“Do you like the infantry?”
“Very much, Papá!”
“What about your horse?”
“I took it along, Papá!”
“Do you ride a lot?”
“Seldom, Papá!”
“You don’t like to?”
“No, I never liked it, Papá!”
“Stop calling me Papá,” Herr von Trotta suddenly said. “You’re big enough. And I’m on vacation!”
They drove into town.
“Well, it’s not all that wild,” said the district captain. “Can people have a good time here?”
“Very much so!” said Carl Joseph. “At Count Chojnicki’s home. Everybody comes. You’ll meet him. I like him a lot.”
“So he’d be the first friend you’ve ever had?”
“Dr. Max Demant was also my friend,” replied Carl Joseph.
“Here’s your room, Papá!” said the lieutenant. “The other officers live here and sometimes they get noisy at night. But there’s no other hotel. They’ll hold back as long as you’re here.”
“It’s all right, it’s all right!” said the district captain.
He unpacked a round tin box from the suitcase, opened the lid, and showed the box to Carl Joseph. “It’s a kind of root—it’s supposed to be good for swamp fever. It’s from Jacques.”
“How is he?”
“He’s up there!” The district captain pointed at the ceiling.
“He’s up there!” the lieutenant repeated.
To the district captain he sounded like an old man. His son must have a lot of secrets. The father did not know them. One said “father and son,” but many years lay between them, huge mountains. He knew little more about Carl Joseph than about any other lieutenant. He had joined the cavalry and had transferred to the infantry. He wore the green lapels of the riflemen instead of the red ones of the dragoons. Oh, well. That was all the father knew. He was obviously growing old. He no longer belonged to his office and to his duties. He belonged to Jacques and to Carl Joseph. He had brought the stone-hard weathered root from one to the other.
The district captain, still leaning over the valise, opened his mouth. He spoke into the valise as into an open grave. But he did not say, I love you, my son, as he meant to; he said, “He died an easy death. It was a true May evening, and all the birds were chirping. Do you remember his canary? It twittered the loudest. Jacques polished all the boots. Then he died, in the courtyard, on the bench. Slama was also there. He was running a fever just that morning. He sent you his best.”
Then the district captain glanced up from the valise and looked into his son’s face. “That’s exactly how I would like to die some day.”
The lieutenant went to his room, opened the wardrobe, and put the bit of root, the remedy for fever, in the top drawer, next to Katharina’s letters and Max Demant’s saber. He pulled out the doctor’s watch. He thought he saw the thin second hand circling faster than any other along the tiny round and thought he heard the jingly ticking more intensely. Soon I’ll also be hearing Papá’s watch; he’s going to leave it to me. The portrait of the the Hero of Solferino will hang in my room and Max Demant’s saber and an heirloom from Papá. With me everything will be buried. I am the last Trotta.
He was young enough to draw sweet delight from his grief and a painful dignity from the certainty that he was the last. From the nearby swamps came the broad, blaring croaking of the frogs. The setting sun reddened the walls and furniture in the room. He heard a lightweight carriage rolling up, the soft clatter of hooves on the dusty street. The carriage halted, a straw-yellow britska, Count Chojnicki’s summer vehicle. Three times, his snapping whip interrupted the chant of the frogs.
He was curious, that Count Chojnicki. No other passion than curiosity sent him traveling into the wide world, fettered him to the tables of the great gambling casinos, locked him behind the doors of his old hunting lodge, sat him on the bench of the parliamentarians, ordered him home every spring, made him hold his usual festivities, and blocked the path to suicide. Curiosity was all that kept him alive. He was insatiably curious. Lieutenant Trotta had told him that he was expecting his father, the district captain, and although Count Chojnicki was acquainted with a good dozen Austrian district captains and countless fathers of lieutenants, he was still eager to meet District Captain Trotta.
“I am your son’s friend,” said Chojnicki. “You are my guest. Your son must have told you. Incidentally, we’ve met before. Aren’t you acquainted with Dr. Swoboda in the Ministry of Commerce?”
“We were schoolmates.”
