Israel Centeno

It stayed with me long after I finished it. The Legend of the Holy Drinker is a long short story, almost a novella, written by Joseph Roth when he was already fading, ill, and living in exile. Its protagonist, Andreas Kartak, is a penniless Polish laborer, a drunk who sleeps under the bridges of Paris, and one day an angelic stranger hands him a sacred obligation: to return two hundred francs to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.

That’s where the tale becomes strange and tender at the same time. Roth—Jewish, exiled, exhausted—discovers, in that gesture of grace, a warmth he had nearly forgotten. And just when the story seems to be moving toward a simple moral, Roth opens a door into something far more intimate: the dream in which Saint Thérèse finally speaks to Andreas.

She appears to him not as a solemn saint, but as a little girl with golden curls, and addresses him with childlike directness:

“Why didn’t you come and see me on Sunday?”

Startled, Andreas responds with the awkward authority of a father scolding a daughter:

“That’s no way to talk to me! Have you forgotten that I’m your father?”

The girl-saint answers with gentle insistence:

“Sorry, father, but will you please, please come and see me on Sunday, the day after tomorrow, at Sainte Marie des Batignolles.”

This moment shifts the entire tone of the story. It is not a grand miracle; it is something smaller, more human. A tenderness breaking into the wreckage of a man’s life. A visitation that neither demands nor condemns—only invites. In that dream, Andreas becomes both child and father, sinner and beloved. Roth writes it with the soft precision of a whispered absolution.

Yet The Legend of the Holy Drinker is no tale of easy redemption. Andreas tries to repay the debt; he fails, promises again, drinks again, sabotages himself, tries once more… but he never fully relinquishes the desire to fulfill his promise. In that fragile, persistent longing, Roth reveals something deeply human: the clumsy reach for a forgiveness we suspect we don’t deserve.

What astonishes me is how Roth—who had lost faith in nearly everything: homeland, stability, even himself—still leaves room for this gentle Catholic grace. The story is not pious; it is the story of a man who drowns, yet dies knowing that someone, somewhere, prayed for him. And that, to me, is almost a miracle.

And then something happened to me that I refuse to call coincidence—because I don’t believe in coincidences. Saint Thérèse showed me roses this Sunday during Mass, at the beginning of the celebrations for Our Lady of Guadalupe, and placed this final story of Joseph Roth into my hands. It moved me deeply. Still does.