The Silent Prophet (10 page)

This was that, in Kharkov, they heard from a hotel porter due to enlist in the same regiment, that it was already in occupied territory, on Austrian soil. They could therefore depart, fail to report, but mingle with the inhabitants of one of the occupied towns and, with the aid of Friedrich's old connections at the frontier, play the part of honest citizens under the occupation.

9

Thus he found himself once more at 'The Ball and Chain'. Yet again it stood in his path. He left Berzejev to wait in the large empty tap-room and climbed the stairs that led to old Parthagener's room.

Friedrich looked through the keyhole; the door was locked. Old Parthagener was sleeping on the green sofa, as always in the afternoon from two to four. He slept as if to refute the war. The old furniture was still in the room. An unfolded newspaper lay on the table, watched by the blue spectacles. Friedrich wondered whether to wake the old man. It seemed dangerous to wait. At any moment a patrol might enter the tavern. He knocked. The old man jumped up. 'Who's there?' Still the same cry. He opened the door. 'Ah, it's you! We've been expecting you for a long time. Kapturak heard a week ago that you'd escaped with your comrade Berzejev. You've been gone a long time, poor young man! You must have been through a lot! But now you're here! Was it really necessary?'

'So nothing has changed!' thought Friedrich. 'Kapturak and Parthagener have been expecting me as if I had gone across to fetch a "batch".' And to Parthagener: 'So Kapturak is here?'

'And why not! He has enlisted as a medical orderly. Didn't you see the big Red Cross flag on our roof? We are, you might say, a hospital without patients. Kapturak marched in with the victorious army in the very first week. Just a common medical orderly! But actually involved in espionage. With connections with the army command. He brings us healthy soldiers and we treat them with various prescriptions. We give them civilian clothing and documents, injections, narcotics, symptoms of paralysis and defective vision. Unfortunately, I am quite alone. My sons have enlisted. At this very time. Not that I fear for their lives! A Parthagener doesn't get killed in the war! But I'm an old man and can't cope with the many deserters.'

More and more deserters came to Parthagener. The fear of a war that was only a possibility had turned into the much greater fear of a war that already existed. The old man sat in his inn and sold remedies against danger as an apothecary might sell powders against fever.

'And where is your friend?' asked the old man.

'He's waiting downstairs!'

Parthagener put on his glasses and combed his fine white beard before the mirror. Then he turned round again. Until now he had spoken personally. Henceforth he was the official landlord, ready to offer a stranger what he had—quiet dignity and spiritual comfort.

In the early evening twilight, Kapturak arrived. He was in uniform and seemed more composed than in more settled times. Then he had been an adventurer. Now, in the midst of the great adventure, he was an honest man who had not abandoned his civilian calling.

It was quiet in the tap-room. At times the heavy step of a patrol could be heard, making its way through the town. It was possible to forget that here the war, which had been in preparation so long, was at home, here on this frontier which was its homeland. Old Parthagener sat over a large book and calculated. Berzejev slept, head on the table-top. Only his tangled brown hair was visible.

'Are you going to stay with him?' asked Kapturak. The glance he cast in Berzejev's direction was physical, like an outstretched index finger.

'He intends to go to Switzerland via Rumania, the Balkans, Italy. I would rather go by Vienna.'

'You both leave tomorrow!' decided Kapturak. 'As Swiss Red Cross. I'll arrange the departure.'

They slept in the bar-parlour. Friedrich was woken a few times by distant shots which rang with a long echo through the still night, and by the distant pale gleam of the searchlights which lit up the horizon and the windows for short seconds. He saw himself, in a dream, running along a narrow path between fields. The path led into a wood. It was night. A broad band of light from a searchlight sped over the fields to find the track along which Friedrich was running. The track had no end. The dark mass of the wood was visible close by. But the path took unexpected bends, evaded a rock and a puddle, and whenever Friedrich decided to abandon it and run straight across the fields the wood disappeared from his sight. A naked sky, shamelessly stripped by white searchlights, lay flat and endless over the world. Hastily he sought again for the treacherous path and he ran, carefully despite his haste, one foot in front of the other, so as not to step to one side and lose sight of the wood.

