The Coral Merchant by Joseph Roth

Author:Joseph Roth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2020-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

VI

The Ukrainian cabinetmaker Nikita Kolohin made a wonderful oak coffin. There was room enough inside for three dead emperors.

The Polish blacksmith Jaroslaw Wojciechowski cast in brass a mighty double eagle, which was riveted to the lid of the coffin.

The Jewish Torah scribe Nuchim Kapturak wrote with his goose quill on a little roll of parchment the blessing that devout Jews are supposed to say at the sight of a crowned head, rolled it inside a box of beaten tin and laid it in the coffin.

Early in the morning—it was a hot summer’s day—countless invisible larks trilled in the sky, and countless invisible crickets whispered back to them from the meadows—the inhabitants of Lopatyny gathered around the memorial to Franz Josef the First. Count Morstin and the mayor placed the bust in the large, ornate coffin. At that moment, the bells of the church on the hill began to toll. The two priests and the rabbi led the procession. Four strong old peasants carried the coffin on their shoulders. Behind it, with his sabre drawn, wearing the helmet of the Dragoons with a field-grey covering, walked Count Franz Xaver Morstin, the person in the village who had been closest to the late Emperor, quite alone in the solitude that grief brings—and after him, with a round black skull cap on his silver hair, came the Jew Salomon Piniowsky, carrying a round velvet hat in his left hand and holding aloft the large black and yellow flag with the double eagle in his right. And the whole village, men and women, followed on behind.

The church bells rang out, the larks trilled, the crickets whispered unceasingly.

The grave was prepared. They lowered the coffin, spread the flag over it—and Franz Xaver Morstin saluted the Emperor with his sword one final time.

Then the crowd began to sob as if only now had they truly buried Emperor Franz Josef, the old monarchy and their old homeland.

The priests and the rabbi said prayers.

And thus the old Emperor was buried for a second time in the village of Lopatyny, in what was once Galicia.

Several weeks later, word of this event reached the newspapers. They printed a few humorous lines about it, in the “Comment” section.

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