There was an all-night café not far from Wollzeile. There you could get slivovitz; unfortunately it was twenty-five percent weaker than the 180 Proof. The lieutenant and the painter sat down and drank. Gradually it dawned on Trotta that he had long since stopped being the master of his fate, long since stopped being an outstanding man with all kinds of virtues. He was actually poor and wretched and utterly rueful about his obedience to the major, who had prevented him from winning hundreds of thousands of crowns. No! He was not meant to be lucky or happy! Frau von Taussig and the major in the casino and indeed everyone: they all made fun of him. This man, Moser the painter—one could already call him a friend—was the only person who was honest, loyal, and sincere. The lieutenant should identify himself. This outstanding man was his father’s oldest friend, his only friend. Why should Carl Joseph be embarrassed about him? He had painted Grandfather!
The lieutenant took a deep breath to draw courage from the air and said, “Do you realize we met a long time ago?”
Moser the painter pulled back his head, his eyes flashed under his bushy brows, and he asked, “Long—time—ago? Personally? Of course you know me as a painter. I’m known widely as a painter. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m afraid you’re mistaken! Or”—Moser was distressed—“perhaps you’re confusing me with someone else?”
“My name is Trotta!” said the lieutenant.
Moser the painter gazed at the lieutenant with sightless, glassy eyes and held out his hand. Then a joyous shout thundered out of him. He yanked the lieutenant halfway across the table, bent toward him, and, in the middle of the table, they exchanged a lengthy brotherly kiss.
“And what is your father up to?” asked the professor. “Is he still in office? Is he governor already? I haven’t heard from him! Some time ago I ran into him here, in the park; he gave me some money, he wasn’t alone, he was with his son, that little boy—wait a moment, that was you.”
“Yes, that was me,” said the lieutenant. “It was a long time ago, it was a very, very long time ago.”
He recalled the terror he had felt at the sight of the red, clammy hand on his father’s thigh.
“I must beg your forgiveness, yes, forgiveness!” said the lieutenant. “I treated you miserably back then, I treated you miserably! Please forgive me, dear friend!”
“Yes, miserably,” Moser confirmed. “I forgive you. Not another word about it! Where do you live? I’ll see you home.”
The café was closing. Arm in arm they staggered through the silent streets. “I’m getting off here,” the painter murmured. “This is my address. Visit me tomorrow, my boy!” And he gave the lieutenant one of his overdone business cards, which he was in the habit of distributing in cafés.
Chapter 14
THE DAY ON which the lieutenant had to return to his garrison was a saddening day and also a sad day. He once more walked along the streets where the pageant had drawn by two days earlier. For a brief hour, the lieutenant thought, he had been proud of himself and his profession. But today the thought of his return strode alongside him like a guard next to a prisoner.
For once, Lieutenant Trotta was rebelling against the military laws that ruled his life. He had obeyed since earliest boyhood. And he wanted to stop obeying. He had no idea what freedom meant, but he sensed that it was as different from a furlough as a war is from maneuvers. This comparison flashed into his mind because he was a soldier—and because war is the soldier’s freedom. It struck him that the ammunition you need for freedom is money. But the cash in his pockets somewhat resembled the blank cartridges fired on maneuvers. Did he even own anything? Could he afford freedom? Had his grandfather, the Hero of Solferino, left a fortune? Would he inherit it from his father some day? Never before had he had such thoughts! Now they flew to him like a flock of exotic birds, nesting in his brain and fluttering around him nervously. Now he heard all the confusing calls of the great world. He had learned yesterday that this year Chojnicki would be leaving his homeland earlier than usual, heading south with his lady friend this very week. And Trotta got to know envy, envy of his friend, and he felt doubly ashamed.
He was going to the northeastern border. But the woman and the friend were going south. And the “south,” hitherto a geographic term, now shone in all the bewitching colors of an unknown paradise. The south lay in a foreign country! And lo: there were foreign countries that were not subject to Kaiser Franz Joseph I, countries with their own armies, with many thousands of lieutenants in small and large garrisons. In those other lands, the name of the Hero of Solferino meant nothing. They too had monarchs. And these monarchs had their own rescuers. Following such trains of thought was highly confusing; for a lieutenant in the monarchy it was as confusing as when people like us imagine that the world is only one heavenly body among millions upon millions, that there are countless suns in the Milky Way, each one with its own planets, and that you yourself are a very worthless individual—if not, to put it quite grossly, a pile of crap.
