Weights and Measures Read online

  6

  Several times a week he received a large batch of mail. Being a conscientious official, he classified all letters carefully. The inspectorate was housed in the local government office, in a wing of the court, in a small, darkish room. There Eibenschütz sat, behind a narrow green table, opposite a young clerk, a so-called contracts clerk, who was very fair, quite provocatively fair, and very ambitious. His name was Josef Nowak and Eibenschütz disliked him partly on account of his name. For it was exactly the same name as that of a hated schoolmate, on whose account Eibenschütz had had to leave the high school in Nikolsburg. It was on his account that he had enlisted so early in the army. It was on his account too – this, the Inspector only imagined – that he had married, and – more particularly – married this Frau Regina. The contracts clerk, of course, was not to blame for Eibenschütz’s fate. He was not only provocatively fair and ambitious, but also vindictive. Behind compliant and wheedling manners he concealed a desire – but one of which Inspector Eibenschütz was well aware – to injure his superior.

  Among the letters that came for the inspectorate there were also some that he had written, in a disguised hand. They were threatening and denunciatory letters. They disconcerted Inspector Eibenschütz. For his excessively cautious nature impelled him to investigate every report and to notify the gendarmerie squad of every threat. Privately, he acknowledged to himself that he was not cut out to be an official and certainly not in this district. He should have stayed in the barracks, yes, in the barracks. In the army, everything was prescribed. One received no threatening letters and no denunciations. The responsibility for everything a soldier did and for everything he neglected to do lay somewhere high above him, somewhere quite beyond him. How free and easy life in the barracks had been!

  One day he took a few threatening letters home in his briefcase, although he had the feeling that he was committing an irregularity. But he felt compelled to show the letters to his wife and he could not withstand this compulsion. So he arrived for lunch, punctually, as he did only on those days on which he did not go on journeys to the villages of the district. The nearer he came to his little house, which stood on the outskirts of the town, next to that of the sergeant of gendarmerie, Slama, the hotter his anger became until, by the time he had nearly reached his own door, it had grown into a burning rage.

  When he caught sight of his wife – who was, as usual, sitting by the window, busy with some virulent green knitting – there awoke in him a positive hatred which frightened even him. What do I really want of her? he asked himself. And as he could give no answer he became still angrier, and when he entered he threw the letters onto the table, which had already been laid, and said in a frighteningly soft voice – as if he were screaming soundlessly – ‘There, read what you’ve done to me!’ The woman laid down her knitting. Painstakingly, as if she herself were a government official, she opened one letter after the other. Meanwhile Inspector Eibenschütz, in hat and coat, as if prepared for instant departure, sat raging on his chair, and the more silently and conscientiously his wife read, the hotter became his rage. He observed her face. He thought he could see distinctly that his wife was assuming a hard, suffering but nevertheless malicious, expression. There were moments when she resembled her mother. He remembered his mother-in-law clearly. She lived at Sternberg, in Moravia. When he had last seen her, which was at the wedding, she had worn a grey silk dress, a kind of armour. It enclosed her shrunken and withered body up to the neck, as if to protect her from arrows and lances. She held a lorgnette in front of her eyes; when she lowered it, she resembled a knight who lets his vizor drop. His wife, too, let an invisible lorgnette, an invisible vizor, drop. After she had conscientiously read all the letters she got up and said: ‘You’re not afraid, are you? Or are you a bit frightened?’

  She really is quite unconcerned about the dangers that threaten me, thought the Inspector. And he replied: ‘You really are quite unconcerned, aren’t you, about the dangers that threaten me? Why did you compel me to leave the barracks? What for? Why?’

  She did not answer. She went into the kitchen and returned with two bowls of steaming soup. In silent resentment, but not without appetite, Inspector Eibenschütz ate his accustomed midday meal. It consisted of noodle soup, boiled beef and damson dumplings.

  Without saying a word, he left the house and went to the office. He did not forget, however, to take the threatening letters back with him.

