Anarchistbanjo's World

by Karl Hans Strobl and translated by Joe E Bandel

Reichenbach grabs his coat and goes. The chief accountant thinks, thank God he’s leaving—I’d have had to get harsh otherwise; that damned know-it-all attitude can go to the devil, thinking he knows everything better.

Outside, the carriage waits. Reichenbach climbs in, and Johann tries to mount the coachbox, a pitiful struggle for his brittle bones. One leg barely makes the step, but lifting the second won’t do. Stiff, stiff joints, trembling knees—Johann pushes off the ground, hopping, hopping, but it’s a wretched, futile effort.

“Wait,” Reichenbach says, jumping from the carriage. “Get in! I’ll drive.”

The old man’s bright eyes widen in disbelief, his weary head shaking—how could this be? Get in? Then old Johann would sit on the blue cloth cushions, and the Herr General Director would take the coachbox. You can’t upend the order of the world—no, that won’t do.

“Shut up!” Reichenbach growls. “No arguing! Get in, and that’s that!”

No one defies the Herr General Director. The unthinkable happens: old Johann must sit in the carriage like a lord, while Reichenbach climbs onto the coachbox, taking reins and whip as if he were the driver.

Johann feels uneasy, but Reichenbach revels in wild inner joy, chuckling like a gleeful child. Yes, now old Johann rides like a lord, and let them at the castle see it and stew in their green and blue annoyance.

Sure enough, as he swings the carriage into the castle courtyard, someone at the prince’s study window starts back, stung by the odd spectacle.

Reichenbach carries his mocking, delighted grin into the study, flashing it at the two young men awaiting him.

First, Reichenbach learns that the stranger young man is Herr Lawyer Dr. Josef Promintzer, Dr. Promintzer from Vienna, successor to the old, somewhat complacent princely syndic Dr. Gradwohl, now retired.

“I’ve summoned you,” the prince says after the men take seats around the large diplomatic desk, “to discuss the balance sheet.”

“In the presence of the syndic?” Reichenbach asks.

“Indeed,” the young prince replies measuredly, recovering from the jab. He understands what Reichenbach means—that this used to be a matter of trust between his late father and Reichenbach, needing no lawyer’s involvement.

The men sit around the diplomatic desk, where the balance sheet and books, fetched by the prince yesterday, lie. The prince is a young, well-built man, slightly gaunt and stooped, with a stern, guarded, haughty face, almost entirely his mother’s. The new lawyer, by contrast, is a plump man with a short neck and a piggish snout. He wears owl-like glasses, like those Frau Paleczek, God rest her soul, used for reading. His breathing whistles through his nose, and a thick watch chain across his blue vest sways with his belly’s rise and fall.

A judicial air fills the prince’s study, the books and papers on the desk like evidence of a crime.

“It’s about this matter,” Dr. Promintzer begins namely, that certain things aren’t clear to His Princely Grace.”

Aha, Reichenbach thinks, those dubious entries I fought the chief accountant over, and instantly he’s ready to defend the accountant tooth and nail to the bitter end.

“Namely…” the prince continues, “the sugar factory. There’s a contract with my late father, the deceased old count—”

“Unfortunately, one might say!” Dr. Promintzer interjects.

“Stating the sugar factory must source its beets exclusively from the princely estate office at a fixed price.”

“We’ve talked about this several times, I believe,” Reichenbach grumbles. “Why throw money elsewhere?”

“Well,” the prince says haltingly, brow furrowed as if recalling a poorly learned lesson, “in bad years, with a poor beet harvest, the estate office can’t supply enough…”

“I find that irrational,” Promintzer cuts in quickly. “In good years, the factory could get beets cheaper elsewhere, but the estate office sticks to its price.”

“So what?” Reichenbach retorts. “We’ve gone over this ten times. It all ends up in the same pocket. Factory or estate office—it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.”

“The contract with my late father, the deceased old count—” the prince says.

“Hm,” Dr. Promintzer interrupts, his eyes vanishing behind the glint of his glasses. “You shouldn’t defend this irrational operation, Herr General Director, when you’re profiting forty percent from the estate office—a remarkably high share, one must say.”

Reichenbach turns dark red. The urge flashes through him to grab Dr. Promintzer by his watch chain and knock the glasses off his piggish snout with two slaps. But then he tells himself slaps are poor arguments, and you only strike a man so swiftly and directly if he’s meant to fall—or has already fallen.

“Well, well,” he says slowly, leaning back until his chair creaks. “So you think my share’s too high, do you?”

Promintzer shrugs, and the prince says, “In general…” laying his hand on a document, “the last contract with my late father, the deceased old count… before, you had twenty-five percent generally… in the last contract, your share rose to thirty-three percent… my late father, in his final days…” The prince tilts his head to his shoulder, his face deeply mournful.

“His Princely Grace,” the lawyer chimes in, “His Princely Grace believes the contract must be revised, and the general power of attorney needs amending as well.”

Business is business, and matters of honor shouldn’t mix with it. It’s wise to hear where this is going. They talk around it for a while, and it becomes ever clearer to Reichenbach that there’s a point where pride demands no further haggling over petty details. They want cuts, even now, to last year’s profits.

“You forget,” Reichenbach says, his chair creaking again as he leans back, “that this is largely my work.” He gestures at the papers on the desk, but his motion sweeps wider, encompassing forests and smoking chimneys, blast furnaces and ore mines, offices and laboratories.

Promintzer snorts sharply through his nose, seeing he has the man where he wants him. “All due respect,” he says deliberately, “your inventions and discoveries, Herr General Director! But, hand on heart, creosote, paraffin, and so forth—everyone knows it was really the chemist Mader—”

Reichenbach slams the armrests of his chair and half-rises. He keeps hold of the armrests—it’s better not to let go. “That, Herr Doctor,” he says, “is despicable, a low blow…”

He doesn’t look at the lawyer or the prince but at the suit of armor by the desk. It’s better to fix on the armor, where one of their warlike ancestors stood, perhaps that Niklas Salm who saved Vienna from the Turks.

“Strong words!” Promintzer smirks. “Strong words!”

Reichenbach could make a grand exit now. He could say, “I request my dismissal,” or “I’ll find my justice,” or “We’ll meet again at Philippi,” or something like that. But he says none of it. It’s enough that he made that grand gesture over the desk, sweeping toward the forests and smokestacks. He regrets it—enough is enough. So he simply says, “Good day!” and walks out.

“You’ll see, he’ll slap us with a lawsuit,” Promintzer smirks.

“Do you think so?” the prince asks, surprised and a bit unsatisfied with the outcome.

“I’m certain,” Promintzer says, his thick watch chain swaying on his gleefully heaving belly. Dr. Josef Promintzer is a lawyer, and lawyers, after all, thrive on people suing each other.

Reichenbach descends the stairs, thinking, the last time. Oddly, he doesn’t think of Dr. Promintzer or the young prince, but of the prince’s mother, that stiff-backed, angular, bony former convent lady who her son so resembles.

In the courtyard, Forester Ruf stands, also summoned for an audience. His hat’s sweep catches Reichenbach’s eye, slowing his step. “Do you know what just happened, Ruf?” he asks.

“What, Herr General Director?”

Reichenbach kicks the air. “No more General Director. I’ve fallen from grace.”

“Good heavens, Herr General Director!”

“No dramatic scenes, Ruf! I saw this coming a long time ago. Now I’m in otium cum dignitate—to put it so you understand, Ruf, I’m my own master now. At Reisenberg near Vienna. And if you ever get fed up here, Ruf, you know—I can always use capable people.”