokers were encroaching on his territory and stirring up distrust on the part of his better clients. He lost his interest. The directors felt obliged to send Alfons Diruf a critical memorandum explaining Jordan’s case, and showing that he was no longer as efficient as he used to be.