Simon Eichelkatz; The Patriarch. Two Stories of Jewish Life. Frank Ulrich

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СКАЧАТЬ in a little town you get to know people, and all about them."

      "But I don't know you," I interrupted, my patience at last exhausted.

      "I am Jonas Goldstücker."

      "So your card tells me. But I should like to permit myself the question, to what I owe the honor of your visit."

      "O, you'll soon find out, Herr Kreisphysikus. I am not sick, as you see. Quite another reason brings me to you. But if I should need medical advice, I shall not fail to come to you, although Sanitätsrat Ehrlich has been treating me for six years – since the time his daughter Annie married Herr Rechtsanwalt Bobrecker of Leobschütz. An excellent match. Any day Bobrecker might have gotten sixty thousand marks, and Löwenberg, the wool manufacturer in Oppeln, would have given him as much as seventy-five thousand, but he wanted to marry a girl from an educated family, and no other. Well, the daughter of Sanitätsrat Ehrlich is no vain delusion."

      My breath was completely taken away by this information regarding private matters.

      Next came the abrupt question:

      "In general, Herr Kreisphysikus, are you in favor of wet or dry treatment in rheumatism?"

      A patient after all! I breathed more freely. Herr Jonas Goldstücker had given me a creepy sensation.

      "I don't understand what you mean by that."

      "I mean, are you in favor of massage and electricity or in favor of baths?"

      The impudent assurance of the question utterly astounded me, and I wanted to give him a brusque reply, when he continued:

      "Sanitätsrat Ehrlich is an excellent physician; but he's a bit antiquated already, Herr Kreisphysikus. The young doctors of to-day make a much more lymphatic impression."

      Doubtless, he meant "emphatic," because a few moments later another pretentious word was incorrectly applied.

      "But Sanitätsrat Ehrlich after all has the largest practice in the congregation; and people would look on it as bigamy if anyone were to say anything against him."

      I was only slightly acquainted with my colleague, and I did not know that doubt of his powers would be regarded as blasphemy – probably what Jonas Goldstücker meant to say. The humor of the situation at last began to dawn upon me, and I awaited the further utterances of my remarkable guest in amused curiosity.

      "And his house, Herr Kreisphysikus, his house! Really, very fine. The Frau Sanitätsträtin knows how to do the honors and to keep her distance."

      What he meant by this was not exactly clear to me; but I learned that the youngest daughter of my colleague Ehrlich was a ravishing maiden, as Herr Jonas Goldstücker assured me.

      "Very highly educated, speaks every language, plays the piano as well as Leubuscher (I didn't know of the performer), and only Chopin, Rubinstein, Offenbach, Brahm."

      "Brahms, Herr Goldstücker, Brahms."

      "Why, yes, I said Brahm, Herr Kreisphysikus. And what she doesn't know, besides! And quite a housekeeper, too; she learned cooking. No, not a soul can find a thing to say against Miss Edith – Edith, a pretty name, Herr Kreisphysikus, Edith."

      He was silent for a moment. I was on the point of telling him that all this had very little interest for me, and that he should come to the real object of his visit; but he continued to impress me as a man of the better classes, with fairly decent manners, calling for a certain amount of consideration. So I maintained my attitude of expectancy, and listened to his digressions and discourses on this theme and that. In the course of his remarks he exclaimed:

      "It's really a shame that you don't visit at Sanitätsrat Ehrlich's, though I can imagine you haven't very much time. And now you must be having a good deal of annoyance with that affair in Raudnitz. A terrible misfortune, terrible. That Herr Schlochauer must have had a fearful temper; because it isn't so easy to throw a man out of your place and kill him outright. It must be very trying to his wife; she is an educated woman, daughter of the teacher Weiss, in Beuthen. She never thought she would marry a thoroughly uneducated saloon-keeper. But he got along very well, and you never heard any talk about her not living happily with him. She always had what she needed, and much more. She could help her own family and give her two daughters a good education – very different from what would have happened if she'd gotten her painter. What a sad picture they'd have made, she and her picture-maker."

      He laughed complacently at his pun, and I meditated over the ideal Jewish marriage. Then I was made acquainted with the story of Frau Rosalie Schlochauer's youthful love.

      "But that he should have gone and taken his life! It's really awful to bring about a misfortune so deliberately. However, a sister-in-law of Frau Schlochauer, a cousin of my wife, married to the book-dealer Grosser, told me that the widow is remarkably calm. Frau Grosser herself is half dead from the excitement, and she can't possibly comprehend how Frau Schlochauer can be so collected. The idea of hanging himself in prison! Absurd! If he had waited, for all we know he might have been set free. At any rate he would not have gotten more than three or four years. In no circumstances would he have been put into the penitentiary. Herr Rechtsanwalt Cassirer told me yesterday that the jury would certainly have agreed on dolus eventualiter."

      Of course, what Herr Jonas Goldstücker wanted to say was dolus eventualis. But a little thing like that didn't matter to him, and I continued to wonder how he came to know everybody and associate with the best families. He was evidently on a most intimate footing with the heads of the community.

      "Frau Schlochauer," he said, after a while, "will doubtless move away from Raudnitz. Life for her there in these circumstances is impossible. And what should she do with two daughters, who are almost grown up and will soon be marriageable? She will certainly go to Berlin. Her brothers live there; one of them is a lawyer, another is a physician, and the third owns a large shirtwaist factory. There she will have someone to cling to."

      I had a mental picture of Frau Schlochauer, quiet in her grief, earnest, thoughtful, as she unfolded to me her plans for the future. And this man knew it all. He had guessed it and now expressed his opinion on events in the life of a stranger.

      "In Berlin people don't bother about such stories. There Frau Schlochauer is the sister of the lawyer Weiss and the doctor Weiss; she is the rich Frau Schlochauer with two pretty, well-bred daughters. That's enough. The girls will make very good matches. They say the property amounts to a great deal, much more than you'd think by looking at Herr Schlochauer. There he was working all day and thinking of nothing but how to serve his customers. He left culture and education to his wife – and now the money, in addition. The sale of the big house and the distillery may bring in as much as four hundred thousand marks. Yesterday Rothmann, the banker, told me Schlochauer had been well off, almost rich. Some of his money he placed with Rothmann, the rest with the Breslau Diskonto Bank; and Rothmann knows the amount of his deposits. If Frau Schlochauer, when the time comes, will give each daughter one hundred thousands marks – for the present she won't use more than the interest on her money – she will be able to do very well with them. Of course, she won't get the sort of person that looks out for a so-called fine family. People like that ask after every possible thing, and are sure to find out about the detention in prison and the suicide. There are some who won't suffer the tiniest speck on the family name – but there are enough young people, too, who haul in without questioning and think, 'Let by-gones be by-gones.' Sometimes even physicians and lawyers aren't so particular about 'antecedents.'"

      I looked at my watch. The act should have been an indication to him that I was getting impatient, and was displeased with the familiarity of his talk; but he seemed not to comprehend the delicate hint. For he СКАЧАТЬ