Even those who hardly knew him soon noticed the increasing oddity of the old man’s behaviour. Acquaintances began to nudge each other on the sly if they met him in the street—there went the old man, one of the richest men in the city, slinking along by the wall like a beggar, his hat dented and set at a crooked angle on his head, his coat dusted with cigar ash, reeling in a peculiar way at every step and usually muttering aloud under his breath. If people greeted him, he looked up in surprise; if they addressed him he stared at them vacantly, and forgot to shake hands. At first a number of acquaintances thought he must have gone deaf, and repeated what they had said in louder tones. He was not deaf, but it always took him time to wake himself, as it were, from his internal sleep, and then he would lapse back into a strange state of abstraction in the middle of the conversation. All of a sudden the light would go out of his eyes, he would break off the discussion hastily and stumble on, without noticing the surprise of the person who had spoken to him. He always seemed to have emerged from a dark dream, from a cloudy state of self-absorption; other people, it was obvious, no longer existed for him. He never asked how anyone was; even in his own home he did not notice his wife’s gloomy desperation or his daughter’s baffled questions. He read no newspapers, listened to no conversations; not a word, not a question penetrated his dull and overcast indifference for a moment. Even what was closest to him became strange. He sometimes went to his office to sign letters. But if his secretary came back an hour later to fetch them, duly signed, he found the old man just as he had left him, lost in reverie over the unread letters and with the same vacant look in his eyes. In the end he himself realised that he was only in the way at the office, and stayed away entirely.
But the strangest and most surprising thing about the old man, to the whole city, was the fact that although he had never been among the most devoutly observant members of its Jewish community he suddenly became pious. Indifferent to all else, often unpunctual at meals and meetings, he never failed to be at the synagogue at the appointed hour. He stood there in his black silk cap, his prayer shawl around his shoulders, always at the same place, where his father once used to stand, rocking his weary head back and forth as he chanted psalms. Here, in the dim light of the room where the words echoed around him, dark and strange, he was most alone with himself. A kind of peace descended on his confused mind here, responding to the darkness in his own breast. However, when prayers were read for the dead, and he saw the families, children and friends of the departed dutifully bowing down and calling on the mercy of God for those who had left this world, his eyes were sometimes clouded. He was the last of his line, and he knew it. No one would say a prayer for him. And so he devoutly murmured the words with the congregation, thinking of himself as one might think of the dead.
Once, late in the evening, he was coming back from wandering the city in a daze, and was halfway home when rain began to fall. As usual, the old man had forgotten his umbrella. There were cabs for hire quite cheaply, entrances to buildings and glazed porches offered shelter from the torrential rain that was soon pouring down, but the strange old man swayed and stumbled on through the wet weather. A puddle collected in the dent in his hat and seeped through, rivulets streamed down from his own dripping sleeves; he took no notice but trudged on, the only person out and about in the deserted street. And so, drenched and dripping, looking more like a tramp than the master of a handsome villa, he reached the entrance of his house just at the moment when a car with its headlights on stopped right beside him, flinging up more muddy water on the inattentive pedestrian. The door swung open, and his wife hastily got out of the brightly lit the interior, followed by some distinguished visitor or other holding an umbrella over her, and then a second man. He drew level with them just outside the door. His wife recognised him and was horrified to see him in such a state, dripping wet, his clothes crumpled, looking like a bundle of something pulled out of the water, and instinctively she turned her eyes away. The old man understood at once—she was ashamed of him in front of her guests. And without emotion or bitterness, he walked a little further as if he were a stranger, to spare her the embarrassment of an introduction, and turned humbly in at the servants’ entrance.
From that day on the old man always used the servants’ stairs in his own house. He was sure not to meet anyone here, he was in no one’s way and no one was in his. He stayed away from meals—an old maidservant brought something to his room. If his wife or daughter tried to get in to speak to him, he would send them away again with a vague murmur that was none the less clearly a refusal to see them. In the end they left him alone, and gradually stopped asking how he was, nor did he enquire after anyone or anything. He sometimes heard music and laughter coming through the walls from the other rooms in the house, which were already strange to him, he heard vehicles pass by until late at night, but he was so indifferent to everything that he did not even look out of the window. What was it to do with him? Only the dog sometimes came up and lay down by his forgotten master’s bed.
