The Silent Prophet

by Joseph Roth

  Only in the eyes of some Jewish students there shone a shrewd, a crafty or even a foolish melancholy. But it was the melancholy of blood and race, handed down to the individual and acquired by him without risk. In the same way, the others had inherited their wellbeing. Only groups distinguished themselves from each other by ribbons, colours, convictions. They prepared themselves for a barrack-room life and each already carried his rifle, his so-called 'Ideal'.

  At that time we had a common acquaintance named Leopold Scheller, who happened to be the only student with whom Friedrich associated. He concealed nothing, always told the truth, naturally only the truth as he knew it, and put up with any insult that was flung at him. He did not believe it could be meant personally. If anyone offended his honour, as he saw it, by a look or a deliberate or chance shove in the Great Hall, it was not so much a matter of his honour, as that of the students' club to which he belonged. When Friedrich was bored he went to Scheller, who did not seem to be acquainted with boredom. He was always preoccupied with his philosophy of life.

  He once surprised Friedrich with the information that he had got engaged. And he at once reached into his trouser-pocket, where he usually carried his pistol in a leather case. On this occasion he took out a wallet and out of the wallet a photograph. He noted Friedrich's amazement and said: 'My fiancée has taken my pistol away. She won't permit it.'

  The photograph showed a pretty young woman of some eighteen years. She had black eyes and hair. 'She's certainly not a blonde then,' said Friedrich.

  'She is Italian,' replied Scheller evenly, as if he had never been a Teuton.

  'But,' persisted Friedrich, 'what are you doing with an Italian girl?'

  'Love conquers all,' began Scheller. 'It is the greatest power on earth. Besides, I shall be making a German of her.'

  'And how long have you known the lady?'

  'Since the day before yesterday,' replied Scheller, beaming. 'I accosted her in the park.'

  'And engaged already?'

  'There's nothing else for it—either, or.'

  'And your Club?'

  'I'm resigning. Because she doesn't care for it. I wrote today to ask her father for her hand. He is a bank-clerk in Milan. My fiancée is with relatives here. We are getting married in two months' time. How do you like her?'

  'Enormously!'

  'Don't you agree? She is beautiful? She is unique?' And he laid a small piece of tissue-paper over the photograph and tucked it away again in his pistol pocket.

  Although Friedrich did not consider Scheller's happiness lasting and feared disillusion for his friend, he nevertheless experienced in the proximity of this infatuation the warming reflection of a bliss not previously encountered, and he sunned himself in the other's love as if he lay in a strange meadow. Scheller was an entirely happy man. From lack of understanding he was incapable of a moment's doubt—a condition that normally accompanies love as shadow accompanies light. As the bliss he received was boundless, he radiated it again outwards. It was a bliss mightier than Scheller himself. Friedrich envied him and simultaneously relished the misery of his own solitude. He now imagined that his entire life would acquire meaning and expression when he met the woman he sought. Although he considered Scheller's method of picking up a girl in the park foolish, he did betake himself to the green spaces, which is not the colour of hope but of yearning. Moreover, everything was already autumnal and yellow. And the impatience of his searching heart waxed as the world approached winter.

  He began to study with redoubled zeal. But as soon as he put down a book, it seemed to him as foolish as Scheller himself. Scholarship concealed what was really important as the rock strata concealed the earth's centre—secret, ever burning, ever invisible, not to be revealed before the end of the world. One learned about amputating legs, Gothic grammar, canon law. One could just as easily have learnt how to store furniture, manufacture wooden legs or pull teeth. And even philosophy made up its own answers and interpreted the sense of the question in relation to the answer that suited it. It was like a schoolboy who alters the problem set him to fit the false result of his mathematical labours.

