Flight Without End

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In what follows I tell the story of my friend, comrade and spiritual associate, Franz Tunda.

I follow in part his notes, in part his narrative.

I have invented nothing, made up nothing. The question of ‘poetic invention’ is no longer relevant. Observed fact is all that counts.

Paris, March 1927

Joseph Roth

Franz Tunda, first lieutenant in the Austrian Army, became a Russian prisoner of war in August 1916. He was taken to a camp a few versts north-east of Irkutsk. He succeeded in escaping with the help of a Siberian Pole. On the remote, isolated and dreary farm of this Pole, the officer remained until the spring of 1919.

Foresters stopped by at the Pole’s, bear-hunters and fur-traders. Tunda had no need to fear pursuit. No one knew him. He was the son of an Austrian major and a Polish Jewess, born in the small Galician town of his father’s garrison. He spoke Polish; he had served in a Galician regiment. It was easy for him to pass himself off as a younger brother of the Pole. The Pole’s name was Baranowicz. Tunda called himself likewise.

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