We sat down at the table, and ate our borsch with wooden spoons. Then we cut up the meat with our bayonets. We drank slivovitz from tea-glasses and canteens. My atheistical friend Rainacher stretched comfortably on the chair, flung wide his arms and sang: Gloria in excelsis deo. He wasn’t blaspheming. At three in the morning, we kissed the widow and the twins, gave them our four parcels, and went off to sleep. You take the bed tonight, Rainacher told me, I’ll go on the floor. It’s my present to you. And that’s how it was. We were roused at six with marching orders.
Das Neue Tage-Buch (Paris), 23 September 1939
Coda
64. Cradle
My earliest memory goes back a very long way. It is separated from a subsequent almost uninterrupted chain of memories commencing from my seventh year by a gap of several years, so that this earliest experience seems to stand all alone, like a brightly lit scene surrounded by darkness, and therefore all the more luminous. It is a sad memory, or at any rate, one that made me sad, for the first time in my life; and the scene, which, as I say, has remained very close to me, still radiates a sort of groundless melancholy, and therefore a true melancholy. The way a memory can remain so distinctly preserved under a layer of forgetting seems to heighten the importance of this early experience; there is almost something symbolic about it. It was a clear winter’s day. I still seem to see, in the small room that was mine at the time, a blue reflection of a cloudless sky, a thick, crystalline layer of snow on the windowsill and a few intricate ice flowers on the right-hand window. An old woman with a longish, grey brown shawl over her head and shoulders enters the room. My mother takes the bedding out of my cradle item by item, and lays it on a brown padded armchair. Then the woman in the shawl, who is not tall, steps up to my cradle, says something, picks up the cradle with a surprising turn of speed, holds it to her chest, as though it were a thing of no particular weight or dimensions, speaks for a long time, flashes her long yellow teeth, and leaves our house. I am left feeling sad, inconsolably helpless and sad. I seem to understand that I have lost something irrecoverable. I have been in a certain sense robbed. I start to cry, and am taken to a large white bed, which is my mother’s. There I fall asleep.
At this point the memory ends. The next four years are shrouded in shadow, in the thick shadow of forgetting. Later on, it transpires that my mother has no recollection of this day. Ten years later, she was unable to tell me when and to whom she had given my cradle. I wasn’t surprised, nor was I upset with her. She had merely missed the first grief of my life. She had no idea. The thing that upsets me is that she no longer knew whether it was summer or winter. By chance I was able to establish later who took the cradle and when. I must have been three years old at the time. I have the feeling that on that day, in that hour I became a grown-up—only briefly perhaps, but long enough to be sad, as sad as a grown-up, and perhaps for a better reason.
Die Literarische Welt, 17 December 1931
Index
Académie Française, 250
aeroplanes, 220–221
agents-provocateurs, 64
Albania
European visitors, 143–145
hospitality, 147
literature, 148
love of music, 137–138
parliament, 132
telegraph wires, 135
