Joseph Roth - The Hundred Days

“I will marry you!” he said finally.

“What for?” asked Angelina without lifting her eyes, as though speaking to an invisible someone at her feet.

Sergeant-Major Sosthène did not comprehend at first. He only felt vaguely that his noble intentions were being rejected and his true wishes accepted. He was somewhat insulted — and at the same time relieved.

“I won’t marry you!” Angelina said.

He stared at her. She was incomprehensible, dangerous, yet seemingly offering him escape. Before he had feared the whole vile burden of this pending marriage, but now it struck him as an insult that she would not agree to go through with it. Before he had been thinking of the Bohemian widow with a lustful nostalgia, but Angelina suddenly seemed desirable. He was greatly astonished by this heretofore unknown and unprecedented complication of his emotions. A horrible suspicion awoke in him, and although this suspicion hurt him much, he held on to it with all his might, for it at least helped explain the bizarre feelings that were now stirring in him.

“So you have betrayed me?” he asked.

“I have betrayed you!” she lied. “He’s not your son!” The words sounded strange to her ears, as if another woman sitting beside her had spoken them.

“Aha!” said Sosthène after a long while.

Then he pressed both of his sturdy fists on the arms of the chair that was holding him prisoner and freed himself with a powerful jerk. He retrieved his helmet, which lay next to him on the floor like a magical gleaming black-maned animal, and put it back on his head. Now he reached the ceiling. He stood there larger than ever, enlarged not only by pride but also by contempt. Angelina sat, tiny and pitiful yet bold, on the edge of the bed.

“Tell me the truth!” thundered Sosthène.

“I’m speaking the truth!” said Angelina.

She looked up at him. She covered a great distance with her eyes in order to do so, and somehow her feet were exhausted from the mountain climbing of her gaze. The thought that he would now (but never again) lift her up and kiss her made her happy.

Suddenly he turned around, reached the doorway with one of his prodigious strides, measured its height, found it too low, ducked a little, and without looking back, slammed it violently.

Angelina then heard him speak a few rancorous words to the midwife outside. She bent over the now screaming child and babbled words that were unintelligible even to her but that brightened her mood. “You are mine,” she said, “he is not, be still, you are mine, you belong to me. .”

So spoke she to her child, softly and at length.

That very day, Sergeant-Major Sosthène set off to rejoin his regiment in Bohemia without even having seen his friends in Paris. When he caught up with his regiment it was already on its march back to France. He soon told his comrades that he had a fine son. He was a magnificent little fellow who, although barely three weeks old, looked and behaved like a soldier. Further, Sergeant-Major Sosthène added that thanks to his cleverness, he would not have to marry the child’s mother.

Angelina thought of the Emperor constantly. But even he, unique and powerful, had ceased to be a living being whose every breath brought happiness, whose voice and glance brought joy, and whose wet footprints on bathroom tiles had inspired humble adoration. He truly had become the great Emperor of the paintings. He was now himself like a copy of his own portraits, yes, and even more remote than they. He was far from the people of France. From the battlefield he hurried to deliberations and from these back to his battles. His negotiations were as inconceivable as his victories. He had long since ceased being the hero of the common man. They no longer understood him. It was as if the power that emanated from him had enveloped him in a transparent but impregnable sphere of ice. He lived within this sphere in some kind of noble isolation, terrible and solemn. He sent away the Empress and married the daughter of a great foreign emperor in a distant country, as though there were not enough women in his own land. And just as he ordered certain wares from the countries he controlled, so had he once sent for the Pope to come from Rome; in the same way he now sent for the daughter of a foreign emperor. Just as he ordered the cannon to thunder in many parts of the world, so now he ordered the bells of Paris and all of France to toll. Just as he commanded his soldiers to fight his battles, he commanded them to celebrate his festivals. And just as he had once challenged God, so now he commanded prayer to Him. The Emperor’s common subjects could feel his violent impatience, and they saw that he could act in ways both grand and small, foolish and wise, good and evil, just as they did. But so much grander were both his virtues and flaws, that they could not understand him.

Angelina alone loved him, although she numbered among the lowliest of his subjects. So much did she love him that she sometimes cherished the foolish wish to see the Great One made small and defeated, driven from all lands to a humiliating homecoming in Corsica. Then he would be almost as base as she, without the luster that he continually bestowed anew upon his own portraits.

In accordance with the rules that regulated life for those in the Imperial service, Angelina returned to work three months after her confinement. Spring was already flowing like a great strong river through the rejuvenated city. Full and proud glistened the candles of the chestnut trees along the sides of the streets. Angelina came across many mothers with children; even the poorly clothed mothers, even the pale and sickly children, smiled with illuminated faces. At each of these encounters, Angelina wished to turn back, to have just one more peek at her boy. When she stood before the gate, where barely a year earlier the multicolored mountain with the fluttering helmet plume had waited for her every evening, she stood still for a while as if contemplating a momentous decision. She could still go back and see her son and be a little later in arriving to work. In the palace garden, the thrushes were raising a joyful ruckus, and they were answered by equally overwhelming scents coming from the park — from the air itself — the voices of the acacias, lilacs, and elderberries. White as a Sunday gleamed the vests of the sentries, and the dark green of their coats was reminiscent of lush meadows. The unmoving guard looked at her. She thought she recognized the man and that he also recognized her. Within his glassy official stare gleamed a tiny spark, as if the glass were smiling, and Angelina nodded at him. This fleeting glimmer in the soldier’s glassy eyes gave her courage; and she walked with swift steps toward the gate, as if afraid of losing it again.

From then on she worked only in the washroom. Loyal and industrious as always, she wielded her smoothing-iron with a powerful swing, spritzed water from her filled cheeks and pursed lips upon the silk, linen, and cambric, used the wooden stave with a learned hand and carefully pressed the shirts, collars, and pleated cuffs. When she thought about her son, she was both happy and sad. By Wednesday, no, even by Tuesday, the next Sunday already seemed almost as near as the coming evening. Monday, however, one day after her visit to Pocci’s house, was the most melancholy day of the week — and Saturday the brightest. On Saturday evenings, after inspection in the great hall, she packed everything together, both useful and useless. She packed salves and powders, serviettes, milk, cream and bread, strands of red coral beads to ward off the evil eye, buttercup root to prevent convulsions, and an herbal infusion that she was told would prevent pox.

She set out at seven o’clock in the morning. On the way she was overtaken by the fear that she would find her son ailing. She stopped for a while, powerless to put one foot before the other, shattered, as if her frightening vision were already a horrible reality. Then, confidence once more gave wings to her steps. When she finally stood in Barbara’s room leaning over her child, she began to weep bitterly. Her hot tears fell rapidly upon the boy’s smiling face. She lifted him up, walked with him around the room, and spoke nonsensical phrases to him. Only the measure by which her little son grew bigger and stronger and changed, made her note the unstoppable course of the months and years. It was as if previously she had lived according to the mindset that time did not advance but rolled, so to speak, in a circle.