“There you are!” cried Chojnicki. “Swoboda is my good friend. He’s getting a little odd in the course of time, but a fine man! May I be completely honest with you? You remind me of Franz Joseph.”
A momentary hush ensued. The district captain had never spoken the Kaiser’s name. On solemn occasions one said “His Majesty.” In everyday life one said “the Kaiser.” But this Chojnicki said “Franz Joseph,” just as he had said “Swoboda.”
“Yes, you remind me of Franz Joseph,” Chojnicki repeated.
They were driving along. On both sides the unending choruses of the frogs were clamoring, the unending blue-green swamps were stretching out. The evening floated toward them, violet and golden. They heard the soft rolling of the wheels in the soft sand of the dirt road and the clear crunching of the axles. Chojnicki halted at the small hunting lodge.
The back wall leaned against the dark edge of the fir forest. It was separated from the narrow road by a small garden and a stone fence. The hedges lining both sides of the short path from the garden gate to the front door had not been trimmed in a long time, and they proliferated wildly and randomly here and there across the path, bending their branches toward one another and allowing only one person at a time to pass through. So the three men walked in single file; obediently the horse followed them, pulling the small carriage; the horse appeared to be familiar with this path, and it seemed to live in the lodge like a human being. Behind the hedges vast areas stretched out, dotted with blossoming thistles, guarded by the broad dark-green faces of the coltsfoot. To the right loomed a broken stone pillar, perhaps the vestige of a tower. Like a mighty broken tooth, the stone grew from the bosom of the front garden against the sky, with many dark-green moss spots and soft black cracks. The heavy wooden front door bore the Chojnickis’ coat of arms, a tripartite blue shield with three gilt stags, their antlers inextricably entangled. Chojnicki turned on the light. They stood in a vast low room. The final twilight of the day was still falling through the narrow cracks of the green blinds. The set table under the lamp bore plates, bottles, pitchers, silver cutlery, and tureens.
“I took the liberty of preparing a little snack for you,” said Chojnicki. He poured the 180 Proof, clear as water, into three small glasses, handed two of them to the guests, and raised the third one himself. They all drank. The district captain was somewhat confused when he put the glass back on the table. However, the reality of the food contradicted the mysterious character of the lodge, and the district captain’s appetite was greater than his confusion. The brown liver pâté, studded with pitch-black truffles, lay in a glittering wreath of fresh ice crystals. The tender breast of pheasant loomed lonesome on the snowy platter, surrounded by a gaudy retinue of green, red, white, and yellow vegetables, each in a bowl with a blue-gold rim and a coat of arms. In a spacious crystal vase, millions of pearls of black-gray caviar teemed within a circle of golden lemon slices. And the round pink wheels of ham, guarded by a large three-pronged silver form, lined up obediently in an oval bowl, surrounded by red-cheeked radishes that reminded one of small crisp country girls. Boiled, roasted, and marinated with sweet-and-sour onions, the fat broad pieces of carp and the narrow slippery pike lay on glass, silver, and porcelain. Round loaves of bread, brown and white, rested in simple, rustically pleated straw baskets, like babies in cradles, almost invisibly sliced, and with the slices so artfully rejoined that the bread looked hale and
undivided. Among the dishes stood fat-bellied bottles and tall narrow crystal carafes with four or six sides and smooth round ones, some with long and others with short necks, with or without labels; and all followed by a regiment of glasses in various shapes and sizes.
They began to eat.
For the district captain, this unusual manner of having a “snack” at an unwonted time was an extremely pleasant sign of the unusual customs at the border. In the old Imperial and Royal Monarchy, even people with Spartan natures, like Herr von Trotta, were thoroughgoing hedonists. A long time had passed since the district captain had had an extraordinary meal. The occasion had been the going-away party for the governor, Prince M, who had left with an honorable commission for the freshly occupied territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina, thanks to his renowned linguistic abilities and his alleged knack for “taming wild nations.” Yes, at that time the district captain had eaten and drunk unwontedly. And that day, along with other days of drinking and banqueting, had lodged in his memory as sharply as the special days when he had received praise from the governor’s office and, later on, been named district captain. As was his habit, he tasted the exquisiteness of food with his eyes as others did with their palates. His eyes swept across the rich table a few times, enjoying and lingering here and there in enjoyment. He had forgotten the mysterious, indeed sinister surroundings. They ate. They drank from various bottles. And the district captain praised everything by saying “delicious” or “excellent” whenever he went on from one dish to another. His face slowly reddened. And his sideburns kept moving.
