by Joseph Roth
When the evening began to grow dark the sister lit a candle. It stood there, solitary, improbably large and solitary in the centre of the room, in the centre of the round table. It shed a late and kindly light. To the Inspector it appeared to be the only kind thing in the world. Suddenly the woman raised herself. She stretched out both arms towards the man and fell back immediately with a shrill cry.
The sister bent over her. She touched the cross and closed the eyes of the dead woman.
Eibenschütz wanted to approach more closely but the nun motioned him back. She knelt down. Her black garment and white coif all of a sudden looked very powerful. She called to mind a black house with a snow-covered roof, and this house separated Eibenschütz from his dead wife. He pressed his forehead against the cool windowpane and began to sob violently.
He wanted to blow his nose, looked for his handkerchief, did not find it but grasped instead the flask that he had carried with him constantly for weeks now, pulled it out and took a deep swallow.
His sobbing stopped immediately. He went quietly outside, without hat or coat, and stood there in the foul, putrescent, drizzling rain. It was as if a quagmire were raining down.
31
Things went from bad to worse. It was already early February. And still the pestilence did not let up. The undertakers died. The municipal employees refused to enter the houses of the dead. A directive came from the Governor’s office to employ convicts as undertakers.
The convicts were brought from the great prison in Zloczow to the Zlotogrod District. They were fastened together in batches of six with chains, with long chains, and they climbed into the train clanking and clattering, escorted by gendarmes with fixed bayonets.
They were posted throughout the Zlotogrod District, six in each hamlet and twelve in the little town. They were fitted out with special coats with hoods, all treated with chloroform. In these ochre-coloured and extremely frightening-looking smocks, clanking and clattering and watched over by the gendarmes, they entered the houses and cottages and, clanking and clattering, carried out the coffins and loaded them onto the large rack-wagons of the municipality. They slept on the floor in the gendarmerie guardrooms.
Some of them managed to fall sick with the cholera. They were taken to hospital and gave the appearance of being ill. But in reality they were not ill at all. Many of them even succeeded in apparently dying. That is, Kapturak induced the municipal clerks to record false deaths. In reality, only a single convict died and he was old and had been ill for some time. The clever ones got away. All the others stayed alive. It was as if the chains and the yearning for freedom protected them from the epidemic more effectively than the precautionary measures of the district medical officer, Doctor Kiniower. Even the deserters who came from Russia did not catch it. What avail have such tiny bacilli against such a great human yearning for freedom?
Among the convicts who came from Zloczow jail at that time was Leibusch Jadlowker. He too collapsed one day, just like that, as he was accompanying the hearse. He was released from the chain. Guarded by the gendarmes, he dragged himself along very slowly to the Zlotogrod hospital. Little Kapturak happened to come along the road, as if by chance. Jadlowker amused himself by collapsing for a second time. Kapturak put down his umbrella and he and the gendarme got Jadlowker onto his feet again. Kapturak took his umbrella in one hand and put his other arm under Jadlowker’s arm. The gendarme brought up the rear. Kapturak did not need to say anything. He conveyed his intentions to the sick man by rapid glances and by exerting clearly modulated kinds of pressure with his arm. Where shall we take you? asked the pressing arm. – Very risky, answered Jadlowker’s arm muscle. – We’ll see, everything can be arranged, replied Kapturak’s arm, a comforting arm.
Thus they slowly dragged themselves to the hospital. At the entrance Jadlowker was passed a bottle of ninety-degree schnapps. He concealed it quickly and safely.
32
Jadlowker’s situation was a very difficult one and Kapturak racked his brains about ways and means of managing his death. He was too well-known in the neighbourhood as the owner of the border tavern and, besides, simply as Jadlowker. Sergeant Slama knew him and so did Inspector Eibenschütz. But by a happy chance Sergeant Slama was transferred to Podgorce as a result of the application he had submitted at the outbreak of the cholera. He had been made a staff-sergeant and commandant of a gendarmerie post.
