by Joseph Roth
He had already been travelling for about an hour and was halfway home when the rain began to fall, softly at first, then gradually getting heavier. All around, everything breathed moist soft goodness. Everything along the route seemed to yield itself willingly to the rain. The lime trees by the road bowed their heads. The willow bushes on both sides of the passable tracks in the marsh of Zubrowka seemed to have raised themselves up, trembling voluptuously in the warm downpour. Almost at once the birds began their singing, which the Inspector had missed for so long. The blackbirds chirped the loudest. How strange – the Inspector said to himself – and unusual it was that the birds should cheep and twitter and trill in the midst of all this rain; probably – he thought further – they welcomed it as much as he did. But why should he welcome the rain? What did the rain have to do with him? I must have undergone a great change since I came to this neighbourhood! What has the rain to do with me? Why should the birds concern me?
Suddenly, he himself did not know why, he tugged at the reins and the grey stopped still. There he sat, the Inspector, on the seat with the rain streaming down on him and the white straw hat flopping on his head like a wet rag. He stopped still in the rain, instead of driving on as others would have done.
He turned around suddenly. He cracked the whip. The grey began to gallop. A bare half-hour later he was back in Szwaby. It was still raining in torrents.
Eibenschütz took a room in the hostelry. He told Onufrij that along the way the ground had turned to mud and that no one could drive further. So he would prefer to spend the night here until the rain had stopped.
He was given a room. He slept lightly and dreamlessly and did not awake till evening.
The rain had long since stopped. The foliage on the trees outside the window was dry. The stones in the inn-yard were dry, the sun was just on the point of setting, in full splendour. The sky was cloudless.
The Inspector went into the inn parlour.
24
He waited for Euphemia, she did not come. He sat there, his head resting in his hands. He did not really know what he was doing here. Through the noise made by the other guests he heard the hard, relentless ticking of the clock on the wall. Gradually he began to believe that he had not come to this place of his own free will but that someone had brought him here. Only, he did not remember who it was; he did not know who it could have been.
The door opened, marked by a draught of air, and Kapturak entered. He went straight to the Inspector’s table. ‘What about a game?’ he asked. ‘Good, let’s play.’
So he played a game of tarock, and a second and a third. He waited in vain for Euphemia. He lost all three games.
The day too was lost, and so was the night. He did not know what to do. He did not utter a word, not even to Kapturak. He waited for Euphemia. She did not come.
Around three o’clock in the morning a deserter began to play the accordion. He played the song ‘Ja lubyl tibia’ – and everyone began to cry. They cried for the homeland which they had just abandoned. At this moment they yearned more for their homeland than for freedom.
Tears stood in every eye. Only Kapturak’s eyes remained dry. Even an accordion could not touch him. He was the one who brought the deserters across the border. He made his living that way. The homesickness of the deserters, their yearning for freedom, earned him his living.
Even Inspector Eibenschütz became melancholy. He listened to the melody, ‘Ja lubyl tibia’, and felt his eyes grow moist. Almost at the same moment as the accordion began to play, Kapturak asked whether Eibenschütz would like to play another game. ‘Yes,’ said Eibenschütz, ‘why not?’ And they played the fourth game of tarock. Eibenschütz lost once more.
Day was already dawning when Eibenschütz rose from the table. He went up the stairs and had to hold on to the banisters with both hands.
He staggered into his room. He lay down on his bed fully clothed, as in former times during army manoeuvres. He slept dreamlessly and quite peacefully. The first chirping of birds awoke him. He rose at once and immediately he knew where he was: here, in the border tavern; this in no way puzzled him.
He had nothing to wash himself with. He could not shave. This troubled him. He felt sullied as well as despoiled. In spite of this he went downstairs.
The bright summer morning streamed vigorously through the open windows. The deserters were still asleep on the floor. Even the morning sun did not succeed in waking them, nor the loud trumpeting song of the morning blackbirds.
Right among the sleeping deserters who were lying at his feet Inspector Eibenschütz sat and drank his tea.
