by Joseph Roth
In the Skovronnek family’s shop, many more people are gathered than usual. Everyone has a newspaper in his hand. In Europe war has broken out.
Mac will no longer be able to go to Russia. Menuchim will not come to America. War has broken out.
Hadn’t the worries just left Mendel Singer? They left, and war broke out.
Jonas was in the war and Menuchim in Russia.
Twice a week, in the evening, Sam and Miriam, Vega and Mac came to visit Mendel Singer. And they sought to hide from the old man Jonas’s certain death and Menuchim’s endangered life. It was as if they believed they could divert Mendel’s gaze, directed at Europe, onto their own successful achievement and their own security. They placed themselves, so to speak, between Mendel Singer and the war. And while he seemed to listen to their talk, agreed with their speculations that Jonas was employed in an office and Menuchim safe in a Petersburg hospital due to his special illness, he saw his son Jonas fall from his horse and get caught in some of that barbed wire that was so vividly described by the war correspondents. And his little house in Zuchnow was burning – Menuchim lay in the corner and was consumed by flames. Occasionally he ventured to say a short sentence: “A year ago, when the letter came,” said Mendel, “I should have gone to Menuchim myself.”
No one knew what to reply to that. A few times already Mendel had said that sentence, and always the same silence had ensued. It was as if the old man, with that one sentence, had extinguished the light in the room, it grew dark, and no one could see where to point a finger. And after they had been silent for a long time, they rose and left.
Mendel Singer, however, closed the door behind them, sent Deborah to sleep, lit a candle and began to sing one psalm after another. In good hours he sang them and in bad. He sang them when he thanked heaven and when he feared it. Mendel’s swaying movements were always the same. And only by his voice might an attentive listener have recognized whether Mendel, the righteous, was thankful or filled with anxieties. On those nights fear shook him as the wind a weak tree. And worry lent him its voice, with a strange voice he sang the psalms. He was finished. He closed the book, lifted it to his lips, kissed it and snuffed out the flame. But he didn’t grow calm. Too little, too little – he said to himself – I have done. Sometimes he was frightened by the realization that his only means, the singing of the psalms, could be powerless in the great storm in which Jonas and Menuchim were going down. The cannons, he thought, are loud, the flames are mighty, my children are burning, it’s my fault, my fault! And I sing psalms. It’s not enough! It’s not enough!
XII
All the people who had wagered, on Skovronnek’s political afternoons, that America would remain neutral lost the bet.
It was autumn. At seven in the morning Mendel Singer awoke. At eight he already stood in the street outside the house. The snow was still white and hard, as at home, in Zuchnow. But here it would melt soon. In America it didn’t last longer than one night. In the early morning the nimble feet of the newsboys already kneaded it. Mendel Singer waited until one of them passed. He bought a newspaper and went back in the house. The blue petroleum lamp was burning. It illuminated the morning, which was as dark as the night. Mendel Singer unfolded the newspaper, it was greasy, sticky and wet, it smelled like the lamp. He read the reports from the front twice, three times, four times. He noted that fifteen thousand Germans had been taken prisoner at once and that the Russians had resumed their offensive in Bukovina.
That alone did not satisfy him. He took off his glasses, cleaned them, put them back on and read the war reports again. His eyes sifted the lines. Wouldn’t the names Sam Singer, Menuchim, Jonas fall out of them? “What’s new in the paper?” asked Deborah, as she did every morning. “Nothing at all!” replied Mendel. “The Russians are winning and the Germans are being taken prisoner.” It grew quiet. On the spirit stove the tea was boiling. It sang almost like the samovar at home. Only the tea tasted different, it was rancid, American tea, even though the little packages were wrapped in Chinese paper. “You can’t even drink tea!” said Mendel, and was surprised himself that he was speaking of such trivialities. Perhaps he wanted to say something else? There were so many important things in the world, and Mendel was complaining about the tea. The Russians were winning, and the Germans were being taken prisoner. Only from Sam one heard nothing at all, and nothing from Menuchim. Two weeks before Mendel had written. And the Red Cross had informed them that Jonas was missing. He’s probably dead, Deborah thought inwardly. Mendel thought the same. But they spoke for a long time about the meaning of the word “missing,” and as if it completely ruled out the possibility of death, they agreed again and again that “missing” could only mean taken prisoner, deserted or wounded in captivity.
