The Sleepwalkers (57 page)

Yet hardly had he duly introduced himself than he sat down without being asked and the words began to flow effortlessly from his lips: he took the liberty of respectfully announcing that he was from the Press
Bureau and had been sent here at its instructions. It seemed that there was a local sheet here called the
Kur-Trier Herald
, about whose policy all sorts of doubtful rumours were going round, and he had come, furnished with the fullest powers required, to study the position on the spot. Yes, and—what shall I say now? thought Huguenau—but his stream of eloquence flowed on; it was as though the words took shape in his mouth—yes, and seeing that the question of censorship fell to a certain degree and in a certain sense within the Town Commandant’s province, he had considered it his duty to wait on the Herr Major and report himself.

In the course of this announcement the Major, drawing himself up with a little jerk, had assumed a formal attitude, and attempted to make the objection that the usual official channels were better suited to deal with such an affair; Huguenau, however, who could not afford to let his fluent stream of words run dry, scarcely listened to him, and summarily dismissed the objection by pointing out that he had approached the Herr Major not in an official, but merely in a semi-official capacity, since the full powers he had mentioned were not from the Government, but rather from the patriotic big industrialists—he need mention no names, they were well enough known—who had entrusted him with the mission of eventually purchasing doubtful newspapers if the price were reasonable, for they must of course prevent suspicious ideas reaching the people. And Huguenau repeated again the words, “suspicious ideas reaching the people,” repeated them as though this return to his starting-point had given him absolute assurance, as though the phrase were a soft bed on which he could lie in comfort.

Apparently the Major did not understand what all this was leading to, but he nodded and Huguenau continued to revolve in his orbit: yes, it was a question of suspect newspapers, and in his own opinion, as indeed according to general opinion, the
Kur-Trier Herald
was a suspect paper, whose purchase he would unconditionally recommend.

He looked at the Major triumphantly, drummed with his fingers on the table, and it was as though he were awaiting the Town Commandant’s admiration and praise for a successfully achieved feat.

“Very patriotic, no doubt,” the Major at length agreed. “I thank you for the information.”

With that Huguenau could have taken himself off, but it was necessary that he should achieve something more, and so he thanked the Herr
Major warmly for the good will he had shown him and, in view of that good will, begged to add one more request, a small request:

“My employers naturally regard it as important that in buying a newspaper such as this, which of course must be looked on more or less as a local paper, local people interested should share in the transaction: that of course is quite understandable, for the sake of local control and so forth.… The Herr Major sees that?”

Yes, that was understandable, said the Major, not understanding in the least.

Well, said Huguenau, the request he had to make was that the Herr Major, who of course had the greatest prestige of anyone in the town, should give him the names of a few reliable moneyed gentlemen among the residents—of course in the strictest confidence—who might be interested in the plan.

The Major remarked that the whole business really fell within the province of the civil authorities and not of the military command, yet he could give Herr Huguenau one piece of advice: to be here on Friday evening, for on that evening he would always find a few town councillors and other influential gentlemen in the place.

“Splendid! but the Herr Major will be here too, I hope,” said Huguenau, who was not to be put off so easily. “Splendid! If the Herr Major will take the transaction under his patronage I can guarantee that everything will go smoothly, especially as the capital required is relatively small, and many of the gentlemen here will be interested no doubt in the idea of getting into touch with the large industries, in being admitted to partnership with them, so to speak.… Splendid! really splendid! … May I smoke, Herr Major?” … and he pulled his chair nearer, took a cigar out of his cigar-case, polished his eyeglasses, and began to smoke.

The Major observed that certainly the auspices were very favourable, and that he was sorry he was not a business man.

Oh, that didn’t matter, said Huguenau, that didn’t affect the matter at all. And as he felt a need to repeat his performance again, perhaps out of pure virtuosity, perhaps to establish his newly won confidence, perhaps out of sheer wantonness, he pulled his chair yet a little nearer to the Major, and begged permission to add a further piece of information, but only for the Herr Major’s personal ear. In his dealings thus far with the publisher of this newspaper—his name was Esch, the Herr
Major must certainly have heard of him—well he had got the definite impression that behind the paper there was a—how could he put it? a whole subterranean movement going on, a movement composed of suspicious and subversive elements. Something of this seemed to have leaked out already: but when the plan of buying the paper was actually realized, he would of course be in a position to get that insight into these obscure activities which it was desirable and necessary to have in the interests of the whole people.

