The Tanners

Beside the Copyists Office flowed a quiet, green, deep and old canal, a former fortress moat and the connecting link between the lake and the flowing river which in this way was given lake water to take along with it on its journey to distant seas. In general this was the quietest part of town; there was something secluded and village-like about it. When the ones who were sent away now tramped back down the stairs, they liked to sit for a while upon the railing at the edge of this canal, which then looked as if a row of large, strange, foreign birds were perched there. There was something philosophical about this, and indeed, many a one gazed down into the green dead water world and pondered the unrelentingness of fate just as fruitlessly as a philosopher is wont to do sitting in his study. The canal had something about it that invited one to dream and reflect, and the unemployed had ample time for this.

At the same time, the Copyists Office was a job market for the mercantile trade. A gentleman or lady, for example, might walk into the Office, go into the administrator’s office and ask to have a man, that is, a temporary worker for his or her place of business. Then the administrator would appear in the doorframe, looking over his charges, and after considering for a while would call one man by name: The person in question had then found work for a short while, perhaps eight, one, two or fourteen days. It was always an envy-arousing event when someone was called by name, for everyone was eager to work on the outside, since the pay was then higher and the work more interesting. Besides which, such a man who found work with kindhearted employers would be given a nice snack mornings and evenings, which was by no means to be despised. And so there was always a certain competition for such positions and an ogling of the one selected. Many believed they were always unjustly overlooked, while others, on the other hand, thought it advantageous to court and flatter the administrator and his under-official to attain what they so yearned for. It was approximately like a pack of trained dogs leaping up to snatch at a sausage that was constantly being jerked out of reach on a string, each dog firmly convinced that the others had no business going after the sausage, though without, of course, being able to substantiate that belief. Here too one man would growl at another who’d succeeded in snatching the prize, much as in the greater spheres of trade, scholarship, art and diplomacy, where things aren’t done so very differently, just with more cunning, arrogance and culture.

Simon also worked a few times on the outside — as abbreviated in the copyists’ patois — but he didn’t have much luck at it. Once he was sent to the devil by his boss, a shifty, rather brutal real estate and property agent who nearly fancied himself God almighty, because he’d been reading the newspaper when he should have been writing; and another time he hurled his pen right in the face of his employer, a wholesale fruit and vegetable merchant, with the words: “Do it yourself!” The fruitseller’s wife had insisted on bossing Simon around; so he simply broke things off; for, as he saw it, this female was merely trying to hurt and humiliate him, which in the end he didn’t see any reason to put up with; at least that’s how he felt about it.

— 17–