“Give me one!” said Frau Demant.
He was forced to look into her face when he gave her a light. He felt it was inappropriate of her to smoke—as if nicotine were not permissible during mourning. And there was something exuberant and vicious about the way she took the first puff, the way her lips rounded into a small red ring from which the dainty blue cloud emerged.
“Do you have any idea where you’re being transferred to?”
“No,” said the lieutenant, “but I’m making every effort to get very far away.”
“Very far? Where, for instance?”
“Perhaps Bosnia!”
“Do you believe you can be happy there?”
“I don’t believe I can be happy anywhere.”
“I hope you do find happiness!” she said quickly—very quickly, it seemed to Trotta.
She stood up, came back with an ashtray, placed it on the floor between them, and said, “So we’ll probably never meet again.”
Never again! The words, the feared, shoreless, dead sea of numb eternity! Never again could he see Katharina, or Dr. Demant, or this woman! Carl Joseph said, “Probably not. Unfortunately!” He wanted to add, And I will never again see Max Demant. The lieutenant also thought of one of Taittinger’s bold adages: “Widows should be burned!”
They heard the doorbell, then movement out in the hall.
“That’s my father,” said Frau Demant. Herr Knopfmacher was already entering.
“Ah, there you are, there you are!” he said, bringing a pungent whiff of snow into the room. He unfolded a large dazzling-white handkerchief, loudly blew his nose, and cautiously buried the handkerchief in his breast pocket as if secreting a precious object. He reached toward the door molding, switched on the ceiling lamp, stepped closer to Trotta, and shook his hand. Trotta, who had already gotten up at Herr Knopfmacher’s entrance, had been standing for a while. Through this handshake Herr Knopfmacher announced all the grief that could be expressed for the physician’s death. Pointing to the ceiling lamp, Knopfmacher was already saying to his daughter, “Forgive me, but I can’t stand such a sad moody light!” It was as if he had hurled a stone at the crape-lined portrait of the dead man.
“My, you look awful!” said Knopfmacher a moment later, in a jubilant voice. “It’s been pretty hard on you, hasn’t it—this misfortune, huh?”
“He was my only friend.”
“You know,” said Knopfmacher, sitting down at the table and adding with a smile, “Please don’t get up!” He went on when the lieutenant was sitting on the sofa again: “He said the very same thing about you when he was alive. What a calamity!” And he shook his head a few times, and his full, reddened cheeks quivered slightly.
Frau Demant drew a wispy handkerchief from her sleeve, dabbed her eyes, stood up, and left the room.
“Who knows how she’ll get over it?” said Knopfmacher. “Well, I coaxed her long enough, before. She wouldn’t listen! You know, dear Herr Lieutenant, every profession has its dangers. But an officer! An officer—do forgive me—should not really marry. Just between you and me—but he must have told you too—he wanted to resign and devote himself exclusively to science. And I can’t tell you how delighted I was to hear it. He would certainly have made a great physician. Dear, good Max!” Herr Knopfmacher looked up at the portrait, let his eyes linger on it, and concluded his obituary: “An authority!”
Frau Demant brought the slivovitz that her father loved. “You’ll join me, won’t you?” asked Knopfmacher, filling some small glasses. He himself gingerly carried them over to the sofa. The lieutenant got to his feet. He had a stale taste in his mouth like after the raspberry drink. He gulped down the alcohol.
“When did you last see him?” asked Knopfmacher.
“The day before,” said the lieutenant.
“He asked Eva to go to Vienna but he didn’t even drop a hint. And she left totally unaware. And then his farewell letter arrived. And I knew instantly that nothing could be done.”
“No, nothing could be done.”
