The Silent Prophet (2 page)

The adventurousness of this nocturnal hour intrigued no one but Friedrich. For those who had been engaged in smuggling for years it was usual and ordinary. It was not until years later and in distant lands that the deserters, who were now overcome by fatigue, would remember the weirdness of this place between death and freedom, and the stillness of the encircling night in the midst of which this tavern was the only lighted place, the bright focus of an immense darkness. Only Friedrich listened to the regular slow ticking of a clock which counted out its seconds as if time consisted of the costly drops of a rare and noble metal. Only he observed the large sluggish flies on the wide petroleum lamp whose wick was turned down to a narrow strip and whose broad shade of brown cardboard darkened the upper half of the room. And only he noted the distant whistle of a locomotive which resounded in the night like a frightened man's call for help.

Towards two in the morning another whistle sounded, cut short, suppressed, fearful. Kapturak heard it. He jumped up and woke the sleepers. Each put his bundle on his back. They went outside. The night was dim and humid, the ground moist. The steps of each were audible. They went through a wood. Kapturak stood still. 'Lie down!' he whispered, and all quietly lay down. A twig snapped.

After a while Kapturak jumped up and began to run. 'Follow me!' he shouted. Behind him they all jumped over a ditch. They continued running to the edge of the wood. Behind them a shot rang out and died away in a long echo.

They were over the border. The men walked slowly, silently, heavily. Each one's breathing could be heard. Friedrich could not see them but he remembered their faces clearly, simple snub-nosed peasant faces, eyes under puny foreheads, massive trunks and heavy limbs.

He loved them, for he was sensitive to their distress. He thought of the innumerable frontiers of the gigantic empire. This very night hundreds of thousands were leaving, moving from misfortune to misfortune. The boundless silent night was peopled with human fugitives, flattened wretched faces, massive trunks, heavy limbs.

It began to lighten in the east. As if by command they all suddenly stood still and turned back in the direction from which they had come, as if the night they were abandoning had become their homeland and the dawn only a frontier. They stood still and bade farewell to their homeland, to a farm, an animal, a mother, this one to a hundred acres and another to a single strip of ground, to the striking of a particular clock, the crow of a cock, the creaking of a familiar door. They stood there as if conducting some rite. Suddenly Savelli began to sing a soldier's song in a strong clear voice. All joined in and sang with him. They still had a good hour to go to reach Parthagener's inn.

4

'That is probably his hymn of praise,' said Kapturak rather loudly to Friedrich. Though everyone was singing Savelli heard the remark and retorted: 'Of the two of us, Kapturak, you are the one who should be singing a hymn of praise! You can thank God that you didn't hand me over. I would have killed you.'

'I know,' said Kapturak, 'and I should not have been the first or the last. Is it true that you did away with Kalashvili?'

'I was around,' replied Savelli. It sounded mysterious.

However, Savelli did not give the impression that he had anything to conceal in the affair.

'I saw him die,' he went on. 'I never for a moment thought that he also had a private life, outside his police duties. Anyway, he could not have continued to live in peace. I don't believe in the peace of a traitor.'

"You must have hated him,' Friedrich ventured to ask.

'No!' replied Savelli. 'I did not feel hate. I believe one can only hate if one has suffered personally at the hands of another. But I'm not capable of that. I am a tool. People use my head, my hands, my constitution. My life is not my own. I no longer belong to myself. I would have to transgress the rights befitting a tool if I wanted to hate him. Or love him, even!'

'But you
do
love?'

'What?'

'I mean,' answered Friedrich slowly, for he was shy of using a large word, 'the Idea, the Revolution.'

'I have worked eight years for it,' said Savelli quietly, 'and cannot say sincerely whether I love it. Is it possible to love something that is so much bigger than I am? I don't understand how believers can love God! I think of love as a force which can grasp and possess its object. No! I don't believe that I love the Revolution—not in that sense.'

'One can love God,' uttered Kapturak decisively.

'Maybe a believer sees him,' opined Savelli. 'Maybe I ought to see the Revolution. ...'

'If you run away,' said Kapturak, 'who will make the Revolution?'

'Who needs make it?' cried Savelli. 'It's coming. Your children will see it.'

