The Silent Prophet (11 page)

'Shall we go and eat?'

Yes, they went to the canteen.

The weather had suddenly changed, a warm wind blew and turned the snow into rain. The slightly wounded and convalescents walked with sticks, with black and white bandages, many on the arms of dark-blue nurses. The street-lamps had been turned down, the lights in the shopwindows were put out early, many shops had closed because their proprietors had been called up. The lowered iron doors were reminiscent of graves, and the bills that gave the reason for the absence of the shopkeepers were like the inscriptions on tombstones. In many streets it was so dark that the stars were visible between the ragged clouds. It was an invasion of nature among the houses and street-lamps. The rows of windows were blind. Sky and clouds were mirrored in the windowpanes.

The feebly lit room of the canteen seemed brighter and friendlier than in peacetime. More women than men now sat at the long tables. They talked of sons and husbands, took crumpled field postcards and old newspapers from hidden pockets. A few grey-haired men, who greeted Grünhut with a brief silence, spoke of politics. Grünhut, whom the old men called Doctor, explained to them the strategic position of the Allied armies and comforted them over the advance of the Russians into Galicia with an allusion to Napoleon, who in 1812 had to thank his very advance for his misfortunes. 'I reported to the military authorities yesterday of my own free will! ' he said, as a final and conclusive proof that the victory of the Central Powers was certain. The old men shook their heads. 'How old are you?' they asked. 'Fifty-two!' said Grünhut, with the same emphasis with which he had previously said 'thirty thousand prisoners.'

Friedrich suddenly noticed, hanging on the walls, a large coloured oleograph of the Kaiser in coronation robes. The portrait had already been there in peacetime, but so high up on the wall and so dusty that it had always been taken for a landscape. Now it hung in a more prominent position, like a renewed plighting of troths by the beggars and the poor who came there.

Friedrich still had enough money to last him for about a month. Berzejev had divided the ready money with him. Friedrich was waiting for a letter from his friend in Zurich. He had no proof of identity to satisfy the police about himself. He lived in his old room at the tailor's, who had been rejected for the time being on grounds of general physical debility. This good fortune made him affable. He warned Friedrich against his wife and advised him to tell her that he was expecting a telegram to report for duty any day.

Friedrich was afraid of the neighbours, an anonymous denunciation, a policeman's glance, and even Grünhut the patriot.

He wanted to see Hilde again. He wrote to her, asking her to come to the café. He waited in the corner; an old gentleman sat opposite him, a newspaper in front of his face. Only his snow-white hair was visible, parted in the middle. He did not stir. He did not lay the newspaper down, nor did he turn it over. It was as if he had fallen asleep but went on reading through closed eyelids. A full glass of water which he had not touched stood on his table, covered by a page of the newspaper. He was probably holding quite an old issue of the paper, one announcing the outbreak of war. He could no longer put it down. On the wall to the right hung a long narrow mirror which had never been completely visible because it had always been obscured by a customer's back. It only provided a fleeting glimpse to the passer-by. Now, for the first time, Friedrich could see his face even though he was sitting down. Only two lamps burnt in the whole room. The wall where the mirror was still lay in the darkening grey of the departing day, and the mirror seemed far removed from the lighted part of the room. It held the image of one of the burning lamps, diminished in its unfathomable depths. Friedrich beheld his face like that of a stranger. If he turned his glance sideways without moving his head he could see his profile, and it alarmed him that he could scarcely recognize himself. His mouth was narrow, his lower lip projected and pulled the chin up with it. His hair was receding, his forehead bulged white and gleaming, and the first hint of a silvery sheen showed at his temples. His nose drooped gently and wearily over his mouth.