This would rid them of one enemy at least, but there still remained the other: Eibenschütz. Jadlowker and Kapturak resolved to exterminate Inspector Eibenschütz. How was this to be done?
The most important thing was to hide Jadlowker. One of the cholera patients in the hospital died after three days; he was the peasant Michael Chomnik, whom nobody cared about. Nobody cared two hoots about him and he was buried under the name of Leibusch Jadlowker, age forty-two, occupation inn-keeper, place of birth Kolomea. Incidentally, even these statements were false. Jadlowker’s name was not Jadlowker, he was not forty-two years old, and he had not been born in Kolomea.
Jadlowker was discharged from the hospital as cured, under the name of Michael Chomnik. But where to shelter him?
For a start, Kapturak collected him at the hospital gate and took him home for the time being. He had a garrulous wife whom he did not trust, whom he hated in fact. So he said to her: ‘A new guest has arrived! My dear cousin Hudes. He will have to stay here a few days.’
Good! Who wouldn’t go out of his way for a cousin? Even in times like these? Six chairs were moved together, three a side, and made into a bed for the false Hudes.
He did not stir out of the house. He slept long and ate heartily. Kapturak had only one room and a kitchen. They ate in the kitchen. Although he slept on only six chairs, the false cousin Hudes seemed to fill the entire room. The chairs were never put away. As soon as he had finished his meal, cousin Hudes went into the room to lie down. He fell asleep at once, satiated and unquestioning and strong as he was. He snored and the walls seemed to shake.
What was to be done with him? Kapturak waited for the transfer of gendarmerie sergeant Slama.
This came about in the first days of February; Slama had only a few days left before his departure. Conscientious as he was, he went everywhere, despite the cholera, to take his leave, even of people he would gladly have arrested. He first betook himself to the border tavern to say goodbye to Inspector Eibenschütz. And he was startled when he saw the Inspector again. Eibenschütz was transformed. Eibenschütz was plain drunk. Nevertheless, they drank another two or three small glasses together and said a heartfelt farewell to one another. The Inspector wept a little. The sergeant felt a powerful emotion.
Little Kapturak was sitting close by and pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. They were dry eyes. He was thinking only of how he could hide Jadlowker. Before the sergeant left he went up to him and whispered: ‘Did you know that Jadlowker has died of the cholera? Don’t tell Euphemia! Now the hotel belongs to us mortgagees!’
‘I’m still in charge here, despite the cholera,’ said the Inspector. And Sergeant Slama fastened his cloak, buckled on his sabre, clapped on his helmet and pressed the Inspector’s hand once more. ‘So, Jadlowker is dead then!’ he said with some solemnity. It was as if he were also saying farewell to the supposed dead. Kapturak he only saluted, with two fingers. Then he was gone. Inspector Eibenschütz felt as if he had been abandoned by God and the world. At this moment he yearned for Sameschkin. But Sameschkin was sleeping upstairs with his beloved, his dearly beloved, Euphemia.
33
On the twenty-first of February exactly, a severe frost suddenly arrived and everyone greeted it joyfully.
God in his wrath and in his mercy sends both cholera and frost, as the case may be. After the cholera the people welcomed the frost.
The Struminka froze overnight. The rain suddenly ceased. The mud in the middle of the street turned hard and dry like glass, grey cloudy glass, and out of a clear glassy sky the sun shone, very bright but also very remote.
The drizzle, the last traces of the rain, froze on the wooden sidewalks; and people walked about with iron-tipped sticks so as not to slip. An icy wind blew: not from north or south, east or west, but a wind that seemed to come from no direction at all. Rather, it came from the sky. It blew down from above, just as rain or snow usually fall from above.
The cholera too died overnight. The sick recovered and no one else fell sick. The dead were forgotten, as the dead are always forgotten. They are buried. They are mourned. In the end they are forgotten.
Life resumed its sway in the Zlotogrod District.
