Amerika

  Karl saw the pram at the foot of the stairs, and just then the couple came down, the woman carrying the baby in her arms. ‘Have you been taken on?’ asked the man, he was much livelier now than before, and the woman behind him was smiling too. When Karl replied that he had just been, taken on, and was just going to be presented, the man said: ‘Then I congratulate you. We too have just been taken, it seems to be a good company, admittedly it’s hard to know your way around, but then it’s like that everywhere.’ They said ‘Goodbye,’ and Karl climbed up to the stand. He took it slowly, because the little room at the top seemed to be bursting with people, and he didn’t want to barge in. He even stopped and looked over the large racecourse that stretched away in every direction to the distant forests. He felt like seeing a horse race again, he hadn’t had a chance to do that yet in America. In Europe he had been taken along to one as a small child once, but all he could remember of that was how his mother had pulled him through a crowd of people who didn’t want to let him through. In effect, he had never really seen a proper race. He heard some machinery clanking behind him, turned round and watched the mechanism that shows the names of the winners at races now raising the following line into the air: ‘Businessman Kalle with wife and child.’ So that was where the names of the recruits were communicated to the offices.

  Just then several gentlemen, engaged in a lively discussion, holding pencils and notebooks, came running down the stairs, Karl pressed himself against the bannister to let them pass, and as there was now room at the top he went on up. In a corner of the wooden-railed platform – it looked like the flat roof of a narrow tower – sat, with his arms spread out along the wooden rails, a gentleman wearing a broad white silk sash that said: Leader of the both Promotional Team of the Theatre of Oklahoma. On a little table next to him was a telephone, that was probably also used in the races, by which the leader could obviously learn all necessary information about each individual applicant before they were presented to him, because he asked Karl no questions to begin with, but merely observed to another gentleman who was leaning next to him, with feet crossed, and his chin cupped in his hand: ‘Negro, a secondary schoolboy from Europe.’ And as though that were all that was required of the deeply bowing Karl, he looked past him down the stairs, to see if there wasn’t anyone else coming along after him. But, as there wasn’t anyone, he occasionally listened in to the conversation the other gentleman was having with Karl, but mainly just looked out over the racetrack and drummed on the railing with his fingers. These delicate and yet sinewy fingers, long and in rapid motion, occasionally distracted Karl, in spite of the fact that the other gentleman was really sufficiently taxing on his own.

  ‘You’ve been out of work?’ that gentleman began by asking. This question, like almost every other question he put, was very simple, quite straightforward, and Karl’s replies to them were not tested by any follow-up questions, but in spite of that the gentleman, by the way he stared as he asked them, observing their effect with torso leaning forward, taking the answers with head sunk on his chest, and occasionally repeating them aloud, seemed to give them a special significance, which one couldn’t understand, but some sense of which made one awkward and self-conscious. It happened on several occasions that Karl felt like recalling an answer he’d just given and offering another instead which might find more favour, but he always managed to restrain himself, knowing what a bad impression such vacillation must make, and how, anyway, the effect of his replies was generally impossible to gauge. Besides, though, he took considerable comfort from the fact that his acceptance seemed already to have been concluded.

