The Silent Prophet

by Joseph Roth

  'I should have thought you were smarter,' answered Berzejev. 'You were so sensibly undecided, so agreeably aimless, so private, without obvious passion . . .'

  Friedrich interrupted him. 'It is not my world, the one into which I fell by the accident of birth. I had nothing to do in it. Now I have something to do. I always lived with the feeling of having missed my time. I did not know that I was yet to experience it.'

  He conducted his own war. He had a personal account to settle with the world. He had his own tactics. Berzejev called them 'anti-military.' 'They are unbourgeois,' replied Friedrich. 'Those of the bourgeois generals are wordless, and therefore spiritless. The bourgeois commander fights with the help of orders, we fight with the help of oratory.' And once again he assembled his comrades for the third time that week and once again uttered the old new words: 'Freedom' and 'New World'!

  'In the Great War your officers ordered you: "Stand to attention! " We, your comrade commanders, shout the opposite at you: "Forward." Your officers ordered you to hold your tongues. We ask that you shout, "Long live the Revolution! " Your officers ordered you to obey. We entreat you to understand. There they told you: "Die for the Tsar!" And we say to you, "Live! But if you have to die, then die for yourselves!" '

  Jubilation arose. 'Long live the Revolution!' cried the crowd. And Berzejev whispered shyly: 'You are a demagogue.'

  'I believe every word I say,' retorted Friedrich.

  As soon as they marched into a captured place, he had the arrested bourgeois brought before him. They stood in a line, he studied their faces. A quiet illusion took possession of him. He found resemblances between these strangers and the faces of bourgeois acquaintances. He hated the whole class, as one hates a particular kind of animal. One looked like the writer he had met at Hilde's, another like Dr Süsskind, who tended to turn up over and over again, a third like the Prussian colonel, a fourth like the Social Democrat party leader. He let them all go again. Once there fell into his hands a harmless bank director whose face seemed familiar. But he could not remember exactly. 'What's your name?' he asked. 'Kargan,' whispered the man. 'Are you a brother of the Trieste Kargan?' 'A cousin!' 'When you write to him,' said Friedrich, 'give him my regards.' The man feared a trap. 'I never write to him,' he said. 'How large is your fortune?' asked Friedrich. 'All lost!' stammered the man. 'I had a flourishing business,' he went on. 'Fifty employees in the bank! And a small factory!' 'In feudal times,' said Friedrich to Berzejev, 'a man who ruled over fifty employees was a man. That one there's a slug, the cousin of my mother's uncle.' He noted how the large tears ran down the director's cheeks.

  Once, in the street, he encountered a man who still retained a few remnants of a former elegance. Friedrich stopped. 'Come on, let him go! ' said Berzejev. 'I can't,' said Friedrich, 'I must recall whom he looks like.' The man began to run. They pursued him, held him fast. Friedrich scrutinized him closely. 'Now I know!' he exclaimed, and turned the stranger loose. 'He looks like the operetta composer, L. Do you recall the photograph in the illustrated magazines? He has the same waltzing expression.' And satisfied, he began to sing: 'There are things one must forget, they are too beautiful to be true .. .

  Of course, he did not know that he himself was gradually beginning to become a feature of the illustrated and non-illustrated newspapers of the bourgeois world, the greater part of which was not nearly annihilated. He did not know that the correspondents of ten great powers telegraphed his name whenever they had nothing else to report and that he was seized on by the mighty machinery of public opinion, that mechanism which manufactures sensations, the raw material of world history. He read no newspapers. He did not know that every third day he featured in the series of men who formed a constant column in the press under the tide 'The bloody executioners', alongside the columns about boxers, composers of operettas, long-distance runners, child prodigies and aviators. He underrated—like all the more judicious of his comrades—the mysterious technique of the defence mechanism of society, which lay in making the extraordinary ordinary by exaggeration or by going into detail, and by letting it be established through a thousand 'well-informed sources' that the riddles of history consisted of real events. He did not know that this world had grown too old for ecstasy, and that technique could master the material of legend to transform eternal verities into current affairs. He forgot that there were gramophones to reproduce the thunders of history, and that the cinema could recall blood-baths as well as horse-races.

  He was naïve, for he was a revolutionary.

