The Jail/Chapter XIX
XIX.
Days passed and weeks elapsed.
Sometimes I used to look back and reflect, and with amazement I became aware that the horizon of my world had thoroughly contracted, and that I had already quite accommodated myself to my surroundings by a process of mimicry. I read the papers daily,—but in doing so, I had the impression that they published news from some distant star. The offensive in Italy suspended. Brusilov advancing against Czernowitz, the waves of war were surging to and fro; I knew that until it was over I could not dream of the end of my stay there—and yet I did not desire the end—so thoroughly had the mimicry worked.
The events of my little world began to interest me more than I had surmised on my arrival. What was happening in Bohemia, I did not know. From the newspapers I had the impression that the wholecountry was snowed under by the censorship, cautious and well wrapped-up people were walking upon frequently trodden paths, whether our land was slumbering, or whether it was dead, was difficult to guess. All was still; If at least a single voice had shouted: We are alive, we are thinking of you all. There was not a sound. And if anything was heard, it was the report of a new arrest, of a new investigation.
I took my exercise, read Julius Caesar, did my eight kilometres every day, in the evening I paid heed so as not to miss the warbling of the skylark, when we were chatting after supper, our heads so close together that the smoke of our cigars merged into a single column; sometimes in the passage I met Dr. Kramář, Rašín, Choc, Buřival, Vojna, Manager Pilát,—I was returning from exercise with our batch, they were going out,—I always looked closely into the eyes of our people, to see whether the jail had laid waste their souls, and besides, I observed the dramas and farces which were being woven by life, that careless and sometimes thoroughly vulgar author, amid the vicisitudes of the people vegetating around me.
A whim on the part of Papritz suddenly forbade the Jewish philanthropic society to supply the rabbinate candidates with ritually prepared food. The candidates were very upset: they sent a deputation to the superintendent, the superintendent shrugged his shoulders. The candidates announced that they would do without food altogether, that they would rather die of hunger, and that the responsibility would fall upon the prison authorities. And they began a hunger strike. That is to say, they refused the prison food, which was refused also by us who were not on hunger strike; evening after evening they sang their proud religious chants, and where there was an opportunity, they slipped into other rooms, pleaded for bread, exchanged cigars and cigarettes for sardines and butter, begged for cheese and eggs,—and continually threatened the worthy authorities that they would perish of hunger. The superintendent laughed, the warders related about the banquets that the dear candidates arranged before they began singing, and their singing was regularly interrupted by Krantz with his circus music.
We had a new arrival. An elderly man with scanty white hair, with blue and devout eyes, clean-shaven, subdued in manner. Hedrich had a look at him, and assured me that he was some Catholic priest. The newcomer took a glance round, stepped joyfully up to Messrs. Fels and Goldenstein, Mr. Simon Lamm also addressed him as an old acquaintance, and so the arrival breathed a sigh of relief: "Thank God,—I feel quite at home!" He was Mr. Aron Wilder, a hotel-keeper from Cracow, and he had been sent to us because "he disliked military service too much." This class of persons who did not push their way to the front, Papa Declich ranked among the Falloti. Mr. Wilder lent Mr. Fels his watch for the period of their residence in common,—by chance it had not been taken away from him in the head office,—Mr. Fels announced that now he was "nearly" quite satisfied here, for to be without a watch is as bad as to be without a left hand. Mr. Wilder was already acquainted with several jails from experience, various transactions connected with supplies of goods had always brought him there, he gave an account of them and compared them with the present one, which but a very poor figure in comparison: the Galician jails are boarding houses, hotels, sanatoria,—this one was an unhealthy and repulsive den.
During exercise the engineer became rather communicative. When he had been taken to Field Marshal Mattuschka at Moravská Ostrava, and would not admit that he was a Russian spy, the military dignitary had snarled at him: "Of course, you're a Czech". "Excuse me, I have a Czech name, Kubaleck, it is true, but I am a German. I do not understand a word of Czech". "Kubaleck,—a Czech name, Czech origin, and if you are a German, then you have high treason in your blood." And the name of this dignitary was Mattuschka.
When he had been transferred to Vienna, they had interned his wife and two little children in a camp at Chocen. After a few months he was summoned before the superintendent who announced to him dryly that according to a notification received from the commandant of the camp at Chocen, his wife had died of typhus on such and such a day, and his children were in an orphan asylum at Pardubice. "At that moment I became the wreck of a man. My wife dead, my children will be brought up as Czechs, by the time I come out, I shall not recognize them, I myself shall be a stranger to them and shall not be able to make myself understood to them with a single word" he said with such convincing emotion in his voice that I believed him and gave him two cigars.
I then got into the habit of giving him two cigars daily—he always related to me a portion of this heartrending story of his. Dušek also helped him as far as possible, Budi too,—only Papa Declich stubbornly kept silence about him.
Somebody gave the sergeant-major at the main entrance three magnificent peonies on my behalf, and the superintendent himself brought them to me into the room. My fellow-inmates came running up,inspected this dark-red greeting from the outside world, Hedrich sniffed at them and wondered that they had no scent. I had to announce upon occasion to Frank that I had received them, that they were on the table in our cell, that the State continued to exist, and that nothing whatever had happened to the jail.
