Joseph Roth - The Silent Prophet

When he stood at the lectern and addressed the young people, the burden of his experiences oppressed him and he felt old, as if he were a hundred. Often, at home, he looked in the mirror and persuaded himself that his face was no older than ten years ago. The youth and health of the others, however, seemed to be a reflection of attitudes rather than physical characteristics. They were six, eight or ten years younger than he. They understood what he told them with ease. And yet, with each sentence he thought: ‘I’m serving as a textbook of history here, and not even an orthodox one.’ Often a small word betrayed the former rebel in him. Then he would feel a shudder passing rapidly over the backs of his listeners. He paused. He felt as if he must suddenly stop short, from lack of words. Passion had been taken by surprise. None of these young men had walked, lonely and hostile, through the streets of cities as he had. Singing and carrying flags, they marched to fêtes, lectures and meetings. Like conquerors, they entered into the inheritance of a new world, but they had conquered nothing and they were only heirs. They no longer needed to answer hatred with hatred. Not one of them need be homeless and wretched any longer. Sorrow was banned, a reactionary institution. A new race was to arise, it was already here, with happy muscles, sunny eyes, fearless because there were no terrors now and brave because no dangers threatened. He had not grown old, it was just that the world had become new, as if he had lived a thousand years. And he learned to experience the slow indifference of the elderly, which gradually spreads over their bodies and soon covers the living like a shroud. The pains came like muffled noises, the pleasures kept a respectful distance, delights he already experienced in the past even as he tasted them, like their own traces left behind years ago. They were recollections of delights.

It was probably the same for the others, his comrades and contemporaries, but they immersed themselves in work. They sat at the desks which had replaced the throne as the furniture of those in government. They wrote and read and avoided the streets. Their windows looked out over the distant outskirts of the city or into the courtyards of the Kremlin. They saw either the mist of the fields, mingled with the smoke of a few factory chimneys, or a plot of grass, a few Red Army sentinels and an occasional official visitor. They travelled through the towns in closed cars. Health and disease, mortality and birth rate, hunger and satiety, crime and passion, homelessness and drunkenness, illiteracy and schools, backwardness and genius, all figured in the reports, and even what was described as the ‘popular morale’ acquired the physiognomy of a statistic. And everyone prophesied good things to come. Optimism became the prime duty. With their old tired faces, their sick bodies, their shortsighted, much-afflicted eyes, the old endeavoured to copy the cheerful speech and athletic sprightliness of the young, and they resembled fathers who had been taken on excursions by their sons.

‘People are altogether changed,’ said Friedrich to Berzejev.

‘Do you still remember R.? Even he has become an optimist. He abandons his books and goes down to the soldiers for an hour. “What splendid fellows!” he says then. They treat him like a raw egg and allow him to pat them on the back. He, who once said that he feared the canaille , and that I ought to fear them too, is as happy as a child. The ordinary people have a sound instinct, they know what suits R. And so they do him a favour and say something offensive to him. He is delighted. He collects these mock-familiarities as a courtier did the gracious remarks of majesty in times gone by. And the soldiers oblige him by acting “The Sovereign People”. Then he returns happily to his books and is convinced that he is no different from the masses. He has evidence of it. They have spoken to him frankly. He has slapped their massive shoulders with his soft fingers and they have told him openly that they have no confidence in his style of government. The people have taken to play-acting splendidly.’

‘If the simple understanding I learned at my military academy qualifies me at all to understand what actually makes a bourgeois,’ said Berzejev, ‘I would say that our comrades have become bourgeois. Probably they always were. It was only the tension and hostility and the poverty in which they lived that inhibited their bourgeois instincts. Now the tension is over. I consider that the characteristic feature of the bourgeois is optimism. Everything will be alright. We shall soon conquer. The general knows what to do. The enemy is done for. My wife’s as true as gold. Things are improving, and so on. Now they have flats with furniture and water-closets, and the children play in the corridors and get on at school. Have you seen how Savelli has installed himself? Oh, not extravagantly! It’s not what the newspapers of the bourgois countries throw in our teeth. Alas, our comrades despise luxury. But they have a passionate inclination towards bourgeois comfort and knick-knacks. They say that Savelli has become very ferocious. He is responsible for eighty per cent of the executions. I was with him a week ago. He had bought himself floral teacups. He doesn’t drink tea out of a glass any more. Someone has brought him a marvellous machine from Germany for making real Turkish coffee. He explained to me for a quarter of an hour how it’s made and said, full of amazement, “The Germans are really brilliant fellows!” An American journalist went to visit him. He treated the American very well, that is very badly, in a superior manner. Often he replied to some question of the American’s with: “That’s no concern of yours!” or “Tell your boss that we treat bourgeois journalists much more kindly than they deserve.” But when the American had left, Savelli said after a few minutes’ reflection: “A fine nation, these Americans. They know exactly what they want.” Just wait two years, and Savelli will tell the Americans as much to their face.’

‘In the whole of Russia,’ said Friedrich, ‘how many are there still who talk as we do? The people who fought with us have disappeared, have gone home, are townsfolk and workers and clerks again. How few have remained with us! They’re starting to reorganize the army. People already treat our kind with respect. A comrade gave me his seat on the tram. I’m getting old, we’re all getting old.’

A week later R. said to Friedrich:

‘It would probably be best for you not to stay in Moscow with your pessimism. One of our people has suggested that you should go to the Volga district.’

‘Don’t lie to me!’ exclaimed Friedrich. ‘Admit that it’s you who suggested it.’

‘Alright then, I suggested it! I wanted to spare you any awkwardness.’

‘Nobody asked you to. I shall stay here as long as I like.’

‘You won’t succeed,’ said R. ‘You’ll go, voluntarily or involuntarily, Savelli will see to that. Besides, have you read my article? I have written an attack on pessimism. Naturally, I mean you and your lot.’

‘Do you recall,’ said Friedrich, ‘what you told me about Savelli in Vienna? You thought that he would hang us!’

‘I was talking about a different Savelli. There is a difference. Savelli was powerless. And today — he no longer even uses his old name — he is no longer powerless.’

‘And you are telling me this because you’re afraid?’

‘Not afraid. Out of caution. And conviction. Savelli must not know of our discussion. What’s more, I warn you not to mention it to anyone at all.’

‘Speak plainly! You’re saying that you’ve taken it on yourself to get me out of the way, gently. You’re saying that you’re all afraid I might be ambitious. I’m not, any more. I don’t care a damn for your Revolution.’