The Silent Prophet (7 page)

There was a moment's quietness. The quietness was an answer. It sanctioned his authority like a seal of silence.

When he got down from the platform, Hilde had disappeared. He was annoyed at having looked for her. A few persons pressed his hand and wished him a good journey.

12

His departure was fixed for the evening of the following day. He still had over twenty-four hours to wait. Savelli had provided him with money, letters and commissions. He was to report first to Frau K. and stay with her. To return at the first safe available opportunity with part of the money, which was urgently needed here. He had a trunk full of newspapers. They were stuffed in the pockets, the sleeves, the linings of strange clothing with which he had been provided.

He was not afraid. He was pervaded by a current of peace, like a dying man conscious of a long and righteous life behind him. He could perish, nameless, forgotten, but not without trace. A drop in the ocean of the Revolution.

'I have taken a cordial farewell from R.,' he told me. 'R., whom everyone calls treacherous, whom no one can really tolerate, knows more than the others. He does not forget the infirmity of men where sentiment is concerned. He is aware of the hidden diversity of which we are all made up. No one trusts him entirely because he is many-sided. But, beyond that, he doesn't even trust himself, his incorruptible intelligence.'

He went to say goodbye to Grünhut.

'Where are you off to?'

There was silence for a few moments. Grünhut went to the window. It was as if he looked, not at the street, but only in the windowpane which had ceased to be transparent.

'What's got into you?' Grünhut cried in a tearful voice. 'I don't ask the reason for your journey, that I can guess. But why you?'

'I'm not even sure myself.'

Back to the windowpane.

'I'm seeing him for the last time,' thought Friedrich.

His thoughts, which he had already directed towards death, suddenly made a volte-face.

'You don't realize, you don't realize,' said Grünhut. 'You're young. Do you really imagine that you will ever again be in a position to say: "I'm going far away"? Do you think life is endless? It's short, and has a few miserable possibilities to offer, and you must know how to cherish them. You can say "I want" twice, "I love" once, "I shall" twice, "I'm dying" once. That's all. Look at me. I'm certainly no one to envy. But I don't wish to die. I can probably still say once more 'I want" or "I shall". No great expectations at present but I can wait. I intend to suffer for nothing and for nobody. The tiny pain you feel when you prick your finger is considerable in relation to the shortness of your life. Yes, and to think that there are folk who let their hands be chopped off and their eyes put out for an idea, for an idea! For Humanity, in the name of Freedom! It's frightful!

'I understand well enough, you can't go back on this. One commits some act or other, one simply has to do it. Then we are held responsible, we are given a medal for a so-called heroic deed, we are thrown in jail for a so-called crime. We aren't responsible for anything. At most, we're responsible for what we
don't
do. If we were held responsible on
that
account, we'd be beaten up a hundred times a day and lie in jail a hundred times and be hanged a hundred times.'

He returned to the windowpane. And, his back turned to Friedrich, said quite gently: 'Go then, and see you come back. I've seen many go before now.'

Voices were suddenly audible in Frau Tarka's room next-door.

'Quiet,' whispered Grünhut, 'sit quite still where you are. A new client. The painter was here yesterday. I thought then that someone might be coming today. Won't stay long. First consultation. Stay here till she's gone.'

Soon they heard the door. 'Quick, before Madame comes in,' said Grünhut. A fleeting handshake, as if Grünhut had forgotten that it was farewell forever.

13

Two days later he was sitting with old Parthagener at the inn 'The Ball and Chain'. It had not changed. Kapturak still continued to bring in deserters. Folk drank schnapps and ate salted peas. The rebels met at Chaikin's. The jurist still hoped to become a Deputy.

Kapturak arrived next morning. 'So you've not become a district commissioner? Yes, we're leaving already. The trunks I'll take with me. Expect them at the border tavern.' It was a holiday, the frontier officials were already sitting with the deserting soldiers, drinking and singing. Behind the counter stood the landlord, open-mouthed and goggle-eyed.

Friedrich stepped outside. The moist stars twinkled. A soft wind blew. One scented the wide plains from which it came.

A small tubby man with a black goatee suddenly stood next to Friedrich.