*
Nothing hurt in his dead heart now, but the black mole was tunnelling on inside his body, tearing a bloodstained path into quivering flesh. His attacks grew more frequent from week to week, and at last, in agony, he gave way to his doctor’s urging to have himself thoroughly examined. The professor looked grave. Carefully preparing the way, he said he thought that at this point an operation was essential. But the old man did not take fright, he only smiled wearily. Thank God, now it was coming to an end. An end to dying, and now came the good part, death. He would not let the doctor say a word to his family, the day was decided, and he made ready. For the last time, he went to his firm (where no one expected to see him any more, and they all looked at him as if he were a stranger), sat down once more in the old black leather chair where he had sat for thirty years, a whole lifetime, for thousands and thousands of hours, told them to bring him a cheque book and made out a cheque. He took it to the rabbi of the synagogue, who was almost frightened by the size of the sum. It was for charitable works and for his grave, he said, and to avoid all thanks he hastily stumbled out, losing his hat, but he did not even bend to pick it up. And so, bareheaded, eyes dull in his wrinkled face, now yellow with sickness, he went on his way, followed by surprised glances, to his parents’ grave in the cemetery. There a few idlers gazed at the old man, and were surprised to hear him talk out loud and at length to the mouldering tombstones as if they were human beings. Was he announcing his imminent arrival to them, or asking for their blessing? No one could hear the words, but his lips moved, murmuring, and his shaking head was bowed deeper and deeper in prayer. At the way out of the cemetery beggars, who knew him well by sight, crowded around him. He hastily took all the coins and notes out of his pockets, and had distributed them when a wrinkled old woman limped up, later than the rest, begging for something for herself. In confusion, he searched his pockets, but there was nothing left. However, he still had something strange and heavy on his finger—his gold wedding ring. Some kind of memory came to him—he quickly took it off and gave it to the startled old woman.
And so, impoverished, empty and alone, he went under the surgeon’s knife.
When the old man came round from the anaesthetic, the doctors, seeing the dangerous state he was in, called his wife and daughter, now informed of the operation, into the room. With difficulty, his eyes looked out from lids surrounded by blue shadows. “Where am I?” He stared at the strange white room that he had never seen before.
Then, to show him her affection, his daughter leant over his poor sunken face. And suddenly a glimmer of recognition came into the blindly searching eyes. A light, a small one, was kindled in their pupils—that was her, his child, his beloved child, that was his beautiful and tender child Erna! Very, very slowly the bitterly compressed lips relaxed. A smile, a very small smile that had not come to his closed mouth for a long time, cautiously began to show. And shaken by that joy, expressed as it was with such difficulty, she bent closer to kiss her
father’s bloodless cheeks.
But there it was—the sweet perfume that aroused a memory, or was it his half-numbed brain remembering forgotten moments?—and suddenly a terrible change came over the features that had looked happy only just now. His colourless lips were grimly tightened again, rejecting her. His hand worked its way out from under the blanket, and he tried to raise it as if to push something repellent away, his whole sore body quivering in agitation. “Get away!… Get away!” he babbled. The words on his pale lips were almost inarticulate, yet clear enough. And so terribly did a look of aversion form on the face of the old man, who could not get away, that the doctor anxiously urged the women to stand aside. “He’s delirious,” he whispered. “You had better leave him alone now.”
As soon as the two women had gone, the distorted features relaxed wearily again into final drowsiness. Breath was still escaping, although more and more stertorously, as he struggled for the heavy air of life. But soon his breast tired of the struggle to drink in that bitter nourishment of humanity. And when the doctor felt for the old man’s heart, it had already ceased to hurt him.
INCIDENT ON LAKE GENEVA
ON THE BANKS OF LAKE GENEVA, close to the small Swiss resort of Villeneuve, a fisherman who had rowed his boat out into the lake one summer night in the year 1918 noticed a strange object in the middle of the water. When he came closer, he saw that it was a raft made of loosely assembled wooden planks which a naked man was clumsily trying to propel forward, using a piece of board as an oar. In astonishment, the fisherman steered his boat that way, helped the exhausted man into it, used some fishing nets as a makeshift covering for his nakedness, and then tried questioning the shivering figure huddling nervously into the corner of the boat. But he replied in a strange language, not a word of which was anything like the fisherman’s, so the rescuer soon gave up any further attempts, pulled in his nets, and rowed back to the bank, plying his oars faster than before.
As the early light of dawn showed the outline of the bank, the naked man’s face too began to clear. A childlike smile appeared through the tangled beard around his broad mouth, he raised one hand, pointing, and kept stammering out a single word over and over again: a question that was half a statement. It sounded like “Rossiya”, and he repeated it more and more happily the closer the keel came to the bank of the lake. At last the boat crunched on the beach; the fisherman’s womenfolk, who were waiting for him to land his dripping catch, scattered screeching, like Nausicaa’s maids in the days of old, when they caught sight of the naked man covered by fishing nets, and only gradually, on hearing the strange news, did several men from the village appear. They were soon joined by that local worthy the courthouse usher, eagerly officious and very much on his dignity. He knew at once, from various instructions that he had received and a wealth of wartime experience, that this must be a deserter who had swum over the lake from the French bank, and he was preparing to interrogate him officially, but any such elaborate process was quickly deprived of any dignity or usefulness by the fact that the naked man (to whom some of the locals had now thrown a jacket and a pair of cotton drill trousers) responded to all questions with his questioning cry of “Rossiya? Rossiya?” sounding ever more anxious and doubtful. Slightly irked by his failure, the usher ordered the stranger to follow him by means of gestures that could not be misunderstood, and the wet, barefoot figure, his jacket and trousers flapping around him, was escorted to the courthouse, surrounded by the vociferous youths of the village who had now come along, and was taken into custody there. He did not protest, he said not a word, but his bright eyes had darkened with disappointment, and his shoulders were hunched as if expecting blows.
