Buchmendel

== BUCHMENDEL ==
=== by Stefan Zweig ===
Originally published in Kaleidoscope, by Stefan Zweig. 1934
STEFAN ZWEIG (1881) is Viennese by birth. He is
internationally known for his biographical and critical writing (Adepts in
Self-Portraiture, Three Masters, Mental Healers, Joseph Fouche, Marie
Antoinette, Romain Rolland, etc.}; his plays (Jeremiah, Volpone); and his
novelettes and short stories, in such collections as Conflicts and
Kaleidoscope. ''
Having just got back to Vienna, after a visit to an out-of-the-way
part of the country, I was walking home from the station when a heavy shower
came on, such a deluge that the passers-by hastened to take shelter in
doorways, and I myself felt it expedient to get out of the downpour. Luckily
there is a cafe at almost every street-corner in the metropolis, and I made for
the nearest, though not before my hat was dripping wet and my shoulders were
drenched to the skin. An old-fashioned suburban place, lacking the attractions (copied
from )
of music and a dancing-floor to be found in the centre of the town; full of
small shopkeepers and working folk who consumed more newspapers than coffee and
rolls. Since it was already late in the evening, the air, which would have been
stuffy anyhow, was thick with tobacco-smoke. Still, the place was clean and brightly
decorated, had new satin-covered couches, and a shining cash-register, so that
it looked thoroughly attractive. In my haste to get out of the rain, I had not troubled
to read its name but what matter? There I rested, warm and comfortable, though
looking rather impatiently through the blue-tinted window panes to see when the
shower would be over, and I should be able to get on my way. 
Thus I sat unoccupied, and began to succumb
to that inertia which results from the narcotic atmosphere of the typical
Viennese cafe. Out of this void, I scanned various individuals whose eyes, in
the murky room, had a greyish look in the artificial light; I mechanically
contemplated the young woman at the counter as, like an automaton, she dealt
out sugar and a teaspoon to the waiter for each cup of coffee; with half an eye
and a wandering attention I read the uninteresting advertisements on the walls and
there was something agreeable about these dull occupations. But suddenly, and
in a peculiar fashion, I was aroused from what had become almost a doze. A
vague internal movement had begun; much as a toothache sometimes begins,
without one's being able to say whether it is on the right side or the left, in
the upper jaw or the lower. All I became aware of was a numb tension, an obscure
sentiment of spiritual unrest. Then, without knowing why, I grew fully
conscious. I must have been in this cafe once before, years ago, and random
associations had awakened memories of the walls, the tables, the chairs, the
seemingly unfamiliar smoke-laden room. 
The more I endeavoured to grasp this lost
memory, the more obstinately did it elude me; a sort of jellyfish glistening in
the abysses of consciousness, slippery and unseizable. Vainly did I scrutinize
every object within the range of vision. Certainly when I had been here before
the counter had had neither marble top nor cashregister; the walls had not been
panelled with imitation rosewood; these must be recent acquisitions. Yet I had
indubitably been here, more than twenty years back. Within these four walls, as
firmly fixed as a nail driven up to the head in a tree, there clung a part of
my ego, long since overgrown. Vainly I explored, not only the room, but my own
inner man, to grapple the lost links. Curse it all, I could not plumb the
depths! 
It will be seen that I was becoming vexed,
as one is always out of humour when one's grip slips in this way, and reveals
the inadequacy, the imperfections, of one's spiritual powers. Yet I still hoped
to recover the clue. A slender thread would suffice, for my memory is of a peculiar
type, both good and bad; on the one hand stubbornly untrustworthy, and on the
other incredibly dependable. It swallows the most important details, whether in
concrete happenings or in faces, and no voluntary exertion will induce it to
regurgitate them from the gulf. Yet the most trifling indication a picture
postcard, the address on an envelope, a newspaper cutting will suffice to hook
up what is wanted as an angler who has made a strike and successfully imbedded
his hook reels in a lively, struggling, and reluctant fish. Then I can recall
the features of a man seen once only, the shape of his mouth and the gap to the
left where he had an upper eye-tooth knocked out, the falsetto tone of his laugh,
and the twitching of the moustache when he chooses to be merry, the entire
change of expression which hilarity effects in him. Not only do these physical
traits rise before my mind's eye, but I remember, years afterwards, every word
the man said to me, and the tenor of my replies. But if I am to see and feel
the past thus vividly, there must be some material link to start the current of
associations. My memory will not work satisfactorily on the abstract plane. 
I closed my eyes to think more strenuously,
in the attempt to forge the hook which would catch my fish. In vain! In vain!
There was no hook, or the fish would not bite. So fierce waxed my irritation
with the inefficient and mulish thinking apparatus between my temples that I
could have struck myself a violent blow on the forehead, much as an irascible
man will shake and kick a penny-inthe-slot machine which, when he has inserted
his coin, refuses to render him his due. 
So exasperated did I become at my failure,
that I could no longer sit quiet, but rose to prowl about the room. The instant
I moved, the glow of awakening memory began. To the right of the cash-register,
I recalled, there must be a doorway leading into a windowless room, where the only
light was artificial. Yes, the place actually existed. 
The decorative scheme was different, but
the proportions were unchanged. A square box of a place, behind the bar the
card-room. My nerves thrilled as I contemplated the furniture, for I was on the
track, I had found the clue, and soon I should know all. There were two small
billiardtables, looking like silent ponds covered with green scum. In the
corners, card-tables, at one of which two bearded men of professorial type were
playing chess. Beside the iron stove, close to a door labelled
"Telephone," was another small table. In a flash, I had it! That was
Mendel's place, Jacob Mendel's. That was where Mendel used to hang out,
Buchmendel. I was in the Cafe Gluck! How could I have forgotten Jacob Mendel.
Was it possible that I had not thought about him for ages, a man so peculiar as
wellnigh to belong to the Land of Fable, the eighth wonder of the world, famous
at the university and among a narrow circle of admirers, magician of
bookfanciers, who had been wont to sit there from morning till night, an emblem
of bookish lore, the glory of the Cafe Gluck? Why had I had so much difficulty
in hooking my fish? How could I have forgotten Buchmendel? 
