Joseph Roth - Tarabas

“Look me in the face, Jew!” said Tarabas.

Kristianpoller stood upright.

“Where’s your answer?” demanded Tarabas.

“Your Excellency,” answered Kristianpoller, “everything is in readiness. A large room is at Your Excellency’s disposal. Your Excellency’s escort will be put up comfortably. And we will make up a bed outside Your Excellency’s door, a good bed.”

“Very good, very good,” said Tarabas. And he sent his men to get food from the kitchen. He sat down at an unoccupied table. There was silence in the room. The officers did not stir. They talked no more. Their forks and spoons lay untouched beside their plates.

“Good appetite!” cried Tarabas, pulling his knife out of his boot. He inspected it carefully, licked his thumb, and passed it gently across the blade.

The Jew Kristianpoller approached with a steaming bowl in his right hand, spoon and fork in his left. He had brought a dish of peas and sauerkraut with a pinkly gleaming rib of pork in it. The whole was veiled in a soft grey cloud of steam. When Kristianpoller had put down the bowl, he bowed and retreated backwards to the bar.

From behind the counter he observed between halfshut eyelids the extremely healthy appetite of the terrible Tarabas. He did not dare, not having been called upon to do so, to obey the prompting of the inner voice which told him to offer the mighty one strong drink. No, he would wait for the command to come.

“Something to drink!” the terrible one cried at last.

Kristianpoller vanished and reappeared a moment later with three large bottles on a stout wooden tray — wine, beer, spirits. He put the three bottles together with three separate glasses on the table before Tarabas and withdrew once more, bowing deeply. Tarabas first tested the bottles, raising each one in turn and examining it in the air as if to put it to the proof of hand and eye. Finally he decided in favour of the brandy. True to the habit of all drinkers of hard liquor, he emptied one glass at a single draught, and poured out another. There was still complete silence in the room. The officers sat stiffly with their plates and glasses in front of them and looked furtively across them at the colonel. Kristianpoller stood immobile and head down before his counter, waiting and alert to hasten over at a gesture, yes, at a flicker of an eyelash from Colonel Tarabas. He stood there intent upon the wishes of the war-god of Koropta, ready to spring to meet them as they formed slowly, or — who knew? — perhaps with suddenness within that mind. The gurgling of the brandy as the colonel poured out another glassful could be heard distinctly all over the large room. It was followed by the terrible one’s praise: “Good stuff, this, Jew!”—a phrase which Tarabas now began to reiterate with shorter and shorter pauses between, and each time in a louder voice. At last, when the colonel had disposed of his sixth glass, the youngest of the officers present, Lieutenant Kulin, thought that the time had come to break the silence which respect and fear had until then imposed on all of them. He rose, a glass of brandy in his hand, and went across to the colonel’s table. The lieutenant’s hand was steady; not a drop overflowed from the brimming glass he held. He stopped at the table and drew himself up smartly.

“To the health of our first colonel!” said Lieutenant Kulin.

All the officers rose.

“Long live the new army!” said Tarabas.

“Long live the new army!” they rejoined.

And amidst the clink of glasses meeting one another in the toast, came a somewhat belated, timid echo in the voice of the Jew Kristianpoller: “Long live our new army!”

Instantly, no sooner were the words out of his mouth, than Nathan Kristianpoller was mightily afraid. And he hastened behind the bar, pushed open the little wooden door which led into the yard, called to the servant Fedya, and ordered him to fetch two barrels of spirits from the cellar. Meanwhile, in the parlour a general fraternizing was taking place. First singly, then in small groups, the men left their places and, with rapidly increasing courage and confidence, approached the colonel’s table, where each one separately drank his health. Tarabas felt increasingly happy and at home. Still more than the spirits, the respectful friendship of the officers warmed him; vanity warmed his heart.

“Listen, my dear chap,” he was soon saying indiscriminately to this and that one.

And soon the tables were pushed together. Panting and with perspiring faces Kristianpoller and Fedya came with the brandy kegs. A while later the white and fiery fluid was pouring into roomy, gleaming wineglasses, thirty-six in number, waiting on the bar counter. The moment one was filled, it passed from hand to hand like a bucket at a fire. As though they were a company of firemen, the officers lined up in a chain from Kristianpoller’s counter to the table at which the terrible Tarabas sat, handing the fresh-filled glasses to each other. One after another was handed down the row — and they were of goodly size.

At a sign from Major Kulubeitis, they raised their glasses all together and roared out an unearthly “Hurrah!” which quite undid the Jew Kristianpoller, but rejoiced the servant Fedya so much that he burst out into a peal of laughter. He laughed so hard that he could not stand up straight, it shook him so. And he beat his plump thighs with his clumsy hands. This foolish laughter, so far from offending the gentlemen, as Kristianpoller had begun to fear, did the reverse; the good-humoured officers caught its contagion, and now everyone laughed with Fedya, touched glasses, guffawed, shook, roared and coughed with merriment. Suddenly a merciless hilarity had them in its toils; they were bound and delivered, given up to their own laughter. Yes, and Tarabas, the man of might, amidst the wild unabating gaiety, beckoned the laughing Fedya to him and ordered him to dance. And so that music might not be lacking, Tarabas had one of his men called in, one Kaleyczuk, an admirable manipulator of the accordion. He took up his position with his chest well out and his instrument across it, and began to play. He struck up the celebrated Cossack dance, for he had immediately recognized a brother-Cossack in Fedya. And at once, caught heart and feet by the music of the accordion, Fedya danced. The chain formed by the officers closed now into a ring, in the centre of which Fedya hopped and Kaleyczuk accompanied him with a will. Willingly, even blissfully, Fedya had embarked upon the dance. But gradually, under the spell of the music, which imposed its will upon him and which he yielded to with a submission at once sweet and agonizing, gradually the smile froze upon his face and his open mouth refused to shut. Between his yellow teeth his tongue showed now and then, moving thirstily as though to lick the air the lungs were panting for in vain. He revolved on his own axis, then dropped and twirled round squatting, and rose again to perform a leap into the air, all as the rules of the Cossack dance prescribed. It was clear to see that he would have gladly stopped. Sometimes it seemed as though all the dancer’s strength was going out of him, had gone already, and that only the ardent, melancholy music still drove and animated him, and the rhythmic beat of the officers’ clapping hands, as they stood around him, drawn up like guardians of the rite.

Soon the musician Kaleyczuk himself was seized with a desire to set his feet in motion. His own music overwhelmed him so completely that, his agile fingers still uninterruptedly pressing the accordion keys, he too suddenly began to turn, to hop, to squat and dance towards the indefatigable Fedya. And lastly some of the officers left the circle and vied with the two dancers as best they could, whilst the others unceasingly pounded out the measure with their heavily booted feet and with their clapping hands.