The Silent Prophet

by Joseph Roth

  'In Zürich, comrade,' he said to Friedrich, 'you'll see how the world treats us. People can't get over our invasion of Belgium. I was against it from the start. But the war has quickly taught us to distinguish the solid basis of fact from theory. In peacetime it's a different matter. One can make claims in a flourishing economy. But if the entire economy is imperilled one must try to preserve it, whether one is an employer or an employee. I know that you and your comrades don't share our opinions. But it's easier for you. You simply can't compare us, proletarians but with equal civil rights as citizens of a western, civilized, constitutional monarchy, with the oppressed Russian proletariat. It is clear that the Russian proletarian is no patriot in the sense that the German proletarian is. After the war our Kaiser will have to be contented with a purely decorative role, like the King of England for example. A victory for the Tsar would lead only to greater oppression of the Russian proletariat, a German victory to the liberation of the German. Then we shall take giant strides towards the Republic.'

  Friedrich took his leave before midnight, when he heard the party leader's wife calling from the bedroom. It was still raining. The town was dark. Not a single one of its many windows showed a gleam of light. The people slept in the midst of war. Was there no widow mourning her husband? Gould mothers sleep whose sons had fallen? He recalled the night when he had walked through the streets of Vienna. Then, too, all were asleep with few exceptions. Those who had woken then were now in the field, in concentration camps, in prisons or, at best, in Switzerland. The others slept. They slept when it was still peacetime and the war was only getting under way, they were sleeping now. 'Today, as then, I am the only unsleeping being in the world. Each has his tomb, his grave, his stone with its inscription, his baptismal certificate, his documents, his military pass, his Fatherland. That gives them security. They can sleep. The codings in the chancellery offices register their fate. There is no government office in the world that has my coding. I have no number. I have nothing.'

  In that town, and on that night, he was the only human being awake. He opened the window and looked out into the dark street. From the second floor on which his window lay he saw the feeble rectangular glimmer on the wall opposite and that gave him a certain satisfaction, as if the glimmer were his reward.

  It was still raining.

  It also rained the next two days, while he had to wait for his passport. 'The German authorities,' said the tailor consolingly, 'are even making conditions in places where they are themselves becoming illegal.'

  'How quickly Kapturak manages it!' thought Friedrich.

  Nevertheless, he was delighted when he had the passport and the tailor handed him his travelling money. 'For the first time,' he said to himself, 'I have proper documents. The authorities themselves have become my accomplices. Such are the miracles of war. Things are progressing.'

  The next day he travelled to Zürich.

  He sat in the third class and listened to the soldiers talking. They spoke of quite ordinary things: of bacon, meat dishes, a medical officer, a field hospital, brands of cigarettes. They had already domesticated the war. They were already living at their ease. The violent and premature death that was now stalking them had become as familiar as natural death in times of peace, familiar and remote. The war, once an unnatural phenomenon, had become a natural one.

  At the last station before the frontier, he put Hilde's letter in the post. 'By the time it reaches her, I'll be over there.'

  He telegraphed his arrival to Berzejev.

  14

  From that moment he thought only of Berzejev. He would be seeing him soon. He remembered the origin of this friendship. Even more easily recalled than troubles suffered in common and dangers endured together during their escape, were Berzejev's words and gestures, fixed in Friedrich's memory without any particular association. He remembered how Berzejev slept and how he ate, how he held his left knee between his hands when he sat down and was pensive, and how he used to wash himself in the morning, rapidly and carefully and with a visible enjoyment of cold and water that was like a daily reaffirmation of the union of man with the elements.