Night already lay behind the windows when Hilde entered. He went towards her. He looked in her face for a long time, as he had just been looking in the mirror. He wanted to find changes in her, too, shadows cast by the times. But the months had passed over her smooth dark face like harmless caressing summer airs. Time had found no place on her cheeks to leave a trace behind. The dark gleam of her eyes, the glimmer of the soft silvery down on her skin, the red bow of her lips, the graceful hesitance of her body, which seemed to reflect before every movement as if the limbs had sense and the nerves intelligence—all these were for ever. Friedrich waited for the first sound of her voice as for a gift. He wanted to see and hear all at once. The waiter, hailed by her, came as a deliverance. 'What would you like to order?' he asked. And once again he heard her voice.

She had been informed of his fate. She had often revisited the café. Once R. had sat down at her table and told her about Friedrich. But now it was wartime. And he had a twofold reason for fighting against Tsarism. The cause of freedom was now so splendidly identical with the cause of the Fatherland that all class distinctions and class conflicts were annulled. She was well aware of this. At last she had found an opportunity to get to know the people, for she nursed the wounded in hospital every morning. And finally came the inevitable question: 'When are you joining up?'

'Next week,' he said mechanically.

Could he come round tomorrow afternoon? Some of her old friends would be there, many of course in uniform.

'No!' he said. But he already saw a shadow on her face and was touched by the fact that she was sad and might miss him.

'Yes!' he corrected himself. 'I'll come.'

In the entrance hall at Herr von Maerker's he already noted signs that the Fatherland was in danger. On the clothes-racks at either side of the mirror hung officers' caps and blue cloaks with metal buttons, and two sabres leaned in the stands appointed for umbrellas in times of peace. As Friedrich handed his hat to the servant girl it seemed to him that she hung it on a rather remote hook with faint disdain, alongside two dark forlorn civilian overcoats. The servant girl had a distant resemblance to a camp-follower.

Most of the friends of the household had joined up. Herr von Maerker himself had become a captain and was currently commandant of a railway station. Twice a day he went to the station and observed the departing regiments and the arriving transports of wounded with an enthusiastic interest. The unwonted exercise did him good. Every day, for decades, he had walked along the same two streets. The sojourn at a station that he had only fleetingly traversed twice a year, on his departure for and his return from the holidays, gave him the pleasant illusion after years of monotonous office work of finding himself caught up in an exciting life. He had to thank his connections at the War Ministry for various items of knowledge about goings-on in politics and at G.H.Q., and for the comforting feeling that he would remain at one of the stations in Vienna for as long as it was possible. Naturally, he did not for a moment think that the protection he enjoyed was inconsistent with his love for the Fatherland. He lacked any understanding of the close connection between patriotism and danger to life. He did not take into account that the direct consequence of war was death, rather than variety. After all, like so many of his social class, he hardly realized that the phrase 'Fallen on the Field of Honour' necessarily implied the irrevocable end of the fallen.

Herr von Maerker's housekeeper now went about with the cheering prospect of becoming the bride of her employer after victory. In its very first months the war had upset a few social prejudices which, despite their stupidity, had nevertheless been more moralistic than the war. A new era was seen as imminent. Because it had become necessary to endow proletarians with the aristocratic attributes of heroes and knights, members of the social class to which Herr von Maerker belonged imagined that they had become democratic. Some young women, so-called 'liaisons' of the sons of the aristocracy and high finance, were fortunate enough, through a quick wartime wedding, to become the legitimate spouses of their princes instead, as was usually the case in peacetime, of acquiring a drapery shop or a glove business as a peace-settlement. Through the mediation of their pretty daughters, a few hundred of the lower middle class acquired connections with elevated circles and got into the army medical service when they enlisted. Patriotic unity was therefore no longer a matter for doubt. All the ladies were nurses or manifested some kind of lively charitable impulse. They went so far as to send unknown war widows articles of clothing that would otherwise have been given to the sewing-women in order to forestall any demands for increased wages. Golden wedding-rings were exchanged for iron ones, even though there was some willingness to retain the precious stones. Watch-chains, especially unfashionable ones, were also exchanged. Wherever one looked there was iron. Many sons found themselves risking their lives, to the gratification of their parents. Even the ne'er-do-wells who had squandered money, were forgiven, since they were now heroes and no longer capable of squandering. The mothers of the dead wore their sorrow as generals their golden collars, and the death of the fallen became a kind of decoration for the bereaved. But even the relatives of heroes who were engaged in quite safe duties were as proud as if they had a dead man to mourn, and the nuances between mothers of the deceased and mothers of the living were effaced in the familiar general 'gravity of the times'. Since all alike was tragic, all imagined themselves as making a sacrifice.

