The Silent Prophet

by Joseph Roth

  'But you do love?'

  'What?'

  'I mean,' answered Friedrich slowly, for he was shy of using a large word, 'the Idea, the Revolution.'

  'I have worked eight years for it,' said Savelli quietly, 'and cannot say sincerely whether I love it. Is it possible to love something that is so much bigger than I am? I don't understand how believers can love God! I think of love as a force which can grasp and possess its object. No! I don't believe that I love the Revolution—not in that sense.'

  'One can love God,' uttered Kapturak decisively.

  'Maybe a believer sees him,' opined Savelli. 'Maybe I ought to see the Revolution. ...'

  'If you run away,' said Kapturak, 'who will make the Revolution?'

  'Who needs make it?' cried Savelli. 'It's coming. Your children will see it.'

  'God help my children!' said Kapturak.

  Friedrich knew who Savelli was. He figured under the name of Tomyshkin in the newspaper reports. He had carried out the notorious bank-raids and illegal movement of money in the Caucasus and in south-west Russia. The police had sought him for years in vain.

  'He could have stayed on longer,' remarked Kapturak. 'He wasn't worried about the police. But they need him abroad.'

  Savelli remained at the inn for a few days. 'Are you related to the Parthageners?' he once asked Friedrich. And when Friedrich denied this, 'Then what are you doing in the company of these bandits?'

  'I must save money in order to learn,' said Friedrich. 'Soon I shall return to Vienna.'

  'Then come and see me sometime!' said Savelli. And he gave him his addresses in Vienna, Zürich and London.

  Friedrich felt the same kind of embarrassed gratitude for this notorious man that a patient feels for his doctor when he announces the protracted course of a disease with kindness and consideration. Savelli was strange, hard, sinister. Friedrich detested the sacrifice, the anonymity of the sacrifice, the voluntary association the Caucasian cultivated with death.

  Life stretched before Friedrich's youth, immense in its extent, incalculably rich in years and adventure. When he set the word 'World' before him, he saw pleasures, women, fame and riches.

  He accompanied Savelli to the station. In a single short moment, when Savelli was already standing on the footboard, Friedrich had the feeling that the stranger had assumed control of his youth, his life, his future. He wanted to hand back the addresses and say: 'I shall never look you up.' But now Savelli was holding out his hand. He took it. Savelli smiled. He closed the carriage door. Friedrich watched for a while. Savelli did not return to the window.

  5

  Friedrich learned how to lie, to forge papers, to exploit the impotence, the stupidity, and even sometimes the brutality of the officials. Others of his age were still dreading a black mark or a bad reference at school. He was already aware that there were no incorruptible persons in the world, that everything could be accomplished with the aid of money and nearly everything with the aid of intelligence. He began to save. In his spare time he prepared for matriculation. To this end he had become acquainted with a law student who had had to leave the university for some undisclosed reason. This student was currently living there as clerk to a solicitor and announced his intention of awaiting a more favourable era. He called himself a 'free revolutionary' and still adhered to the ideals of the French Revolution. He sighed for the one that had failed in 1848. He spoke of the great days in Paris, of the guillotine, of Metternich, of the minister Latour as of recent and immediate matters. He wanted one day to become a politician, an Opposition deputy. And he already possessed the robust, unruffled, solid aggressiveness of a parliamentarian that might well discountenance a suave minister of the old régime. In the meantime he confined his political activities to participation in the meetings which were held twice a week at Chaikin's, the cobbler's.