'A fine night,' he said, 'isn't it?'

'Yes,' said Friedrich, 'a fine night.'

'I'm arresting you, my dear Kargan,' said the man amiably. He had a chubby, white, almost feminine hand and short fingers. 'Get going!' he ordered.

Two men who suddenly came into view took Friedrich between them.

He felt only the wind, like a consolation from infinite space.

Book Two

It was evening. The water splashed softly and caressingly against the steamer floating on the Volga. The heavy regular thump of the engines could be heard between decks. The swaying lanterns cast light and shadow over the two hundred men who had lain down there, each exactly where he happened to have been standing when he set foot on the ship. At the quiet way-stations the engines fell silent and one heard the low shouts of sailors and porters and the slap of water against wood.

Most of the prisoners lay stretched out on the deck. A hundred and twenty of the two hundred between-deck passengers were in irons. They wore chains at their right wrist and right ankle. Those who were not fettered seemed almost like free men beside the chained men. Now and again there appeared a policeman, an inquisitive sailor. The prisoners took no notice either of their guards or their visitors. Although it was quite early in the evening and food was due to be handed out in half an hour, most slept, tired after the long march they had covered. The government was sending them on the slow cheap route by water, after having made them go a long distance on foot. The day after tomorrow they were to be freighted on the railroad. They were stocking up well on sleep.

Some of them already knew their way around. It was not the first time they had made this trip. These were experienced, settled down in a practical manner, and gave advice to the novices. They enjoyed a certain authority among their comrades. With the gendarmes they were linked by a kind of intimate hostility.

They were called to meals as if to an execution. They lined up behind one another, chains clanking between them. It seemed as if they were all strung on a single chain. A spoon landed with a regular splashing stroke in the cauldron, then there was the soft gurgle of a stream of soup flowing softly downwards, a damp mass fell on a hard metal plate. Heavy feet shuffled, a chain dragged clanking, and ever and again another detached himself from the line as if he had been unstrung. The lower space became filled with the vapour rising from two hundred metal plates and mouths. All ate. And, although they themselves conducted the spoon to their lips, it seemed as if they were being fed by alien arms which did not belong to their bodies. Their eyes, which were sated much sooner than their stomachs, already had the vacant look of repletion which characterizes the head of a family at table, the look that is already advancing into the domain of sleep.

'When I look at these men as they feed,' said Friedrich to Berzejev, a former lieutenant, 'I am convinced that they need nothing more than a ball and chain on the leg, a spoon in the right hand, and a tin plate in the left. The heart is so near the bowels, tongue and teeth so closely adjacent to the brain, the hands that write down thoughts can so easily slaughter a lamb and turn a spit, that I find myself as much at a loss before human beings as before a legendary dragon.'

'You talk like a poet,' replied Berzejev, smiled, and showed in his black beard two rows of gleaming teeth which seemed to confirm Friedrich's conjecture. 'I cannot find such words. But I too have seen that man is a puzzle, and above all that it is not possible to help him.'

Both felt alarmed. Were they not here because they wanted to help him? They turned away from each other.

'Good night,' said Berzejev. Outside the guard was relieved.

2

After four days they were disembarked, led into a large room and entrained. They were refreshed as they trod solid ground again, and their chains gave a livelier ring. Even beneath the turning wheels of the train they felt the earth. Through the barred windows they saw grass and fields, cows and herdsmen, birches and peasants, churches and blue smoke over chimneystacks, the entire world from which they were cut off. And yet, it was a consolation that it had not perished, that it had not even altered. As long as houses stood and cattle grazed, the world awaited the return of the prisoners. Freedom was not like a possession which each one of them had lost. It was an element like the air.

