Joseph Roth - The Emperor's Tomb

In April of the following year, Elisabeth had her baby. She didn’t give birth to it in hospital, but, as my mother demanded and insisted, at home.

I had fathered the child, demanded it, ordered it, insisted on it. Elisabeth had wanted it. I was in love with Elisabeth at that time, and was therefore jealous. I couldn’t — as I imagined — expunge Professor Jolanth Szatmary from Elisabeth’s memory, or in another way remove her, except by giving her a baby: the visible proof of my superior power. Professor Jolanth Szatmary was forgotten and expunged. But I too, old Trotta, was half-forgotten and half-expunged.

I was no longer Trotta, I was the father of my son. I had him baptized Franz Joseph Eugen.

It would be true to say that I changed completely from the moment my son was born. Chojnicki and all the friends who lived in our boarding house were waiting for me in my room on the ground floor, as excited as though they were to become fathers themselves. At four in the morning, the child was born. My mother brought me the news.

There was my son, a blood-red ugly creature, with far too big a head and flipper-like limbs. The creature cried all the time. It was the fruit of my loins, and I instantly fell in love with it, I even fell for the easy pride that I had sired a son and not a daughter. Yes, to get a better view of it, I even bent down over his tiny penis, which looked like a negligible red comma. No question: this was my son. No question: I was his father.

There have been millions and billions of fathers since the beginning of the world. Among these billions I now duly took my place. But from the moment I held my son in my arms, I experienced a dim version of that incomprehensibly lofty satisfaction that the Creator of the world must have felt when he saw his incomplete work nevertheless as done. When I held the tiny, bawling, ugly, scarlet thing in my arms, I could clearly feel what a change was taking place in me. However small and ugly and scarlet the thing in my arms: he still radiated an inexpressible strength. Or more: it was as though that soft, pathetic little body was a repository of all my strength, as though I was holding myself in my hands, and the best of myself at that.

The maternal quality of women is boundless. My mother reacted to her new grandson as though she had borne him herself, and the rest of whatever love she still had in her went to Elisabeth. It was only once she had a son from me, from my loins, that she accepted her as a daughter. In reality, Elisabeth was never more than the mother of her grandson.

It was as though she had only been waiting for this grandson to prepare for her own death. She started slowly to die, as she had all her life been slow. One afternoon she no longer came down to our room on the ground floor. One of the maids announced my mother had a headache. It wasn’t a headache: my mother had had a stroke. She was left half-paralysed.

Over the years she remained a dearly loved, tenderly cared-for burden. I rejoiced each morning to see her still alive. She was an old lady, how easily she might die!

My son, her grandson, was brought to her every day. All she could do was blurt, “Li’l fellow!” Her right side was paralysed.

To me my mother was a tenderly cared-for, dearly loved burden. I, who all my life, had never been drawn to any calling, now found myself suddenly with two: I was a son, and I was a father. I sat at my mother’s bedside for hours on end. We had to take on a male nurse, the old lady was heavy. She had to be carried into the dining room every day, to table. Even sitting her down was a job. Sometimes she would ask me to wheel her through the rooms. She wanted to see and hear. Ever since she had become an invalid, she had the feeling she was missing out on a lot, really on everything. Her right eye drooped. When she parted her lips, it was as though she had an iron bracket clamped round the right half of her mouth. She could manage no more than the odd word at a time, usually nouns. Sometimes it almost seemed as if she was hoarding her vocabulary.

Straight after leaving my mother, I went into the room of my son. Elisabeth, who had been a devoted mother during the first few months, was slowly distancing herself from our son. I had given him the name Franz Joseph Eugen, among ourselves we called him Geni. Elisabeth started to leave the house frequently and for no reason. I didn’t know where she was going, and I didn’t ask her. She went, let her go! I even enjoyed being on my own without her, just me and my son. “Geni!” I would call out, and his round, brown face would light up. I became more and more possessive of him. Not content with having sired him, ideally I would have been pregnant with him as well, and given birth to him. He crawled through our rooms, as swift as a weasel. He was already a human being — and still an animal and still an angel. I could see him changing by the day — if not by the hour. His brown curls grew thicker, the look in his large pale grey eyes was steadier, his eyelashes blacker and denser, the little hands themselves seemed to acquire a face, his little fingers grew strong and slender. His lips moved more eagerly, and his little tongue burbled more rapidly and meaningfully. I saw his first teeth appear, I saw Geni’s first conscious smile, I was there on the day he took his first steps, towards the window, the light, the sun, with a sudden burst as though of inspiration; it was more like a brainwave than a physiological action. God Himself had given him the idea that man could walk on two feet. And lo and behold: my boy was walking on two feet.

For a long time I remained ignorant of where Elisabeth spent hours and sometimes whole days. She would talk of a friend, a seamstress, a bridge club. Our boarders, Hallersberg apart, paid infrequently and inadequately. When Chojnicki once in a blue moon received money from Poland, he would straightaway pay the rent for three or four boarders. Our credit in the area was unlimited. I didn’t understand bills, and Elisabeth claimed to be keeping accounts. But one day, while she was gone, the butcher, the baker, the coffee merchant came to me, asking to be paid. I only had my allowance; every day before she went out Elisabeth left me some spare change. Sometimes we didn’t see each other for days on end. I went to the Café Wimmerl with my friends. Among Chojnicki’s duties was reading the newspaper, and giving lectures on politics. Every Sunday he went out to Steinhof, to visit his insane brother. He would talk to him about politics. Chojnicki would tell us: “In general, my brother is barking mad, but where politics are concerned no one is as wise as he is. Today, for instance, he said to me, ‘Austria isn’t a state, or a homeland, or a nation. It’s a religion. The clerics and the clerical idiots who are governing us now, are making a so-called nation of us; of us , a supra-nation, the only supra-nation the world has ever seen.’ Another time he laid his hand on my shoulder, and said, ‘We are Polish, apparently, and always were. Why shouldn’t we be? And we are Austrians too: why not? But there is a special idiocy of nationalists. The Social Democrats, who are the repulsive inventors of so-called nationalities, were the first to claim that Austria belongs to the German Republic. Now the cretinous Christian parties are taking their lead from the Social Democrats. The mountains always were the home of stupidity, so say I, Josef Chojnicki.’ And to maintain,” Chojnicki continued, “that such a man is deranged! I am convinced: he isn’t in the least bit deranged. But for the end of the Monarchy, he wouldn’t have become unhinged!” and so he ended his oration. No one spoke after such speeches. A heavy silence settled over our table, it didn’t come from within us, it came from above. We didn’t bewail our lost fatherland, we kept a respectful silence for it. Then sometimes, without any prior signal, we would start to sing old Army songs. We were all present and correct. But in reality we were all dead.