The Silent Prophet
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Authors: Joseph Roth
JOSEPH ROTH
THE SILENT PROPHET
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY DAVID LE
VAY
Copyright © 1966 by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln and Allert de Lange, Amsterdam
English translation © 1979 Peter Owen Ltd.
Translation of
Der stumme Prophet.
CONTENTS
13
Prologue
On New Year's Eve 1926-1927 I was sitting with some friends and acquaintances in Moscow in room Number Nine of the Bolshaia Moskovskaia Hotel. For some of those present this private mode of celebrating the New Year was the only one possible. Their views would clearly have permitted them a public expression of festive spirit. But certain considerations had to be taken into account, and to be feared. They could mix neither with foreigners nor with the local citizens and although each and every one of them had functioned long and often as an observer to further an idea, he rightly shunned becoming himself the object of observation.
In my room there floated the haze of cigarette smoke familiar to those acquainted with the novels of Russian literature. I opened intermittently the small transom of the window—my guests had restrained me from opening the entire window—and presently the door, which led into the corridor and through which entered the sounds of music, voices, glasses, footsteps, song.
'Do you realize,' said Grodzki, a Ukrainian Pole who had worked for a long time for the Cheka in Tokyo, and for whom I had developed a certain fellow feeling when he approached me with the request to write some reports about me and I had replied at once that I still recalled his activities in Japan. . . . 'Do you realize,' asked Grodzki, 'who used to live here three years ago, in this very room, Number Nine?' A few regarded him questioningly. For a few seconds he made the most of the silence. Like many of those who had been employed in the secret service, he craved not only to know something but to have known about it longer than anyone else. 'Kargan,' he said after a pause. 'Oh, him!' exclaimed B., a journalist whose orthodoxy was well-known. 'Why so scornful?' said Grodzki. 'Because we have probably already harboured several of his kind here, in this room Number Nine,' replied B. with a glance in my direction.
The others joined in. Almost all professed to have known Kargan and almost all expressed a more or less critical view of him. The appellations invented by orthodox theory for revolutionaries with an intellectual past are familiar and I need hardly rehearse the meaning of the wording of each. 'Anarchist,' exclaimed one, 'sentimental rebel,' another, 'intellectual individualist,' a third.
I may possibly have seized the opportunity to defend Kargan rather too eagerly just then. Although I suspected him at that time of being in Paris, and not without reason, I felt quite unaccountably as if he were now my guest and that it was my duty to protect him. Possibly Grodzki's information that Kargan had lived in this room of mine years before provoked me to a long speech in his defence. It was not, in fact, a speech. It was a history. It was an attempt at a biography. Apart from Grodzki, whose vocation compelled him to know everybody, I was the best placed of all those present to know everything about the man attacked. I began my narration, supported by Grodzki, and both of us did not finish that night. I continued the story the next night and the third night; but by the third night the listeners had dwindled to two. They were the only ones not officially obliged or afraid to hear the truth.
In consequence I felt it necessary for my narrative to reach a more extensive audience than my voice could provide. I decided to write down what I had been recounting.
Kargan's life is described below, set out in the same sequence as it was recounted then. The interruptions of the listeners, their gestures, their jokes, their questions, are omitted. Omitted too, even deliberately suppressed, are certain indications that might lead to Kargan's identification and might further the reader's natural impulse to recognize in the individual portrayed a definite, historically existing personality. Kargan's life-story is as little related to actual events as any other. It is not intended to exemplify a political point of view—at most, it demonstrates the old and eternal truth that the individual is always defeated in the end.
Is Friedrich Kargan destined finally to sink into oblivion?
In the light of news of him received by some of his friends, indirectly but reliably, some weeks ago, he seems to have abandoned any intention to seek out the civilized part of the world of his own accord. It is therefore possible that one day he will be engulfed in empty solitude, unnoticed and without trace, like a falling star in a silent obscure night. Then his end would remain unknown, as until now were his early beginnings.
Book One
Friedrich was born in Odessa, in the house of his grandfather, Kargan, the rich tea merchant. He was an unwanted, because illegitimate, child, the son of an Austrian piano-teacher named Zimmer to whom the rich tea merchant had refused his daughter. The piano-teacher vanished from Russia, old Kargan had him sought for in vain after he had learned of his daughter's pregnancy.
Six months later he sent her and the new-born child to his brother, a wealthy merchant in Trieste. In this man's home Friedrich spent his childhood. It passed not altogether unhappily, even though he had fallen into the hands of a benefactor.
Only when his mother died—at an early age and of a disease that was never accurately identified—was Friedrich quartered in a servant's room. On holidays and special occasions he was allowed to eat at the same table as the children of the house. He preferred the company of the domestics, from whom he learned the pleasures of life and a distrust of the lords and masters.
At primary school he proved far more gifted than the children of his benefactor. Therefore the latter did not allow him to continue his education but apprenticed him to a shipping agent's, where Friedrich had the prospect, after several years, of becoming a skilled official with a monthly wage of a hundred and twenty kronen.
At that time a growing number of deserters, emigrants and refugees from the pogroms were crossing the Austrian border from Russia. The shipping agencies therefore began to set up branch establishments in the border states of the Monarchy to intercept the emigrants and despatch them to Brazil, Canada and the United States.
These branch agencies enjoyed the goodwill of the authorities. It was the government's unconcealed desire to remove these poor, unemployed and not altogether innocuous refugees from Austria as quickly as possible; but also to convey the impression that Russian deserters would be supplied with sailing tickets and recommendations to countries overseas—to such an extent that the desire to quit the army should affect an increasing number of Russian malcontents. The authorities were probably tipped off not to keep too close an eye on the shipping agents.