  Chaikin was one of those Russian émigrés whose poverty had prevented him from leaving this border town. Although he earned barely enough for a cup of tea, a piece of bread, a radish, he supported the revolutionaries who came over the border. Every month he expected the outbreak of the world revolution. He prided himself on performing important duties on its behalf and eventually became the head of an impotent conspiracy. Round him gathered the rebellious and dissatisfied. For even in this town, on the periphery of the capitalist world, in which the statute books had only a diminished and debased effect, the unwritten laws of the establishment and of bourgeois morality were nevertheless observed in their full validity. Amidst the striking and unEuropean local colour, in the bizarre tumult of adventurers, doubtful nationalities and the babel of tongues, the putrescent gleam of a patriarchal entrepreneurial benevolence still lingered, the wages of the small artisans and workmen were kept low, the poor were maintained in their submissiveness, which was exposed in the streets beside the infirmities of the beggars. Here, too, those who had settled showed their hatred towards the migrants; all the newly-arrived poor—and some arrived every week—were greeted with the same hostility that the others had themselves received. And even the beggars, who lived on charity, were as afraid of competitors as the shopkeepers. From the officers of the garrison there emanated a metallic glitter to which the daughters of the lower middle class succumbed. At election times soldiers and police moved into the town and spread fear, and the townsfolk were just as cowed as their brethren in the larger European cities.

  The rebels met at Chaikin's. In compliance with theory, he called the few municipal watchmen 'capitalist lackeys', a merchant who did not pay his apprentices 'an exploiter and entrepreneur', the town councillors 'beneficiaries of society', the apprentices 'beasts of burden', and 120 brush-makers the 'proletarian masses'. He organized discussions. He expounded the small and the major programmes. He arranged demonstrations on various occasions. Nothing would have made him happier than to be arrested. But no one regarded him as dangerous.

  Friedrich attended Chaikin's meetings regularly. He went out of curiosity. He stayed out of ambition. In the discussion he learned how to make his point at any price. He developed his marked talent for false formulations. He enjoyed the hush which settled when he rose to speak, in which he imagined he could hear his voice even before it rang out. For days on end he prepared himself to counter every possible objection. He learned to feign a quickwittedness that he did not really possess. He reproduced strange sentences from pamphlets as if they were his own. He enjoyed triumphs. And yet he sincerely loved the poor folk who listened to him, and the red world conflagration he intended to kindle.

  The World! What a word! He heard it with youthful ears. It radiated a great beauty and concealed great injustice. Twice a week he deemed it necessary to destroy it and on the other days he readied himself to conquer it.

  To this end he studied so zealously that one day his student friend was able to say:

  'I think you could sit the examination in two months' time. See if you can make it this autumn.'

  Friedrich counted the money he had saved. It was enough for six months. He consulted Kapturak about documents. There was some satisfaction to be obtained in appearing before the authorities of the capitalist world with false papers. He had no father and no country. His birth had not been registered anywhere. He took this as a sign and went to Kapturak.

  'In what names?'

  'Friedrich Zimmer.'

  'Why Zimmer?'

  'That was my father's name.'

  'Russian or Austrian?'

  'Austrian.'

  'Quite right,' said Kapturak. 'A young man should not stay in our town. Go out into the world and study law. That's useful. You may yet be a district commissioner.'

  It was on a July day that Freidrich took his departure. The sun beat down on the low roofs of the cottages between which the path led to the station and drove the smoke from the chimneys in front of the low doors. In the middle of the street, which was bordered on both sides by wooden sidewalks, there was a bustle of women and children, peaceful poultry and aggressive dogs. All was pervaded
by a fragrant summery influence, and over the smoke from the chimneys prevailed a distant smell of hay and of the trunks of the spruce forest behind the station.

  Friedrich was determined to resist any kind of traditional emotion. The fear of melancholy conferred on him the false steadfastness of which young men are unnecessarily proud, and which they take for manliness. He exaggerated the significance of this moment. He had read too much. All of a sudden he re-experienced a hundred scenes of parting. But as the train began to move he forgot the town he was leaving and thought only of that world into which he was travelling.

  6

  At noon on a fine day in August, a certificate in his pocket, he emerged from the great brown doorway of a Viennese high school. He made his way homeward through the still heat. The streets were empty. They contained only shadows, sun and stones.

  He encountered a carriage. The noiseless rubber tyres glided over the paving as if over a polished table. Only a cheerful feudal clatter of horses' hooves could be heard. In the carriage, under a light sunshade currently the fashion, sat a young woman. As she passed by she had time enough to study Friedrich with the protracted and insulting indifference with which one contemplates a tree, a horse or a lamp-post. He passed before her eyes as before a mirror.

