The Jail/Chapter XII
XII
Tuesday, one—Wednesday—two, Thursday—three—what, only three days? And I feel as if I had been here three weeks, no, three months and even longer. My freedom is already far, far behind me; I recalled it and my heart began to ache, I began to think of the future, and gloomy thoughts arose in my mind. I have loved nothing so much in the world as this freedom of mine; I could not even imagine that it would be possible to live without it—and lo, I am living here, I am living without sunshine, without air, in dirt, amid hunger, with thieves, sharpers, robbers and murderers, which human society has rejected from its midst; I watch how time as it elapses bears away the irrecoverable hours of my life, and whenever a bitter wave of grief arises in my spirit, I suppress it, refuse to recognize within me the slightest shadow of an emotion, and I assume a hearing as if I had been here for years and were to remain here my whole life. For: Danton, no weakness! Nobody in the other world has ever detected signs of it within me, nobody shall ever do so here among the filthy dregs of human society. Here a man practices mimicry, it is true, he adapts himself to his new surroundings, but he cannot drag forth his soul as the rest do, and expose it quivering to the gaze of beholders. No word of grief must pass the lips, the breast must heave no sigh, and not the least stirring of sorrow must be revealed in the glance. Everything must remain within the soul, and there let it crystallize; it already contains a whole array of such crystals of wrath and hatred, let there be more of them. There is no paper, and in any case it is impossible to write here, so let us hold our peace. I would, however, give the following advice to all estimable states (if such conditions prevail elsewhere as in this one): if you lock up poets, give them paper and pencils, and let them write. Verse, prose, it doesn't matter which. They will write down the contents of their souls, and although the critics may afterwards adopt a varying attitude towards it, you will be satisfied. Let them sing when you put them into a cage, for the things that have to crystallize within them are apt to be worse than dynamite.
Yesterday evening towards 9 o'clock before the lamp flared up, I heard the warbling of a skylark. A brief, exultant scale, as if it were the greeting of one acquaintance to another. Nobody heard it, I alone, and it pleased me. The bird, I suppose, had flown from distant fields, it had passed over the outskirts of the city, had settled upon the jail roof, and uttered a call, a greeting. It was as if it knew that down below, behind the bars, there was a poet sitting, a lover of freedom who was watching the last flashes of day in the windows opposite.
And in the following night I had another beautiful dream. I was somewhere with people dear to me. The sun was gleaming magnificently, and the world was fresh and magical. And I had a feeling of freedom, we were all free, and that was why the world was so delightful. The tall figure of an antique Goddess—Artemis, I said to myself—proceeded from a grove near by, stood at the edge, pulled aside the bough of a birch tree with which she veiled her eyes, gazed upon me and smiled—
In the morning Dušek went off to the office. The superintendent needed an additional man to help him, Mr. Fiedler was not enough, the agenda had increased enormously—there were more of us than had been arranged for: he had placed the management of the rooms in the hands of a sergeant of Uhlans. In civil life the sergeant had been a coffee-house keeper in some out-of-the-way street of the fifth circuit; during the war he retained his military rank in a hospital where he had some duties in connection with the commissariat; and there it was alleged that certain cigarettes had been ordered which the patients did not receive. It was supposed that the greater part of them had been smoked by the customers of the coffee-house in the fifth circuit—but this was not true—the sergeant beat his breast and vowed that his honour was everything to him, and he called as a witness Mr. Karl, an infantryman who was also accused (and of course also unjustly) of having had an unsteady hand in the barracks. And Mr. Karl (I draw attention to the fact that in jail strict heed is paid to the proper use of formalities in intercourse; "Mr." must not be omitted in addressing anyone; Mr. Fiedler, Mr. Karl, etc.) declared that if only those were to serve their time in jail who were actually mixed up in things, number 60 would have to contain quite different people from those who were there. Of course, they both gave a glance at our table, as if they were making a silent exception (I was sitting there with Budi and Papa Declich—Dušek was already performing office work); for Mr. Karl and the sergeant were patriots.
