Joseph Roth - Tarabas

And as in the old days the Jew Kristianpoller had the portly little kegs brought from the cellar and set out, not only in the yard, but some outside before the open door to encourage all who came to slake a thirst already keen enough. A great and pious gratitude filled Kristianpoller. God, the Inscrutable, had covered the world with war and devastation; but meantime He had suffered hops and malt to flourish in abundance, and out of these came beer, and beer was what the innkeeper must live by. And for all that so many men had fallen in the war, yet the peasants, thirsty and solid drinkers, increased and multiplied, themselves as plentiful as malt and hops. Oh, divine grace! Oh, lovely peace!

But whilst the godly Kristianpoller marvelled and gave praise, already the disaster was afoot, the great and bloody disaster of Koropta, and with it the dire aberration of the mighty Nicholas Tarabas.

COLONEL TARABAS’S followers who had been left behind in the out-house in Kristianpoller’s yard received the deserters with feigned pleasure. Immediately they sent news to Kontsev at the barracks that the drunken men had walked unawares into a fresh imprisonment. As for Colonel Tarabas, he had been sitting long together with the officers in the barracks mess, “to forget that it was Friday,” and to forget the other agitations of this strange day as well. Sergeant-Major Kontsev brought him the report which he had just received, but Colonel Tarabas was no longer able to hear everything.

Meanwhile, evening was coming on, a Friday evening. And the Jews of Koropta were beginning, as usual, to make their preparations against the Sabbath. Kristianpoller likewise. As he moved about the kitchen where he had slept since the departure of his family, spreading a cloth upon the table and setting out the candlesticks, he thought about his wife and children, and a kind of hope that they might soon come home again stole back into his heart.

The pig-market was a certain sign that peace had re turned, lasting peace. If those new bank-notes of the new country, with which the peasants had paid, were worth real gold like the good rubles of the past, the day’s takings had been wonderful, just like the days before the war. Kristianpoller began to take the notes which lay all crumpled in his till, and order them, smooth them out and put them away in the numerous compartments of his two fat leather bags. On the rack close above his head appeared now, as it had done on every other day, the gold reflection of the autumn sun, preparing to go down to its usual serene setting.

Outside in the street and in the yard the peasants were getting ready for the journey home. They had bought kerchiefs, corals, sickles, and hats. They had drunk much and were in high good-humour. They all donned the new hats over the old ones, the handkerchiefs they wore like scarves, the money for the pigs they had sold they carried in bags of unbleached linen round their necks. They were cheerful and tired, pleased with themselves and with the well-spent day. Cocks crowed peacefully, and in the chaff that strewed the road, good-tempered hens and ducks and geese hunted for some delicacy of the fair. Even the dogs which had been let off their chains ran about among them without barking or threatening their weaker brethren with harm.

Nathan Kristianpoller opened his whole heart to the whole blessed peace of this declining earthly Friday which seemed to yearn towards the divine and holy Sabbath. Tomorrow evening, he thought, he would write a letter to his wife in Kyrbitki, and tell her he would like her to come home. “My darling wife,” he would say, “with the help of God we are now delivered from the war, and peace has been given back to us. Unfortunately we still have soldiers billeted on us, but the colonel is not as dangerous as he looks; in fact, when one thinks what a very high officer he is, he is not altogether savage. I think he is not a bad man at all, and is even a God-fearing one, I believe …”

Still inwardly composing his letter, Kristianpoller cut his nails with his pocket-knife in honour of the approaching Sabbath, and kept his eyes upon the street to see whether or no more customers were on the way. Suddenly his blood ran cold. He listened. Six pistol shots — ah, how well he could distinguish between those and the report of guns! — were fired in succession in his yard. All peaceful sounds died instantly — the quacking and cackling of the feathered folk, the cheerful voices of the peasants, the whinnying of their little horses, the laughter of their women. Through the window Kristianpoller saw their mouths gape open and their hands go up to cross themselves. In a moment they had all got down from the carts where they had already taken their places, ready to drive away. As though the sudden shots had hit the day as well, the light seemed to go now very fast. The glazier Nuchim’s little room facing the bar across the street was already in pitch darkness, although the windows stood wide open. Only the white table-cloth shone out silverly, spread for the Sabbath.

