4. Kings of the Exchange

“The whole operation made sense only if we managed to buy up all the ‘bread’ to the last gram. However, it turned out that Fritz and Ludwig hid some of the ‘bread’—‘for growth,’ as they said.”

“Fraudsters!”

“They blabbed about this to their fellow villagers, boasting to them how well they managed to fool the buyers. And the fishermen who sold us ‘bread’ without leaving some for themselves, of course, were upset that they did not do the same thing as Fritz and Ludwig did. So, being angry at themselves, they sold out their fellow villagers. The unfortunate thing is that we don’t know exactly how much dough exists, and therefore there is no guarantee that we will be able to extract all the ‘bread,’ especially after the lesson that Fritz and Ludwig taught us. That is why I stopped buying up the ‘eternal bread’ any further. For the same reason, I did not proceed with the second task, about Professor Breuer.

Rodenstock’s face was still sleepy, but his eyebrows were already creeping up to the bridge of his nose, gathering the skin on his forehead into folds. Meyer knew what this change meant, and stretched “at attention” even more.

“It’s bad,” Rodenstock said quietly, but in that quiet voice, one could already hear the distant clap of thunder.

“Bad!” he repeated unexpectedly loudly, and his face turned purple.

“A-ha, you do know how to worry,” thought Kriegman, not without gloating. He suddenly got up, raised his index finger, and bent his head towards Rodenstock.

“Listen to me, I want to say something.”

Rodenstock’s eyes were no longer sleepy, now they were throwing lightning bolts. But he listened to Kriegman carefully.

“Crisis, revolutions, wars—it’s all terrible,” Kriegman began his speech. “But what is terrible for the masses may not be terrible for individuals at all. An intelligent person should benefit from everything, even from wars.”

“Yeah, you won’t complain about the war,” Rodenstock thought, looking at Kriegman.

Kriegman seemed to catch the idea.

“Take you, for example, Mr. Rodenstock,—during the war you reforged plowshares into swords at your factories and worked for defense.”

Rodenstock grimaced. It was true. He, too, could not complain about the war.