  7

  In the village of Szwaby, which belonged to the Zlotogrod District, Leibusch Jadlowker was mightier than the sergeant of gendarmerie himself. It must be made plain who Leibusch Jadlowker was: he was of unknown origin. It was rumoured that he had come from Odessa years ago and that the name he was known by was not his real one. He owned the so-called border tavern and no one even knew how it had come into his possession. The former owner, an old silver-bearded Jew, had perished in a mysterious, never-to-be-fathomed manner. He had been discovered one day, frozen, in the border forest, already half eaten away by wolves. Nobody, not even his servant Onufrij, had been able to explain why and wherefore the old Jew had walked through the border forest at the height of the frost. All that was known was that he had no children, and that his nephew, Leibusch Jadlowker, was his only heir.

  Rumour had it that Jadlowker had fled from Odessa because he had slain a man with a sugar-loaf. As a matter of fact it was hardly a rumour, it was almost a truth. Leibusch Jadlowker himself related the story to anyone who cared to hear it. He had – so he said – been a docker and there was an enemy among his comrades. And it was this fellow – who must have been as strong as a bear – whom Jadlowker slew one evening, after a quarrel, with one of the sugar-loaves they were unloading from a merchant ship. This was said to be the reason why he had fled across the Russian border.

  Everyone believed him: that he had been a harbour worker and that he had murdered. The only thing they did not believe was his name: Leibusch Jadlowker – which is why he was known throughout the Zlotogrod District simply as ‘Leibusch the Lawless’. There were enough reasons for calling him by this name. For his frontier tavern was the rendezvous of all the ne’er-do-wells and criminals. Three times a week the notorious Russian agent for the American Line dumped the deserters from the Russian army in Jadlowker’s frontier tavern, to make their way from there to Holland, to Canada, and to South America.

  As has been said: ne’er-do-wells and criminals frequented Jadlowker’s frontier tavern; he harboured vagrants, beggars, thieves and robbers. And his cunning was such that the law could not touch him. His papers and those of his guests were always in order. The official informers, who swarmed near the frontier like flies, could report nothing detrimental, nothing immoral, about his way of life. But rumour had it that Leibusch Jadlowker was the author of all the crimes in the entire Zlotogrod District – and there were not a few of these: murder, robbery with murder and arson among them – not to speak of theft. He bartered Austrian deserters fleeing to Russia for Russians fleeing to Austria, so to speak. Those who did not pay him – so it was rumoured – he probably left to be shot by the Austrian or Russian frontier guards, as the case might be!

  By mysterious means Jadlowker had not only acquired his licence for the frontier tavern, but also one for a grocery shop. And by ‘groceries’ he seemed to understand something quite special. For he sold not only flour, oats, sugar, tobacco, brandy, beer, caramels, chocolate, thread, soap, buttons and string, but he also dealt in girls and men. He manufactured false weights and sold them to the traders in the vicinity; and some even claimed that he also made counterfeit money – silver, gold and paper.

  Naturally, he was the enemy of Inspector Anselm Eibenschütz. He did not really understand why and wherefore an otherwise healthy and intelligent man should pay any heed to government, law and statute. He hated Inspector Eibenschütz, not because he was an Inspector of Weights and Measures but because he was an incomprehensibly honest man. Jadlowker was squat, stocky, powerful and unscrupulous. I
t would not have been at all difficult for him to throw out the Inspector and the gendarme when they came to check his weights and measures. However, his sinful conscience impelled him not to do so. So he welcomed the Inspector in a very friendly fashion, temporarily suppressing, even denying, his hatred. One would hardly have credited Leibusch Jadlowker – bear-strong and stocky as he was – with so much dissembling art. Nature wished him to be sly as well as strong.