  Before long Friedrich began to become a less frequent attender in the lecture theatres. 'No,' he said, 'I'd rather pass the time with Grünhut. I have seen through them all. This intellectual flirtation of the elegant professors who lecture to the daughters of high society in the evenings from six to eight. A light-hearted excursion into philosophy, Renaissance art history, with lantern-slides in a darkened hall, national economy with sarcastic remarks about Marxism—no, that's not for me. And then, the so-called strict professors, who give lectures at a quarter past eight in the mornings, just after sunrise, so as to be free for the rest of the day—for their own work. The bearded senior lecturers who are on the look-out for a good marriage so that, through some connection with the Minister of Education, they may at last become established professors with salaries. And the malicious smiles of spiteful examiners, who carry off glorious victories over failed candidates. The University is an institution for the children of good middle-class homes with well-organized primary teaching, eight years of middle school, private coaching by tutors, the prospect of a judgeship, of a prosperous legal practice or a government office through marrying a second cousin—not a first cousin, because of consanguinity. And finally for the blockheads of the uniformed students' societies who fight each other, for pure Aryans, pure Zionists, pure Czechs, pure Serbs. Not for me! I'd rather write addresses with Grünhut.'

  Once he discovered Savelli's name in one of the library catalogues. The book was entitled International Capital and the Petroleum Industry. He looked for the book and did not find it. It was out on loan. And as if this incident had been a sign from above he immediately betook himself from the library to Savelli.

  In Savelli's room, on the fifth floor of a grey tenement in a proletarian district, there were three men. They had removed their jackets and hung them over the chairs they were sitting on. An electric bulb on a long flex hung from the ceiling and swung low over the rectangular table, constantly moved by the breath of the men talking but also by their repeated attempts to shift the lamp out of their field of vision whenever it hid one or the other. Sometimes, irritated by the annoying bulb but without recognizing it as the cause of his impatience, one of the three would get up, walk twice round the table, cast a searching glance at the sofa by the wall, and resume his original place. It was impossible just to sit down on the sofa. Heavy books and light newspapers, coloured pamphlets, prospectuses, dark-green library volumes, manuscripts and unused octavo sheets yellowing at the edges lay there higgledy-piggledy, and all subject to unknown laws which prevented the heavy volumes of an encyclopaedia from sliding off a thin stack of green pamphlets Savelli had relinquished the chairs to his guests and sat on a pile of eight thick books, but still so low that his chin just projected above the table-top.

  One of those present was powerful and broad-shouldered. He kept his large hairy fists on the table. His skull was round and bald, his eyebrows so thin and sparse as to be barely visible, his eyes small and bright, his mouth red and fleshy, his chin like a block of marble. He wore a red Russian blouse of some shiny material with a strong reflection, and no one could see him without at once thinking of an executioner. He was Comrade P., a Ukrainian, placid, even-tempered and trustworthy, and with a remarkable cunning which was hidden under his bulk like silver under the earth. Next to him sat Comrade T., a yellow-brown face with a black moustache and a wide black imperial, eyeglasses on his prominent nose, and dark eyes which seemed to betray a kind of restless hunger. Opposite him stood the momentarily empty chair of the third comrade. He was the most restless of them all and the frailty of his limbs, the pallor of his skin, justified his unease.

  He had just been speaking when Friedrich entered and was now drumming with lean fingers on the dark window-pane as if telegraphing morse signals into the night. His face bore a modest thin nautical beard like a faded frame round a portrait. His ey
es were hard and bright when he removed his spectacles. Behind them they looked thoughtful and wise. This was R., with whom Friedrich struck up a rapid friendship at the time, and whose enemy he was later to become.

  The sentence which still rang in Friedrich's ears immediately revealed the speaker to him. 'I'll be hanged,' he had said, before at once correcting himself, 'that is, they can hang me if we have a war within five years.'

  Then there was silence for a time. Savelli got up, recognized Friedrich at once, and signed to him to sit where he liked. Friedrich looked round in vain and sat down cautiously on a pile of books on the sofa.

  No one paid him any attention. P. stood up. His great bulk immediately darkened the room. He took up a stance behind the back of his chair and said: 'There's no other possibility. One of us has to go. The situation is so critical that we may all be for it overnight. Then the connection will be broken and the money lost over there for good. Berzejev is an officer, he has to look after his own interests. Desertion will be difficult for him. I have a direct report. He writes that he was jittery right through the manoeuvres. When he got back, Levicki was in Kiev, Gelber in Odessa. No one in Kharkov.'

