by Joseph Roth
Eibenschütz had long ceased to listen. But it did him good that a man was speaking beside him, just as it sometimes does one good when the rain is pouring down, even if one does not understand the language of the rain.
They had only one shop to visit in Bloty, that of the milkman and innkeeper Broczyner, but they stayed there the whole day. Broczyner was found to have five false pound weights in all. Broczyner was reported. Then they went into the inn, kept by the same Broczyner.
The reported Broczyner came to the table and endeavoured to begin a conversation with the Inspector and the sergeant. But both were strict and official, that is to say, they imagined that they were being strict and official.
They stayed there the whole day, till late in the evening. Then Eibenschütz said: ‘Let’s drive to Szwaby.’
So they drove there.
They played tarock with Kapturak. Kapturak won again and again. Inspector Eibenschütz might also have won if he had only paid attention. But he was thinking of Euphemia and of Konstantin Sameschkin.
At last – it was already well into the night – the two of them came to the table, Euphemia and Sameschkin. Arm-in-arm they came down the stairs. Arm-in-arm they approached the table. They were like brother and sister. Eibenschütz suddenly noticed that they both had the same blue-black hair.
He suddenly felt that he did not desire the woman out of love, as he had done up till now, but out of hate. Sameschkin smiled as always, good-heartedly and with all his white teeth. At the same time he generously extended his large, strong, rust-brown hand. It looked as if he were distributing alms.
He sat down. In his not easily comprehensible speech he announced that business had been good that day. People had come to him from as far as Zlotogrod to buy raw chestnuts.
Euphemia sat between the men. She was silent, she was mute, like a flower which someone has seated at a table rather than placed on it.
Eibenschütz looked at her constantly. He tried to catch her eye at least once, but he did not succeed. Her eyes were wandering somewhere in the distance. God alone knew what she was thinking about!
They resumed their game and Eibenschütz won a number of hands. He was a little shamefaced as he pocketed the money. And still Euphemia sat at the table, a silent flower. She glowed and remained silent.
All around there was the usual noise, caused by the deserters. They crouched on the floor and played cards and threw dice. As soon as they had gambled everything away they began to sing. As usual, they sang the song ‘Ja lubyl tibia’, out of tune and with croaking voices.
Finally Euphemia and Sameschkin rose. They went upstairs arm-in-arm and poor Inspector Eibenschütz followed them with his eyes, helplessly. It finally came to him that he must remain here. Yes, remain! He had already drunk a little, had Inspector Eibenschütz. He suddenly felt that he could oust Sameschkin just by remaining here, simply by staying in the hotel. Also he had a dreadful horror of returning home, even though he was certain that he would not see his wife, nor her child, the child of the clerk Nowak. He also felt suddenly very close to Sergeant Slama. Addressing him, Eibenschütz said: ‘Tell me, should I stay here?’
The gendarme reflected and touched his head, as if he were once more removing the helmet which he had naturally long since laid aside.
‘I think you should stay here,’ he said finally, after considerable reflection. And Inspector Eibenschütz stayed on in the border tavern.
Later, a few weeks later, he himself no longer knew why he had asked the gendarmerie sergeant’s advice and why he had remained in the border tavern.
All in all, things went very badly for Inspector Eibenschütz at this time. Winter came.
Eibenschütz was afraid of this winter.
28
Ah, what a winter that was! Nothing like it had been seen for years! It arrived suddenly, as a stern and mighty lord might arrive, with whips. The Struminka river froze at once, in a single day. A thick layer of ice covered it suddenly which seemed not to have been formed out of the water itself but to have come from somewhere else, God knows where.
Not only did the sparrows drop dead from the roofs, they also froze in mid-flight. Even the ravens and the crows stayed within close range of human habitations in order to gather just a little warmth. From the first day the icicles hung large and strong from the roofs. And the windows resembled thick crystals.
Oh, how lonely Inspector Eibenschütz felt now! He knew a few souls, Sergeant Slama for example, and the merchant Balaban and little Kapturak. But what did any of them mean to him? In his colossal loneliness the few people he knew appeared to him like lost flies in an icy wilderness. He was very unhappy, was Inspector Eibenschütz. And he no longer sought human company. He felt almost well in his wilderness.
