Joseph Roth - Tarabas

Nevertheless — as he went on board he bought all the newspapers within his reach at the last moment, to find out whether any of them contained a report about the murder by one Tarabas of the owner of a certain café. It was as though he expected to find a notice of an event which he alone had witnessed. More important seemed to him the ship, the cabin he would now inhabit, the strange passengers the ship would be carrying to their destinations as it would carry him to his, the war, and home. For he was going to the fields of home, to the bright trilling of the larks, the whisper of the crickets, the fragrance of potatoes roasting in the open, the birchen fence that bound his father’s house like a plaited silver ring; to his father whom he had thought cruel before but whom he longed now to see again. In two great grizzled halves his father’s moustache lay across his mouth, a mighty chain of harsh hair, many times daily combed and brushed, nature’s insignia of domestic omnipotence. The mother was gentle and blond. The father’s darlings had been the twelve-year-old Lusia, and Cousin Maria, the daughter of the uncle who had died young and very rich. Fifteen years of age she had been, pretty and quarrelsome, often at odds with Nicholas Tarabas. All these things were still far off and not yet visible, but he could feel them plainly, beyond the crests of the ocean’s dark-green waves, and farther still, where it arched towards the sky to become one with it.

In the newspapers there was nothing about a murdered café-owner. Tarabas threw them all together into the sea. Probably the man had not died. It had been nothing but a harmless brawl. In New York and in all the world there are thousands of such every day. Tarabas, watching the wind and water sweep the newspapers away, told himself that this was the end of America for good and all. A little later he remembered Katharina. He had been good to her, and she had meant home for him — and had lied to him but once. In that moment Tarabas was happy. (Happiness alone could waken generosity in him.) Let her see, he said to himself, what sort of man I am, and what she has lost in me. She’ll miss me and want me back again; perhaps, if what she said was true, she might go home to her sick father. But she shall grieve for me in either case! And he went in and wrote a line to Katharina. He expected her to stay faithful to him. He was sending money. And he did, in fact, send fifty rubles, the half of what the Embassy had given him for his passage.

Relieved, and with a faint sense of pride, he then applied himself to the diversions of life on board ship: he played cards with strangers, carried on meaningless conversations, cast frequent covetous glances towards the pretty women, and when he found himself talking to one of them he did not forget to mention that he was going to the war as a lieutenant in the Russian reserve. Here and there he thought he caught an answering look of admiration in the women’s eyes — and of promise. But he let it rest at that. The voyage agreed with him. His appetite was prodigious, his sleep excellent. He drank a great deal of whisky and brandy. One could manage both a great deal better at sea than on dry land.

Tanned, and filled with new strength, curious to see his country once again and eager for the war, Tarabas left the ship one morning at the port of Riga.

HE had to join up at Kherson where his regiment was being assembled. Two other young men left the ship together with him, soldiers, officers. He had not seen them during the voyage. Now he asked them whether they too were going to join their regiment. Yes, they said, they were on their way to the garrison in St. Petersburg; they themselves were, however, from Kiev. Once one was in the regiment, who knew whether there would be any home leave given. So they were going to see their people first, and would report for duty afterwards. They advised him to do likewise.

Tarabas saw the sense of their advice. The war had now acquired a family resemblance to death. Who could tell whether there would be any home leave, the two had said. In Tarabas’s room at home, in the closet, hung the uniform he loved, loved in much the same way as father, mother, sister, and the house where he was born. Thanks to his connexions and his money, old Tarabas had succeeded in an appeal to the Tsar, and procured a lieutenancy for his son — not more than a few months after the unfortunate trial had been forgotten. Nicholas Tarabas had taken this lightly and as a matter of course. In his own opinion it was he who did the Tsar the favour of serving as lieutenant in his ninety-third infantry regiment. The Russian army would have suffered serious damage by the degradation of a Tarabas to the ranks.

So Tarabas boarded the train which carried him to his own district. He sent no word ahead. He loved to experience and to spring surprises. He would come home as a deliverer! How frightened they must be, so near the border! Victory and security would come with him!

Light of heart, Tarabas settled himself in the overcrowded train, gave the conductor an astounding tip, explained that he was a “special courier” on an important mission, fastened the latch of the compartment door, and basked in the sight of the fellow-travellers who, with a perfect right to share his compartment, were nevertheless obliged to stand in the corridor outside. Extraordinary times these; it was the people’s duty to conduct themselves accordingly and to allow a courier-in-extraordinary of the Tsar the comfort indispensable to him on his important errand. From time to time Tarabas went out into the corridor. He let his eyes droop superciliously upon the poor souls he was forcing to stand, made the tired ones who had made seats out of their up-turned luggage stand up and make room for him, and was gratified to note how all of them obeyed his lightning-blue glance without a murmur, and even looked at him with a certain approbation. With unnecessary sternness he commanded the conductor, loudly so that all might hear, to make him tea and fetch this and that from the stations. Sometimes he tore open his compartment door and complained that the passengers in the corridor were making too much noise with their talk. And indeed the moment they caught sight of him they broke off and were quiet.

Delighted and amused at his own cleverness and at the other’s stupidity, Nicholas Tarabas left the train the following morning after a sound and undisturbed night’s sleep. Hardly two versts separated him now from his father’s house. At any rate the station-master, the ticket-collector, and the porters recognized and greeted him. He answered their numerous and friendly questions with official portentousness to the effect that he had been recalled from America by orders from the highest places and for an errand of the most vital urgency. This sentence he kept repeating again and again with the same warm smile and the same bright can-dour in his child-like blue eyes. When this and that one asked him if he had announced his coming at home, Tarabas put his finger to his lips. The gesture exhorted silence and awoke respect. And as, without luggage, exactly as he was when he left New York, he left the station and set off down the narrow path which led to the Tarabas demesne, the station employees, one after the other, laid their fingers on their lips exactly as he had done and all of them were firmly convinced that Nicholas Tarabas, known to them since his babyhood, was now the bearer of a momentous state secret.

Nicholas arrived at the house at an hour when he knew the family would be assembled at the midday meal. In order to carry out his “surprise” to the full, he did not take the wide road which led to the house, accompanied on either side by the delicate, slim birch trees he had missed so; he went by the narrow path along the swamps. Isolated willows were trustworthy fingerposts showing him the way which approached the house in a semi-circle from the rear, and ended underneath the window of his own room. It was a gable room. A wild grapevine, well on in years, climbed the wall strongly to the grey roof-slates with its firm and supple arms interwoven with thick wire. To ignore the stairs and mount the vine was an easy matter for Tarabas, and no less easy would he find it to open his window — should he find it closed — with a twist of the hand learnt in boyhood, which loosened and then pushed it open noiselessly. He took off his shoes and put them in his coat pockets, as he had done since childhood. Nimble and silent he climbed up the wall to his old room again. The window happened to be open; a moment later he was in the room. He slipped to the door and shot the bolt. The key was still in the closet. One had to lean one’s shoulder softly against it to prevent its creaking. Now it was open. The uniform hung neatly upon hangers. Tarabas took off his civilian clothes. He put on the uniform. With swift fingers he released the sword from its paper wrapping. The belt buckle snapped to — Tarabas was accoutred. He went on tip-toe down the stairs, knocked at the dining-room door, and went in.