  'You'll have to go yourself,' interrupted Savelli.

  'Make your will! ' cried R.

  'Comrade R. is nervous as usual,' said Savelli very softly.

  'I don't deny it,' retorted R. smilingly, thereby displaying two rows of strikingly white and even teeth which no one would have suspected behind his narrow lips. The teeth emitted a fearsome gleam so that the sensitive peaceable nature of his face vanished and even his eyes became malicious.

  'I've never claimed to be a hero and don't intend to risk my life. In any case, Savelli gives me no opportunity.'

  They all laughed, except for the one with the dark hair. He shook his head, his pince-nez quivered and, as he gave the dangling lamp which now obstructed his view a shove so that it began to swing even more wildly, looking like a large irritated moth, he banged his other hand on the table and said resentfully: 'Don't be funny.'

  When they broke up they shook Friedrich's hand, as if he were an old acquaintance.

  'I saw you once on the Ring,' Savelli said to him. 'What are you doing now? Are you working? I don't mean studying.' He meant whether Friedrich was working for the Cause. Friedrich confessed that he was doing nothing. Savelli spoke of the war. It might break out within a week. The Russian General Staff was at work in Serbia. Russian agents trailed the émigrés in Paris, Berlin and Vienna. Suspicious customers had appeared several weeks ago in a café they frequented in the 9th precinct. Would Friedrich put in an appearance?

  'I'll meet you again, here or at the café,' said Friedrich.

  'Good-day!' said Savelli, as if he were taking leave of a man who had given him a light.

  R. was without doubt the most interesting man besides P., Dr T., and Savelli. A number of younger men gathered round him and formed his 'group'. They walked through the late still nights. R. addressed them, they hung on his words.

  'Tell me,' he began, 'whether this world isn't as quiet as a cemetery. People sleep in their beds like graves, they read a leading article, dunk a crisp croissant in their coffee, the whipped cream spills over the edge of the cup. Then they tap their egg carefully with the knife, out of respect for their own breakfast. The children saunter off to school with satchels and dangling blackboard sponges to learn about emperors and wars. The workers have already been at work in the factories for a long time, young girls glueing cartridges, big men cutting steel. For some hours, soldiers have been at exercise in the fields.

  Trumpets blare. Meanwhile it's ten o'clock, councillors and ministers drive up to their offices, sign, sign, telegraph, dictate, telephone; typists sit in editorial offices and take dictation, pass it to editors who conceal and disclose, disguise and reveal. And as if nothing eventful had happened during the day, bells shrill to signal in the evening and the theatres fill with women, flowers and perfume. And then the world falls asleep again. But we are awake. We hear the ministers come and go, the kings and emperors groaning in their sleep, we hear how the steel is sharpened in the factories, we hear the birth of the big guns and the soft rustle of papers on the desks of diplomats. Already we see the great conflagration, from which men can no longer salvage their small sorrows and their small joys ... .'

  8

  Friedrich now worked—as he and his friends tended to say—'for the Cause'. He got himself into the habit of obtaining the enthusiasm, without which he could not live, from renunciation and anonymity. He even charmed a stimulus from the inexorability he had so feared, comfort from despair. He was young. And he believed not only in the efficacy of sacrifice, but also in the reward which engarlands sacrifice like flowers a grave. And yet there were hours, his 'weak' ones as he called them, in which he indulged a private hope that the Idea might triumph, and that he might live to experience it. But he owned to this only when he met R.

  'Don't worry about that!' said R. 'I believe only in the altruism of the dead. We would all like to experience the right moment and a sweet revenge.'

  'Except Savelli!' said Friedrich.

  'You deceive yourself,' replied R., not without malevolence, or so it seemed to me at the time. 'You don't know Savelli. People will only understand him when it's too late. He acts the part of a man who no longer owns his heart because he has presented it to mankind. But don't be taken in, he has none. I prefer an egoist. Egoism is a sign of humanity. But our friend is not human. He has the temperament of a crocodile in the drought, the imagination of a groom, the idealism of an Izvoschik.'

