Joseph Roth - The Silent Prophet

She was no different from the young women of her time and station. She transformed the submissive romanticism of her mother into an Amazon martiality, demanded the recognition of civil rights, including, in passing as it were, free love. Under the slogan ‘Equal rights for all!’ the daughters of good homes at that period rushed into life, into the high schools, into railway trains, luxury liners, into the dissecting-room and the laboratory. For them there blew through the world that familiar fresh breeze that every new generation believes it has discovered. Hilde was determined not to surrender herself in marriage. Her ‘closest friend’ had committed the betrayal of marrying the enormously wealthy Herr G.; she owned carriages, horses, flunkeys, coachmen, liveries. But Hilde, who gladly enjoyed sharing in her friend’s wealth and laid claim to the carriages and the liveries for shopping expeditions, asserted: ‘Irene’s happiness means nothing to me, she has sold her freedom.’ The men to whom she said this found her charming, unusually intelligent, delightfully self-willed. And as, on top of this, she had a dowry and a father with good connections, one or the other thought of marrying her despite her principled objection, in their old-fashioned masculine way.

Her father would only have given her to certain of her acquaintances. Certainly not to everyone of those with whom she associated, less out of interest than from the need to demonstrate her independence. She formed a so-called circle. Through her father she knew some hopeful young officials and officers, through Professor D., a few lecturers and students of art history. Through her rich married friend, whose husband fancied himself a Maecenas, a composer, two painters, a sculptor and three writers.

All these young people, none of whom suspected that they would soon be decimated in a world war, behaved as if they had to burst out of never-ending bondage. The young officials spoke of the dangers which threatened the old Empire, of the necessity for far-reaching national autonomy or a strong centralizing grip, of the dissolution of Parliament, a careful choice of ministers, a break with Germany, a rapprochement with France, or else an even closer tie with Germany and a challenge to Serbia. Some wanted to avoid war, others to provoke it; both thought that it would be a question of only a lighthearted little war. The young officers held slow promotion and the stupidity of the general staff responsible for everything. The lecturers, meek as young theologians, concealed under their store of knowledge a hunger for position and dowries. The artists let it be understood that they had a direct line to Heaven, derided authority, simultaneously championed Olympus, the café and the studio. Each was audacious, and yet each was really rebelling only against his own father. Hilde regarded each as a personality and at the same time as a good comrade. She believed she was maintaining pure friendship, but if anyone failed to pay her a compliment, she began to doubt his personality. To be sure, she had no time for outmoded love but she broke off relationships with any man who did not give her to understand that he was in love with her.

She listed her encounter with Friedrich under her ‘notable experiences’. His obvious poverty was a novel feature in her circle of acquaintances. His far-reaching radicalism marked him off from the minor rebels. Nevertheless, she was a little excited the next time she went to the lecture.

‘Perhaps I might come with you,’ he said. Naturally, she thought, but merely said: ‘If it amuses you.’ And, as it was raining, she imagined that she would go with him to his room or a café. ‘But perhaps he’s no money,’ she mused, and from then on no longer registered what he said. Outside in the street, where the wet, the wind and the showers threw people into confusion, he endeavoured several times to take her by the arm. Her arm anticipated his hand. It will be obvious how slight an effect emancipation had actually had on Hilde.

They reached the little café where he was a regular customer, and where he could owe or borrow money without embarrassment. As if it had only just occurred to him, he said: ‘We’re wet, come along in.’ She felt the faint intimation of happiness a young woman feels when her lover guides her into a room.

They were sitting in the corner. ‘He is a regular customer and at home here,’ she concluded rapidly, and had already made up her mind to surprise him there from time to time. At times their hands touched on the table-top, quickly withdrew from each other, and independently experienced embarrassment, yearning, curiosity, as if they had their own hearts. Her sleeve rubbed against him. Their feet touched. Their plates clashed, became alive. Every movement one of them made conveyed a hidden meaning to the other. He loved her bracelet as much as her fingers, her narrow sleeve as well as her arm. He asked her about her mother because he wanted to see her looking sad again. But she did not. She merely described the photograph she had of the dead woman and promised to show it to him. The time at boarding-school, he thought, would have been strict and dreary. She recalled the secret nightly talks that she had long forgotten, comfortably included in the category of ‘childish behaviour’. Recollections distressed her. She yearned for one of his casual and startled contacts. She wanted to grasp his hand and blushed. She recalled some painter’s unambiguous importunity and now transferred this to Friedrich. His remarks made her impatient, but at the same time she thought: ‘He is intelligent and remarkable.’

‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘I must go home.’

He had been on the point of telling her about the goings-on at the midwife’s as an illustration of the decadence of society, a symptom of its decline. She propitiated him with a smile. He consoled himself with the length of the walk. Once outside, she began to talk of her youth. It was dark. The street-lamps burned dimly, sparse and damp. The walls seemed to cast double shadows. Suddenly she took his arm as if to tell him more. ‘Maybe he’ll ask,’ she thought. But he did not ask. She began:

‘At night-time we used to sleep four in a large room, one in each corner. My bed was on the left, by the window. Opposite me slept little Gerb. Her father was a German finance official, from Hessen, I think. In the night she got into my bed. We were sixteen then. She told me that her cousin, a military cadet, had explained everything to her, as it were. That’s frightful, isn’t it?’

Friedrich did not understand what she wanted to be asked. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that you wouldn’t have found it so frightful if you had realized that sixty per cent of all working-class children between twelve and sixteen are no longer virgins. Have you any idea what it’s like in the tenements?’ His old rage! He resumed with a bitter zeal and took away all her appetite for confidences. In a good boarding school, where only four girls slept in a room, one could have no idea of a worker’s dwelling. He described one to her. He explained what it was like not to have a bed of one’s own, a casual ward, the life of the exiles and the politically condemned.

She comforted herself. ‘What strange company!’ she thought arrogantly. She asked him about his youth. He told her about his activities on the frontier. ‘I envy you,’ she said. ‘You are free and strong. Will you call on me? Wednesday afternoon?’

Her smile illuminated the dark hall like a light.

Most young men seemed to her as tedious as her father. She longed to be a man and despised men who did nothing with their masculinity. She would have had Friedrich suave like the lieutenant and importunate like the painter, and for the first time in many years she cried in bed, naked and abandoned to the darkness, a poor girl without a trace of emancipation.