V.
For a brief period Albert was blind to all else save the romantic beauty of his environment. He did not even brood over the humiliation of being segregated. All Frankfort was then composed of segregated groups—hostile camps—towns within towns, fortresses within fortresses, every period of the distant past, clear back to the feudal days, indelibly stamped upon the inhabitants. His imagination was aglow with romance. Indeed the theme for a poem, a heroic poem—a poem to vie with the Odyssey—was born in his fantastic brain. In this epic he would tell the glorious story of Israel in the same manner as Virgil had told of Augustus and of the Romans. His hero was to be a descendant of Don Abarbanel, from the branch of David, and a fugitive from the Spanish Inquisition. Yes, he visualised his hero—he was a young man with greenish blue eyes and light brown hair, with poetic aspirations, and the heroine—
But with the beginning of his apprenticeship the subject lost all glamor for him. He found the banking business disappointing and the Judengasse disheartening. He had imagined a bank was—well, he did not clearly know what a bank was like except that money flowed from it like milk and honey in the promised land, and with money one could buy so many beautiful things. For aside from thought and feeling Albert was still childishly unpractical.
Rindskopf’s bank was a sombre room with a dingy little chamber in the rear, in which stood a large iron box and was fastened with three locks.
He had soon become dreadfully lonesome and homesick for Gunsdorf—the Gunsdorf he had been so glad to leave only a few weeks before. He longed for Schmallgasse, for the Marktplatz, for the Hofgarten, for Father Rhine, for Hedwiga. He had never known how much he loved his native town. How had he ever wished to depart from it, he asked himself again and again in his loneliness. He had already seen the house where Goethe was born, had again visited the Roemer and the Zeil and Sachsenhausen, and found nothing new any longer.
All his thoughts again turned to Hedwiga. He had despatched two letters of glowing passion and tenderness but had received no answer. So he stayed up late at night, writing heart-rending verses about a maiden with golden hair, who chanted as she sewed a shroud for her lover . . .
The banker had put Albert to copying letters and filling in draft blanks and the youth found the task irksome. At the end of the second week his work was done so mechanically and with such eloquent distaste that his employer, seated at his writing desk a short distance away shook his head and murmured, “Der Junge hat kein Talent zum Geschaeft.”
No, the young man had no talent for business. Adolf Rindskopf would have sent him away but David Zorn was his friend and he must endure his friend’s son a little longer. Besides, Albert wrote a very neat hand, with a flourish which Adolf secretly envied. When he wrote to Berlin—die Kaiserstadt—he was anxious to make an impression on his correspondent. Yes, Albert’s penmanship was beautiful.
But one day while Albert was seated at the long table copying a letter and thinking of other things, the postman came in. Albert looked up eagerly. Although he had already given up hope of hearing from Hedwiga, the postman revived his anxiety. But no letter for him. So he watched Rindskopf from the corner of his eye. He loved to watch Rindskopf open his mail. Rindskopf approached this task as a gourmand attacks a palatable dish. His eyes dilated, his bulky stolid body stirred restlessly in his chair, his lips twitched, avidity in every gesture. Then he took the large ivory paper-cutter in one hand, and with the other tapped the edge of the envelope against his desk and, raising it on a level with his eyes, screwed one eye almost tight as he fixed the other at the upper end, which he held against the light, and ripped it open with the utmost care for fear of touching the contents.
“Tausend Donner Sakrament!” Adolf suddenly exclaimed and jumped up from the chair, with the enclosure of the envelope in his hand.
Albert poised his pen, an amused smile on his boyish countenance.
Rindskopf’s face was flushed, his mustache twitched, his paw-like hands trembled.
“Ach, du lieber Gott!” he called upon the Almighty to witness his distress, and rushed up to Albert.
“You’ll bring ruination on me—what? Where is your head—what do you—”
He was so enraged that coherent speech would not come.
Albert’s face changed color. He paled a trifle and was terrified.
“This is a fine piece of business,” Rindskopf soon regained his voice—“What did you do with that bill of exchange?”
This strange demand puzzled poor Albert. He stared fretfully at his employer.
“What did you do with that bill of exchange I gave you the other day to forward to Berlin?” Rindskopf repeated, panting.
“—I—I enclosed it in the letter—as you told me—” Albert stammered.
Adolf’s eyes were dancing over the letter in his hand. Presently he was reading its contents aloud. “ ‘My dear Herr Rindskopf:
“ ‘In Frankfort, the birthplace of Goethe, love-songs may be called bills of exchange, but in our prosaic city of Berlin we mean precisely what we say. We have tried to cash the enclosed but without success; perhaps you can do better with it in your home town—’ ”
Rindskopf had caught the facetious tone of the letter and burst out in enraged laughter.
“Fine business I call this!” he cried as he continued reading the ironic reply, accentuating every syllable, contempt in his voice: “ ‘We are therefore returning your amorous ditty, much as we appreciate your romantic sentiments, and beg to send us instead a plain, matter-of-fact bill of exchange.’ ”
Adolf was beside himself. He called Albert a good-for-nothing, cursed the day he had let the boy enter the bank, swore that his wife had warned him against taking Zorn’s son into his house.
He then raised the returned enclosure to his eyes and began to read—
The money-changer was shaking with scornful laughter as he read on.
Albert was quivering, tears rushed to his eyes. It was not the mistake that vexed him but Rindskopf’s mocking voice. These verses were intended for the envelope addressed to Hedwiga!
Albert leaped forward and snatched the verses from Adolf’s hand.
“Where is my bill of exchange?” shouted Adolf.
Albert was not interested in the bill of exchange. His heavenly lyrics had been defiled! Their recital by Rindskopf was a piercing dagger in his heart.
“You are nothing but an ignorant boor!” Albert shouted back, striking a pose of sublime impudence. “What is your miserable bill of exchange compared with my poem—huh! Your Thalers! You ought to feel honored that you, an ignoramus, have a poet in your employ!”
Rindskopf shrank back, stunned. Such insolence from his apprentice!
Before Adolf recovered his wits Albert had put on his hat and with a look of unspeakable contempt strutted out of the place.