So she still wasn’t asleep. His match illuminated her face, which lay, white, framed by black tangled hair, on the crimson upholstery. Yes, perhaps they should have taken sleeping cars. The tiny head of the cigarette glowed reddish through the darkness. They lumbered over a bridge; the wheels clattered more noisily.
“The bridges!” she said. “I’m scared they’ll collapse.”
Yes, thought the lieutenant, let them collapse!
His only choice was between a sudden disaster and one that crept up very slowly. He sat opposite the woman, motionless, saw the lights of each whizzing station brighten the compartment for an instant, saw Frau Taussig’s pale face grow even paler. He was tongue-tied. He imagined he ought to kiss her rather than talk. He kept putting off the expected kiss more and more. After the next station, he told himself. All at once, the woman stretched out her hand, groped for the bolt on the compartment door, found it, and snapped it shut. And Trotta bent over her hand.
Frau Taussig made love with the lieutenant as intensely as she had made love with Lieutenant Ewald ten years earlier, on the same route and—who knows?—in the same compartment. But for now that lancer was snuffed out, like the earlier men, like the later men. Pleasure roared over memory, washing away all traces. Frau von Taussig’s first name was Valerie, shortened to the usual Vally. Her nickname, whispered to her in all tender moments, sounded brand-new each time. This young man was rebaptizing her; she was a child—and as fresh as her name. Nevertheless, out of habit, she wistfully noted that he was “much older” than she: a remark she often dared make to young men—in some degree, a foolhardy precaution. Besides, her remark always inspired a new series of caresses. She now pulled forth all the tender words that she spoke so glibly, using them with one man or another. Next—how well, alas, she knew this sequence—would come the man’s always identical plea not to talk about age or time. She knew how meaningless these pleas were—and she believed them. She waited. But Lieutenant Trotta kept silent, an obstinate young man. She was afraid his silence was a verdict, and so she cautiously began. “How much older do you think I am?”
He was at a loss. One did not respond to such a remark, nor did it really concern him. He felt the swift alternation of smooth coolness and equally smooth heat on her skin, the abrupt climatic changes that are among the enchanting manifestations of love. (Within a single hour they accumulate all the features of all the seasons on a single female shoulder. They truly suspend the laws of time.)
“I’m old enough to be your mother!” the woman whispered. “Guess my age.”
“I don’t know!” said the unhappy man.
“Forty-one!” said Frau Vally. She had turned forty-two just one month ago. But some women are prohibited by nature itself from telling the truth—the nature that prevents them from aging. Frau von Taussig may have been too proud to cover up three whole years. But stealing a single wretched year from truth was no theft.
“You’re lying!” he eventually said, very gruffly, out of politeness. And she gratefully embraced him in a new, roaring surge. The white lights of stations dashed by the window, illuminating the compartment, brightening up her white face, and appearing to bare her shoulders once again. The lieutenant lay with his head at her breast like a child. She felt a blissful, beneficial, a motherly pain. A motherly love poured into her arms, filling her with new strength. She wanted to do something good for her lover as if for her own child: as if her womb had birthed him, the same womb that now received him.
“My child, my child!” she repeated. She no longer feared old age. Indeed, for the first time she blessed the years that separated her from the lieutenant. And when morning, a radiant early-summer morning, broke through the flying windows, she fearlessly showed the lieutenant her face, which was not yet equipped for the day. Of course, she was reckoning a little with the dawn. For the window she sat at happened to be facing east.
To Lieutenant Trotta the world looked different. As a result, he fancied that this was love—the materialization, that is, of his notions about love. In reality he was merely thankful, a sated child.
“We’ll stay together in Vienna, won’t we?”
Dear child, dear child! she kept thinking. She gazed at him, filled with maternal pride as if she could take credit for the virtues that he did not possess and that she ascribed to him like a mother.
She imagined an endless series of small parties. Luckily they happened to be arriving at Corpus Christi. She would obtain two seats on the grandstand. Together they would enjoy the colorful procession that she loved, just like all Austrian women of all classes.