These days he was again living at the inn. He was again living close to Euphemia. He rose very early in order to see her come down. She came down before Sameschkin. Sameschkin did not rise till an hour later. He was good-natured as well as indolent, very indolent. He did not like to get up early, in fact he hated the mornings. Besides, the people who wanted to buy chestnuts came only in the afternoon. What was there for Sameschkin to do in the early morning? He just did not like the early morning.
However, Eibenschütz patiently waited for him too. It did Eibenschütz good to be close to Sameschkin. He even began to love Sameschkin. After all, Sameschkin still held something of Euphemia’s sweet, sweet warmth. And it was so cold this winter! And he was so lonely, was Inspector Eibenschütz!
He was so lonely, our Inspector Eibenschütz, that he sometimes stepped in front of the great rust-brown gate of the tavern and stationed himself beside Sameschkin, the chestnut-roaster, careless of his position and his office. Various folk came to buy chestnuts, raw and roasted, and sometimes the Inspector even condescended to sell these people chestnuts, at times when Sameschkin had absented himself. In time Sameschkin became very dear to him. He did not really understand why, but for all that Sameschkin became quite dear to him.
In time he began to love him, as one loves a brother.
29
Everything was going well, or tolerably well, until the day when the improbable happened. It was exactly as if winter had suddenly ceased to be winter. It had simply resolved to be winter no longer. Horrified, the inhabitants of the district heard the ice over the Struminka crack, barely a week after Christmas. According to an old legend that circulated in the neighbourhood, this cracking of the ice signified a great misfortune for the coming summer. Everyone was very alarmed and went about with a troubled face.
Well, they were right. The old legend was right. In fact, a few days after the cracking of the ice a fearful disease began to rage in the town, a disease which otherwise used to appear only during hot summers: it was the cholera.
It thawed in every nook and cranny, one might well have said that spring had already come. At night it rained. It rained softly and uniformly and appeared like a solace from heaven, but it was a false solace. People died off quickly, after barely three days’ illness. The doctors said it was the cholera, but people in the neighbourhood maintained that it was the plague. Not that it mattered. Whatever kind of sickness it was, the people died.
As there seemed no end to death, the Governor’s office began to send many doctors and drugs to the Zlotogrod District.
But there were many who said that doctors and drugs could only do harm, and that the gubernatorial ordinances were even worse than the plague. The best means of preserving one’s life – so they said – was alcohol. And so people began to drink prodigiously. Quite a lot of people who had never been seen there before now came to the border tavern at Szwaby.
Inspector Eibenschütz also began to drink, in immoderate fashion. Not so much because he feared the disease and death, but because the general passion for drink suited him very well. For him it was not so much a matter of escaping the great pestilence as of escaping his own suffering. In fact, it might be said that he actually welcomed the pestilence. For it gave h
im the opportunity of alleviating his own suffering, which seemed to him so colossal that no pestilence could match it. Actually he yearned for death. The notion that he might be one of the many victims of the cholera was very agreeable to him, even comforting. But how to await death, when one did not know if it would really come, without stupefying oneself?
So Inspector Eibenschütz drank.
All who still remained alive, not to mention the deserters, became addicted to schnapps. Three of Jadlowker’s mortgagees had already been carried off by the cholera and only little Kapturak was left, the indestructible Kapturak. He, too, drank; his yellow wrinkled face did not flush, nothing could have any effect on him, neither the bacilli nor the spirit.
Not everyone died, to be sure, but many were laid up with the sickness.
In the border tavern only the Inspector, Slama the gendarme, the rogue Kapturak and the chestnut-dealer Sameschkin still played. As a matter of fact, one could hardly call him a chestnut-dealer any longer. For he sold virtually no chestnuts these days. How could anyone sell chestnuts in a neighbourhood where the cholera reigned? And reigned with such a vengeance!
