Joseph Roth - The Emperor's Tomb

Well, so we were prisoners of war, the whole of our platoon. Joseph Branco and Manes Reisiger and I managed to stay together. We were so to speak birds of a feather. “The war is over for us,” said Manes Reisiger. “I’ve never been taken prisoner before,” he added sometimes, “no more than you. But I know that life and not death awaits us. You will both remember that when we return. If only I knew what my Ephraim is doing. The war will go on for a long time. My son will join up. Remember! Manes Reisiger from Zlotogrod, an ordinary cabbie, said so!” Whereupon he clacked his tongue, like the crack of a whip. For the next few weeks he did not speak.

On the evening of October 2 we were to be parted. As was the accepted practice in those days, our captors intended to separate the officers from the men. We were all to be held in the interior, but the men were to be shipped much further away. The name Siberia fell. I volunteered for Siberia. To this day I don’t know or want to know how Manes Reisiger managed to get me to Siberia. Never, it seems to me, can a man have been so happy to have secured disadvantages for himself by bribery and cunning. All the credit was Manes Reisiger’s. From the moment we were taken prisoner, he had assumed command over us, all our platoon. What is there that can’t be learned from horses, with the grace of God, if you happen to be a cabbie! And a Jewish one at that, from Zlotogrod. .

I won’t describe the highways and byways by which we got to Siberia. There are always highways and byways. At the end of six months, we found ourselves in Viatka.

Viatka is on the river Lena, in the depths of Siberia. The journey there takes half a year. In the course of getting there, we had forgotten the innumerable and identical sequence of days. Who counts the corals on a sixfold chain? Our transport took six months. It was in September that we were taken prisoner, it was March when we reached our destination. In the Augarten in Vienna, the laburnum would be flowering soon; before long the elderflower would spread its scent. Here, vast floes of ice drifted down the river, you could get across it dry-footed, even at its widest point. During our transport three men in our platoon had died of typhoid. Fourteen had tried to run away, six members of our escort had deserted with them. The young Cossack lieutenant who was in command of this latest stage of the transport left us in Chirein: he had to catch both the fugitives and the deserters. Andrei Maximovitch Krassin was his name. On his return, he and I played cards together while his patrols combed the area looking for the absconded men. We spoke French together. He drank the home-distilled samogonka brought to him by the rare Russian settlers in the area, out of a pouchy field-flask, and he was personable and grateful for each kind look I gave him. I liked his laugh, the dazzling strong white teeth under the short coal-black moustache, and the eyes that were reduced to sparks when he squeezed them shut. He was a grand master of laughter. I would say to him: “Won’t you laugh for me?” and in a trice — generous, noisy, large-hearted — he would be laughing. One day his patrols caught up with the fugitives. Those that were left, anyway, eight of the original twenty. The rest were either lost or hidden or dead somewhere. Krassin was playing tarock with me in the station building. He summoned the apprehended men, gave them tea and schnapps, and ordered me who was subject to his orders, to determine the punishment both for the members of my platoon, and the two recaptured Russian deserters. I told him I wasn’t au fait with his army’s regulations. First he asked, then he threatened, and finally I said: “Since I don’t know what punishments should be handed down according to your rulebook, it is my decision that all shall remain unpunished.”

He laid his pistol on the table and said: “This is a conspiracy. I will have you arrested, lieutenant, and taken away!” “Shouldn’t we finish our game first?” I asked, picking up my cards. “Of course,” he said, and we went on playing, while soldiers, Austrians and escorts milled around us. He lost. I could easily have let him win, but I was concerned lest he might notice. Childlike as he was, suspicion was an even greater source of pleasure to him than laughter, and his readiness to suspect was always there. So I beat him. He knitted his brows and scowled at the NCO in command of the escort as though he was about to order all eight men to be shot. “Won’t you laugh?” I asked. He laughed straightaway, generous, large-hearted, with all his dazzling teeth. I thought I had saved the lives of all eight men.

He laughed for about two minutes, and then suddenly, as was his wont, was serious again, and commanded the NCO: “I want all eight clapped in irons! Dismiss! Await further instructions.” Then, once the men had left the building, he started to shuffle the cards. “All right. Payback time.” We played another round. He lost again. At that point he picked up his revolver, got up and walked out, saying: “I’ll be back.” I remained seated; two petroleum lamps were lit. The Karvasian landlady wobbled in, with a new glass of tea. The fresh tea had the same slice of lemon in it. The landlady was as broad in the beam as a tugboat, but she smiled like a good sort, confiding and motherly. When I made to take the old used lemon slice out of the glass, she reached in two of her fat fingers and fished it out for me. I gave her a look of thanks.

I sipped my hot tea. Lieutenant Andrei Maximovitch didn’t return. It grew late, and I was due to go back to my men in the camp. I stepped outside, in front of the balcony door, and called Krassin’s name a couple of times. At last he answered. The night was so cold that I first thought a shout would shiver to pieces in the air and never reach its intended destination. I looked up at the sky. The silver stars didn’t look as though they belonged to it, more as though they were gleaming nails knocked into its canopy. A strong wind out of the East, the tyrant among the Siberian winds, took the breath out of my throat, stopped my heart, and briefly blinded me. The lieutenant’s reply to my call, carried to me on that bad wind, struck me as a comforting message from a human being, the first I’d heard for a long time, and that even though I’d only been waiting outside in the hostile night for a few minutes. But then this human message turned out to be anything but comforting.

I went back inside. A single lamp was still burning. It didn’t light the room so much as refine its darkness. It was the tiny luminous kernel of a heavy, orbic darkness. I sat down beside the lamp. Suddenly a couple of shots rang out. I ran outside. The shots hadn’t finished echoing away. They were still rolling around under the huge, icy sky. I listened. Nothing moved, nothing except the steady arctic wind. I could stand it no longer, and went back inside.

Shortly afterwards, the lieutenant came in, pale, cap in hand in spite of the wind, his pistol half out of its holster.

He sat down right away, breathing hard, unbuttoned his tunic, and looked at me with staring eyes, as though he didn’t know me, as though he had forgotten who I was and was straining to identify me. He swept the cards off the table with his sleeve. He took a long pull from his flask, lowered his head, and suddenly, rapidly said: “I only hit one of them.” “Poor aim,” I said. But he meant it differently.

“You’re right. I aimed badly. I had them form up in a line. I only wanted to give them a fright. I fired into the air. The last shot, it was as though something was pressing my arm down. I don’t know how it happened. The man is dead. My men can’t understand me any more.”

The soldier was buried that same night. The lieutenant accorded him full military honours. He never laughed again. He was reflecting about something that seemed to be preoccupying him.