And before the old gentleman could reply, Huguenan got up and said in conclusion:

“Please, oh, please, Herr Major!… it’s simply my duty as a patriot … not worth mentioning.… So I’ll take the liberty, then, of accepting your most flattering invitation for Friday evening.”

He clicked his heels and went back with a light, almost jaunty step to his own table.

The fact that Herr August Esch’s editorial duties filled him with such impatience and exasperation, and that he felt so strangely uncomfortable in his position, may be comprehensively referred back to the other fact that all his life he had followed the vocation of a book-keeper, having been, indeed, a head book-keeper for many years in a large industrial concern in his Luxemburg home, before—it was already in the middle of the war—he took possession of the
Kur-Trier Herald
and the buildings attached to it, as the result of an unexpected legacy.

For a book-keeper, and a head book-keeper in particular, is a man who lives within a strict and extraordinarily exact system of rules, rules so exact that he will never be able to apply them in any other kind of occupation. Supported firmly by such rules, he grows acclimatized to an all-powerful and yet modest world in which everything has its place, in which he himself is the point of reference, and where his glance remains unerring and undisturbed. He turns the pages of the ledger and compares them with the journal and the daybook; without a break numberless bridges stretch from the one to the other, giving security to life and the day’s work. Each morning the janitor or the office girl brings the new book-keeping entries from the order office, and the head book-keeper summarizes them, so that the junior clerks may enter
them in the daybook. This done, the head book-keeper is at liberty to reflect in peace on the more difficult problems, to examine the books and give his decisions. Then if in his head he has disentangled and straightened out a particularly difficult book-keeping problem, he sees new and approved bridges once more stretching reciprocally from continent to continent, and this intricate maze of established connections between account and account, this inextricable and yet so clearly woven net, in which not a single knot is missing, is symbolized at last in a single figure which he already foresees, though it may not go into the balance sheet for months to come. Oh, sweet agitation of the final balance! no matter whether it show a gain or a loss; for to the book-keeper all transactions bring gain and satisfaction. Even the monthly trial balances are triumphs of power and skill, yet they are nothing when compared with the general settlement of the books at the end of the half-year: during those days he is the captain of the ship, and his hand never leaves the helm; the young clerks in his department stick to their posts like galley slaves, and no one heeds the dinner-hour, or thinks of sleep, until all the accounts are balanced; but the drawing up of the profit and loss account and the final balance sheet he reserves for himself, and when he has achieved his task, and ruled the last line beneath the account, he seals his labours with his signature. But woe if the balance is out even by so much as a penny! A new, but bitter pleasure follows. Aided by his chief assistant he goes through the suspected accounts with the eye of a detective, and if that is of no avail all the entries of the last half-year are ruthlessly scrutinized yet again. And woe to the young man in whose books the error is found,—wrath and cold contempt will be his portion, yea dismissal. If meanwhile, however, it is discovered that the error has occurred not in the books but in the stocktaking in the storeroom, then the head book-keeper simply shrugs his shoulders, and his lips wear a pitying or sarcastic smile, for the stocktaking lies outside his province, and moreover he knows that in the store, as in life, that perfect order can never be achieved which he maintains in his books. With a contemptuous wave of the hand he returns to his office, and when presently the days become more tranquil, not seldom it may be the head book-keeper’s good fortune, while flinging open a ledger, smoothing out the page rapidly with his thumb, running down a column of figures to check it, proud meanwhile of his skill which in spite of the sureness of his smoothly proceeding calculations permits his thoughts
to stray freely to distant things—it may be his good fortune to realize with delighted surprise, expected and yet enchanting surprise, that the miracle of calculation still exists like a sure rock in an incalculable world. But then, it may be, his hand slips down from the page, and sadness steals into his heart as he thinks of the new system which it is one of the duties of a modern book-keeper to inaugurate; and reflecting that the new system is an affair of matter-of-fact cards instead of imposing and massive tomes, superseding personal skill by adding-machines, he is filled with bitterness.