vendettas, 129n, 138–139, 146–147, 149–150
women, 138–139, 149, 151
Albanian army, 136, 140–142
Albanian language, 147–148
Alcázar, battle of, 250
alcohol, 115
Alexander III, Czar, 103
Ankara, 132
“Annette, Madame”, 175–180
anti-semitism, 22n, 32–33, 103, 114
Apfel, Alfred, 239
Aranitas, General Jemal, 136
Astrakhan, 108, 110, 115, 117–120
Avalov-Bermont, Count, 48
Azerbaijan, 124
Baabe, 21–22
Baku, 71, 118, 121
balalaikas, 101–102, 109
Baltic coast resorts, 19–22
Bäder-Antisemitismus, 22n
Baumbach, Rudolf, 200
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 241, 250
Berlin, 47, 56, 146, 249
anti-semitism in, 33
Berlin Tiergarten, 103
Berlin University, 33
bezprizorniy (homeless children), 122
bicycles, 31
Binz, 21
Bismarck, Otto von, 244
“black shame”, 43
Boryslav, 71–72, 75, 123
Bremen, 18
Bruck-Kiralyhida, 63–65
Bruckner, Anton, 250
Budapest, 3–4, 15, 103, 132
burlaki, 114–115
cafés, 65, 82, 84, 103, 116, 197, 204–207
Astrakhan, 117–119
Kruja, 149
cafés, cont’d
Magdeburg, 34–35
Sarajevo, 85–86
Tirana, 137–138
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 245, 250
canaries, 200
castanets, 245
castor oil, 145
Catherine the Great, Empress, 104
caviar, 117–118, 120
Chaplin, Charlie, 145
Charles I (Karl), Emperor, 249
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 248n, 249–250
Chemnitz, 31
Chuvaish, 112
Cimetière Parisien de Thiais, 129n
citizens “of ill repute”, 83–84
collectivism, 112
commercial travellers, 78–79
Constantinople, 103, 249
Cossacks, stage, 101–102
couleurs, 41
Counter-Reformation, 245
curfew hours, 37
Częstochowa, 119
dachas, 123
Dekobra, Maurice, 86
Denikin, Anton, 103
Dinter, Artur, 43, 45
dogs, 7–8, 32, 222
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 101
Dresden, 32
Dreyfus, Alfred, 76, 145
Drohobycz, 123
droshkies, 111, 113, 118, 123
Dual Monarchy, 63, 91n, 137
dual-occupancy rooms, 78
Durazzo, 130, 135
Eichendorff, Joseph Freiherr von, 200
Elbasan, 148–149
Elvestad, Sven, 43
emigrants, 13–16
émigrés, Russian, 101–104
Erasmus, Desiderius, 244
exhibition spaces, 37
fairs, 79
feuilletons, xi–xii, 3–4, 221
films, “socially conscious”, 179–180
Franz Joseph I, Emperor, 67, 91–97
fraternity students, 41–42
Frederick II (the Great), King of Prussia, 243–244
French Revolution, 244, 249
Freytag-Loringhoven, Professor, 41, 45
Galicia, 66–70
oil industry, 71–76, 123
Gargas, Josefova, 257–260
Gentschow, Rose, 51–53
Germany
anti-semitism, 22n, 32–33, 103
hunger, 18, 32
nationalist propaganda, 17–18, 22
press under Nazis, 234–236
railways, 29–30
unemployment, 17–18, 28, 31
Gillette razors, 134
Goebbels, Joseph, 234–236
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 241
gramophones, 79–80
Greiser, Karl, 258
Grillparzer, Franz Seraphicus, 240–250
Grock (clown), 56–58
Grünbaum, Fritz, 1
16
Grunewald, 197
gypsies, 54–55
Habsburgs, 91n, 92, 94, 240, 245–246, 250
Hamburg, 17–18, 47
Hamburg Gold Mark, 17–18
Heine, Heinrich, 237–241
Hitler, Adolf, 45, 239
hospitals, 216
“Hotel Kopriva”, 77–80
hotels, 9–11, 77–80, 155–159, 190–193
and commercial travellers, 78–79
the cook, 170–174
departures, 186–189
and guests’ letters, 81, 158–159, 184
Italian, 81–84
“Madame Annette”, 175–180
the old waiter, 166–169
the patron, 181–185
the “poor man”, 251–254
the receptionist, 160–165
Italy
and Albania, 131–133, 136, 141–142, 145
Fascist, 81–84
Jablonovka, 255–260
Jardins du Luxembourg, 103
Jews
