Joseph Roth - The Silent Prophet

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve seen you around for some weeks. Do you always eat here?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘I suppose you’re a student.’

‘Not yet! I have to get enrolled first.’

‘What kind, may I ask?’

‘Don’t know yet!’

‘I’m an address-writer,’ said the man. ‘My name is Grünhut. I was a student once too. But I had bad luck.’ It was as if he really meant: ‘You won’t escape that fate either.’

‘Do you manage all right?’ asked Friedrich.

‘As an address-writer! Three heller an envelope. A hundred a day, sometimes a hundred and twenty. I can get work for you too. Willingly! I’d be glad to do so. Is your handwriting good? Come tomorrow!’

They went to a linen warehouse. The book-keeper handed them a list and a hundred and fifty green envelopes.

‘Where are you eating tonight?’ asked Grünhut. ‘Come with me.’

They ate in a cellar. They were given soup made of sausage scraps. A long table. Hurrying rattling spoons. Metal tableware. Noises of lips smacking, spoons scraping, throats gurgling. ‘Good soup!’ said Grünhut. ‘I’ll show you about the coffee, we have that across the road, at Grüner’s. Soon you won’t have to bother any more, you’ll be eating in the college refectory. I used to feed there once.’

‘I could find myself in the same situation,’ said Friedrich.

‘What, really? What situation? My situation, of course! Do you really think so? Yes, it’s a good thing that I’ve shown you all these places. I had to discover them myself.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Oh, not at all! Not at all! When I came out of prison, I was all alone. Wife divorced! Brother a stranger. Didn’t know me any more. Apart from Frau Tarka, I didn’t know a soul. Her brother was in clink with me. So he recommended me. Connections are what count in our circles too. Do you know Frau Tarka? She’s the midwife, just over your tailor’s. My room’s above yours. I checked. You wouldn’t believe how many come to Frau Tarka. Yesterday, for example, Dr D.’s daughter. Six months ago it was the wife of a proper Excellency. And the young men! Sons of public prosecutors and generals! Bring their careless little girls. And all I did was to undo the blouse of the pupil I was teaching geography and history in the sixth form, at the high school in the Floriangasse, a private school. Good children from good homes. A working man’s daughter wouldn’t have said anything. But the well-off! I know a lawyer who raped his ward. A lieutenant who sleeps with his batman. I could write them each a little anonymous letter if I were a scoundrel. But I’m not, in spite of everything. Where do you stand politically? Left, of course! What? I’ve no opinions. But I think a revolution would do us good. A small short revolution. Three days, for instance.’

A peculiar relationship developed between Friedrich and myself at that time. I might call it intimacy without friendship or comradeship without affection. And even the fellow-feeling which later linked us was not present at the outset. It arose from the attention we began to pay each other one day and from the mutual mistrust we detected in each other. Finally we began to respect each other. Trust grew slowly, was fostered by the glances we exchanged, almost without realizing it, in the company of others and less by the words that passed than by the silences in which we often sat and strolled together. Had our lives not taken such differing courses, Friedrich would probably have become my friend, as did Franz Tunda.

It was a long time before Friedrich decided to look up Savelli, who was still living in Vienna at that time. He was afraid. He felt that, for the time being, he still had the choice between what he termed ‘revolutionary asceticism’ and the ‘world’, the vague romantic notion of pleasures, struggles, triumphs. Already he hated the governance of this world, but he still believed in it.

The finely soaring ramp of the University did not yet seem to him — as it did to me — the fortress wall of the national students’ association, from which every few weeks Jews or Czechs were flung down, but as a kind of ascent to ‘Knowledge and Power’. He had the respect of the self-taught for books, which is even greater than that contempt for books which distinguishes the wise. When he leafed through a catalogue, stood in front of the bookshop windows, sat in the quiet mildly dusty rooms of the library, regarded the dark-green backs of innumerable books on the tall wide shelves, the military ranks of green lampshades on the long tables, the deep devotion which makes every reader in the library look like a pious worshipper in a church, he was seized by the fear that he did not know the All-Important, and that one life might be too short to gain experience of it. He read and learned hastily, unsystematically, following changing inclinations, attracted by a title or a recollection of having heard of it before. He filled notebooks with observations that he took to be ‘fundamental’ and was almost inconsolable if a phrase, a date, a name escaped him. He listened to all lectures, necessary and unnecessary. He was always to be seen in the auditorium, always in the last row, which was also usually the highest. From there he overlooked the bent heads of the audience, the open white notebooks, the tiny blurred shorthand. The professor was so far away that to a certain extent he had lost his private humanity, was no more than a purveyor of knowledge. But Friedrich remained solitary, surrounded by candid faces in which nothing was evident but youth. One could, at a pinch, distinguish the races. Social differences were recognizable only by secondary characteristics. The well-to-do had manicured fingernails, tiepins, well-cut suits. All around a stone-deaf stolid wellbeing.

Only in the eyes of some Jewish students there shone a shrewd, a crafty or even a foolish melancholy. But it was the melancholy of blood and race, handed down to the individual and acquired by him without risk. In the same way, the others had inherited their wellbeing. Only groups distinguished themselves from each other by ribbons, colours, convictions. They prepared themselves for a barrack-room life and each already carried his rifle, his so-called ‘Ideal’.

At that time we had a common acquaintance named Leopold Scheller, who happened to be the only student with whom Friedrich associated. He concealed nothing, always told the truth, naturally only the truth as he knew it, and put up with any insult that was flung at him. He did not believe it could be meant personally. If anyone offended his honour, as he saw it, by a look or a deliberate or chance shove in the Great Hall, it was not so much a matter of his honour, as that of the students’ club to which he belonged. When Friedrich was bored he went to Scheller, who did not seem to be acquainted with boredom. He was always preoccupied with his philosophy of life.

He once surprised Friedrich with the information that he had got engaged. And he at once reached into his trouser-pocket, where he usually carried his pistol in a leather case. On this occasion he took out a wallet and out of the wallet a photograph. He noted Friedrich’s amazement and said: ‘My fiancée has taken my pistol away. She won’t permit it.’

The photograph showed a pretty young woman of some eighteen years. She had black eyes and hair. ‘She’s certainly not a blonde then,’ said Friedrich.

‘She is Italian,’ replied Scheller evenly, as if he had never been a Teuton.

‘But,’ persisted Friedrich, ‘what are you doing with an Italian girl?’

‘Love conquers all,’ began Scheller. ‘It is the greatest power on earth. Besides, I shall be making a German of her.’

‘And how long have you known the lady?’