Joseph Roth - Tarabas

Now Tarabas, faced with the task of chopping wood for the first time in his life, set about it so unskilfully that the horse-dealer’s suspicions were redoubled.

“Listen here,” he said, and grasped Tarabas by a button of his coat. “By the looks of it, you’ve never done any work before?”

Tarabas nodded.

“You’re a convict or a criminal of some kind, eh? And you think I’m going to leave you alone in my yard? So that you can take a good look round, and come back in the night and rob me? You can’t fool me, my man, and I’m not afraid of you either. I was in the trenches three years — I was in eight big drives. Do you know what that means, eh?”

Tarabas only nodded.

The horse-dealer took away the axe and saw, and said: “Be off now, before I hand you over to the police. And don’t let me see your face round here again.”

“God be with you, sir!” said Tarabas, and went slowly out of the yard.

The horse-dealer looked after him. He was warm and cosy in his beaver coat. He felt the frost in his ruddy face as no more than a pleasant device of heaven — perhaps designed for that special purpose — to encourage a good appetite in house-owners and horse-dealers. Besides, it pleased him that he had had the cleverness to see through that suspicious fellow so promptly, and put the fear of God into him with his strong right hand. In addition to which he had been given the opportunity to mention his eight big drives once again. And finally it occurred to him that the tramp had asked for no wages. He would most likely have been satisfied with a bowl of soup in payment of his work. These considerations had a softening effect upon the horse-dealer. And he called Tarabas back before he had reached the outside gate.

“I’ll give you another trial,” he said, “because I’ve got a kind heart. How much do you want for your work?”

“I’ll be content with anything you give me,” Tarabas repeated.

He began to saw the trunk which he had laid with such evidently unpractised hands upon the stand before. He worked diligently, under his employer’s eye, and as he worked he felt the strength increasing in his muscles. He was in haste to be done, so that he might get away from the horse-dealer’s mistrustful eyes. But the man was coming to like Tarabas more and more. He was also not a little afraid of the stranger’s undeniably great strength. Also one could admit to a certain curiosity when one found oneself confronted with so remarkable a man. Therefore the master of the house said: “Come inside; you’d better have a drink to warm you up a bit!”

For the first time since many a long day Tarabas drank a glass of spirits. It was a good, strong liquor, clean and clear, greenly tinged and bitterly spiced with many different herbs which could be seen swimming about in the bottom of the massive, wide-bellied bottle like seaweed in an aquarium. They were good, reliable household health-herbs, such as Tarabas’s old father used to mix with the liquor at home. It burnt, a brief, quick fire in the throat, immediately extinguished, to change into a comforting and spacious warmth lower down. It went into the limbs, then to the head.

Tarabas stood there, the little glass in one hand, his cap in the other. His eyes betrayed such appreciation and contentment that his host, at once flattered and stirred to pity, poured him out another. Tarabas tossed it off at a single draught. His limbs grew limp, his mind confused. He wished he might sit down, but did not dare. Suddenly he was conscious of hunger, an immense hunger; it seemed to him that he could feel with his hands the absolutely void, immeasurable cavern of his stomach. His heart contracted. His mouth gaped open. For an instant which seemed to him eternity, he groped in emptiness with both his hands, caught at a chair-back and fell with a great noise to the ground, while the frightened horse-dealer uselessly and helplessly rushed to the door and tore it open. The horse-dealer’s wife flew in from the next room. They threw a pail of water over Tarabas. He woke, rose slowly, went over to the stove, wrung the water out of his coat and cap without a word, said then: “God’s blessing be on you!” and left the house.

For the first time the lightning of disease had struck him. And already he felt the first touch of death.

THIS year the wanderers on the highroads were impatient for the spring. It was a hard winter. It could last a long while yet, before it decided to go from the land. It had struck a hundred thousand fine, inextricably branching roots of ice into the ground everywhere. Deep underneath the earth and high over it the winter had had its dwelling. The seed was dead below, the grass and bushes dead above the ground. Even the sap in the trees at the edge of the roads and in the forests seemed to be petrified for ever. Very slowly the snow began to melt in the ploughland and the meadows, and then only in the short midday hours. But in the dark depths, in the ditches along the roadside, it still lay clear and stiff over a thick crust of ice.

It was the middle of March, and icicles were still hanging from the roofs; they melted for an hour in the brightness of the noonday sunshine. In the afternoon, when the dusk fell again, they congealed to spears once more, immovable, sharp, and brilliant. Upon the floor of the forests everything was still asleep. And in the crests of the trees no bird’s voice was to be heard. The sky abode immaculate in icy cobalt-blue. The birds of spring would not venture into that dead clarity.

The new laws of the new state were no less inimical to the wanderers than was the winter. In a new state order must reign. It must not be said of it that it is barbarian, still less a “musical comedy” affair. The statesmen of the new country have studied laws and legislation at ancient universities. The new engineers have studied at the old schools of technology. And the newest noiseless, dependable, precise machines are coming on silent, dangerous wheels into the new country. Civilization’s most dangerous beasts of prey, the great rolls of paper on which the daily press is printed, glide into the new great presses, unroll themselves independently of human agency, cover themselves with politics and art and science and literature, arrange themselves in columns, fold themselves, and flutter out into the little towns and villages. They fly into houses, cottages, and huts. And thus the newest state has reached completion. Upon its highways there are more gendarmes than tramps. Every beggar must possess a paper, for all the world as though he were a person owning money. And whoever does own money takes it to the banks. In the capital there is a stock exchange.

Tarabas was waiting for the twenty-first of March, when he would go into the capital. That was the date which General Lakubeit had set for him. Tarabas still had five days’ time. He remembered his last talk with Lakubeit. The little man had not had much time to spare. He urged Tarabas to be as quick with his story as he could.

“I understand! I understand!” he had said. “Just go on, and tell me everything.” And when Tarabas had told it all, Lakubeit said: “Good. Nobody shall know anything about you. Not even your father. You can try until the twentieth of March next year, and see whether you can stand that life. Then write to me. From the twenty-first of March on,” Lakubeit had said, “I shall see that you receive your pension monthly.”

“Good-bye,” Tarabas had said. And without waiting for an answer, ignoring Lakubeit’s outstretched hand, he had gone away. That was more than four months ago! Sometimes Tarabas longed to meet somebody who had known him in the past and would recognize him again in spite of everything. Surely there could hardly be a more voluptuous manner of humiliating oneself than that! In his sinful moments, that is, in the moments which he called sinful, Tarabas would look back over the short but eventful way upon which he had acquired the distinctions and insignia of poverty with the self-admiration with which others, who have attained to fame or riches after poor or obscure beginnings, are wont to look back on their “career.” Nor could he quite overcome a certain vanity concerning his appearance. Sometimes he would stand before his own reflection in a shop window, and look at himself with grim and spiteful satisfaction. Immersed in contemplation of his image, he would stand there until he had resumed before his mind’s eye his appearance of the past, his uniform, his tall boots. And then he would find bitter joy in pulling it to pieces, bit by bit; watching the shaven, powdered cheeks cover themselves with the unkempt beard, observing how the upright back bent over in a gentle curve.