In the morning he walked once more through the little town. The shops were closed. No one showed himself at the windows of the low houses. Soldiers were encamped on the square market-place. The horses whinnied. Enormous cauldrons gave forth greasy warm odours. The supply waggons rolled incessantly and apparently aimlessly over the uneven cobblestones. On the stone threshold of a house whose door was closed sat a soldier. He held a sack between his knees, bent his head over it and looked inside. As Friedrich passed he closed the sack with startled haste and lifted his head. He had a pale broad face with faded brows over narrow light-grey eyes. His cap sat crooked on his hair and squashed one ear. His yellow uniform of coarse linen was too small and his broad shoulders bulged out the upper part of the sleeves. He was like a lunatic in a strait-jacket. A gradual fear spread over his face. His much too short lips, which could never quite be closed, revealed the gums over his long yellow teeth. He gave the appearance of laughing and crying, friendliness and rage. 'I've frightened you!' said Friedrich. The soldier nodded. 'What have you got in the sack? Don't be afraid!' The soldier opened it quickly and let Friedrich look inside. Friedrich saw silver spoons, chains, candlesticks and watches. 'What are you going to do with these?' The soldier shrugged his shoulders and held his head on one side like a naughty child. At last he begged: 'Give me your watch!' 'You've got so many!' said Friedrich, 'I've none.' 'Let's see!' pleaded the soldier. He stood up and put his hands in Friedrich's pockets. He found papers, pencils, an old newspaper, a knife, a handkerchief. 'No, you haven't got one!' said the soldier. 'Here, help yourself!' And he opened the sack. 'I don't want a watch! ' said Friedrich. 'Go on. You must take one!' insisted the man and put a watch in his coat pocket.

Friedrich went away. The soldier ran after him, the sack swinging in his hand. 'Halt!' he cried. And, as Friedrich stood still: 'Give me back the watch! ' He took it back again with a trembling hand. Officers returned from breakfast, with jingling spurs, belted waists, with the warlike elegance that confers the badge of manhood on them together with a certain resemblance to female models. They swayed their hips, at which pistols hung like pieces of jewellery in their cases. The soldiers in the streets saluted. And the officers responded gaily and lightly. As they passed among respectful salutes, dumb submissiveness, infatuated devotion, they resembled society ladies passing through a ballroom.

Ambulances arrived from which wounded men with white bandages were removed like plaster figures from a drawer; a horse lay dying in the middle of the street, without anyone taking any notice; an officer rode by. He came up to the level of the house-tops and seemed to be visiting the world like a blue deity.

They left the same day for Rumania. Berzejev went on to Switzerland via Greece and Italy, Friedrich continued to Vienna by way of Hungary. They arranged to meet in Zürich. They travelled with Red Cross armbands and with identification papers of Kapturak's manufacture as members of a Swiss medical mission.

10

In Rumania Friedrich parted from his friend. At the time, when I heard that he was going to Vienna, I found it inexplicable that he did not make the detour by way of Italy and Switzerland together with Berzejev. And when, in the field, I received the first letter from Friedrich for a long time—I quote a typical passage in one of the following pages—I still assumed that it was something important, probably on behalf of his Party, that took him to Austria. But he had nothing to do there. I cannot conceive that a man who had lived for over a year in a Siberian prison camp should return to a city in order to meet an acquaintance, or even a woman. Yet Friedrich seems to have had no other reason. Savelli was no longer in Vienna. The Ukrainian comrade P. had been living for a year in a concentration camp for civilian internees in Austria. R. had moved to Switzerland—a month before the outbreak of war. Friedrich could not even go safely through the streets without military papers. People—as one knows—had all become the shadows of their documents. Friedrich's age group had long ago been called up. He must have appeared suspicious to every policeman on the streets. The large mobilization notices, in which he was named, clung faded and tattered to the walls, as if in confirmation that the members of this age-group had already fallen and begun to rot. Friedrich, to whom a definite citizenship could not be allotted, could be arrested and end up in a camp. At the frontier and en route he had stated that he had come from Rumania to enlist. People had believed him, there were many like him on the train. A gendarme who checked his papers told him as much. Men came from distant countries to take up a rifle. Here, too, the trains were decorated with foliage. The soldiers sang different songs and wore different colours from those in Russia. A month before they had all been in mufti, both here and over there, barely distinguishable. Why, then should they all at once be able to sing? They had never sung before when they had sat in trains as travellers in perfumery, as lawyers, as officials going on leave or returning to their duties. Had they no respect for death? Did they respect it only when it appeared with the festive insignia which they liked to bestow on it at proper times and in proper churchyards, at coffin-makers and in funeral parlours?