The lieutenant still had seven hundred crowns left over from his winnings. He had not dared visit another casino. Not only did he fear that unknown major, who may have been sent by city headquarters to keep an eye on young officers; he was also afraid of remembering his woeful flight. Ahh! He knew he would promptly leave any casino another hundred times, at any superior’s beck and call. And like a sick child he lost himself with a certain relish in the painful realization that he was powerless to force his luck. He felt extraordinarily sorry for himself, and at this moment it did him good to feel sorry for himself. He had a few drinks and instantly felt at home in his powerlessness. And like someone entering a prison or a monastery, the lieutenant felt that the money he had on him was oppressive and superfluous. He decided to spend it all at once.
Stepping into the boutique where his father had gotten the silver cigarette case, he bought a string of pearls for his girlfriend. With flowers in his hand, the necklace in his trouser pocket, and a woebegone face, he appeared before Frau von Taussig. “I’ve brought you something,” he confessed, as if to say, I’ve stolen something for you!
He felt he was illegitimately playing a strange role—that of a man of the world. And the moment he held his present, it occurred to him that he was ridiculously overdoing it, that it degraded him and perhaps offended the rich woman.
“Please excuse me!” he said. “I wanted to buy you a little something, but …” And he was tongue-tied. And he turned crimson. And he lowered his eyes.
Ah! Lieutenant Trotta did not understand women who see old age approaching. He did not know that she welcomed every present like a magic gift to make her younger, and that her intelligent and yearning eyes had a very different standard for assessing things! Frau von Taussig loved his helplessness, and the more evident his youth, the younger she herself became. And so, wise and impetuous, she threw her arms around him, kissed him like a child of her own, wept because she was about to lose him, laughed because she still held him, and also a little because the pearls were beautiful, and she said, through an intense and splendid flood of tears, “You’re sweet, very sweet, my boy!” She promptly regretted those words, especially “My boy.” For they made her older than she actually was at that instant. Luckily she noticed right away that he was as proud as if he had been decorated by the Supreme Commander in Chief himself. He’s too young, she thought, to know how old I am!
But to wipe out, root out her real age, scuttle it in the sea of her passion, she grabbed the shoulders of the young man whose warm, tender bones were confusing her hands and drew him to the sofa. She pounced on him with her stupendous yearning to be young. Passion erupted from her in violent sweeps of flame, chaining the lieutenant and subjugating him. Her eyes, blissful and grateful, blinked at the young man’s face above her face. Looking at him made her young again. And her lust to remain eternally young was as great as her lust to love. For a while she thought she could never let go of this lieutenant. But then a moment later she said, “Too bad you’re leaving today.”
<
br /> “Won’t I ever see you again?” he asked, reverent, a young lover.
“Wait for me, I’ll be back!” And: “Don’t cheat on me!” she quickly added, with an aging woman’s dread of infidelity and another woman’s youth.
“You’re the only one I love!” answered the honest voice of a young man to whom nothing seems as important as fidelity.
That was how they said goodbye.
Lieutenant Trotta went to the train, arrived too early, and had to wait a long time. But he felt he was already traveling. Every additional minute spent in the city would have been painful, perhaps even humiliating. He struggled against his obsession by pretending to leave a bit earlier than he had to. At last he could get into the train. He fell into a happy, mostly unbroken sleep and only woke up right before the border.
His orderly, Onufrij, who was waiting for him, reported that the town was in ferment. The bristle workers were demonstrating, and the garrison was on alert.
Now it hit Lieutenant Trotta why Chojnicki had left the area so early. So he was going “south” with Frau von Taussig! And Trotta was a helpless prisoner who could not immediately turn around, hop the train, and go back!
Today no cabs were waiting at the station. So Trotta went on foot. Onufrij walked behind him, clutching the lieutenant’s bag. The small shops of the little town were shut. Iron poles barricaded the wooden doors and shutters of the low houses. Constables patrolled with fixed bayonets. No sound was heard apart from the familiar croaking of the frogs in the swamps. The dust produced indefatigably by this sandy earth had been lavishly poured by the wind over roofs, walls, picket fences, wooden pavements, and scattered willow trees. Centuries of dust seemed to be coating this forgotten world. No inhabitant could be seen in the streets—as if they had all been struck dead behind their bolted doors and windows. Double sentries were posted outside the barracks. All the officers had moved here since yesterday, and Brodnitzer’s hotel stood empty.
