Overview
A fable about the disintegration of a good man.
At the insistence of his wife, Eibenschutz leaves his job as an artilleryman in the Austro-Hungarian army for a civilian job as the inspector of weights and measures in a remote territory, near the Russian border. Attempting to exercise some proper rectitude in his trade duties, he is at a loss in a world of smugglers, profiteers, and small crooks. Eibenschutz soon finds he can no longer distinguish law from justice. When he discovers that his wife is pregnant by his own clerk, he spends more time away from home. Spending his hours at the border tavern, he finds himself hopelessly drawn to a beautiful gypsy woman, Euphemia. But she is prepared to share the bed of the landlord and Eibenschutz's enemy, Jadlowker, an unprincipled profiteer who has made the tavern a beacon for local smuggling activity.
Synopsis
At his wife's insistence, Eibenschutz leaves his job as an artilleryman in the Austrian army for a job as Weights and Measures Inspector in a remote part of the Empire near the Russian border. Attempting to exercise some rectitude in his duties, he is at sea in a world of smugglers, profiteers and small-time crooks. When he discovers that his wife has become pregnant by his own clerk, he spends less and less time at home, preferring to frequent a tavern on the border. Here, he becomes hopelessly drawn to a gypsy woman; she, however, is prepared to share the bed of the landlord Jadlowker, Eibenschutz's enemy, an unprincipled profiteer who has made the tavern a beacon for smuggling activity.
Library Journal
Published in Amsterdam in 1934 and translated into English in 1982, this book offers the perils of Eibensch tz, who, on the urging of his wife, takes a job as a weights and measures inspector. He soon learns that his wife is cheating on him, he has no hope of being effective in his post owing to criminal activity, and the woman to whom his own affections have strayed is sleeping with the area's leading smuggler.