XI.
The commandant of the jail was the Lieutenant-Colonel, Mr. Werner, his adjutant was a major, the chief staff superintendent was the third in rank among the mighty men of this under-world. Each floor then had a visible head in its own special superintendent, but the sole decisive authority, the lord of all these lords, was the one who in rank followed then all—Alfred Papritz—N. C. O. in charge of accounts. Alfred Papritz, whose acquaintance I had made at the morning's parade. He decided about everything, he intervened everywhere, and there was no strength that could defy him. The prisoners were powerless, and woe unto him who might venture to defy Papritz. Even the superintendents trembled before him, the chief staff superintendent carefully kept out of his way, for Papritz alone had the ear of the higher authorities, and his will was always their will.
Complaints, signed and unsigned information against him had been sent to the Minister for the Interior, to the Minister for Defence, to the Minister for War, but the result was the same, all these Ministers departed, fresh ones came and were relieved by others, but Papritz remained. And after every complaint he gave the prisoners a taste of his power; it was permitted—and the ghastly official food made it necessary—for prisoners under remand to eke out the food with what they bought, and they had their lunch fetched for them from a restaurant, once or twice a week also a caterer, under the supervision and through the co-operation of the superintendent's office, supplied them with supper,—the vindictive Papritz suddenly ordered that the prisoners were to be allowed neither one nor the other. It was further permitted on special holidays to bring the prisoners parcels of food,—these parcels were strictly searched, during which process the better parts of their contents often "got lost." Papritz forbade that also. There was no appeal, and every protest was in vain.
From the restaurant and from the caterer Papritz received his fixed amount of baksheesh—and, so it was said, a respectable backsheesh,—how great must have been the promptings of vindictiveness within him, when he succeeded in renouncing this gratuity, or else how great must this baksheesh have been beforehand, that now he no longer needed to take it into account and could give full vent to his fury. It is true that after some time he became merciful again, but there were considerable doubts that this was due to humane considerations towards the prisoners.
When Hindenburg became an Austrian Field-Marshal, the Viennese attributed to him an anecdotal desire to become an Austrian Sergeant-Major as well,—if only those worthy narrators had known their Sergeant-Major Papritz as well as the members of other Austrian nationalities knew him in a military prison!
The judicial supervisors emphatically refused to interfere—the internal affairs of the jail were not their concern. They arrested a man, cross-examined him, finally brought him up for trial—whether in the meantime he lived under reasonably humane conditions, and in fact how he lived, had nothing whatever to do with them.
"Tell me, Dušek, who was that infantry-man this morning in the elegant riding-boots?"
"That was Mr. Fiedler. A man who has seen a good deal of the world and of life. A Viennese, a German, who speaks all the Slavonic languages fluently, speaks a great deal and yet says nothing. At least, not about himself. He is a convict—he has another five or six years of his sentence to serve, and nobody here has found out what it is for. Ask him, he will tell you. But ask him tomorrow, he will tell you something quite different. He has been in Asia, in America, his experiences are enormous, he is an expert at a whole series of trades and at all kinds of clerical work, but what kind of a man lurks behind all this it would be difficult to say. He wraps himself up in his speeches as in a mist. He is the superintendent's right hand, so that while the superintendent sits and smokes pipe after pipe, Fiedler does the work. Returns, reports, bills, orders—he prepares them-all. And at the same time he is a kind of minor Papritz for our floor. Only he is not such a bully. He himself is fond of life and he is willing to let others live also. He drinks good wines, smokes good cigars, obtains everything for which he has a fancy, the caterer is altogether considerate, both as a man and as a trader, and besides that, do you know that we have here quite a quantity of real millionaires? In our number 60 for example we have two—the little stout man with the large head, he is standing there by the window, Mr. Fels, and next to him the tall one, Mr. Goldenstein—Jews from Galicia, proprietors of petroleum wells; in the adjoining rooms there are also a number of them; we call them "censorists"; you see, rich men of that kind have become accustomed to regarding money as a key which opens everything in the world, and unfortunately for the world, they have never been disappointed in this belief. Well, you will see that they will try it in jail as well, and they will discover that even in jail this key will open everything. When they want newspapers, Mr. Fiedler will supply newspapers; pencils and paper are, of course, prohibited, but Mr. Fiedler will supply them. Mr. Fiedler will provide everything. And while he does it he will smile, make jokes, run to and fro, in the morning he will give his moustache a smart twist,—"
"And he is a convict?"