But why hadn’t Sam written for so long? Well, he was in the midst of a long march, or currently in a “redeployment,” in one of those redeployments the nature and significance of which were more precisely explained in the afternoon at Skovronnek’s.
One can’t say it aloud, thought Mendel, Sam should not have gone.
Nonetheless, he said the second part of the sentence aloud, Deborah heard it. “You don’t understand, Mendel,” said Deborah. All the arguments for Sam’s participation in the American war Deborah had gotten from her daughter Miriam. “America isn’t Russia. America is a fatherland. Every respectable person is duty-bound to go to war for the fatherland. Mac went, Sam couldn’t have stayed. Besides, thank God!, he is on the regimental staff. They don’t fall there. Because if they permitted all the high officers to fall, they’d never win. And Sam, thank God!, is with the high officers.”
“I’ve given one son to the Tsar, it would have been enough!”
“The Tsar is different, and America is different!”
Mendel didn’t debate further. He’d already heard it all. He still remembered the day when they’d departed, Mac and Sam. Both had sung an American song, in the middle of the street. In the evening at Skovronnek’s they’d said: Sam was, knock on wood, a good-looking soldier.
Perhaps America was a fatherland, war a duty, cowardice a disgrace, death impossible on the regimental staff! Nonetheless, thought Mendel, I’m the father, I should have said a word. “Stay, Sam!” I should have said. “I’ve waited long years to see a tiny sliver of good luck. Now Jonas is in the army, who knows what will happen to Menuchim, you have a wife, a child and a business. Stay, Sam!” Perhaps he would have stayed.
Mendel stood, as was his wont, at the window, his back turned to the room. He looked straight at the Lemmels’ broken window, boarded up with brown cardboard, across the street on the second floor. Below was the Jewish butcher shop with the Hebrew sign, white dirty letters on a pale blue background. The Lemmels’ son too had gone to war. The whole Lemmel family attended night school and learned English. In the evening they went to school with notebooks, like small children. Probably it was right. Perhaps Mendel and Deborah should go to school too. America was a fatherland.
It was still snowing a little, slow, lazy and damp flakes. The Jews, open black umbrellas rocking over their heads, already began to promenade up and down. More and more came, they walked in the middle of the street, the last white remains of the snow melted under their feet, it was as if they had to walk up and down here at the behest of the authorities until the snow was completely obliterated. Mendel couldn’t see the sky from his window. But he knew that it was a dark sky. In all the windows across the street he saw the yellowish red reflection of lamps. Dark was the sky. Dark were all the rooms.
Soon a window was opened here and there, the busts of the neighbor women became visible, they hung red and white bedding and naked, yellowish, skinned pillows from the windows. All of a sudden the whole street was cheerful and colorful. The neighbor women called loud greetings to one another. From inside the rooms sounded the rattle of dishes and the shouts of children. One might have believed it was peacetime, if the war marches hadn’t been clanging through the street from the gramophones in the Sk
ovronneks’ shop. When is Sunday? thought Mendel. Once he had lived from one Saturday to the next, now he lived from one Sunday to the next. On Sunday Miriam, Vega and his grandson came to visit. They brought letters from Sam or at least news of a general nature. They knew everything, they read all the newspapers. Together they now ran the business. It was always going well, they were industrious, they collected money and waited for Sam’s return.
Miriam sometimes brought Mr. Glück, the general manager, with her. She went dancing with Glück, she went swimming with Glück. A new Cossack! thought Mendel. But he said nothing.
“I can’t go to the war, unfortunately!” sighed Mr. Glück. “I have a serious heart valve defect, the only thing I inherited from my blessed father.” Mendel observed Gluck’s rosy cheeks, his small brown eyes and his coquettish downy mustache, which he wore against the fashion and with which he often played. He sat between Miriam and Vega. Once, when Mendel stood up from the table in the middle of a conversation, he thought he noticed that Mr. Glück had his right hand in Vega’s lap and his left on Miriam’s thigh. Mendel went out into the street, he walked up and down outside the house and waited until the guests had gone away. “You’re behaving like a Russian Jew,” said Deborah, when he returned.
