Joseph Roth - The Emperor's Tomb

I knew that my mother had just fifty thousand crowns left in Ephrussi’s Bank, where they were gradually losing what was left of their value, according to the “Jew” ’s report.

I began to pace up and down the room, as I had never dared to do before, in front of the stern and alarmed eyes of my mother. For the first time in my life I raised my voice in her presence, almost to a shout. At any rate, I was vehement. My whole accumulated anger with Stettenheim, with Jolanth, with my father-in-law overwhelmed me; and also my anger with my own weak nature. Anger with my mother was involved as well, jealousy of Stettenheim. For the first time in my mother’s presence I dared to use an expression that was not acceptable outside officers’ messes: “Prussian swine.” It gave me quite a fright.

I allowed myself another liberty: I forbade my mother to issue cheques without my approval. In the same breath, I forbade Elisabeth to introduce anyone in need of money to my poor mother; any Tom, Dick or Harry was the expression I used. And since I knew myself, and knew very well that it was only once in a blue moon that I would express my will, my revulsion, yes, even my honest opinion of people, I deliberately worked myself into a deeper rage. I yelled: “And I don’t want to see the Professor ever again!” And: “I’ve had it up to here with arts and crafts. I’m going to set things straight, Elisabeth! You’re moving in here with me.”

My mother looked at me with her big sad eyes. It was obvious that she was equally frightened and delighted at my sudden outburst. “His father was just the same,” she remarked to Elisabeth. Today, I even think it was possible that my father was speaking through me. I felt an impulse to stalk out of the house right away.

“His father,” my mother continued, “was a force of nature. He broke so many plates! So many plates when he was in a temper!” She spread out both arms to give Elisabeth a suggestion as to how many plates my father broke. “Every six months!” my mother said. “It was an illness, especially when we were packing our suitcases for Bad Ischl. He never liked that. My boy neither,” she added, even though she had never seen me do anything when we were packing.

I felt like taking her in my arms, the poor, deaf old lady. It was just as well she no longer heard the noises of the present time. She could hear those of the past, the smashed plates of my irascible father, for instance. She was also beginning to lose her memory, as is apt to happen with older persons who are hard of hearing. And that too was just as well! How kindly nature is! The infirmities it bestows upon age are actually a mercy. It gives us forgetfulness, deafness and dimmed eyesight when we are old; a little confusion too, shortly before death. The shadows it sends ahead of it are cool and beneficent.

Like many others of his sort, my father-in-law had bet on the fall of the French franc. It was a bad bet. Of all those “many irons in the fire,” he was left with not one. The “Jolan-Workshops” didn’t bring in any money either. The lemon yellow furniture stayed on the shelf. The designs of Professor Jolanth Szatmary were hopeless. My wife Elisabeth’s incomprehensible sketches were worth nothing.

My spry father-in-law lost his interest in arts and crafts. All of a sudden, he turned towards the newspaper industry. The press, people began to say in Austria, following the German usage. He took a share in the so-called Monday paper. There too he wanted to take me “on board.” He was a tipster. He made money on it. Our house, once we had deducted the mortgages, had lost two-thirds of its value. And when the new currency was introduced, it turned out that my mother’s savings in Ephrussi’s Bank were barely worth a couple of thousand schillings.

The first person to disappear out of our world was Herr von Stettenheim. He “made a break for it,” one of those phrases he was so given to using. He didn’t even write a goodbye letter. He just wired: “Urgent rendezvous elsewhere. Will be back! Stettenheim.” Professor Jolanth Szatmary held on for longest. For weeks now, the auspicious premises with the lemon yellow furniture had been let to a firm called Iraq Ltd, which imported Persian carpets. For weeks now, my father-in-law had been negotiating the sale of his house to the city of Vienna. The world was changing fast, but Frau Jolanth Szatmary remained where she had always been: in the Regina Hotel. She was determined not to give up any of her habits, customs or usages. She was still designing. Her divorce had gone through: her ex-husband was sending her monthly cheques. She talked about going to San Francisco. Foreign parts appealed to her, Europe in her view was “a mess.” But she didn’t leave. She didn’t quit. She appeared to me sometimes in nightmares. I saw her as a kind of infernal female, set on destroying my life and Elisabeth’s. Why did she stay? Why was she still designing? Why did Elisabeth go to see her every day? To her hotel, to pick up perfectly redundant never-to-be-realized sketches?

“I feel I’m stuck,” Elisabeth confessed to me one day. “I love you!” she said. “But that woman won’t let me go, I don’t know what her game is.” “Let’s talk to my Mama!” I said. We went together to my house, to our house.

It was already late but my mother was still up. “Mama,” I said, “I’ve brought Elisabeth.” “Good!” said my mother, “so long as she stays!”

For the first time I slept with Elisabeth in my room, under our roof. It was as though my father’s house heightened our love, blessed it. I will always remember that night, a true bridal night, the only bridal night of my life. “I want your baby,” said Elisabeth, already half-asleep. I took it to be an expression of devotion. But in the morning, when she awoke — and she was always the first to wake — she embraced me, and there was a calm, almost a coldness to her voice when she said: “I am your wife. I want to be pregnant by you. I want to finish with Jolanth, she disgusts me, I want a baby.”

From that morning on, Elisabeth stayed in our house. Professor Jolanth Szatmary sent a short farewell note. She wasn’t going to San Francisco, as she had threatened to, she was going to Budapest, where she quite possibly belonged. “What’s Professor Keczkemet doing with herself?” my mother asked from time to time. “She’s in Budapest, Mama!” “She’ll be back!” predicted my mother. She would prove to be correct.

Now we were all living in one house, and it was going pretty well. My mother even did me the kindness of dropping her spiteful expressions. She no longer spoke about “the Jew,” but of Dr Kiniower, as she had for years previously. He was adamant that we should open a boarding house. He was one of those so-called practical people, who are unable to give up a so-called good idea, even if the people to whom he entrusts its execution are wholly unequal to such a task. He was a realist, which means he was as incorrigible as any fantast. He was incapable of seeing anything beyond a certain project’s usefulness; and he lived in the conviction that all people, regardless of their nature, are equally able to carry out useful projects. It was as if a tailor were instructed to start making furniture, and without being told the dimensions of the houses, the rooms, the doors. And so we opened a boarding house. With the enthusiasm which an obsessive brings to the execution of his patented ideas, Dr Kiniower set about obtaining the licence we needed to go into business. “You have so many friends!” he said to me. “You have in all twelve rooms you can let. Your mother will be left with two. You and your wife will have four. All you need is a maid, a telephone, eight beds and bells.” And before we knew where we were, he was bringing in maid, telephone, engineers, beds. Then it was a matter of finding lodgers. Chojnicki, Stejskal, Halasz, Grünberger, Dvorak, Szechenyi, Hallersberg, Lichtenthal, Strohhofer: the lot of them were in a manner of speaking homeless. I introduced them all to our boarding house. The only one who paid in advance was Baron Hallersberg. Son of a wealthy Moravian sugar manufacturer, he espoused the expensive (and in our circle rather rare) habit of punctuality. He neither borrowed nor lent money. Impeccably brushed and pressed and correct, he lived with us and in our midst, tolerated on account of his gentleness, his discretion and his perfect lack of irony. “The factory’s going through hard times,” he would tell us, for instance. And straightaway, with paper and pencil, he would calculate his father’s financial position. He expected us to look worried for him, and we obliged. “I need to tighten my belt,” he would then say.