I allowed my imagination to work. The man's
face and form pictured themselves vividly before me. I saw him as he had been
in the flesh, seated at the table with its grey marble top, on which books and
manuscripts were piled. Motionless he sat, his spectacled eyes fixed upon the
printed page. Yet not altogether motionless, for he had a habit (acquired at
school in the Jewish quarter of the Galician town from which he came) of
rocking his shiny bald pate backwards and forwards and humming to himself as he
read. There he studied catalogues and tomes, crooning and rocking, as Jewish
boys are taught to do when reading the Talmud. The rabbis believe that, just as
a child is rocked to sleep in its cradle, so are the pious ideas of the holy
text better instilled by this rhythmical and hypnotizing movement of head and
body. In fact, as if he had been in a trance, Jacob Mendel saw and heard
nothing while thus occupied. He was oblivious to the click of billiard-balls,
the coming and going of waiters, the ringing of the telephone bell; he paid no
heed when the floor was scrubbed and when the stove was refilled. Once a
red-hot coal fell out of the latter, and the flooring began to blaze a few
inches from Mendel's feet; the room was full of smoke, and one of the guests
ran for a pail of water to extinguish the fire. But neither the smoke, the bustle,
nor the stench diverted his attention from the volume before him. He read as
others pray, as gamblers follow the spinning of the roulette board, as
drunkards stare into vacancy; he read with such profound absorption that ever
since I first watched him the reading of ordinary mortals has seemed a pastime.
This Galician secondhand book dealer, Jacob Mendel, was the first to reveal to
me in my youth the mystery of absolute concentration which characterizes the
artist and the scholar, the sage and the imbecile; the first to make me
acquainted with the tragical happiness and unhappiness of complete absorption. 
A senior student introduced me to him. I
was studying the life and doings of a man who is even today too little known,
Mesmer the magnetizer. My researches were bearing scant fruit, for the books I
could lay my hands on conveyed sparse information, and when I applied to the
university librarian for help he told me, uncivilly, that it was not his
business to hunt up references for a freshman. Then my college friend suggested
taking me to Mendel. 
"He knows everything about books, and
will tell you where to find the information you want. The ablest man in , and an original
to boot. The man is a saurian of the book-world, an antediluvian survivor of an
extinct species." 
We went, therefore, to the Cafe Gluck, and
found 
Buchmendel in his usual place,
bespectacled, bearded, wearing a rusty black suit, and rocking as I have
described. He did not notice our intrusion, but went on reading, looking like a
nodding mandarin. On a hook behind him hung his ragged black overcoat, the
pockets of which bulged with manuscripts, catalogues, and books. My friend
coughed loudly, to attract his attention, but Mendel ignored the sign. At
length Schmidt rapped on the table-top, as if knocking at a door, and at this
Mendel glanced up, mechanically pushed his spectacles on to his forehead, and
from beneath his thick and untidy ashengrey brows there glared at us two dark,
alert little eyes. My friend introduced me, and I explained my quandary, being
careful (as Schmidt had advised) to express great annoyance at the librarian's
unwillingness to assist me. Mendel leaned back, laughed scornfully, and
answered with a strong Galician accent: 
"Unwillingness, you think?
Incompetence, that's what's the matter with him. He's a jackass. I've known him
(for my sins) twenty years at least, and he's learned nothing in the whole of
that time. Pocket their wages that's all such fellows can do. They should be
mending the road, instead of sitting over books." 
This outburst served to break the ice, and
with a friendly wave of the hand the bookworm invited me to sit down at his
table. I reiterated my object in consulting him; to get a list of all the early
works on animal magnetism, and of contemporary and subsequent books and pamphlets
for and against Mesmer. When I had said my say, Mendel closed his left eye for
an instant, as if excluding a grain of dust. This was, with him, a sign of
concentrated attention. Then, as though reading from an invisible catalogue, he
reeled out the names of two or three dozen titles, giving in each case place
and date of publication and approximate price. I was amazed, though Schmidt had
warned me what to expect. His vanity was tickled by my surprise, for he went on
to strum the keyboard of his marvellous memory, and to produce the most
astounding bibliographical marginal notes. Did I want to know about sleepwalkers,
Perkins's metallic tractors, early experiments in hypnotism, Braid, Gassner,
attempts to conjure up the devil, Christian Science, theosophy, Madame Blavatsky?
In connexion with each item there was a hailstorm of book-names, dates, and
appropriate details. I was beginning to understand that Jacob Mendel was a
living lexicon, something like the general catalogue of the British Museum
Reading Room, but able to walk about on two legs. I stared dumbfounded at this
bibliographical phenomenon, which masqueraded in the sordid and rather unclean
domino of a Galician second-hand book dealer, who, after rattling off some
eighty titles (with assumed indifference, but really with the satisfaction of
one who plays an unexpected trump), proceeded to wipe his spectacles with a
handkerchief which might long before have been white. 
Hoping to conceal my astonishment, I
inquired: 
"Which among these works do you think
you could get for me without too much trouble?" 
"Oh, I'll have a look round," he
answered. "Come here tomorrow and I shall certainly have some of them. As
for the others, it's only a question of time, and of knowing where to
look." 
"Pm greatly obliged to you," I
said; and, then, wishing to be civil, I put my foot in it, proposing to give
him a list of the books I wanted. Schmidt nudged me warningly, but too late.
Mendel had already flashed a look at me such a look, at once triumphant and
affronted, scornful and overwhelmingly superior the royal look with which Macbeth
answers Macduff when summoned to yield without a blow. He laughed curtly. His
Adam's apple moved excitedly. Obviously he had gulped down a choleric, an
insulting epithet. 
Indeed he had good reason to be angry. Only
a stranger, an ignoramus, could have proposed to give him, Jacob Mendel, a
memorandum, as if he had been a bookseller's assistant or an underling in a
public library. Not until I knew him better did I fully understand how much my would-be
politeness must have galled this aberrant genius for the man had, and knew
himself to have, a titanic memory, wherein, behind a dirty and
undistinguishedlooking forehead, was indelibly recorded a picture of the title-page
of every book that had been printed. No matter whether it had issued from the
press yesterday or hundreds of years ago, he knew its place of publication, its
author's name, and its price. From his mind, as if from the printed page, he
could read off the contents, could reproduce the illustrations; could
visualize, not only what he had actually held in his hands, but also what he
had glanced at in a bookseller's window; could see it with the same vividness
as an artist sees the creations of fancy which he has not yet reproduced upon
canvas. When a book was offered for six marks by a dealer, he could remember that,
two years before, a copy of the same work had changed hands for four crowns at
a Viennese auction, and he recalled the name of the purchaser. In a word, Jacob
Mendel never forgot a title or a figure; he knew every plant, every infusorian,
every star, in the continually revolving and incessantly changing cosmos of the
book-universe. In each literary specialty, he knew more than the specialists;
he knew the contents of the libraries better than the librarians; he knew the book-lists
of most publishers better than the heads of the firms concerned though he had
nothing to guide him except the magical powers of his inexplicable but
invariably accurate memory. 
