The Silent Prophet

by Joseph Roth

  But she was wrong. For her husband, who had formerly shared her views of sexual freedom for women, suddenly regarded marriage as a sacred institution and was determined, as he said, to preserve 'the honour of his home'. Yes, he even became jealous. He kept his wife under surveillance. He engaged a new secretary and pursued his normal practices with her. Wawrka went to the front and had probably fallen in the meantime. Hilde, however, got a child. It was simply a precautionary measure on her husband's part. She took it as a sign of her humiliation. Thus, with Nature's help, he had demonstrated to her that it was a wife's lot to be unfree and a vessel for posterity. She hated the child, a boy, who resembled his father with malice aforethought. Now she was surrounded by two Derschattas. When the one went to the office, the other screamed in the cradle. Often they both slept in her bed. She had nobody in the world. She could not talk to her father, he did not understand what she said. Her only friend, Frau G., gave her cheap advice. She should betray her husband. That was the sole revenge. But Herr von Derschatta was mistrustful and prudent and a domestic tyrant of the old style. And far and wide there was no man with whom it would have been worthwhile breaking the marriage. For Hilde had become more critical. Misfortune makes one choosy.

  Then came the Revolution. Herr von Derschatta lost his connections, his rank and his nobility. He had never had a vocation. It was necessary to cut down. The children's nurse was dismissed and a cheap cook engaged. One gave no social evenings and went to no parties. Herr von Derschatta lost his secretaries and concentrated his entire manliness on his wife. He became even more jealous. A second child arrived, a son, just as much like his father as the first and just as much hated by Hilde. Herr von Derschatta plunged into commerce. He developed connections with members of the odious but clever race of Jewish financiers. At the instance of one of these he removed to Berlin, in order to act for his principal on the money markets of German cities. No one had any confidence in his expertise. But, in the opinion of rich but ill-favoured men, he had a distinguished appearance and 'cut a good figure' in Germany. No drop of Jewish blood could be detected in him. And he was a nobleman.

  He made his living by tenuous deals, which he barely grasped. He consorted with stout individuals whom he despised and whom he simultaneously respected and feared. He attempted to learn their 'dodges'. For he believed they were dodges. He did not realize that generations of ancestors subjected to pogroms and martyrdom, confined in the ghetto and compelled to banking transactions, were requisite to making deals. He became one of those furtive antisemites who begin to hate out of respect and who say to themselves a thousand times a day, whenever a deal goes against them and whenever they believe themselves outwitted: 'If I were to have my life over again, I would be a Jew.' A great part of his bad humour arose from the fact that it was so difficult to be born again. And because he could not discuss his private worries with business friends and acquaintances, he poured out his heart to Hilde. She let him talk, she did not comfort him, she actually rejoiced in his bad luck. She was haughty and spiteful. The Director General who, with the adroitness of a weakling, approved the principles of the new world and despised those of the old one, which was what he called a 'reorientation', indicated that his marriage had been an over-hasty affair and the result of a reactionary outlook. He thought of his marriage as he did of his patriotism and his war decoration and his monarchistic opinions. From the whole of that world, which had so rapidly collapsed, he had salvaged nothing but this stupid marriage, whose basis had been a stupid principle of honour. Today? Today no reasonable man would enter into a discussion with an old blockhead of a ministerial adviser over the honour of his daughter. Pistols, horsewhips, duels, formalities! What a performance! 'If I had not married Hilde,' he thought bitterly, 'I might now have got hold of the daughter of a rich Jew. Blond Aryans are highly sought after.' Often he worked himself into a rage. He no longer had a uniform or a title or any position of standing. No precepts anywhere could force him to practise restraint. He let himself go. A door slammed, a chair fell over, his fist pounded on the table, the hanging-lamp began to shake gently. Hilde opened her eyes wide. Already grief choked her, the tears began to smart at the corners of her eyes. 'Anything rather than cry,' she thought, 'anything rather than cry in front of him! I shall try instead to be surprised, just surprised. What an animal. A butcher.' First the nape of his neck reddened, then the blood mounted from behind into his face. Small hairs sprouted on the backs of his broad hands. She must think of someone quickly, thought was a comfort in itself. And she thought of her father, who restrained himself a hundred times a day, who was doubly polite when he fell into a silent rage, who left the house when he had something unpleasant to say. Father! But he was old and foolish and had never understood her. Even if he were here now, he would at most shoot it out with her husband.

