The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [88]
As I have gone on this far (I am becoming quite a gossip, to be sure) I may as well add that an unhealthy unrest prevails in our emporium. Apart from myself, there are now seven clerks altogether (would old Mincel ever have dreamed of this?)—but there is no unity among them. Klein and Lisiecki, as the seniors, keep together and treat the rest of their colleagues in a manner which I can hardly call contemptuous, but which is certainly rather haughty. And the three new clerks, in the haberdashery, metal and rubber departments respectively, only mix with one another, and are stiff and sulky towards the others. Admittedly, honest Zięba, in his desire to bring them together, trots from old to new and seeks to placate them, but the poor man has such a heavy hand that the opponents merely glower at one another still more fiercely after each attempt at placation.
Perhaps if our emporium (it certainly is an emporium and a first-rate one into the bargain) had developed gradually, if we had taken on one new clerk a year, the new man would have mingled with the old and there would be harmony. But to take on five new clerks at once, so that one will often get in the way of another (for the merchandise cannot be properly arranged, nor the sphere of each man’s duties defined in such a short time)—why then, it is natural enough that disagreements would occur. But why should I criticise my principal’s activities, and he a man who has more sense than the rest of us put together…
Only on one point do the old and the new gentlemen agree, and here Zięba is even a help—in teasing our seventh clerk, Szlangbaum. This Szlangbaum (I have known him for years) is of the Hebraic persuasion, but an honest fellow for all that. Small, dark, bent, unshaven—in a word, you would not give tuppence for him when he sits at the cash desk. But as soon as a customer comes in (Szlangbaum works in the department of Russian textiles), good gracious, how he twirls like a top! Now he is at the highest shelf on the right, now at the lowest on the left. When he begins hurling rolls of cloth about, he resembles a steam-engine rather than a man; when he begins unfolding and measuring, I think he has three pairs of hands. Also he is a born salesman, and when he starts recommending goods, making suggestions, guessing taste, all in an exceedingly grave tone, then I give my word that not even Mraczewski comes anywhere near him. It is too bad, though, that he is so small and plain; we shall have to get him a stupid but handsome young man as assistant with the ladies. For although it is true that ladies linger longer with a handsome clerk, yet they also complain and bargain less. (Heaven protect us from lady customers! Perhaps I lost my taste for marriage by seeing ladies in the shop all the time. The Creator, when He formed that miracle of Nature known as Woman, cannot have realised the misfortune He would bring down upon tradesmen.)
Thus, though Szlangbaum is a decent citizen in the fullest sense, yet no one likes him since he has the misfortune to be a Hebrew…In general, I have noticed over the last year or two that dislike of the Hebrews is increasing; even people who, a few years ago, called them Poles of the Mosaic persuasion, now call them Jews. And those who recently admired their hard work, their persistence and their talents, today only see their exploitation and deceit.
When I hear such things, I sometimes think a spiritual twilight is falling on mankind, like night. By day all is nice, cheerful and good; at night, all is dark and dangerous. I think this, but can say nothing; for what does the opinion of an old clerk matter in the face of well-known journalists who can prove that Jews use Christian blood on their matzos,