  'She has no idea,' he thought, 'who I am. My suit is wretched and no wonder; the youngest Parthagener sold it to me cheap. It has a shabby false brightness. The pockets are too deep, the trousers too wide. It's like deceptive sunshine in February. I'm wearing a hat of coarse straw, it presses like heavy wire netting and is spuriously summery. Beautiful women look past me indifferently.'

  She was a beautiful woman. A narrow nose with delicate nostrils, brown cheeks, a narrow rather over-straight mouth. Her neck, slender and probably brown, disappeared in the collar of her high-necked dress. A foot in a dove-grey shoe sat like a bird on the facing seat cushioned in red velvet. The sunlight flowed over her body, over the cream-coloured dress and filtered through the parasol which stretched like a tiny sky over its own small world. The coachman in his ash-grey livery held the reins tightly. His forearms hung parallel over his knees. The almost golden glint of the black horses had a festive jollity. Their docked tails betrayed a flirtatious strength. They rose and fell governed by the secret rules of a rhythm not to be fathomed by pedestrians.

  This encounter with a beautiful woman was like the first encounter with an enemy. Friedrich assessed his position. He weighed up his forces. He summed them up and pondered whether he dared to go into battle. He had just taken a barricade. He had, through a laughable examination, become fit for society. He could become anything: a defender of mankind, but also its oppressor; a general and a minister; a cardinal, a politician, a people's tribune. Nothing—apart from his clothes—hindered him from advancing far beyond the position the young woman might occupy; from becoming idolized by her and her kind; and from rejecting her. Naturally, rejecting her.

  What a long way for one who was poor and alone! For one without even a name or papers! Everyone else was rooted in a home. Everyone else was fixed as fast as bricks in a wall. They had the precious certainty that their own downfall would also mean the end of the others. The streets were quiet and filled with peaceful sunshine. Closed windows. Lowered blinds. Happiness and love dwelled unalloyed behind the green and yellow curtains. Sons honoured their fathers, mothers understood their children, women embraced their husbands, brothers hugged each other.

  He could not divorce himself from this quiet, prosperous, fortunate district in which he happened to be. He made detours as if, by some miracle, he might suddenly find himself in front of his house without having to traverse the noisy dirty streets which led to his lodging. The chimney-stacks of the factories emerged straight behind the roofs. The people had slept in tenements, could not keep their balance and seemed as if drunk. The haste of poverty is frightened and soundless and yet begets an indistinct uproar.

  He lodged with a tailor, in a gloomy little room. The window had tarnished panes and opened on the hall. It prevented light from entering and the neighbours from looking in. Sewing machines clattered in the landlord's bedroom. The ironing-board lay across the bed, the dressmaker's dummy was propped against the door, customers were measured in the kitchen and the wife, stuck by the stove with flushed face, scolded the four children at their play.

  'If I go to the restaurant first,' reflected Friedrich, 'the family will have eaten by the time I get back. There'll be only the washing-up left to do.'

  He entered a small restaurant. A man sat down at his table. His ears were strikingly large and withered as if made of yellow paper, his head batlike.

  'I think you must be my neighbour,' said the man. 'Don't you live across the road at Number 36?'

  'Yes.' 'I've seen you around for some weeks. Do you always eat here?'

  'Sometimes.'

  'I suppose you're a student.'

  'Not yet! I have to get enrolled first.'

  'What kind, may I ask?'

  'Don't know yet!'

  'I'm an address-writer,' said the man. 'My name is Grünhut. I was a student once too. But I had bad luck.' It was as if he really meant: You won't escape that fate either.'

  'Do you manage all right?' asked Friedrich.

  'As an address-writer! Three heller an envelope. A hundred a day, sometimes a hundred and twenty. I can get work for you too. Willingly! I'd be glad to do so. Is your handwriting good? Come tomorrow!'

  They went to a linen warehouse. The book-keeper handed them a list and a hundred and fifty green envelopes.

  'Where are you eating tonight?' asked Grünhut. 'Come with me.'