“I am a Russian Jew,” replied Mendel. One day, it was a weekday in early February, while Mendel and Deborah were having lunch, Miriam entered.
“Good day, Mother!” she said, “Good day, Father!” and remained standing. Deborah put down her spoon and pushed her plate away. Mendel looked at both women. He knew that something extraordinary had happened. Miriam came on a weekday, at a time when she should have been in the store. His heart beat loudly. But he was calm. He believed he could remember this scene. It had already occurred once before. There stood Miriam in a black raincoat, and was silent. There sat Deborah, she had pushed the plate far away from her, it’s almost in the middle of the table, outside it’s snowing, soft, lazy and flaky. The lamp burns yellow, its light is greasy, as is its smell. It fights against the dark day, which is weak and dull, but powerful enough to paint the whole room with its pale gray. This light Mendel Singer remembers clearly. He has dreamed this scene. He also knows what’s coming. Mendel already knows everything as if it had happened long ago and as if the pain had already years ago turned into grief. Mendel is completely calm.
It’s silent for a few seconds. Miriam doesn’t speak, as if she hoped that her father or mother would free her, through a question, from the duty to deliver the message. She stands silently. None of the three moves. Mendel stands up and says: “A misfortune has occurred!”
Miriam says: “Mac has come back. He has brought Sam’s watch and his last greetings.”
Deborah sits, as if nothing had happened, calmly on the armchair. Her eyes are dry and empty, like two dark little pieces of glass. She sits opposite the window and it looks as if she were counting the snowflakes.
It’s quiet, one hears the hard ticking of the clock. Suddenly Deborah begins, very slowly, with creeping fingers, to tear out her hair. She pulls one plait of hair after another over her face, which is pale and motionless, like swollen plaster. Then she tears out one strand after another, almost in the same tempo in which the snowflakes are falling outside. Already two or three white islands appear in the middle of her hair, a few coin-sized spots of naked scalp and very tiny drops of red blood. No one moves. The clock ticks, the snow falls, and Deborah gently tears out her hair.
Miriam sinks to her knees, buries her head in Deborah’s lap and stops moving. In Deborah’s face not a feature changes. Her two hands take turns pulling at her hair. Her hands look like pale, fleshy five-footed animals that feed on hair.
Mendel stands, his arms folded over the back of the armchair.
Deborah begins to sing. She sings with a deep, manly voice that sounds as if an invisible singer were in the room. The strange voice sings an old Jewish song without words, a black lullaby for dead children.
Miriam rises, straightens her hat, goes to the door and lets Mac in.
He is larger in uniform than in civilian clothing. In both hands, which he holds in front of him like plates, he has Sam’s watch, wallet and coin purse.
These objects Mac lays slowly on the table, directly before Deborah. He watches her tearing out her hair for a while, then he goes to Mendel, lays his large hands on the old man’s shoulders and weeps soundlessly. His tears stream, a heavy rain over his uniform. It’s quiet, Deborah’s song has ceased, the clock ticks, the evening sinks suddenly over the world, the lamp no longer glows yellow but white, behind the windowpanes the world is black, one can see no more flakes. All of a sudden a wailing sound comes out of Deborah’s breast. It sounds like the rest of that melody she was singing before, a ruptured, shattered note.
Then Deborah falls from the armchair. She lies, a contorted soft mass, on the floor.
Mac flings open the door, leaves it open, it grows cold in the room.
He comes back, a doctor accompanies him, a small nimble gray-haired man.
Miriam stands opposite her father.
Mac and the doctor carry Deborah to the bed.
The doctor sits on the edge of the bed and says: “She is dead.”
Menuchim too is dead, alone, among strangers, thinks Mendel Singer.
