Joseph Roth - Tarabas

“I’ve been meaning to go and see my people,” he lied.

General Lakubeit seemed not to hear this remark.

“I knew you,” said Lakubeit, “when you were still a lad. I’ve often visited your father. And then you were mixed up in that St. Petersburg affair. You recollect. It cost enormous trouble — and money, an enormous lot of money too. After that you went to America. Then there was the episode with that bar-keeper you had a fight with. …”

“The bar-keeper?” said Tarabas.

How long it was since he had thought about that man, and about Katharina. Now he saw them all again, Katharina, the café-owner’s immense red maw, his cousin Maria, the heavy silver cross between her breasts, the large glass globe and the gipsy’s face beyond it.

“In New York,” Tarabas began suddenly, and it was as though somebody else were telling it, some other speaking through his mouth, “at an amusement park in New York a gipsy told my fortune; she said that I would be a murderer and a saint. … I believe the first part of that prophecy …”

“Colonel Tarabas,” said little Lakubeit, holding his thin claw up to his face with the fingers far apart, “the first part of that prophecy has not yet been fulfilled. You did not kill that man in New York. He’s not alive, however. He joined up in the war and was killed. At Ypres, to be exact. That affair gave us a lot of trouble, too. Justice, you know — if you’ll allow me to digress a moment — does not let wars interfere with it. You were kept track of. There would have been a nice degradation in store for you if you had done for the good man that time. And by the by, the young man I’m sending down here to you looked after that matter for you. You’ve something to thank him for, I assure you! Your father was in a state!”

It was very quiet. Lakubeit’s monotonous voice moved like a breeze, a gentle one, blowing towards Colonel Tarabas. A gentle, stubborn, inescapable breeze. It, too, was wholly familiar, and disagreeable at the same time. It rose out of wholly familiar, disagreeable, long-forgotten years.

“And my cousin Maria?” asked Tarabas.

“She is married,” said Lakubeit. “She’s married to a German officer. It seems she fell in love with him.”

“I was in love with her too,” said Tarabas.

There was no sound after that. Lakubeit folded his hands. His fingers thrust through each other made a bony fence across the table with the neat piles of documents behind it.

But Colonel Tarabas let his hands lie limp and loose upon his thighs. He felt that he could lift neither his hands from his legs nor his feet from the floor. Maria had fallen in love with a foreign officer. The mighty Tarabas had been betrayed! Another had wronged the terrible Tarabas, who until then had only wronged and done violence to others. Poor Tarabas was the victim of great and bitter wrong. It mitigated somewhat his own violence; it was, therefore, when all is said and done, a kindly wrong. It is atonement, atonement, O Tarabas, thou man of violence!

“The chief thing,” General Lakubeit began, “the chief thing is for you to clean up this regiment of yours. You’ll have to throw out at least half of them. We shall require precise information as to the origins of every single one you keep. Colonel Tarabas, we’re building up a new army. It must be an army we can rely upon. The men from here, there, and everywhere that you can’t keep, we’ll deport them or lock them up, or hand them over to their various consuls. In short, we’ll get rid of them by some means or other. It doesn’t matter really how. Be sure and keep enough musicians. Music is important. And — all else being equal — keep as many as you can that can read and write. But give them all their full pay. Those you’re getting rid of, too. You’ll find it easier to get them to give up their arms if you see that they have plenty of beer tomorrow and the day after. Say it’s the general’s treat, if you like. — Well, that’s all, I think!” concluded Lakubeit, and rose.

In silence, as they had come, they drove to the station. It was evening. The station lay past Koropta to the west. The highroad went straight as an arrow towards the setting sun, which, seen above the yellow brick of the station, showed a sad flushed face beyond the smoke-clouds of the shunting engines. Its reflection hung in the immense and shiny black peak of the general’s cap. The elegant lieutenant on the back seat stared, stiff and silent, at this small reflection.

“Good luck!” said General Lakubeit, about to board the train. His dried-up little hand was strangely warm, a helpless bird in the mighty grip of mighty Tarabas. “Don’t forget the beer, and if you think the situation calls for vodka, let them have it,” Lakubeit added from the carriage window.

The train steamed out — and the mighty Tarabas was alone; alone, it seemed to him, as he had never been in all his life before.

THEREFORE he drank, on that disastrous day, far more than usual. He drank so much that the Jew Kristianpoller began to cast round in his mind for a means whereby he might dilute the spirits with a little water. Life had ceased to smile upon Kristianpoller, although he already knew that two chests of money for the officers and men had arrived late that afternoon. Two non-commissioned officers and six privates, all with carbines in their hands, had escorted the automobile. It was still standing in Kristianpoller’s yard. The chests were inside. A sentinel marched up and down outside the door. It was he who prevented the Jew from diluting the brandy.

Above the entrance to the out-house a lantern swung gently in the evening wind, shedding an oily, yellow gleam over the yard. One could hear from the parlour the sentinel’s measured, hob-nailed footsteps, and this although the officers were gathered at their tables in full force, as usual. But they did not talk, they whispered. For in their midst, as though upon an island of silence, immured within a wall of mute, transparent ice, sat Colonel Tarabas, alone at his own table. He was drinking.

The whole world had deserted Tarabas. It had forgotten him and spat him out. The war was over. Even the war had deserted him. There was no danger left to hope for. Tarabas felt betrayed by the peace. He could not understand this business of the regiment. His cousin Maria had betrayed him. His father and mother had not sent him their love. They betrayed him too. Forgotten, deserted, spat out and betrayed, was Colonel Tarabas.

The regiment that he had got together was good for nothing. He was aware of it himself. Tomorrow he would have to send half of them away — disarm and turn them off. He rose, already not quite steady on his feet. He went into the yard to his own men that he could trust.

He called for Kontsev, his oldest sergeant-major. Kontsev had been serving under Tarabas for three years now, and more.

“My dear fellow,” said Tarabas. “My dear fellow,” Tarabas repeated; he was not quite clear in his speech.

The huge form of Sergeant-Major Kontsev merged under the starry dome of the clear night, wanly lit by the yellow-gleaming lantern, and stood immobile before the colonel. “Come with me,” said Tarabas. And the colossus Kontsev set himself in motion. Seeing that Tarabas stumbled a little, he walked stooping, thus offering the colonel his shoulder for support. Tarabas flung his arm round Kontsev’s shoulder. He tried to bring the great bearded face close to his own; the smell of Kontsev’s moustache was pleasant to him, and the tobacco- and alcohol-laden breath, oh, the whole familiar odour of the proper soldier — the dampness which the woolly stuff of the uniform exuded, the earthiness of the heavy, cloddish hands, the leathernness of boots and straps. These scents could move Colonel Tarabas to tears. Already two scalding drops were stealing down his cheeks. Tarabas could not speak. He staggered, embracing with one arm the stooping, shortened giant Kontsev, into the farthest, darkest corner of the yard.