And then there was another new arrival. A man like a cat, I should call him, but a nice cat. Tender, velvety eyes, all of him in fact, was velvety,—movements, gait, speech,—he was, by the way, a Magyar, I did not understand much of what he said. The jail produced a home-like impression upon him, he was surprised by nothing, he was familiar with everything; it was the very first night he had slept there (he arrived in the evening), and already when we returned from exercise, a hand thrust into the room a small package which he quickly hid among the straw mattresses. When things were quiet and the door was shut, he took it out and opened it: Salami, bread, and a box of very fine tobacco cut thinly like a woman's golden hair,—the whole room opened its eyes greedily, but the cat-like man glided alertly up to me as if he had been made of india-rubber, looked into my eyes devotedly and tenderly, and handing me the open package, he lisped: "Tessek".
I refused; "En nem szivarzok cigaretten" (It is true that I smoked cigarettes and am fond of them, but my knowledge of Magyar did not contrive to produce any other sentence).
"Tessek," he pleaded afresh.
I smiled my gratitude and shook my head. He became sad as if my refusal had really hurt him, and went away. He did not offer them to anybody else.
After a while Hedrich arrived from a shaving ramble, brought the "Extrablatt", mysteriously called me into a corner behind the straw mattresses, and pointed out to me an item of local news. The king of Magyar pickpockets had been arrested. The previous day in a tram. And this was our new colleague. As he also had a decided objection to soldiering and had demonstrated this by ostentatiously absenting himself from the Emperor's service, they had locked him up in the military prison. And put him with us. But before midday he was taken off by Warder Sponner—to a safer place, so it was said.
"Because he is a king" remarked our worthy Hedrich.
Dr. Frank again had me sent for.
On the way I once more caught sight of Josefínka,—was the girl loitering around the jail day after day?
Frank informed me that I should have a visitor at 10 o'clock; further, that there was a copy of Molière for me, which he would have sent to me in the jail during the course of the afternoon; finally, that there was an application from my wife for permission to get my food from a restaurant.I was polite and pleasant to all people in the whole jail, but this Frank somehow got on my nerves. For me he was a direct representative of the thing which had flung me into the cesspool of human society, he was the agent of the power which had acted so ruthlessly towards my whole nation, he was a German who had taken over my case without knowing a word more about me, my work, my position, than he was informed by the police reports, on the day of my arrest he had promised that I should have a second inquiry into the merits of my case "on Friday or Saturday" (the assuaging, hopeful tone of his voice was still ringing in my ears, and I, fool that I was, had actually believed him for several hours), as soon as he uttered the word "application", I burst forth: "Throw it into the waste-paper basket."
"The application does not come from you, but from your wife" he remarked with a superior smile.
"And I want you to throw this application into the waste-paper basket, I wish for nothing from you."
"The application will take its official course" he said dryly.
A knock at the door. The visitor entered,—Professor Ehrlich of the faculty of law in the University of Czernowitz, Dr. Preminger's former teacher. We were acquainted before the beginning of the war, he had been recommended to me by my friend Kotera, he used to come to see me, and we would discuss literature, politics, things of the present and future—now he was giving me a look up in jail.
"Professor, behold the better and juster Austria which you have so often predicted to me,—it is already here and I am in it" was my greeting to him.
The worthy official sat down with us to complete the triangle.
"Patience, poet, all will be well. You know, Dante: Hell,—Purgatory,—Paradise.""Thanks for the pleasant prospect. In the meanwhile on every side we bear voices shrieking and shouting: Lasciate ogni speranza. And by the way, do you know that I am beginning to believe in the immortality of the soul?"
"Ah, you are studying?"
"Yes. Austria from below. And I have found that the spirit of the late Clement Václav Lothar Prince Metternich still lives and rules in it."
"You Czechs, it seems to me" began Professor Ehrlich, as if he had made preparations for this lecture, "all have a leaning towards martyrdom."
I burst out laughing: "Yes, the worthy authorities here", and with my foot I indicated the bundles and boxes of all sorts of lumber, collected during domiciliary searches, "have piles of applications; we are the ones who applied for searches, for arrests, for legal proceedings, in a word,—for martyrdom."
"Even that will pass away and things will be different" said the optimistic professor to assuage me.
Thereupon he entered into a conversation with Frank, my only contribution to which was the single aphorism that the Austrian State was suffering from hypertrophy of officialdom. They spoke of grades of rank, of promotion, of Preminger, of these and those professors, and they enjoyed themselves so much they did not notice how time was flying. A quarter of an hour, half an hour. Frank still did not take out his watch.
I stood up: "Pardon me, gentlemen, I must go home."
Hours and days passed, none of them were welcomed, and none of them were looked back upon with regret.
Hedrich often sat down opposite me, propped his elbow up on the table, with a cigar dangling between his lips, and said with conviction: "Do you know, Mr. M., I would have no objection to staying here for life. This jail doesn't worry me at all. The people here are pleasant, straightforward—"
This worthy lad projected his guileless, unassuming spirit into everything.
But have I really any grievance against anyone? Thieves, sharpers,—it is true, but is there amongst them a single one in whom there is not at least a slight spark of holy fire?