XIII
Seven round days Mendel Singer sat on a stool next to the wardrobe and looked at the windowpane, on which a white scrap of canvas hung as a sign of mourning and in which day and night one of the two blue lamps burned. Seven round days rolled away in succession like large black slow wheels, without beginning and without end, round like grief. One after another came the neighbors: Menkes, Skovronnek, Rottenberg and Groschel, brought hard-boiled eggs and bagels for Mendel Singer, round foods, without beginning and without end, round like the seven days of mourning. Mendel spoke little with his visitors. He scarcely noticed that they came and went. Day and night his door stood open with the unlocked, pointless bolt. Whoever wanted to come came, whoever wanted to leave left. This visitor and that tried to begin a conversation. But Mendel Singer avoided it. He talked, while the others spoke of living things, with his dead wife. “You have it good, Deborah!” he said to her. “It’s only a shame that you left behind no son, I myself have to say the prayer for the dead, but I will soon die, and no one will weep for us. Like two little specks of dust we were blown away. Like two little sparks we are extinguished. I’ve begotten children, your womb has borne them, death has taken them. Full of need and without meaning was your life. In young years I enjoyed your flesh, in later years I spurned it. Perhaps that was our sin. Because the warmth of love was not in us, but between us the frost of habit, everything around us died, everything wasted away and was ruined. You have it good, Deborah. The Lord has taken pity on you. You’re dead and buried. For me He has no pity. For I’m a dead man and live. He is the Lord, He knows what He is doing. If you can, pray for me, that I may be effaced from the book of the living.
See, Deborah, the neighbors come to me, to console me. But though they are many and they all strain their heads, they nonetheless find no consolation for my situation. Still my heart beats, still my eyes see, still my limbs move, still my feet walk. I eat and drink, pray and breathe. But my blood freezes, my hands are limp, my heart is empty. I am no longer Mendel Singer, I am the remains of Mendel Singer. America has killed us. America is a fatherland, but a deadly fatherland. What was day at home is here night. What was life at home is here death. The son who at home was named Shemariah was here named Sam. In America you are buried, Deborah, I too, Mendel Singer, will be buried in America.”
On the morning of the eighth day, when Mendel stood up from his grieving, his daughter-in-law Vega came, accompanied by Mr. Glück. “Mr. Singer,” said Mr. Glück, “the car is waiting below. You must come with us immediately, something has happened to Miriam.” “All right,” replied Mendel indifferently, as if someone had informed him that his room had to be wallpapered. “All right, give me my coat.”
> Mendel crept into the coat with weak arms and went down the stairs. Mr. Glück rushed him into the car. They drove and didn’t speak a word. Mendel didn’t ask what had happened to Miriam. Probably she is dead too, he thought calmly. Mac has killed her out of jealousy.
For the first time he entered the apartment of his dead son. He was pushed into a room. There lay Miriam, in a broad white bed. Her hair flowed loosely, in a sparkling blue-black, over the white pillows. Her face glowed red, and her black eyes had wide round red outlines; circled by rings of fire were Miriam’s eyes. A nurse sat next to her, Mac stood in a corner, large and motionless, like a piece of furniture.
“There is Mendel Singer,” cried Miriam. She stretched out a hand toward her father and began to laugh. Her laughter lasted a few minutes. It sounded like the ringing of the high-pitched incessant signals at train stations and as if someone were striking with a thousand brass mallets against a thousand thin crystal glasses. Suddenly the laughter broke off. For a second it was silent. Then Miriam began to sob. She threw off the blanket, her naked legs writhed, her feet kicked with a swift steady rhythm on the white bed, ever swifter and steadier, while her balled fists swung in the same rhythm through the air. The nurse held Miriam down with force. She grew calmer.
“Good day, Mendel Singer!” said Miriam. “You are my father, I can tell you. I love Mac, who is standing over there, but I’ve deceived him. I’ve slept with Mr. Glück, yes, with Mr. Glück! Glück is my Glück, Mac is my Mac. I like Mendel Singer too, and if you want –” Here the nurse held her hand over Miriam’s mouth, and Miriam fell silent. Mendel Singer was still standing at the door, Mac was still standing in the corner. Both men stared intently at each other. Because they couldn’t communicate with words, they spoke with their eyes. “She is mad,” said Mendel Singer’s eyes to those of Mac. “She couldn’t live without men, she is mad.”