  She remembered Friedrich. She no longer saw him distinctly. She remembered him, but not as a living human being, rather as a kind of 'interesting phenomenon'. A young idealist, a revolutionary. And not even consistent. In the end he was like the others. 'He must have enlisted and has probably been killed,' she thought.

  She had not ceased thinking of Friedrich when the Director General succeeded, the inflation overcome, in obtaining an impressive and prominent position as manager of the office of a steel combine in Berlin, and in acquiring the improved mood that befitted the circumstances.

  One day the maid brought her a letter. The envelope was studded with many postmarks. The comments of many postal officials criss-crossed at the edges. The round postmarks lay like medals on someone's chest. The letter was like a warrior who had emerged from a heated engagement. It bore her old address, her maiden name, for which she yearned, and she regarded the letter with that tenderness with which she so often recalled her girlhood days. It was, in any case, a delightful letter. It had sought her out after long endeavour and fruitless journeys, it was a loyal devoted letter. 'It comes from one who is long dead,' she thought, and redoubled her tenderness at this notion. She carefully cut it open. It was Friedrich's last letter.

  From the first word he was at once close to her. She recalled his gait, his greeting, his gestures, his voice, his silence, his hand. His face she no longer saw distinctly. She felt his timid touch on her arm, she smelled the scent of the evening rain through which they had walked together, and saw the twilight in the little café. A sudden pang checked her recollections. He was dead. He had perished in the confusion of the times. Dead in some prison, starved, executed. 'I should go into mourning,' she thought, 'put on mourning. He was the only real man I ever met. And look how I treated him! '

  But when her husband entered the room her mourning had disappeared or had been relegated to the background, or overlaid with a bright triumph. The Director General was puzzled by his wife's good humour. She irritated him, he did not know why. What reason could she have for being so cheerful? 'I've had enough irritations already today. I'll spoil her mood.' And aloud: 'Why are you so exuberant?' She looked at him and did not reply. She did not feel the choking pain and she was sure that she would not cry. The letter lay in the drawer and radiated secret strength. Derschatta's sons came in from their daily outing. They had healthy red empty faces and squabbled eternally. She sent the children away with' the maid. She ate nothing. For the first time she noticed exactly how her husband behaved at table. He must have learned as a child how to hold a knife and fork and yet he ate like a savage. His gaze wandered over the narrow columns of the unfolded newspaper and his spoon rose gropingly, like a blind man, to his mouth. Although he seemed preoccupied with some item of news, this in no way lessened his comfortable enjoyment in eating. 'What an appetite!' thought Hilde, as if appetite were a degrading quality. 'How remarkably some people behave.' She felt as if her husband were a stranger, whom she had met in a restaurant. He was no concern of hers. She was free.

  How could she set about discovering something about Friedrich's fate? If she were bolder, she could go out into the world, travel to Russia to s
eek him out. She discarded this romantic idea. Yet it seemed to her that nothing one felt was fanciful when one loved. What could be more remarkable than what she had experienced already? Their first encounters, his departure, his imprisonment in Siberia, his return, his disappearance, and finally this letter! Did it not come to her as if guided from heaven? Was it perhaps a cry for help, which she heard too late? It was all miraculous, there was no doubt, and it was not for her to flinch from an improbable task.