She got seats on the grandstand. The cheerful and solemn pomp gave her a warm, rejuvenating glow. Since her youth she had been familiar—and probably no less precisely than the Controller of the Royal Household—with all phases, portions, and rules of the Corpus Christi procession, the way the old spectators in hereditary boxes are familiar with each and every scene in their favorite operas. Their pleasure in looking is not reduced; on the contrary, it is nourished by this intimate familiarity.
Inside Carl Joseph the old childish and heroic dreams surfaced, the ones that had filled him and made him happy during vacations at home, on his father’s balcony, when he had heard the strains of “The Radetzky March.” The full majestic might of the old empire passed before his eyes. The lieutenant thought about his grandfather, the Hero of Solferino, and the unshakable patriotism of a father who was like a small but strong rock amid the towering mountains of Hapsburg power. He thought about his own holy mission to die for the Kaiser at any moment, on water or on land, or also in the air—in short, any place. The oath he had perfunctorily sworn a few times came alive. It rose up, word for word, each word a banner. The porcelain-blue eyes of the Supreme Commander in Chief—eyes grown cold in so many portraits on so many walls in the empire and now filled with a new fatherly solicitude and benevolence—gazed like a whole blue sky at the grandson of the Hero of Solferino. The light-blue breeches of the infantry were radiant. Like the serious embodiment of ballistic science, the coffee-brown artillerists marched past. The blood-red fezzes on the heads of the azure Bosnians burned in the sun like tiny bonfires lit by Islam in honor of His Apostolic Majesty. In black lacquered carriages sat the gold-decked Knights of the Golden Fleece and the black-clad red-cheeked municipal councilors. After them, sweeping like the majestic tempests that rein in their passion near the Kaiser, came the horsehair busbies of the bodyguard infantry. Finally, heralded by the blare of the beating to arms, came the Imperial and Royal anthem of the earthly but nevertheless Apostolic Army cherubs—“God preserve him, God protect him”—over the standing crowd, the marching soldiers, the gently trotting chargers, and the soundlessly rolling vehicles. It floated over all heads, a sky of melody, a baldachin of black-and-yellow notes. And the lieutenant’s heart stood still yet pounded fiercely—a challenge to all medical science. Over the slow strains of the anthem, the cheers fluttered like small white flags amid huge banners painted with coats of arms. The white Lipizzaner steed capered along with the majestic coquettishness of the famous Lipizzaner horses trained at the Imperial and Royal Stud Farm. The steed was followed by the trotting hooves of a half squadron of dragoons—a delicate parade thunder. The black-and-gold helmets flashed in the sun. The loud fanfares resounded, the voices of cheerful heralds: Clear the way! Clear the way! The old Kaiser’s coming!
And the Kaiser came; eight radiant-white horses drew his carriage. And on the white horses rode the footmen in black gold-embroidered coats and white periwigs. They looked like gods and yet they were merely servants of demigods. On each side of the carriage stood two Hungarian bodyguards with a black-and-yellow panther skin over one shoulder. They recalled the sentries on the walls of Jerusalem, the holy city, and Kaiser Franz Joseph was its king. The Emperor wore the snow-white tunic well known from all the portraits in the monarchy, and an enormous crest of green parrot feathers on his hat. The feathers swayed gently in the wind. The Kaiser smiled in all directions. T
he smile hovered on his old face like a small sun that he himself had created. The bells tolled from St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the salutes of the Roman Church, presented to the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The old Kaiser stepped from the carriage, showing the elastic gait praised by all newspapers, and entered the church like any normal man; he walked into the church, the Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation, immersed in the tolling of bells.
No lieutenant in the Imperial and Royal Army could have watched this ceremony apathetically. And Carl Joseph was one of the most impressionable. He saw the golden radiance streaming from the procession and he did not hear the dark beating of the vultures’ wings. For they were already circling over the two-headed eagle of the Hapsburgs—vultures, the eagle’s brotherly foes.