True, this memory owed its infallibility to
the man's limitations, to his extraordinary power of concentration. Apart from
books, he knew nothing of the world. The phenomena of existence did not begin
to become real for him until they had been set in type, arranged upon a composing
stick, collected and, so to say, sterilized in a book. Nor did he read books
for their meaning, to extract their spiritual or narrative substance. What
aroused his passionate interest, what fixed his attention, was the name, the
price, the format, the title-page. Though in the last analysis unproductive and
uncreative, this specifically antiquarian memory of Jacob Mendel, since it was
not a printed book-catalogue but was stamped upon the grey matter of a
mammalian brain, was, in its unique perfection, no less remarkable a phenomenon
than Napoleon's gift for physiognomy, Mezzofanti's talent for languages,
Lasker's skill at chess-openings, Busoni's musical genius. Given a public
position as teacher, this man with so marvellous a brain might have taught thousands
and hundreds of thousands of students, have trained others to become men of
great learning and of incalculable value to those communal treasure-houses we call
libraries. But to him, a man of no account, a Galician Jew, a book-pedlar whose
only training had been received in a Talmudic school, this upper world of
culture was a fenced precinct he could never enter; and his amazing faculties
could only find application at the marble-topped table in the inner room of the
Cafe Gluck. When, some day, there arises a great psychologist who shall
classify the types of that magical power we term memory as effectively as
Buffon classified the genera and species of animals, a man competent to give a
detailed description of all the varieties, he will have to find a pigeonhole
for Jacob Mendel, forgotten master of the lore of bookprices and book-titles,
the ambulatory catalogue alike of incunabula and the modern commonplace. 
In the book-trade and among ordinary
persons, Jacob Mendel was regarded as nothing more than a second-hand book
dealer in a small way of business. Sunday after Sunday, his stereotyped
advertisement appeared in the "Neue Freie Presse" and the "Neues
Wiener Tagblatt." It ran as follows: "Best prices paid for old books,
Mendel, Obere Alserstrasse." A telephone number followed, really that of
the Cafe Gluck. He rummaged every available corner for his wares, and once a
week, with the aid of a bearded porter, conveyed fresh booty to his
headquarters and got rid of old stock for he had no proper bookshop. Thus he
remained a petty trader, and his business was not lucrative. Students sold him
their textbooks, which year by year passed through his hands from one "
generation" to another; and for a small percentage on the price he would
procure any additional book that was wanted. He charged little or nothing for
advice. Money seemed to have no standing in his world. No one had ever seen him
better dressed than in the threadbare black coat. For breakfast and supper he
had a glass of milk and a couple of rolls, while at a modest meal was brought him from a
neighbouring restaurant. He did not smoke; he did not play cards; one might
almost say he did not live, were it not that his eyes were alive behind his
spectacles, and unceasingly fed his enigmatic brain with words, titles, names.
The brain, like a fertile pasture, greedily sucked in this abundant irrigation.
Human beings did not interest him, and of all human passions perhaps one only
moved him, the most universal vanity. 
When someone, wearied by a futile hunt in
countless other places, applied to him for information, and was instantly put
on the track, his self-gratification was overwhelming; and it was
unquestionably a delight to him that in Vienna and elsewhere there existed a
few dozen persons who respected him for his knowledge and valued him for the
services he could render. In every one of these monstrous aggregates we call
towns, there are here and there facets which reflect one and the same universe in
miniature unseen by most, but highly prized by connoisseurs, by brethren of the
same craft, by devotees of the same passion. The fans of the book-market knew Jacob
Mendel. Just as anyone encountering a difficulty in deciphering a score would
apply to Eusebius Mandyczewski of the Musical Society, who would be found wearing
a grey skull-cap and seated among multifarious musical MSS., ready, with a
friendly smile, to solve the most obstinate crux; and just as, today, anyone in
search of information about the Viennese theatrical and cultural life of
earlier times will unhesitatingly look up the polyhistor Father Glossy; so,
with equal confidence did the bibliophiles of Vienna, when they had a
particularly hard nut to crack, make a pilgrimage to the Cafe Gluck and lay their
difficulty before Jacob Mendel. 
To me, young and eager for new experiences,
it became enthralling to watch such a consultation. Whereas ordinarily, when a
would-be seller brought him some ordinary book, he would contemptuously clap
the cover to and mutter, "Two crowns"; if shown a rare or unique
volume, he would sit up and take notice, lay the treasure upon a clean sheet of
paper; and, on one such occasion, he was obviously ashamed of his dirty,
ink-stained fingers and mourning finger-nails. Tenderly, cautiously, respectfully,
he would turn the pages of the treasure. One would have been as loath to
disturb him at such a moment as to break in upon the devotions of a man at
prayer; and in very truth there was a flavour of solemn ritual and religious observance
about the way in which contemplation, palpation, smelling, and weighing in the
hand followed one another in orderly succession. His rounded back waggled while
he was thus engaged, he muttered to himself, exclaimed "Ah" now and
again to express wonder or admiration, or "Oh, dear" when a page was
missing or another had been mutilated by the larva of a book-beetle. His
weighing of the tome in his hand was as circumspect as if books were sold by
the ounce, and his snuffling at it as sentimental as a girl's smelling of a rose.
Of course it would have been the height of bad form for the owner to show
impatience during this ritual of examination. 
