Every man had not only a weak spot but also a criminal one At his wifes insistence upstanding citizen and artillery officer Anselm Eibenschutz leaves his beloved Austro Hungarian army and takes up a civilian post as Inspector of Weights and Measures in a remote backwater near the Russian border. At first he does everything by the book but gradually he finds himself adrift in a world of petty corruption bribery and drunkenness and undone by his passion for the beautiful gypsy Euphemia. A haunting evocation of Eastern Europes borderlands in the early twentieth century Weights and Measures is also the story of the disintegration of a good man. Translated by David Le Vay