However, it was not easy to find reliable and skilled staff for the frontier establishments. The older employees did not want to leave their districts, homes and families. In addition, they were unfamiliar with the languages, manners and inhabitants of the border territories. Lastly, they were also scared of a somewhat risky occupation.
In the office where Friedrich worked he was regarded as capable and diligent. He mastered several languages, among them Russian. He was a thoughtful young man. What was not appreciated was that his quiet and always alert courtesy concealed a shrewd and silent arrogance. His taciturn pride was taken for reserve. However, he hated his superiors, his instructors, his benefactor and every kind of authority. He was timid, did not participate in sports with those of his own age, he dealt no blows and received none, evaded every danger, and his fearfulness always exceeded his curiosity. He prepared to revenge himself on the world which, he believed, treated him as a second-class person. It thwarted his ambition that he could not go to high school like his fellows and cousins. He made up his mind to complete his studies one day nevertheless, to enter the high school and become a statesman, politician, diplomat—in any case someone powerful.
When it was suggested to him that he should go to one of the border subsidiaries, he immediately assented, in the hope of a lucky change of fortune and an interruption of the normal routine, which he detested. On this first journey he took with him his foresight, his cunning, and his ability to dissemble, qualities bestowed on him by nature.
Before he climbed into the passenger train which left for the east, he cast a yearning and yet reproachful glance at an elegant coffee-coloured international sleeping-car which was due to depart from Trieste for Paris.
'One day I shall be one of the passengers in that coach,' thought Friedrich.
2
Forty-eight hours later he arrived at the little border town where the Parthagener family ran a branch of the shipping agency. Old Parthagener had owned the inn, 'The Ball and Chain', for over forty years. It was the first house on the wide street that ran from the frontier to the town. Here the fugitives and deserters came and encountered the pure and calm serenity of the old man with the silver beard, who seemed to be a manifestation of nature's blind intent ultimately to clothe all men, irrespective of their sins or deserts, with the white colour of dignity. Over his weak and light-sensitive eyes Herr Parthagener wore blue spectacles. They merely deepened further the serenity of his face and were reminiscent of a dark curtain over the window of a bright and luminous house-front. The agitated refugees at once placed their trust in the old man and left him a good part of the possessions they had brought with them.
The three Parthagener sons had an official, even nautical, appearance, thanks to their white sailor-hats and armbands of navy blue. They distributed among the emigrants illustrated prospectuses inviting one to contemplate dark-green meadows, brindled cows, cabins with blue smoke rising, endless fields of tobacco and rice. From the prospectuses wafted an air of lush and peaceful surfeit. The refugees became homesick for South America and the Parthageners sold steamship tickets.
Not all the emigrants possessed the necessary papers. Thus they were turned back on their arrival in foreign parts. They remained confined in mass hutments, endured one disinfection after another, and finally embarked on a long tour of the police cells of several countries. However, for those who could pay, papers were manufactured at the frontier. A man named Kapturak supplied the circumspect and well-to-do with false documents.
Who was Kapturak? A diminutive man with a greenish-grey complexion, spindly limbs, deft movements, a quack doctor and a shady lawyer by calling, renowned as a smuggler and on good terms with the border officials. His smuggling of goods was only a cover for his traffic in human beings. The many terms he served in the various jails of the territory were his voluntary concessions to the law. Every year, in spring, he appeared at the frontier like a bird of passage. He emerged from one of the many jails of the interior. The snow melted. It rained warm and fragrant in the veiled nights. And the frontier slept. One could cross it silently and invisibly.
During the months of February, March and April he worked. In May he sat in the train in broad daylight with his pack of uncustomed wares, pretended to escape from the inspectors and allowed himself to be imprisoned. Sometimes he treated himself to a vacation and travelled to Karlsbad, for the good of his stomach.
He and the Parthagener family worked together. In the morning, an hour after sunrise, he would bring his protégés to 'The Ball and Chain'. They would pay for three days' board and lodging in advance. At this point a young Parthagener would appear with prospectuses.
From time to time, however, someone from the agency had to make a so-called 'spot-check', at night, across the frontier. For it occasionally happened that Kapturak led his fugitives to another town, to other Parthageners, in other inns, handed them over to other branches of the firm. So one had to catch him unawares on Russian territory, in the so-called 'border taverns'.
Friedrich arrived at the Parthageners' on a sunny day in March 1908. There was a steady cheerful drip from the icicles on the gutters. The sky was light blue. Old Parthagener sat in front of his inn door. A dirty dark-grey crust lay over the large piles of snow on either side of the highroad. The winter was beginning to break up.
Friedrich was young enough to note all the processes of nature and relate them to his experiences. He drank in the special light of this day. It was strong like the warm young south-west wind, the darkness of the crooked gateway and the silvered dignity of the old man.
'He might as well bring a "batch" across next week!' said the ancient to his sons, who were standing at the open window in their gleaming white sailor-hats.
'Come along in,' he then said to Friedrich, 'and have something to drink!'
From then on Friedrich remained at 'The Ball and Chain'.
3
A week later he was sent to the border tavern to bring a 'batch' across. The train had arrived at eleven at night, they were not due to cross the frontier until three in the morning. Four deserters slept huddled together on the floor, a double row of bodies, heads on their bundles. Behind the counter sat the deaf and dumb landlord. He opened his eyes wide, for they served him instead of ears and he could hear with them. But now there was nothing to hear. Kapturak had nodded off in a chair. Against the door, haggard and menacing, leaned the swarthy Caucasian, Savelli. He refused to sit down, he was afraid of falling asleep. He mistrusted Kapturak. The authorities would have been prepared to pay a high price for Savelli. Who knew whether Kapturak might not intend to turn him in?