'God help my children!' said Kapturak.

Friedrich knew who Savelli was. He figured under the name of Tomyshkin in the newspaper reports. He had carried out the notorious bank-raids and illegal movement of money in the Caucasus and in south-west Russia. The police had sought him for years in vain.

'He could have stayed on longer,' remarked Kapturak. 'He wasn't worried about the police. But they need him abroad.'

Savelli remained at the inn for a few days. 'Are you related to the Parthageners?' he once asked Friedrich. And when Friedrich denied this, 'Then what are you doing in the company of these bandits?'

'I must save money in order to learn,' said Friedrich. 'Soon I shall return to Vienna.'

'Then come and see me sometime!' said Savelli. And he gave him his addresses in Vienna, Zürich and London.

Friedrich felt the same kind of embarrassed gratitude for this notorious man that a patient feels for his doctor when he announces the protracted course of a disease with kindness and consideration. Savelli was strange, hard, sinister. Friedrich detested the sacrifice, the anonymity of the sacrifice, the voluntary association the Caucasian cultivated with death.

Life stretched before Friedrich's youth, immense in its extent, incalculably rich in years and adventure. When he set the word 'World' before him, he saw pleasures, women, fame and riches.

He accompanied Savelli to the station. In a single short moment, when Savelli was already standing on the footboard, Friedrich had the feeling that the stranger had assumed control of his youth, his life, his future. He wanted to hand back the addresses and say: 'I shall never look you up.' But now Savelli was holding out his hand. He took it. Savelli smiled. He closed the carriage door. Friedrich watched for a while. Savelli did not return to the window.

5

Friedrich learned how to lie, to forge papers, to exploit the impotence, the stupidity, and even sometimes the brutality of the officials. Others of his age were still dreading a black mark or a bad reference at school. He was already aware that there were no incorruptible persons in the world, that everything could be accomplished with the aid of money and nearly everything with the aid of intelligence. He began to save. In his spare time he prepared for matriculation. To this end he had become acquainted with a law student who had had to leave the university for some undisclosed reason. This student was currently living there as clerk to a solicitor and announced his intention of awaiting a more favourable era. He called himself a 'free revolutionary' and still adhered to the ideals of the French Revolution. He sighed for the one that had failed in 1848. He spoke of the great days in Paris, of the guillotine, of Metternich, of the minister Latour as of recent and immediate matters. He wanted one day to become a politician, an Opposition deputy. And he already possessed the robust, unruffled, solid aggressiveness of a parliamentarian that might well discountenance a suave minister of the old régime. In the meantime he confined his political activities to participation in the meetings which were held twice a week at Chaikin's, the cobbler's.

Chaikin was one of those Russian émigrés whose poverty had prevented him from leaving this border town. Although he earned barely enough for a cup of tea, a piece of bread, a radish, he supported the revolutionaries who came over the border. Every month he expected the outbreak of the world revolution. He prided himself on performing important duties on its behalf and eventually became the head of an impotent conspiracy. Round him gathered the rebellious and dissatisfied. For even in this town, on the periphery of the capitalist world, in which the statute books had only a diminished and debased effect, the unwritten laws of the establishment and of bourgeois morality were nevertheless observed in their full validity. Amidst the striking and unEuropean local colour, in the bizarre tumult of adventurers, doubtful nationalities and the babel of tongues, the putrescent gleam of a patriarchal entrepreneurial benevolence still lingered, the wages of the small artisans and workmen were kept low, the poor were maintained in their submissiveness, which was exposed in the streets beside the infirmities of the beggars. Here, too, those who had settled showed their hatred towards the migrants; all the newly-arrived poor—and some arrived every week—were greeted with the same hostility that the others had themselves received. And even the beggars, who lived on charity, were as afraid of competitors as the shopkeepers. From the officers of the garrison there emanated a metallic glitter to which the daughters of the lower middle class succumbed. At election times soldiers and police moved into the town and spread fear, and the townsfolk were just as cowed as their brethren in the larger European cities.

