‘A rum customer. But I’ve met worse. By the way — if you’ve no objection, I’ll walk along with you.’
We walked along together. Suddenly he turned to me.
‘Believe me, I’m not talking for effect when I say that for years nothing has been a greater bore to me than this Maria Theresa Order of mine — it’s far too conspicuous for my liking. I must admit, to be quite honest, that when it was awarded to me out there at the front I was, of course, absolutely bowled over. After all, I’d been brought up as a soldier, and as a cadet I’d heard this Order spoken of as something almost legendary, this one Order which comes the way of perhaps no more than a dozen men in every war — a positive bolt from the blue. Why, for a young chap of twenty-eight that sort of thing means a devil of a lot. All at once you find yourself standing before the whole brigade, everyone gazes up reverently as something suddenly sparkles out on your breast like a little sun, and His Majesty, the Emperor, that unapproachable deity, shakes you by the hand and congratulates you. But a distinction of that kind, you know, only had any sort of point in our military world; and when the war was over, it seemed to me ridiculous to have to go about for the rest of my life labelled as a hero, just because on one occasion I had acted with real courage for twenty minutes — probably no more courageously than thousands of others, except that I had had the good fortune to be noticed, and the perhaps still more astounding good fortune to come back alive. By the end of a year I was fed to the teeth with stalking about like a walking monument, seeing people wherever I went stare at the little metal disc and then let their gaze travel in awed admiration up to my face; in fact, my exasperation at being so eternally conspicuous was one of the reasons why, at the end of the war, I left the army and entered civilian life.’
He strode along more vigorously.
‘I say one of the reasons, but the chief reason was one that you may be able to appreciate even more. The chief reason was that I myself had become thoroughly sceptical as to my claim to be called a hero and of my heroism. After all, I knew better than all these strangers who gaped at me that the man behind the Order was anything but a hero, was even definitely the reverse — one of those who only rushed headlong into the war in order to extricate themselves from a desperate situation, men who were running away from their responsibilities rather than patriotic heroes. I don’t know how you writers feel about it — to me, at least, to live in a halo of glory seems unnatural and unendurable, and I felt genuinely relieved when I was no longer obliged to strut about with my heroic history writ large on my uniform. Even to this day it annoys me when people rake up my glorious past, and I may as well confess to you that I was very nearly on the point yesterday of coming over to your table and telling that chattering fool he’d better find someone else to brag about. The awed look you gave me kept riling me for the rest of the evening, and I had a good mind, just in order to give that fellow the lie, to compel you to hear from my own lips by what tortuous paths I attained to the status of a hero. It’s a very odd story, and yet it may serve to show that courage is often nothing but inverted weakness. Incidentally, I wouldn’t mind telling you the whole story straight out here and now. Something that goes back a quarter of a century in a man’s life no longer concerns him, but quite another person. Have you time? And it wouldn’t bore you, would it?’
Of course I had time, and we paced up and down the now deserted streets far into the night. I have only made a few changes in his narrative (I need scarcely add it was not related to me at a single interview), such as putting Uhlans instead of Hussars, to conceal the identity of the various garrisons, and, of course, changing the names of people and places. But in no instance have I added anything essential of my own invention, and it is not I but the man who lived the story who now narrates it.
* * *
The whole thing began with a blunder on my part, an entirely innocent piece of clumsiness, a gaffe, as the French call it. Then followed an attempt to put things right; but if you try to repair a watch in too much of a hurry, you’re as likely as not to put the whole works out of order. Even today, now that years have gone by, I am unable to decide exactly where my sheer gaucherie ended and my guilt began. I dare say I shall never know.
