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Interlude
77
that and the English visitors I found in the streets of Vienna and for whom I frequently acted as unpaid liaison officer merely for the privilege of speaking to them in their own tongue—a blessing that, like most English peo­ple, they were very willing to bestow for nothing. I also read English books and newspapers with great assiduity.
When I had spent six terms at the Commercial Academy I was ready for life. But I was handicapped from the start. I could not go into an office in which I would have to work on the Jewish Sabbath, and there were then in Vienna, all told, no more than perhaps two score firms of any importance whose principals were Sabbath-keepers. As my grandfather was the Chief Pastor of our ultra Orthodox congregation, I looked, therefore, to him for such influence as he could bring to bear upon the more prominent members of his flock. And he it was who ob­tained a post for me with an important firm of metal merchants in Vienna. I don't know what impression I made in my interview with the senior partner, but after five minutes he led me into the large countinghouse and showed me a vacant seat, telling me I was to start at once. "Richman will tell you what to do," he said, indicating a youth at another table, and went back to his room.
I sat there for a quarter of an hour, fiddling with a pencil and a clean piece of paper. Three-quarters of a kreutzer—less than a penny—I figured my waiting to be told what to do had cost my new boss. I stared hard at Richman, a youth with large hands and feet who continu­ally licked the ink off his fingers and blew his nose in a blue cotton sheet, but he deigned to take no notice of me.