Life resumed its sway in the Zlotogrod District, but Inspector Eibenschütz did not care whether the cholera ruled or not. Since his wife’s death he had been drinking, not because he feared death, but because he longed for it.
He surpassed all other drinkers. He was once more living in the border tavern at Szwaby; his house in Zlotogrod was managed by the maid and he did not bother himself about how she managed it. He could no longer be bothered about anything.
He drank. He fell into alcohol as into an abyss, into a soft, alluring, feather-bedded abyss. He who had always been so diligently concerned about his appearance, for official reasons that had meanwhile become second nature to him, now began to neglect himself: in the way he carried himself, the way he walked, the way he looked. It began by his lying down on his bed after a whole night of drinking without taking off more than his coat, his waistcoat and his shoes. He undid his braces but was too lazy to remove trousers and socks. From his barrack days he had been in the habit of washing and shaving at night before going to sleep, as duties began early at six o’clock the next morning. Now he began to postpone shaving until the morning. But by the time he got up it was late, around noon, and he remembered that many people shaved, or were shaved, only every other day. He still had the strength to wash himself. He still inspected himself in the mirror, not so much to see how well he looked but rather to discover whether he was still looking passable. Very often, after he had got up, he was overcome by the unpleasant desire to give his tongue a close inspection, although he was not at all interested in it. And as soon as he had once stretched out his tongue at himself, out of obstinate curiosity as it were, he could not help making all sorts of grimaces in front of the mirror; and sometimes he even called out a few furious words at his mirror image. At times he found it almost impossible to break away from this self-contemplation in the mirror, and then he would reach for the bottle, which always stood at the foot of the bed. He poured a slug in the water-glass and then another and another. After he had had three such mouthfuls it seemed to him that he was once more the old Inspector Anselm Eibenschütz. In reality he was nothing of the kind. He was an entirely new, entirely different Anselm Eibenschütz.
Every day, in the early morning, he had been in the habit of drinking hot tea with milk. But suddenly one night it occurred to him that he could not drink tea with milk as long as Sameschkin was here and it was not possible for him to be together with Euphemia. Not until the spring … not until the spring! he cried out to himself. And he began, every morning, to pour the tea they brought him up to his room into the washing-bowl. For he was ashamed, and he did not want anyone to notice, that he no longer had a hot drink in the morning. Instead of the hot drink he took a mouthful of ninety-degree schnapps.
He immediately felt warm and well and in spite of everything life looked cheerful. He felt very strong and believed that he could overcome all obstacles. At this moment he, Inspector Eibenschütz, was very strong and the chestnut-roaster Sameschkin would soon disappear.
In uniform or out of it, Eibenschütz had always paid great attention to his trouser-creases. Now, however, since he slept in his trousers, trouser-creases seemed not only superfluous to him, but downright repugnant. Equally superfluous and repugnant was the idea of leaving his boots in front of the door to be cleaned.
For all that, Inspector Eibenschütz still appeared imposing to everyone and only a few people were able to perceive any change in him. Except perhaps Sameschkin who said to him one morning in all his artless good nature: ‘You have a great, a colossal sorrow, Herr Eibenschütz.’
He stood up and left without a word.
34
Poor Eibenschütz soon had to acknowledge to himself that remarkable things were happening to his brain. He noticed, for example, that he was losing his memory for quite recent events. He no longer knew what he had done, said or eaten the previous day. He went rapidly downhill, our imposing Inspector. He had to pretend, when he came into the office and the clerk discussed with him an order he had given the previous day, that he remembered everything perfectly. And he gathered every ounce of shrewdness he possessed just to drag out of the clerk what he might have said the day before.
Outwardly he still appeared imposing, did Inspector Eibenschütz. He was still a young man, thirty-six years old in all.
He still held himself bold and erect, on foot and in the gig. But within him burned the schnapps when he had drunk it, and the longing for it when he had not yet drunk it. In reality there burned within him the yearning for another person, any person, and a longing akin to homesickness for Euphemia. Her picture was firmly lodged in his heart; at times he had the feeling that he need only open up his breast and reach inside to draw the picture out. And he did in fact contemplate the idea that one day he might open up his breast.