  He was already travelling over Swiss soil. No more martial posters on the station walls and no more trains full of uniformed men. It was as if he had come straight from a battle, not just from a country at war. Only here did the peaceful world he had yearned for in Siberia begin. It seemed to him that peace held a strange and unfamiliar aspect and that war had been the more obvious and natural condition. Throughout the entire journey across Russia, Austria and Germany he had grown accustomed to the idea of the sovereignty of certain death in Europe. All of a sudden, at a frontier, ordinary life began. It was as if he had reached the edge of a downpour and had been allowed to glimpse briefly how sharp the separation was between blue and cloudy sky, damp and dry earth. Suddenly he saw young men in civilian clothes who should long ago have worn uniform. Suddenly he saw men tranquilly taking their leave of women, heard how they said to each other: 'Till we meet again'. It was evident that all were secure in their lives. At the newsstands the newspapers of every country hung side by side, as if they did not contain reports of bloodshed. 'So this is the substance of neutrality, he told himself. 'Even from the train I can feel how unimportant the war is. The awareness that so much blood is flowing no longer fills everyone's thoughts. I begin to understand the disinterestedness of God. Neutrality is a kind of divinity.'

  'He'll be at the station,' he said. And, immediately afterwards, 'He won't come to the station, he'll wait for me at the house. There's no point in waiting for someone at the station. Besides, so far I've always arrived alone.

  No one has ever expected me or accompanied me. All the same, I shall be pleased if he is at the station.'

  But Berzejev really was waiting, placid as ever. 'You got my telegram, then?' asked Friedrich. 'No,' said Berzejev, 'I've been meeting every train coming from Germany for a week.' 'But whom were you expecting?' 'You!' said Berzejev.

  For the first time they saw each other in European civilian clothes. For the first time each noticed in the other's dress a few minor features that were like the ultimate and most irrefutable evidence of the community of their way of thought. 'So you're wearing your hat, then!' said Friedrich. 'You don't like it?' asked Berzejev. 'On the contrary, I can't picture it otherwise.' And they talked like two young men of the world about neckties, hats, double-breasted and single-breasted coats, as if there were no war and as if they were not there to await the Revolution.

  'If Savelli could hear us!' said Berzejev, 'how he'd despise us. Even here he obstinately insists on going around without a collar, to spite us, to spite R. and myself, and especially all "intellectuals". It's no ordinary ostentation. With him, it's real hatred.'

  As a matter of fact things weren't going well for any of them. They had nothing to live on. It was a struggle for them to raise enough money each week for the flat. Savelli ate only once a day, R. urgently needed a pair of trousers. He wrote for a review, for which Savelli despised him. 'And you?' asked Friedrich. 'I have money,' said Berzejev. 'I'm working. I've found work at a theatre. An actor I've become friendly with got a place for me. It wasn't easy. The Swiss theatrical employees were not friendly at first; finally they found me congenial. I've even saved money. We could both live for a month without lifting a finger. You're staying at my place. No rooms available. Deserters and pacifists have occupied the whole of Switzerland.'

  And they resumed their old life.

  15

  In Zürich Friedrich began to keep a proper diary. I reproduce below those of its passages that seem to me important.

  From Friedrich's diary:

  'I met R. again today. He was the same as ever. He spoke to me as if we had parted only yesterday. I remembered exactly our last conversation before my departure to Russia. But naturally he had forgotten it. It's thanks to him that I decided to write this diary. "What?" he said, "you're not keeping notes? Wrong! First it is a manifestation of individuality. P
encil in hand, a sheet of white paper in front of me. From a small piece of paper, not to mention a large sheet, there emanates a stillness and a solitude. A desert could not be more tranquil. Sit down with an empty notebook in a noisy café—you are at once alone. Second, it's practical, because there are various things one shouldn't forget. Third, a diary is a safeguard against the all too hectic activity to which our calling condemns us, as it were. It helps us to distance events. Fourth, I write because Savelli would despise it as bourgeois sentimentality if he knew about it."

