Job by Joseph Roth Read Free Book Online Page A

stable boy. He groomed the white horse and the brown one, slept with them in the stable, sucked in with open savoring nostrils their sharp scent of urine and sour sweat. He got the oats and the drinking buckets, mended the pens, trimmed the tails, hung new little bells on the yoke, filled the troughs, replaced the rotten hay in the two carts with dry hay, drank
samogonka
with Sameshkin, got drunk and impregnated the maids.
    They wept for him at home as a lost one, but they did not forget him. The summer began, hot and dry. The evenings sank late and golden over the land. Outside Sameshkin’s hut Jonas sat and played accordion. He was very drunk and didn’t recognize his own father, who sometimes hesitantly crept by, a shadow that was afraid of itself, a father who never ceased to be amazed that this son had sprung from his own loins.

V
    On the twentieth of August a messenger from Kapturak appeared at Mendel Singer’s home to fetch Shemariah. All had been expecting the messenger one of these days. But when he stood before them in the flesh, they were surprised and frightened. He was an ordinary man of ordinary stature and ordinary appearance, with a blue soldier’s cap on his head and a thin rolled cigarette in his mouth. When they invited him to sit down and have some tea, he declined. “I’d rather wait outside the house,” he said in a way that indicated he was accustomed to waiting outside. But this very decision of the man’s sent Mendel Singer’s family into still more intense excitement. Again and again they saw the blue-capped man appear like a guard outside the window, and each time their movements grew more furious. They packed Shemariah’s things, a suit, phylacteries, provisions for the journey, abread knife. Miriam fetched the objects, bringing over more and more. Menuchim, whose head already reached the table, raised his chin curiously and stupidly, and incessantly babbled the one word he could: Mama. Mendel Singer stood by the window and drummed against the pane. Deborah wept soundlessly, her eyes sent one tear after another toward her contorted mouth. When Shemariah’s bundle was ready, it appeared to all of them much too scanty, and they searched the room with helpless eyes so as to discover some other object. Until that moment they hadn’t spoken. Now that the white bundle lay next to the stick on the table, Mendel Singer turned away from the window and toward the room and said to his son:
    â€œYou will send us word immediately and as quickly as possible, don’t forget!” Deborah sobbed aloud, spread her arms and embraced her son. For a long time they clasped each other. Then Shemariah pried himself loose, stepped up to his sister and kissed her with smacking lips on both cheeks. His father spread his hands over him in a blessing and hastily murmured something incomprehensible. Fearfully, Shemariah then approached the gawking Menuchim. For the first time it was necessary to embrace the sick child, and Shemariah felt as if it were not a brother he had to kiss, but a symbol that gives no answer. Everyone would have liked to say something more. But no one found a word. They knew that it was a farewell forever. In the best case, Shemariah would end up safe and sound abroad. In the worst case, he would be caught on the border, then executed or shot on the spot by theborder guards. What are people supposed to say to each other when they’re parting for life? Shemariah shouldered the bundle and pushed open the door with his foot. He didn’t look back. The moment he stepped over the threshold he tried to forget the house and his whole family. Behind his back there sounded once more a loud cry from Deborah. The door closed. Sensing that his mother had fallen unconscious, Shemariah approached his escort.
    â€œJust beyond the marketplace,” said the man with the blue cap, “the horses are waiting for us.” As they passed Sameshkin’s