It really was as though there was no stoker. Karl examined his uncle a little more closely – their knees were almost touching – and he wondered whether this man would ever be able to replace the stoker for him. The uncle avoided his eye, and looked out at the waves, which were bobbing around the boat.

2

THE UNCLE

Karl soon got used to his new circumstances in his uncle’s house, and his uncle was also very kind to him in every little matter, so Karl never had to learn from bitter experience, which is the lot of so many when they begin a new life in a new country.

Karl’s room was on the sixth floor of a building, whose five lower floors, and three more which were subterranean, were taken up by his uncle’s business concern. The light that came into his room through two windows and a balcony door never ceased to astound Karl when he emerged from his little bedroom in the morning. Think of where he might have had to live, if he’d climbed ashore as a poor little immigrant! His uncle, from his knowledge of the immigration laws, even thought it highly probable that he might not have been admitted into the United States at all, but would have been sent straight back again, never mind the fact that he no longer had a home. Because one couldn’t look for pity here, and what Karl had read about America was perfectly correct in this regard; here the fortunate few seemed quite content to enjoy their good fortune with only the pampered faces of their friends for company.

A narrow balcony ran along the entire length of the room. But what would probably have been the highest vantage point in Karl’s hometown here did not afford much more than a view of a single street, which ran in a dead straight line between two rows of lopped-off houses until it vanished in the distance where the massive forms of a cathedral loomed out of the haze. In the morning and evening, and in his dreams at night, that street was always full of swarming traffic. Seen from above, it appeared to be a swirling kaleidoscope of distorted human figures and the roofs of vehicles of all kinds, from which a new and amplified and wilder mixture of noise, dust and smells arose, and all this was held and penetrated by a mighty light, that was forever being scattered, carried off and eagerly returned by the multitudes of objects, and that seemed so palpable to the confused eye that it was like a sheet of glass spread out over the street that was being continually and violently smashed.

Cautious as the uncle was in all things, he urged Karl for the moment, in all seriousness, to avoid all manner of commitments. He was to absorb and examine everything, but not allow himself to be captured by it. The first days of a European in America were like a new birth, and while Karl shouldn’t be afraid, one did get used to things here faster than when entering the human world from beyond, he should bear in mind that his own initial impression did stand on rather shaky feet, and he shouldn’t allow them any undue influence over subsequent judgements, with the help of which, after all, he meant to live his life. He himself had known new arrivals, who, instead of sticking by these useful guidelines, would for instance stand on the balcony for days on end, staring down into the street like lost sheep. That was certain disorientation! Such solitary inactivity, gazing down on an industrious New York day, might be permitted to a visitor, and perhaps even, with reservations, recommended to him, but for someone who would be staying here it was catastrophic, one could safely say, even if it was a slight exaggeration. And the uncle actually pulled a face each time when, in the course of one of his visits, which he made at unpredictable times but always once a day, he happened to find Karl on the balcony. Karl soon realized this, and so he denied himself, as far as possible, the pleasure of standing out on the balcony.

After all, it was far from being the only pleasure in his life. In his room there was an American writing desk of the very finest sort, one of the kind his father had been longing for for years, and had tried to find at an affordably cheap price at various auctions, without ever having been able to afford one with his small means. Of course his desk was nothing like those so-called American desks that turn up at European auctions. For instance the top part of it had a hundred different compartments of all sizes, so that even the President of the Union would have found room for each of his files in it, but even better than that, it had an adjuster at the side, so that by turning a handle one could rearrange and adjust the compartments in whatever way one wanted or needed. Thin lateral partitions slowly descended to form the floors of newly created compartments or the ceilings of enlarged ones; with just one turn of the handle, the appearance of the top would be completely transformed, and one could do it either slowly or at incredible speed, depending on how one turned the handle. It was a very modern invention, but it reminded Karl vividly of the nativity scenes that were demonstrated to astonished children at the Christmas Fairs at home. Karl himself, warmly dressed, had often stood in front of these nativities, and had incessantly compared the turning of the handle, which an old man performed, with the effect it had on the scene, the halting progress of the three Kings, the shining star of Bethlehem and the shy life in the holy stable. And always it had seemed to him as though his mother standing behind him wasn’t following the events closely enough and he had pulled her to him, until he felt her against his back, and he had drawn her attention to various more subtle manifestations by loud shouts, say a rabbit that was alternately sitting up and making to run in the long grass at the front, until his mother put her hand over his mouth and presumably reverted to her previous dullness. Of course the desk hadn’t been designed to recall such things, but the history of inventions was probably full of such vague connections as Karl’s memory. Unlike Karl, the uncle was not at all pleased with the desk, but he had wanted to buy Karl a proper desk, and all desks were now fitted with this contraption, which had the added advantage of being inexpensive to mount on older desks. Still, the uncle kept urging Karl preferably to avoid using the adjuster at all; to back up his advice the uncle claimed that the machinery was very delicate, easily broken and very expensive to repair. It wasn’t hard to see that such claims were mere excuses if one reminded oneself that it was very easy to immobilize the adjuster, which the uncle never did.

In the first few days, there were of course frequent conversations between Karl and his uncle, and Karl had mentioned that he had played the piano at home, not much but with enjoyment, although he only knew the basics, which his mother had taught him. Karl was well aware that to mention this was tantamount to asking for a piano, but he had already seen enough to know that his uncle didn’t need to economize. Even so, his wish was not immediately fulfilled, and it wasn’t till a week later that the uncle said, and it sounded like a reluctant admission, that the piano had arrived and if Karl wanted to he could supervise its move up to his room. It was an undemanding job, but really no more demanding than the moving itself, because the building had its very own service lift, in which a whole removal van might have fitted with ease, and this lift carried the piano up to Karl’s room. Karl could have gone on the same lift as the piano and the removal men, but since there was an ordinary lift just next to the other, standing empty, he took that, using a lever to remain constantly at the same level as the other lift, and looking through the glass walls at the beautiful instrument that was now his own.