Gargoyles

“Nine o’clock,” the prince said. “I read through my advertisement once more and reflect that it is a perfectly ordinary, not especially attractive notice. It surprises me that there should be a single person who comes in response to it, and then the two other applicants arrive, Henzig and Huber. First Henzig,” the prince said. “Let me give you a brief sketch of Henzig.” (Something hysterical about the prince’s tone!) “Thirty-four years old,” the prince said. “Henzig seems to me excellently fitted for the post, though I didn’t like him (in contrast to Huber, whom I found more likable than naturally fitted for the post). Henzig comes from the vicinity of Aussee, son of a family of foresters. His father is a commissioner of forests; he attended the School of Forestry, studied soils, and so on.… Sureness about everything he says; moreover, everything he says is correct,” the prince said. “Strip selection cutting — opening up the canopy — shelterwood, etc. I was stunned by the way the man knew everything. (Vertical group selection cutting, etc.) But I felt dislike for the man’s neatness,” the prince said. “Personal cleanliness, clothing, and so on — all merits that suddenly repel me. Why? I don’t have to look at the references to know that I’m dealing with an excellent man. Right at the beginning of the interview with Henzig I had to laugh the name Zehetmayer away. A poor wretched fellow, I say to myself, and let Henzig give me a summary of his previous employment while still savoring the unspoken name Puschach Lake. I had my mind on Zehetmayer, not on Henzig, Doctor. I had my mind on Zehetmayer’s generalized despair while Henzig was giving me specific data on his career. Suddenly I said aloud: Of course there are people who are so horribly constituted that they occupy one’s mind continually, and in a pleasant way, moreover. Henzig was irritated,” the prince said, “but only for the briefest moment. Then he went on with his summary. It was a pleasure for me to listen to Henzig and to think of Zehetmayer,” the prince said. “I had no difficulty in carrying this amusement to an extreme. Henzig said that he had been working for six years in Kobernausserwald, certainly the foremost forestry school in Austria, in the former Habsburg, now republican, state forests. Henzig said something about Douglas firs, about arid and humid strata, broad base, about conditions of payment, purchases and sales. I heard the name Liberia and the word mangroves; and several times, sounding very grotesque: The Habsburgs. It would have been wise to hire the man on the spot,” the prince said. “For I realized at once: Here is a top-notch man. But I did not hire him then and there,” the prince said. “This man reminded me of my youth, of long walks in the woods with Forest Commissioner Siegmund. Of conversations about the colors of game birds, fees for hunting licenses, tree diseases, sale of lumber to France and Italy, of my young manhood. I suddenly found myself looking through him into long and in any case secret and faded talks. The smell of all these talks and subjects and woods and clothes were in my nose, and the smell of the air on the banks of the Ache, the smell of Tyrol, Salzburg, Upper Bavaria, and Upper Austria, the smell of kindred forests. I looked into an official building on the margin of a Tyrolian forest, where the floorboards betray who is walking on them. You hear such phrases as: The forest commissioner is coming! or Dr. Konstanz or Marie is coming. The door opens into a library in which two thousand volumes of distorted history are lined up, from Descartes and Pascal to Schopenhauer and the obscure Schiern papers. When I looked through Henzig I saw the vast forests between the inn and the lowlands of Bavaria, or the endless woods of Slovenia,” the prince said. “I kept thinking: The tranquility of nature is and remains an infinite tranquility. Suddenly I said to Henzig: All in all,” the prince said, “and I said that in extreme embarrassment, all in all you seem to me too voting for the post. For you must realize, I say to Henzig, that you would be bearing an enormous responsibility entirely alone. In the Kobernausserwald, I say, there are many state employees, and no matter how good they are, they bear no responsibility. State employees do not bear responsibility. Under the Republic the word responsibility has become a foreign word! I say. I know it, I say to him,” the prince said, “in the state forests everything is irresponsible; that is the most conspicuous characteristic of these so-called new, but actually age-old systems: that there is no responsibility in them. And I say,” the prince said, “you see the consequences of this irresponsibility of course, my dear fellow. Of course you see them, I said, I mean, I said, I know what I mean by responsibility. In this position you have the utmost responsibility. In this post there is no such thing as this ridiculous Republic. On the Saurau property this ridiculous Republic doesn’t exist. Not yet, I say. This is a state in itself. Here, I say, our own laws prevail, the Saurau natural laws. Understand, I say, the Saurau laws of nature, not those of the Republic, not those of the pseudo-democracy. And I say: The area is vast; you surely know how large the area of the Saurau property is, still is. Henzig says he does. Well then, I say, and you mean to say you fed equal to such a position? Let me call your attention to the fact, I say to the man, that this is not a state operation, this is private enterprise. That is a tremendous responsibility! And I think, this man Henzig is perfectly right for the post, but I say: I can imagine an older man holding such a post, but such a young man.… I keep thinking: Henzig is the man for the post, yet I say: You are surely biting off more than you can chew.… Henzig does not answer that. Then he says that incidentally he speaks French (of course), English, Russian, and Italian. Well, I say, I cannot decide at the moment. No,” the prince said, “at the moment you cannot expect a decision. I say: I’ll write to you. Give me your exact address. In two days you’ll receive a telegram. I stand up,” the prince said, “and offer my hand to Henzig. I open the door for him, because there is no one else around to open it for him, no one, and he’s gone. Henzig, no one else, I tell myself, and I think, sitting down in the office, and I think, why did the man’s Tightness, his general orderliness, order personified, so repel you? His education? I have to clap my hand to my head. This sudden dislike for enormous knowledge, I told myself,” the prince said. “Again and again I say: A good man, a good man, what a good man this fellow Henzig is.… I pace back and forth in the office. I reckon out the spring income from the gravel pits. I think: Are these gravel pits still profitable? While I begin to think about the large work force in the gravel pits (and in the mines) and to wonder whether I should not close the mines altogether — close them, I think, close the mines and the gravel pits, it’s high time — there is a knock at the door and another (the third) applicant stands before me: Huber.”