Joseph Roth - Three Novellas

In the false hope that he could forget the situation if he were outside the country, the Count decided to go abroad. But he discovered to his astonishment that he needed a passport and a number of so-called visas before he could reach those countries which he had chosen for his journey. He was quite old enough to consider as fantastically childish and dreamlike such things as passports, visas and all the formalities which the brazen laws of traffic between man and man had imposed after the war. However, since Fate had decreed that he was to spend the rest of his days in a desolate dream, and because he hoped to find abroad, in other countries, some part of that old reality in which he had lived before the war, he bowed to the requirements of this ghostly world, took a passport, procured visas and proceeded first to Switzerland, the one country in which he believed he might find the old peace, simply because it had not been involved in the war.

He had known the city of Zurich for many years, but had not seen it for the better part of twelve. He supposed that it would make no particular impact on him, for better or for worse. His impression coincided with the not altogether unjustified opinion of the world, both rather more pampered and rather more adventurous, on the subject of the worthy cities of the worthy Swiss. What, after all, could be expected to happen there? Nevertheless, for a man who had come out of the war and out of the eastern marches of the former Austrian Monarchy, the peace of a city which even before that war had harbored refugees, was almost equivalent to an adventure. Franz Xaver Morstin gave himself up in those first days to the pursuit of long-lost peace. He ate, drank and slept.

One day, however, there occurred a disgusting incident in a Zurich night club, as the result of which Count Morstin was forced to leave the country at once.

At that time there was often common gossip in the newspapers of every country about some wealthy banker who was supposed to have taken in pawn, against a loan to the Austrian royal family, not only the Habsburg Crown Jewels, but also the old Habsburg Crown itself. No doubt about it that these stories came from the tongues and pens of those irresponsible customers known as journalists and even if it were true that a certain portion of the Imperial family’s heritage had found its way into the hands of some conscienceless banker, there was still no question of the old Habsburg crown coming into it, or so Franz Xaver Morstin felt that he knew.

So he arrived one night in one of the few bars, known only to the select, which are open at night in the moral city of Zurich where, as is well known, prostitution is illegal, immorality is taboo, the city in which to sin is as boring as it is costly. Not for a moment that the Count was seeking this out! Far from it: perfect peace had begun to bore him and to give him insomnia and he had decided to pass the night-time away wherever he best could.

He began his drink. He was sitting in one of the few quiet corners of the establishment. It is true that he was put out by the newfangled American style of the little red table lamps, by the hygienic white of the barman’s coat which reminded him of an assistant in an operating theater and by the dyed blonde hair of the waitress which awoke associations with apothecaries; but to what had he not already accustomed himself, this poor old Austrian? Even so, he was startled out of the peace which he had with some trouble arranged for himself in these surroundings by a harsh voice announcing: “And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the crown of the Habsburgs!”

Franz Xaver stood up. In the middle of the long bar he observed a fairly large and animated party. His first glance informed him that every type of person he hated — although until then he had no close contact with them — was represented at that table: women with dyed blonde hair in short dresses which shamelessly revealed ugly knees; slender, willowy young men of olive complexion, baring as they smiled sets of flawless teeth such as are to be seen in dental advertisements, disposable little dancing men, cowardly, elegant, watchful, looking like cunning hairdressers; elderly gentlemen who assiduously but vainly attempted to disguise their paunches and their bald pates, good-humored, lecherous, jovial and bow-legged; in short a selection from that portion of humanity which was for the time being the inheritor of the vanished world, only to yield it a few years later, at a profit, to even more modern and murderous heirs.

One of the elderly gentlemen now rose from the table. First he twirled a crown in his hand, then placed it on his bald head, walked round the table, proceeded to the middle of the bar, danced a little jig, waggled his head and with it the crown, and sang a popular hit of the day, “The sacred crown is worn like this!”

At first Franz Xaver could not make head nor tail of this lamentable exhibition. It seemed to him that the party consisted of decaying old gentlemen with gray hair (made fools of by mannequins in short skirts); chambermaids celebrating their day off; female barflies who would share with the waitresses the profits from the sale of champagne and their own bodies; a lot of good-for-nothing pimps who dealt in women and foreign exchange, wore wide padded shoulders and wide flapping trousers that looked more like women’s clothes; and dreadful-looking middlemen who dealt in houses, shops, citizenships, passports, concessions, good marriages, birth certificates, religious beliefs, titles of nobility, adoptions, brothels and smuggled cigarettes. This was the section of society which was relentlessly committed, in every capital city of a Europe which had, as a whole continent, been defeated, to live off its corpse, slandering the past, exploiting the present, promoting the future, sated but insatiable. These were the Lords of Creation after the Great War. Count Morstin had the impression of being his own corpse, and that these people were dancing on his grave. Hundreds and thousands had died in agony to prepare the victory of people like these, and hundreds of thoroughly respectable moralists had prepared the collapse of the old Monarchy, had longed for its fall and for the liberation of the nation-states! And now, pray observe, over the grave of the old world and about the cradles of the newborn nations, there danced the specters of the night from American bars.

Morstin came closer, so as to have a better view. The shadowy nature of these well-covered, living specters aroused his interest. And upon the bald pate of this bow legged, jigging man he recognized a facsimile — for facsimile it must surely be — of the crown of St. Stephen. The waiter, who was obsequious in drawing the attention of his customers to anything noteworthy, came to Franz Xaver and said, “That is Walakin the banker, a Russian. He claims to own the crowns of all the dethroned monarchies. He brings a different one here every evening. Last night it was the Tsars’ crown; tonight it is the crown of St. Stephen.”

Count Morstin felt his heart stop beating, just for a second. But during this one second — which seemed to him later to have lasted for at least an hour — he experienced a complete transformation of his own personality. It was as if an unknown, frightening, alien Morstin were growing within him, rising, growing, developing and taking possession not only of his familiar body but, further, of the entire space occupied by the American bar. Never in his life, never since his childhood had Franz Xaver Morstin experienced a fury like this. He had a gentle disposition and the sanctuary which had been vouchsafed him by his position, his comfortable circumstances and the brilliance of his name had until then shielded him from the grossness of the world and from any contact with its meanness. Otherwise, no doubt, he would have learned anger sooner. It was as if he sensed, during that single second that changed him, that the world had changed long before. It was as if he now felt that the change in himself was in fact a necessary consequence of universal change. That much greater than this unknown anger, which now rose up in him, grew and overflowed the bounds of his personality, must have been the growth of meanness in this world, the growth of that baseness which had so long hidden behind the skirts of fawning “loyalty” and slavish servility. It seemed to him, who had always assumed without a second thought that everyone was by nature honorable, that at this instant he had discovered a lifetime of error, the error of any generous heart, that he had given credit, limitless credit. And this sudden recognition filled him with the honest shame which is sister to honest anger. An honest man is doubly shamed at the sight of meanness, first because the very existence of it is shameful, second because he sees at once that he has been deceived in his heart. He sees himself betrayed and his pride rebels against the fact that people have betrayed his heart.