Joseph Roth - The Emperor's Tomb

The walls were a toxic green, as usual. There were no lights. The porter lit a candle, dribbled a little wax, and gummed it down on the bedside table. A towel hung over the basin. On it was a perfectly round wreath picked out in green thread with a “ Grüss Gott !” in the middle, in red.

That night, in that room, I made love to Elisabeth. “I’m a prisoner,” she said to me, “Jolanth has taken me prisoner. I should never have left, that night in Baden, when Jacques died.”

“You’re no one’s prisoner,” I replied. “You’re with me, you’re my wife.”

I tried to discover all the secrets of her body, and they were many. A youthful ambition — at the time I thought it was masculine — prompted me to wipe out any traces that Jolanth might have left. Was it ambition? Or jealousy?

Slowly the winter morning crept up the toxic green walls. Elisabeth awoke me. She looked very different, looking at me. With terror in her eyes and reproach; yes, there was a measure of reproach in her eyes. Her stern tie, silvery-grey, hung like a little sword over the arm of the chair. She kissed my eyes sweetly, then she jumped up and shrieked: “Jolanth!”

We got dressed hurriedly, with an indescribable feeling of shame. The morning was unspeakable. It was raining little hailstones. We had a long way to walk. The trams weren’t yet running. For fully an hour we walked in the teeth of the sleet to Elisabeth’s house. She brushed off her gloves. Her hand was cold. “Goodbye!” I called out after her. This time, she didn’t turn round.

It was eight o’clock. My mother was breakfasting, as on any other day. Ritual greetings were exchanged. “Good morning, Mama!” Today my mother surprised me with a “Servus, laddie!” It was a long time since I had last heard that boisterous greeting from her lips. When would she have used it last? Maybe ten or fifteen years ago, when I was a schoolboy, in the holidays, when I could stop in for breakfast. At that time she liked to follow that with the anodyne joke that struck her as rather witty. Pointing to the chair I was sitting on, she would ask: “Well, and is the school bench pinching you?” On one occasion I answered, “Yes, Mama!” and my punishment was that for three days I wasn’t allowed to sit at the table with her.

Today, she even allowed herself a complaint about the jam. “What I don’t understand is where they get all those confounded beets from! Try it, boy! They claim it’s oh-so-good for you. .” I ate beets and margarine and drank coffee. The coffee was good. I noticed that our maid poured mine from a different pot, and I saw that the old lady kept the good, hard-to-come-by Meinl coffee for me, and contented herself with bitter chicory brew. But I couldn’t let on that I knew. My mother didn’t like it when her little tactical moves were seen through. Her vanity was such that she could even cut up on occasion.

“So, you’ve seen your Elisabeth,” she began abruptly. “I know, your father-in-law was here yesterday. If I concentrate, I can understand what he says. He was here for a good two hours. He told me you’d spoken to him. I said I was happy to wait to hear about it from you, but there was no stopping him. So, you want to put your life in order — that’s what I hear. And what does Elisabeth say?”

“I’ve been with her.”

“Where? Why didn’t you bring her back?”

“I didn’t know, Mama. Besides, it was very late.”

“He wants to get you on board somewhere, he said. You have no skills. You can’t keep a wife. I don’t know where he thinks he’s going to get you on board; you’d have to bring some capital with you. And we have nothing. Everything went into those war bonds. So it’s lost, just like the war. This house is all we have left. We could take out a loan on it, he said. You might talk to Dr Kiniower about it. But where are you going to work, and what will you do? Do you even know the first thing about arts and crafts? Your father-in-law seems quite the expert. His lecture about it was more exhaustive than your Elisabeth’s. And who is Professor Jolanth Keczkemet anyway?”

“Szatmary, Mama!” I corrected her.

“Szekely for all I care,” my mother retorted. “So who is she?”

“She has short hair, Mama, and I don’t like her.”

“And Elisabeth is a friend of hers?”

“A very close friend!”

“Very close, you say?”

“Yes, Mama!”

“Ah!” she said. “Then leave her be, boy. I’ve heard about friendships like that. I know. I’ve read things in books, boy. You have no idea how much I know; a boyfriend would have been better. A woman is practically impossible to get rid of. And since when have there been lady professors anyway? What faculty is she in, this Keczkemet?”

“Szatmary, Mama!” I corrected her.

“Have it your own way: Lakatos,” said my mother, on reflection. “How are you going to compete with a lady professor, boy? A wrestler or an actor would be something else!”

How poorly I had known my mother. The old lady who went to the park once a week to “take the air” for two hours at a time, and for the same purpose took a cab to the Praterspitz every month, was fully informed about so-called inverts. What a lot she must have read, how clearly she must have reflected and thought about it in the long and lonely hours she spent at home, propped on her black cane, wandering from one of our dimly lit rooms to the next, so lonely and so rich, so sheltered and so knowledgeable, so remote and so worldly wise! But I had to defend Elisabeth — what would my mother think if I didn’t! She was my wife, I had just come from our embrace, I could still feel the smooth weight of her young breasts in the palms of my hands, still breathe the scent of her body, the image of her features with the blissful half-closed eyes still lived in mine, and on my mouth was pressed the seal of her lips. I had to stand up for her — and as I defended her, I fell in love with her all over again.

“Professor Szatmary,” I said, “doesn’t stand a chance against me. Elisabeth loves me, I am certain of that. Last night, for example. .”

My mother didn’t let me finish: “And today?” she interrupted me. “Today she’s back with Professor Halaszy!”

“Szatmary, Mama!”

“I don’t care what she’s called, boy, you know that perfectly well, stop correcting me the whole time! If you want to live with Elisabeth, you’ll have to keep her. So, as your father-in-law says, you’ll have to take out a loan against our house. What am I saying our house — it’s your house! Then that professor with the bloody name will have to go back to making corals out of pine cones — for the love of God! The flat on the ground floor is empty, four rooms, I think, the janitor

will know. I have something in the bank, I’ll share it with you, ask Dr Kiniower how much there is! And we can share the household. Can Elisabeth cook?”

“I don’t believe so, Mama!”

“I used to be able to,” said my mother. “I expect I can still do some things! But the main thing is that you can live with Elisabeth. And she with you.” She’d stopped saying: your Elisabeth, I took it for a sign of exceptional maternal grace.

“Go out on the town, boy. See your friends! Maybe they’re still alive. How about that? A trip to town?”

“Yes, Mama!” I said, and I went to Stellmacher in the War Ministry to ask after my friends. Stellmacher ought to be still extant. Even if the War Ministry was now just a Department. Stellmacher was bound to be around still.

He was — old, stooped and iron-grey. He sat there, behind his old desk, in his old office. But he was in civilian clothes, in a strange, baggy suit which was much too big for him and had been turned. From time to time he drove a couple of fingers down between his neck and collar. His collar bothered him. His shirt-cuffs bothered him. He kept ramming them against the edge of his desk to push them back. He had some information, though: Chojnicki was still alive, and living in the Wieden; Dvorak, Szechenyi, Hallersberg, Lichtenthal and Strohhofer got together every day to play chess in the Café Josefinum on the Währinger Strasse. Stejskal, Halasz and Grünberger were unaccounted for. I went round to Chojnicki’s in the Wieden.