“It’s so out of date—do forgive me—that code of honor! This is the twentieth century, after all, just imagine! We’ve got the gramophone, you can telephone someone hundreds of miles away, and Blériot and others are already flying through the air! And—I don’t know if you read the newspapers and keep up with politics, but they say the constitution is going to be thoroughly amended. Ever since they introduced universal suffrage and the secret ballot—one per person—all sorts of things have been happening, in our country and all over the world. Our Kaiser, God bless him and keep him, is not so old-fashioned as some people think. Of course, the so-called conservative forces aren’t all that wrong either. You have to proceed slowly, take your time, think it through. Just don’t rush things!”
“I don’t know anything about politics,” said Trotta.
Knopfmacher was very annoyed. He resented that stupid army and its hare-brained institutions. His child was now a widow, his son-in-law dead, a new one had to be found—a civilian this time—and the title of commercial councilor might likewise have been postponed. It was high time they did away with such nonsense. Young good-for-nothings like the lieutenant should control their exuberance in the twentieth century. The nations were insisting on their rights, a citizen is a citizen, no more privileges for the nobility. The Social Democrats were dangerous, but they provided a good balance. People kept talking about war constantly, but it was certain not to come. We’d show them. These times were enlightened. In England, for instance, the king had no say.
“Naturally!” he said. “After all, politics has no place in the army. Although he”—Knopfmacher pointed at the portrait—” did know a thing or two about politics.”
“He was very wise,” Trotta murmured.
“Nothing could be done!” Knopfmacher repeated.
“He may have been,” said the lieutenant—and he himself felt as if an alien wisdom were speaking out of him, a wisdom from the big ancient tomes of the silver-bearded king of the tavern keepers—”he may have been very wise and quite alone.”
He paled. He felt Frau Demant’s shiny glances. He had to leave. The room grew very still. There was nothing more to say.
“We won’t be seeing Baron Trotta anymore either, Papá!” said Frau Demant. “He’s being transferred.”
“But you’ll stay in touch?” asked Knopfmacher.
“You’ll write me,” said Frau Demant.
The lieutenant got up. “Best of luck!” said Knopfmacher. His hand was big and soft, like warm velvet.
Frau Demant led the way. The orderly came, held the coat. Frau Demant stood at their side. Trotta clicked his heels. She said very quickly, “Write me! I’ll want to know where you are.” It was a swift puff of warm air, immediately gone. The orderly was already opening the door. There lay the steps. Now the gate was opened, like when he had left the sergeant.
He walked to town rapidly, entered the first café along the road, stood at the counter, drank a brandy, then another. “We always drink Hennessy!” he heard the district captain say. He hurried to the barracks.
At the door to his room, Onufrij, a blue stroke against bare white, was waiting. The officer’s orderly had brought the lieutenant a package from the colonel. Narrow, in brown paper, it was leaning in the corner. A letter lay on the table. The lieutenant read:
My dear friend, I leave you my saber and my watch.
Max Demant
Trotta unwrapped the saber. Dr. Demant’s smooth silver watch dangled from the hilt. The watch had stopped. It showed ten minutes to twelve. The lieutenant wound it and held it to his ear. Its frail, swift voice ticked comfortingly. He pried the cap open with his penknife, curious and eager to play—a boy. Inside were the initials M.D. He pulled the saber from its sheath. Right beneath the hilt, Dr. Demant had used a knife to carve a few clumsy, sprawling letters into the steel. Live well and free! said the inscription. The lieutenant hung the saber in the closet. He held the sword hanger in his hand. Its wire
d silk glided through his fingers—a cool, golden rain. Trotta shut the closet; he shut a coffin.
He turned off the light and stretched out fully dressed on the bed. The yellow shimmer from the troop rooms floated in the white enamel of the door and was mirrored in the glittering knob. The accordion over there sighed hoarsely and nostalgically amid the roar of the deep voices of the men. They were singing the Ukrainian song about the Emperor and the Empress:
Oh, our Emperor is a good fine man,
And our lady is his wife, the Empress.
He rides ahead of all his lancers brave,
And she remains alone in the castle,
And she waits for him.…
She waits for the Emperor—our Empress.
The Empress had died long ago. But the Ruthenian peasants believed she was still alive.