When it was over, he willingly, nay
enthusiastically, tendered all the information at his disposal, not forgetting relevant
anecdotes, and dramatized accounts of the prices which other specimens of the
same work had fetched at auctions or in sales by private treaty. He looked
brighter, younger, more lively at such times, and only one thing could put him
seriously out of humour. This was when a novice offered him money for his
expert opinion. Then he would draw back with an affronted air, looking for all
the world like the skilled custodian of a museum gallery to whom an American
traveller has offered a tip for to Jacob Mendel contact with a rare book was
something sacred, as is contact with a woman to a young man who has not had the
bloom rubbed off. Such moments were his platonic love-nights. Books exerted a
spell on him, never money. Vainly, therefore, did great collectors (among them
one of the notables of ) try to
recruit Mendel as librarian or book-buyer. The offer was declined with thanks.
He could not forsake his familiar headquarters at the Cafe Gluck. Thirty-three years
before, an awkward youngster with black down sprouting on his chin and black
ringlets hanging over his temples, he had come from Galicia to Vienna,
intending to adopt the calling of rabbi; but ere long he forsook the worship of
the harsh and jealous Jehovah to devote himself to the more lively and
polytheistic cult of books. Then he happened upon the Cafe Gluck, by degrees
making it his workshop, headquarters, post-office his world. Just as an
astronomer, alone in an observatory, watches night after night through a
telescope the myriads of stars, their mysterious movements, their changeful
medley, their extinction and their flaming-up anew, so did Jacob Mendel, seated
at his table in the Cafe Gluck, look through his spectacles into the universe
of books, a universe that lies above the world of our everyday life, and, like
the stellar universe, is full of changing cycles. 
It need hardly be said that he was highly
esteemed in the Cafe Gluck, whose fame seemed to us to depend far more upon his
unofficial professorship than upon the godfathership of the famous musician,
Christoph Willibald Gluck, composer of Alcestis and Iphigenia. He belonged to
the outfit quite as much as did the old cherrywood counter, the two
billiard-tables with their cloth stitched in many places, and the copper
coffee-urn. His table was guarded as a sanctuary. His numerous clients and
customers were expected to take a drink "for the good of the house,"
so that most of the profit of his far-flung knowledge flowed into the big
leathern pouch slung round the waist of Deubler, the waiter. In return for
being a centre of attraction, Mendel enjoyed many privileges. The telephone was
at his service for nothing. He could have his letters directed to the cafe, and
his parcels were taken in there. The excellent old woman who looked after the toilet
brushed his coat, sewed on buttons, and carried a small bundle of underlinen
every week to the wash. He was the only guest who could have a meal sent in
from the restaurant; and every morning Herr Standhartner, the proprietor of the
cafe, made a point of coming to his table and saying "Good morning!"
though Jacob Mendel, immersed in his books, seldom noticed the greeting. Punctually
at half-past seven he arrived, and did not leave till the lights were
extinguished. He never spoke to the other guests, never read a newspaper,
noticed no changes; and once, when Herr Standhartner civilly asked him whether
he did not find the electric light more agreeable to read by than the
malodorous and uncertain kerosene lamps they had replaced, he stared in astonishment
at the new incandescents. Although the installation had necessitated several
days' hammering and bustle, the introduction of the glow-lamps had escaped his
notice. Only through the two round apertures of the spectacles, only through
these two shining and sucking lenses, did the milliards of black infusorians
which were the letters filter into his brain. Whatever else happened in his
vicinity was disregarded as unmeaning noise. He had spent more than thirty
years of his waking life at this table, reading, comparing, calculating, in a
continuous waking dream, interrupted only by intervals of sleep. 
A sense of horror overcame me when, looking
into the inner room behind the bar of the Cafe Gluck, I saw that the marble top
of the table where Jacob Mendel used to deliver his oracles was now as bare as
a tombstone. Grown older since those days, I understood how much disappears when
such a man drops out of his place in the world, were it only because, amid the
daily increase in hopeless monotony, the unique grows continually more
precious. Besides, in my callow youth a profound intuition had made me
exceedingly fond of Buchmendel. It was through the observation of him that I
had first become aware of the enigmatic fact that supreme achievement and
outstanding capacity are only rendered possible by mental concentration, by a
sublime monomania that verges on lunacy. Through the living example of this
obscure genius of a second-hand book dealer, far more than through the flashes
of insight in the works of our poets and other imaginative writers, had been
made plain to me the persistent possibility of a pure life of the spirit, of
complete absorption in an idea, an ecstasy as absolute as that of an Indian
yogi or a medieval monk; and I had learned that this was possible in an
electric-lighted cafe and adjoining a telephone box. Yet I had forgotten him,
during the war years, and through a kindred immersion in my own work. The sight
of the empty table made me ashamed of myself, and at the same time curious
about the man who used to sit there. 
What had become of him? I called the waiter
and inquired. 
"No, Sir," he answered, "I'm
sorry, but I never heard of Herr Mendel. There is no one of that name among the
frequenters of the Cafe Gluck. Perhaps the head-waiter will know." 
"Herr Mendel?" said the
head-waiter dubiously, after a moment's reflection. "No, Sir, never heard
of him. Unless you mean Herr Mandl, who has a hardware store in the
Florianigasse?" 
I had a bitter taste in the mouth, the
taste of an irrecoverable past. What is the use of living, when the wind obliterates
our footsteps in the sand directly we have gone by? Thirty years, perhaps
forty, a man had breathed, read, thought, and spoken within this narrow room;
three or four years had elapsed, and there had arisen a new king over Egypt,
which knew not Joseph. No one in the Cafe Gluck had ever heard of Jacob Mendel,
of Buchmendel. Somewhat pettishly I asked the head-waiter whether I could have
a word with Herr Standhartner, or with one of the old staff. 
"Herr Standhartner, who used to own
the place? He sold it years ago, and has died since. . . . The former head-waiter?
He saved up enough to retire, and lives upon a little property at Krems. No,
Sir, all of the old lot are scattered. All except one, indeed, Frau Sporschil, who
looks after the toilet. She's been here for ages, worked under the late owner,
I know. But she's not likely to remember your Herr Mendel. Such as she hardly
know one guest from another." 
I dissented in thought. 
"One does not forget a Jacob Mendel so
easily!" 
