Joseph Roth - The Silent Prophet

Then came the Revolution. Herr von Derschatta lost his connections, his rank and his nobility. He had never had a vocation. It was necessary to cut down. The children’s nurse was dismissed and a cheap cook engaged. One gave no social evenings and went to no parties. Herr von Derschatta lost his secretaries and concentrated his entire manliness on his wife. He became even more jealous. A second child arrived, a son, just as much like his father as the first and just as much hated by Hilde. Herr von Derschatta plunged into commerce. He developed connections with members of the odious but clever race of Jewish financiers. At the instance of one of these he removed to Berlin, in order to act for his principal on the money markets of German cities. No one had any confidence in his expertise. But, in the opinion of rich but ill-favoured men, he had a distinguished appearance and ‘cut a good figure’ in Germany. No drop of Jewish blood could be detected in him. And he was a nobleman.

He made his living by tenuous deals, which he barely grasped. He consorted with stout individuals whom he despised and whom he simultaneously respected and feared. He attempted to learn their ‘dodges’. For he believed they were dodges. He did not realize that generations of ancestors subjected to pogroms and martyrdom, confined in the ghetto and compelled to banking transactions, were requisite to making deals. He became one of those furtive antisemites who begin to hate out of respect and who say to themselves a thousand times a day, whenever a deal goes against them and whenever they believe themselves outwitted: ‘If I were to have my life over again, I would be a Jew.’ A great part of his bad humour arose from the fact that it was so difficult to be born again. And because he could not discuss his private worries with business friends and acquaintances, he poured out his heart to Hilde. She let him talk, she did not comfort him, she actually rejoiced in his bad luck. She was haughty and spiteful. The Director General who, with the adroitness of a weakling, approved the principles of the new world and despised those of the old one, which was what he called a ‘reorientation’, indicated that his marriage had been an over-hasty affair and the result of a reactionary outlook. He thought of his marriage as he did of his patriotism and his war decoration and his monarchistic opinions. From the whole of that world, which had so rapidly collapsed, he had salvaged nothing but this stupid marriage, whose basis had been a stupid principle of honour. Today? Today no reasonable man would enter into a discussion with an old blockhead of a ministerial adviser over the honour of his daughter. Pistols, horsewhips, duels, formalities! What a performance! ‘If I had not married Hilde,’ he thought bitterly, ‘I might now have got hold of the daughter of a rich Jew. Blond Aryans are highly sought after.’ Often he worked himself into a rage. He no longer had a uniform or a title or any position of standing. No precepts anywhere could force him to practise restraint. He let himself go. A door slammed, a chair fell over, his fist pounded on the table, the hanging-lamp began to shake gently. Hilde opened her eyes wide. Already grief choked her, the tears began to smart at the corners of her eyes. ‘Anything rather than cry,’ she thought, ‘anything rather than cry in front of him! I shall try instead to be surprised, just surprised. What an animal. A butcher.’ First the nape of his neck reddened, then the blood mounted from behind into his face. Small hairs sprouted on the backs of his broad hands. She must think of someone quickly, thought was a comfort in itself. And she thought of her father, who restrained himself a hundred times a day, who was doubly polite when he fell into a silent rage, who left the house when he had something unpleasant to say. Father! But he was old and foolish and had never understood her. Even if he were here now, he would at most shoot it out with her husband.

She remembered Friedrich. She no longer saw him distinctly. She remembered him, but not as a living human being, rather as a kind of ‘interesting phenomenon’. A young idealist, a revolutionary. And not even consistent. In the end he was like the others. ‘He must have enlisted and has probably been killed,’ she thought.

She had not ceased thinking of Friedrich when the Director General succeeded, the inflation overcome, in obtaining an impressive and prominent position as manager of the office of a steel combine in Berlin, and in acquiring the improved mood that befitted the circumstances.

One day the maid brought her a letter. The envelope was studded with many postmarks. The comments of many postal officials criss-crossed at the edges. The round postmarks lay like medals on someone’s chest. The letter was like a warrior who had emerged from a heated engagement. It bore her old address, her maiden name, for which she yearned, and she regarded the letter with that tenderness with which she so often recalled her girlhood days. It was, in any case, a delightful letter. It had sought her out after long endeavour and fruitless journeys, it was a loyal devoted letter. ‘It comes from one who is long dead,’ she thought, and redoubled her tenderness at this notion. She carefully cut it open. It was Friedrich’s last letter.

From the first word he was at once close to her. She recalled his gait, his greeting, his gestures, his voice, his silence, his hand. His face she no longer saw distinctly. She felt his timid touch on her arm, she smelled the scent of the evening rain through which they had walked together, and saw the twilight in the little café. A sudden pang checked her recollections. He was dead. He had perished in the confusion of the times. Dead in some prison, starved, executed. ‘I should go into mourning,’ she thought, ‘put on mourning. He was the only real man I ever met. And look how I treated him!’

But when her husband entered the room her mourning had disappeared or had been relegated to the background, or overlaid with a bright triumph. The Director General was puzzled by his wife’s good humour. She irritated him, he did not know why. What reason could she have for being so cheerful? ‘I’ve had enough irritations already today. I’ll spoil her mood.’ And aloud: ‘Why are you so exuberant?’ She looked at him and did not reply. She did not feel the choking pain and she was sure that she would not cry. The letter lay in the drawer and radiated secret strength. Derschatta’s sons came in from their daily outing. They had healthy red empty faces and squabbled eternally. She sent the children away with’ the maid. She ate nothing. For the first time she noticed exactly how her husband behaved at table. He must have learned as a child how to hold a knife and fork and yet he ate like a savage. His gaze wandered over the narrow columns of the unfolded newspaper and his spoon rose gropingly, like a blind man, to his mouth. Although he seemed preoccupied with some item of news, this in no way lessened his comfortable enjoyment in eating. ‘What an appetite!’ thought Hilde, as if appetite were a degrading quality. ‘How remarkably some people behave.’ She felt as if her husband were a stranger, whom she had met in a restaurant. He was no concern of hers. She was free.

How could she set about discovering something about Friedrich’s fate? If she were bolder, she could go out into the world, travel to Russia to seek him out. She discarded this romantic idea. Yet it seemed to her that nothing one felt was fanciful when one loved. What could be more remarkable than what she had experienced already? Their first encounters, his departure, his imprisonment in Siberia, his return, his disappearance, and finally this letter! Did it not come to her as if guided from heaven? Was it perhaps a cry for help, which she heard too late? It was all miraculous, there was no doubt, and it was not for her to flinch from an improbable task.