Chapter 9
THE RAYS OF the Hapsburg sun reached eastward all the way to the border of the Russian czar’s territory. It was the same sun under which the Trotta dynasty had gained its tides of nobility and its prestige. Franz Joseph’s gratitude had a long memory, and his benevolence had a long arm. If one of his favorite children was about to do something foolish, the Emperor’s ministers and servants intervened in time, making the foolish person act cautious and sensible. It would scarcely have been appropriate for the sole offspring of the newly ennobled dynasty of Trotta und Sipolje to serve in the province that had given birth to the Hero of Solferino, the grandson of illiterate Slovenian peasants, the son of a constabulary sergeant. The descendant might, of course, exchange service with the lancers for a modest commission in the infantry: he would thereby remain loyal to the memory of his grandfather, the plain infantry lieutenant who had saved the Kaiser’s life. However, the Imperial and Royal Ministry of War was prudent enough not to send the bearer of a title of nobility to the area of a Slovenian village if his name was exactly that of the very village from which the dynastic progenitor came. This view was fully shared by the district captain, the son of the Hero of Solferino. Granted—though certainly not with a light heart—he did permit his son to transfer to the infantry. But he utterly disapproved of Carl Joseph’s desire to be stationed in the Slovenian province. He himself, the district captain, had never wished to see his father’s homeland. He was an Austrian, a servant and official of the Hapsburgs, and his homeland was the Imperial Palace in Vienna. Had he entertained any political ideas about a useful reshaping of the great and multifarious empire, it would have suited him for all the crown lands to be merely large variegated forecourts of the Imperial Palace and all the nations in the monarchy to be servants of the Hapsburgs. He was a district captain. In his bailiwick he represented the Apostolic Majesty. He wore the gold collar, the cocked hat, and the sword. He did not wish to push a plow across the fertile Slovenian soil. The decisive letter to his son contained the words: Fate has turned our family of frontier peasants into an Austrian dynasty. That is what we shall remain.
Thus it was that the southern borderland remained closed to the son, Carl Joseph, Baron von Trotta und Sipolje, and he was limited to the choice of serving either in the interior of the empire or on its eastern border. He opted for the rifle battalion, which was stationed only a few miles from the Russian border. Nearby lay Burdlaki, Onufrij’s native village. This area was the related homeland of the Ukrainian peasants, their mournful accordions, and their haunting songs; it was the northern sister of Slovenia.
Lieutenant Trotta sat in the train for seventeen hours. During the eighteenth hour, the monarchy’s final eastern railroad station emerged. Here he got out. He was accompanied by Onufrij, his orderly. The rifle barracks lay in the middle of the small town. Before they entered the courtyard of the barracks, Onufrij crossed himself three times. It was morning. The spring, long since at home in the interior of the empire, had come this far only recently. The forsythia was already glowing on the slopes of the railroad embankment. The violets were already blossoming in the damp woods. The frogs were already croaking in the endless swamps. The storks were already circling over the low thatched roofs of the rustic huts, seeking the old wheels, the foundations of their summer homes.
At this time, the border between Austria and Russia, in the northeast of the dual monarchy, was one of the strangest areas. Carl Joseph’s rifle battalion was stationed in a town of ten thousand inhabitants. The town had a spacious ring square, with two large thoroughfares crossing at the center. One ran from east to west, the other from north to south. One led from the train depot to the graveyard, the other from the castle ruins to the steam mill. Of the ten thousand inhabitants of the town, roughly one third worked at some kind of craft. Another third lived wretchedly on their tiny farms. And the rest were involved in some sort of commerce.