What I said was: 
" Still, I should like to have a word
with Frau Sporschil, if she has a moment to spare," 
The "Toilettenfrau" (known in the
Viennese vernacular as the "Schocoladefrau") soon emerged from the
basement, white-haired, run to seed, heavy-footed, wiping her chapped hands
upon a towel as she came. She had been called away from her task of cleaning
up, and was obviously uneasy at being summoned into the strong light of the
guest-rooms for common folk in Vienna, where an authoritative tradition has
lingered on after the revolution, always think it must be a police matter when
their "superiors 3 ' want to question them. She eyed me suspiciously, though
humbly. But as soon as I asked her about Jacob Mendel, she braced up, and at
the same time her eyes filled with tears. 
"Poor Herr Mendel ... so there's still
someone who bears him in mind?" 
Old people are commonly much moved by
anything which recalls the days of their youth and revives the memory of past
companionships. I asked if he was still alive. 
"Good Lord, no. Poor Herr Mendel must
have^died five or six years ago. Indeed, I think it's fully seven since he
passed away. Dear, good man that he was; and how long I knew him, more than
twenty-five years; he was already sitting every day at his table when I began
to work here. It was a shame, it was, the way they let him die." 
Growing more and more excited, she asked if
I was a relative. No one had ever inquired about him before. Didn't I know what
had happened to him? 
"No," I replied, "and I want
you to be good enough to tell me all about it." 
She looked at me timidly, and continued to
wipe her damp hands. It was plain to me that she found it embarrassing, with
her dirty apron and her tousled white hair, to be standing in the full glare of
the cafe. She kept looking round anxiously, to see if one of the waiters might
be listening. 
"Let's go into the card-room," I
said, "Mendel's old room. You shall tell me your story there." 
She nodded appreciatively, thankful that I
understood, and led the way to the inner room, a little shambling in her gait.
As I followed, I noticed that the waiters and the guests were staring at us as
a strangely assorted pair. We sat down opposite one another at the
marble-topped table, and there she told me the story of Jacob Mendel's ruin and
death. I will give the tale as nearly as may be in her own words, supplemented
here and there by what I learned afterwards from other sources. 
"Down to the outbreak of war, and
after the war had begun, he continued to come here every morning at halfpast
seven, to sit at this table and study all day just as before. We had the
feeling that the fact of a war going on had never entered his mind. Certainly
he didn't read the newspapers, and didn't talk to anyone except about books. He
paid no attention when (in the early days of the war, before the authorities
put a stop to such things) the newspaper-venders ran through the streets
shouting, 'Great Battle on the Eastern Front' (or wherever it might be),
'Horrible Slaughter,' and so on; when people gathered in knots to talk things
over, he kept himself to himself; he did not know that Fritz, the
billiard-marker, who fell in one of the first battles, had vanished from this place;
he did not know that Herr Standhartner's son had been taken prisoner by the
Russians at Przemysl; never said a word when the bread grew more and more
uneatable and when he was given bean-coffee to drink at breakfast and supper
instead of hot milk. Once only did he express surprise at the changes, wondering
why so few students came to the cafe. There was nothing in the world that mattered
to him except his books. 
"Then disaster befell him. At eleven
one morning, two policemen came, one in uniform, and the other a plainclothes
man. The latter showed the red rosette under the lapel of his coat and asked
whether there was a man named Jacob Mendel in the house. They went straight to
Herr Mendel's table. The poor man, in his innocence, supposed they had books to
sell, or wanted some information; but they told him he was under arrest, and
took him away at once. It was a scandal for the cafe. All the guests flocked
round Herr Mendel, as he stood between the two police officers, his spectacles
pushed up under his hair, staring from each to the other bewildered. Some ventured
a protest, saying there must be a mistake that Herr Mendel was a man who
wouldn't hurt a fly; but the detective was furious, and told them to mind their
own business. They took him away, and none of us at the Cafe Gluck saw him
again for two years. I never found out what they had against him, but I would
take my dying oath that they must have made a mistake. Herr Mendel could never
have done anything wrong. It was a crime to treat an innocent man so
harshly." 
The excellent Frau Sporschil was right. Our
friend Jacob Mendel had done nothing wrong. He had merely (as I subsequently
learned) done something incredibly stupid, only explicable to those who knew
the man's peculiarities. The military censorship board, whose function it was
to supervise correspondence passing into and out of neutral hands, one day got
its clutches upon a postcard written and signed by a certain Jacob Mendel,
properly stamped for transmission abroad. This postcard was addressed to Monsieur
Jean Labourdaire, Libraire, Quai de Crenelle, Paris to an enemy country,
therefore. The writer complained that the last eight issues of the monthly
"Bulletin bibliographique de la " had failed to reach
him, although his annual subscription had been duly paid in advance. The jack-in-office
who read this missive (a highschool teacher with a bent for the study of the
Romance languages, called up for "war-service" and sent to employ his
talents at the censorship board instead of wasting them in the trenches) was
astonished by its tenor. "Must be a joke," he thought. He had to
examine some two thousand letters and postcards every week, always on the alert
to detect anything that might savour of espionage, but never yet had he chanced
upon anything so absurd as that an Austrian subject should unconcernedly drop into
one of the imperial and royal letter-boxes a postcard addressed to someone in
an enemy land, regardless of the trifling detail that since August 1914 the
Central Powers had been cut off from Russia on one side and from France on the
other by barbed-wire entanglements and a network of ditches in which men armed
with rifles and bayonets, machine-guns and artillery, were doing their utmost
to exterminate one another like rats. Our schoolmaster enrolled in the
Landsturm did not treat this first postcard seriously, but pigeon-holed it as a
curiosity not worth talking about to his chief. But a few weeks later there turned
up another card, again from Jacob Mendel, this time to John Aldridge,
Bookseller, , asking whether the
addressee could send the last few numbers of the "Antiquarian" to an
address in 
which was clearly stated on the card. 
The censor in the blue uniform began to
feel uneasy. Was his "class" trying to trick the schoolmaster? Were the
cards written in cipher? Possible, anyhow; so the subordinate went over to the
major's desk, clicked his heels together, saluted, and laid the suspicious
documents before "properly constituted authority." A strange business,
certainly. The police were instructed by telephone to see if there actually was
a Jacob Mendel at the specified address, and, if so, to bring the fellow along.
Within the hour, Mendel had been arrested, and (still stupefied by the shock)
brought before the major, who showed him the postcards, and asked him with
drillsergeant roughness whether he acknowledged their authorship. Angered at
being spoken to so sharply, and still more annoyed because his perusal of an
important catalogue had been interrupted, Mendel answered tartly: 
"Of course I wrote the cards. That's
my handwriting and signature. Surely one has a right to claim the delivery of a
periodical to which one has subscribed?" 