  Whenever Inspector Eibenschütz set foot in the inn at Szwaby, they would be serving sausage and horseradish and mead and schnapps and salted peas. The ninety-degree schnapps was forbidden by law; however, the sergeant drank it with dedicated enjoyment. Franz Slama, the sergeant of gendarmerie, unfortunately became drunk easily. But this was really of no importance, as in any case he understood nothing at all about weights and measures. And even if he had understood something about them, there was no chance of ever catching a glimpse of the false weights and measures at Leibusch Jadlowker’s. He made sure that they disappeared in good time; somehow he always heard about the Inspector’s arrival a day earlier.

  It was about this time that Inspector Eibenschütz registered a singular change in the demeanour of his wife Regina. She not only relinquished her delight in quarrelling, but became visibly more affectionate. He was rather frightened by this. For though he still loved her, because she formed part of his belongings, so to speak, like the new vocation to which he had so quickly become accustomed, he had long since ceased to desire her. She had indicated to him too plainly and for too long that she was indifferent to him and at times even hated him. For a long time now he had made a habit of going to sleep as soon as they climbed into bed at night, into the two beds pushed close together, and he no longer spared a glance for her naked body as she undressed before the mirror, perhaps in the hope that he might desire her still. Sometimes she asked him, standing there naked, whether he loved her. She really meant whether he found her beautiful. ‘Yes, of course!’ he said and yielded to sleep, not least to escape the pangs of conscience which his lie might yet produce.

  Therefore the affection which was suddenly rekindled in his wife surprised, even frightened, him. He slept with her, as in earlier years. But in the morning he felt out of sorts and kissed her almost with repugnance before he went off. She pretended to be asleep and he was well aware that it was a pretence. But it was her pretence and he still loved her. He did not tell her so.

  In vain did he brood over what might have prompted such renewed passion. One day he was to discover the truth.

  8

  One day, among his many anonymous denunciatory letters, there was an unusual one that went as follows: ‘Respected Inspector, although one of the victims of your harshness and in consequence involved in a court case, and that on account of a single ten kilo weight, I take the liberty of informing you that your wife is deceiving you in an underhand way and shamefully. And in fact with your master clerk, Herr Josef Nowak. Respectfully, your obedient X. Y.’

  Anselm Eibenschütz was as slow as he was honest. Besides, he had discovered too often that many denunciations contained false assertions. He put the letter in his pocket and went home. His wife received him with affection, as she had done for some days past. She even clung a little longer with her arms around his neck. ‘I have been waiting for you with a special longing today,’ she said in a whisper. Arm in arm they went to the dining-table. During the meal he observed her closely and he noticed something that had obviously escaped him hitherto: on her little finger she was wearing a ring that was unfamiliar to him. He took her left hand and asked ‘Where did you get that ring?’ ‘From my father,’ she said. ‘I have never worn it before.’ It was a cheap ring, a man’s ring, with an artificial sapphire. He asked again: ‘Why have you suddenly put it on?’ ‘So that it might bring us luck,’ she said. ‘Us?’ ‘Both of us!’ she confirmed.

  Suddenly, too, he saw how she had altered. A new, large, tortoise-shell comb held the knot of her thick, dark-blue-gleaming hair together. Large golden earrings which she had not worn for a long time, earrings on which dangled tiny delicate gold discs, trembled on her earlobes. Her dark-brown countenance had recovered quite a youthful, indeed a maidenly, ruddy hue. One might say that she looked again as she had looked in the past, as a young girl, when he had first met her in Sarajevo, where her uncle, the master-at-arms, had invited her for the summer.

  In the midst of these reflections, which by now had begun to frighten him, she uttered some unintelligible words, words without sense or meaning, so to say. They went: ‘I should like at last to have a child.’ By whom? he wanted to ask, for he naturally thought at once of the letter. But he said only: ‘Why now? You have never wished for one. You have always said that a daughter would have no dowry and a son would at best have to be an Inspector of Weights and Measures like myself.’

  She lowered her eyes and said: ‘I love you so much!’

