The Spider's Web & Zipper and His Father by Joseph Roth

Author:Joseph Roth [Roth, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Overlook Press
Published: 2018-06-18T18:56:29+00:00

4

Why was it that old Zipper had amounted to nothing – or at least had amounted to nothing in his own estimation? Because he had been forced to devote the greater part of the energy which God had bestowed on him to making a bourgeois out of his proletarian self. For that is the way of the small man. When Zipper, the carpenter’s son, was young, he was supposed to become a carpenter, too. He became an apprentice. He made oak tables, cupboards, cradles, chests and coffins. In the end he came to study under a great cabinetmaker in Vienna.

In small towns it seems as if one were destined from birth for a certain trade, profession or business. One is a municipal policeman, another a sexton. One is a clock maker, another deals in food. One becomes a rich merchant, one a poor glazier. But the father of the rich man was already rich, and so was his grandfather. The oldest inhabitant cannot remember any forebear having been poor. The son of a carpenter never becomes a sexton. The son of a delicatessen owner never becomes a floor walker. Zipper, the son of a carpenter, would have remained a carpenter but for his coming to the great city.

He did not confine himself entirely to his trade. He used some of his energy to cross the frontiers which had circumscribed his life. The spirit of enterprise was in his blood. He was also a bit fickle. He no longer worked in a simple shop with three companions, as he had at home with his father, but in a big coffin factory with three hundred workmen, most of whom weren’t carpenters.

Each day, precisely seventy coffins were turned out. Where a lot of people live, a lot of people die. It was a depressing business. At first Zipper was constantly preoccupied with death.

He changed his trade, but stayed with wood, and apprenticed himself to an instrument maker. He learned to build the various parts of a violin. It was this opportunity which revealed to him his talent for music. He did not intend it to be long before he could make a complete violin. He prayed for a stroke of luck, particularly since he had fallen in love with a girl whose parents, the owners of a prosperous delicatessen business, would only marry their daughter to a man of means. He took tickets in the lottery and won, whereupon he visited the parents of his beloved and spoke of opening a music shop. He became engaged. A small music shop would not suit him, he wanted to start with a big one. That required more money than he had won. Because he believed in his luck and felt like an adventure or two, he took a train to Monte Carlo. And it was there that those unusual circumstances occurred which led to the acquisition of his chronometer.

He lost the greater part of his money, came back, and married. There was not enough left for even a small music shop.

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