  'I, too, have a natural propensity for things that Savelli terms bourgeois sentimentality. I have met him again. Not a word about Siberia. Not a word about my escape. Only: "Berzejev tells me things have gone very well for you." And it seemed for a moment as if I ought to demand pardon because I had been arrested. For the first time I have become really convinced that he hates me, at those times when he does not despise me too greatly. He repeated to me what Berzejev had already said: it would have been better if we had both remained in Russia. There was more to do there. I could not restrain myself from telling him that Russia was not, in fact, my home. "So much the worse!" he replied. It was a striking demonstration of nationalism. At that moment I felt like a European, as it were, just as R. terms himself. He means the great European traditions: Humanism, the Catholic Church, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and Socialism. He said recently that Socialism was a concern of the West and that it would be as foolish to speak of Socialism in Russia as of Christianity to Hottentots. R. might be my older brother. We probably have more in common than qualities alone. It seems to me that we share a similar destiny. We are both sceptics. We both hate the same things. We want the Revolution for the same reasons. We are both cruel. It is laid down that we shall prepare a revolution but probably not experience its victorious outcome. I cannot believe, any more than he, that anything in the world will change except nomenclature. We hate society, personally, privately, because it happens not to please us. We hate the fat and bloody cosiness in which it lives and dies. Had we been born in a previous century we should have been reactionaries, possibly priests, lawyers, aides-de-camp, anonymous secretaries in a European court. We ought both to have been born in an age when extraordinary men could still determine their own fate, while average men remained insignificant.

  'A week ago I took the place of the correspondent of a Danish radical newspaper. My duties are to take an interest in society, politics, the theatre; and I believe that I do my work well. "You have," says R., who secured me this job as a correspondent, "the first quality of a journalist: you are curious."

  'The deserters who live here are not to be distinguished from the pacifists. None of those fortunate enough to have crossed the frontier admits that he fled from a private love for life. As if love for life needed any excuse! It is an attribute of the middle classes to conceal the simple necessities of nature behind complicated ideals. The men of past times might lose their life in a stupid duel. But they died for their personal honour and did not deny for a moment that life was dear to them. The men of today, at least most of the men now to be found in neutral countries, allege that they are the victims of their convictions.

  'I am interested above all in those who have come to Switzerland with the permission of their own countries. In fact, one can learn most from them. They come here to spy on the pacifists of their own countries and to make official propaganda for their ideals. There are two living in our boarding-house, a German and a Frenchman. The German's name, ostensibly, is Dr Schleicher, the Frenchman's Bernardin. That they sit at my table for breakfast is due to the naïvety of our landlady. The landlady believes that the two have something in common because of their pacifist ideas, and find pleasure in eating at the same table, two poor victims of their fatherlands. Instead of which, each is the paid spy of his country. Dr Schleicher is a decent, easygoing man. He gets up late, goes to the toilet in slippers and dressing-gown, and stays there a very long time. He wears glasses, which make his eyes friendly, his broad face even broader, and which lie like a second gold-rimmed glassy smile over the permanent natural smile of his cheeks. Whenever I go by his door I hear a machine clattering. He is a naive spy, who believes one to be convinced that he is not writing reports for his superiors, but typing love-letters. Bernardin is a man in his forties. He has the solemn sombre elegance of a provincial Frenchman who looks every day as if he were going to a funeral; only the cheerful expression with which he awaits his meals softens his solemnity. His shoes are always shiny and often covered by dark-grey spats, his trousers are always creased, his jacket looks as if it had just come from the tailor, his high stiff collar is always white and glossy. He continually strokes his small black moustache, which emphasizes the brownish-red of his cheeks, with two thoughtful fingers. He wears small bow-ties, as if in a conscious demonstration against the heavy silk knitted neckties of Dr Schleicher. Neither says a word to the other. They acknowledge each other smilingly and silently when they sit down and when they get up. They know about each other. Only the Frenchman writes his reports by hand, and it is quiet when one passes his door.

