Right and Left by Joseph Roth

Author:Joseph Roth [Roth, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000/FIC040000
ISBN: 9781590209721
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2004-02-24T06:00:00+00:00

10

The noonday bells died away. The hobnailed column disappeared in a small cloud of dust and noise. The street was left deserted. People were eating in their homes and in restaurants. The spring breeze carried the aromas of Sunday lunch.

Nikolai Brandeis sat down at a café terrace. Two men walked by, and his ear picked up the sound of Russian. Brandeis hadn’t cared to share his predicament with anyone. He avoided occasions that forced him to listen – with a show of credulity – to the émigrés’ tales of their past glories, and to overlook – with a show of blindness – whatever of their present misery they revealed in spite of themselves. For who among them had been reborn by their flight, the way he had been? They all seemed to have left their lives behind in Russia. The balalaika strummings of their nostalgia bored him every bit as much as the marching tunes that he had just heard. Though a deserter himself, he couldn’t understand the kind of patriotism that bewails a thoroughly extant fatherland as though it had been wiped off the face of the earth. Those people were really crying for their silver samovars.

Nevertheless, the Russian words he had just heard seemed to settle in some unfamiliar part of Brandeis’ mind, a part that the spring must have uncovered. They revived his memories of February in the Ukraine, the way a long-awaited rain revives parched fields. Memories blossomed in him. He could clearly distinguish all the subtle nuances and gradations of spring in his homeland. He remembered days in February when for five minutes at noon the sun was able to generate a comforting warmth, enough to make the icicles on the roofs suddenly start to drip, and it was as though the sun had just performed a short practice routine for the summer ahead. The blue of the sky was still a wintry cobalt. Only round the edges was it a lighter colour, almost white, as if it had iced over there. And yet the air felt warm and moist, as if in anticipation of summer rain. Already – invisible to the human eye – it contained the stuff of summer clouds. Then the northeast wind would sweep down, and instantly the icicles refroze. Night would fall in the village faster than on previous days, even though they had surely been shorter. In the gloaming, only the silver birches in the little wood opposite would shimmer, standing in amongst the other trees like slips of days amongst ancient nights. In the fields, little reddish bonfires awoke, on which potatoes were roasted. The sweet smell of the burning twigs wafted into the village. Today you would still be able to walk across the wide swamp without having to stick to the safe paths that were marked out by familiar willows. It would still be frozen hard, and ice would splinter like glass under your heel. But how many more times would you be able to walk

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.