Onufrij served him. ‘Where’s Euphemia?’ asked the Inspector. ‘I don’t know,’ said Onufrij. ‘I would like to see her,’ said Eibenschütz, ‘I’ve something important to tell her.’
‘Good,’ said Onufrij, and Eibenschütz remained seated. She soon appeared, Euphemia herself. He was embarrassed in her presence, unwashed as he was and with yesterday’s growth of beard.
‘I’ve been waiting for you all night,’ he said.
‘Well, you can see me now!’ she replied. ‘You are staying here?’
He had not fully realized that he had come here to stay. How simple it was. Of course! What was there left for him at home? ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, addressing himself to the early morning through the open door. The men on the floor slowly awoke. They crouched dully for a while, rubbed their eyes, and only then did they seem to notice that it was morning. They got up and, one after the other, went out into the yard to wash at the well.
Eibenschütz remained alone with Euphemia in the large bar parlour, which had suddenly grown even larger, as if all the time the dawn was enlarging it still more. It smelled of the dawn and also of the previous day, of the men’s clothes and of their sleep, of brandy and mead and also of summer and of Euphemia. All these odours now assailed poor Eibenschütz. They confused him and yet he accurately marked each one.
Many things, very many things, went confusedly through his head. He grasped that he had nothing sensible left to say and yet he must do something, and Euphemia was sitting beside him. He suddenly embraced her and kissed her heartily and passionately. Then, as the men from the well approached the door, he said, simply and honestly, ‘I love you!’ and quickly rose to his feet. He had his horse harnessed. He drove home to fetch his things.
25
As long as the summer lasted Eibenschütz was happy. He experienced love and all the blissful changes it produces in a man. Upright and simple as he was, with a somewhat grave disposition, he experienced the first passion of his life profoundly and honestly, in all its awesome, thrilling bliss. During this time he carried out his official duties in a carefree as well as careless manner. The long summer days were only minor postscripts to the short, packed, vigorous nights. What one did by day, without Euphemia, was of no consequence.
Barely once a week did Eibenschütz go home, to his wife. He went out of a kind of sporadic sense of duty and on account of the neighbours. They all knew that he was living with Jadlowker’s woman, but as he had become so mild and neglectful, they too regarded him with mild, or at least indifferent, eyes. Moreover, he did not concern himself with the task that had been entrusted to him. The hostelry and the shop were looked after by Euphemia alone, and she also took care of the papers of those who came across the frontier, and in her helpless handwriting entered the names in the big book at which the gendarmes glanced only rarely and fleetingly.
So autumn arrived. And with it, as every other autumn, came the chestnut-roaster and Sameschkin; Sameschkin, from Uchna in Bessarabia, arrived in Szwaby. He was a distant relative of Euphemia’s; at all events, so she said. He was her sweetheart, that was no secret, all the world knew it. Jadlowker had got on well with him. Sameschkin always came in October. He stayed for the winter. He arrived with many sackfuls of chestnuts and with his small roasting oven on its four spindly black legs. He looked very foreign, as if he too had been roasted. The sun of Bessarabia and the Caucasus an
d the Crimea had done this to him. His small quick eyes called to mind the charcoal with which he roasted his chestnuts, and his long narrow moustache, reminiscent of a finely curved switch of hair, was even blacker than the iron oven. His hands and his feet were brown as chestnuts. On his head he wore a tall fur cap of astrakhan, and round his body a white, soot-blackened and greasy sheepskin. He had large, really massive, knee-boots with very wide legs to them. In his belt was stuck a heavy stick of cherry-wood furnished below with a four-sided iron spike. Thus he was completely equipped for a hard winter and for a hard vocation.
He was a good-natured, even a soft-hearted, man. He spoke a mixture of many languages which no one in the district understood. Here he was simply called ‘the gypsy’, and only a few knew that his name was Sameschkin. Konstantin Sameschkin was his name. He sold twenty chestnuts for a dreier, he sold his wares by the piece. He often smiled; his teeth appeared large and white under his black moustache. They called to mind white piano keys.