The major swung half-round in his
swivel-chair and exchanged a meaning glance with the lieutenant seated at the adjoining
desk. 
"The man must be a double-distilled
idiot" was what they mutely conveyed to one another. 
Then the chief took counsel within himself
whether he should discharge the offender with a caution, or whether he should
treat the case more seriously. In all offices, when such doubts arise, the
usual practice is, not to spin a coin, but to send in a report. Thus Pilate
washes his hands of responsibility. Even if the report does no good, it can do
no harm, and is merely one useless manuscript or typescript added to a million
others. 
In this instance, however, the decision to
send in a report did much harm, alas, to an inoffensive man of genius, for it
involved asking a series of questions, and the third of them brought suspicious
circumstances to light. 
"Your full name?" 
"Jacob Mendel." 
"Occupation?" 
"Book-pedlar" (for, as already
explained, Mendel had no shop, but only a pedlar's license). 
"Place of birth?" 
Now came the disaster. Mendel's birthplace
was not far from Petrikau. The major raised his eyebrows. Petrikau, or
Piotrkov, was across the frontier, in Russian Poland. 
"You were born a Russian subject. When
did you acquire Austrian nationality? Show me your papers." 
Mendel gazed at the officer
uncomprehendingly through his spectacles. 
"Papers? Identification papers? I have
nothing but my hawker's license." 
"What's your nationality, then? Was
your father Austrian or Russian?" 
Undismayed, Mendel answered: 
"A Russian, of course." 
"What about yourself?" 
"Wishing to evade Russian military service,
I slipped across the frontier thirty-three years ago, and ever since I have
lived in ."
The matter seemed to the major to be
growing worse and worse. 
"But didn't you take steps to become
an Austrian subject?" 
"Why should I?" countered Mendel.
"I never troubled my head about such things." 
"Then you are still a Russian
subject?" 
Mendel, who was bored by this endless
questioning, answered simply: 
"Yes, I suppose I am." 
The startled and indignant major threw
himself back in his chair with such violence that the wood cracked
protestingly. So this was what it had come to! In , the Austrian capital, at the end of
1915, after ,
when the war was in full blast, after the great offensive, a Russian could walk
about unmolested, could write letters to and , while
the police ignored his machinations. And then the fools who wrote in the
newspapers wondered why Conrad von Hotzendorf had not advanced in seven-leagued
boots to ,
and the general staff was puzzled because every movement of the troops was
immediately blabbed to the Russians. 
The lieutenant had sprung to his feet and
crossed the room to his chiefs table. What had been an almost friendly
conversation took a new turn, and degenerated into a trial. 
"Why didn't you report as an enemy
alien directly the war began?" 
Mendel, still failing to realize the
gravity of his position, answered in his singing Jewish jargon: 
"Why should I report? I don't
understand." 
The major regarded this inquiry as a
challenge, and asked threateningly: 
"Didn't you read the notices that were
posted up everywhere?" 
"No." 
"Didn't you read the newspapers?"
"No." 
The two officers stared at Jacob Mendel
(now sweating with uneasiness) as if the moon had fallen from the sky into
their office. Then the telephone buzzed, the typewriters clacked, orderlies ran
hither and thither, and Mendel was sent under guard to the nearest barracks, where
he was to await transfer to a concentration camp. When he was ordered to follow
the two soldiers, he was frankly puzzled, but not seriously perturbed. What
could the man with the gold-lace collar and the rough voice have against him?
In the upper world of books, where Mendel lived and breathed and had his being,
there was no warfare, there were no misunderstandings, only an ever-increasing
knowledge of words and figures, of booktitles and authors' names. He walked
good-humouredly enough downstairs between the soldiers, whose first charge was
to take him to the police station. Not until, there, the books were taken out
of his overcoat pockets, and the police impounded the portfolio containing a
hundred important memoranda and customers' addresses, did he lose his temper,
and begin to resist and strike blows. They had to tie his hands. In the
struggle, his spectacles fell off, and these magical telescopes, without which
he could not see into the wonderworld of books, were smashed into a thousand
pieces. Two days later, insufficiently clad (for his only wrap was a light
summer cloak), he was sent to the internment camp for Russian civilians at
Komorn. 
I have no information as to what Jacob
Mendel suffered during these two years of internment, cut off from his beloved
books, penniless, among roughly nurtured men, few of whom could read or write,
in a huge human dunghill. This must be left to the imagination of those who can
grasp the torments of a caged eagle. By degrees, however, our world, grown
sober after its fit of drunkenness, has become aware that, of all the cruelties
and wanton abuses of power during the war, the most needless and therefore the
most inexcusable was this herding together behind barbed-wire fences of
thousands upon thousands of persons who had outgrown the age of military
service, who had made homes for themselves in a foreign land, and who (believing
in the good faith of their hosts) had refrained from exercising the sacred
right of hospitality granted even by the Tunguses and Araucanians the right to
flee while time permits. This crime against civilization was committed with the
same unthinking hardihood in ,
,
and ,
in every belligerent country of our crazy .
Probably Jacob Mendel would, like thousands
as innocent as he, have perished in this cattle-pen, have gone stark mad, have
succumbed to dysentery, asthenia, softening of the brain, had it not been that,
before the worst happened, a chance (typically Austrian) recalled him to the
world in which a spiritual life became again possible. Several times after his
disappearance, letters from distinguished customers were delivered for him at
the Cafe Gluck. Count Schonberg, sometime lord-lieutenant of Styria, an
enthusiastic collector of works on heraldry; Siegenfeld, the former dean of the
theological faculty, who was writing a commentary on the works of St. Augustine;
Edler von Pisek, an octogenarian admiral on the retired list, engaged in
writing his memoirs these and other persons of note, wanting information from
Buchmendel, had repeatedly addressed communications to him at his familiar
haunt, and some of these were duly forwarded to the concentration camp at
Komorn. There they fell into the hands of the commanding officer, who happened
to be a man of humane disposition, and was astonished to find what notables
were among the correspondents of this dirty little Russian Jew, who, half-blind
now that his spectacles were broken and he had no money to buy new ones,
crouched in a corner like a mole, grey, eyeless, and dumb. A man who had such
patrons must be a person of importance, whatever he looked like. The C.O.
