Joseph Roth - Flight Without End

The female members of this society led a pleasure-orientated existence in thin, colourful, light expensive dresses. They walked the pavement on flawlessly shaped legs, in shoes of remarkable — often eccentric — cut, steered motorcars, galloped on horseback, drove light carriages, and called Claude Anet their favourite author. They never appeared singly or in pairs, but gathered in flocks like birds of passage and, like these birds, they were all equally beautiful. Among themselves they could probably be told apart by their particular clothes and bows, by the difference between certain hair-tints and lipstick colours; but to the observer they were children of the same mother, sisters of staggering similarity. The fact that they bore different names was an error of officialdom.

In addition, the majority had English first names. They had not — and this was perfectly reasonable — been called after saints or grandmothers, but after the heroines of American films or English drawing-room comedies. They had been perfectly equipped to take on their particular roles. When they entered a room, a cloud of fragrance and beauty drifting before them and spreading about them, they might be treading a stage or transforming themselves into moving shadows on a screen. It was self-evident that, though so vivacious, they had no life in them. Tunda perceived them not as realities, but as one perceives the girls of vaudeville shows — improbably alike, beautiful and numerous, a kind of daydream despite their sensual charm and physical liveliness — slotted in between the acts of comedians, the outcome of hypnotic suggestion. To Tunda all these girls seemed as unreal as the photographs in the illustrated magazines; when he encountered them, it was as if he had come upon them when turning over a page. And, in reality, they were the charming subjects of the illustrated magazines. They were, indeed, the greater half of the fashionable world, tobogganing in winter in the dazzling snows of St Moritz (gleaming white wool on their bodies), flower-wreathed in February in the carnival procession at Nice, naked on the seashore in summer, returning home in the autumn to inaugurate the winter season with their new hats.

They were all beautiful. They possessed the beauty of a species. It seemed as if their creator had distributed a great quantity of beauty among them all impartially; but it did not suffice to distinguish between them.

Whenever Tunda thought of Irene, she seemed to him as far removed from this carefree and charming world as he was himself. One may call such an attitude ‘romantic’. But it seems to me that this is the only attitude that has any validity today. It seems to me that there can no longer be any choice between enduring the torment of reality, of false categories, soulless concepts, amorphous schemata, and the pleasure of living in a fully accepted unreality. Given the choice between an Irene who played golf and danced the Charleston and one who was not even registered with the police, Tunda opted for the latter. But what gave him the right to expect a woman who was any different from all the others he saw? From Madame G., for instance, whom he had loved for an evening, the remote image of the remote Irene? Only the fact that he had let her escape him; that, on his way to her, he had been caught up in a strange fate as by a wind, had been borne off into other places, into other years, into another existence.

He visited Pauline for the last time. Her trunks remained half-full and still open in her room. She was at last en route for Dresden. Tunda talked with her father. M. Cardillac sat in an armchair which could not quite contain him; he jutted out over the seat and the arms although he was neither too fleshy nor too fat, muscular rather than portly, stocky rather than colossal. He was short, he stood firmly planted on short legs, unshakeable like an object made of iron; his nape was red and firm, his neck short, his hands broad, but his fingers — as if he had had them made as an afterthought — possessed a certain gracefulness. They made him almost likeable when they drummed on the table like naughty children, or fiddled with his waistcoat buttons or inserted themselves between neck and collar to ease the stiff edge of a shirt. Yes, Tunda even found M. Cardillac bearable. On the whole, he found it easier to tolerate the older generation; a son of M. Cardillac he would have found unbearable. But the father still suggested — when he momentarily forgot himself and became vulnerable — the endearing, honest, sympathy-evoking poverty of the working man, which is equivalent to open-mindedness and approximates to goodness. His simple honesty was buried, but still perceptible, under a layer of superimposed manners, hard-won and rigorously maintained inhibitions, under laboriously stratified defence-works of pride, self-assurance and imitated vanity. But when one looked M. Cardillac in the eye — he wore glasses, not because he was long-sighted but to mask his natural expression, and his brows projected over them — if, as it were, one removed these glasses with an intimate gaze and thus stripped M. Cardillac of his defences — then it came to pass that he began to speak of his hard youth in a gentle voice, lying only a little. But whenever the discussion turned to generalities Cardillac became formal, as if he had a mandate to represent that society of which he was a pillar and which was responsible for his comfortable position.

So Tunda conversed with M. Cardillac; he was even a little melancholy at having to leave his house. Cardillac invited him to return in the winter. He was in the habit of giving small, occasionally quite large, but usually intimate soirees at which young men were always welcome. They shook hands, Tunda accepted a cheque, took his leave of Mlle. Pauline and departed.

There was a car at the front door, the motor was still running, the chauffeur opened the door and a woman stepped out. She was slender, blonde, dressed in grey. Tunda noted at a glance her narrow shoes of smooth grey leather, evenly clasping her feet, the thin stockings with their bloom, an artificial and doubly provocative second skin, he clasped with both eyes, as if with both hands, the slender lissom hips. The woman came closer, and although it was barely three steps from the pavement-edge to the threshold where he stood, it seemed to him as if her passage lasted an eternity, as if she was coming to him, straight to him and not to the house, and as if he had been awaiting this woman on this spot for years.

Yes, she came nearer, he looked at her beautiful, proud, beloved face. She returned his gaze. She looked at him, a little ruefully, a little flattered, as women look into a mirror they pass in a restaurant or on the stairs, happy to confirm their beauty and at the same time despising the cheapness of the glass which is incapable of reproducing it. Irene saw Tunda and did not recognize him. There was a wall in the depths of her gaze, a wall between retina and soul, a wall in her cool, grey, unwilling eyes.

Irene belonged to the other world. She was visiting the Cardillacs. She was accompaning Mlle. Pauline to Dresden. She lived a healthy and happy life, played golf, bathed by sandy beaches, had a rich husband, gave parties and attended them, belonged to charitable societies, and had a warm heart. But she did not recognize Tunda.

Tunda received a bulky letter, the first letter at last from Baranowicz.

It had had a roundabout journey, had been forwarded from Berlin to George; it was a widely-travelled letter, it had taken three months to arrive. It seemed to have grown heavier in transit.

Baranowicz sent his thanks for the money, he was prepared to repay it, and more besides. For he had made some excellent deals; the State had purchased part of his land, the ground contained valuable minerals. There was talk of platinum. Furthermore, in six months a new scientific expedition would be setting out through the taiga with Baranowicz as guide. If he so wished, Tunda could accompany him. Baranowicz had already received an advance for all kinds of equipment.