Joseph Roth - Tarabas

While the peasants thus approached from every side at once, so that no less than six processions converged at Kristianpoller’s inn at the same moment; and while the Jews in the few darkened houses sat longing for the delivering night to come, Tarabas sat together with his officers in the inn parlour, the servant Fedya waiting on them in his master’s stead. Kristianpoller had gone into hiding.

But the pious peasants cherished no thoughts of vengeance and violence today. They had taken the admonitions of their priests to heart. Gently their ardour flowed towards the miracle, like a full stream between dikes. Services were held, several in close succession, one for each group of pilgrims. An improvised altar had been set up. The out-house recalled one of those chapels, roughly and hastily erected hardly three hundred years before by the first missionaries to that land. For three hundred years this people had been receiving Christian baptism. And yet at the end of a day’s gay pig-market, and after a few rounds of beer, and at the sight of a lame Jew, the ancient heathen woke in all of them.

Things were not left wholly to the priests today; soldiers patrolled the street and all the lanes of Koropta. Amongst the officers in Kristianpoller’s parlour excitement reigned. For the first time since Tarabas had taken over his command, they were daring to say in his presence what they thought. Undeterred by his presence there, drinking his accustomed spirits, wrapped in fierce gloom, and silent, they shouted and laughed noisily, quarrelled and argued; some were expounding various theories about the new state, the army, and revolution, about religion, peasants, superstition, and Jews. They seemed neither to fear nor to respect him, all at once. It was as though the miracle in Kristianpoller’s out-house and the Koropta fire had deprived Colonel Tarabas of dignity and power.

The officers of the new regiment had come, like the men, from all sections of the former army and the front. They were Russians, Finns, Balts, Ukrainians, Crimeans, Caucasians, and others. Accident and need had swept them hither. They were soldiers, proper mercenaries, taking service where they found it. All that they wanted was to go on being soldiers, no matter where. Without a uniform, without an army, they could not live. And they needed, like all their kind no matter where, a commanding officer without a weakness and without a fault, a visible weakness, that is, and a visible fault. But yesterday Tarabas had quarrelled with them; there had even been a fight. And they had seen him drunk and senseless. They did not doubt that in a few days he would be deposed. Moreover each one of them believed that he himself was far more capable than Tarabas or any other, to form a regiment and to be its leader.

The silent Tarabas was well aware of what the officers were thinking. Suddenly it seemed to him that until then his progress had been due only to luck, and to no merit at all. He had exploited the accident of his relationship to the War Minister, yes, more than that, he had abused it. He had never really been a hero. If he had shown courage, it was because his life was worthless. He had been a good soldier in the war only because he had wanted to die, and because in war death is nearer than elsewhere. You have been leading a wasted, ruined life, Tarabas, these many years. It began in your third term as a student. You have never known what was right for you. Home, Katharina, New York, father and mother, Maria, the army and the war, all lost! You were not even able to die, Tarabas! But you let many others die; and many died by your own hand. With pomp and in a masquerade of power you go about the world, but they have seen through you. The first to do so was General Lakubeit, then came the Jew Kristianpoller, and now the officers. And Kontsev, the only one that still believed in you, is dead.

So spoke Tarabas to himself. And soon it seemed to him that there were two Tarabases. Of these one stood by the table in a shabby, ash-grey coat; the mighty Tarabas sat at the table, armed, in uniform with all his medal-ribbons, booted and spurred. But the seated Tarabas was growing less and less, while the poor one on his feet in front of him and so humbly clad held his head high, and grew and grew.

Colonel Tarabas had ceased to listen to the conversation of the officers around him, so wholly did this poverty-stricken, proud image of himself preoccupy him. Suddenly he thought it seemed to be advising him to go upstairs to the dead Kontsev. He stumbled out of the room. He went upstairs, clinging to the banister. It was a long time before he reached the top. Then he went and stood beside the bed. He sent away the two soldiers who were keeping the dead-watch. Four great wax candles, two at the head and two at the feet, cast an unsteady, flickering, golden shine. There was a stuffy, sweetish smell in the room. A few drops of wax had fallen on Kontsev’s shoulder. Tarabas scratched them off with his fingernail, and rubbed his sleeve over the dead man’s tunic, brushing the last traces of the wax away. “Pray,” came into his mind. Mechanically he recited one Our Father after another.

He opened the door, called the soldiers back, and went clumsily down the stairs again.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “you are aware that the burial is to be tomorrow. At midday. Sergeant-Major Kontsev and the others.”

It seemed to Colonel Tarabas that this announcement to his officers was one of the last that he would ever make, as though it were the hour of his own funeral that he had just informed them of.

He did not leave his table all that night. Something told him that he must wait there for the other Tarabas.

“He probably won’t come again,” said Tarabas to himself. “He won’t have any more to do with me.”

And he fell asleep, lying across the table with his head upon his folded arms.

A BLUE and silver Sunday morning, humming golden bells and the choir of worshipping peasants still in the out-house, woke Colonel Tarabas. He got up immediately. Fedya was there already with the steaming tea, but Tarabas drank but a mouthful or two, impatiently. He was quite wide-awake and clear in his mind. He could remember everything that had taken place the day before. He recalled the conversation of each of the officers. And every word the other Tarabas had said to him stood distinctly in his memory. The other Tarabas was real; the colonel doubted this no longer. He went out into the high street. The soldiers were resting beside the ruins of the houses. They rose to their feet and saluted. A sergeant reported that the night had been quiet. Tarabas said: “Good, good, very good!” And went on.

The deep bells hummed, the peasants sang their hymns.

Tarabas thought about the burial of Kontsev and the others at midday. There was plenty of time; it was only nine o’clock.

There was not a soul to be seen in Koropta, not a single Jew. Not a sound from the few houses the fire had left them, now bolted and shuttered with blind windows.

“Perhaps they’re all suffocated!” thought Tarabas. Let them be suffocated, it was immaterial to him.

“It can’t be immaterial to you,” said the other Tarabas, however.

The colonel answered: “Yes, it is. I hate them.”

Suddenly something black, suspicious, emerged from one of the little houses. It vanished round a corner.

Tarabas might have fancied it; he went calmly on his way.

But as he turned the next corner into a side street, a perfectly terrifying apparition ran straight into his arms.

It was a radiant Sunday morning. The golden echo of the bells still swung in the soft breeze. The peasants were leaving the church upon the hill-top; the women’s bright kerchiefs shone out in many colours. It looked as though the whole hill were moving down towards the town, its slopes a mass of huge and brilliant flowers. A gentle wind wafted the last notes of the organ into the sky. The Sunday with the fading music of the organ and the bells seemed one with sky and earth and all that moved between them. Like the impious symbols of an impious revolt against the laws of peaceful nature, the razed places and the still smoking ruins in the town showed black against the rest, a violation of this Sunday mood. The sunshine flooded the hill that rose to the south-west of the little town. The moving flowers seemed to crowd into an ever-denser carpet as the peasant women descended the slope. The yellow church floated in a sea of sunlight. And upon its little tower glittered the cross, gay and serene and holy, like an exalted toy.