  3

  When he stood at the lectern and addressed the young people, the burden of his experiences oppressed him and he felt old, as if he were a hundred. Often, at home, he looked in the mirror and persuaded himself that his face was no older than ten years ago. The youth and health of the others, however, seemed to be a reflection of attitudes rather than physical characteristics. They were six, eight or ten years younger than he. They understood what he told them with ease. And yet, with each sentence he thought: 'I'm serving as a textbook of history here, and not even an orthodox one.' Often a small word betrayed the former rebel in him. Then he would feel a shudder passing rapidly over the backs of his listeners. He paused. He felt as if he must suddenly stop short, from lack of words. Passion had been taken by surprise. None of these young men had walked, lonely and hostile, through the streets of cities as he had. Singing and carrying flags, they marched to fêtes, lectures and meetings. Like conquerors, they entered into the inheritance of a new world, but they had conquered nothing and they were only heirs. They no longer needed to answer hatred with hatred. Not one of them need be homeless and wretched any longer. Sorrow was banned, a reactionary institution. A new race was to arise, it was already here, with happy muscles, sunny eyes, fearless because there were no terrors now and brave because no dangers threatened. He had not grown old, it was just that the world had become new, as if he had lived a thousand years. And he learned to experience the slow indifference of the elderly, which gradually spreads over their bodies and soon covers the living like a shroud. The pains came like muffled noises, the pleasures kept a respectful distance, delights he already experienced in the past even as he tasted them, like their own traces left behind years ago. They were recollections of delights.

  It was probably the same for the others, his comrades and contemporaries, but they immersed themselves in work. They sat at the desks which had replaced the throne as the furniture of those in government. They wrote and read and avoided the streets. Their windows looked out over the distant outskirts of the city or into the courtyards of the Kremlin. They saw either the mist of the fields, mingled with the smoke of a few factory chimneys, or a plot of grass, a few Red Army sentinels and an occasional official visitor. They travelled through the towns in closed cars. Health and disease, mortality and birth rate, hunger and satiety, crime and passion, homelessness and drunkenness, illiteracy and schools, backwardness and genius, all figured in the reports, and even what was described as the 'popular morale' acquired the physiognomy of a statistic. And everyone prophesied good things to come. Optimism became the prime duty. With their old tired faces, their sick bodies, their shortsighted, much-afflicted eyes, the old endeavoured to copy the cheerful speech and athletic sprightliness of the young, and they resembled fathers who had been taken on excursions by their sons.

  'People are altogether changed,' said Friedrich to Berzejev.

  'Do you still remember R.? Even he has become an optimist. He abandons his books and goes down to the soldiers for an hour. "What splendid fellows!" he says then. They treat him like a raw egg and allow him to pat them on the back. He, who once said that he feared the canaille, and that I ought to fear them too, is as happy as a child. The ordinary people have a sound instinct, they know what suits R. And so they do him a favour and say something offensive to him. He is delighted. He collects these mock-familiarities as a courtier did the gracious remarks of majesty in times gone by. And the soldiers oblige him by acting "The Sovereign People". Then he returns happily to his books and is convinced that he is no different from the masses. He has evidence of it. They have spoken to him frankly. He has slapped their massive shoulders with his soft fingers and they have told him openly that they have no confidence in his style of government. The people have taken to play-acting splendidly.'

  'If the simple understanding I learned at my military academy qualifies me at all to understand what actually makes a bourgeois,' said Berzejev, 'I would say that our comrades have become bourgeois. Probably they always were. It was only the tension and hostility and the poverty in which they lived that inhibited their bourgeois instincts. Now the tension is over. I consider that the characteristic feature of the bourgeois is optimism. Everything will be alright. We shall soon conquer. The general knows what to do. The enemy is done for. My wife's as true as gold. Things are improving, and so on. Now they have flats with furniture and water-closets, and the children play in the corridors and get on at school. Have you seen how Savelli has installed himself? Oh, not extravagantly! It's not what the newspapers of the bourgeois countries throw in our teeth. Alas, our comrades despise luxury. But they have a passionate inclination towards bourgeois comfort and knick-knacks. They say that Savelli has become very ferocious. He is responsible for eighty per cent of the executions. I was with him a week ago. He had bought himself floral teacups. He doesn't drink tea out of a glass any more. Someone has brought him a marvellous machine from Germany for making real Turkish coffee. He explained to me for a quarter of an hour how it's made and said, full of amazement, "The Germans are really brilliant fellows!" An American journalist went to visit him. He treated the American very well, that is very badly, in a superior manner. Often he replied to some question of the American's with: "That's no concern of yours!" or "Tell your boss that we treat bourgeois journalists much more kindly than they deserve." But when the American had left, Savelli said after a few minutes' reflection: "A fine nation, these Americans. They know exactly what they want." Just wait two years, and Savelli will tell the Americans as much to their face.'