Outside their work book-keepers are irritable. For the frontier between reality and unreality in life can never be clearly drawn, and a man who lives within a world of precisely adjusted relations will refuse to allow that there can be another world whose relations are incomprehensible and inscrutable to him: so when he steps out of his firmly established world or is torn from it he becomes impatient, he becomes an ascetic and passionate fanatic, even a rebel. The shadow of death has touched him, and the one-time book-keeper—if he has grown old—is really fit for nothing but the petty existence of the superannuated, and, impervious to accident and all the life round him, can be content to water his garden and attend to his fruit-trees; but if he is still vigorous and eager for work, his life becomes a galling combat with a world of reality which to him is unreal. Especially if fate or a legacy has deposited him in such an exposed position as that of a newspaper editor, even though it may be only a small provincial newspaper that he controls! For there is certainly no occupation so dependent on the uncalculability and uncertainty of the world’s affairs as that of an editor, particularly in times of war when report and counter-report, hope and despair, heroism and misery, tread so closely on one another’s heels that any methodical keeping of the books becomes a sheer impossibility; only by referring to the Censor’s office can one establish what is to pass for truth and what must remain in the realm of untruth, and each nation lives enclosed in its own patriotic reality. Here a book-keeper is very much out of place, for he may easily be tempted to write that our brave troops are still posted on the left banks of the Marne awaiting orders for a further advance, while in reality the French, on their side, have long since pushed forward to the right bank. And if the censorship should reprimand him for such falsehoods, the book-keeper, especially if he is a man of impetuous moods, will inevitably get into a rage and
point out that while General Headquarters had indeed reported the fortification of the bridgehead on the left bank, nothing at all had been said of the withdrawal of the troops. This is only one instance among many, one may even say among hundreds, and they are sufficient to show amply how impossible it is to apply to entries in the annals of history that scrupulosity which is accepted as the first and absolute condition of the registration of business events, and how the inaccuracy of a war which it has become impossible to survey as a whole may nourish a spirit of rebellion, for which a precise and scrupulous man might have found excuse enough even in times of peace, but which now must develop of necessity into an inevitable struggle between authority and justice, between two unrealities, two violent forces, a struggle that is eternal, a renewal of Don Quixote’s crusade against a world which refuses to submit to the demands of the law-bringing spirit. For ever the book-keeper will do battle for the right, since if a penny is out he will go over every item again should the integrity of his books require it, and without being actually a good man himself, he will rise as the advocate of oppressed justice as soon as he has recognized and registered the existence of injustice and wrong; unyielding and wrathful he will rise to give battle, a lean knight with lance in rest who must charge again and again for the honour of the accurate book-keeping that ought to be able to account for everything on earth.

So Herr Esch’s editorial labours were by no means so easy as one might have supposed. True, the material for his half-weekly sheet was delivered by a Cologne news and article agency, and all that the editor really needed to do was to extract from among the sensational reports the most sensational, to choose from the elegant serials and articles the most elegant, and there was nothing left for him to deal with personally but the local news, which moreover consisted chiefly of paragraphs “from a correspondent.” But simple as this looked, and simple indeed as it really was so long as Esch confined himself to the book-keeping, which he had established on a new basis (not of course on the American, but on the more modest Italian model), all sorts of complications set in when the acting editor was called up and Herr Esch found himself compelled, partly by his natural and book-keeping parsimony, partly by the increasing difficulty of the general situation, to take the editorship of the paper into his own hands. Then the fight began! the fight for precise evidence of the world’s doings, and against the false or falsified book-keeping
entries which people tried to fob off on him, the fight against the authorities who were indignant that the
Kur-Trier Herald
should give public currency to abuses at the Front and behind the lines, to sailors’ revolts and unrest in munition factories, more, who refused to listen even to the paper’s proposals for genuinely fighting these evils, but on the contrary found it suspicious—although only an ill-wisher could have found it suspicious—that such reports should be confided to Herr Esch, and already were seriously considering whether they should interdict him the exercise of his editorial calling, on the ground that he was a foreign subject (a Luxemburger); he had been repeatedly warned, and his relations with the Censor’s office in Trier were becoming more uncomfortable from week to week. Small wonder, then, that Herr Esch, himself at odds with the world, should begin to feel a brotherly sympathy for his oppressed and downtrodden fellow-creatures, and should become an obstructionist and a rebel. But he did not actually admit it to himself.