  He stood up and kissed her. Then he went to the office.

  It was a fairly long way and on the way he suddenly remembered, or thought he remembered, having seen the ring with the artificial sapphire once before, a long time ago, on the hand of the clerk Josef Nowak. Deviousness and cunning were repugnant to the Inspector. Nevertheless, he now resolved to be devious and cunning.

  The clerk got up as usual when the Inspector entered. With unwonted friendliness the Inspector said: ‘Good day, my dear Nowak! Anything new happened?’ ‘Nothing new!’ said Nowak, bowing. He remained standing until Eibenschütz had sat down.

  Eibenschütz read his papers for a while and then said, with a glance at Nowak’s hands: ‘What’s happened to your ring with the sapphire, then, Herr Nowak? It was a very fine ring!’

  Nowak seemed not in the least embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid I have had to pawn it!’

  ‘Why, because of money problems?’ asked the Inspector. Then the prudence of the fair and ambitious contracts clerk deserted him for the first time and he said: ‘It’s to do with a woman!’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the Inspector, ‘when I was your age, I had affairs of the heart too.’

  It was the first time that the clerk found his superior so friendly. But he did not suspect from this that he had been detected.

  This time he deceived himself. For with the thoroughness which was basic to him, and which made him such an outstanding assessor of weights and measures, Eibenschütz resolved to investigate the matter carefully. It was not that his heart was involved any longer. He merely had a transient notion that his honour was injured – but even this notion derived only from his army days and from the recollection of the concepts of honour held by his superiors, the officers. It was, as stated, no more than a fleeting notion. Above all it behoved him, the man of honour, to search for the whole truth, one might say to establish and to check the weight and measure of events.

  In consequence he went home quite slowly and with bowed head. And when passers-by greeted him he pretended not to see them, from fear that they might say something to him and distract him.

  By the time he had almost reached his house, he had already made a quite specific, very methodical plan. And, being the kind of man he was, it follows that he would have to proceed exactly according to the plans he had figured out.

  9

  A week later he noticed that his wife was no longer wearing the ring with the artificial sapphire. He said nothing at all to his wife.

  For a week he was silent, towards his wife and towards Josef Nowak. Then, however, he said unexpectedly to the latter: ‘Have you redeemed your ring?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied the clerk. He feigned joyful satisfaction.

  ‘There’s no need to be embarrassed,’ said Eibenschütz. ‘I would willingly advance you the money!’

  ‘Well, to be honest …’ muttered the clerk – and now he feigned embarrassment rather than joy.

  ‘But willingly, with pleasure!’ said the Inspector. He gave the young man a solid five-kronen piece, negligently, as if it had been a pencil or cigarette. Then he beg
an affably: ‘Between us men, tell me, Herr Nowak, where do you meet the lady in such a small town? Surely you can be seen?’

  Cheered and enlivened by so much friendliness in his superior, the contracts clerk got up from his stool. Eibenschütz sat facing him, not unlike a pupil. It was late autumn and late afternoon. Two official oil-lamps, supplied by the local government office, burned gently under their benevolent green shades.

  ‘You see, Herr Inspector,’ began the clerk, ‘in spring and summer it’s very easy. It happens in the border forest. Ah, if I were to tell you, Herr Inspector, what women I’ve come across there! But you know that nowhere is silence more imperative than in these affairs. In autumn and winter it is more difficult, for official reasons. In the whole district only the border tavern of “Lawless Leibusch” is suitable as a place of assignation for lovers. And you know yourself, Herr Inspector, that he is a very dangerous man and that I often have to deputize for you there. Official rectitude before everything, official rectitude comes first!’

  ‘That’s very fine,’ said the Inspector. And he buried himself in his official papers. At six in the evening, when work was over, the Inspector said to his clerk: ‘You can go! And lots of luck with the ladies!’

  The clerk made a bow, which looked almost like the curtsy of a small schoolgirl, and disappeared.