Joseph Roth - Three Novellas

What happened in the great unheeding world was no concern of either of them. The treasure which they had brought with them ensured a life of leisure for several years to come. In any case they took no thought for the future. When they visited the gambling rooms it was from excess of high spirits. They could afford to lose money, and lose money they did, as if to justify the old saying: lucky in love, unlucky at cards. Every time they lost they were enchanted, as if they needed the superstition to be sure of their love. But like all happy people, they were inclined to put their love to the test, and when it survived it, to make their happiness still greater.

XI

Even though the Countess Walewska had her Fallmerayer all to herself she was nonetheless incapable of going on living — few women can — without the fear that she would lose the man who had inflamed her love and passion. Therefore, although Fallmerayer had given her no cause to do so, she one day began to demand that he divorce his wife and give up his children and his service. Adam Fallmerayer wrote at once to his cousin Heinrich, who occupied a high position in Vienna at the Ministry of Education, and told him that he had abandoned his former life once for all. Since, however, he did not wish to come to Vienna he would prefer that a competent lawyer take charge of the divorce.

A remarkable chance — thus wrote his cousin Heinrich some days later — had led to the fact that Fallmerayer had already been posted missing some two years previously. Since, in addition, he had given no sign of life, he had already been consigned to the ranks of the dead by his wife and his few blood relations. For a long time a new stationmaster had been in charge of the station at L. A long time ago Frau Fallmerayer had gone with the twins to live with her parents in Brums. The best thing to do would be to continue keeping quiet, always provided that Fallmerayer did not experience any difficulties with Austria’s represent atives abroad in the matter of a passport or anything similar.

Fallmerayer thanked his cousin, promised in future only to write to him, asked him for his silence and showed this exchange of letters to his mistress. Her mind was put at rest. She no longer trembled for Fallmerayer. Only, once infected by this mysterious anxiety, which Nature plants in the souls of women as deeply in love as she was, (perhaps, who knows, in order to ensure the survival of the world), the Countess Walewska demanded a child by her lover, and from the moment at which this desire arose in her she began to give herself up to imagining the outstanding qualities of the child; even, up to a point, dedicating herself to serve it unswervingly. Unthinking, careless, carefree as she was, she nonetheless recognized in the lover, whose boundless love had first aroused her lovely, natural and uninhibited disposition, an example of sensible reflective man. Nothing seemed to her so important as to bring into the world a child which would combine her own qualities with the incomparable qualities of the man she loved.

She became pregnant. Fallmerayer, grateful, as are all men in love, to their fate, as to the woman who has helped them fulfill it, was beyond himself with joy. His tenderness knew no bounds. He saw both his love and his own personality irrevocably confirmed. Now, for the first time, he was fulfilled. Life was yet to begin. The child was expected in six months. Only then would life begin.

Meanwhile Fallmerayer had reached the age of forty-five.

XII

One day a stranger appeared at the Walewskis’ villa, a Caucasian called Kirdza-Schwili, who informed the Countess Walewska that thanks to a fortunate destiny and thanks, probably, to a particularly venerable portrait, dedicated in the monastery of Pokroschnie to the blessed Procopius, the Count Walewski had escaped both the hardships of the war and the Bolsheviks, and was now on his way to Monte Carlo. He was to be expected in about a fortnight. He, the messenger, formerly the Ataman Kirdza-Schwili, was on his way to Belgrade in the service of the Tsarist counter-revolution. He had now carried out his duty. He wished to proceed.

Countess Walewska introduced Fallmerayer as the faithful régisseur of her household. While the Caucasian was there Fallmerayer kept silence. He accompanied the guest part of the way. On his way back he felt for the first time in his life a sharp, sudden pain in his chest.

His mistress was sitting by the window, reading.

“You can’t receive him,” said Fallmerayer, “let’s run for it.”

“I shall tell him the whole truth,” she replied. “We shall wait.”

“You are carrying my child!” said Fallmerayer. “It’s an impossible situation.”

“You’re staying here until he comes! I know him! He will understand everything!” replied the woman.

From then on they did not discuss Count Walewski again. They waited.

They waited until, one day, a telegram arrived from him. One evening he arrived. They both fetched him from the station.

Two guards lifted him down out of the coach and a porter brought along a wheelchair. They placed him in the wheelchair. He held his yellow, bony, tight-drawn face up to his wife. She bent down to him and kissed him. With his long, blue, icy, bony hands he kept trying unsuccessfully to pull up two brown rugs over his knees. Fallmerayer helped him.

Fallmerayer saw the Count’s face; a longish, yellow, bony face with a sharp nose, light eyes and a narrow mouth, over which grew a drooping black mustache. They rolled the Count along the platform like one of the many pieces of luggage. His wife walked behind the wheelchair, Fallmerayer walked ahead. Fallmerayer and the chauffeur had to lift him into the car. The wheelchair was stowed on top of it.

He had to be carried into the villa. Fallmerayer took him by the head and shoulders, the servant by his feet.

“I’m hungry,” said Count Walewski.

As the table was set, it turned out that Count Walewski was unable to feed himself. His wife had to feed him. And as, after a gruesome and silent meal, the time came for sleep, the Count said, “I’m sleepy. Put me to bed.”

Countess Walewska, the servant and Fallmerayer carried the Count to his room on the first floor, where his bed was prepared for him.

“Goodnight!” said Fallmerayer. He waited long enough to see his mistress setting the pillows to rights, and how she seated herself on the edge of the bed.

XIII

At this juncture Fallmerayer left; he was never heard of again.

I

In what used to be Eastern Galicia, and today is Poland, far indeed from the solitary railway line which links Przemysl with Brody, lies the small village of Lopatyny, about which I intend to tell a remarkable tale.

Will readers be so kind as to forgive the narrator for prefacing the facts which he has to impart by a historico-political explanation. The unnatural moods which world history has recently exhibited compel him to this explanation, since younger readers may wish, perhaps need, to have it pointed out to them that a part of the eastern territories, which today belong to the Polish Republic, formed a part of the many Crown Lands of the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy until the end of the Great War which is now called the World War.

Thus, in the village of Lopatyny, there lived the Count Franz Xaver Morstin, the scion of an old Polish family, a family which (in parenthesis) originated in Italy and came to Poland in the sixteenth century. Count Morstin had, in his youth, served in the Ninth Dragoons. He thought of himself neither as a Polish aristocrat nor as an aristocrat of Italian origin. No: like so many of his peers in the former Crown Lands of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, he was one of the noblest and purest sort of Austrian, plain and simple. That is, a man above nationality, and therefore of true nobility. Had anyone asked him, for example — but to whom would such a senseless question have occurred? — to which “nationality” or race he felt he belonged, the Count would have felt rather bewildered, baffled even, by his questioner, and probably bored and somewhat indignant. And on what indications might he have based his member ship of this or that race? He spoke almost all European languages equally well, he was at home in almost all the countries of Europe. His friends and relations were scattered about the wide colorful world. Indeed the Imperial and Royal monarchy was itself a microcosm of this colorful world, and for this reason the Count’s only home. One of his brothers-in-law was District Commandant in Sarajevo, another was Counselor to the Governor in Prague; one of his brothers was serving as an Oberleutnant of artillery in Bosnia, one of his cousins was Counselor of Embassy in Paris, another was a landowner in the Hungarian Banat, a third was in the Italian diplomatic service and a fourth, from sheer love of the Far East, had for years lived in Peking.