Czechoslovak, 171–172
emigrants, 13–16
Russian émigrés, 103
in Soviet Union, 113–114
traders, 66, 68
Joseph II, Emperor, 244
Kadare, Ismail, 151n
Kahlenberg, the, 241
Kalmucks, 117–118
Kazan, 112
Kirghiz, 117–118
Koblenz, 43–44
Komsomol, 112–113
Königgrätz (Sadová), battle of, 243, 250
“Köpenick-iad”, 46
Korça, 137, 150
Kronstadt, 11
Kruja, 149
“Kukuruza”, 66
Kun, Béla, 64–65
Kurfürstendamm, 12, 197, 207
Le Havre, 176
League of Nations, 139
Lehár, Franz, 244
Leipzig, 31
Lemberg (Lviv), 69
Lenau, Nikolaus, 45
Lenin, Vladimir, 48, 102
Lissa, battle of, 243
Luna Park, 199
Luther, Martin, 244
Lviv, see Lemberg
Magdeburg, 34–37, 114
malaria, 129, 143, 146
mandolins, 138–139
Marseilles, 155n
matches, 60
Matteotti, Giacomo, 235
Maupassant, Guy de, 86
Metternich, Klemens von, 84
Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 102
millionaires, 10–11, 220
Minnesingers, 242
Monte Carlo, 222
morphine, 51–53
Mraznica, 74
Munich, 44–45
musicians, Albanian, 137–138
Musil, Robert, 91n
Mussolini, Benito, 82–84
Nansen passports, 102
Napoleon Bonaparte, 244, 248–249
NEP-men, 108, 110, 114
Nestroy, Johann, 250
Nicholas II, Czar, 88–90, 102
Niegoreloye border crossing, 105–107
Nizhny Novgorod, 108, 110
Nuremberg, 211
Nürnberger, Helmuth, 155n
offices, 202–203, 216
oil industry
Galician, 71–76, 123
Soviet, 121–125
Olszewska, Frau, 257
opanci shoes, 145
Paris Hippodrome, 102
Petljura, Symon, 103
Plattdeutsch, 22
Pokrovsk, 112
police and police spies
Austro-Hungarian, 64–65, 93–94, 96–97
Italian, 81–84
Soviet secret police, 114
policemen, 14, 32, 86
Albanian, 134–136, 140–141, 149
post-chaises, 220
press, German, 234–236
prostitutes, 51–53, 67
“Prussian blue”, 249
Radetzky, Joseph, 95, 243
Radetzky March, 210, 245
railway travel, 215, 218–229
railways
German, 30–32
Russian, 106
Raimund, Ferdinand, 250
Rasputin, Grigori, 104
ravens, 70
Razin, Stenka, 124
Rebner, Arthur, 116
Red Army, 107, 112, 114
Red Guards, 64–65
Red Square, 92
Reichsmark notes, 30
Roethe, Professor, 33, 41, 45
Röhm, Ernst, 235
Rügen, 21
Ruhrgebiet, 23–29
Russian Civil War, 112–13, 117
Russian Revolution, 48, 104, 111–114, 117
Sabunchi, 121, 123–124
St Petersburg, 88
Samara, 113
Samhaber, Eduard, 233
Sarajevo, 85–87, 249
Saratov, 112
Sassnitz, 21
Schleicher, Kurt von, 235
Schlieffen, Count, 47
Schönbrunn, 94, 96
Scutari, 145, 150
Skumli, river, 149
Sofia, 144
South Slavs, 131–133, 145
Stalingrad, 112– 113
Stanislavksy, Konstantin, 102
Stifter, Adalbert, 250
Sundays, 199–201
swastikas, 18, 21–22, 42, 45
Tartars, 111
Theory of Relativity, 220–221
Thiele, Wilhelm, 43–45
Third Reich, 234–236, 239
Thormann, Mayor, 22
Tirana, 134–139, 144–145
toilets, 30–31, 138, 143, 221
trams, 23–25, 28, 30, 36, 85, 92, 97, 121, 156
Trotsky, Leon, 48, 88, 103
Tustanowice, 74
unemployment, 17–18, 28, 32, 75
Vallentin, Antonina, 237, 239
Valona, 150
Verlaci, Shefgiet, 149
Viennese Burgtheater, 245, 250
Viennese Prater, 103
Volhynia, 102
Voigt, cobbler, 46
Volga, river, 108–116
songs, 114–116
Volksgarten, 208–210
Wannsee, 199
Warsaw, 119
Wehmut, 246
Weltschmerz, 244
Wendel, Hermann, 238
White Star Line, 13
Zagacki, Franz, 49–50
Zogu, President Ahmed, 129–133, 142, 149
zouaves, 177–178
Zuckmayer, Carl, 46n
Translation copyright © 2015 by Michael Hofmann
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Joseph Roth, The Hotel Years
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