  'But what about all he's done so far?'

  'A stupid error, to judge men by their deeds. Forget the bourgeois historians! Men get involved with affairs as innocently as they do with dreams. Our friend could just as well have organized pogroms as robbed banks!'

  'Then why does he stay in our camp?'

  'Because he's not talented enough, in our view, not versatile enough to free himself from the weight of his past. Men of his kind keep to their chosen path. He's no traitor. But he is our enemy. He hates us, as Russian peasants hate city intellectuals. He hates me in particular.'

  'Why you in particular?'

  'Because he has good cause to. Look at it properly. I'm no Russian. I'm a European. I know that I am separated from our comrades much more than most of us intellectuals are from the proletarians. I'm unlucky. I have a western education. Although I'm a radical, I like the centre. Although I prepare for the great uprising, I like moderation. I can't help myself.'

  R. abandoned himself to the gusto of his formulation. And Friedrich copied him. Both began to outdo each other in contradictions. From both at that time one could hear a statement which was startling then and today sounds almost obvious: 'The Tsar is no gentleman, he's a bourgeois. He marks the beginning of the democratic era in Russia, the era of a democracy of small peasants—and you'll see, Savelli's friends will push on with the work. If the Tsar doesn't hang us, they will.'

  It was as if R. had set out systematically to destroy Friedrich's fervour, his romantic enthusiasm for all the trappings of secret conspiracy. In R.'s company, even danger gained a ridiculous aspect. 'It's no lie,' he would say in the halls which stank of beer, pipe tobacco and sweat, 'that it's easier to die for the masses than to live with them.' Then he would step onto the platform, demand stronger support for the Party, threaten the ruling class, shout for blood, and cry: 'Long live the World Revolution!'

  The police inspector would blow his whistle, the officers stormed into the hall, the meeting broke up. R. disappeared in a flash. He did not expose himself to the fists of the police.

  It may well be that Friedrich would have taken another path if he had not become R.'s friend. For ultimately it was R. who instigated Friedrich to go to Russia, who aroused the younger man's ambition, the naïve ambition to demonstrate that one was not a 'fainthearted intellectual'. But there was also another factor.

  I have the suspicion that Friedrich's
voluntary journey to Russia, which ended ultimately in a compulsory spell in Siberia, was the foolish outcome of a foolish infatuation which he took for hopeless at the time and whose importance he plainly exaggerated. But we have no right to enquire into the personal motives for an action that Friedrich wanted to carry out in the service of his Idea. We must content ourselves with a description of certain events.

  9

  He thought no more of the woman in the carriage—or he imagined that he had forgotten her. But one day, by chance, he saw her again—and he was startled. For it was like an encounter with a picture come to life which had been left in store in a particular room in a particular museum, or an encounter with a forgotten idea which has remained in a deep and hidden region of the memory. He no longer remembered who she was when she asked him in a corridor at the University where Lecture Theatre 24 was. He only recognized her after she had disappeared. Like a distant star, she had occupied a few seconds in impinging on his retina. He followed her. In the darkened room someone was reading aloud about some painter or other, someone was showing various lantern-slides, and the darkness was like a second smaller room within the hall. It enclosed both her and him with equal density.

  He waited. He did not hear a single word or see a single picture. He saw that the door opened, and that she left the hall.

  He followed her at a distance which seemed to be ordained and laid down by adoration. He was afraid that a side-street might swallow her, a carriage bear her away, an acquaintance await her. His tender gaze seized the distant brown shimmer of her profile between the edge of her fur collar and her dark hat. The regular rhythm of her steps imparted gentle wavy movements to the soft material of her jacket, to her hips and back. She stopped in front of a small shop in a quiet side-street and laid a hesitant, pensive hand on the door-handle. She went in. He came nearer. He looked through the window. She was sitting at the table, face turned towards him, trying on gloves. She was leaning on her left hand, her fingers were outspread in patient expectation. She slipped on the new leather, closed her hand into a fist and opened it again, stroked the left hand caressingly with the right, and unfolded joints and fingers in attractive and absorbing play.