A presentiment of evil prompted Kristianpoller to leave his inn for the present, and by way of the window. He climbed out on to the street and slipped across the way to the tumbledown blue cottage of the glazier.

“They’re shooting in my yard!” he said hastily. “Don’t light your candles. Bolt your door!”

And so they were, shooting in Kristianpoller’s outhouse. Colonel Tarabas’s own men, harmlessly confident of their own superiority, and in momentary expectation of their Sergeant-Major Kontsev, had begun to go on drinking in company with the deserters from the barracks, whereupon sleep and fatigue and even indifference soon overcame them. Gradually the false camaraderie with which the old guard had baited the deserters gave place to a temporary and ungenuine, but nevertheless emotional friendliness. On both sides a great many false but burning tears were shed. In a word, they were all very drunk.

“Let’s try a bit of shooting just to see if we can still hit anything,” said the cleverest of the deserting band, one Ramzin.

“Splendid!” said the others.

“First let’s draw some decent targets,” said Ramzin. And he pulled a piece of chalk out of his trousers pocket, and set to work to draw all manner of large and smaller figures on the dark-blue distempered wall. This Ramzin was a skilful fellow. He had always been good at every kind of trick, including conjuring and sleight-of-hand. His tall, gaunt figure, the black eyes in his sallow face, his long and crooked nose with a list to one side, the raven-black mane of hair which, not without vanity, he allowed to fall in disorder over his forehead, and his long, bony hands with the slightly bent fingers, had long since given rise to the suspicion in his comrades’ minds that he could not be really one of them. Some had known him two years and more, and had seen service with him. He had never told any of them which government or province he belonged to. And all at once, most of them having taken him for a Ukrainian, he seemed to belong just here, in this brand-new country. Its language seemed to be his mother-tongue. He spoke it fluently and with raciness.

He was an adept with his chalk, they all agreed — his drawings were masterly in their eyes. They had ceased to feel tired. They crowded in a dense clump behind Ramzin, standing on tip-toe to follow the agile movements of his hand. Against the deep blue background of the wall Ramzin evoked snow-white kittens chasing mice, raging, greedy dogs which likewise filled the mice with terror, men having at the dogs with sticks. Below these in another row Ramzin began to draw three women, unmistakably in the act of taking off their clothes. To the onlookers Ramzin’s hand, somewhat lustful and certainly impatient as it was, seemed with extreme dexterity to divest the bodies of their garments in the very moment of clothing them; he stripped the women in the same second as he created them, and this proceeding excited and embarrassed the audience in equal measure. They were all at once completely sober. But another and far more potent intoxication now possessed them. Each one wished that Ramzin would stop, or change the subject of his pictures, but at the same time and just as ardently they wished him to continue. They were in a turmoil of fear and shame, intoxication and expectancy. Their eyes, before which all the pictures now and then hung blurred, looked again in the next instant and saw in sharp and torturing distinctness the shadows and lines of the bodies, the nipples on the breasts, the tender firmness of the thighs, and the delicate fragility of the slim and charming ankles. With scarlet faces, and in order to overcome the uneasiness whose helpless slaves they were, the men began to utter witless, meaningless, and shameless cries. Some whistled piercingly, others burst out into loud neighing laughter. Now upon the wall on which Ramzin was completing his infernal task, fell the farewell glory of the sunset. The wall was burnished gold and azure, and in the golden blue the chalk-white figures seemed to be carved, not sketched. Ramzin stepped back. He suddenly stopped short in the midst of filling his third row with German soldiers of different corps, soldiers of the Red Army, and every kind of symbol such as sickle and hammer, eagle, double-headed eagle, and the like. He hurled the chalk against the wall. It smashed and fell in many fragments to the floor. Ramzin turned round. Next to him stood the Ukrainian Kolohin, one of Tarabas’s own men. Ramzin pulled the pistol out of the other’s belt.