There were two other chestnut-roasters in the whole district, one in Zlotogrod itself. But they were not as esteemed as Sameschkin, the gypsy. People came from all over the district to buy his chestnuts, raw and roasted. The raw ones he sold for ten pfennigs a pound.
To be sure, Eibenschütz also knew that Sameschkin was Euphemia’s lover. In the past, Sameschkin had travelled through other countries and other districts with his chestnuts. Every year he had wintered in a different place. But for years now, out of plain devotion to Euphemia, he had come to Szwaby. During the summer he earned his living doing casual labour in Uchna, Bessarabia. Sometimes he helped the wood-cutters, other times the charcoal-burners, sometimes he dug wells, sometimes he cleared out cesspits. He had never yet seen a town larger than Kishinev. Inoffensive as he was, he believed that Euphemia was true to him. During the summer he told anyone who would listen that each autumn he went to see his wife, that she was employed in the border tavern at Szwaby and could not always accompany him. He anticipated the autumn as keenly as others do the spring.
It did not help poor Eibenschütz one whit that he recognized Sameschkin’s good-heartedness. On the contrary, he would have much preferred Sameschkin had been a scoundrel. Helplessly and with a feeling of real sorrow he watched how Sameschkin and Euphemia greeted each other. They fell into one another’s arms. The large, slender, rust-brown hands of the gypsy held Euphemia’s back in a strong and vigorous grip, straining her to him, and Anselm Eibenschütz thought with genuine horror of Euphemia’s fine breasts – his by right!
Sameschkin had brought along his appliances on a barrow, as he did every year. The barrow was drawn by a poodle. Sameschkin stowed poodle and barrow in the shed of the hostelry. He established himself in front of the inn, with his oven and his chestnuts. At once the whole place smelled of autumn. It smelled of Sameschkin’s sheepskin, of burnt charcoal, and most of all of roasted chestnuts. A haze composed of all these odours floated through the place like a herald announcing Sameschkin’s arrival.
An hour later people arrived from Szwaby, to buy roasted chestnuts. A crowd collected round Sameschkin and he sold them chestnuts, roasted and raw. In the centre of the crowd glowed the red coals on which the chestnuts lay. There was no longer any doubt; winter had begun. Winter had begun in Szwaby.
Winter had begun, and with it began the torment of Inspector Eibenschütz.
26
Yes, that was the time when the great torment of Inspector Anselm Eibenschütz began.
‘You can’t go on living here any more,’ Euphemia said to him one night. ‘Sameschkin has come, you know!’
‘What’s Sameschkin to me, what’s Sameschkin to you?’ he asked.
‘Sameschkin,’ she said, ‘comes every winter. I really belong to him.’
‘For your sake,’ replied Inspector Eibenschütz, ‘I have given up my home, my wife and the child.’ (He dared not say: my child.) ‘And now,’ he continued, ‘you want to get rid of me?’
‘It must be so!’ she said.
She sat up in the bed. The moon shone piercingly through the round apertures in the window shutters. He regarded her. Never had he so greedily regarded her. In the moonlight she seemed desirable to him, as if he had never before seen her naked. He knew her exactly, every contour of her body, even better than the lineaments of her face.
Why now? he asked himself. Why at all? A great anger against the woman arose in him. But the angrier he became, the more precious she also appeared to him. It was as if his anger made her more alluring every second. He sat bolt upright, grasped her by the shoulders, her body glowed, he pressed her down with enormous force. Thus he held her fast for a while, on the pillow. He knew that he was hurting her, but she did not even groan and that embittered him still more. He threw himself over her, he had the ecstatic feeling that he was destroying her while he loved her. He wanted to hear some sound of pain, he waited for that. She remained still and cold; it was as if he were not sleeping with Euphemia but with a distant image of her. Where was she really? She was already downstairs, lying in Sameschkin’s arms. ‘Say something,’ he entreated her. She was silent, as if to complete his notion that she was only an image. ‘Why don’t you say anything?’ ‘I don’t know, I’ve already said everything!’ ‘Are you really going to live with Sameschkin?’ ‘I must!’ ‘Why must you?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Shall I go away?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Don’t you love me?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Do you love Sameschkin?’ ‘I belong to him.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t know.’