  The question whether he had been out of work, he answered with a straightforward ‘Yes.’ ‘Where were you last employed?’ the gentleman then asked. Karl was about to reply, when he lifted his finger and said: ‘I stress: last!’ Karl had understood the original question anyway, and now involuntarily shook his head at this confusing remark, and replied: ‘In an office.’ This was indeed the case, but if the gentleman happened to want to know a little more about the type of office, he would be forced to lie to him. But the gentleman did not do that, and instead asked a question which was very easy to answer truthfully: ‘Were you happy there?’ ‘No,’ cried Karl, almost before he had finished. Looking out of the corner of his eye, Karl noticed that the leader was smiling a little, Karl regretted the impulsiveness of his last reply, but it had been too tempting to shout out that ‘No,’ because during the whole of his last employment, he had been simply longing for some new employer to come along and ask him precisely that question. But his answer could have another drawback too, because the gentleman could now go on to ask him why he hadn’t been happy. Instead, though, he asked: ‘What sort of job do you think would suit you?’ That might be a trick question, because why was it being asked, if Karl had already been taken on as an actor: although he saw that, he still couldn’t bring himself to claim that he felt particularly suited for the profession of acting. And so he avoided the question, and, at the risk of seeming obstinate, he said: ‘I read the poster in the city, and as it said that all were welcome, I came along.’ ‘We know that,’ said the gentleman, and his ensuing silence indicated that he insisted on an answer to his question. ‘I was taken on as an actor,’ Karl said hesitantly, to make it clear to the gentleman how difficult he found this last question. ‘That’s right,’ said the gentleman, and was once more silent. ‘Well,’ said Karl, and all his hopes of having found a job began to shake, ‘I don’t know if I’m right for acting. But I will do my best, and try to do everything I’m asked.’ The gentleman turned to the leader, and they both nodded, Karl seemed to have given a good answer, he plucked up courage again, and awaited the next question, a little more hopefully. That was: ‘What were you originally going to study?’ To narrow the question down – the gentleman seemed at pains to do that – he added: ‘I mean, in Europe.’ At the same time, he took his hand away from his chin, and waved it feebly, as though to indicate at one and the same time the remoteness of Europe and the insignificance of whatever plans might have been made there. Karl said: ‘I wanted to be an engineer.’ The answer went against the grain, it was absurd in the context of his career so far in America to bring out that old chestnut – and would he ever have succeeded, even in Europe? – but it was the only answer he had and for that reason he gave it. The gentleman, though, took it seriously, as he took everything seriously. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we probably can’t make an engineer out of you right away, but maybe it would suit you for the time being to work on some fairly simple technical tasks.’ ‘Certainly,’ said Karl, he was very happy, of course if he accepted the offer it would mean being plucked out of the acting profession, and put with the technical workers, but he really believed he would make a much better fist of that. Anyway, he kept saying to himself, what mattered wasn’t so much the type of work as one’s ability to stick it out, whatever it might be. ‘Are you strong enough for such demanding work?’ asked the gentleman. ‘Oh yes,’ said Karl. Thereupon the gentleman had Karl come up to him, and felt his arm. ‘He’s a strong lad,’ he said, pulling Karl by the arm over to the leader. The leader nodded and smiled, then without getting off the railing, he gave Karl his hand and said: ‘Well, that’s it then. In Oklahoma, we’ll check everything over again. Be sure to be a credit to our publicity team!’ Karl gave a final bow, and he wanted to take leave of the other gentleman too, but he was already walking up and down the platform, looking up, as though completely finished with his task. As Karl climbed down the stairs, next to him the scoreboard was pulled up, and on it the words: ‘Negro, Technical Worker’. As everything had gone so well, Karl wouldn’t have minded too much if it had been his real name up on the board. Everything was very well organized, because at the foot of the stairs, Karl was met by a servant who put an armband round his arm. When Karl lifted his arm to see what was on the band, it was, quite rightly, ‘technical worker’.

  Wherever Karl was supposed to be taken next, first he wanted to go and te
ll Fanny how well everything had gone. But, to his regret, he learned that both the angels and the devils had already left for the next point on the publicity team’s itinerary, to announce the arrival of the whole team the next day. ‘Shame,’ said Karl, and it was the first disappointment he had experienced in this enterprise, ‘there was someone I knew among the angels.’ ‘You’ll see her again in Oklahoma,’ said the servant, ‘now come along please, you’re the last.’ He led Karl along the back of the stage, where the angels had been standing earlier, now there were just their empty pedestals. Karl’s assumption that more applicants might come, now that there was no more music from the angels turned out to be wrong, because there were no grown-ups at all in front of the stage, just a few children fighting over a long white feather that must have come from an angel’s wing. One boy held it up in the air, while the other children tried with one hand to push his head down and reached for the feather with the other.

  Karl pointed to the children, but the servant said without looking: ‘Hurry up, it took a very long time before you were taken. I expect they had their doubts?’ ‘I really don’t know,’ said Karl, astonished, but he didn’t think so. Always, even in circumstances that were clear as crystal, someone could be found who liked to alarm his fellow-humans. But at the wonderful sight of the large public enclosure to which they had now come, Karl quickly forgot the servant’s remark. On the stand was a long bench covered with a white cloth, and all those who had been accepted sat on the bench below it, with their backs to the racetrack, and were being catered for. All were excited and in high spirits, just as Karl sat down unnoticed, the last to arrive, on the bench, a number of them stood up with glasses aloft, and someone proposed a toast to the leader of the both publicity team, to whom he referred as ‘The father of all the unemployed everywhere’. Someone pointed out that he could be seen from there, and indeed there was the stewards’ tribune, with the two gentlemen, not too far away at all. Then everyone raised their glasses in that direction, and Karl too picked up the glass in front of him, but however loudly they called and however hard they tried to get their attention, nothing on the stewards’ stand indicated that they had noticed, or more precisely wanted to notice the ovation. The leader was leaning in the corner as before, and the other gentleman stood beside him, cupping his chin in his hand.