I was twenty-five at the time and a second lieutenant in the —th Regiment of Imperial Uhlans. I cannot claim ever to have been particularly keen about soldiering or felt it to be my vocation. But when you get four growing boys with voracious appetites and two girls in the family of an Austrian official, and there’s barely enough to feed them, you don’t bother much about their inclinations, but push them out at an early age into the treadmill of a profession, so that they won’t be a charge on the household any longer than necessary. My brother, who even at his first school swotted so hard that he ruined his eyesight, was sent to a seminary for priests; I was packed off, because of my sturdy physique, to a military academy. From that point onwards the thread of life spins itself out mechanically, there’s no need to do any more lubricating. The State sees to everything. In a few years, out of a pale, adolescent youngster it fashions, free of charge, after the prescribed military pattern, an ensign with a downy moustache, and hands him over, ready for use, to the army. One day, on the Emperor’s birthday, according to the usual custom, I was discharged from the academy, not yet eighteen years old, and shortly afterwards the first star flashed out on my collar; thus the first stage was reached, and now the successive stages of promotion could reel themselves off mechanically at suitable intervals, to end up with gout and a pension. That I should enter the cavalry of all things, the most fashionable and expensive arm of the service, was by no means my personal wish, but a caprice on the part of my Aunt Daisy, who had married my father’s elder brother as his second wife on his leaving the Ministry of Finance for a more remunerative post as the president of a bank. At once rich and snobbish, she could not bear the thought that anyone connected with her who happened also to be called Hofmiller should ‘disgrace’ the family by serving in the infantry; and since she made me an allowance of a hundred crowns a month to indulge this whim, I had to make a show of humble gratitude to her on every possible occasion. Whether it was to my liking to serve in the cavalry or, indeed, to enter the army at all, no one had ever considered, I myself least of all. Whenever I was in the saddle I felt fine, and my thoughts did not travel far beyond my horse’s neck.
In November, 1913, the year when my story opens, some order or other must have passed from one department to another, for before you could say Jack Robinson our squadron was transferred from Jaroslau to another small garrison town on the Hungarian frontier. It is of no importance whether I call the little town by its right name or not, for two buttons on a uniform could not more closely resemble each other than does one Austrian provincial garrison town another. In one as in the other the same military establishments: barracks, a riding-school, a parade-ground, an officers’ mess, and in addition three hotels, two cafés, a pâtisserie, a wine-bar, a dingy music-hall with faded soubrettes who, as a side-line, most obligingly divide their attentions between the regular officers and the volunteers. Everywhere soldiering entails the same busily empty monotony; hour after hour is mapped out in accordance with inflexible, antediluvian regulations, and even one’s leisure does not seem to offer much in the way of variety. In the officers’ mess the same faces, the same conversation; at the café the same games of cards and billiards. Sometimes one is amazed that the good God should trouble to give the six or seven hundred roofs of a little town of this sort the background of a different sky and a different countryside.
My new garrison had, it is true, one advantage to offer over the former one in Galicia; it was a stopping-place for express trains, and was situated on the one hand near Vienna and on the other at no great distance from Budapest. Anyone who had money — and there are no end of wealthy fellows in the cavalry, to say nothing of the volunteers, who are either aristocrats or sons of industrialists — might, if he could get off, take the five o’clock train to Vien
na and be back again at half-past two in the morning by the night express: time enough, that is, to do a theatre, to saunter about the Ringstrasse, to play the cavalier and keep a look-out for chance amours; some of the officers were even in the enviable position of keeping a flat or some kind of pied-à-terre for such purposes. Unfortunately, such diverting escapades were beyond the scope of my monthly allowance. The only amusements left me were the café or the pâtisserie, where, since the stakes at cards were usually too high for me, I was reduced to playing billiards, or chess, which was cheaper still.
