Job
Joseph Roth titles
published by The Overlook Press
The Radetzky March
The Emperor’s Tomb
Tarabas
Confession of a Murderer
Job
Flight Without End
Hotel Savoy
Right and Left and The Legend of the Holy Drinker
The Silent Prophet
The Spider’s Web and Zipper and His Father
Copyright
This paperback edition first published in the United States in 2003 by
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
Woodstock & New York
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Copyright © 1930 Gustav kiepenheuer verlag AG.Berlin
Copyright © 1974 by Verlag Allert de Lange Amsterdam
and Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne
Translation copyright © 1931, 1959 by The Viking Press
Translation copyright © 1982 by The Overlook Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system now
known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher,
except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with
a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN: 978-1-59020-910-3
Contents
Joseph Roth
Copyright
Part One
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Part Two
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Part One
I
MANY YEARS AGO there lived in Zuchnow in Russia, a man named Mendel Singer. He was pious, Godfearing, and ordinary, an entirely commonplace Jew. He practised the simple profession of a teacher. In his house, which was merely a roomy kitchen, he instructed children in the knowledge of the Bible. He taught with honourable zeal and without notable success. Hundreds of thousands before him had lived and taught as he did.
As insignificant as his nature was his pale face. A full beard of ordinary black framed it. The mouth was hidden by the beard. The eyes were large, black, dull, and half veiled by heavy lids. On the head sat a cap of black silk rep, a stuff out of which unfashionable and cheap cravats are sometimes made. His body was stuck into the customary half-long Jewish caftan of the country, the skirts of which flapped when Mendel Singer hurried through the street and struck with a hard regular tact like the beat of wings against the shafts of his high leather boots.
Singer seemed to have little time and a lot of pressing engagements. True, his life was always hard and at times even a torment to him. A wife and three children had to be clothed and fed. (She was carrying a fourth.) God had given fertility to his loins, equanimity to his heart, and poverty to his hands. They had no gold to weigh and no bank-notes to count. Nevertheless his life flowed along like a poor little brook between bare banks. Every morning Mendel thanked God for his sleeping, for his awakening, and for the dawning day. When the sun went down he said his prayers once again. When the first stars began to sparkle, he prayed for the third time, and before he laid himself down to sleep he whispered a hurried prayer, with tired but zealous lips. His sleep was dreamless, his conscience was pure, his soul was chaste.
He had nothing to regret, and he coveted nothing. He loved the woman, his wife, and took delight in her flesh. His two small sons, Jonas and Shemariah, he beat when they were disobedient, but the youngest, his daughter Miriam, he was constantly caressing. She had his black hair and his black, soft, and indolent eyes. Her limbs were tender and fragile. A young gazelle.
He instructed twelve six-year-old scholars in the reading and memorizing of the Bible.
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