She turned away from him. She fell asleep at once. It was as if she had gone on a long journey, without a farewell.
He lay awake and saw the moon through the apertures and felt himself to be meaningless and foolish. His entire life was meaningless. What malicious god had brought him to Euphemia? Soon Inspector Eibenschütz believed that he had gone mad, simply because the words: ‘Who really reigns over the world?’ formed in his mind. His fear was so great that, as if to forestall it and to carry out his own destiny, he sat up in bed and spoke the sentence ‘Who really reigns over the world?’ out loud. He was like a man who, out of fear of death, attempts to kill himself, but who goes on living, asking himself: ‘Am I really dead? Have I really gone insane?’
He got up very early. Euphemia was still asleep. He gazed at her for a long time, at the sleeping image of the distant Euphemia. She was sleeping with her hands crossed behind her neck in an unusual posture, almost as if she were aware that he was gazing at her.
He washed and shaved with great care, as he did every morning. He was accustomed, from his army days, to concentrate all his thoughts on his face for half an hour in the mornings. He brushed his coat, his waistcoat and his trousers. He moved about very carefully so as not to wake Euphemia. He set to work packing his trunk. But halfway through his task it occurred to him that there would still be things for him to do here. He left the trunk. Out of an official sense of duty, so he thought. He went out on tiptoe.
In the saloon below, Eibenschütz came across Sameschkin, the chestnut-roaster. Sameschkin smiled at him with all his dazzling teeth. He was drinking tea and eating bread and dripping, which he sprinkled with salt as he ate. Poor Eibenschütz felt as if he himself were being sprinkled with salt, and not the bread.
He took a hold of himself and said: ‘Good morning, Sameschkin!’ At that moment he was filled with a burning hatred for Sameschkin. Then, as he continued to regard him, sitting there garrulous and smiling, he began to hate Euphemia.
He hoped that he would see things more clearly once he had got away.
It was good that the grey was so clever, a clever grey horse. Without him, on his own, Eibenschütz would not have found the way home.
First he drove to the office. For days now, papers had been accumulating there, awaiting him.
He dreaded the papers that were awaiting him.
27
Inspector Eibenschütz stayed at his home for a week in all.
He did not get to see Frau Regina, he sometimes heard the cler
k’s child screaming.
One day, en route, while he was sitting with Sergeant Slama in the gig – they were travelling to Bloty – he began to talk. His heart was heavy. He had to say something – and far and wide there was no one else, only Sergeant Slama. To whom should one talk? People need to talk to each other.
So the Inspector told the sergeant his story. He related how, until the moment when he had known Euphemia, he had had no idea whatever of the meaning of life. And he also told the sergeant of his wife’s deceit with the clerk Josef Nowak.
The gendarmerie sergeant was a very simple man. But he understood everything that Eibenschütz told him, and as a sign that he understood he took off his spiked helmet, as if he could nod with more confidence bareheaded.
Eibenschütz felt quite light at heart after he had related the whole of his story. He became almost cheerful and yet he was so sad.
Sergeant Slama could not think of anything to say, but he knew that it was customary to say something cheerful and so he said, simply and honestly, ‘I could not put up with that!’
He wanted to comfort Eibenschütz but he made him still more sad.
‘I too,’ began Slama, ‘have been betrayed. My wife – confidence for confidence – had an affair with the son of the district governor. She died in childbirth.’
Eibenschütz, who was not affected by any part of the tale, said only: ‘Very sad!’ He was concerned with his own fate. What was the dead Frau Slama to him?
But the sergeant, once embarked on his narrative and with his heart’s wound torn open, continued the tale about his wife. ‘There we were,’ he said, ‘twelve years married. And just think, he was not even a real man, the fellow with whom she betrayed me. He was a youth, the son of the district governor, he was a military cadet.’ And, as if this was of special significance, he added after a while: ‘A cavalry cadet from Weisskirchen in Moravia.’
