Joseph Roth - Tarabas

Towards eleven o’clock they lined up for the midday meal. The tin bowls clattered in a row, the hot, thick soup out of the cauldron splashed heavily from the cook’s huge ladle into them. Colonel Tarabas stood beside the field-kitchen. One after the other each man passed before him. He observed their faces closely. He was trying to discern which of these men were worth something, and which of them must be got rid of. Yes, Tarabas hoped to know men by their faces. Vain endeavour! But General Lakubeit could do it! To Colonel Tarabas all their faces looked stupid, cruel, treacherous, and sly that day. It was different in the war. In the war one saw at once exactly what a man was worth. None of these had red hair. None of them, unfortunately. That would have been a certain sign. Every red-haired man would have been eliminated by Colonel Tarabas, and in short order.

They were in great haste to be done with eating. Those who had spoons left them where they were inside their boots. They put the bowls to their mouths and gulped down the thick soup, sucked the meat off the bones, and hurled them wide over the barracks wall. All to arrive the sooner at the promised beer. Kontsev was the barman. Now, as the church clock began to strike noon and the sun’s heat had grown almost fierce, innumerable drinking vessels of the most various species appeared as if by magic; glasses, wooden, tin, and earthenware mugs, jugs and cans, brought in bundles and armfuls post-haste by soldiers, and set down carefully before the vats. At a gesture from Kontsev all the taps were turned. A loud rushing and foaming arose. And the faces of the soldiers, greedy though appeased, with the soupy traces of their dinner still in their beards, and their lips already moving with the water that gathered in their thirsty mouths, now lit up with a flame of almost sacred rapture. It made them all look alike, a regiment of brothers. In dense swarms they swept up to the barrels. A mighty drinking began. The vessels were not enough to go round, they had to be shared; their return was waited for impatiently, four, six hands to each mug held towards the richly, infinitely richly flowing taps. They drank beer. The white froth overflowed, soaked into the ground, hung in the corners of the mouths and in the moustaches of the men; their tongues came out and licked it off their beards, and the taste of it lingered on the palate, this extra gift of special grace which crowned the day of grace which was this festival. What a day!

Each with a tin jug filled to the brim with clear spirits, Kontsev and his five now began to push their way through the disorderly, surging crowd. They chose, changed their minds, picked out this one, then that one — without rhyme or reason, so it seemed to the men — and handed him a drink, then moved on with the grateful smile of the favoured one for thanks, and pursued by the inconsolable and disappointed gaze of the unfavoured. All those who had taken their great swallow of the vodka now felt their throats on fire, and must have more beer. But many a one, big and powerful as he was, fell instantly with a loud crash to the ground, struck by the white thunderbolt of the first draught. And it did not look as though he would ever rise again. Froth came out of the corners of his mouth, his lips were blue, the eyelids would not shut quite to, but showed the bluish edge of the eyeball, the face was distorted yet content, and filled with a cruel, stubborn joy. The men thus felled were then lifted high by two strong fellows and removed from the barracks. Four big lorries waited at the gate. One was already half full. The men had been disposed inside them carefully, one next to the other, as one might pack a box of monster tin soldiers. And they threw a kindly pall of canvas over the unconscious bodies.

It soon became apparent that Kontsev’s carefully thought-out arrangements had overlooked the immunity of some of these men’s constitutions. Some whom no beer nor spirits could affect profited by the general disorder to make their longed-for escape. Silent and stealthy so long as they were still within the precincts of the barracks, as soon as they were well away, they lifted up their voices in loud and drunken song and staggered down the by-paths to the little town which they had not seen for a long time, and for which they now felt seized with honest homesickness. Deep was the grudge they nourished against the frightful Tarabas ever since he had lured them into the barracks and laid his harsh yoke upon them there. Only his old guard lived a life worth living under him. And against these their resentment was almost greater than against the colonel. Once or twice the malcontents had tried to organize a general flight or open mutiny. The malcontents! Who was not that — except his own men whom Tarabas had brought with him to Koropta? Thither they had swarmed to join the army, but no sooner were their thirst and hunger stilled than they began to long again for freedom, for freedom, sweet sister of the bitter brother, hunger. Drilling for a new country which belonged to no one knew whom was silly, childish, and tiring. But every time the caged ones had a plan half formed it was infamously — and inexplicably — betrayed to Sergeant-Major Kontsev. The punishment was hideous. Many of the plotters were made to squat upon the narrow barracks wall for six hours at a stretch, watched by two men with guns primed to shoot, one inside and one outside the wall, with eyes and gun-barrel trained upon the culprit. Kontsev was past master in the art of inventing penalties and torments. With his own hands he would lash the outstretched arms of some to the rungs of a long ladder which the wretched victims had thus to carry round with them whilst they performed the various marching steps, or ran. Others again, carrying their carbines and full equipment, were made to race ten times without stopping and with a running start up the steep bank which had been raised at the farthest end of the barracks yard for use in shooting exercises. When these and similar chastisements had been experienced once or twice, there was an end of secret planning. But the resentment stayed within the mind and grew.

Now they were free at last. The first eight who had slipped out of the barracks were followed by others in groups, this time without any previous arrangement. It was as though the alcohol had sharpened the wits of those whom it had not knocked into insensibility. And though their bodies lost their equilibrium, their minds grew clear and steady. It was not long — certainly before Kontsev and his men could realize how many had escaped them — before the fugitives, thanks to the sure instinct with which the drunkard gropes his way to the right place, had reached the inn of Nathan Kristianpoller. They entered, in three or four groups; they broke in. That day the gate stood open. For the first time in a long while it was pig-market day in Koropta. The Jew Kristianpoller gave praise to God for His miracles. Great He was, though His ways defeated comprehension, very great in His inexplicable lovingkindness. Indeed no human reason could tell why on this day the pig-market should have suddenly taken place as in the good old days, and brought such joy to Kristianpoller’s heart. Yesterday not a soul so much as dreamt of it! But there you are — if it is the will of God that there should be a pig-market once again in Koropta, in the twinkling of an eye every peasant in the district knows it, and even the pigs themselves know it perhaps, who can tell?

When the first of the peasant guests, so long and sadly missed, appeared at the White Eagle, Kristianpoller had the boy Fedya throw open both wings of the double door, as in the bygone, happy days of years ago, before ever the threshold of that inn had been crossed by any armed man except the bland and friendly policeman of the town. Yes, when the first of the little country-folk arrived in the earliest morning, as casually and calmly as though they had been there the week before the same as ever, as though there had been no war, no revolution, and no new country, dressed in their familiar, acrid-smelling, whitish-yellow, buttonless sheepskins belted in with dark-blue linen girdles — when these good folk whom he had seen and known all his life appeared once more after their long absence, the Jew Kristianpoller forgot his sleepless night, his fears, the officers, his guests, and even Tarabas. It seemed to him that the returning peasants were the first sure sign that real peace had been restored at last. Kristianpoller, in joyful, pious haste, had not yet finished taking off his phylacteries and rolling them together, when the first peasant customers entered the parlour. With hurried obeisances the host now tried to take his leave of God to whom he had just been offering his devotions, and to include a greeting to the peasants in the same motions. How sweet and peaceful was the sharp odour of their sheepskin coats! How delightful the grunting of the fettered pigs lying on the straw-covered floor of the little carts outside. No doubt about it, those were the voices of true peace, the sweet and long-lost, now come back again. Peace had returned to earth and stopped at Kristianpoller’s inn to rest a while.