“I have invited you gentlemen here because we would have been disturbed in the New Castle. There my door is always open, so to speak, and my friends can all drop in whenever they like. Otherwise I usually work here.”
“You work?” asked the district captain.
“Yes,” said Chojnicki, “I work. I work for the fun of it, so to speak. I am merely continuing the tradition of my forebears. Frankly, I am not always so earnest about it as my grandfather was. The peasants in this region regarded him as a powerful sorcerer, and perhaps he was. They regard me as one too, but I’m not. So far I haven’t succeeded in producing even a speck.”
“A speck?” asked the district captain. “What sort of speck?”
“Gold, of course!” said Chojnicki as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I know something about chemistry,” he went on. “It’s an old talent in our family. As you can see, I have the oldest and the most modern equipment.” He pointed to the walls. The district captain saw six rows of wooden shelves on each wall. On the shelves stood mortars, small and large paper bags, glass containers as in old-fashioned apothecaries, bizarre glass spheres filled with gaudy liquids, tiny lamps, gas burners, and test tubes.
“Very strange, strange, strange!” said Herr von Trotta.
“And I myself can’t really say whether I’m earnest or not. Yes, sometimes I’m overwhelmed with passion when I come here in the morning, and I read through my grandfather’s formulas and I go and test and laugh at myself and leave. And I keep coming again and keep testing again.”
“Strange, strange!” the district captain repeated.
“No stranger,” said the count, “than anything else I might do. Should I become Minister of Culture? It’s been suggested to me. Should I become section head in the Ministry of the Interior? That’s been suggested to me too. Should I go to court, become Comptroller of the Royal Household? I could do that too; Franz Joseph knows me.”
The district captain shifted his chair back two inches. He felt a pang whenever Chojnicki used the Kaiser’s name as intimately as if he were one of those ridiculous deputies who had been sitting in Parliament since the introduction of universal suffrage with a secret vote, one per person, or as if he were, at best, already dead and a figure in the Fatherland’s history.
Chojnicki corrected himself. “His Majesty knows me.”
The district captain shifted closer to the table and asked, “And why—if you’ll forgive me—would it be just as superfluous serving the Fatherland as making gold?”
“Because the Fatherland no longer exists.”
“I don’t understand!” said Herr von Trotta.
“I assumed you wouldn’t understand,” said Chojnicki. “We are all no longer alive!”
It was very still. The final glint of twilight had long since vanished. Through the narrow gaps of the green blinds they could have seen a few stars in the sky. The broad and blaring chant of the frogs had been replaced by the quiet metallic chant of the nightly field crickets. From time to time they heard the harsh cry of the cuckoo.
The district captain, put in an unfamiliar, almost enchanted state by the alcohol, the bizarre surroundings, and the count’s unusual words, stole a glance at his son, merely to see a close and familiar person. But Carl Joseph too seemed neither close nor familiar to him. Perhaps Chojnicki was correct and they all really no longer existed: not the Fatherland nor the district captain nor his son! Straining greatly, Herr von Trotta managed to ask, “I don’t understand. How can you say the monarchy no longer exists?”
“Naturally!” replied Chojnicki. “In literal terms, it still exists. We still have an army”—the count pointed at the lieutenant—“and officials”—the count pointed at the district captain—“but the monarchy is disintegrating while still alive; it is doomed! An old man, with one foot in the grave, endangered whenever his nose runs, keeps the old throne through the sheer miracle that he can still sit on it. How much longer, how much longer? This era no longer wants us! This era wants to create independent nation-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. Monarchy, our monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian nations. Our Kaiser is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty; no other is as apostolic, no other majesty in Europe is as dependent on the grace of God and on the faith of the nations in the grace of God. The German Kaiser still rules even when God abandons him; perhaps by the grace of the nation. The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God. But God has abandoned him!”