  'In the whole of Russia,' said Friedrich, 'how many are there still who talk as we do? The people who fought with us have disappeared, have gone home, are townsfolk and workers and clerks again. How few have remained with us! They're starting to reorganize the army. People already treat our kind with respect. A comrade gave me his seat on the tram. I'm getting old, we're all getting old.'

  A week later R. said to Friedrich:

  'It would probably be best for you not to stay in Moscow with your pessimism. One of our people has suggested that you should go to the Volga district.'

  'Don't lie to me!' exclaimed Friedrich. 'Admit that it's you who suggested it.'

  'Alright then, I suggested it! I wanted to spare you any awkwardness.'

  'Nobody asked you to. I shall stay here as long as I like.'

  'You won't succeed,' said R. 'You'll go, voluntarily or involuntarily, Savelli will see to that. Besides, have you read my article? I have written an attack on pessimism. Naturally, I mean you and your lot.'

  'Do you recall,' said Friedrich, 'what you told me about Savelli in Vienna? You thought that he would hang us!'

  'I was talking about a different Savelli. There is a difference. Savelli was powerless. And today—he no longer even uses his old name—he is no longer powerless.'

  'And you are telling me this because you're afraid?'

  'Not afraid. Out of caution. And conviction. Savelli must not know of our discussion. What's more, I warn you not to mention it to anyone at all.'

  'Speak plainly! You're saying that you've taken it on yourself to get me out of the way, gently. You're saying that you're all afraid I might be ambitious. I'm not, any more. I don't care a damn for your Revolution.'

  'So much the better. Then get away quickly. But don't tell anyone. I shall never admit that I've spoken to you.'

  'But I heard your discussion,' suddenly exclaimed Berzejev. He had opened the door, so that they could see the corridor.

  'I've been standing here for
half an hour listening to you.'

  He approached R. and raised his hand. R. ducked. Berzejev's blow struck his ear. The next moment he sat under the table and cried: 'Either calm down or go away!'

  They went away.

  'I shall probably go to Germany,' said Friedrich. 'You'll come with me, of course?'

  'No!' said Berzejev. 'We shall separate. You mustn't be angry. I have to tell you frankly that I can't leave Russia. I am happy to be able to live here in safety. Safely for the first time since my youth and with nothing to hide. This is my country. I love it. I was homesick when I was abroad. I can't live abroad again. In a word — I'm staying.'

  'If I were in your place,' said Friedrich slowly, 'I should feel compelled to accompany my friend.' I have no country, he thought quietly. He was too abashed to formulate it. But Berzejev guessed. 'I'm only a Russian,' he said — and it sounded like a reproach. 'I've learned nothing. I can only remain in the army. What could I do abroad? I'd only be a nuisance to you . . . .' 'Farewell!' said Friedrich. He gave him his hand, they embraced each other—lingeringly, as if each still had something to say to the other, something that could no longer be uttered. As if, still embracing, they were separated by an immense space, as if they stood on opposite shores of a lake, looked at each other, and realized that they could not catch each other's words and that there was no point in articulating them.

  And three days later Friedrich again stood alone in a great station and awaited a train to the West.

  It was already dusk. Soldiers who had been ordered to the frontier were sitting in the carriage. They were discussing politics.