“Van” was Ivan Herzl, the popular juvenile leading man of the National Theatre. He was a great friend of Bert and Ingrid, who frequently took tea at his flat and visited him in his dressing-room. He was an artist of the new school, and adopted poses on the stage which reminded the professor of a dancer, so precious and artificial did they seem, as he stood there and yelled tragically. A professor of history is sufficiently immune to that sort of thing, but Bert had succumbed greatly to Herzl’s influence and had even taken to darkening his lower eyelids, which had led to certain drastic but futile scenes with his father. Bert, with the ruthlessness and utter disregard of the young for the feelings of their elders, declared that he would not only take Herzl for his prototype in case he should decide to become a dancer, but that in the event of his becoming a waiter in Cairo he was determined to move, professionally, precisely in the same way.
Cornelius bowed slightly to his son, his eyebrows a trifle raised, signifying that proper diffidence and self-control suited to his generation. The pantomime was devoid of obvious irony and had a universal application. Bert might have related it to himself as well as to his friend’s talent for expression.
The master of the house inquired who else was coming. Several names were mentioned, more or less known to him. There were names from the world of suburban villas, from the city, names of schoolmates of Ingrid’s from the upper grade of the girls’ high school—there was still some telephoning to be done. For example, there was Max to be rung up, Max Hergesell, a student of engineering, whose name Ingrid forthwith pronounced in that drawling and nasal tone which, according to her, was common to the mode of speech of all Hergesells. She proceeded with this parody in such a comic and realistic manner that her parents from sheer laughter were in danger of choking over the wretched pudding. For even in times such as these one was forced to laugh when something comic cropped up.
Then the telephone tinkled in the professor’s study and the Big Ones raced over to it, for they knew that the summons was for them. Many people were forced to give up the telephone after the last increase in taxes, but the Cornelius family had just managed to keep theirs, just as they had managed to keep the villa which they had built before the war, by virtue of the fact that the professor’s salary was increased in proportion to the inflation of the mark. This suburban house was elegant and comfortable, even though a bit neglected, since repairs had become impossible through lack of materials, and though disfigured by iron stoves with long pipes. But all this had served as the frame for the life of the upper middle class of prewar times, and life went on in this frame, though in a manner no longer suited to it—that is, in a needy and difficult way, in worn and turned clothes. The children had never known anything else; for them this was quite the normal order of things, they were born proletarians of the villa. The question of clothes disturbed them little. This generation had invented a costume suitable to the times, a product both of poverty and the standards of the Boy Scout; in summer it consisted chiefly of a belted jacket of linen and a pair of sandals. The bourgeois Old Ones faced greater difficulties.
The Big Ones had hung their napkins over the backs of the chairs in the adjoining room and were talking over the telephone to their friends. They who had rung up were invited guests. They were bent on accepting or declining the invitation or upon discussing this or that matter. The Big Ones negotiated with them in the jargon of their circle, a kind of slang full of bounce and queer turns of phrase, of which the Ancients seldom understood a word. The Ancients, on their part, were discussing the refreshments to be offered. The professor displayed the pride and ambition of the middle classes. He declared that there ought to be a cake or something similar, following upon the Italian salad and the black-bread sandwiches of the evening meal. But Frau Cornelius declared that this would go too far—the young people expected nothing of the sort, and the children supported her after they came back and had sat down to finish their pudding.
The housewife, whom Ingrid, though taller, resembled, was seedy and exhausted owing to the insane difficulties of the household. She ought to have gone to some health resort, but the quaking of the solid ground underfoot, the dropping-out of the bottom of things, had made this impossible for the time being. She thought of the eggs which must be bought today without fail, and began to speak of them: of the eggs at six thousand marks apiece which could be had only at a certain shop and only on this day—the shop was about fifteen minutes distant. And only a certain number of eggs were sold to each customer, so the children would have to go there at once after lunch. Danny, the son of a neighbour, would come to fetch them, and Xavier, in civilian clothes, would also accompany the young people. For this shop sold only five eggs per week to one single household, and for this reason the young folks, each assuming a different name, were to enter the shop, one after the other, in order to capture a total of twenty eggs for the Villa Cornelius. This was great sport for the participants each week, including Xavier the muzhik-like, but especially for Ingrid and Bert, who were particularly bent upon mystifying and misleading
