Little Apple by Leo Perutz Read Free Book Online Page B

Lola?"
    The subject she wanted to raise with him was very close to her heart. Herr Bamberger, the lodger, for whom she cherished the highest regard, had expressed an interest in her brother and wanted to meet him. It might prove an extremely useful contact, but she decided to start by speaking of matters to 'which she attached less importance.
    "Franzi dropped in first thing this morning," she said. "She wondered if you'd meet her for lunch at the Domcafe. She's working right through, but she plans to take half an hour off around one, just for a snack. Why not join her? You haven't made a sign of life all week. She was going on about it like anything."
    "I've been busy, she knows that perfectly well," Vit¬torin grumbled. "Interviews and appointments all day long - here, there and everywhere. Take yesterday afternoon: I had an important meeting in the 4th District. Half an hour later I had to be at the Café Splendide in Praterstrasse, then home to change and back to Prinz-Eugen-Strasse for yet another appointment — one long rush! Then there's the time I have to spend at the railway stations, standing there for hours on the lookout for POW trains. I need certain information. I have to make inquiries, and it's a job I can't leave to anyone else. Franzi knows that, so why does she keep pestering me?"
    Lola was at a loss for an answer.
    "Anyway, things are going to be different from now on," Vit¬torin pursued. "I won't have to hang around the stations any more. I've already found out 'what I wanted to know, and I've completed my preliminary discussions. Now I've got to work and earn some money. Is it really quarter to eleven already? High time I got dressed and went out — I've been lying here far too long. I mustn't fritter away another whole morning like this."
    "You can afford to take it easy for another few days," Lola told him. "You needn't go back to work till the fifteenth, Father says."
    "Back to the office and bang away at a typewriter?" Vit¬torin exclaimed. "I wouldn't dream of it. A hundred and eighty kronen a month, maybe two hundred next year if I'm lucky — you call that good money? I'd make more playing the violin in a cinema. Have you any idea how much people are earning these days?"
    Lola perched on the edge of his bed.
    "Listen, Georg," she said. "I meant to tell you this yesterday, but I hardly saw you. That cinema idea - you can't be serious. It's no kind of a job for people like us. I could sing for a living myself- my voice is good enough for a suburban music hall - and maybe I will, too. I'd sooner do that than marry Ebenseder." Her face darkened. "There was another row this morning, Georg. Father got terribly worked up - he's been so worried and irritable lately. I think they want to pension him off, you see, and he's only done seventeen years. It's awfully unfair, but don't let him know I've told you. He doesn't want it mentioned."
    Herr Vit¬torin had been completely unbalanced by the nation's defeat, the collapse of the army, the overthrow of the monarchy and the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Unable to come to terms with the way things were going, he had become dogmatic, argumentative, and convinced that everyone was persecuting him. Devoid of legal training and incapable of grasping the nature of complex fiscal regulations, he had committed numerous blunders and applied incorrect scales of charges when working out the tax demands for which his department was responsible. When hauled over the coals, he had jumped to the conclusion that he was the victim of political intrigue and defended himself in a manner that only aggravated his position: he submitted a memorandum to higher authority in which he heaped his immediate superior with grave accusations. He not only called the man a schemer, an incompetent ignoramus, and an embezzler of government funds, but charged him with corruption, moral turpitude, and conduct unworthy of a public servant. The authorities promptly launched an