  2

  Thanks to the extraordinary length of time the war had taken to run its course, many letters had stayed so long in the post that they did not reach their destination for years. The letter that Friedrich had written to Hilde in the winter of 1915 was received by her in the spring of 1919, at a time when she had long ceased to be Fräulein Hilde von Maerker and was now the wife of Herr Leopold Derschatta, or von Derschatta, which he was no longer entitled to call himself after the Austrian revolution. Nevertheless, he was called Herr Generaldirektor since no one is willingly deprived of his rank in the Middle European countries, and since one feels just as respected for the title that may be spoken by others as for that which one bears oneself.

  Herr von Derschatta had in fact been a Director General during the last two years of the war, having been sent back from the field as a lieutenant in the reserve, with a minor gunshot wound of the elbow which he had quite unnecessarily exposed to the enemy above the parapet. His enemies—for a Director General always has enemies—maintained that he knew what he was doing. But let us pay no attention to his enemies! Their calumnies are unimportant. Even if we assume that the gunshot wound had been no accident, what help was a gunshot wound to anyone? How many did a gunshot wound save from returning to the field? No, Herr von Derschatta, who had become a railway station commandant like Hilde's father at the outbreak of war, although he should not have remained behind the front at his age, and who only went into the field as the result of an oversight for which a major at the War Office later had to make amends—this Herr von Derschatta needed no gunshot wound. He had protection. His family who came from Moravia, had produced government officials for generations, ministerial advisers, officers, and only one single Derschatta had shown talent and become an actor—and he bore another name. Connections with one of the oldest families in the land originated with great-grandfather Derschatta, who had been a simple steward of a count's estates. What a piece of luck for the great-grandson! For the descendant of that count was now a powerful man in the government and whoever called himself his friend did not have to dread the war. When Herr von Derschatta left hospital with his arm finally healed, he had resolved not to visit the front again. He betook himself, his arm still in the black bandage for appearance's sake, to the office where his friend ruled. He strode without stopping—as if he represented his own fate—though long, empty and echoing passages and other narrow corridors in which whole swarms of civilian rabble waited for passports, permits and identification papers, he saluted lackadaisically whenever an usher jumped to his feet who—thanks to a vocational capacity for presentiment—immediately divined that here there wandered a lieutenant with connections, and, after some enquiries, reached his friend's door. He remained in friendly conversation for exactly ten minutes: 'Excellency,' he said, 'may I be permitted . . . .'

  'I know already,' Excellency replied, 'I received the letter from Herr Papa. What's new? What's Fini up to?'

  'Your Excellency is very kind,' said Herr von Derschatta.

  'As always, as always!' opined His Excellency. 'A splendid young woman!'

  And as the lieutenant rose, the Count, as if by chance, as if he were thinking aloud about something that had nothing at all to do with his guest, let fall the words: 'All settled tomorrow.'

  Thereby the Count meant nothing other than the Potato Board, whose task it was to check free enterprise in potatoes and to prevent profiteering. The Potato Board at that time was still run by an expert,
one of the richest farmers, who, despite his fitness for service in the field, had already been thrice designated as indispensable and who, unluckily for him, had not looked up his protector in the Food Ministry for six months. Out of sight, out of mind! When the military had recently claimed the greengrocer, he was—to the surprise even of the military—no longer regarded as indispensable. It was Herr von Derschatta who had become indispensable instead. And with the manifest reason that in such serious times a Potato Board must be subordinate to the War Minister no less than to the Minister for Food, the lieutenant, as a member of the Army, was allocated to establish a lasting liaison between the War Minister and the fruit of the earth.

  From now on Herr von Derschatta called himself Director General, although it was not expressly made known that this was his title. Could one possibly have called him Lieutenant in such serious times, when every other lawyer was a lieutenant? Someone, some day uttered the title Director General Derschatta, and from then on he was known as Director General Derschatta. Indeed, some weeks later there reappeared that farmer who had once reigned as indispensable. But in what a pitiable state! He had had to drill for four weeks, that is, until his family had found satisfactory protection. He was finally restored to his potatoes, no longer as sovereign but as Derschatta's technical adviser, and had to content himself with the title of Director.

  Derschatta, who was by nature a prudent man, did not enjoy seeing the farmer in his vicinity. Two men fit for war service in proximity did not go down well. Besides, he badly needed a secretary and equally feared to deprive the trenches of three men. He therefore began by attempting to dislodge the farmer. But the latter sat fast. Thereupon he relinquished his claim to a male secretary and decided to remain on the lookout for a female substitute.