The rebels met at Chaikin's. In compliance with theory, he called the few municipal watchmen 'capitalist lackeys', a merchant who did not pay his apprentices 'an exploiter and entrepreneur', the town councillors 'beneficiaries of society', the apprentices 'beasts of burden', and 120 brush-makers the 'proletarian masses'. He organized discussions. He expounded the small and the major programmes. He arranged demonstrations on various occasions. Nothing would have made him happier than to be arrested. But no one regarded him as dangerous.

Friedrich attended Chaikin's meetings regularly. He went out of curiosity. He stayed out of ambition. In the discussion he learned how to make his point at any price. He developed his marked talent for false formulations. He enjoyed the hush which settled when he rose to speak, in which he imagined he could hear his voice even before it rang out. For days on end he prepared himself to counter every possible objection. He learned to feign a quickwittedness that he did not really possess. He reproduced strange sentences from pamphlets as if they were his own. He enjoyed triumphs. And yet he sincerely loved the poor folk who listened to him, and the red world conflagration he intended to kindle.

The World! What a word! He heard it with youthful ears. It radiated a great beauty and concealed great injustice. Twice a week he deemed it necessary to destroy it and on the other days he readied himself to conquer it.

To this end he studied so zealously that one day his student friend was able to say:

'I think you could sit the examination in two months' time. See if you can make it this autumn.'

Friedrich counted the money he had saved. It was enough for six months. He consulted Kapturak about documents. There was some satisfaction to be obtained in appearing before the authorities of the capitalist world with false papers. He had no father and no country. His birth had not been registered anywhere. He took this as a sign and went to Kapturak.

'In what names?'

'Friedrich Zimmer.'

'Why Zimmer?'

'That was my father's name.'

'Russian or Austrian?'

'Austrian.'

'Quite right,' said Kapturak. 'A young man should not stay in our town. Go out into the world and study law. That's useful. You may yet be a district commissioner.'

It was on a July day that Freidrich took his departure. The sun beat down on the low roofs of the cottages between which the path led to the station and drove the smoke from the chimneys in front of the low doors. In the middle of the street, which was bordered on both sides by wooden sidewalks, there was a bustle of women and children, peaceful poultry and aggressive dogs. All was pervaded by a fragrant summery influence, and over the smoke from the chimneys prevailed a distant smell of hay and of the trunks of the spruce forest behind the station.

Friedrich was determined to resist any kind of traditional emotion. The fear of melancholy conferred on him the false steadfastness of which young men are unnecessarily proud, and which they take for manliness. He exaggerated the significance of this moment. He had read too much. All of a sudden he re-experienced a hundred scenes of parting. But as the train began to move he forgot the town he was leaving and thought only of that world into which he was travelling.

6

At noon on a fine day in August, a certificate in his pocket, he emerged from the great brown doorway of a Viennese high school. He made his way homeward through the still heat. The streets were empty. They contained only shadows, sun and stones.

He encountered a carriage. The noiseless rubber tyres glided over the paving as if over a polished table. Only a cheerful feudal clatter of horses' hooves could be heard. In the carriage, under a light sunshade currently the fashion, sat a young woman. As she passed by she had time enough to study Friedrich with the protracted and insulting indifference with which one contemplates a tree, a horse or a lamp-post. He passed before her eyes as before a mirror.

'She has no idea,' he thought, 'who I am. My suit is wretched and no wonder; the youngest Parthagener sold it to me cheap. It has a shabby false brightness. The pockets are too deep, the trousers too wide. It's like deceptive sunshine in February. I'm wearing a hat of coarse straw, it presses like heavy wire netting and is spuriously summery. Beautiful women look past me indifferently.'

She was a beautiful woman. A narrow nose with delicate nostrils, brown cheeks, a narrow rather over-straight mouth. Her neck, slender and probably brown, disappeared in the collar of her high-necked dress. A foot in a dove-grey shoe sat like a bird on the facing seat cushioned in red velvet. The sunlight flowed over her body, over the cream-coloured dress and filtered through the parasol which stretched like a tiny sky over its own small world. The coachman in his ash-grey livery held the reins tightly. His forearms hung parallel over his knees. The almost golden glint of the black horses had a festive jollity. Their docked tails betrayed a flirtatious strength. They rose and fell governed by the secret rules of a rhythm not to be fathomed by pedestrians.