Dearest, I thought, I know that trick; you won't wear me out that way.
I pumped a pretty typist in the anteroom, to whom I gave the pink in my buttonhole, about the business.
Woollens, turnover good, nine in the office, one sleeping partner, keenest rival Meyer and Son, young Meyer drove a red, two-seater Essex—so far I got when Blumenthal called me.
He shot at sight with both barrels.
"Young man," said he, "I haven't much time.
Last I saw, your price was mere wish-fulfillment.
Now, hand on heart, what does the car cost?"
"Seven thousand marks," I replied.
He turned away sharply.
"Then there's nothing doing."
"Herr Blumenthal," said I, "just you look at the car once more—"
"Quite unnecessary," he interrupted. "I saw all I want to see last time."
"There is seeing and seeing," I explained. "You should see the details.
The lacquer, first class, from Voll and Ruhrbeck, cost price two hundred and fifty marks, the springs—new, catalogue price six hundred marks—makes eight hundred and fifty already.
The upholstery, finest corduroy—"
He dismissed it.
I started again.
I invited him to inspect the luxurious fittings, the magnificent coach-leather hood, the chromium radiator, the modern buffers, sixty marks the pair. Like a mother struggling to get back to her child I tried to persuade Bluementhal to come down to the Cadillac.
I knew, like Antaeus, that if I could once get in touch with the earth again I should find new strength.
Prices lose much of their abstract terror when one can show something for them.
But Blumenthal also knew that his strength lay behind his writing desk.
He removed his glasses and now went for me properly.
We fought like tiger and python.
Blumenthal was the python.
Before I could turn round he had already reduced me fifteen hundred marks.
I began to get alarmed and nervous.
I felt in my pocket and held Gottfried's amulet tight in my hand.
"Herr Blumenthal," said I, pretty exhausted, "it is one o'clock; you will be wanting to go to lunch." At all costs I wanted to get out of this office where prices melted like snow.
"I don't lunch till two," explained Blumenthal unperturbed, "but I'll tell you what.
We might make a trial run now."
I breathed again.
We drove to his house.
To my surprise once in the car he was a changed man. Good-humouredly he told me the joke about the Emperor Franz Josef, which I knew long ago.
I told him the one about the tram driver; then he told me the one about the Saxon who.lost his way; I followed immediately with the one about the Scotch lovers. Not until we were outside his house did we become serious again.
He asked me to wait while he fetched his wife.
"Dear fat friend," said I to the Cadillac, patting the radiator, "there's sure some new devilry behind all that joking.
But don't you worry, we'll find a home for you yet.
He'll buy you all right—when a Jew comes back he buys.
When a Christian comes back he's still got a long way to go.
He makes half a dozen trial runs, to save himself taxi fares, and then it suddenly occurs to him he wants to buy' a kitchen range instead.
No, no, Jews are all right, they know what they want.
But my good friend, if I come down another hundred marks to this direct descendant of the pugnacious Judas Maccabaeus, may I never drink another schnapps in all my life."
Frau Blumenthal appeared.
I remembered a counsel of Lenz's and changed from a warrior into a cavalier.
Blumenthal greeted the change with a villainous grin.
The man was of iron. He ought to have been selling locomotives, not woollens.
I saw to it that he sat in the back, and Frau Blumenthal beside me.
"Where would you like me to drive you, madam?" I asked meltingly.
"Anywhere you like," said she with a motherly smile.
I began to talk.