And so one afternoon — it must have been somewhere about the middle of May, 1914 — I was sitting in the pâtisserie with our local apothecary and deputy mayor, who from time to time took me on at chess. We had long since finished our customary three games, and were chatting away out of sheer inertia — what was there to do in this boring hole? — but the conversation was already petering out like a smouldering cigarette-end. Then, suddenly, the door opened, and a billowing skirt swept in a gust of fresh air and a pretty girl: brown, almond eyes, dark complexion, superbly dressed, not a bit provincial, and, what was more, a new face in this Godforsaken monotony. But alas! the elegant nymph did not vouchsafe us a glance as we looked up in awed admiration; briskly and spiritedly, with firm athletic tread, she walked past the nine little marble-topped tables straight to the counter, where she proceeded to order cakes, pastries and liqueurs by the dozen. I was immediately struck by the very obsequious way in which the proprietor bowed to her; never had I seen the back-seam of his swallow-tails arched so tautly. Even his wife, the buxom, overblown provincial beauty, who was accustomed to accept the attentions of us officers in the most perfunctory manner (we were often in debt for all kinds of little trifles until pay-day came round), rose from her seat at the cash desk and almost dissolved in treacly politeness. While the worthy proprietor was entering her order in his book, the pretty young lady carelessly nibbled at a few chocolates and made conversation with Frau Grossmaier: but as for us, who were, I fear, craning our necks with unseemly eagerness, we were not accorded so much as the flicker of an eyelid. Naturally the young lady did not burden her pretty hands with a single parcel; everything, Frau Grossmaier humbly assured her, would be sent at once without fail. Nor did it even enter her head to pay at the cash desk like us ordinary mortals. We all realized at once that here was a quite unusually grand, distinguished customer.
As, her order completed, she turned to go, Herr Grossmaier rushed forward to open the door for her. My friend the apothecary also got up to bow most respectfully as she swept past. She acknowledged the courtesy with regal graciousness — devil take it, what velvety deep-brown eyes! — and I could scarcely wait until, overwhelmed with sugary compliments, she had left the shop, to begin pumping my companion about this swan in our duck-pond.
‘You mean to say you don’t know her? She’s the niece of ... (I shall call him Herr von Kekesfalva, although that was not his real name) Kekesfalva. Surely you know the Kekesfalvas?’
Kekesfalva — he threw down the name as though it were a thousand-crown note and looked at me as if expecting me to echo as a matter of course, ‘Kekesfalva! Ah yes, of course!’ But I, a recently transferred subaltern, dropped into this new garrison only a few months since — I in my innocence knew nothing of this most mysterious deity and politely asked for further information, which my companion proceeded to impart with all the complacent pride of a provincial, far more long-windedly and in greater detail, of course, than I shall retail it here.
Kekesfalva, he explained, was the richest man in the whole neighbourhood. Practically everything belonged to him, not only the Kekesfalva estate — ‘you must know the house, you can see it from the parade-ground, the yellow house to the left of the high-road with the flat tower and the huge park’ — but also the big sugar-factory on the road to R., the saw-mill in Brück and the stud-farm in M.; they all belonged to him, and six or seven blocks of houses in Budapest and Vienna as well. ‘Yes, you’d scarcely believe that we can count such colossally rich people among our neighbours. Why, he lives like a grandee! In winter in the little palace in the Jacquingasse in Vienna, and in the summer in various watering-places; he only keeps his house here open for a few months in the spring, but lord, what style he lives in! Quartets from Vienna, champagne and French wines, everything tip-top, the best of everything.’ And incidentally, if I cared, he’d be only too glad to give me an introduction, for — with an expansive and complacent gesture — he was on the best of terms with Herr von Kekesfalva, had had frequent business dealings with him in the past and knew that he was always glad to welcome officers to his house. A word from him and I should receive an invitation.
Well, and why not? One positively suffocated in this stagnant duck-pond of a provincial garrison town. By now one knew all the women on the promenade, knew each one’s summer hat and winter hat, best dress and everyday dress, they were always the same. And one knew their dogs and their maids and their children, one had passed and repassed them time without number. One knew all the culinary arts of the fat Bohemian mess cook, and one’s palate was gradually being dulled by the sight of the everlastingly unvaried menu at the hotel. One knew by heart every name, every sign-board, every notice in every street, every shop in every building and every show-window in every shop. By now one knew almost as precisely as Eugen the head waiter at what time His Worship the magistrate would appear in the café; on the stroke of half-past four he would sit down in the window corner on the left and order a café mélange, whilst the notary in his turn would come in exactly ten minutes later, at four-forty, take a cup of tea with lemon — blessed variation! — because of his poor digestion, and, puffing away at the everlasting cheroot, retail the same old jokes. God, one knew every face, every uniform, every horse, every driver, every beggar in the whole neighbourhood, one knew even oneself to the point of satiety! Why not break away from the treadmill for once? And then, that pretty girl, those deep-brown eyes! And so I told my patron with feigned indifference (no over-eagerness before this conceited vendor of pills!) that it would be a pleasure, to be sure, to make the acquaintance of the Kekesfalva family.
