Joseph Roth: Flight Without End

My description of Alja must be confined to conjecture. Even Tunda knew little more about her, though he lived with her for almost a year. That he came together with her seems obvious, as I have already said. He did not, alas, have what is described as an ‘active temperament’. (However, it would be just as false to speak of his ‘passivity’.) Alja received him like a quiet room. Having renounced all desire for exertion, struggle, excitement or even annoyance, he lived away from the main stream. He did not even have to be in love. He was spared even the minor domestic strategies. By day Alja helped her uncle, the potter. When evening came she slept with her man. There is no healthier life.

Meanwhile a deputy was appointed in Tunda’s place. He himself had to go to Baku with his wife to make films for a scientific institute.

It seemed to him that the most important part of his life lay behind him. The time to give himself up to illusions was over. He had passed his thirtieth year. In the evenings he went down to the sea and listened to the sad scant music of the Turks. Every week he wrote to his Siberian friend, Baranowicz. During this period when they did not see each other, Baranowicz really became his brother. Tunda’s name was not a fiction. Tunda was really Franz Baranowicz, citizen of the Soviet state, a contented official, married to a silent woman, resident in Baku. Perhaps his homeland and his earlier life returned to him sometimes in dreams.

Every evening there was to be seen in the harbour at Baku, aloof from the cheerful brightly-clothed bustling crowd, a man who in any other town would have excited the interest of some people, but who passed unnoticed here, cloaked in a deep and impenetrable solitude. Sometimes he sat on the stone wall which bordered the sea as if it were a garden, his feet dangling over the Caspian, his eyes aimless. Only when a ship came in did he evince any visible emotion. He pushed his way through the dense throngs of bystanders and surveyed the disembarking passengers. It must have seemed as if he was expecting someone. But as soon as it was all over — the Turkish porters returning to lean against the white walls or play cards in groups, the empty cabs rumbling off slowly, the occupied ones at a fiery rousing pace — the solitary man went home in obvious satisfaction, not with the embarrassed expression we assume when we have waited for someone in vain and have to return home alone.

When ships arrived at Baku — and these were rare, only Russian ones, from Astrakhan — excitement reigned in the harbour. People knew perfectly well that no foreign ships would put in, from England or from America. But when the smoke was visible from a distance people would behave as if they were uncertain whether or not the ship might chance to be a foreign one. For the same blue-white smoke-trails blow over every steamer. Even when no steamer arrives, Baku is in a ferment. Possibly it is due to the volcanic soil. From time to time there arises the dreaded wind which meets no resistance, which sweeps over the flat roofs, over the yellow landscape devoid of vegetation, dragging with it windows, stucco-work and shingle, which makes even the drilling-rigs, substitutes for trees in this part of the country, seem to sway.

Tunda used to go down to the harbour whenever ships arrived. Even though he knew they were only the antique local ferries bringing local officials and, rarely, foreign caviare traders, he would nevertheless always imagine that the ships might have come from some foreign sea or other. Ships are the only available means for such venturesome journeys. They do not even have to be steamers. Any ordinary boat, leisurely raft, or wretched fishing skiff could have attempted the waters of all the oceans. For those who stand on the shore, all seas are the same. Each small wave is sister to a large and dangerous one.

Alas, he had become resolved no longer to await the unexpected. His wife’s reserve damped the noise of the world and slowed the passage of the hours. And yet he still escaped from his house, went down to the harbour, and was violently disturbed by the smell of this small sea. He would return home to see Alja sitting impassive at the window, watching the empty streets. She barely turned her head when he arrived and smiled if there was any sound in the room as if something cheerful had happened to her.

It was at this period that Tunda began to record every insignificant event, as if thereby they acquired a certain significance.

One day he wrote:

Extract from Tunda’s diary.

Yesterday, at half-past ten at night, the steamer Grashdanin arrived, three hours late. I stood by the harbour as usual and watched the crowd of porters. Many remarkably well-dressed persons arrived, firstclass passengers. They were, as usual, Russian Nepmen* and some foreign traders. Since I began writing this diary I have taken a special interest in foreigners. Before, I never used to notice them. The majority come from Germany, only a few from America, some from Austria and the Balkan countries. I can easily tell them apart; many come to me at the Institute in search of information. (I am the only one in our Institute who can speak French and German.) I go to the harbour, assess the nationality of the foreigners and am delighted when I have guessed aright. I don’t really know how I recognize them. I would find it difficult if I had to list the national characteristics. Perhaps I tell them by their clothing, not any single item of dress, but their entire bearing. Sometimes it is possible to confuse Germans and Englishmen, especially in the case of older men. Germans and Englishmen often have the same ruddy complexion. But the Germans have bald patches, the English usually thick white hair so that their ruddy faces seem even darker. Their silver hair doesn’t exactly inspire my respect. On the contrary, it seems at times as if the English grow old and grey out of dandyism. Their rosiness has something unnatural about it and — I don’t know how to put it — something godless. They seem as unnatural as hunchbacks in strait-jackets. They walk around like advertisements for gymnastic apparatus and tennis-racquets, guarantees of a youthful old age.

On the other hand, many of the older men from the Continent look as if they were advertising office furniture and comfortable chairs. They grow wider from the hips downward; both their knees knock together; their arms are so close to their trunk that they appear to rest on soft, wide, leather chairbacks.

Yesterday there arrived three Europeans, whose country of origin I could not determine at first glance. They were a lady, a small, elderly, broad-shouldered man with a brown face and dark-grey beard, and a younger man, dark, of medium height, with bright eyes which were almost white in his dark-brown face, a very small mouth, and strikingly long legs in white linen trousers which hugged his knee-joints like a second skin.

The small bearded man was a little reminiscent of those coloured stone and plaster gnomes to be found among the flower beds in so many gardens. Somehow I found this gentleman’s healthiness, the high-spirited brown face in its bearded setting, offensive. He walked beside the long-legged man and the tall lady with quick short steps, he almost skipped along beside them. It really gave the impression that he was an animal led by the lady on a slender lead. He made frisky movements, once he threw his soft, light-coloured hat in the air just before they climbed into the cab. Two porters followed them with trunks.

I think to myself that, at home, the movements of the bearded man must be slow and carefully studied. It is when travelling that he is lively. There was a lot of noise, and also they spoke so softly that I could not hear even though I strained towards them.