Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/125

 Several people expressed aloud their satisfaction at the departure of Tironi. A hideous man with that cough of his,—the sergeant lost his taste for food when the fellow coughed.

When we had finished our "scorching", we sat down on a mattress and looked on while the second batch marched.

Then I began to crave for something to read. One volume of Gerstäcker and something by Ganghofer were lying about on the table. I thought to myself "Das ist kein Kaffeehaus vor mir" (as the Viennese Jews say). "Budi, have you got anything to read?"

Budi gave me a few stories by Rodenbach and Napoleon III's "Life of Julius Caesar". I started off with the stories. The author of "Bruges la morte" disappointed me. Anybody who has become accustomed to read the honest and profound Russians, rarely finds satisfaction in foreign literatures. Everything there is so corpse-like, affected, machine-made and untrue to life,—it would really be a pity to waste time on it, if there were not so much to spare. If somebody had taken it into his head to sweep the floor, I would rather have watched the movements of the broom and the whirling of the dust,—there was more life in that than in these bloodless people about whom I read. But Voronin was gone and the broom was deserted.

After the midday meal, of which I again touched nothing, I was summoned to the superintendent in the Tigergasse. A defence-corps man in front of me, a defence-corps man behind me,—the streets and the people as strange as if they were from another world,—I see how accustomed to the jail I had become. With composure I imagined that this would be the second cross-examination which Dr. Frank had promised me for the previous Friday or Saturday, but I was not pleased,—I did not believe that it would mean a turning-point in my destiny.