Joseph Roth - The Emperor's Tomb

We covered another ten versts or so under his command. Two days before the next commander was due to take over from him, he asked me to join him in his sleigh, and said: “This sleigh now belongs to you and your two friends. The Jew is a coachman, he’ll know his business. Here’s my map. I marked the point where you get off. You will be expected. The man is a friend of mine. Trustworthy. No one will come after you. I will report all three of you as fugitives. I will shoot you and have you buried.” He pressed my hand, and got out.

That night we set off. The trip was just a couple of hours. The man was there, waiting. We felt right away that we were safe with him. A new life began.

Our host belonged to the long-established community of Siberian Poles. He was a trapper by profession. He lived on his own, with a dog of no certifiable breed, a couple of hunting rifles, a number of homemade pipes, in two spacious rooms full of scruffy furs. His name was Baranovich, first name of Jan. He hardly spoke. A full black beard enjoined him to silence. We did all sorts of work for him, repairing his fence, splitting firewood, greasing the runners on his sleigh, sorting furs. These were all useful occupations for us to learn. But even after a week there, it was clear to us that he only allowed us to work for him out of a sense of tact, and so that in the isolation we didn’t quarrel with him or each other. He was right. He carved pipes and canes out of the limbs of a tough shrub he called nastorka , I don’t remember why. He broke in a new pipe every week. I never heard him tell a joke or anecdote. At the most he would take the pipe out of his mouth to smile at one or the other of us. Every two months someone would come from the nearest hamlet, bringing an old Russian newspaper. Baranovich didn’t even look at it. I learned a lot from it, but not about the war. Once, I read that the Cossacks were about to invade Silesia. My cousin Joseph Branco believed it, Manes Reisiger didn’t. They started to quarrel. For the first time they quarrelled. In the end, they too were in the grip of that madness that is the inevitable outcome of isolation. Joseph Branco, younger and more hot-tempered, grabbed at Reisiger’s beard. I was just washing up in the kitchen when it happened. When I heard the quarrel, I dashed into the room, plate in hand. My friends had neither eyes nor ears for me. For the first time, even though I was shocked by the violence of two people I loved, I was struck also by the sudden understanding which came to me: namely the revelation that I was no longer one of them. I stood before them, like a hapless umpire, no longer their friend, and even though I was perfectly sure that a kind of cabin fever had them in its grip, I believed I was somehow immune to it. A kind of hateful indifference filled me. I went back into the kitchen to finish the washing up. They went wild. But, as though I expressly wanted not to disturb them in their crazed fight, in the way that you try not to disturb people when they’re asleep, I put the plates down very quietly, one on top of the other, to avoid making the least noise. After I was done, I sat down on the kitchen stool, and waited patiently.

Eventually, they both came out, one after the other. They wouldn’t look at me. It seemed each of them separately — seeing as they were now enemies — wanted to make me feel his disapproval because I hadn’t intervened in their quarrel. Both turned to some needless task or other. One ground the knives, but it didn’t look at all menacing. The other collected snow in a pan, lit a fire, threw in little pieces of kindling, and stared concentratedly into the flames. It got warm. The warmth reached the opposite window, the ice-flowers turning reddish, blue, sometimes violet in the reflection of the blaze. Little ice-patches that had formed on the floor under the leaky window started to melt.

Evening was at hand, the water was bubbling away in the pan. Baranovich was due back from one of his wanderings that he would undertake on certain days, we never knew when or why. He walked in, with his stick in his hand, and his mittens stuck inside his belt. (He had the habit of taking them off outside, a kind of etiquette.) He shook hands with each of us with the familiar greeting: “God give you health.” Then he took off his fur cap and crossed himself. He walked into the sitting room.

Later, the four of us ate together, as usual. No one spoke. We listened to the hour striking on the cuckoo clock, which made me think of a bird that had lost its way from some other distant country: I was surprised it hadn’t frozen. Baranovich, who was used to our customary evening chitchat, looked covertly into each of our faces. At last he got up, not slowly as usual, but suddenly, and seemingly disappointed with us, called “Good night!” and went into the other room. I cleared the table, and blew out the oil lamp. Night glimmered through the icy panes. We lay down to sleep. “Good night!” I said, as always. No reply.

In the morning, while I was splitting wood for kindling to light the samovar, Baranovich came into the kitchen. Unwontedly quickly, he started speaking: “So there was a fight,” he said. “I saw the wounds, I heard the silence. I can’t keep them here any longer. This house needs to be at peace. I’ve had guests before. They were always welcome to stay as long as they kept the peace. I never asked anyone where he was from. He could have been a murderer for all I cared. To me he was a guest. I have the watchword: a guest in the house is God in the house. The lieutenant who sent you to me I have known for a long time. I had to throw him out once too for fighting. He wasn’t upset. I’d like to keep you. You didn’t fight. But the other two will report you. So you’ll have to leave as well.” He stopped. I tossed the burning kindling into the samovar pan, and stuffed some loose newspaper over it to keep it from blowing out. When the samovar started to sing, Baranovich resumed: “You can’t run away. In this region, in this season it’s impossible for a wanderer to stay alive. There’s nothing for you but to go back to Viatka. To Viatka,” he said again, hesitated, and spelled it out: “to the camp. You may be punished gravely, lightly, or not at all. Then again, there’s no shortage of other trouble, the Tsar is far away, his laws are a mess. Report to Sergeant Kumin. He has more power than the camp commandment. I’ll give you some tea and makhorka for him. Remember: Kumin.” The water was boiling, I tipped some tea into the chajnik, poured boiling water on it, and put the chajnik on the samovar fire. For the last time! I thought. I wasn’t afraid of the camp. It was war, and that’s what happened to prisoners: they were put in camps. But I now understood that Baranovich was a sort of father, that I felt at home in his house, and that his bread was the bread of home. The previous day I’d lost my friends. Today I was losing my home. At that time, I didn’t realize that it wasn’t the last time I would lose my home. The likes of us is marked down by fate.

When I brought the tea in, Reisiger and Joseph Branco were already seated at opposite ends of the table. Baranovich was leaning in the doorway. He didn’t sit down, not even when I poured his tea. I cut the bread myself, and doled it out. He stood by the table, drank his tea standing up, standing up he ate his bread. Then he said: “My friends, I’ve talked to your lieutenant. It’s impossible for me to keep you here any longer. Take your sleigh, stuff a few furs under your coats, they will warm you. I’ll take you back to the place where I first met you.”

Manes Reisiger went out; I could hear him towing the sleigh across the crisp snow in the yard. At first Branco didn’t realize what was happening. “All right, let’s pack up!” I said. For the first time, I was upset at having to take command.