"That is the only thing we know for certain about him."
Keys grated in the lock, the prisoners crowded to the door, the door opened, two orderlies threw on the floor a dirty kneading-board with twenty dishes of soup and twenty dishes with the second course,—lunch.The prisoners made a rush for the kneading-board, seized on the cleanest dishes and carried them off as plunder to the tables, the straw mattresses, the boxes placed along the walls.
Papa Declich was one of the first—he must certainly be a man with a long record and many experiences here—the dishes stood on the table, the portions for Dušek, Hedrich, Budi, myself. Papa Declich cut up the bread. The soup contained barley, pieces of flour as big as a child's fist, unchopped vegetables and a few scraps of meat. And a horrible lot of pepper.
I tasted it;—it burnt my tongue. I could not manage it.
"Tell me, why is there so much pepper?" I asked Hedrich.
"Because the head cook is a Russian prisoner, some sort of Asiatic; he is fond of it like that, and then a man has to keep on drinking and never quenches his thirst" declared our barber with good-humoured indignation.
"So a Russian prisoner is head cook here?" I asked Dušek.
"Yes, an imprisoned Russian. Or a Russian prisoner, it comes to the same thing," laughed Dušek; "what do you expect? Austria. To everything that human understanding cannot grasp, this word Austria forms a key and an explanation."
They were cursing in the room. "Food for cattle", "hog-wash", "this ought to be reported on parade", "send a specimen to the War Ministry", "Feed Papritz with it, the beast"—and the plates were flung with the greater part of their contents of soup back on to the kneading-board.
"That's not fit to eat", remarked Dušek resignedly, and he pushed his dish aside. "We must wait till the evening, and then we will eat our fill. I have discovered that it is quite enough for a man to eat once a day."
Budi and Hedrich also pushed their plates aside. Papa Declich drew them up to him, fished out the scraps of meat, cut them up, salted them and ate them with bread. He liked it,—an Istrian stomach.
"What is the second course?" I asked, looking at the thick yellowish semi-liquid in the second dish."Those are beans," explained Budi, "and these beans were here on Monday in their original form, but as we sent them back because we couldn't swallow them, on Tuesday they were mixed with fish, but as the fish smelt so bad that we could swallow it still less, we sent it back again; today the fish has been taken out of them, they have been boiled, mixed with vinegar, and now we are expected to call them gruel. But it's no use. we can't get them down even in this disguise", and Budi's dish flew in a curve on to the kneading-board so that the gruel was splashed all about.
There was fresh cursing and abuse. The dishes fell and clattered as they knocked against each other on the board.
"Those are our lunches—now we will have a piece of bread and butter, and make up for it in the evening. Papa, butiro."
Papa Declich unpacked his papers.
The orderlies rushed into the room and cursed at the abundance of mess on the kneading-board.
"Now it will go floating down the sink," explained Hedrich. "How many poor people in Hernals and Ottakring could have been fed with these beans if they had been given to them before the Russian Asiatic spoilt them," and he put his hand into his breast pocket and pulled out a cigar: "Mr. Dušek."
We smoked.
"You mentioned the censorists, what are they?"
"A nice business. Only yesterday, just as you came, about 80 Jews joined us. From the censorship, into which they got by a trick. They bribed the commandant of the military censorship of letters, a Captain Moscheni—by the way, he is locked up here too—with four, five or six thousand, and they censored letters, and in certain cases gave information where they found anything compromising. Soldier’s letters, sent by field-post, passed through their hands, postcards and letters written to soldiers from home likewise; who knows how much domestic trouble these peeple caused by their work. And now they are here. The whole business came out in a typically Austrian manner. A certain prostitute was murdered in Vienna. As usual, no trace of the murderer. Among her possessions the police discovered a number of letters from a regimental medical officer with his name and address. So they went to him and instituted a search. But even so they found nothing which would have led to the discovery of the murderer, but on the other hand they came upon the censorists trick. The regimental medical officer was mixed up with it."
The room was quiet with the quietness following a meal in the afternoon. A few were still chewing slices of bread, others were stretched out on the straw mattresses, were smoking and staring with a sullen glance into vacuity.
Papa Declich had also stretched himself out. Budi was snoring in the sound sleep of youth. Hedrich was lying downm cap on head and with a cigar which had slipped into the corner of his mouth.
"Dušek, let's have a nap."
"Let's have a nap."