Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press Classics
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
A soldier travels through Europe on a doomed mission to track down his fiancée in this masterful and vivid evocation of life between the wars __________ 'A concise, powerful writer who brilliantly evokes the social, political and intellectual turmoil of the era' Publisher's Weekly 'A master of German prose... Roth understood the subtler acts of violence that war enacts upon the mind' Spectator 'A very fine writer indeed' Guardian __________ Flight Without End tells the story of Franz Tunda, an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, who is captured by the Russians in WWI and escapes to a remote Siberian farm. When peace is at last declared, Tunda pulls out a crumpled photo of his fiancée and sets off in search of home. But the old order has vanished, and Tunda finds himself instead swept along in the current of this new, terrifying world, surrendering to an impassioned love affair with a Russian revolutionary, then drifting phantom-like through Europe's cities. One of Joseph Roth's most personal novels, Flight Without End melds wry humour and experience of exile to reflect on the predicament of a man who can find no role for himself in a changed world.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 201
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
1
‘A concise, powerful writer who brilliantly evokes the social, political and intellectual turmoil of the era’
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY2
3
FLIGHT WITHOUT END
JOSEPH ROTH
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY DAVID LE VAY AND BEATRICE MUSGRAVE
PUSHKIN PRESS CLASSICS4
Contents
FLIGHT WITHOUT END
6
Foreword
In what follows I tell the story of my friend, comrade and spiritual associate, Franz Tunda.
I follow in part his notes, in part his narrative.
I have invented nothing, made up nothing. The question of ‘poetic invention’ is no longer relevant. Observed fact is all that counts.
I
Franz tunda, first lieutenant in the Austrian Army, became a Russian prisoner of war in August 1916. He was taken to a camp a few versts north-east of Irkutsk. He succeeded in escaping with the help of a Siberian Pole. On the remote, isolated and dreary farm of this Pole, the officer remained until the spring of 1919.
Foresters stopped by at the Pole’s, bear-hunters and furtraders. Tunda had no need to fear pursuit. No one knew him. He was the son of an Austrian major and a Polish Jewess, born in the small Galician town of his father’s garrison. He spoke Polish; he had served in a Galician regiment. It was easy for him to pass himself off as a younger brother of the Pole. The Pole’s name was Baranowicz. Tunda called himself likewise.
He obtained false papers in the name of Baranowicz, was henceforth born in Lodz, had been invalided from the Russian Army in 1917 on account of an incurable and infectious eye disease, and was by occupation a fur-trader resident in Verchni Udinsk.
The Pole counted his words like pearls; a black beard reinforced his reserve. Thirty years earlier he had come 10to Siberia as a convict. Later, he stayed on of his own free will. He collaborated with a scientific expedition exploring the taiga, roamed in the forests for five years, then married a Chinese woman, became a Buddhist, stayed in a Chinese village as doctor and herbalist, had two children, lost both of them and his wife to the plague, returned to the forests, lived by hunting and fur-trading, learned to recognize the tiger’s tracks in the thickest grass, omens of storms in the erratic flight of birds, knew how to distinguish hail- from snow-clouds and snow- from rain-clouds, studied the habits of foresters, robbers and harmless travellers, loved his two dogs like brothers, and revered snakes and tigers. He volunteered to serve in the war, but made such a sinister impression on his comrades and officers in the barracks that they sent him back to his forests as a lunatic. Every year, in March, he visited the town. He bartered horns, hides, antlers for ammunition, tea, tobacco and spirits. He also took back a few newspapers so as to keep in touch with events, but believed neither the news nor the articles; he did not even trust the advertisements. For years he visited a particular brothel to see one Ekaterina Pavlovna, a redhead. If someone else was with the girl Baranowicz would wait, a patient admirer. The girl grew elderly, dyed her grey hairs, lost first one tooth, then another, then her dentures, too. Every year Baranowicz had a shorter time to wait, until eventually he was the only one to visit Ekaterina. She began to love him, was consumed with yearning throughout the year, the late yearning of a late betrothed. Every year her tenderness grew, her passion increased; an old woman, with shrivelled flesh, she enjoyed the first love of her life. Every year Baranowicz brought her 11the same Chinese necklaces and the little flutes he carved himself, on which he imitated the calls of birds.
In February 1918 Baranowicz lost the thumb of his left hand when he was carelessly sawing wood. It took six weeks to heal; in April the hunters were due to arrive from Vladivostok; he was unable to visit the town that year. Ekaterina waited in vain. Baranowicz sent her a letter by a hunter and comforted her. Instead of the Chinese pearls he sent her sables and a snake-skin and a bear’s coat as a bedside rug. So it came about, in this most important of all years, that Tunda did not see a newspaper. Not until the spring of 1919 did he learn from Baranowicz on his return that the war was over.
