Joseph Roth - Tarabas

“Dog,” Kontsev said, the death-rattle in his throat. “Son and grandson of a bitch!”

With the last gleam of consciousness vouchsafed him by approaching death Kontsev grasped the ignominious manner of his going. A peasant’s knife had gone into his throat. A despicable bandit had wielded it. Shame, bitterness, and hate distorted his features. He sank down, first upon his knees. Then his arms went out; they fell back to give him room. He had not strength enough to support himself upon his hands. He fell forward and lay at his full length, his face in the slime and litter of the road. The blood streamed out of his neck, it overflowed the collar of his tunic and soaked into the mud.

Over his corpse and over the corpse of the other soldiers the mob’s hobnailed boots trampled and stamped. Some bore self-inflicted wounds, others had been injured. But the sight of their own blood did not in the least appease them; it mounted to their heads even more potently than the other blood which they saw flowing round them. Just as the brief battle had not tired them, but on the contrary had only increased their blind urge to destroy. Out of their cavernously gaping mouths came, in a strange and regular, almost a strict rhythm, inhuman cries, in which sobs and wailing, triumph, grief, weeping and laughter, and the cries of wild beasts in heat and hunger, all were mingled.

One of the soldiers suddenly produced a torch. He had wound a table-cloth round his stick, smashed one of the street-lanterns, drenched the cloth with oil and set it alight. First he made passes with the torch over the heads of the crowd, then he put it first to one of the low, overhanging cottage roofs, then to another. They were shingle-roofs and very dry. Many now followed his example, and gradually the whole Koropta high street had begun to burn.

The licking flames dancing so gaily on the roofs to right and left all the way up and down the street delighted the mob so much that they almost forgot the Jews. True, they still dragged the poor captives with them. When these stumbled and fell to their knees, which they did continually, they were wrenched roughly up again, but they were no longer kicked about or beaten. Their captors even began to talk to them with heartening and pacifying words, and to draw their attention to the gruesome beauties of the night’s performance.

“Look, look at those little flames!” they said. “See this wound!” they said. “It hurts, I can tell you!” they said.

They had got used to the Jews, gradually. These had become, after the long-drawn torture they had been put through, an indispensable element in the triumphal procession. They could on no account be spared.

But the harmless words and gentle treatment frightened the Jews still more than blows and torments. They thought that the general mildness could be but a prelude to still more atrocious agonies to come. A peaceful hand moving towards their shoulders sent them cringing back as before a whip. They looked like a clump of madmen; they seemed to represent a special kind of stolid, feeble, anxious lunacy, amidst the dangerous and violent insanity of the others. They saw their houses burning; perhaps their wives and children, and their children’s children might be dead now; they would have gladly prayed, but they were afraid to utter the least sound. Why did their ancient God punish them so? For four long years He had heaped horror upon horror on the Jews of Koropta. The Tsar, the old Pharaoh, was dead; a new one had arisen in the eternal land of Egypt, yes, a perfectly new and very small, but most unnaturally cruel Egypt had replaced the old. Stifled sighs escaped their lips from time to time; they sounded like the hoarse and frightened crying of sea-gulls before a storm.

The guard on duty at the barracks had heard the shooting. So had the rest of Tarabas’s men, who had remained behind in Kristianpoller’s out-house. These awoke precipitately out of the drunken state into which alcohol, the miracle, the praying and the singing had put them. Fear seized upon them, fear of the trained soldier brought to book by his own soldier’s conscience, and dread of punishment at Tarabas’s terrible hands. Some of their weapons had gone with the deserters.

The soldiers in the out-house looked at each other silently, reproachfully, apprehensively; their eyes fell before each other’s eyes in consciousness of guilt. Now that their minds were cleared of the beclouding fumes they could recall each episode of this strange and dreadful day, but the evil spell which had been laid upon them remained inexplicable.

Innumerable candles still burnt and smoked before the Virgin’s image. But it had become invisible. It was as though it had gone away again, engulfed in the surrounding shadow.

“There’s hell let loose out there,” one of the soldiers began at last. “We’d best get back to barracks. We ought to let the old man know. Who’ll risk it?” There was no answer.

“Let’s all go together,” said another.

They put out the guttering candles with their fingers, and left the out-house. They saw the reflection of the fire, heard the commotion, broke into a run and set off for the barracks, giving the high street a wide berth. When they arrived, the regiment was drawn up in readiness to march. Tarabas was just about to mount his horse.

“Fall in, quick!” he shouted to them.

They ran inside, looked for and found a few forgotten carbines, and pushed their way into the column wherever they could find a place.

A few of the officers, not all, were on their feet again. The usual commands were given. The depleted regiment marched towards the town, Tarabas on horseback at its head, as prescribed, with drawn sword. They made straight for the high street.

The mighty Colonel Tarabas, twenty paces in advance of his first platoon, red in the light of the flames, was so terrible to see that the whole crazy mob was stricken dumb.

“Back!” thundered Tarabas.

And obediently they all began to back, still facing him. But suddenly they turned, as though the realization had come to them in a flash that walking backwards they could never hope to escape the awful Tarabas in time, or the innumerable fixed bayonets behind him, glinting in the firelight. They scattered headlong, running for their lives.

They left the Jews behind; they had forgotten them. The abandoned captives stood there huddled close against each other, like a black, glued-together bundle in the middle of the street. They sensed that rescue had arrived, but knew as well that it had come too late. They were lost, utterly and for all time. They did not move. Now let the rescuers trample and stamp them down to the end. Death and a mortal chill were in their hearts. They had ceased to feel even their physical hurts. Along the board sidewalks, where the fire had already taken foothold here and there, stood women and children with their burning houses behind them. They screamed no more. Even the children had done with crying.

“Out of the street!” commanded Tarabas. And before him the compact swarm of Jews dispersed to right and left; and the wooden planks echoed to the sound of the women’s and children’s fleeing footsteps.

The street cleared, the soldiers now began to salvage what they could out of the houses. They tried as best they could to quench the fires. But there was lack of water and containers. It was a hopeless undertaking. They threw coats, stones, mud upon the flames; not looking what it was they seized, they brought bedclothes and tables, candlesticks, lamps and pots, racks, cradles, bread and every kind of foodstuffs, household utensils of all species, out of the houses. The smouldering places on the sidewalks they trod out with their boots. What they could not extinguish they left to burn; they tried to wrench the burning roof-tiles loose with bayonet, sword, and rifle-butt; they tried to batter down the burning walls, and stamp the fire out of flaming bed-clothes.