The Inheritance by Peter Stephan Jungk

Author:Peter Stephan Jungk [Peter Stephan Jungk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: the_inheritance
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2012-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

So that he didn’t lose his charter flight, and counter to Dr Stallbohm’s urgings, the convalescent proposed to fly back to Venezuela only days after leaving hospital. (The flight was anything but direct, with stopovers in Frankfurt, Madrid and Barbados.) The doctor decreed a compromise solution—till his departure, Stecher Bravo was to have strict bed rest.

“I don’t know whether I have weeks or months or years to live, and so I need to keep something in reserve,” Stecher began as they sat over breakfast with the balcony door open. There was a view of a narrow, lovingly tended strip of garden. “Even if I do have a couple of friends in Caracas, a father and son, who would do absolutely anything for me. They offer me help quite naturally, without repayment being an issue, or ‘Why? What for?’ When they come and see me, the first question is always: ‘D’you need money?’ It’s nice to know, anyway …”

One by one, an eggcup, a cup, a piece of toast, a pat of butter and a jammy knife slid off the round glass table.

“I was lying awake last night, thinking about you. Bueno—it’s said one should give with warm hands, and not just in one’s last will and testament. And so on this day of my departure I will present you with a cheque for twenty thousand marks, drawn on my giro account here in Hamburg with the German Bank of Latin America. For the equivalent, I might tell you, I could live for three years in Caracas, in spite of the idiotic inflation …”

Daniel went around the little table, kissed his uncle on the forehead, sat down again, and upset the coffee pot. Fetched a towel from the bathroom, laid it on the glass plate, where it absorbed the black liquid. Called reception, and ordered a fresh pot.

“Thank you so much,” he then said. “You’ve saved our lives.”

“You’ll have to speak up!”

“You say it would keep you for three years?! …”

Stecher nodded.

“We’ll get through it … in four months …”

“Now don’t you start your moping and wailing again, my boy! Sometimes I get the impression you know as much about the realities of life as I do about the Provençal lyric. Have you ever given any thought to banks, interest rates, shares, dividends, Lombard rate, currency exchange? Or the organisation of the economy? You must have grown up in a cocoon, without any idea of the wider world! You know at best I feel pity for your father. A fool who doesn’t know the first thing about money. How much I looked down on him, when he was young I prophesied he would always remain poor, without guessing how right I was! What did your good father manage to teach you? Money isn’t dirty, my dear fellow, money’s a necessity. The association between value and dirt is Christian—the way those Catholics turn up their noses when there’s any talk of money! Coins don’t carry germs. Metal doesn’t communicate disease!”

The nephew did

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