It was a Friday. Tunda was washing the dishes in the kitchen, Baranowicz came through the door, the dogs were barking. Ice clattered on his black beard, a raven sat on the window-sill.
‘It’s peace, it’s revolution!’ said Baranowicz.
At that moment all was still in the kitchen. The clock in the next room struck three loud strokes. Franz Tunda put down the dishes gently and carefully on the bench. He did not want to disturb the silence. Probably, too, he was afraid the plates might break. His hands trembled.
‘All the way back,’ said Baranowicz, ‘I wondered whether I should tell you. I’m really sorry that you’ll be going home now. We shall probably never meet again, neither will you write to me.’
‘I shan’t forget you,’ said Tunda.
‘Don’t be too sure!’ said Baranowicz.
It was farewell.
II
Tunda wanted to reach the ukraine, Shmerinka, where he had been captured, then the Austrian frontier-post at Podvoloczyska, and finally Vienna. He had no particular plan; the way ahead was uncertain, even tortuous. He realized that it would take a long time. He had only one resolve: to avoid encountering either White or Red troops and not to get involved in the Revolution. He no longer had a home. His father had met his death as a colonel, his mother had been dead for many years. A brother was an orchestral conductor in a medium-sized German city.
In Vienna his fiancée, daughter of Hartmann, the pencil manufacturer, was expecting him. The first lieutenant knew no more about her than that she was beautiful, sensible, rich and blonde. These four qualities had made her a suitable bride.
She used to send him letters and liver pâté in the field, sometimes a pressed flower from Heiligen Kreuz. He would write to her every week on dark-blue field-post paper with a moistened indelible pencil – brief letters, terse factual reports, news bulletins.
He had heard nothing from her since his escape from 13the camp. But he did not doubt that she remained true to him and was waiting for him.
He did not question that she would wait for him until his return. But it seemed to him just as certain that she would cease to love him once he was standing before her in person. For when she had become engaged to him he had been an officer. The world’s great troubles had lent him an air of beauty, the proximity of death had enhanced him, the shadow of the tomb had fallen across the living man, the cross on his breast had called to mind the Cross on the Hill. If one assumed a happy outcome, then, after the triumphal march of the victorious troops through the Ringstrasse, there would be waiting for him the golden collar of a major, the staff school, and the eventual rank of general, all to the sound of the soft drum-roll of the Radetzky March.
But for the moment Franz Tunda was a young man without a name, without importance, without rank, without title, without money and without occupation – homeless and stateless.
He had his old papers and a picture of his betrothed sewn up in his jacket. It seemed wiser to him to travel across Russia under the assumed name which was as familiar to him as his own. Once across the border he could again make use of his old papers.
Tunda felt the pasteboard on which his beautiful betrothed was portrayed firm and comforting against his heart. The picture was by the court photographers who supplied the fashion magazines with pictures of beautiful women. Fräulein Hartmann had appeared as the fiancée of the gallant first lieutenant in a series ‘Brides of Our 14Heroes’; the journal had reached him just a week before his capture.
Tunda was able to take the cutting with the picture from his coat-pocket without difficulty whenever he felt inclined to contemplate his fiancée. He mourned for her already, even before seeing her again. He loved her twice over: as an ideal, and as one lost forever. He loved the heroism of his far and dangerous journeying. He loved the sacrifice which was necessary to reach his bride, and the futility of this sacrifice. All the heroism of his war years seemed childish to him in comparison with the undertaking he was now attempting. Alongside his despair grew the hope that through this perilous return journey he could once more become desirable as a husband. He was happy the whole way. If anyone had asked him whether this was due to hope or sadness, he would not have known. In the hearts of some men sorrow creates a greater exaltation than joy. Of all the tears one may have to choke back, the most precious are those that one has shed for oneself.
Tunda managed to steer clear of both White and Red troops. In a few months he traversed Siberia and a large part of European Russia, by train, on horseback and on foot. He reached the Ukraine. He did not concern himself with the victory or the overthrow of the Revolution. The sound of this word evoked faint images of barricades, mobs, and the history instructor at the Cadet School, Major Horvath. ‘Barricades’ conjured up over-turned black school benches, piled on top of each other. ‘Mob’ could be equated with the crowd which used to mass behind the cordon of militia on Maundy Thursday. Of these people one saw only sweaty 15faces and crushed hats. They probably held stones in their hands. Such people engendered anarchy and were addicted to sloth.
