Hotel Savoy by Joseph Roth

Author:Joseph Roth [Roth, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Classics, FIC019000/FIC040000
ISBN: 9781590209585
Google: 38dt-3Bc92QC
Amazon: B007152ITS
Barnesnoble: B007152ITS
Goodreads: 16444928
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1924-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

XV

We live together in my room. Zwonimir sleeps on the sofa.

I have not offered him my bed, which I find comfortable. I have spent a long time without a bed. In my parents’ house in the Leopoldstadt there was often not much to eat, but always a soft bed. But all through Zwonimir’s life he has slept on benches, ‘on genuine oak’, he jokes. He hates the warmth of a bed and has bad dreams sleeping on anything soft.

He has a sound constitution, goes to sleep late and wakes with the dawn wind. Peasant blood runs through his veins, he has no watch but always knows the exact time, can sense rain and sunshine on the way, can smell fires from far off and has presentiments and dreams.

On one occasion he dreams that his father has been buried. He gets up crying and I do not know how to cope with this big weeping man. Another time he sees his cow dying and seems quite indifferent as he tells me about it.

All day long we go from one place to another. Zwonimir finds out from Neuner’s workmen about the conditions of their work and about the leaders of the strike; he gives money to the children and grumbles with the women, telling them to fetch their menfolk out of the waiting-room. I admire Zwonimir’s capacities. He has not mastered the language of the country and speaks with his expression and his arms more than with his mouth but everyone understands him splendidly because he speaks simply, like the people, and swears away in his mother tongue. In these parts everyone understands a good oath.

That evening we go out into the fields and Zwonimir sits down on a rock, puts his hands up to his face and cries like a boy.

‘Why are you crying, Zwonimir?’

‘Because of my cow.’

‘But you’ve known that all day. Why cry now?’

‘Because I have no time during the day.’

Zwonimir says this perfectly seriously, cries for a good quarter of an hour, then stands up. He suddenly laughs out loud, because he discovers a milestone has been dressed up as a scarecrow.

‘These people are too lazy to put their scarecrows properly in the middle of the field. Milestones are no scarecrows! I’d like to see the starling who was scared by a milestone!’

‘Zwonimir,’ I beg him, ‘let’s travel on! Your father is still alive, but if you don’t come he may yet die and then you’ll have no more bad dreams. And I want to get away too.’

‘Let’s stay on for a while,’ says Zwonimir and I know that he won’t budge.

He enjoys the Hotel Savoy. For the first time Zwonimir is living in a big hotel. He is not surprised by Ignatz the lift-boy. I tell Zwonimir that in other hotels little lads with milky complexions run the lifts. Zwonimir thinks it would surely be more sensible to leave an older, experienced man in charge of such an ‘American’ device. In any case both Ignatz and the lift seem to him eerie.

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