People died like flies. Or so the expression goes: in reality most flies die more slowly than men. After three or eight days, according to circumstances, people turned blue. Their tongues hung out of their open mouths. They gave a few more gasps and that was the end of them. Of what use were the doctors and the drugs that had been sent by the Governor’s office? One day the military authorities issued orders that the regiment of the Thirty-Fifth was to evacuate the Zlotogrod District immediately and this caused even greater alarm. Until now the poor inhabitants had believed that death was passing through their houses and cottages at random. Now that the garrison was being transferred, however, the government had officially decided and decreed that the ‘plague’, as they called it, had come to stay. There was no sign that winter was going to return. Everyone longed for the frost which they usually dreaded. But no frost came, no snow came; at most it hailed now and again, and usually it rained. And death went about and reaped and slaughtered.
One day something very strange happened. For a few hours at least, there fell a red rain, a rain of blood, so people said. It was a kind of reddish, very fine, sand. It lay inches deep in the streets and fell from the roofs. It was as if the roofs were bleeding.
People became even more alarmed than they had been earlier by the transfer of the garrison. And although yet another commission was sent to the Zlotogrod District by the Governor’s office, and although some learned gentlemen explained to the people in the town-hall that the rain of blood was really a red sand which had come from far away, from the desert, that it was a peculiar phenomenon not unknown to science, this in no way allayed the terrible fear people felt in their hearts. They died even faster and more suddenly than before. They believed that the end of the world had arrived, and who could possibly wish to go on living in such circumstances? The cholera spread with the rapidity of a fire. It spread from cottage to cottage, from village to market town, from there to the next village. Only isolated farmsteads and the castle of Count Chojnicki remained unaffected.
The border tavern at Szwaby, too, remained unaffected, even though many people passed through its doors. One might almost say that the bacilli met an instant death in the haze of alcohol which hung around the inn.
However, as far as Inspector Eibenschütz was concerned, it was not fear of the epidemic that was driving him to drink. Far from it; he drank not because he was afraid of death but because he had to go on living, living without Euphemia. He had not set eyes on her for some time. Kapturak and Sameschkin between them looked after the shop. Anyway, only a few customers came. Heaven alone knew what Euphemia was doing in her room, alone for days on end. What could she possibly be doing?
One night, after he had drunk a lot, mixing mead and ninety-degree schnapps, the Inspector, in his confused state, decided to go to her room. Was it not his room as well? He could not stand it any longer. The more confused his thoughts became, the clearer the image of Euphemia rose before his eyes. He could almost have grasped her, her naked body, with his hands as she lay there before him. I only want to touch her, he thought to himself, only to touch her! None of the delights her body contains. Only to touch, to touch!
‘To touch! To touch!’ he said aloud to himself as he stumbled up the stairs. The door was open; he entered. Euphemia had her back turned to him. She was sitting in the semi-darkness looking out of the window. What could she be looking at out there? It was raining, as it did every day. Whatever was she looking for beyond those windows, in the gloomy night, in the rain? A tiny naphtha lamp was burning. It stood high up on the wardrobe. It reminded Eibenschütz of a dim and foolish star. Why did she not turn round? Had he entered so quietly? He was unable to recall how he had entered, or when he could have done so. Although he was swaying, he felt quite steady. He had been standing there like that for ever.
‘Euphemia!’ he cried.
She turned round, she stood up at once, she came to him. She put her arms round his neck, rubbed her cheek against his and said: ‘Don’t kiss me! Don’t kiss me!’ She released him again. ‘It’s sad, isn’t it!’ she said. Her arms hung limply by her body, two wounded wings. At this moment she appeared to Eibenschütz like a big, beautiful, wounded bird. He wanted to tell her that she was dearer to him than anything else in the world and that he would die for her. But he only said, against his will: ‘I’m not afraid of the cholera! I’m not afraid of the cholera!’ And yet he had so many beautiful tender words in his heart for Euphemia. But his tongue did not obey. It did not obey.