therefore read the letters to the short-sighted Mendel, and penned answers for
him to sign answers which were mainly requests that influence should be
exercised on his behalf. The spell worked, for these correspondents had the
solidarity of collectors. Joining forces and pulling strings they were able
(giving guarantees for the "enemy alien's" good behaviour) to secure
leave for Buchmendel's return to Vienna in 1917, after more than two years at Komorn
on the condition that he should report daily to the police. The proviso
mattered little. He was a free man once more, free to take up his quarters in
his old attic, free to handle books again, free (above all) to return to his
table in the Cafe Gluck. I can describe the return from the underworld of the
camp in the good Frau Sporschil's own words: 
"One day Jesus, Mary, Joseph; I could
hardly believe my eyes the door opened (you remember the way he had) little
wider than a crack, and through this opening he sidled, poor Herr Mendel. He
was wearing a tattered and much-darned military cloak, and his head was covered
by what had perhaps once been a hat thrown away by the owner as past use. No
collar. His face looked like a death's head, so haggard it was, and his hair
was pitifully thin. But he came in as if nothing had happened, went straight to
his table, and took off his cloak, not briskly as of old, for he panted with
the exertion. Nor had he any books with him. He just sat there without a word, staring
straight in front of him with hollow, expressionless eyes. Only by degrees,
after we had brought him the big bundle of printed matter which had arrived for
him from ,
did he begin to read again. But he was never the same man." 
No, he was never the same man, not now the
miraculum mundi, the magical walking book-catalogue. All who saw him in those
days told me the same pitiful story. Something had gone irrecoverably wrong; he
was broken; the blood-red comet of the war had burst into the remote, calm
atmosphere of his bookish world. His eyes, accustomed for decades to look at
nothing but print, must have seen terrible sights in the wire-fenced human
stockyard, for the eyes that had formerly been so alert and full of ironical
gleams were now almost completely veiled by the inert lids, and looked sleepy
and red-bordered behind the carefully repaired spectacle-frames. Worse still, a
cog must have broken somewhere in the marvellous machinery of his memory, so
that the working of the whole was impaired; for so delicate is the structure of
the brain (a sort of switchboard made of the most fragile substances, and as
easily jarred as are all instruments of precision) that a blocked arteriole, a
congested bundle of nerve-fibres, a fatigued group of cells, even a displaced
molecule, may put the apparatus out of gear and make harmonious working
impossible. In Mendel's memory, the keyboard of knowledge, the keys were stiff,
or to use psychological terminology the associations were impaired. When, now
and again, someone came to ask for information, Jacob stared blankly at the
inquirer, failing to understand the question, and even forgetting it before he
had found the answer. Mendel was no longer Buchmendel, just as the world was no
longer the world. He could not now become wholly absorbed in his reading, did
not rock as of old when he read, but sat bolt upright, his glasses turned
mechanically towards the printed page, but perhaps not reading at all, and only
sunk in a reverie. Often, said Frau Sporschil, his head would drop on to his
book and he would fall asleep in the daytime, or he would gaze hour after hour
at the stinking acetylene lamp which (in the days of the coal famine) had
replaced the electric lighting. No, Mendel was no longer Buchmendel, no longer
the eighth wonder of the world, but a weary, wornout, though still breathing,
useless bundle of beard and ragged garments, which sat, as futile as a
potato-bogle, where of old the Pythian oracle had sat; no longer the glory of
the Cafe Gluck, but a shameful scarecrow, evilsmelling, a parasite. 
That was the impression he produced upon the
new proprietor, Florian Gurtner from Retz, who (a successful profiteer in flour
and butter) had cajoled Standhartner into selling him the Cafe Gluck for eighty
thousand rapidly depreciating paper crowns. He took everything into his hard
peasant grip, hastily arranged to have the old place redecorated, bought
fine-looking satin-covered seats, installed a marble porch, and was in
negotiation with his next-door neighbour to buy a place where he could extend
the cafe into a dancing-hall. Naturally while he was making these
embellishments, he was not best pleased by the parasitic encumbrance of Jacob
Mendel, a filthy old Galician Jew, who had been in trouble with the authorities
during the war, was still to be regarded as an "enemy alien," and,
while occupying a table from morning till night, consumed no more than two cups
of coffee and four or five rolls. Standhartner, indeed, had put in a word for
this guest of long standing, had explained that Mendel was a person of note,
and, in the stock-taking, had handed him over as having a permanent lien upon the
establishment, but as an asset rather than a liability. 
Florian Gurtner, however, had brought into
the cafe, not only new furniture, and an up-to-date cash register, but also the
profit-making and hard temper of the post-war era, and awaited the first
pretext for ejecting from his smart coffee-house the last troublesome vestige
of suburban shabbiness. 
A good excuse was not slow to present
itself. Jacob Mendel was impoverished to the last degree. Such banknotes as had
been left to him had crumbled away to nothing during the inflation period; his
regular clientele had been killed, ruined, or dispersed. When he tried to resume
his early trade of book-pedlar, calling from door to door to buy and to sell,
he found that he lacked strength to carry books up and down stairs. A hundred
little signs showed him to be a pauper. Seldom, now, did he have a meal sent in from the
restaurant, and he began to run up a score at the Cafe Gluck for his modest
breakfast and supper. Once his payments were as much as three weeks overdue.
Were it only for this reason, the head-waiter wanted Gurtner to "give
Mendel the sack." But Frau Sporschil intervened, and stood surety for the debtor.
What was due could be stopped out of her wages! 
This staved off disaster for a while, but
worse was to come. For some time the head-waiter had noticed that rolls were
disappearing faster than the tally would account for. Naturally suspicion fell
upon Mendel, who was known to be six months in debt to the tottering old porter
whose services he still needed. The head-waiter, hidden behind the stove, was
able, two days later, to catch Mendel red-handed. The unwelcome guest had
stolen from his seat in the card-room, crept behind the counter in the front
room, taken two rolls from the bread-basket, returned to the card-room, and
hungrily devoured them. When settling-up at the end of the day, he said he had only
had coffee; no rolls. The source of wastage had been traced, and the waiter
reported his discovery to the proprietor. Herr Gurtner, delighted to have so
good an excuse for getting rid of Mendel, made a scene, openly accused him of
theft, and declared that nothing but the goodness of his own heart prevented
his sending for the police. 