Tunda sometimes remembered the guillotine, which Major Horvath always referred to as the guillotin, just as he used to say Pari, instead of Paris. The guillotine, of whose construction the Major had an expert knowledge and appreciation, was probably by now erected on the Stephansplatz, where the traffic of carriages and motor-cars was held up (as on New Year’s Eve), and the heads of the leading families of the Empire were rolling as far as the Peterskirche and into the Jasomirgottstrasse. Things were the same in St Petersburg and Berlin. A revolution without the guillotine was as improbable as one without red flags. One sang The Internationale, a song which cadet Mohr had declaimed on Sunday afternoons, the day of the so-called Schweinereien, when Mohr used to exhibit pornographic postcards and sing socialist songs. The yard outside was empty, there was stillness and emptiness when you looked out of the window, you could hear the grass growing between the great paving-stones. A ‘guillotin’, even as it were with ‘e’ amputated, cut off, was something heroic, steel-blue, dripping with blood. Considered purely as an instrument, it seemed to Tunda more heroic than a machine-gun.
But Tunda himself did not take sides. He felt no sympathy for the Revolution; it had ruined his career and his life. No longer a member of the army, he was happy not to be forced to espouse any particular cause when he encountered the historical process. He was an Austrian. He was on his way to Vienna. 16
In September he reached Shmerinka. In the evening he went into the town, bought bread dearly for some of his last silver coins, and avoided political discussions. He had no desire to reveal that he was unfamiliar with the situation and that he had come from a distance.
He decided to travel on through the night.
It was clear and chill, almost wintry; the ground was still unfrozen, but not so the sky. Towards midnight he suddenly heard rifle-shots. A bullet struck the stick from his hand. He threw himself to the ground, a hoof-blow struck him in the back, he was seized, yanked upright, thrown across a saddle, attached to a horse like washing to a line. His back hurt, he lost consciousness in the gallop, his head was filled with blood, it threatened to spurt from his eyes. He awoke from his swoon and slept just where he hung. The next morning, when he was untied, he was still asleep; they gave him vinegar to smell, he opened his eyes and found himself lying on a sack in a hut, where an officer sat behind a table. Horses neighed loudly and cheerfully in front of the house, a cat sat at the window. Tunda was suspected of being a Bolshevik spy. ‘Red dog!’ the officer called him. The first lieutenant very quickly realized that it was unwise to speak Russian. He told the truth, identified himself as Franz Tunda, admitted that he was trying to make his way home and that he held false papers. They did not believe him. He began to reach towards his breast to produce his proper papers. But then he felt the pressure of the photograph as a caution, a warning, so he did not legitimize himself; after all, it could not have helped him. He was fettered, shut up in a stable, saw the daylight through an aperture, saw a small group of 17stars scattered like white poppy-seed. Tunda thought of fresh pastry – he was an Austrian. After he had seen the stars a second time round he fainted again. He awoke in a flood of sunlight, was given water, bread and brandy, Red Guards stood round him; among them was a girl in trousers, two large tunic-pockets stuffed with papers hinted at a bosom.
‘Who are you?’ asked the girl.
She wrote down all that Tunda said.
She held out her hand to him. The Red Guards went outside, they left the door wide open, he could feel the glowing sun though it was pale and without power to burn. The girl was robust; she tried to drag Tunda to his feet and fell down herself.
He fell asleep in bright sunlight. Then he remained with the Reds.
III
I rene had really waited a long time. In the social stratum to which Fräulein Hartmann belonged, there is a conventional loyalty, love founded in convenience, chastity springing from lack of choice and a fastidious taste. Irene’s father, a manufacturer from the period when a man’s honesty was reckoned in terms of the percentage he obtained on his wares, lost his factory as a result of those same scruples to which Irene had almost sacrificed her life. He could not make up his mind to use bad lead, even though the customers were not fussy. There is a mysterious and touching attachment to the quality of one’s own merchandise, whose reliability reflects the character of their manufacturer, a loyalty to the product which resembles to some extent the patriotism of those people who make their own existence depend on the size, beauty and power of their fatherland. This patriotism manufacturers frequently share with the least of their office-workers, like the great patriotism of princes and corporals.
The old gentleman sprang from the period when quality was a matter of determination and money was still earned ethically. He had war contracts but no real notion of military life. Therefore he supplied our soldiers in the field with millions 19of the very best pencils, pencils which our soldiers used just as little as the wretched products of other war contractors. The manufacturer showed the door to a quartermaster who advised him to be less scrupulous with his products. Others kept their good material for better times.
When peace came the old man was left with only poor material, the value of which had in any case fallen. He disposed of it together with his factory, retired to a country district, made a few short excursions and finally the last long one to the central cemetery.
Irene, like most daughters of impoverished manufacturers, remained in a villa, with a dog and a lady of noble birth who received visits of condolence and sincerely mourned the old man, not because he had been close to her, but because he had died without ever having been so. Her path from housekeeper to mistress had been interrupted by death. Now she possessed the keys to cupboards which did not belong to her. She consoled herself with an exhaustive regard for the suffering Irene.