Rumours circulated through the waggons. In recollection of the tidings heard and exchanged in recent prisons, they were called 'latrine reports'. Some said that the entire transport would go straight to Vierchoiansk, which was denounced by the knowledgeable as nonsense. Adrassionov, the NGO, had told one of the old hands whom he was now transporting for the second time, that they would be taken to Tiumen, to one of the biggest prisons, the Tiuremni Zamok, or central prison for exiles. The experienced, who had already been there, began to depict the horrors of this jail. At first they shuddered at their own words and made their listeners shudder. But gradually, during their narration, the thrill they derived from their narrative exceeded its content, and the curiosity of the listeners dominated their terror. They sat there like children listening to stories of glass palaces. Panfilov and Sjemienuta, two old white-bearded Ukrainians, even described the solitary cells with a kind of nostalgia; and, so forgetful is the human heart and because the journey still seemed unending and its destination still uncertain despite the affirmations of the old hands, all of them believed for a few short hours that it was not they themselves but quite other strangers who were travelling towards the miseries of the prisons.

Friedrich and Berzejev resolved to stay together as far as possible. Berzejev had money. He knew how to bribe, swap lists and names and—while the other 'politicals' discussed the peasants, anarchy, Bakunin, Marx and the Jews—calculated whom he should give a cigarette and whom a rouble.

Although they travelled slowly, waited for hours at goods stations, the railway journey nevertheless seemed shorter than they had expected. Once again the chains rattled, once again there was a roll-call. They stood at the last station and took their leave of the attractive appurtenances of the railway, of its technical playthings, its green signals and red flags, the shrill bells of glass and the hard bells of iron, the indefatigable ticking of the telegraph and the yearning swerving gleam of the rails, of the panting breath of the locomotive and the hoarse screech it sent up to the sky, the guard's hail and the wave of the station officials, a wall and a garden fence, of the meagre refreshment room at this forlorn station and the girl who stood behind the bottles and tended a samovar. Especially this girl. Friedrich contemplated her as if she were the last European woman he would be allowed to look at and had to memorize carefully. He recalled Hilde as he might a girl he had talked to twenty years ago. At times he could no longer picture her face. It seemed to him that she had become old and grey in the interim, a grandmother.

They climbed into waggons, halted every twenty-five kilometres, changed horses. Only the driver remained the same throughout the journey. A large part of the convoy had remained behind and was indeed due to be delivered to one of the large collective prisons. Now they consisted only of a few groups. Friedrich and Berzejev, Freyburg and Lion sat in one waggon. Without everyone seeing, Friedrich pressed Berzejev's hand. They sealed a silent compact.

When any of the prisoners removed his cap, one saw the left half of his skull shaved bare, and his face took on the foolish imprint of a lunatic. Each shrank from the other, but each hid his horror under a smile. Only Berzejev had succeeded in bribing the barber. He had his whole scalp shaved bare.

The prisoners sang one song after another. The soldiers and the driver joined in. At times one man would sing alone, and then it was as if he sang with the strength of all. His voice was drowned in the many-voiced refrain, which was like an echo from heaven to earth.

The best singer was Konov, a weaver from Moscow, at whose house a secret printing-press had been discovered. He was on his way to fifteen years' imprisonment.

3

One morning they began their march. Across a desolate flat landscape deployed the trail of human beings with bundles, fetters, sticks in hands.

Of the fifty men thus making their way, in groups of eight, six and ten guarded by sharp bayonets on long rifles, only the oldest manifested fatigue. According to regulations, each was allowed to carry only fifteen poods of baggage. Some who had refused to cut down on their belongings at the last station now discarded useful with unnecessary objects. The soldiers collected all of these and left them behind in the
jurts
which they passed, and which they would revisit on the return journey. Only Berzejev threw nothing away. His bulky pack was carried by the soldiers. He would say a good word to them, stick a cigarette in their mouths, and click his tongue at them as if they were horses.

After they had been marching in silence for a long time, Berzejev ordered: 'Sing'. They sang. But they stopped right after the first verse. A hesitant pause ensued, then the refrain was taken up by a timorous voice, and it was a long time before the others joined in. The melody did not quicken their lagging feet. Exile itself advanced towards them. The railway, horses, carriages and men, all had been left far behind. The sky arched over the flat earth like a round roof of grey lead, soldered around its edges. They were sealed down under the sky. In prison, at least, one knew that a sky still arched above the walls. But here the very freedom was an imprisonment. In the leaden sky there were no bars through which one could spy another sky of blue air. The vastness of this space was more confining than a cell.