  A little disappointed, they all sat down again, now and then someone would turn to look at the stewards’ stand, but soon they were quite preoccupied by the plentiful meal, some poultry bigger than any Karl had ever seen, with many forks stuck in their crisply roasted flesh, were carried around, and wine glasses kept being replenished by the servants – one almost didn’t notice it, bending over one’s plate, and a thin stream of red wine fell into one’s glass – and anyone who didn’t care to participate in the general conversation could look at pictures of the Theatre in Oklahoma, which had been piled up at one end of the table, from where they were supposed to be passed from hand to hand. But no very great attention was paid to the pictures, and so it happened that Karl, at the end of the row, got to see only one of them. To go by this one picture, though, they must all have been very well worth seeing. This picture showed the box of the President of the United States. At first sight, one might think it wasn’t a box at all, but the stage, so far did the curved balustrades jut out into empty space. The balustrades were entirely made of gold. In between little pillars that might have been cut out by the minutest scissors, there was a row of portraits of former presidents, one had a strikingly straight nose, thickish lips and stubbornly lowered eyes under bulging lids. The box was brightly lit from all sides and from above; white and yet somehow mild light laid bare the front of the box, whereas its recesses, deepening pleats of red velvet falling full length and swagged by cords, were a darkly glimmering void. It was hardly possible to imagine people in this box, so sumptuously self-sufficient did it look. Karl didn’t forget to eat, but he often looked at the picture too, having put it next to his plate.

  He would have liked very much to see at least one of the other pictures, but didn’t want to fetch it himself because a servant had his hand on the stack of them, and some sequence had to be kept to, so instead he just turned to look down the table and see if there might not be a picture on its way to him. Then to his astonishment – at first he couldn’t believe it – among those faces bent furthest over their plates he saw one that was very familiar to him – Giacomo. He ran over to him at once. ‘Giacomo,’ he called. He, shy as he always was when taken by surprise, got up from his plate, turned round in the little space between the benches, wiped his mouth with his hands, and was finally very glad to see Karl, asked him to sit with him, or offered to go over to Karl’s place, they wanted to tell each other everything, and stay together for always. Karl didn’t want to bother the others, so each of them agreed to stay in his place for now, the meal would soon be over, and then they would never be parted. But Karl stayed close to Giacomo, just to watch him. What memories of past times! Where was the Head Cook? What was Therese doing? Giacomo’s appearance had hardly changed at all, the Head Cook’s prediction that within six months he would turn into a raw-boned American hadn’t come to pass, he was just as delicate as ever, hollow-cheeked as ever, although at the moment his cheeks were bulging, because he had a huge piece of meat in his mouth, from which he was slowly pulling out the superfluous bones and throwing them on to his plate. As Karl saw from his armband, Giacomo had not been taken on as an actor, but as a lift-boy, the Theatre of Oklahoma really did, it seemed, have use for everyone.

  Lost looking at Giacomo, Karl had stayed away from his place far too long, he was just about to go back to it, when the head of personnel came along, stood on one of the higher benches, clapped his hands, and gave a little speech, for which the majority stood, and those who remained seated, unable to tear themselves away from their food, were finally compelled to stand too by nudges from the others. ‘I hope’, he said, Karl had tiptoed back to his place, ‘you were happy with your welcome dinner. In general, the food for our publicity team is held in high regard. Unfortunately I have to bring the meal to a speedy conclusion, because the train that will take you to Oklahoma is leaving in five minutes. It’s a long journey, but as you’ll see, you will be well looked after. Let me present to you the gentleman who will be responsible for transporting you, and whom you must obey.’ A skinny little gentleman clambered up on to the same bench as the head of personnel, barely found time for a perfunctory bow, but began right away by indicating with gestures of his nervous hands how he wanted everyone to assemble, get in line and start moving. But for a time no one did any of this, because the same individual who had proposed a toast earlier now banged on the table with his hand and embarked on a lengthy vote of thanks, even though – Karl was getting quite agitated – it had just been announced that their train would be leaving shortly. But the speaker, not even seeming to care that the head of personnel wasn’t listening, he was giving the transport organizer some instructions, was now well into his speech, he listed all the dishes that had been served, gave his verdicts on each of them, and concluded with the cry: ‘And that, gentleman, is the way to our hearts.’ Everyone laughed, except those he had addressed, but there was more truth than humour in his remarks.