Soldier to Saint

TARABAS--Joseph Roth--Viking ($2.50).

Tarabas was a creature of impulse. It was impulse rather than conviction that got him mixed up with a student revolutionary society in St. Petersburg. When his father with difficulty got him acquitted, Tarabas was shipped off to the U.S. In Manhattan he made violent love to a Russian waitress, made more violent scenes when she cast her eyes elsewhere. He might have landed in a serious scrape when he throttled her employer, but war broke out just then, and Tarabas went back to Russia to fight the Germans.

His family welcomed him with forgiving arms, but because he was seen coming out of his cousin's room late one night his father sent him off with a curse. The War swallowed Tarabas up. He could not go home even if he had wanted to, for his native town was soon inside the German lines. But Tarabas thrived on war, got medals, promotion, respect and fear. Out of a job when the Revolution broke up the Russian Army, Tarabas went home with the faithful fragment of his regiment, only to find that his native land was no longer a part of Russia but an independent country. As commander of the garrison town of Koropta, Tarabas was not so happy or so successful as he had been in the field. When a pogrom occurred, Tarabas was too drunk to check it in time. Next day he encountered a half-witted Jew who was disobeying the regulations about staying indoors. In his fury Tarabas pulled the old man's beard out by the roots.

Still a man of moods, Tarabas suffered fearful remorse, decided to resign his commission, punish himself by becoming a beggar. He had achieved tuberculosis, sainthood, the point of death before he found his victim again.

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