Joseph Roth - The Hundred Days

He stepped out blithely into the scorching sun. The sweat ran down his face, made his bushy mustache tacky, soaked his shirt, and made the poor stump of his leg, packed in leather padding, sting with the ferocity of an open wound. It was just after noon when he reached the Elysée. He asked to speak to Véronique Casimir. One of the soldiers on duty went to find her but it took a long time for her to come. The burning sun was unrelenting but Wokurka was not allowed even to wait in the narrow strip of shade just past the gate. Véronique finally arrived, embraced him emotionally, with sadness, but also with a somewhat duplicitous warmth. She actually needed him now; what a miracle that he had come! She and Angelina had a handcart and were just packing their things. All the palace servants had to take an oath to the returned King, and whoever refused was released. Naturally, she and Angelina were among those leaving. How good it was to have a man’s help, she said — and then looked at Wokurka’s wooden leg. He saw her staring, knocked on the wood with the knuckle of his forefinger, and said: “It’s good and strong, Mademoiselle Casimir. Better than my old one!”

She left. He had to wait half the afternoon, but despite the heat he was not one bit tired. He hobbled back and forth, up and down, back and forth, eventually awakening the suspicion of the secret police on patrol around the palace. He was well aware of them but was not afraid. He had already prepared an answer in case one of them questioned him. He had worked hard on his response, and he thought to say something like: “Ask your Minister Fouché, what he’s doing with the King!” He thought it was a perfect reply; ambiguous yet meaningful, witty yet non-contradictory.

Finally, as the shadows were getting longer and the guard was being changed, Véronique Casimir and Angelina arrived. They were pushing a small two-wheeled cart before them. Piled upon it and tied down with ropes were their belongings. Each of the women was holding one of the cart handles. They were held up at the gate by the guard and then by a policeman in civilian clothes. Véronique talked her way past them, waving her papers. They would be back in an hour, she said.

Wokurka had not seen Angelina for quite a while. Yet as he looked at her now, it hardly seemed a day had passed since they parted. Her face was so familiar and endearing to his enamored eyes. The Emperor had come and then gone, the King had returned, thousands of soldiers had fallen, Angelina’s son was also dead — but the cobbler Wokurka felt that it was just yesterday, or the day before, that Angelina had left him. Great and important events had transpired during their separation, but those months were obliterated in one moment. He offered Angelina his hand, but said nothing. Then he took both handles of the cart in his callused fists and asked, with an anxious heart: “So, where to?”

“To Pocci’s, naturally,” said Véronique.

He limped along between the two women, rolling the heavy cart along like a toy. He was cheerful and spoke loudly so as to be heard over the stamping of his crutch and the rumbling of the cart on the bumpy stones. What did he, Jan Wokurka, care that afternoon about all the miseries of Paris, France, of the world? For all I care one hundred great Emperors could leave and one hundred fat old Kings come back, he thought, what did it matter? And he expressed his thoughts: “You see, Angelina, I told you so! Why should we care about the fate of the great ones? If only we had gone to my village in Poland back then! By now you would be quite at home and would have forgotten everything!” He was not exactly certain what it was that Angelina was supposed to have forgotten, but he became emotional as he spoke those two words “forgotten everything” and was filled with an overwhelming feeling of compassion for Angelina. “One should not,” he went on, “give one’s heart to the great and mighty when one is as small and insignificant as we are. I’ve been saying this for a long time and lately I’ve been repeating it to my unfortunate friends. You see, Angelina! You see, Mademoiselle Casimir! What did it get me? I hung my heart on a great ideal and a great Emperor. I wanted to free my fatherland. Yet here I am, still a shoemaker, I’ve lost a leg, my country has not been liberated, and the Emperor is defeated! Nobody should ever tell me again to concern myself over the great advance of the world! The little things, the little things are what I love. I care about you alone, Angelina! Tell me now, after all this, are you coming? With me?”

“I thank you,” she said simply. “We shall speak of this later.” She could not possibly have explained what was running through her mind, for she lacked not only the courage to voice her thoughts but also the ability to choose the right words and express herself properly. In her opinion what Wokurka said was not false, but the great ideal for which she had sacrificed her heart happened also to be her own personal little ideal, and it was all the same whether God intended one to fall in love with a great Emperor or with some ordinary fellow. Ideals were both great and small at the same time, she believed. But could she explain it? And even if she could, would anyone understand? For all the confusion, agony, and shame that she had experienced since arriving in this city, she knew that nothing was more powerful than her precipitous love, which encompassed everything else — longing and homesickness, pride and shame, desire and sorrow, life and death. Now that the Emperor was lost forever — oh, how well she knew this! — even though she was far removed from him, in the distant reaches of the lengthy shadow he cast, she felt certain that she drew life from him alone; from his Imperial existence alone. Her son was dead and the Emperor was a prisoner. How could she feel anything except numb? Wokurka was good to her. But was kindness alone great and strong enough to revive a heart, a dead little heart? If only I were a man! she thought. She accidentally said it aloud: “If only I were a man!”

“What would you have done?” Wokurka asked.

“I would not have let him go. I would have gone with him!”

“The great events of the world,” said Wokurka, “do not depend on men, either. One would have to be just as great a man as he to affect anything. When one is a nobody, it’s all the same, man or woman!”

It was already full in Wokurka’s workshop, as it was every day at that time, when they arrived. He typically left his door open so that his friends could come and go as they pleased. Some of them were standing outside talking to the neighbors. Dusk was falling, the fearsome dusk of the lonely and unfortunate. They helped to bring the luggage up to the midwife Pocci’s room. How did things look in the palace, and had she seen the King? they asked Véronique Casimir. One of them asked the women if they knew where the Emperor was being taken. Another interrupted and said he knew for certain — to London, where they would behead him. Angelina trembled. It was as if her own death sentence had just been pronounced.

“Who says so? Who says so?” she cried through the chaos of voices.

“It can’t be helped,” one man said. “The great ones have made their decision.”

The little room was jammed. They stood crowded together or crouched on crates they had brought, or on chairs, stools, and Wokurka’s bed, as thick gray clouds of smoke wafted from their pipes; it looked as if there were even more guests than there actually were, all with the same faces. One of them — an old Polish legionnaire, with the Legion of Honor upon his tattered, heavily stained uniform, a gray black beard, and bright red cheeks — took a bottle from his coat pocket, raised it, took a big gulp and said: “ Ah! ” so loudly and so severely that it could not be mistaken for satisfaction but sounded like resentment and annoyance; and it was true that resentment and ill humor has long been smoldering within his heart and the drink was stoking the flames. He took another swig, for he felt he would very soon need to say something extraordinary. Quite simply his honor demanded it. He was good-hearted, excitable, and boisterous. Wokurka knew him well. Together they had marched, together they had fought, together they had drunk and eaten — even sharing the same plate and the same pipe. Although amid the thick smoke all the faces were cloudy and distorted, Wokurka could recognize in the eyes of his friend — Jan Zyzurak was his name and he had once been a blacksmith — that old flickering flame that meant this Zyzurak was in a state of extreme agitation. Wokurka was afraid of what Zyzurak would do; there were women present. The midwife Pocci, Angelina, and Véronique Casimir sat silently on the bed where a spot had been cleared for them. They were scared, uncertain what would happen next. The men and the spirits they were consuming — each of them carried a flask in his threadbare pocket — their desperate faces and their grim talk instilled a great fear in the women. Yet they did not dare get up.