  They ate in a cellar. They were given soup made of sausage scraps. A long table. Hurrying rattling spoons. Metal tableware. Noises of lips smacking, spoons scraping, throats gurgling. 'Good soup!' said Grünhut. 'I'll show you about the coffee, we have that across the road, at Grüner's. Soon you won't have to bother any more, you'll be eating in the college refectory. I used to feed there once.'

  'I could find myself in the same situation,' said Friedrich.

  'What, really? What situation? My situation, of course! Do you really think so? Yes, it's a good thing that I've shown you all these places. I had to discover them myself.'

  'Thank you.'

  'Oh, not at all! Not at all! When I came out of prison, I was all alone. Wife divorced! Brother a stranger. Didn't know me anymore. Apart from Frau Tarka, I didn't know a soul. Her brother was in clink with me. So he recommended me. Connections are what count in our circles too. Do you know Frau Tarka? She's the midwife, just over your tailor's. My room's above yours. I checked. You wouldn't believe how many come to Frau Tarka. Yesterday, for example, Dr D.'s daughter. Six months ago it was the wife of a proper Excellency. And the young men! Sons of public prosecutors and generals! Bring their careless little girls. And all I did was to undo the blouse of the pupil I was teaching geography and history in the sixth form, at the high school in the Floriangasse, a private school. Good children from good homes. A working man's daughter wouldn't have said anything. But the well-off! I know a lawyer who raped his ward. A lieutenant who sleeps with his batman. I could write them each a little anonymous letter if I were a scoundrel. But I'm not, in spite of everything. Where do you stand politically? Left, of course! What? I've no opinions. But I think a revolution would do us good. A small short revolution. Three days, for instance.'

  A peculiar relationship developed between Friedrich and myself at that time. I might call it intimacy without friendship or comradeship without affection. And even the fellow-feeling which later linked us was not present at the outset. It arose from the attention we began to pay each other one day and from the mutual mistrust we detected in each other. Finally we began to respect each other. Trust grew slowly, was fostered by the glances we exchanged, almost without realizing it, in the company of others and less by the words that passed than by the silences in which we often sat and strolled together. Had our lives not taken such differing courses, Fri
edrich would probably have become my friend, as did Franz Tunda.

  It was a long time before Friedrich decided to look up Savelli, who was still living in Vienna at that time. He was afraid. He felt that, for the time being, he still had the choice between what he termed 'revolutionary asceticism' and the 'world', the vague romantic notion of pleasures, struggles, triumphs. Already he hated the governance of this world, but he still believed in it.

  The finely soaring ramp of the University did not yet seem to him—as it did to me—the fortress wall of the national students' association, from which every few weeks Jews or Czechs were flung down, but as a kind of ascent to 'Knowledge and Power'. He had the respect of the self-taught for books, which is even greater than that contempt for books which distinguishes the wise. When he leafed through a catalogue, stood in front of the bookshop windows, sat in the quiet mildly dusty rooms of the library, regarded the dark-green backs of innumerable books on the tall wide shelves, the military ranks of green lampshades on the long tables, the deep devotion which makes every reader in the library look like a pious worshipper in a church, he was seized by the fear that he did not know the All-Important, and that one life might be too short to gain experience of it. He read and learned hastily, unsystematically, following changing inclinations, attracted by a title or a recollection of having heard of it before. He filled notebooks with observations that he took to be 'fundamental' and was almost inconsolable if a phrase, a date, a name escaped him. He listened to all lectures, necessary and unnecessary. He was always to be seen in the auditorium, always in the last row, which was also usually the highest. From there he overlooked the bent heads of the audience, the open white notebooks, the tiny blurred shorthand. The professor was so far away that to a certain extent he had lost his private humanity, was no more than a purveyor of knowledge. But Friedrich remained solitary, surrounded by candid faces in which nothing was evident but youth. One could, at a pinch, distinguish the races. Social differences were recognizable only by secondary characteristics. The well-to-do had manicured fingernails, tiepins, well-cut suits. All around a stone-deaf stolid wellbeing.