Moreover, the noble lady had been the go-between in her betrothal to Tunda. Irene had become engaged in order to demonstrate her independence; an engagement was almost the equivalent of coming of age. The fiancée of a serving officer in the war was defactoof age. In all probability the love which had developed on this basis would not have survived the attainment of legal majority, the end of the war, the Revolution, had Tunda returned. But missing persons have an irresistible charm. One may deceive someone who is not missing, a healthy man, a sick man, and under certain circumstances even a dead man. But one waits as 20long as is necessary for someone who has mysteriously disappeared.
A woman’s love is inspired by various motives. Even waiting is one. She loves her own yearning and the substantial amount of time invested. Every women would despise herself for not loving the man she has waited for. Why, then, did Irene wait? Because the men on the spot are greatly inferior to those who are absent.
Moreover, she was choosy. She belonged to that generation of disillusioned upper middle-class girls whose naturally romantic disposition had been destroyed by the war. During the war these girls were in secondary schools, high schools, so-called finishing schools. In times of peace these are the breeding-grounds of illusions, of ideals and amorousness.
During the war education was neglected. Girls of all classes studied sick-nursing, current heroism and war communiqués in place of iambics. The women of this generation are as cynical as only those with much experience in love are. To them the obtuse, simple and barbaric nature of men is tedious. They already know in advance the despicable, eternal and unchanging modes of masculine courtship.
After the war Irene took a post in an office because by then it had become embarrassing not to work. She was one of those better office workers, who would be summoned by the chief himself rather than by his secretary. Thus one began to imagine that the world was topsy-turvy, that a general equality was now the rule. What had the world come to when the daughters of manufacturers had to reply to ‘yours of the eighteenth inst.’ in order to be able to wear better stockings! Such times were out of joint. 21
Irene waited (like many thousands of women) morning, noon and night for the postman. From time to time he brought an unimportant letter from the lawyer. Meanwhile she was accompanied by the sighs of the aristocratic lady, whose sympathy resembled a malicious gloating.
Irene was in contact with family friends from Trieste. They were an ancient family who had lived for decades by the manufacture of tiled stoves and plaster casts of classical statues. This family is responsible for most of the discus-throwers which stand under bell-jars on mahogany showcases. A branch of the Trieste family had – probably for business reasons – embraced the Irredentist cause, moved its office to Milan, and split away from that part of the family still loyal to the Hapsburgs. Never again did the two camps exchange wedding telegrams, so profound are the consequences patriotism can engender.
After the war relations were gradually resumed. As victory conduces to magnanimity, the Italian branch of the family began by extending its hand to the Austrian. There was a nephew who came from Milan to Vienna; and it was this man whom Irene eventually married.
He won her by gallantry. In those days this was a rare quality in German men – it still is today. He was unpretentious, lively, businesslike, he made money, and possessed the important and astute capacity of being at once mean and of making a woman unexpected and expensive gifts. His personal taste stood in startling contrast to his profession; his house did not contain a single one of the statues he manufactured.
Irene was delighted when she left the paternal villa and – for the first time in fifteen years – the noble lady. 22
As the dog accompanied the bridal pair, the housekeeper assumed part of his functions: she snarled at the postman.
Irene did not forget Tunda. Contrary to her good taste, she called her first child – it was a girl – Franziska.
IV
Ihave narrated how Tunda began to fight for the Revolution. It was an accident.
He did not forget his betrothed, but found himself no longer on the way to her but actually in the neighbourhood of Kiev and marching towards the Caucasus. He wore a red star; his boots were in shreds. He still did not know whether he was in love with this girl comrade. But one day when, following an ancient tradition, he declared his allegiance he was confronted with her opposition to such poetic nonsense and experienced the collapse of traditional laws.
‘I shall never leave you,’ said Franz Tunda.
‘I shall get rid of you!’ retorted the girl.
Her name was Natasha Alexandrovna. She was the daughter of a clockmaker and a peasant woman, had made an early marriage with a manufacturer of French perfumery and left him after a year. She was twenty-three years old. Her expression changed from time to time. Her arched forehead became creased, her thick short eyebrows moved close together, the fine skin of her nose became taut over the bone, her nostrils narrowed, her lips – usually round and half-open – pressed together like two bitter enemies, 24her neck reached out like a searching animal. Her pupils, usually brown and round, in thin gold circles, could become narrow green ovals between contracted lids like swords in their sheaths. She did not want to acknowledge her beauty, rebelled against herself, regarded her femininity as a reversion to bourgeois conceptions and the entire female sex as the unwarranted residue of a defeated expiring world. She was braver than the whole of the male troop with whom she fought. She did not realize that courage is a virtue in women and cowardice the prudence of men. Neither did she realize that all the men were her comrades only because they loved her. She was unaware that men are chaste and ashamed to betray their affection. She had taken none of them; she had not acknowledged the love of a single one because she was more bourgeois than she dared to admit to herself.
