Joseph Roth - Flight Without End

George was at this club today.

In the second place, he did not come to the station because he would thereby have deprived Klara of her old-established privilege of dealing on her own with all those affairs which, in other families, usually require a masculine hand.

In the third place, George did not come because he was a little nervous of his brother and because a peaceable brother, once he was in his room and possibly even in bed, was much less dangerous than one just getting off the train.

Klara was wearing a leather jerkin of brown calf, reminiscent of the leather shirts worn beneath their armour by the knights of the Middle Ages, She gave the impression that she had come from afar, had faced perils in gloomy forests, she conjured up civil war. She came up to Tunda with the frank and resonant cordiality of awkward upright persons.

‘I recognized you immediately,’ she said.

Then she kissed him on the mouth. She attempted to relieve him of his heavy bag. He could not wrest it away from her and ran beside her like a child collected from school by a maid-servant.

In front of the station he saw a maze of wires, arc-lights, automobiles; in the middle a policeman who extended his arms like an automaton — right, left, upward, downward — simultaneously signalling on a whistle and giving the impression that the very next moment he would have to use his legs, too, to regulate the traffic. Tunda admired him. Music issued from various taverns, filling the intervals occasionally left by the din of the traffic; the atmosphere was one of Sunday enjoyment, clinking of glasses, coal, industry, the big city and general well-being.

The station appeared to be a centre of civilization.

By the time Tunda had regained his senses, they had already stopped in front of the conductor’s villa.

A grille began to rumble as soon as a knob was pressed and at once glided smoothly open. A servant stood there in a blue livery and bowed like a nobleman. They walked over crunching wet gravel, it felt like sand between the teeth. Then came a few steps, at the top of which, under a silver lantern, stood a girl in white like an angel, with wings at the back of her head, soft brown eyes and knees that curtseyed. Then they entered a brown-panelled hall in which one looked in vain for antlers, but found a mask of Beethoven standing in for hunting-gear.

For the master of this house was a conductor.

‘You must be rich!’ said Tunda, who sometimes reverted to his former naivety.

‘Not rich!’ smiled Klara deprecatingly, her social conscience outraged more by the word than the fact.

‘It’s just that we live in a civilized fashion. It’s essential for George.’

George did not come home for an hour.

He was wearing a dinner-jacket, his cheeks were flushed and smoothly powdered, he smelled of wine and shaving-soap, which produced the effect of menthol.

Franz and George embraced for the first time in their lives.

Some years previously the conductor had bought a silver samovar from some Russian refugees, as a curiosity. In honour of his brother, who must have become a kind of Russian, this item of furniture was brought in on a trolley by the liveried servant. The servant wore white gloves and seized small pieces of charcoal with silver sugar-tongs to heat the samovar.

A stench as from a light railway locomotive arose.

At this juncture Franz had to explain how to manage a samovar. He had never used one in Russia, did not understand it, but relied on his intuition.

Meanwhile he noticed many Jewish appurtenances in the room — lamps, goblets, scrolls of the Torah.

‘Have you been converted to Judaism?’ he asked.

It emerged that in this city, where the oldest and most impoverished Jewish families dwelled, many costly artefacts of artistic value were to be had for a song. In addition, other rooms contained Buddhas, although no Buddhists lived anywhere near the Rhine; there were also Hussite manuscripts, a Lutheran bible, Catholic religious furniture, ebony madonnas and Russian ikons.

That’s how conductors live.

Franz Tunda slept in a room devoted to modern painting. But Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain lay on his bedside table.

When he awoke next day, it was Sunday.

Ultra-modern bells, fashioned out of war material by gun-factories converted to peaceful purposes, called the world to prayer.

The house smelled of coffee. At breakfast Tunda was informed that it was caffeine-free coffee, which did not harm the heart and pleased the palate.

The conductor was still asleep. Artists need sleep. Klara, however, even in her married state, had not forgotten the healthy usages of her parental home. She awoke like a bird with the first rays of the sun. Wearing thin rubber gloves such as surgeons use she wiped the dust from the religious objects.

Tunda decided to go for a stroll.

He went in the direction from which came the occasional sound of tramcar bells. He walked along quiet streets with gardens in which well-dressed boys and girls on bicycles wove harmonious loops. Servant-girls returned from divine service to flirt. Dogs lay haughtily behind the grilles like lions. Closed venetian blinds evoked the holidays.

Then Tunda came upon the old quarter of the town, with its coloured gables and wine-cellars with Middle High German names. Shabbily-dressed men came towards him, evidently workers who lived among these Gothic characters but probably earned their living in the pits of international owners.

Music sounded. Young men armed with sticks, marched behind fifes and drums in double-column. It sounded like the music of ghosts or some militarized Aeolian harps. The young folk marched with serious faces and without saying a word; they marched towards an ideal.

Behind and beside them, on the pavements and in the middle of the road, men and women kept in step; it was their way of taking a walk.

All were marching towards the station, which looked like a temple. Porters squatted on the stone steps like numbered beggars; the engines whistled with holiness and reverence.

The double columns fell out and disappeared into the station.

At this point the supporters turned back, slackening their pace, their faces transfigured, the echo of the whistles still in their hearts. As if they had fulfilled a joyous duty, they could now devote themselves to Sunday with a clear conscience.

Along the streets scuttled painted prostitutes, off duty. They conjured up thoughts of death. Some wore glasses.

A group of cyclists sped by ringing their bells. Men with dignified bearing and childish clothing, carrying rucksacks, hiked off to the mountains.

Odd, scattered, gleaming firemen strolled with wives and children.

The attractions of grand, double-bill military concerts were announced on bill-boards by district ex-servicemen’s associations.

Behind the great plate-glass windows of the cafés whipped cream towered before epicures in wicker chairs.

A comically misshapen dwarf sold shoe-laces.

An epileptic lay twitching in the sun. A crowd of people stood around him. One man expounded the case as if he was giving a lecture to students; the thesis of his exposition was that the man should always stay in the shade.

Young men passed by in small groups with caps that were much too small, black-wrapped faces and glassy eyes behind glassy spectacles. These were students.

In the distance roared the Rhine.

Then other men arrived, with students’ caps made out of paper.

These were not students but chimney-sweeps, washed clean, who had organized some festivity.

Elderly gentlemen took dogs, and elderly ladies, for walks.

Verdigrised church steeples rose up in the distance. Singing rang out from the wine-cellars.