Joseph Roth - Three Novellas

And so the bust stood for years outside Count Morstin’s house, the only memorial which had ever existed in the village of Lopatyny and of which all its inhabitants were rightly proud.

The bust meant even more, however, to the Count, who in those days no longer left the village any more. It gave him the impression, whenever he left his house, that nothing had altered. Gradually, for he had aged pre maturely, he would stumble upon quite foolish ideas. He would persuade himself for hours at a time, although he had fought through the whole of the greatest of all wars, that this had just been a bad dream, and that all the changes which had followed it were also bad dreams. This in spite of the fact that he saw almost every week how his appeals to officials and judges no longer helped his pro tégés and that these officials indeed made fun of him. He was more infuriated than insulted. It was already well known in the neighboring small town, as in the district, that “old Morstin was half crazy.” The story circulated that at home he wore the uniform of a Rittmeister of Dragoons, with all his old orders and decorations. One day a neighboring landowner, a certain Count, asked him straight out if this were true.

“Not as yet,” replied Morstin, “but you’ve given me a good idea. I shall put on my uniform and wear it not only at home but out and about.”

And so it happened.

From that time on Count Morstin was to be seen in the uniform of an Austrian Rittmeister of Dragoons, and the inhabitants of Lopatyny never gave the matter a second thought. Whenever the Rittmeister left his house he saluted his Supreme Commander, the bust of the dead Emperor Franz Josef. He would then take his usual route between two little pinewoods along the sandy road which led to the neighboring small town. The peasants who met him would take off their hats and say: “Jesus Christ be praised!” adding “Herr Graf !” as if they believed the Count to be some sort of close relative of the Redeemer’s, and that two titles were better than one. Alas, for a long time past he had been powerless to help them as he had in the old days. Admittedly the peasants were unable to help themselves. But he, the Count, was no longer a power in the land! And like all those who have been powerful once, he now counted even less than those who had always been powerless: in the eyes of officialdom he almost belonged among the ridiculous. But the people of Lopatyny and its surroundings still believed in him, just as they believed in the Emperor Franz Josef whose bust it was their custom to salute. Count Morstin seemed in no way laughable to the peasants and Jews of Lopatyny; venerable, rather. They revered his lean, thin figure, his gray hair, his ashen, sunken countenance, and his eyes which seemed to stare into the boundless distance; small wonder, for they were staring into the buried past.

It happened one day that the regional commissioner for Lwow, which used to be called Lemberg, undertook a tour of inspection and for some reason had to stop in Lopatyny. Count Morstin’s house was pointed out to him and he at once made for it. To his astonishment he caught sight of the bust of the Emperor Franz Josef in front of the house, in the midst of a little shrubbery. He looked at it for a long while and finally decided to enter the house and ask the Count himself about the significance of this memorial. But he was even more astonished, not to say startled, at the sight of Count Morstin coming towards him in the uniform of a Rittmeister of Dragoons. The regional commissioner was himself a “Little Pole”; which means he came from what was formerly Galicia. He had himself served in the Austrian Army. Count Morstin appeared to him like a ghost from a chapter of history long forgotten by the regional commissioner.

He restrained himself and at first asked no questions. As they sat down to table, however, he began cautiously to enquire about the Emperor’s memorial.

“Ah, yes,” said the Count, as if no new world had been born, “His late Majesty of blessed memory spent eight days in this house. A very gifted peasant lad made the bust. It has always stood here and will do so as long as I live.”

The commissioner stifled the decision which he had just taken and said with a smile, as it were quite casually, “You still wear the old uniform?”

“Yes,” said Morstin, “I am too old to have a new one made. In civilian clothes, do you know, I don’t feel altogether at ease since circumstances became so altered. I’m afraid I might be confused with a lot of other people. Your good health,” continued the Count, raising his glass and toasting his guest.

The regional commissioner sat on for a while, and then left the Count and the village of Lopatyny to continue his tour of inspection. When he returned to his Residence he issued orders that the bust should be removed from before Count Morstin’s house.

These orders finally reached the mayor (termed Wojt) of the village of Lopatyny and therefore, inevitably, were brought to the attention of Count Morstin.

For the first time, therefore, the Count now found himself in open conflict with the new power, of whose existence he had previously hardly taken cognizance. He realized that he was too weak to oppose it. He recalled the scene at night in the American bar in Zurich. Alas, there was no point any more in shutting one’s eyes to these new bankers and wearers of crowns, to the new ladies and gentlemen who ruled the world. One must bury the old world, but one must give it a decent burial.

So Count Morstin summoned ten of the oldest in habitants of the village of Lopatyny to his house — among them the clever and yet innocent Jew, Solomon Piniowsky. There also attended the Greek Catholic priest, the Roman Catholic priest and the Rabbi.

When they were all assembled Count Morstin began the following speech,

“My dear fellow-citizens, you have all known the old Monarchy, your old fatherland. It has been dead for years, and I have come to realize that there is no point in not seeing that it is dead. Perhaps it will rise again, but old people like us will hardly live to see it. We have received orders to remove, as soon as possible, the bust of the dead Emperor, of blessed memory, Franz Josef the First.

“We have no intention of removing it, my friends!

“If the old days are to be dead we will deal with them as one does deal with the dead: we will bury them.

“Consequently I ask you, my dear friends, to help me bury the dead Emperor, that is to say his bust, with all the ceremony and respect that are due to an Emperor, in three days’ time, in the cemetery.”

VI

The Ukranian joiner, Nikita Koldin, made a magnificent sarcophagus of oak. Three dead Emperors could have found accommodation in it.

The Polish blacksmith, Jarowslaw Wojciechowski, forged a mighty double eagle in brass which was firmly nailed to the coffin’s lid.

The Jewish Torah scribe, Nuchin Kapturak, inscribed with a goose quill upon a small roll of parchment the blessing which believing Jews must pronounce at the sight of a crowned head, cased it in hammered tin and laid it in the coffin.

Early in the morning — it was a hot summer day, countless invisible larks were trilling away in the heavens and countless invisible crickets were replying from the meadows — the inhabitants of Lopatyny gathered at the memorial to Franz Josef the First. Count Morstin and the mayor laid the bust to rest in its magnificent great sarcophagus. At this moment the bells of the church on the hill began to toll. All three pastors placed themselves at the head of the procession. Four strong old peasants bore the coffin on their shoulders. Behind them, his drawn saber in his hand, his dragoon helmet draped in field gray, went Count Franz Xaver Morstin, the closest person in the village to the dead Emperor, quite lonely and alone, as becomes a mourner. Behind him, wearing a little round black cap upon his silver hair, came the Jew, Solomon Piniowsky, carrying in his left hand his round velvet hat and raised in his right the black and yellow flag with the double eagle. And behind him the whole village, men and women.