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Chapter 4

The Dawn of Europe

The train speeds on—toward Vienna.

In my previous life I travelled from Trieste to Vienna by train many times. During my initial trips, I used to stand at the window drinking in the wonders that passed by, starting at Miramare, with its eternal summer, and ending with Semmering, with its cheerful winter’s song.¹ During subsequent journeys, I used to stretch out on the sofa, fall sleep, and awaken in Vienna. This was convenient, especially during night trips.

Fate decreed this to be a night journey. It has been seventeen years since I have been in Europe—cradle of humanity. My heart beats to see glorious Europe anew, after the torments of war, imprisonment, and my own disappointed, private hope for redemption. I want to recite shehecheyanu² to the accompaniment of the clacking wheels that sing out ever-new sweet songs of greeting, wafting their warm welcome to visitors through the wind.³

I forget for a moment that things have changed, since then. Oh, how they have changed!

I haven’t even managed to get comfortable in my cramped quarters when a group of officials, armed to the teeth, barge in, demanding to see our papers.

I promise them that everything is in order. They laugh with devilish glee:

“That’s a good one! ‘Everything is in order!’ Ha Ha!”

“Any Bolshevik could say that!”—their leader says to me. I hand my papers over with a feeling of humiliation: what has caused them to doubt my good faith?⁴

He takes my papers, pockets them, and leaves.

I look at him for a minute—and pull myself together.

Hardly have I done this—when a second armed group appears: these are real armed bandits.

“Open your bags!”

“I am a writer, and do not deal in goods—legal or illegal.”—

I show them my ticket.

Another hearty laugh:

“Anyone can be a ‘writer!’”

This time they are correct: I remember our writers during the riots of 1929: in the Land of Israel, every second person is a writer.

But still, I try:

“I am a Hebrew writer—in the language of the Old Testament—from Jerusalem.”

One of the officials examines my ticket. The expression on his face says: “That is another matter.”

Oh well, I know that this “other matter” might not work. A Hebrew writer can do exactly as he likes.

He returns my ticket to me, and, like someone satisfying his curiosity, continues:

“Open! Open! I haven’t got time to stand around and wait!”

The orderly process of opening bags begins. Orderly? It’s disorganized chaos. The luggage louts tear the luggage apart, sweep up the contents with both hands, raise up, throw around, scrabble like hunting hounds, toss about, move, sniff.—

One of my party looks on, waiting his turn to have his bag opened, a broad smile of vengeance on his face:

“Well, I’ll let you take a sniff—I forgot to sprinkle my socks with sweet-smelling finest incense!”⁵

He’s right: they don’t scrabble much in his bag.

Finally, after the bag and suitcase “pogroms” are finished, the order comes:

“Pack up and close!”

The luggage louts leave.

Packing proves a little more difficult than unpacking.

Half an hour later, the train supervisor appears.

“Tickets, please!”

I’ve just started to fall asleep when he wakes me up: I give him my ticket with barely repressed anger. But this time, my anger is unjustified: even seventeen years ago, ticket examination was routine, so in this regard at least nothing has changed.

He examines my ticket and I again try to get some sleep.

Hopeless—the first group reappears like a bad dream. They return my papers to me.

“Now, at last, will I be able to get some sleep?”

“Yes, of course. Everything is in order.”

They leave.

A violent hand shoves me awake. It’s the second group again.

Good God, what now?!

“All bags must be weighed!”

Couldn’t this have been done before the “parcel pogroms?”

One of the bag bandits explains to me in a friendly way:

“No, that’s impossible. Because if forbidden goods are found, we confiscate them, and their weight must be subtracted from the original total, so you don’t have to pay extra.”

What a delightful law: I don’t have to pay for transportation of confiscated goods!

In fact, no forbidden goods can be found. However, many packages and bags exceed legal weight. Fines follow, with complaints, arguments, quarrels, almost ejection from the train. Even those who want to pay cannot because they only have foreign currency, which is not legal tender on the train. So, an additional nuisance is added (as if we don’t have enough!).—Even money has now lost its international value, and obstinately depends on “national culture!”

With great difficulty and mutual assistance between the wretched passengers, united by shared inconvenience, we finally get rid of the “customs officials.” One of the passengers stretches luxuriously, lies down and says happily:

“Please only wake me if the Messiah comes to let us all into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

After a few minutes, however, it is not the Kingdom of Heaven that awakens us, but the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.⁶

We look at one another: bad things are about to happen.

They do.

In Yugoslavia, the same procedure, the same inconveniences, in short the same hell is repeated—only the clothes of the officials are different. Papers are examined and then collected, followed by baggage examination, ticket inspection, baggage weighing, and finally our papers are returned.

This all continues from the moment we arrive in Yugoslavia, all the way to the Austrian border.

It’s a good thing that we are travelling at night: there is nothing to see or enjoy out of the window.

We arrive in Austria

Will we undergo the same Dante-esque inferno here as well?

The answer is yes—but this time with Viennese delicacy. Things are handled differently here: there are no luggage louts, only ordinary human beings. They don’t rummage around in, mess up, grab, throw, or sniff the contents of our bags. Everything is done as if incidentally, with “please” and “by your leave,” in order to politely fulfil the law.

They don’t even want to wake up one of the sleeping passengers:

Der schnarcht so süss! (He snores so sweetly), the Austrian customs official says. Our word that the snorer’s suitcase doesn’t contain any contraband suffices.

Has Austria truly retained its old, comfortable, calm and cheerful nature, and way of doing things?

Here it is not the baggage boors who don’t let us sleep, but dawn, which breaks with blinding whiteness.

“Snow!”—One of our lads from Israel bursts out—his happiness to see snow for the first time knows no bounds.

The train stops at one of the small stations, and we get off to buy various necessities. Almost instantly, our pockets become bureaux de change—each one of us becomes an international moneychanger: Grushim from the Land of Israel, Italian liras, Serbian dinars, Austrian gröschen, hellers, centimes . . . the man who knows his way about this confusion is very fortunate indeed. I travelled around these countries and their neighbors for about fifteen years before the war and never once had to change money: everywhere I went, I simply paid with the money I had.

And now—how, God forbid, can the Serbian dinar give up its exalted position in the currency world?—It’s a matter of national pride!

It strikes me that savages can be bought with all manner of trinkets, colored glass, shining stones. All these serve as international currency. Each country has its own particular national trinket: Hottentots like teeth; Niam-Niam, red glass; Bushmen, shiny tin; Balinese, shells.⁷ These objects are most valuable to them (or else, they know them to be so for the buyer)—and each requires payment in its national trinket (whose total value is not higher, and sometimes even lower, than that of his neighbor) before anything is sold.

Police guard each border, including Austria. Men who, for generations, have been educated traditionally, both secularly and in their hearts and souls, stand next to one another. But now they stand and stare at one another, and everyone who passes through, with cautious silence, with restrained, dumb hate, which could at any moment turn ugly at the slightest action or misplaced word.

Here, instead of urban Tungus, Papuans, Igbos, Balinese, and Bushmen, living in their native “wigwams,” as described by Bernard Shaw, we have armed bandits on borders and in trains, walking around, and sniffing out the enemy.⁸

Behold the face of the new, national Europe!

Who said anything about the sunset of Europe?

I see the exact opposite—the continent is starting afresh, from its primitive beginnings.

We are approaching Vienna.