We say “some sort of commerce.” For neither the wares nor the business practices corresponded to the civilized world’s notion of commerce. The tradesmen in those parts lived far more on happenstance than prospects, far more on unpredictable providence than any commercial planning, and any tradesman was willing at any time to seize the goods that destiny had put his way or to invent goods if God had blessed him with none. Indeed, the livelihoods of these tradesmen were a riddle. They had no shops. They had no names. They had no credit. But they did possess a finely whetted, miraculous instinct for any and all secret and mysterious sources of money. They lived off other people’s work, but they also created work for others. They were frugal. They lived as squalidly as if subsisting on manual labor, but it was other people’s labor. Always on the move, always on the alert, with glib tongues and quick minds, they might have had the stuff to conquer half the world—had they known what the world was all about. But they did not know. For they lived far from the world, between East and West, squeezed in between night and day—virtually as living ghosts spawned by the night and haunting the day.
Did we say they lived “squeezed in”? Nature in their homeland prevented them from feeling squeezed in. Nature forged an unending horizon around the borderland people and surrounded them with a noble ring of green forests and blue hills. When they walked through the darkness of the firs, they could actually have believed that they were favored by God—if the daily anxiety about bread for wife and children had left them time to recognize God’s goodness. But they walked through the fir forests to purchase wood for city buyers as soon as winter drew near. For they also dealt in wood. Incidentally, they also dealt in corals for the peasant women in the encircling villages and also for the peasant women who lived on the other side of the border, on Russian soil. They dealt in feathers for feather beds, in horsehair, in tobacco, in silver ingots, in jewels, in Chinese tea, in southern fruit, in horses and cattle, in poultry and eggs, in fish and vegetables, in jute and wool, in cheese and butter, in fields and woodlands, in Italian marble, in human hair from China for the manufacture of wigs, in raw silk and finished silk, in textiles from Manchester, in Brussels lace and Moscow galoshes, in linen from Vienna and lead from Bohemia. None of the wonderful and none of the cheap goods in which the world is so rich remained unknown to the dealers and agents in this region. If they could not acquire or sell something in accordance with the current laws, they would get hold of it unlawfully through cunning and calculation, through boldness and deceit. Some of them even dealt in human beings, live human beings. They sent deserters from the Russian army to the United States and young peasant girls to Brazil and Argentina. They ran shipping offices and also agencies for foreign brothels. And yet their profits were paltry, and they had no inkling of the vast and splendid affluence a man can live in. Their senses, so polished and skilled in finding money, their hands, so gifted in striking gold from gravel like sparks from flint, were incapable of gaining joy for their hearts or health for their bodies.
The people in this area were the spawn of the swamps. For the swamps lay incredibly widespread across the entire face of the land, on both sides of the highway, with frogs, fever germs, and treacherous grass that could be a horrible lure into a horrible death for innoce
nt wanderers unfamiliar with the terrain. Many died, and their final cries for help went unheard. But all the people who were born there knew the treachery of the swamps and had something of that treachery themselves. In spring and summer, the air was thick with an intense and incessant croaking of frogs. An equally intense trilling of larks exulted under the skies. And a tireless dialogue took place between sky and swamp.
Among the dealers we have spoken of were many Jews. A whim of nature, perhaps the mysterious law of an unknown descent from the legendary tribe of the Khazars, gave many of the borderland Jews red hair. The hair blazed on their heads. Their beards were aflame. On the backs of their deft hands, hard, red bristles stood rigid like tiny spears. And their ears were rank with soft reddish wool like the haze of the red fires that might be glowing inside their heads.
Any stranger coming into this region was doomed to gradual decay. No one was as strong as the swamp. No one could hold out against the borderland. By this time, the high-placed gentlemen in Vienna and St. Petersburg were already starting to prepare for the Great War. The borderlanders felt it coming earlier than the others, not only because they were used to sensing future things but also because they could see the omens of doom every day with their own eyes. They profited even from these preparations. Any number of them lived from spying and counterspying; they received Austrian guldens from the Austrian police and Russian rubles from the Russian police. And in the isolated swampy bleakness of the garrison, one or another officer fell prey to despair, gambling, debts, and sinister men. The graveyards of border garrisons held many young corpses of weak men.