And lo and behold! my valiant apothecary had not been humbugging. Two days later, swelling with pride, he handed me a printed card on which my name had been neatly inscribed; and this invitation-card informed me that Herr Lajos von Kekesfalva requested the pleasure of the company of Herr Leutnant Anton Hofmiller at dinner at eight o’clock on Wednesday of the following week. One wasn’t dragged up in the gutter, thank God, and knew what was proper in such circumstances! So on the following Sunday morning I got myself up in my very best — white gloves and patent-leather shoes, my face relentlessly shaved, a drop of eau-de-Cologne on my moustache — and drove out to pay my courtesy call. The butler — old, discreet, well-cut livery — took my card and murmured apologetically that the family would be extremely sorry to have missed the Herr Leutnant, but they were all at church. So much the better, said I to myself. Paying one’s first call, whether official or private, is always a ghastly business. At any rate, you’ve done the right thing. You’ll go to dinner on Wednesday evening, and let’s hope you’ll have a good time. That settles that, I thought, until Wednesday evening. But it was with genuine delight that two days later, that is to say, on the Tuesday, I found that a visiting-card with the corner turned down had been left on me at the barracks by Herr von Kekesfalva. Capital, I thought to myself, these people have irreproachable manners. Fancy their repaying my call within two days — and I a mere junior officer! Why, a General couldn’t wish for greater consideration and courtesy! And I now looked forward with really pleasurable feelings of anticipation to the Wednesday evening.
But from the very start Fate played me a dirty trick — one really ought to be superstitious and pay more heed to little omens. At half-past seven on the Wednesday evening there was I all togged up — dress uniform, new gloves, patent-leather shoes, trousers creased as sharp as a razor-blade — and my batman was ju
st smoothing out the folds of my cloak and giving me a last look-over (I always needed him for that, for I had only a small hand-mirror in my ill-lit little room), when there came a knock at the door. It was an orderly, to say that the officer on duty, my friend Captain Count Steinhübel, requested me to hurry over to him in the guard-room. Two Uhlans, probably blind drunk, had been brawling, and the upshot was that one of them had hit the other over the head with the butt of his rifle. And now the clod was lying there bleeding, unconscious, his mouth wide open. They didn’t know yet whether his skull was broken or not; the regimental doctor had cleared off to Vienna on leave, the Colonel was not to be found, and in his desperation poor old Steinhübel, curse him, had sent the orderly haring off for me, me of all people, to get me to give him a hand while he looked after the injured man. So now I had to take down the evidence and send orderlies flying all over the place to hunt up a civilian doctor in the café or somewhere else. What with all this it was now a quarter to eight, and I could see that there was no chance of my getting away for another quarter or half an hour. Confound it all, this filthy business would happen today, today of all days, when I was invited out to dinner! I looked more and more impatiently at my watch; impossible to arrive punctually if I had to hang about here another five minutes. But duty’s in our very bones, it comes before any private obligation; I simply couldn’t go away. And so I did the only thing possible in this damnable situation, which was to send my batman in a cab (that little item cost me four crowns!) to the Kekesfalvas to beg them to excuse me if I were late, but I had been unexpectedly detained on duty, and so on and so on. Fortunately the hullabaloo in the barracks didn’t last much longer, for the Colonel appeared in person with a doctor who had been dug out from somewhere or other, and I was able to slip away.
But now came a further bit of bad luck. Today of all days there was no cab in the Rathausplatz, and I had to wait until they had telephoned for a carriage. And so when at long last I landed up in the great entrance hall of the Kekesfalva house, the minute hand of the clock on the wall was already hanging down vertically; it was exactly half-past eight instead of eight, and I could see that the cloakroom was bulging with overcoats. I could tell, too, by the man-servant’s somewhat embarrassed expression that I had arrived too late — disagreeable, very disagreeable, for such a thing to happen on one’s first visit!