'I gradually came to recognize my old anger against authority,' Friedrich wrote to me later in the field. 'I was rebelling against authority as it is at the present time. For it is not based on legal assumptions. The book-keeper who goes off singing to the war is no more a hero than the policeman is a policeman, the minister a minister, or the Kaiser a Kaiser. One does not see this in times of peace. But now the hundred thousand lawyers and headmasters who have suddenly turned into officers, expose this illegality which applies even to the regular officers. There is no doubt that society reveals its identity, however it disguises itself.

'I was in the Union of Young Workers, which you know. The Thursday evening meetings still take place. I read the programme in the entrance-hall. These were the titles of the lectures: "The Central Powers and the War", "Socialism and Germany", "Tsarism and the Proletariat", "The Middle European idea and Freedom of the Peoples". I sought the chairman, a young metal worker. Despite his youth, he was currently exempted from military service because he worked in a munitions factory and on account of his expert knowledge. "Oh, Comrade!" said the young man, overjoyed. He wore a badge in his buttonhole whose design I could not quite make out and which combined a cross, a star and a hammer. A draughtsman in the munitions factory had designed it and it had become officially adopted as the insignia of the heroes of the home front as the metal workers are known, "How marvellous, that you've escaped!" said the young man. "When do you enlist? Will you give us a talk beforehand? There aren't many of us now, most have joined up! " While he was speaking he had the cheerfulness of the president of a festival committee. On his table lay piles of pink field postcards, there was an ashtray he had made himself out of the grenades he helped to produce. On the wall hung one of the familiar prints showing Karl Marx, and a red flag wrapped up with string leaned in a corner. It was rather like a rolled-up sunshade, the ones the flower-sellers spread over their stalls on hot summer days. And because it was snowing outside, it seemed to me in a fit of strange confusion that the flag was really an umbrella.'

He remembered Grünhut as one remembers a medicine one has already used a few times with success. Grünhut was a lost individual, even a war could not relieve him of his excommunication. And as society was waging war, Friedrich concluded with the consistency of a man who has not yet experienced a war, that the previously convicted must be normal.

Grünhut jumped up. 'Come in, come in,' he said, and drew Friedrich to the table and lit the gas-lamp which began to diffuse a humming green chill. However, he endeavoured to warm his frozen hands at the flame.

Friedrich told of his escape. Grünhut walked around in the room and rubbed his hands. 'What heroism!' he said. 'You've earned a decoration even before going into the field! It ought to be published in the papers! What a hero! What a hero!'

And he began to talk of the imminent siege of the city of Paris, of Hindenburg's march towards Petersburg, of a regiment that had passed under his window that very day on its way to the station, and of his hopes of being rehabilitated at last. He now referred to his old unhappy story as 'a tragic case'. He had put in a request to the regiment in which he had served as a one-year volunteer years ago; he had been a sergeant and been considered for a commission. He had kept a copy, which he took from his pocket and began to read aloud. In it he talked about the exceptional times, about the Fatherland and the Kaiser, about his 'youthful misdemeanour' and his yearning to die as a soldier and a gentleman, to make up for a wasted life with a splendid death. Despite his age, he wanted to go to the front.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead although his red hands betrayed that he was freezing. He was hot and cold at the same time. His head was in quite another climate than his body. At the moment, so Grünhut said, there were no addresses to write. A large tailoring firm, which had a contract for uniforms, gave him so-called home work. He fetched twenty pairs of military trousers and a hundred and fifty buttons from the workshop every third day and delivered the trousers with the buttons sewn on three days later. He delivered only good work. Others were satisfied with drawing one thread through each hole in the button. Then, the first time a soldier fastened his braces, the button tore off. People had no conscience. But Grünhut sewed the buttons on so carefully that they were as firm as iron. Although spot-checks were made on all the other home workers, he was taken on trust. Also he received a higher wage. Only now things weren't too good. Frau Tarka was gradually losing her clientèle. The men were enlisting, the women becoming nurses. They gradually learned to be careful and to avoid becoming pregnant. It was practice. Sexual matters could no longer remain secret. And the girls' fear of their fathers also grew less with the times. So Frau Tarka pestered him. She demanded more money for his room. Letting to refugees from the east was so profitable now. He put her off with his prospects of rehabilitation.