Collected Stories (60 page)

Translated by Tania and James Stern

D
EEPLY LOST
in the night. Just as one sometimes lowers one’s head to reflect, thus to be utterly lost in the night. All around people are asleep. It’s just play acting, an innocent self-deception, that they sleep in houses, in safe beds, under a safe roof, stretched out or curled up on mattresses, in sheets, under blankets; in reality they have flocked together as they had once upon a time and again later in a deserted region, a camp in the open, a countless number of men, an army, a people, under a cold sky on cold earth, collapsed where once they had stood, forehead pressed on the arm, face to the ground, breathing quietly. And you are watching, are one of the watchmen, you find the next one by brandishing a burning stick from the brushwood pile beside you. Why are you watching? Someone must watch, it is said. Someone must be there.

Translated by Tania and James Stern

O
UR LAWS
are not generally known; they are kept secret by the small group of nobles who rule us. We are convinced that these ancient laws are scrupulously administered; nevertheless it is an extremely painful thing to be ruled by laws that one does not know. I am not thinking of possible discrepancies that may arise in the interpretation of the laws, or of the disadvantages involved when only a few and not the whole people are allowed to have a say in their interpretation. These disadvantages are perhaps of no great importance. For the laws are very ancient; their interpretation has been the work of centuries, and has itself doubtless acquired the status of law; and though there is still a possible freedom of interpretation left, it has now become very restricted. Moreover
the nobles have obviously no cause to be influenced in their interpretation by personal interests inimical to us, for the laws were made to the advantage of the nobles from the very beginning, they themselves stand above the laws, and that seems to be why the laws were entrusted exclusively into their hands. Of course, there is wisdom in that – who doubts the wisdom of the ancient laws? – but also hardship for us; probably that is unavoidable.

The very existence of these laws, however, is at most a matter of presumption. There is a tradition that they exist and that they are a mystery confided to the nobility, but it is not and cannot be more than a mere tradition sanctioned by age, for the essence of a secret code is that it should remain a mystery. Some of us among the people have attentively scrutinized the doings of the nobility since the earliest times and possess records made by our forefathers – records which we have conscientiously continued – and claim to recognize amid the countless number of facts certain main tendencies which permit of this or that historical formulation; but when in accordance with these scrupulously tested and logically ordered conclusions we seek to adjust ourselves somewhat for the present or the future, everything becomes uncertain, and our work seems only an intellectual game, for perhaps these laws that we are trying to unravel do not exist at all. There is a small party who are actually of this opinion and who try to show that, if any law exists, it can only be this: The Law is whatever the nobles do. This party see everywhere only the arbitrary acts of the nobility, and reject the popular tradition, which according to them possesses only certain trifling and incidental advantages that do not offset its heavy drawbacks, for it gives the people a false, deceptive, and overconfident security in confronting coming events. This cannot be gainsaid, but the overwhelming majority of our people account for it by the fact that the tradition is far from complete and must be more fully inquired into, that the material available, prodigious as it looks, is still too meager, and that several centuries will have
to pass before it becomes really adequate. This view, so comfortless as far as the present is concerned, is lightened only by the belief that a time will eventually come when the tradition and our research into it will jointly reach their conclusion, and as it were gain a breathing space, when everything will have become clear, the law will belong to the people, and the nobility will vanish. This is not maintained in any spirit of hatred against the nobility; not at all, and by no one. We are more inclined to hate ourselves, because we have not yet shown ourselves worthy of being entrusted with the laws. And that is the real reason why the party who believe that there is no law have remained so few – although their doctrine is in certain ways so attractive, for it unequivocally recognizes the nobility and its right to go on existing.

Actually one can express the problem only in a sort of paradox: Any party that would repudiate not only all belief in the laws, but the nobility as well, would have the whole people behind it; yet no such party can come into existence, for nobody would dare to repudiate the nobility. We live on this razor’s edge. A writer once summed the matter up in this way: The sole visible and indubitable law that is imposed upon us is the nobility, and must we ourselves deprive ourselves of that one law?

Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

T
HE
conscription of troops, often necessary on account of the never-ending frontier wars, takes place in the following manner:

