VI.
Albert’s conduct was a severe blow to his parents. Rindskopf had written to the elder Zorn and described the disgraceful scene to its minutest detail. “I could see from the very first day,” wrote Rindskopf, “that your son has no bent for business, but on your account I had endured him as long as I possibly could.”
The father made a hurried trip to Frankfort and tried to reason with Albert. He told him of the deplorable state of his finances and that further schooling was out of the question; and there was nothing for him to do at home.
The father had another friend in Frankfort, Veitel Scheps, who was a wholesale grocer and an importer of fruits from Italy. Veitel was willing to give the young man a chance to learn his trade.
Veitel was a little man, nothing but skin and bones, with a grizzly little beard, the end of which he was in the habit of chewing wistfully. Veitel seemed always absent-minded. There was a strange light in his big brown eyes. He was nearly sixty, but there was the fire of youth in his eyes. He received his friend’s son kindly and assigned to him the easiest work in his warehouse. He also housed him in his own home, and his wife, being childless, bestowed on Albert maternal tenderness.
For a short time everything went well. Albert liked Veitel and his place of business. The warehouse was sunless, filled with bales of dried fruits, casks of wine, boxes of oranges and lemons and dates, permeated with the pleasant odors of figs and raisins and the delicacies of the Italian soil. Albert’s task was to take down the numbers of the shipments and the quantities that came in and went out.
He loved to lose himself in the rear of the large storehouse, where there were narrow passages stacked with boxes and sacks and crates of wafting fragrance. The scents were inspiring. He had just read Goethe’s “Briefe aus Italien” and visualized the graphic descriptions of the great master. At times he would move listlessly through those darkened passages, conjuring visions of the land “wo die Citronen blühen.”
Meandering through these fruit-smelling passages he often imagined himself under the blue skies of Italy. A spear of sunshine stealing in through the crack of a dust-covered window pane enhanced the illusion. That was the glorious light of Italian skies shining upon the sun-baked lanes of Capri. It was not the creaking of the ungreased wheels of Franz’s wheelbarrow—Franz was the peasant lad trundling heavy-laden boxes—that he heard but the twittering of birds in the green foliage of Sorrento. A horse was neighing outside. Albert’s breast heaved with sensuous joy. For to his ears it was the braying of a donkey clambering up the narrow cliff road to Salerno.
“Albert!—Albert!” someone was calling, but he only heard the distant echoes from his wonderland. Leaning against a column of casks he paused and wrote verses that had been running through his head for days—
“Albert—Albert Zorn!”
The voice became impatient, irritable, anger in the tone. It was the voice of Veitel.
“Franz is waiting for the numbers!” he cried.
Albert tried hard to remember on which errand he had been sent.
Presently the agitated Veitel was before him. The wagon was outside and had to be loaded for the boat sailing for Coblenz and Albert stood there, staring at him like an idiot!
Veitel took a step back. The young man must have lost his wits. His wife had told him the boy had been acting queerly, always as if in dreamland.
For a moment Veitel was baffled. Perhaps he ought to run back for help. One could not tell what a maniac might do! The wife of a friend of his had been stabbed by a maid servant under similar circumstances, he recalled. She, too, had acted queerly—the maid servant had been melancholy—and suddenly, while she was peeling potatoes, she stabbed her mistress with her paring knife!
“Are you not feeling well, Albert?” Veitel’s tone was now soft, sympathetic, cautious.
He was moving back step by step, coaxing the young maniac to follow him. As soon as he emerged into the open Veitel gained courage.
“Where is the list?” he pleaded.
Albert shuddered. He could not free his mind from the illusion. He was still under the blue skies of Italy.
“Where are the numbers?” Veitel demanded.
“The numbers—what numbers?” Albert’s voice was somnolent. “Just a moment!”
He had not finished writing the last two verses and was afraid they might escape his memory, so while Veitel scolded he put the sheet of paper against a box nearby and scribbled the end of his ballad. He then looked up with clearer vision in his eyes.
“Didn’t you take the numbers down for the Coblenz shipment? Franz is waiting for them.”
“O, yes, the numbers;” and he rushed back to execute the order, Veitel staring at large.
“No, the boy has no talent for business,” Veitel confirmed Rindskopf’s opinion, and wrote a lengthy letter to his friend David Zorn.
This time the father made no trip to Frankfort. Instead he sent Albert money for the homeward journey.