He suddenly felt dizzy and leaned against the door. At that moment it was pushed open and Eibenschütz fell to the ground. He was aware of everything that took place. He saw exactly how Sameschkin entered and stopped for a second, taken aback; then he heard how Sameschkin asked in his cheerful bawling voice: ‘What’s he doing here?’ and how Euphemia answered: ‘You can see for yourself! He’s made a mistake, he’s tight.’
I’m tight then, thought Inspector Eibenschütz. He felt someone lift him by the arms – not Sameschkin, these were strong arms – and drag him out through the door which still remained half-open. He felt them let go and he distinctly heard Sameschkin wish him a good night.
That really is a good night, he thought. And he fell asleep, like a dog, right outside the door of his beloved Euphemia, next to Sameschkin’s boots.
30
In the morning, very early, the servant Onufrij woke him. He had a letter for the Inspector, a letter with an official stamp. Inspector Eibenschütz got up from the cold hard boards, bruised and tired as he was. He was a little embarrassed in front of the servant Onufrij because he had spent the night there, on Euphemia’s threshold. He got up and read the letter with the official stamp. The letter had been despatched by the district medical officer, Doctor Kiniower, and read as follows:
‘Dear Inspector, it is my duty to inform you that your child died last night. Your wife’s life is in danger. In my opinion she will not survive the night.
Yours respectfully, Doctor Kiniower.’
The letter, barely legible, had been hurriedly written on a prescription sheet in a medical hand. However, it deeply affected Inspector Eibenschütz.
He asked for his horse to be harnessed; he drove home.
He found his wife in bed, in the same bed in which he had always slept with her. Now it was surrounded with medicines of all kinds and there was a smell of camphor, stupefying and unnerving. She recognized him at once. She was completely altered. She had a bluish look and her lips were almost violet. He clearly remembered those lips when they had been red as cherries and had kissed him. He was not afraid of the disease. Why should he fear death? But his wife was frightened to give him her hand, a limp and yellow hand; several times it stretched itself towards him as if she had no will of her own. Once the woman said, evidently with a great and final effort: ‘Husband, I have always loved you. Must I die?’
It shattered the Inspector that she addressed him not by his name but only as ‘husband’. And he had no idea why this affected him so.
The dead child had long since been taken from the room, the woman did not even know it was dead. A nun sat motionless at the foot of the bed, holding a rosary with a cross in her hand. She was as still as an icon; only her lips moved, and from time to time she raised her hand and touched the cross. Eibenschütz sat at the head of the bed. He envied the nun her immobility. He had to stand up repeatedly, take a few steps, go to the window and look out into the wet gloom. He would have liked to do something good for his wife. To make music, for example. As a boy he had once played the violin. Sometimes a shudder went through the body of the dying woman. The whole wide bed shivered and creaked. Sometimes she sat bold upright, looking like a dead candle in her straight white jacket. After a little while she slumped back again, more like an overturned object than a human being.
The doctor came. He could do nothing more. He could only report that the one hospital in the entire district had long been full to bursting. The sick were lying on the floor. The recently stricken had to be left in their homes. He smelled pungently of camphor and iodoform. He moved about in a cloud of stench.
He left. And it became very lonely in the room. The nun suddenly stood up to straighten the pillows, and this seemed like a great event. Then she immediately sat down again and froze into immobility. The rain sang softly on the window-sill. Sometimes one could also hear the sound of heavy wheels outside. The two municipal freight wagons were rolling past, piled high with corpses and covered in black. The drivers wore black hoods, the rain-moist black glistened, and although it was still day the lanterns at the back of the wagons had been lit. They gleamed dimly and swung and tossed; one could almost hear them vibrate although this was only an illusion because of the heavy wheels. The heavy horses wore a festoon of surprisingly delicate little bells, which whimpered softly. Occasionally the half-open wagon passed by the parsonage. In there the priest sat with the Holy of Holies. The lame old horse jogged slowly along, one could clearly hear the wheels crunching in the sticky mud. Once in a while a pedestrian hurried by, canopied by an umbrella. This, too, resembled a tightly stretched shroud. In the room the clock ticked, the woman breathed, the nun whispered.