No, the world was not going under, as Chojnicki had said; you could see with your own eyes that it was very much alive. The inhabitants of this city surged across the broad Ring Street, cheerful subjects of His Apostolic Majesty, all of them members of his court retinue. The entire city was simply a gigantic outer court of his palace. Mighty in the entrance arches of the ancient palaces stood the liveried doorkeepers clutching their staffs—the gods among the footmen. Black coaches on high noble wheels with rubber tires and thin spokes drew up at the gates. The horses caressed the asphalt with solicitous hooves. Government officials with black cocked hats, gold-embroidered collars, and slender swords came from the procession, dignified and sweaty. White-clad schoolgirls, blossoms in their hair and candles in their hands, returned home, wedged between their solemn parents as if their somewhat bewildered and perhaps slightly beaten souls had become flesh. The delicate canopies of parasols vaulted over the bright hats of the bright women, who were leading their beaux along like dogs on leashes. Blue, brown, and black uniforms decorated with gold and silver moved like bizarre plants and saplings that had escaped from a southern garden and were striving back to their distant homeland. The black fire of the top hats glowed over red, zealous faces. Particolored sashes, the rainbows of the burghers, slanted across wide chests, waistcoats, and bellies. Now, along Ring Street, the bodyguardists came floating in two broad files, sporting white angelic pelerines with red lapels and white panaches and gripping shimmery halberds, and trolleys, fiacres, and even automobiles pulled over as though for familiar ghosts from history. At the corners and crossings, the obese flower women in tenfold petticoats—urban sisters of the fairies—held dark-green cans to water their radiant bouquets and tied lilies of the valley together; their old tongues wagged freely and their smiling glances blessed the loving couples who strolled past. The gold helmets of the firemen, who were marching toward the uproar, sparkled, cheerfully evoking danger and disaster. Everything was redolent of lilac and hawthorn. The hubbub of the city was not loud enough to drown out the whistling blackbirds in the gardens and the trilling larks in the air. The world lavished all these things on Lieutenant Trotta. He sat next to his mistress in the carriage, he loved her, and he was riding through what seemed like the first good day of his life.
And he really felt his life was beginning. He learned how to drink wine, just as he had drunk the 180 Proof in the borderland. He and the woman dined in that renowned restaurant whose proprietress was as dignified as an empress, her establishment as serene and pious as a temple, as elegant as a castle, and as peaceful as a cottage. Here the Excellencies ate at hereditary tables, and the waiters who served them looked almost like their peers, so that diners and waiters appeared to be spelling one another at scheduled intervals. The patrons were on a first-name basis like brothers, yet they greeted one another like princes. They knew the young and the old, the good horsemen and the bad, the gallants and the gamblers, the fops, the strivers, the favorites; the heirs to a time-blessed, proverbial, and ubiquitously honored stupidity; and also the smart ones who would gain power tomorrow. One heard only the delicate tinkles of well-bred forks and spoons and, at each table, that smiling whisper caught only by the companion and guessed all the same by the knowledgeable neighbor. A peaceful glow came from the white tablecloths, a discreet daylight poured in through the high curtained windows, the wine gurgled tenderly from the bottles, and anyone who wished to summon a waiter had only to raise his eyes. For in this well-mannered hush the twitch of an eyelid was like a call anywhere else.
Yes, thus began what he called “life” and what may have been life at that time: driving in a smooth carriage amid the dense perfumes of mellow spring, next to a woman who loved you. Each of her tender glances seemed to justify his youthful conviction that he was an outstanding man of many virtues and even a “swell officer,” in the sense that this term had inside the army. He remembered that most of his life he had been sad, shy, one could say bitter. Yet now, thinking he knew himself, he could not understand why he had been sad, shy, and bitter. The nearness of death had terrified him, but he still drew pleasure from his rueful thoughts about Katharina and Max Demant. He had, in his opinion, endured harsh things. He deserved the tender glances of a beautiful woman. Yet from time to time, he eyed her a bit anxiously. Wasn’t it just a whim for her, taking him along like a boy and giving him a few good days? That was something he could not stand for. He was, as was already established, a really swell guy, and any woman who loved him had to love him completely, honestly, and unto death, like poor Katharina. And who knew how many men this beautiful woman thought of while she believed she loved only him or pretended to? Was he jealous? Of course he was jealous! And also powerless, as he promptly realized. Jealous and with no way of remaining here or riding farther with the woman, holding on to her as long as he wished, and fathoming her and winning her. Yes, he was a poor little lieutenant with fifty crowns a month from his father, and he had debts….