  Hilde, who had long since tired of being a sick-nurse, and who considered that employment with the Red Cross was more a tribute to her benevolence than fitting for her intellect, had for some months been seeking a post in the public service, one—as it were—as the right hand of an important man. Frau G., her friend, who knew Herr Derschatta, brought Hilde to his notice. Herr von Derschatta treasured womanly charm. And as, in those serious times, it was no longer unusual for daughters from good homes to sit at typewriters, thus serving the Fatherland as well as emancipation, Hilde rapidly learned to type and became a lady secretary.

  She was proud, according to the usage of her times, thereby to 'earn her bread'. Her father had grown tired, worn down by the admonitions of his housekeeper, whom he had still not yet married, and by the opposition of his daughter; he was already weary of his post at the railway station, the war was going on too long for his liking, he longed for his quiet office again, the peaceful clubroom, a crisp poppy-seed croissant, his stomach was so upset by the maize flour and, in a word, he allowed his daughter to become a secretary without opposition.

  He would not have done so, despite his tiredness, if he had been more closely acquainted with Herr von Derschatta—and also, of course, with his daughter. For Hilde, who was as convinced of the absurdity of the old morality as she was of her own self-sufficiency, was enraptured by the discovery made by girls of the middle class during the war—that a woman could dispose of her body as she wished, and, if only to comply with theory, offered no resistance at all to the demands made by Herr Derschatta on his secretary. It was an era in which women, while they were abused, were motivated by the concept that they were obliged to do something by which they differed from their mothers. While the conservatives bemoaned the notorious laxity of morals, virginity was remarked on by the men as a rare phenomenon and regarded by the flappers as an encumbrance. Many women derived no pleasure at all because they practised sexual intercourse as an obligation, and because their pride in venturing to love like men satisfied them more than love itself. Herr von Derschatta did not need to feign love. Hilde's ambition to be able to assess men only by their physical prowess, in the same way as men formed their opinions of women, made any exertions on Derschatta's part unnecessary from the outset as far as she was concerned. Without a trace of passion or pleasure, simply on grounds of principle, Hilde had relations with the Director General, naturally in office hours, because she could then at the same time retain the awareness of being the 'right hand' of an important functionary. If anything really attracted her in this adventure, it was curiosity. But even in the curiosity there was mingled a kind of investigating scientific zeal. And the love hours passed like the office hours, from which they were in a sense subtracted, in a cool concupiscence that felt like the brown leather of the office sofa on which they were consummated. Meanwhile the yellow pencil and typist's notebook lay on the carpet awaiting further employment, for the Director General did not like to waste time and began to dictate even while he was engaged in satisfying the requirements of hygiene at the tap. It was, one might say, a love idyll on the Pitman system and corresponded completely to the seriousness of the times and the danger that beset the Fatherland.

  It would certainly have remained without consequence if it had not become involved with the fate of a clerk named Wawrka. Wawrka had been indispensable until Derschatta's arrival and had grown accustomed to regarding war as an event that did not endanger his life. But the Director General, who, in that very context, was disposed to have as few healthy men around him as possible, annulled Wawrka's indispensability. The latter, in a long audience, implored the Director General for clemency. The poor man fell on his knees before the great Derschatta. He invoked his numerous family, his six children—he had invented two more for the emergency—his sick wife, who of course was really perfectly well. But the Director General's concern for his own life rendered him even more unyielding than he was by nature; it was settled: Wawrka had to join up.

  The poor man resolved on revenge. He knew who Hilde's father was and, with his simple brain, which did not appreciate the philosophy of an emancipated young woman, assumed that the goings-on on the sofa which he had overheard must be the result of a seduction in the good old style. With persons of consequence, he thought in his innocence, there is an honour which one forfeits, protects, avenges in a duel or with pistol-shots. He already saw the Director General lying dead in the office with a bullet in the temple, old Herr von Maerker beside him, broken but proud and silent, and—most important of all—he himself again indispensable and preserved. And he went to Herr von Maerker and related to him what he had detected and overheard. Basically, Herr von Maerker's views did not differ from those of Wawrka. The precepts of social honour required a ministerial adviser and cavalry officer to call his daughter's seducer to account. And with the matter-of-course attitude of a man who has no misgivings about his daughter but the traditions of an old chivalry in his blood, Herr von Maerker betook himself, horsewhip in hand, to the Director General.

  Herr von Derschatta was determined not to die at any price, either at the front or behind the lines. To save his life he played the confessed sinner, but also the anguished lover, and begged Herr von Maerker for his daughter's hand. Hilde would have preferred to pursue her sexual freedom but realized that she must avert a catastrophe. She made a sacrifice to prejudice, got married, and consoled herself with the prospect of a free modern marriage in which both parties could do as they wished.