By now news of this human catch had reached the nearby hotel, and several ladies and gentlemen, glad of this intriguing episode to relieve the monotonous course of the day’s events, came over to look at the wild man. One lady gave him some confectionery, which he eyed as suspiciously as a monkey might, and did not touch. A gentleman took a photograph. They all chattered and talked vivaciously as they swarmed around him, until at last the manager of the large hotel, who had lived abroad for a long time and knew several languages, spoke to the terrified man first in German, then in Italian and English, and finally in Russian. No sooner did he hear the first sound of his native tongue than the frightened man started violently, a broad smile split his good-natured face from ear to ear, and suddenly he was telling his whole story frankly and with self-assurance. It was very long and very confused, and the chance-come interpreter could not always understand every detail, but in essentials the man’s history was as follows:
He had been fighting in Russia, and then one day he and a thousand others were packed into railway trucks and taken a very long way, they were transferred to ships and had travelled in those for even longer, through regions where it was so hot that, as he put it, the bones were baked soft inside your body. Finally they were landed again somewhere or other, packed into more railway trucks, and then they were suddenly told to storm a hill, but he knew no more about that, because a bullet had hit him in the leg as soon as the attack began. The audience, for whom the interpreter translated his questions and the man’s answers, immediately realised that this fugitive was a member of one of those Russian divisions fighting in France who had been sent half-way round the world, from Siberia and Vladivostok to the French front, and as well as feeling a certain pity they were all moved at the same time by curiosity: what could have induced him to make this strange attempt at flight? With a smile that was half-good-natured, half-crafty, the Russian readily explained that as soon as he was better he had asked the orderlies where Russia was, and they had pointed to show him the way. He had roughly remembered the direction by noting the position of the sun and the stars, and so he had escaped in secret, walking by night and hiding in haystacks from patrols by day. He had eaten fruit and begged for bread for ten days, until at last he reached this lake. Now his account became less clear. Apparently he himself came from Lake Baikal, and seeing the undulating curves of the opposite bank ahead of him in the evening light, he had thought that Russia must lie over there. At any rate, he had stolen a couple of planks from a hut, and lying face downwards over them, had used a piece of old board as a paddle to make his way far out into the lake, where the fisherman found him. As soon as the hotel manager had translated the anxious question which concluded his confused explanation—could he get home tomorrow?—its naivety at first aroused loud laughter, but that soon turned to pity, and everyone found a few coins or banknotes to give the poor man, who was now looking around him with miserable uncertainty.
By this time a telephone call to Montreux had brought the arrival of a senior police officer to take down an account of the case, rather an arduous task. For not only was the amateur interpreter’s command of Russian inadequate, it was soon obvious that the man was uneducated to a degree scarcely comprehensible to Westerners. All he knew about himself was his own first name of Boris, and he was able to give only the most confused accounts of his native village, for instance that the people there were serfs of Prince Metchersky (he used the word serfs although serfdom had been abolished long ago), and that he lived fifty versts from the great lake with his wife and three children. Now a discussion of what was to be done with him began, while he stood amidst the disputants dull-eyed and hunching his shoulders. Some thought he ought to be handed over to the Russian embassy in Berne, others feared that such a measure would get him sent back to France; the police officer explained all the difficulty of deciding whether he should be treated as a deserter or a foreigner without papers; the local courthouse usher rejected out of hand any suggestion that the stranger should be fed and accommodated in Villeneuve itself. A Frenchman protested that there was no need to make such a fuss about a miserable runaway; he had better either work or be sent back. Two women objected strongly to this remark, saying that his misfortune wasn’t his own fault, and it was a crime to send people away from their homes to a foreign country. It began to lo
ok as if this chance incident would lead to political strife when suddenly an old Danish gentleman intervened, saying in firm tones that he would pay for the man’s board and lodging for a week, and meanwhile the authorities could come to some agreement with the embassy. This unexpected solution satisfied both the officials and the private parties.
During the increasingly agitated discussion the fugitive’s timid gaze had gradually lifted, and his eyes were now fixed on the lips of the hotel manager, the only person in all this turmoil who, he knew, could tell him his fate in terms that he was able to understand. He seemed to be vaguely aware of the turmoil caused by his presence, and as the noisy argument died down he spontaneously raised both hands in the silence, and reached them out to the manager with the pleading look of women at prayer before a holy picture. This moving gesture had an irresistible effect on all present. The manager went up to the man and reassured him warmly, saying that he had nothing to fear, he could stay here and come to no harm, he would have accommodation for the immediate future. The Russian tried to kiss his hand, but the other man withdrew it and quickly stepped back. Then he pointed out the house next door, a small village inn where the Russian would have bed and board, said a few more words of reassurance to him, and then, with another friendly wave, went up the beach to his hotel.