The Coral Merchant

Book 4: Essential Stories

by Joseph Roth

Genres: Classics; Literary Fiction; Short Stories

Synopsis

New translations of the six greatest short stories by Joseph Roth, collected in a beautiful edition

Joseph Roth's sensibility--both clear-eyed and nostalgic, harshly realistic and tenderly humane--produced some of the most distinctive fiction of the twentieth century. This collection of his most essential stories, in exquisite new translations by Ruth Martin, showcases the astonishing range and power of his short stories and novellas.

In prose of aching beauty and precision, Roth shows us isolated souls pursuing lost ideals and impossible desires. Forced to remove a bust of the fallen Austrian emperor from his house, an eccentric old count holds a funeral for it and intends to be buried in the same plot himself; a humble coral merchant, dissatisfied with his life and longing for the sea, chooses to adulterate his wares with false coral, with catastrophic results; young Fini, just entering the haze of early sexuality, falls into an unsatisfying relationship with an older musician. With the greatest craft and sensitivity, Roth unfolds the many fragilities of the human heart.

Release date: November 10, 2020

Publisher: Pushkin Collection

Print pages: 256

Sample

Career
1920
He had been the junior bookkeeper with the firm of Reckzügel & Co., a wholesale exporter of
saddles and bridles, for twenty-three years, and he earned 350 crowns a month.
And his name was Gabriel Stieglecker.
The other thing to be said about him is that, to keep from starving to death, he went
looking for more work to supplement his income, and found some. For a few days at the end
of each month he helped out at the firms of Pollacek Brothers, Simon Silberstein and Brother,
and Rosalie Funkel. Altogether, Gabriel Stieglecker received 675 crowns a month. And he
had now been dying on that amount for three years and five months.
He was an excellent, prompt and reliable bookkeeper. Thanks to his efforts, the firms of
Pollacek Brothers, Simon Silberstein and Brother and Rosalie Funkel were able to manage
without a bookkeeper of their own. He kept their accounts in order, knew what had to be
hidden from the taxman and the police, and was as discreet as a borehole.
Gabriel Stieglecker loved his job. He preferred green ink over blue, and red above
that. But his favourite was violet. Every other bookkeeper in the world wrote their figures in
black imperial ink. But all of Gabriel Stieglecker’s figures were violet. He claimed to know
for a fact that the violet ink was more permanent than the others, and soaked into the pores of
the paper with unparalleled intensity. Yes, one might even suppose that numbers written in
violet ink would go on existing long after the paper had disintegrated, as transparent images
in the air.
As for the numbers written by Gabriel Stieglecker, it is worth remarking that they
could never be mistaken for anyone else’s. They had a personal touch, a distinct character,
they were individuals. The 3 had no belly, the 2 no hunchback, the 7 no tail. All the numbers
had a “nice line”, they were slender and willowy like modern women, and their artistic
panache was second only to the drawings of models in the latest fashion magazines.
For Gabriel Stieglecker loved the numbers he created. He breathed his own breath
into them, so to speak, and that was why they looked so undernourished. He played with
them as a boy plays with tin soldiers, mustering them in double rows, and marking the edge
of his parade ground with a grass-green line. Or he would use red ink to start a bloodbath
among them – though it was never permitted to spill everywhere willy-nilly, but channelled
into neat furrows with a ruler. Order had to prevail at all times.
If you didn’t know this, it would be impossible to understand that Gabriel Stieglecker
has now entered the sixth month of his fourth year of dying on this income of 675 crowns. I
use the word “dying” not, say, out of forgetfulness; it is entirely deliberate. For the story is
true: Gabriel Stieglecker is not this man’s name, but he is a living person. The story is in any
case too remarkable for anyone but Life to have come up with it – as you will see.
Gabriel Stieglecker had a seat at the regulars’ table in Café Aspern, where he went
every Sunday for a black coffee with saccharin. And every Sunday, while he was busy
thinking about the strange sheen of the violet ink he’d purchased the day before, the other
regulars would reproach him. Why hadn’t he asked for a raise yet? Couldn’t he see that he
was being despicably exploited? In this day and age? By that firm? That honest company?
In order to forget these reproaches quickly and completely, Gabriel Stieglecker went
into the office every Sunday afternoon and wrote out numbers. Gabriel Stieglecker completed
all his work for Monday morning and would have gone to bed well pleased with his efforts,
had he not been plagued by the worry that the next morning, he would have nothing to do.
And so Gabriel Stieglecker’s Sunday nights were tormented and anxious. Gabriel
Stieglecker was generally not in favour of Sundays.