Joseph Roth - The Silent Prophet

From now on Herr von Derschatta called himself Director General, although it was not expressly made known that this was his title. Could one possibly have called him Lieutenant in such serious times, when every other lawyer was a lieutenant? Someone, some day uttered the title Director General Derschatta, and from then on he was known as Director General Derschatta. Indeed, some weeks later there reappeared that farmer who had once reigned as indispensable. But in what a pitiable state! He had had to drill for four weeks, that is, until his family had found satisfactory protection. He was finally restored to his potatoes, no longer as sovereign but as Derschatta’s technical adviser, and had to content himself with the title of Director.

Derschatta, who was by nature a prudent man, did not enjoy seeing the farmer in his vicinity. Two men fit for war service in proximity did not go down well. Besides, he badly needed a secretary and equally feared to deprive the trenches of three men. He therefore began by attempting to dislodge the farmer. But the latter sat fast. Thereupon he relinquished his claim to a male secretary and decided to remain on the lookout for a female substitute.

Hilde, who had long since tired of being a sick-nurse, and who considered that employment with the Red Cross was more a tribute to her benevolence than fitting for her intellect, had for some months been seeking a post in the public service, one — as it were — as the right hand of an important man. Frau G., her friend, who knew Herr Derschatta, brought Hilde to his notice. Herr von Derschatta treasured womanly charm. And as, in those serious times, it was no longer unusual for daughters from good homes to sit at typewriters, thus serving the Fatherland as well as emancipation, Hilde rapidly learned to type and became a lady secretary.

She was proud, according to the usage of her times, thereby to ‘earn her bread’. Her father had grown tired, worn down by the admonitions of his housekeeper, whom he had still not yet married, and by the opposition of his daughter; he was already weary of his post at the railway station, the war was going on too long for his liking, he longed for his quiet office again, the peaceful clubroom, a crisp poppy-seed croissant, his stomach was so upset by the maize flour and, in a word, he allowed his daughter to become a secretary without opposition.

He would not have done so, despite his tiredness, if he had been more closely acquainted with Herr von Derschatta — and also, of course, with his daughter. For Hilde, who was as convinced of the absurdity of the old morality as she was of her own self-sufficiency, was enraptured by the discovery made by girls of the middle class during the war — that a woman could dispose of her body as she wished, and, if only to comply with theory, offered no resistance at all to the demands made by Herr Derschatta on his secretary. It was an era in which women, while they were abused, were motivated by the concept that they were obliged to do something by which they differed from their mothers. While the conservatives bemoaned the notorious laxity of morals, virginity was remarked on by the men as a rare phenomenon and regarded by the flappers as an encumbrance. Many women derived no pleasure at all because they practised sexual intercourse as an obligation, and because their pride in venturing to love like men satisfied them more than love itself. Herr von Derschatta did not need to feign love. Hilde’s ambition to be able to assess men only by their physical prowess, in the same way as men formed their opinions of women, made any exertions on Derschatta’s part unnecessary from the outset as far as she was concerned. Without a trace of passion or pleasure, simply on grounds of principle, Hilde had relations with the Director General, naturally in office hours, because she could then at the same time retain the awareness of being the ‘right hand’ of an important functionary. If anything really attracted her in this adventure, it was curiosity. But even in the curiosity there was mingled a kind of investigating scientific zeal. And the love hours passed like the office hours, from which they were in a sense subtracted, in a cool concupiscence that felt like the brown leather of the office sofa on which they were consummated. Meanwhile the yellow pencil and typist’s notebook lay on the carpet awaiting further employment, for the Director General did not like to waste time and began to dictate even while he was engaged in satisfying the requirements of hygiene at the tap. It was, one might say, a love idyll on the Pitman system and corresponded completely to the seriousness of the times and the danger that beset the Fatherland.

It would certainly have remained without consequence if it had not become involved with the fate of a clerk named Wawrka. Wawrka had been indispensable until Derschatta’s arrival and had grown accustomed to regarding war as an event that did not endanger his life. But the Director General, who, in that very context, was disposed to have as few healthy men around him as possible, annulled Wawrka’s indispensability. The latter, in a long audience, implored the Director General for clemency. The poor man fell on his knees before the great Derschatta. He invoked his numerous family, his six children — he had invented two more for the emergency — his sick wife, who of course was really perfectly well. But the Director General’s concern for his own life rendered him even more unyielding than he was by nature; it was settled: Wawrka had to join up.

The poor man resolved on revenge. He knew who Hilde’s father was and, with his simple brain, which did not appreciate the philosophy of an emancipated young woman, assumed that the goings-on on the sofa which he had overheard must be the result of a seduction in the good old style. With persons of consequence, he thought in his innocence, there is an honour which one forfeits, protects, avenges in a duel or with pistol-shots. He already saw the Director General lying dead in the office with a bullet in the temple, old Herr von Maerker beside him, broken but proud and silent, and — most important of all — he himself again indispensable and preserved. And he went to Herr von Maerker and related to him what he had detected and overheard. Basically, Herr von Maerker’s views did not differ from those of Wawrka. The precepts of social honour required a ministerial adviser and cavalry officer to call his daughter’s seducer to account. And with the matter-of-course attitude of a man who has no misgivings about his daughter but the traditions of an old chivalry in his blood, Herr von Maerker betook himself, horsewhip in hand, to the Director General.

Herr von Derschatta was determined not to die at any price, either at the front or behind the lines. To save his life he played the confessed sinner, but also the anguished lover, and begged Herr von Maerker for his daughter’s hand. Hilde would have preferred to pursue her sexual freedom but realized that she must avert a catastrophe. She made a sacrifice to prejudice, got married, and consoled herself with the prospect of a free modern marriage in which both parties could do as they wished.

But she was wrong. For her husband, who had formerly shared her views of sexual freedom for women, suddenly regarded marriage as a sacred institution and was determined, as he said, to preserve ‘the honour of his home’. Yes, he even became jealous. He kept his wife under surveillance. He engaged a new secretary and pursued his normal practices with her. Wawrka went to the front and had probably fallen in the meantime. Hilde, however, got a child. It was simply a precautionary measure on her husband’s part. She took it as a sign of her humiliation. Thus, with Nature’s help, he had demonstrated to her that it was a wife’s lot to be unfree and a vessel for posterity. She hated the child, a boy, who resembled his father with malice aforethought. Now she was surrounded by two Derschattas. When the one went to the office, the other screamed in the cradle. Often they both slept in her bed. She had nobody in the world. She could not talk to her father, he did not understand what she said. Her only friend, Frau G., gave her cheap advice. She should betray her husband. That was the sole revenge. But Herr von Derschatta was mistrustful and prudent and a domestic tyrant of the old style. And far and wide there was no man with whom it would have been worthwhile breaking the marriage. For Hilde had become more critical. Misfortune makes one choosy.