The order goes out that on a certain day in a certain part of town all inhabitants – men, women, and children without exception – have to remain indoors. Usually at about noon the young nobleman in charge of the conscription appears at the entrance of that part of town where a detachment of
soldiers, both infantry and cavalry, has been waiting since dawn. He is a young man, slender, not tall, weak, carelessly dressed, with tired eyes, waves of restlessness continually passing through him like the shivers of a fever. Without looking at anyone he makes a sign with a whip, his sole equipment, whereupon several soldiers join him and he enters the first house. A soldier, who knows personally all the inhabitants in this part of town, reads out the list of the inmates. As a rule they are all present, lined up in the room, their eyes fixed on the nobleman, as though they were soldiers already. It can happen, however, that here and there someone, it’s invariably a man, is missing. In this case no one will dare to utter an excuse, let alone a lie, everyone is silent, all eyes are lowered, the pressure of the command which someone in this house has evaded is almost unbearable, but the silent presence of the nobleman keeps everyone nevertheless in his place. The nobleman makes a sign, it’s not even a nod, it can be read only in his eyes, and two soldiers begin the search for the missing man. This is not difficult. He is never out of the house, never really intends to evade military service, it’s only fear that has prevented him from turning up, yet it’s not fear of the service itself that keeps him away, it’s the general reluctance to show himself, for him the command is almost too great, so frighteningly great that he cannot appear of his own accord. This is why he does not flee, he simply goes into hiding, and on learning that the nobleman is in the house he even leaves his hiding place and creeps to the door of the room where he is promptly caught by the soldiers in search of him. He is brought before the nobleman who seizes the whip with both hands – he is so weak he can’t do it with one hand – and gives the man a thrashing. Having inflicted no great pain, he drops the whip, half from exhaustion, half from disgust, whereupon the beaten man has to pick it up and hand it to him. Only then may he join the line with the others; incidentally, it is almost certain that he will not be recruited. But it also happens, and this is more frequent, that a greater number of people appear
than are listed. There, for instance, stands an unknown girl, staring at the nobleman; she is from out of town, from the provinces perhaps, the conscription has lured her here. There are many women who cannot resist the temptation of a conscription in another town, conscriptions at home meaning something quite different. And, strangely enough, it is not considered disgraceful for a woman to surrender to this temptation; on the contrary, in the opinion of many, this is something women have to go through, a debt which they pay to their sex. Moreover, it invariably takes the same course. The girl or the woman learns that somewhere, perhaps very far away, at the home of relatives or friends, a conscription is going to take place; she asks her family for permission to undertake the journey, which is granted – it cannot very well be refused – she puts on her best clothes, is gayer than usual, at the same time calm and friendly, no matter what she may be like at other times; and yet behind all the calm and friendliness she is inaccessible, like an utter stranger who is on her way home and can think of nothing else. In the family where the conscription is going to take place she is received quite differently from an ordinary guest; everyone flatters her, she is invited to walk through all the rooms in the house, lean out of all the windows, and if she puts her hand on someone’s head it means more than a father’s blessing. When the family is preparing for the conscription she is given the best place, which is near the door where she has the best chance of being seen by the nobleman and can best see him. She is honored in this way, however, only until the nobleman enters; thereafter she begins to fade. He looks at her as little as at the others, and even when his eye rests on someone, that person is not aware of being looked at. This is something she has not expected or rather she certainly has, for it cannot be otherwise, yet it wasn’t the expectation of the opposite that had driven her here, it was just something that had now definitely come to an end. She feels shame to a degree which our women possibly feel at no other time; only now is she fully aware of having forced her
way into a foreign conscription, and when the soldier has read out the list and her name is not on it and there comes a moment of silence, she flees stooped and trembling out of the door, receiving in addition a blow in the back from a soldier’s fist.

Should the person not on the list be a man, his only desire is to be conscripted with the others although he does not belong to this house. But this too is utterly out of the question, an outsider of this kind has never been conscripted and nothing of the sort will ever happen.

Translated by Tania and James Stern

I
AM
a servant, but there is no work for me. I am timid and don’t push myself to the fore, indeed I don’t even push myself into line with the others, but that is only one reason for my nonemployment, it’s even possible that it has nothing to do with my nonemployment, in any case the main thing is that I am not called upon to serve, others have been called yet they have not tried harder than I, indeed perhaps they have not even felt the desire to be called, whereas I, at least sometimes, have felt it very strongly.

So I lie on the pallet in the servants’ hall, stare at the beams in the ceiling, fall asleep, wake up, and promptly fall asleep again. Occasionally I walk over to the tavern where they sell a sour beer, occasionally I have even poured away a glass in disgust, but at other times I drink it. I like sitting there because from behind the closed little window, without the possibility of being discovered, I can see across to the windows of our house. Not that one sees very much there, to my knowledge only the windows of the corridors look out on the street, and moreover not even those of the corridors leading to my employers’ apartments. But it is also possible that I am mistaken; someone, without my having asked him, once said so, and the general impression of this
house front confirms this. Only rarely are the windows opened, and when this does occur it is done by a servant who may lean against the balustrade to look down for a while. It follows therefore that these are corridors where he cannot be taken by surprise. As a matter of fact I am not personally acquainted with these servants; those who are permanently employed upstairs sleep elsewhere, not in my room.

Once when I arrived at the tavern, a guest was sitting at my observation post. I did not dare look at him closely and was about to turn around in the door and leave. The guest, however, called me over, and it turned out that he too was a servant whom I had once seen somewhere before, but without having spoken to him.

‘Why do you want to run away? Sit down and have a drink! I’ll pay.’ So I sat down. He asked me several things, but I couldn’t answer, indeed I didn’t even understand his questions. So I said: ‘Perhaps you are sorry now that you invited me, so I’d better go,’ and I was about to get up. But he stretched his hand out over the table and pressed me down. ‘Stay,’ he said, ‘that was only a test. He who does not answer the questions has passed the test.’

Translated by Tania and James Stern

A
VULTURE
was hacking at my feet. It had already torn my boots and stockings to shreds, now it was hacking at the feet themselves. Again and again it struck at them, then circled several times restlessly around me, then returned to continue its work. A gentleman passed by, looked on for a while, then asked me why I suffered the vulture. ‘I’m helpless,’ I said. ‘When it came and began to attack me, I of course tried to drive it away, even to strangle it, but these animals are very strong, it was about to spring at my face, but I preferred to sacrifice my feet. Now they are almost torn to bits.’ ‘Fancy letting yourself be tortured like this!’ said the gentleman.
‘One shot and that’s the end of the vulture.’ ‘Really?’ I said. ‘And would you do that?’ ‘With pleasure,’ said the gentleman, ‘I’ve only got to go home and get my gun. Could you wait another half-hour?’ ‘I’m not sure about that,’ said I, and stood for a moment rigid with pain. Then I said: ‘Do try it in any case, please.’ ‘Very well,’ said the gentleman, ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’ During this conversation the vulture had been calmly listening, letting its eye rove between me and the gentleman. Now I realized that it had understood everything; it took wing, leaned far back to gain impetus, and then, like a javelin thrower, thrust its beak through my mouth, deep into me. Falling back, I was relieved to feel him drowning irretrievably in my blood, which was filling every depth, flooding every shore.