“Do you men gamble in your garrison?” Frau von Taussig suddenly asked.
“The other officers do,” he said. “Captain Wagner, for instance. He loses tremendous amounts!”
“And you?”
“Not at all!” said the lieutenant. At that moment, he knew how a man could become powerful. He rebelled against his mediocre fate. He wanted a glorious destiny. Had he become a government official, he might have gotten the chance to apply some of his intellectual virtues, which he certainly possessed; he could have had a career. What was an officer in peacetime? What had the Hero of Solferino gained even in war and by his deed?
“Just don’t gamble!” said Frau von Taussig. “You don’t look like a man who’s lucky at cards.”
He was offended. He instantly wanted to prove that he was lucky—everywhere! He began hatching secret plans, for today, now, for tonight. His embraces were virtually provisional, the foretaste of a love he wanted to give tomorrow, as a man who was not only outstanding but also powerful. He wondered what time it was, looked at his watch, and was already thinking up an excuse to avoid getting away too late. Frau Vally sent him off herself.
“It’s getting late, you have to go.”
“Tomorrow morning!”
“Tomorrow morning!”
The hotel clerk gave him the name of a nearby casino. The lieutenant was greeted with bustling cordiality. Spotting a few high-ranking officers, he halted in front of them in the regulation rigidity. They casually waved, staring blankly at him as if unable to grasp that he was observing military rules, as if they had left the army long ago and were merely wearing its uniforms sloppily, and as if this innocent newcomer were stirring their very distant memory of a very distant time when they had been officers. They were now in a different, perhaps a more secret phase of their lives, and only their clothes and stars recalled their normal everyday life, which would recommence tomorrow with the dawning day.
The lieutenant counted his cash: he had one hundred fifty crowns. Imitating Captain Wagner, he put fifty crowns in his pocket, the rest in his cigarette case. For a while, he sat at one of the two roulette tables without betting—he was too unfamiliar with cards and did not dare approach them. He was very calm and astonished at his calm. He saw the
red, white, and blue piles of chips grow smaller, grow bigger, shift to and fro. But it never occurred to him that he had come here to see them all wandering in his direction. He finally decided to bet, but merely out of a sense of duty. He won. He staked half his winnings and won again. He did not check the colors or the numbers. He put his chips down anywhere, indifferently. He won. He bet all his winnings. He won a fourth time. A major beckoned to him. Trotta stood up.
The major: “This is your first time here. You’ve won a thousand crowns. You’d be better off leaving right away.”
“Yessir, Herr Major!” said Trotta and left obediently. But when he cashed in his chips, he was sorry he had obeyed. He was angry at himself for being obedient to just about anyone. Why did he let himself be sent away? And why did he not have the courage to return? He left, dissatisfied with himself and unhappy about his first winnings.
It was late and so still that one could hear the footsteps of individual pedestrians in remote streets. In the strip of sky over the narrow street, which was lined with high buildings, the stars twinkled, alien and peaceful. A dark shape turned the corner and staggered toward the lieutenant. It reeled—a drunkard, no doubt. The lieutenant recognized him immediately: it was Moser the painter, making his usual rounds, with his portfolio and slouch hat, through the nocturnal streets of the inner city. He saluted with one finger and began offering his pictures: “Girl, girls, in all kinds of positions!”
Carl Joseph halted. He felt that destiny itself had sent Moser his way. He had no inkling that for years now he could have run into the professor at the same time on any street in the inner city. He drew out the fifty crowns he had stowed away in his pocket and handed the cash to the old man. He did it as if following soundless orders, the way one carries out a command. Just like him, just like him, he thought, he is quite happy, he is quite right! He was frightened by this thought. He wondered why Moser the painter should be right; he found no reason, was even more frightened, and already felt a thirst for alcohol, the drinker’s thirst, which is a thirst of soul and body. Suddenly you see dimly like a person who’s nearsighted, you hear poorly like a person who’s hard of hearing. You have to have a drink right away, on the spot. The lieutenant turned, stopped Moser the painter, and asked, “Where can we get a drink?”