The district captain rose to his feet. He would never have believed there could exist a person in this world who could say that God had abandoned the Kaiser. All his life he had left matters of heaven to the theologians and regarded the church, the mass, the Corpus Christi ceremony, the clergy, and the Good Lord as institutions of the monarchy; but now all at once, the count’s statement seemed to explain all the confusion he had been feeling for the past few weeks, especially since old Jacques’s death. That was it: God had abandoned the old Kaiser! The district captain took a few steps, the old boards creaking under his feet. He went over to the window, and through the gaps in the blinds he saw the narrow stripes of the dark-blue night. All processes in nature and all events of everyday life suddenly achieved an ominous and incomprehensible meaning. Incomprehensible was the whispering chorus of crickets, incomprehensible the twinkling of the stars, incomprehensible the velvety blue of the night, incomprehensible the district captain’s trip to the border and his visit with this count. He returned to the table and ran his hand over one sideburn, as he would do whenever he felt a bit perplexed. A bit perplexed? Never had he been as perplexed as he was now!
In front of him stood a full glass. He swiftly drained it. “So,” he said, “you believe, you believe that we—”
“Are doomed,” Chojnicki completed. “We are doomed, you and your son and I. We are, I tell you, the last members of a world in which God sheds his grace on majesties, and lunatics like myself make gold. Listen! Look!” And Chojnicki stood up, went to the door, turned a switch, and the lights on the large chandelier shone. “Look!” said Chojnicki again. “This is the age of electricity, not alchemy. Chemistry too, you know! Do you know what this thing is called? Nitroglycerine.” The count articulated each syllable. “Nitroglycer
ine!” he repeated. “No more gold! In Franz Joseph’s palace they still often burn candles. Do you understand? Nitroglycerine and electricity will be the death of us! It won’t last much longer, not much longer!”
The glow spread by the electric lamps aroused green, red, and blue reflections trembling narrow and broad in the test tubes on the wall shelves. Carl Joseph sat there, pale and silent. He had been drinking all this time. The district captain looked at the lieutenant. He thought of his friend Moser, the painter. And since he himself had already been drinking, old Herr von Trotta, he spotted, as if in a very remote mirror, the wan image of his drunken son under the green trees of the park, with a slouch hat on his head and a large portfolio under his arm, and it was as if the count’s prophetic gift for seeing the historical future had also been granted to the district captain, enabling him to know his offspring’s future. The plates, glasses, bottles, and tureens were half empty and dismal; the lights in the pipes all around the walls shone magically. Two old footmen with sideburns, both of them resembling Kaiser Franz Joseph and the district captain like brothers, started clearing the table. From time to time the harsh cry of the cuckoo fell like a hammer on the chirping of the crickets. Chojnicki held up a bottle. “You have to drink the local” (that was what he called the liquor). “There’s only a bit left!” And they drank the last of the “local.”
The district captain drew out his watch but could not precisely recognize the position of the hands. It was as if they were rotating so swiftly along the white circle of the face that there were a hundred hands instead of the regulation two. And instead of twelve numbers there were twelve times twelve, for they crowded into each other like the strokes indicating minutes. It could be nine in the evening or already midnight.
“Ten o’clock!” said Chojnicki.
The footmen with sideburns gently took the arms of the guests and led them out. Chojnicki’s large barouche was waiting. The sky was very close; a good familiar shell made of a familiar blue glass, it lay within reach, over the earth. Earthly hands had pinned the stars into the nearby sky like tiny flags into a map. At times the entire blue night whirled around the district captain, rocking softly and then standing still. The frogs croaked in the unending swamps. The air smelled of rain and grass. The horses were ghostly white in front of the black carriage, and over them loomed the coachman in a black overcoat. The horses whinnied, and as soft as cat paws their hoofs scratched the damp, sandy ground.