Joseph Roth - Tarabas

“He’s a damned revolutionist!”

“Yes, yes,” repeated Shemariah, while he was being shaken to and fro, backwards and forwards, and each separate hair upon his face felt like an open, yawning wound. He wanted to repudiate his son; he wanted to tell how his son himself had repudiated his father. But how to speak? But even if the mighty one had not been shaking him so painfully and dreadfully, Shemariah could not have made his story clear in the language of the Christians, which it was all that he could do to understand, and hardly spoke at all. His heart was fluttering wildly; he felt it inside his chest like an intolerably heavy weight that did not, however, hang still but flew madly about. His breath gave out, his mouth fell open, his tongue lolled out; he was panting for air, and as he drew it in and sent it out at once in shallow gasps, shrill, croaking little sighs burst out of him. His whole face pained him, as though ten thousand white-hot needles were being stuck into it.

“Let me die!” he tried to say, but could not.

Through the film that clouded his eyes he could see the face of his tormentor, now enormous, like a huge disk, now tiny as a hazel-nut, and both within the space of a single second. At last he uttered a shrill, ear-splitting scream, torn from the depths of his being. Some soldiers came running up. They saw Shemariah fall to the ground unconscious, and Colonel Tarabas stand over him a while with a lost air. In either hand he held a clump of red beard, and he was smiling. His eyes looked out into a vague distance, and at last he thrust his hands into his pockets, turned round, and went away.

TOWARDS six o’clock Colonel Tarabas woke up. He looked through the uncurtained window and saw that the stars were out. He thought it must be very late. He realized that he was in a strange room, and remembered then that he had come home in the afternoon, come back to the inn, and that the servant Fedya had given him another room because the dead sergeant-major Kontsev had lain in his old one. And it came back to Tarabas that at twelve o’clock midday they were to have buried Kontsev and the others. It was the late grandfather’s room that he was to have had, therefore this must be it, the room in which the grandfather of the Jew Kristianpoller had lived, and in which he had probably also died.

It was not dark. The objects in the room were all clearly distinguishable in the blue shimmer of the night. Tarabas sat up. He noticed that he was lying on the bed in his boots and coat, and with his belt and shoulder-straps still on. He looked about the room. He saw a heating-stove, a chest of drawers, a mirror, a cupboard, bare white-washed walls. One picture only hung on the wall to the left of the bed. Tarabas got up, the closer to examine it. It portrayed a broad face surrounded by a fan-like beard. The colonel took a step back. He put his hands into his pockets to get his match-box. They met something hairy and sticky.

He withdrew them instantly. Candle and matches were on the night-table beside the bed. Tarabas lit the candle. He lifted it up to the picture and read the inscription. It said: “Moses Montefiore.”

It was a cheap photo-engraving; in hundreds of copies it may be seen in many Jewish homes in the eastern European countries.

The name conveyed nothing to Tarabas. But the beard upset him extraordinarily. He put his hands into his pockets once again and brought out two sticky, matted bunches of red human hair. He threw them on the floor with loathing, then bent down at once and picked them up again. He regarded them a while on his open palm, and put them back into his pockets. This done, he lifted up the candle again and held it close up to the picture, studying the face of Montefiore feature by feature. The picture hung behind glass in a thin, black frame. On his head Montefiore wore a little round skull-cap, precisely like the inn-keeper Kristianpoller. The broad, white face fringed with the fan of thick white hair, reminded one of a benign moon shining through soft clouds on a summer night. The dark and heavy-lidded eyes were fixed upon some definite but unknown distance.

Tarabas put the candle down again upon the night-table, and began to walk up and down the room. He avoided looking at the picture again. But soon he felt distinctly that this Montefiore, whoever he might be, was watching him attentively from the wall. He took the picture down from its nail, turned it round and put it on the chest-of-drawers with its face to the wall. The back of the frame consisted of a thin bare sheet of wood, kept in place at the corners by little nails.

Now Tarabas believed that he could go on walking up and down in peace. But he was mistaken. True, he had turned Montefiore’s eyes away, but in his stead there came the red-haired man whose beard he still had in his pockets; there he was in the room as large as life, and as surely as Tarabas himself was there. Tarabas heard again the little, piping cries which the Jew uttered as he was being shaken to and fro, and then the last shrill scream.

Once more Tarabas pulled the matted bunch of hair out of his pocket. He stood looking at it for a long time with dull eyes.

Suddenly he said: “She was right!

“She was right,” he repeated — and resumed his pacing up and down the room. “She was right — I am a murderer.”

It seemed to him in that moment as though he had shouldered an infinitely heavy burden, but as though at the same time he had been delivered of another, unspeakably more oppressive still. His state was that of a man who, with a load at his feet which he has been condemned countless years ago to lift, knows that he has become laden with it at last, but without conscious action on his own part — as though it had put itself alive upon his back. He bent beneath its weight. He took the candle in his hand. And as though the door of the room were not high enough to let him through with his new load, he put down his head to clear it as he went. He descended the narrow, creaking stairs, carefully lighting every step. From the parlour the voices of his fellow-officers came towards him. He entered with the lighted candle in his hand. He put it down on the bar-counter. The clock showed seven. He realized that it was only seven o’clock in the evening. He greeted the officers shortly. They had gathered there for supper. To Fedya he said in a low voice:

“I want to go down into the cellar to Kristianpoller.”

They went down into the cellar. On the last step Tarabas called out: “It’s I — Tarabas!”

Kristianpoller prised up the flagstone with the point of the iron bar; Fedya pulled it open by the hook.

“Yes, Your Excellency,” said Kristianpoller.

“I want to talk to you,” said Tarabas. “We can stay here. Send Fedya away.”

When they were alone, Tarabas began.

“Who is that Moses Montefiore of yours?”

“That,” answered Kristianpoller, “was a Jew in England. He was the first Jewish mayor of London. When he was invited to dinner with the Queen, they used to cook a special meal for him, just for himself, prepared according to the laws of the Jewish religion. He was a great scholar and a pious Jew.”

“Look here,” said Tarabas, and pulled the red bunch of beard out of his pocket. “Look here, Kristianpoller, and don’t misunderstand me. I hurt a Jew yesterday — very badly.”

“Yes, I know, Your Excellency,” replied Kristianpoller. “There are a good many here who know my hiding-place. And the Jews come out of their houses just the same. One of them has been here. He told me about it. You pulled Shemariah’s beard out.”

“I’ll send one of my men with you,” said Tarabas. “Go and bring that Shemariah to me. I’ll wait here till you get back.”