Other strange changes also took place within him at that time: he noted them, he even regretted them, but he could no longer become his old self again. He would gladly have done so; in fact it could be said that he yearned even more for his old self than he did for other human beings.
He became increasingly inflexible and unrelenting in his official duties, for which the new sergeant who had taken Slama’s place, namely Sergeant Piotrak, was also somewhat to blame. He was redheaded, and he confirmed the truth of the old folk superstition that redheads are malicious. Even his eyes, though they were bright blue, gleamed in a slightly reddish way, inflamed and burning at the same time. He did not speak so much as growl. When he entered a shop it was only with reluctance that he put down his rifle, as the law decreed. He seldom laughed, but was forever telling the Inspector tedious stories in a solemn manner. When they entered a shop together in order to check the weights and measures he did not have to open his mouth. Inspector Eibenschütz felt his gaze, and this sharp blue and, at the same time, reddish gaze fell with deadly accuracy on the most suspicious object. One day the gendarmerie sergeant Piotrak happened to discover that they were also entitled to check the quality of the wares, and the Inspector obeyed him. He asked to see the wares. He found rotten herrings and watered schnapps and linoleum gnawed by mice and damp matches that would not burn and materials eaten by moths and Samogonka, the home-distilled schnapps made by poor peasants, brought across from Russia. It had never occurred to him that it was one of the duties of an Inspector of Weights and Measures to check the wares as well, and the gendarme Piotrak, who had drawn his attention to it, acquired a special importance.
Very gradually, very insidiously, Inspector Eibenschütz slid into a certain dependence on the gendarme; he did not acknowledge this to himself but he felt it, and sometimes he even experienced a fear of the redheaded man. Especially frightening was the fact that the gendarme was quite abstemious. He was always sober, and he was always malicious. His short, thick fists were covered with reddish hairs, looking like the spines of a hedgehog. This man not only carried the regulation weapons. He was himself a weapon.
Sometimes he would take a smoked-ham sandwich out of his large black service bag, break it in two in the middle, and offer half to Inspector Eibenschütz. Although he was hungry, Eibenschütz would take it with some reluctance. Sometimes he had the notion that a few of the reddish bristles which grew in such profusion on the backs of Piotrak’s hands had also fallen on the butter or the ham.
At the same time he also felt that he himself had become a malicious person and that Piotrak was not really all that mu
ch worse than he was. He took the flat bottle out of his back trouser-pocket and gave a good hearty swallow. Thereupon it seemed to him that he was not malicious at all, that he had to be strict, that he was only doing his duty – and that was that! Boldly, and filled with a certain frantic gaiety, he entered the shops, the large, the medium-sized, the small and the tiny ones. Sometimes the few customers fled, for they were afraid of the gendarmerie, of the authorities, of the law in general. The gendarme drew out from his service bag the longish, black, official notebook, bound in silk rep. His pencil at the ready resembled his bayonet.
Inspector Eibenschütz stood behind the counter and the merchant beside him seemed stunted and shrivelled (one must imagine a shrivelled nought beside some terrible numeral) and Eibenschütz dictated to the gendarme: ‘Grammes!’ or: ‘Three pounds,’ or: ‘Six kilos,’ or else: ‘Two metres.’ He set down the false weights before him as one might set down chessmen. Standing there at his full height, he felt very powerful, the arm of the law. The gendarme recorded, the merchant trembled. Sometimes his wife would come out from the room at the back of the shop and would wring her hands.
Everyone asked themselves why the cholera had not attacked Inspector Eibenschütz. For he raged worse than the cholera. Through him the coral-dealer Nissen Piczenik went to prison, also the draper Tortschiner, the milkman Kipura, the fishmonger Gorokin, the poultry-dealer Czaczkes, and many others.