Already appeals for the first War Loan were posted on every wall, alongside notices of the third call-up. The portrait-painter was in uniform, even if a fanciful one hastily invented by some military official. There had not been adequate preparations for artists to participate in the war. The war propaganda department could not cope with so many painters and writers, historians and journalists, dramatists and drama critics. The journalists wore leather gaiters and revolvers and an arm-band on which the word 'Press' was stitched in gold letters. The drama critics went into the archives and were allowed to wear civilian clothes so as not to have to appear as NCO's. The painters were left to their own devices. They made portraits of the army leaders, painted the walls of military hospitals in gay and cheerful colours, and wrote diaries or letters which they then published as the 'guests of Literature'. They too went for medical examinations, but usually had a number of disorders that kept them from the shooting. Some of the dramatists began to write regimental histories.

At Herr von Maerker's house, where Hilde acted as mediator between literature, art and the history of art, there gathered not only fighting men but also painters and writers. Friedrich found their glances curious and quizzing. His revolutionary opinions and his Siberian experiences, together with his readiness to struggle against Tsarism—which people took for granted—fitted in with their conception of the identity of freedom and the cause of the Fatherland. His very presence attested to this identity.

The writer G., one of the cultivated satirists who knew how to combine a decadent manner, elegant posturing and large debts with a sensitive feeling for language, was immersed in a discussion with young Baron K. about the French literature of the Enlightenment. He avoided the discussion of current events. He was, in fact, a sceptic and might have upset the general optimism. If he had expressed his opinions, it would have been all over with his congenial occupation and civilian clothing. However, in order not to appear as a man without any kind of attachment to the Fatherland, he said 'The war is the very time in which one is able to think. Never before have I been able to read so extensively and with so few distractions. At present I am reading the French. It affords me a special pleasure to get to know our enemies better. They are cruel and clever. The entire race is impelled by their so-called
"raison".
It is quite obvious to me, of course, that such sound commonsense rears a thrifty lower middle class but not a heroic nation. Great occasions call for a sweet unreason.'

Hilde smiled and exchanged a glance with the writer. She understood that he had spoken for her and not to the lieutenant. She did not much care for the cavalry. For whereas the writer and the 'intellectuals'—this word was used increasingly often—discussed the very simplest battle reports in such a manner that nothing remained of their actuality but a faint echo, which Hilde found agreeable, the lieutenant named names, numbers, kilometres and divisions, which bored her. And although he said nothing that the others could not have said, had they wished to, it seemed as if he alone knew what war was all about.

Besides this lieutenant, Hilde's father alone among all the men present remained an object for her particular disdain. Only since the war had the ministerial adviser participated in his daughter's entertainments, so changed was he by the great event. Among all the groups of that social class which produced no officers, no ministerial officials, no diplomats and no landed proprietors, the one he most detested consisted of what he called the 'Bohemians', of whom his notions were infantile. Even now when, revolutionized by wartime enthusiasm, he yielded to the general illusion that differences would be abolished and that a painter in travelling clothes and riding-breeches who painted a base hospital and a base commandant was part of the baggage-train of heroes, even now he winced imperceptibly when the painter P., as soon as anything exciting was mentioned, took his foot in his hands as if this manipulation was a necessary aid to better hearing, or when the drama critic R., in a quiet moment, broke a match between his teeth. In this unsuspecting state, which he owed to a secluded youth in a feudal institution, Herr von Maerker did not understand that these men did not display the free ways of an artistic disposition but the miserable ones of a lower middle-class upbringing. He regarded it as a method of expressing the artistic temperament.