  'Yesterday the German and the Frenchman conversed for the first time. They very nearly did not come to eat at all. They remained together for a long time after everyone was ready, they drank coffee and smoked. I was curious as usual. I know Dr Schleicher from the café, we have a mutual acquaintance, Dr Gold. This Dr Gold has not yet decided which side to take among the warring countries. He has lived a long time in Germany and in France and, from fear that one of the two countries might possibly win and that he might learn of it too late, he remains neutral. He sometimes sits at Dr Schleicher's table, sometimes at Bernardin's. He is on good terms with both. He reports on the one to the other. From fear that one day both might turn on him, he has been trying for months to bring them together. Yesterday he finally succeeded. He told me the course of events as follows: "Unfortunately, it occurred to me yesterday," said Dr Gold, "to say to Dr Schleicher that Bernardin had been wanting for a long time to make his acquaintance. And then I discovered that they sit together at table every day. I was in despair. If I were not as adept as I am, I should have blamed myself. But with my innate aplomb, I replied coolly: 'Then he cannot know with whom he has the honour of sitting at table.' And Dr Schleicher believed it. Only he happens to find Bernardin extremely uncongenial, and not only on grounds of nationality. And now I made my second mistake. 'He is, after all, a man of the law,' I said to Schleicher, 'a pleasant man in civilian life. But the war goes to the heads of these people.' 'What? A lawyer?' asks Schleicher. 'But I too am a lawyer.' At that moment in came Bernardin and Schleicher was the first to greet him, all smiles. At last I've brought them together. And what do you know! In half an hour the two were as thick as thieves. They talked only of pupils and teachers!"

  'So much for Dr Gold. He soon left me, as busy as ever. He talks breathlessly, almost panting, and always on the go. What's more, he whispers. And he takes care that everyone around sees how diligent he is in retailing secrets. He is continually being greeted and continually responding. He knows all the pacifists. He is a regular contributor to European Peace. Berzejev calls him the "freemason" in the jaunty manner in which he confuses freemasons with pacifists. The great extent of his stupidity is astonishing, combined as it is with a knowledge of literature, languages and countries, insignificant people and so-called personalities. He is credulous and takes every piece of information seriously, and considers everything he is told important. Obviously, he must be credulous to be able to tell another person anything with conviction.

  'What is extraordinary and incomprehensible is the readiness of everyone to listen to him. But that seems to be a feature of most gregarious natures; they accept information from people as if from newspapers, as if the sound of a voice, the expression of a face and the character of the narrator were not much more important than what they have to say, as if his look might never have given the lie to his lips.

  'Dr Schleicher
and Bernardin are now always seen together. They evidently do not suspect that, in such proximity, they constitute a striking phenomenon, even for wartime Zürich. Beside Bernardin's ceremonial black, which gives him a resemblance to the manager of a large department store, Dr Schleicher's blond brightness suggests a sunny carefree holiday. The gold frame of his spectacles, the glittering glass, the sand-coloured overcoat, his tan shoes, his light-brown trousers, his brown bowler-hat and his pale face diffuse a lustre visible at a distance, and when he walks towards one he is like a stray piece of the sun, whereas the dark Bernardin at his side appears like a sort of long and narrow ray of darkness. They have gradually become the object of joking remarks even among the pacifists, whose surveillance has brought them here. But both the German and the Frenchman seem to feel the common nature of their calling more strongly than their difference of nationality. I have heard that the German teaches French and the Frenchman German. The governments of the belligerent states seem to regard a knowledge of the enemy's language as an adequate qualification for espionage and diplomacy. R. tells me that there is a shortage of spies, as there is of guns and bread and sugar, and that the employment of a legal official in secret diplomacy and in the press corps roughly corresponds to the employment of a Home Guard unit at the front.

  'Every day one sees new faces. Again and again new refugees. The longer the war lasts, the stronger becomes the army of convinced or chance pacifists. Switzerland could deploy an immense foreign legion to defend its neutrality.

  'Favourable news from Russia. A strike in Moscow, twenty-six factories at a standstill in the Ukraine. From Comrade P. a report that he has made every preparation to break through the front, as he calls it, and get to Russia. He asks for equipment. Someone must go and take it to him. I would gladly go. No one has money for the journey. Nothing can be sent by post because of the censorship. Tomorrow I shall go again to L. to fetch the equipment.