Joseph Roth - The Emperor's Tomb

Elisabeth came. She did not come alone. Her friend Jolanth Szatmary was with her. I had assumed of course that she would come alone. Now when Jolanth Szatmary turned up as well, I wasn’t even surprised. It was clear to me that Elisabeth would not, could not, have come without the woman, and I understood.

It wasn’t that I was prejudiced, oh no! In the world in which I had grown up, prejudice was vulgar. To make a public display of something that was viewed askance didn’t seem right to me. Probably Elisabeth would not have come to our rendezvous with a woman with whom she was not in love. At this point she had to obey.

There was an astonishing resemblance between the two of them, even though they were of such different types, and had such utterly different features. It came from the similarity in their clothes and gestures. You might have said they resembled one another like sisters — or like brothers. As men tend to do, they both hesitated outside the door, to see which of them would agree to go in first. There was another hesitation at the table, to see which of them would sit down first. I didn’t even try to kiss their hands. I was a ridiculous thing in their eyes, the sprog of a wretched sex, an alien, unimpressive race, unworthy all my life of receiving the distinctions of the caste to which they belonged, or of being inducted in their mysteries. I was still caught in the wicked belief that they belonged to a weak, even a lesser sex, and impertinent enough to try and express this view through gallantry. They sat next to me resolute and contained, as though I had challenged them. Between them there was a silent but perfectly apparent bond against me. It was clearly visible. I made some bland remark, and they exchanged glances, like two who had long known my type, and the sort of things I was capable of saying. Sometimes one of them would smile, and then a split second later, the same smile would appear on the lips of the other. From time to time I thought I noticed Elisabeth incline towards me, try to send me a secret look, as though to show me that she really belonged to me, only to be compelled, against her own will and inclination, to obey her friend. What was there to talk about? I asked her about her work. I got a lecture in return about the reluctance of Europe to appreciate the materials, intentions and genius of the primitive. It was essential to reroute the whole misguided taste of the European in art, and return it to nature. Ornaments were, I was given to understand, useful. I didn’t question what I was told. I freely conceded that European taste in arts was misguided. Only I couldn’t understand how this aberrant taste had caused the end of the world: wasn’t it a consequence, or at any rate a symptom?

“Symptom!” exclaimed Jolanth. “Didn’t I tell you right away, Elisabeth, that he’s a blue-eyed optimist! Didn’t I recognize it immediately?” With that, she put her small stubby hands on Elisabeth’s hand. As she did so, Jolanth’s gloves slipped from her lap onto the floor, I stooped to pick them up, but she pushed me away with some force. “Forgive me,” I said, “it’s the optimist in me.”

“You and your symptoms!” she exclaimed. It was clear to me that she didn’t understand the word.

“At eight o’clock Harufax is giving a talk on voluntary sterilisation,” said Jolanth. “Don’t forget, Elisabeth! It’s already seven.”

“I’ll remember,” said Elisabeth.

Jolanth got up, shooting a glance at Elisabeth to follow her. “Excuse me!” said Elisabeth. Obediently she followed Jolanth to the lavatory.

They were gone for a couple of minutes. Time enough for me to register that with my insistence on “putting my life in order,” I was only adding to my confusion. Not only was I growing more bewildered myself, I was adding to the general bewilderment. That was as far as I’d got with my pondering when the women came back. They paid. I didn’t even manage to call the waitress. Afraid I might anticipate them and curtail their independence, they had, so to speak, nobbled her on the short walk from the toilet to the till. As we said goodbye, Elisabeth pressed a little rolled-up piece of paper into my hand. And then they were off to Harufax, and sterilization. I unrolled the piece of paper. “Ten at night, Café Museum, alone,” it said. The confusion wasn’t over.

The café stank of carbide, or if you prefer, of rotting onions and corpses. There was no electric light. I always find it difficult to concentrate in the presence of strong smells. Smell is a stronger sense than hearing. I waited dully, without the least inclination to see Elisabeth again. Nor did I much feel like “putting things in order.” It seemed to have taken the carbide to make me see the perverse hopelessness of my desire to make order. I only hung on out of gallantry. But even that couldn’t outlast the police curfew. Which in turn — something I would ordinarily have railed against — struck me as excessively generous. The authorities knew what they were doing all right. They were compelling us to drop our inappropriate habits, and to amend our hopeless misunderstandings. But then, half an hour before closing time, Elisabeth arrived. She looked ravishing, storming in, like a hunted animal in her half-length beaver jacket, with snow in her hair and her long lashes, and flakes of snow melting on her cheeks. She looked like something running out of the woods for refuge. “I told Jolanth that Papa was unwell,” she began. And already there were tears in her eyes. She began to sob. Yes, even though she had on a man’s collar and tie under her open fur jacket, she was sobbing. Carefully I took her hand and kissed it. Elisabeth was no longer in any mood to push away my arm. The waiter came along, already out on his feet. Only two of the carbide lamps were still burning. I thought she would order a liqueur, but no, she ordered a pair of frankfurters with horseradish. Nothing gives a woman an appetite like crying, I thought. Anyway, the horseradish would be a cover for her tears. Her appetite moved me. I was overtaken by tenderness, the mindless, fatal tenderness of the male. I put my arm round her shoulder. She leaned back, dunking her sausage in the horseradish with one hand. Her tears were still flowing, but they meant just as little as the melting snow in her beaver coat. “I’m your wife, after all,” she sighed. It sounded like a yelp. “Of course you are,” I replied. Suddenly she sat up straight. She ordered another pair of frankfurters with horseradish and, this time a glass of beer.

Since the second-last carbide lamp was being put out, we had to try to leave. “Jolanth is waiting for me,” Elisabeth said outside the café. “I’ll walk you,” I said. We walked silently side by side. An inconstant, mouldering snow fell. The streetlamps failed, they too mouldering. They kept a little grain of light in their glass bulbs, spiteful and miserly. They didn’t brighten the streets, they darkened them.

When we got to Jolanth Szatmary’s house, Elisabeth said: “Here we are, goodbye!” I took my leave. I asked when I could visit. I made to turn for home. Suddenly Elisabeth put out both her hands towards me. “Don’t leave me,” she said, “I’ll go with you.”

So I took her with me. I couldn’t take Elisabeth into any of those houses where I might still be remembered from pre-War times. We were adrift in the great, orphaned, gloomy city, two orphans ourselves. Elisabeth clasped my arm. I could feel her pulse through her fur coat. Sometimes we stopped under one of the miserable lamp posts, and I would look at her wet face. I didn’t know if it was from snow or tears.

Somehow we had reached Franz-Josefs-Kai, without knowing it. Without knowing it, we crossed the Augarten bridge. It was still snowing, that ugly, mouldy snow, and we didn’t speak. A tiny star blinked at us from a house on the Untere Augartenstrasse. We both knew what the star signified. We went towards it.