Joseph Roth - The Silent Prophet

He thought no more of the woman in the carriage — or he imagined that he had forgotten her. But one day, by chance, he saw her again — and he was startled. For it was like an encounter with a picture come to life which had been left in store in a particular room in a particular museum, or an encounter with a forgotten idea which has remained in a deep and hidden region of the memory. He no longer remembered who she was when she asked him in a corridor at the University where Lecture Theatre 24 was. He only recognized her after she had disappeared. Like a distant star, she had occupied a few seconds in impinging on his retina. He followed her. In the darkened room someone was reading aloud about some painter or other, someone was showing various lantern-slides, and the darkness was like a second smaller room within the hall. It enclosed both her and him with equal density.

He waited. He did not hear a single word or see a single picture. He saw that the door opened, and that she left the hall.

He followed her at a distance which seemed to be ordained and laid down by adoration. He was afraid that a side-street might swallow her, a carriage bear her away, an acquaintance await her. His tender gaze seized the distant brown shimmer of her profile between the edge of her fur collar and her dark hat. The regular rhythm of her steps imparted gentle wavy movements to the soft material of her jacket, to her hips and back. She stopped in front of a small shop in a quiet side-street and laid a hesitant, pensive hand on the door-handle. She went in. He came nearer. He looked through the window. She was sitting at the table, face turned towards him, trying on gloves. She was leaning on her left hand, her fingers were outspread in patient expectation. She slipped on the new leather, closed her hand into a fist and opened it again, stroked the left hand caressingly with the right, and unfolded joints and fingers in attractive and absorbing play.

She left the shop. He had no time to move away. Her first glance fell on him and, as he involuntarily removed his hat, she stood there as if she intended to acknowledge him, as if she was considering whether she should assume the indifferent smile suited to acquaintances one has forgotten. Eventually, as he made no move, she turned to go. He came a step closer. She was visibly embarrassed. The urge to fly seized him together with the fear of ridicule. The awareness that he must say something the very next moment was surpassed by the silent avowal that he could think of nothing to say. The soft oval of her brown face confused him by its proximity, like her startled dark gaze and the delicate bluish skin of her eyelids, and even the small parcel she held in her hand. ‘If only she didn’t continue to smile,’ he thought. ‘I must make it clear to her at once that I am not one of her acquaintances.’ So, hat in hand, he said: ‘I can’t help it if you’re alarmed. The situation was too much for me. I followed you unintentionally. You left the shop before I expected. I accosted you without knowing you. I have therefore misled you without intending to do so. Please forgive me.’

As he was speaking he was surprised by the calmness and precision of his words. Her smile vanished and reappeared. It was like a light that comes and goes.

‘I quite understand,’ she said.

Friedrich bowed, she likewise attempted an acknowledgment, and both laughed.

He was surprised to find that she was not married. He could not understand now why he had taken her for a married woman. Also, it was not her carriage in which she had been travelling that August day. The carriage belonged to her friend, Frau G., to whom she had been invited. Was she a student? No, she only attended the lectures of Professor D., who was a family friend. Her father, as is the way of some old gentlemen, did not permit her to study. She would certainly have had her way if her mother had been alive. Her mother would have been helpful. And a transient sadness passed over her face.

She stood in front of a cab-rank, she was due at the theatre, she had an appointment. Already Friedrich saw a coachman jump down from his box and strip the blankets from the back of his horse.

‘I should very much like to come with you, if you’ve the time,’ said Friedrich quickly.

She laughed. He was embarrassed. ‘Let’s go then,’ she said, ‘but right away.’

Now it was done he could no longer speak calmly. The talk was only on neutral topics, the hard winter and Professor D., the tedious public and private balls, the meanness of rich people and the poor street lighting. She vanished into the theatre.

He abandoned himself to an animated aimlessness, a sort of holiday. He entered the foyer in which she had disappeared. It was a quarter of an hour before the start of the performance. One heard the carriages driving up, the horses’ solemn neighing, the clatter of their hoof-beats and the murmured exhortations of the coachmen. The foyer wafted an odour of perfume, powder, clothes, a confusion of greetings. Many men were waiting there, leaning against the walls, removing their hats, bowing more or less deeply, only bowing or smiling while bowing. He could deduce the status of those who entered from the mien and attitude of those who awaited them. The people stood in their corners like living mirrors. But they themselves also had rank and character and were repeatedly confirmed in the position they held in the world by the response they received. The beautiful women seemed to see no one; nevertheless they scanned all those present with the alert and unobtrusive gaze with which commanders inspect regiments ready to march one last time before the General arrives. None of those present escaped these beautiful women. They did not overlook even the doorman or the policeman. Their eyes scattered rapid questions and received slow and languishing answers. Officers in every shade of blue and brown, all in gleaming patent leather boots and narrow black trousers, spread an amiable cadence of sound and a harmless motley of colour. For the first time Friedrich felt no hatred toward them and even a certain solidarity with the policeman, who was to be thanked because the harmony of this elegant turmoil was undisturbed by drunkards or criminals. ‘No one here suspects what I am,’ he thought. ‘They take me for a little student.’ When a woman’s gaze rested on him, he felt gratitude towards the entire sex. ‘These creatures have instinct,’ he told himself. ‘The men are coarse.’ Suddenly he pitied these society ladies. They mourned away their lives, their beauty wilted, at the side of boorish lieutenants and brutish moneylenders. They needed quite different men. Naturally, he thought of himself.

A shrill bell rang through the house like a joyous alarm. People’s movements quickened, the hubbub grew louder. The doors flew open and three minutes later the foyer was empty. The policeman sat down on an empty chair in the corner. The box-office window was slammed to from within by an invisible hand. The silvery arc-lights in front of the entrance went out. The performance had ended in the foyer, another was just beginning on the stage. The coachmen came inside, little men who looked like postmen out of uniform. They gathered round the doorman and parleyed with him. They were sub-agents and fly-by-night ticket touts. The policeman turned away so as not to have to see them. In the foyer there was no longer any fragrance of women’s perfume. These poor folk diffused an aroma of goulash, old clothes and rain. It was as if the poor now gathered in the foyer stood, like the figures in a weather-house, at the opposite end of the same gang-plank to which the rich too were nailed, and as if fixed rules governed the appearance, now of the fortunate, and now of the wretched.

Friedrich left the theatre. It was time to seek out his friends in the café. But on this particular day he would rather not have seen them. He felt embarrassed before them. ‘They are bound to see,’ he told himself, ‘that I am in love. R. will immediately unmask me as a “romantic”, a description which, in his mouth, sounds like the word “parricide”.’ No, he could not meet the comrades. Savelli, for instance, did not fall in love, Comrade T. loved only the Revolution. The Ukrainian had subjected his entire colossal bulk to the Idea as one subjects a race to a master. And as for R., he obviously denied the possibilities of love. Only he, Friedrich, had room in his breast for renunciation and ambition, revolution and infatuation.