The sergeant was put in charge,—good. But after a while he came to ask me how he should manage at morning and evening roll-call ii the superintendent did not come; he said that he as a sergeant could not say "all present, sir" to the warders Sponner and Gehring who were only platoon-leaders. l assured him very solemnly that in truth he could not. Whereupon he went to the censorists, explained the difficult situation to them, corroborated it by my opinion; the censorists listened to him, nodded their heads, remarked: jo, jo, but expressed no views whatever on their ovn initiative, for which reason the sergeant applied to Mr. Nicolodi. Nicolodi used to sit all day on his box leaning upon a stick. He was an old man of seventy, with tiny short legs which could scarcely carry him across the room. He was an Italian from Roveredo and had been here for several weeks. At the beginning of the war he had entered a refugees' camp, then there had been a domiciliary search where he lived in Roveredo, and in his shop (he was a tradesman who had retired from business, which was carried on by his daughter and son-in-law, but they had fled to Italy) had been found flags with the Italian colours. It wasin vain he objected that he had not put them there, or that he knew nothing about them, that he had not been in the shop for years and years, and had neither the interest nor the opportunity to go there, they took him to Vienna and put him into jail. He did not know a word of German, he could scarcely see; in the morning Papa Declich used to dress him, wrap him up in a plaid, put his stick in his hand and place him on the box. There the old man sat all day motionless and without speaking a word. Whether he thought, whether he did not think and, if he thought, what he thought,—heaven alone knew. And so when the sergeant explained matters to him,—and possibly when explaining them to him, he was only explaining this difficult affair to himself again, for it is the way of the Viennese to think and reflect aloud,—he only grunted, hm, hm, and coughed.
Hedrich came back from an errand. He had been shaving people in several rooms and wanted to rest. He put a cigar in his holder, lit it and sat down with us. The sergeant immediately unburdened himself to him of his dilemma. Hedrich looked around the room and remarked with deliberation: "If the superintendent comes, you can report to him, if a warder comes, let platoon-leader Kretzer report ". The sergeant exulted. He clapped Hedrich on the shoulder, asked him for a cigarette, and went off to explain to the censorists how he would manage it.
Mr. Kretzer, the platoon-leader, had an insuperable aversion to the trenches. For six months he had remained hidden in Vienna to avoid them, but he had nevertheless been tracked down. He was the size of a mountain, an unusually strong fellow except for that fatal weakness which had brought him in our midst. He had an enormous appetite, and he would have felt thoroughly happy in number 60 if it had not been for this appetite. But the sergeant, following a noble impulse of his soul, gave him a slice of bread when he had expressed his consent to do the reporting.We received a new member. A reddish, freckled man in a light overcoat entered the room, looked around him and came up to us. A censorist. In eyes, features, voice—a Jew. He asked whether he could write and send off a post-card from here.
To whom?
To a lady. He had an appointment with her that day.
Impossible. Writing was allowed only on Sundays.
Then he would telegraph.
Impossible. Until he had undergone his cross-examination, he must not think of any connections with the outside world.
But perhaps the warder would—?
We advised him not to.
He only wanted to tell her that he could not come for several days at present, and that he was in a sanatorium
"Sanatoriurn is an old-fashioned phrase, we speak of an Orphan Asylum", I explained to him solemnly.
He wanted to know why I was there.
"I circulated boxes of sardines, in the belief that they contained sardines, but it was discovered that they were bombs with nitroglycerine. So they took them away from me and I am now under remand on a charge of endangering the safety of weak-minded persons in accordance with paragraph 7,580."
He introduced himself: “Editor Dr. Smrecsanyi."
Budi burst out laughing: "And what was your name before?"
The editor laughed too.
Well, he did not spoil the joke.
"Editor of what?"
"Of the Reichspost."
Of the Reichspost? Good heavens, Immortal Nemesis,—at least this much…You cannot write, nor telegraph either, and they won't let any of your messages through unless they contain the truth. The examining superintendent censors everything, the jail provides all your communications with an official stamp.
"But this is terrible", he said interrupting me, "what shall I tell her? She is waiting today, she'll wait tomorrow—"
"Where is she waiting?" asked Hedrich inquisitively.
"In St. Stephen's."
"Not in the temple?" suggested Budi maliciously.
"I am on the editorial staff of the Reichspost and therefore römisch-katholisch, the Reichspost would not take a Jew."
"Take off your overcoat and make yourself at home" Hedrich advised him.
"Hier nur erste zwei Jahr nicht angenehm" (Here only the first two years are not pleasant.) Papa Declich uttered this, his only German eternal truth.