"But after this," said Florian,
"you'll kindly take yourself off for good and all. We don't want to see
your face again at the Cafe Gluck." 
Jacob Mendel trembled, but made no reply.
Abandoning his poor belongings, he departed without a word. 
"It was ghastly," said Frau
Sporschil. "Never shall I forget the sight. He stood up, his spectacles
pushed on to his forehead, and his face white as a sheet. He did not even stop
to put on his cloak, although it was January, and very cold. You'll remember
that severe winter, just after the war. In his fright, he left the book he was
reading open upon the table. I did not notice it at first, and then, when I
wanted to pick it up and take it after him, he had already stumbled out through
the doorway. I was afraid to follow him into the street, for Herr Gurtner was
standing at the door and shouting at him, so that a crowd had gathered. Yet I
felt ashamed to the depths of my soul. Such a thing would never have happened
under the old master. Herr Standhartner would not have driven Herr Mendel away
for pinching one or two rolls when he was hungry, but would have let him have
as many as he wanted for nothing, to the end of his days. Since the war, people
seem to have grown heartless. Drive away a man who had been a guest daily for
so many, many years. Shameful! I should not like to have to answer before God for
such cruelty!" 
The good woman had grown excited, and, with
the passionate garrulousness of old age, she kept on repeating how shameful it
was, and that nothing of the sort would have happened if Herr Standhartner had
not sold the business. In the end I tried to stop the flow by asking her what
had happened to Mendel, and whether she had ever seen him again. These
questions excited her yet more. 
"Day after day, when I passed his
table, it gave me the creeps, as you will easily understand. Each time I
thought to myself: 'Where can he have got to, poor Herr Mendel?' Had I known
where he lived, I would have called and taken him something nice and hot to eat
for where could he get the money to cook food and warm his room? As far as I
knew, he had no kinsfolk in the wide world. When, after a long time, I had
heard nothing about him, I began to believe that it must be all up with him,
and that I should never see him again. I had made up my mind to have a mass
said for the peace of his soul, knowing him to be a good man, after twenty-five
years' acquaintance. 
"At length one day in February, at
half-past seven in the morning, when I was cleaning the windows, the door opened,
and in came Herr Mendel. Generally, as you know, he sidled in, looking
confused, and not ' quite all there'; but this time, somehow, it was different.
I noticed at once the strange look in his eyes; they were sparkling, and he
rolled them this way and that, as if to see everything at once; as for his
appearance, he seemed nothing but beard and skin and bone. Instantly it crossed
my mind: 'He's forgotten all that happened last time he was here; it's his way
to go about like a sleepwalker noticing nothing; he doesn't remember about the
rolls, and how shamefully Herr Gurtner ordered him out of the place, half in
mind to set the police on him.' Thank goodness, Herr Gurtner hadn't come yet,
and the head-waiter was drinking coffee. I ran up to Herr Mendel, meaning to tell
him he'd better make himself scarce, for otherwise that ruffian" she
looked round timidly to see if we were overheard, and hastily amended her
phrase, "Herr Gurtner, I mean, would only have him thrown into the street once
more. 'Herr Mendel,' I began. He started, and looked at me. In that very moment
(it was dreadful), he must have remembered the whole thing, for he almost collapsed,
and began to tremble, not his fingers only, but to shiver and shake from head
to foot. Hastily he stepped back into the street, and fell in a heap on the
pavement as soon as he was outside the door. We telephoned for the ambulance,
and they carried him off to hospital, the nurse who came saying he had high
fever directly she touched him. He died that evening. 'Double pneumonia,' the
doctor said, and that he never recovered consciousness could not have been
fully conscious when he came to the Cafe Gluck. As I said, he had entered like
a man walking in his sleep. The table where he had sat day after day for
thirty-six years drew him back to it like a home." 
Frau Sporschil and I went on talking about
him for a long time, the two last persons to remember this strange creature,
Buchmendel: I to whom in youth the bookpedlar from Galicia had given the first
revelation of a life wholly devoted to the things of the spirit; she, the poor old
woman who was caretaker of a cafe-toilet, who had never read a book in her
life, and whose only tie with this strangely matched comrade in her
subordinate, povertystricken world had been that for twenty-five years she had
brushed his overcoat and had sewn on buttons for him. We, too, might have been
considered strangely assorted, but Frau Sporschil and I got on very well
together, linked, as we sat at the forsaken marble-topped table, by our common
memories of the shade our talk had conjured up for joint memories, and above
all loving memories, always establish a tie. Suddenly, while in the full stream
of talk, she exclaimed: 
"Lord Jesus, how forgetful I am. I
still have the book he left on the table the evening Herr Gurtner gave him the
key of the street. I didn't know where to take it. Afterwards, when no one
appeared to claim it, I ventured to keep it as a souvenir. You don't think it
wrong of me, Sir?" 
She went to a locker where she stored some
of the requisites for her job, and produced the volume for my inspection. I
found it hard to repress a smile, for I was face to face with one of life's
little ironies. It was the second volume of Hayn's Bibliotheca Germanorum
erotica et curiosa, a compendium of gallant literature known to every
book-collector. "Habent sua fata libelli!" This scabrous publication,
as legacy of the vanished magician, had fallen into toilworn hands which had
perhaps never held any other printed work than a prayer-book. Maybe I was not
wholly successful in controlling my mirth, for the expression of my face seemed
to perplex the worthy soul, and once more she said: 
"You don't think it wrong of me to
keep it, Sir?" 
I shook her cordially by the hand. 
"Keep it, and welcome," I said.
"I am absolutely sure that our old friend Mendel would be only too
delighted to know that someone among the many thousand he has provided with
books, cherishes his memory." 
Then I took my departure, feeling a trifle
ashamed when I compared myself with this excellent old woman, who, so simply
and so humanely, had fostered the memory of the dead scholar. For she,
uncultured though she was, had at least preserved a book as a memento; whereas
I, a man of education and a writer, had completely forgotten Buchmendel for years
I, who at least should have known that one only makes books in order to keep in
touch with one's fellows after one has ceased to breathe, and thus to defend
oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives transitoriness and
oblivion. 
==
Category:Zweig
Category:Kaleidoscope