Lieutenant Trotta reported to Major Zoglauer. From his superior he learned that the trip had done him good. By the lights of this man, who had been serving at the border for over a decade, a trip could not help doing good. And as if it were a perfectly routine matter, the major told the lieutenant that a platoon of riflemen would march out at dawn, station themselves on the highway opposite the bristle factory, and, if necessary, take armed action against “seditious disturbances” by the striking workers. This platoon was to be commanded by Lieutenant Trotta. It was a minor affair, said the major, and there was reason to assume that the constabulary was strong enough to keep the strikers duly respectful; we only had to maintain cool heads and not move prematurely; in the end, however, the civil authorities would have to decide whether or not the riflemen had to proceed; this was certainly not very pleasant for an officer, for how could they be bossed around by a district commissioner? But ultimately this delicate task was a kind of distinction for the youngest lieutenant in the battalion; and besides, the other officers hadn’t had any furlough, and the simplest rule of solidarity would demand… and so on and so forth.
“Yessir, Herr Major!” said the lieutenant and left.
One could not fault Major Zoglauer for anything. He had practically asked the grandson of the Hero of Solferino instead of ordering him. And after all, the grandson of the Hero of Solferino had had an unexpected and marvelous furlough. Now he cut across the grounds to the officers’ mess. Fate had prepared this political demonstration for him. That was why he had wound up at the border. He was certain now that a scheming, treacherous fate had granted him his furlough in order to destroy him upon his return.
The others sat in the officers’ mess and greeted him with an exaggerated jubilation that sprang more from their curiosity to find out something than from any deep feelings at having him back. And they also asked, in unison, how “it” had been. But Captain Wagner said, “When everything’s done tomorrow, he can tell us!” And they all hushed.
“What if I’m killed tomorrow?” Lieutenant Trotta said to Captain Wagner.
“Goddammit!” replied the captain. “A disgusting death. The whole thing’s disgusting! But they’re poor devils. And maybe they’re right after all.”
It had not yet occurred to the lieutenant that the workers were poor wretches who could be right. Now the captain’s remark struck Trotta as excellent, and he no longer doubted that they were poor devils. So he drank two 180 Proofs and said, “Then I simply won’t order the men to shoot! Or to advance with fixed bayonets! The constabulary should fend for itself.”
“You’ll do what you have to, you know you will.”
No! Carl Joseph did not know it at this moment. He drank. And he very quickly got into a state in which he felt capable of just about anything: insubordination, resigning from the army, winning a fortune. No more corpses should lie on his path. “Leave the army!” Dr. Max Demant had said. The lieutenant had been a weakling long enough. Instead of leaving the army, he had gotten himself transferred to the border. Now everything was to have an end. He would not be degraded tomorrow to a kind of high-level policeman. The day after, he might have to walk a beat and give tourists directions! Ridiculous, playing the soldier in peacetime! There will never be a war! They’ll rot in the officers’ mess! But as for him, Lieutenant Trotta, who knows? By next week at this time he might be sitting in the south!
He said all this to Captain Wagner in a loud, eager voice. A few comrades surrounded him, listening. Several were certainly in no mood for war. Most of them would have been content with anything so long as they got somewhat higher pay, somewhat more comfortable garrisons, and somewhat faster promotions. Several found Lieutenant Trotta strange and also a bit unsettling. He enjoyed special protection. He had just returned from a wonderful trip. What? And he didn’t feel like marching out tomorrow?
Lieutenant Trotta sensed a hostile stillness around him. For the first time since joining the army, he decided to provoke his fellow officers. And knowing what was bound to offend them the most, he said, “Maybe I’ll apply to staff school!”
Sure, why not? the officers said. He had come from the cavalry, why not go to staff school? He would certainly pass the exams and even make general without seniority, at an age when their kind were just making captain and putting on their first spurs. So it couldn’t hurt him to march off to the huggermugger tomorrow!
The next day he had to march off at the crack of dawn. For it was the army that regulated the sequence of the hours. It grabbed time and put it wherever the military found appropriate. Even though the “seditious disturbances” were not expected until noon, Lieutenant Trotta marched out by eight hundred hours, along the wide dusty highway. Behind the neat, systematic rifle stacks, which looked both peaceful and dangerous, the soldiers lay, stood, and wandered. The larks blared, the crickets chirped, the mosquitoes hummed. In the remote fields, they could see the colorful, radiant kerchiefs of the peasant women. They were singing. And sometimes the soldiers who were natives of this area responded with the same songs. They would have known what to do in those fields, but they did not understand what they were waiting for here. Had the war begun already? Were they going to the this afternoon?
There was a small village tavern nearby. And that was where Lieutenant Trotta went to drink a 180 Proof. The low taproom was crowded. The lieutenant realized that these were the workers who were supposed to assemble outside the factory at noon. They all fell silent when he entered, jingling and fearsomely girded. He halted at the counter. Slowly, all too slowly, the tavern keeper fiddled around with bottle and glasses. Behind Trotta’s back the hush towered, a massif of silence. He drained his glass at one gulp. He sensed that they were all waiting for him to leave. He would have liked to tell them that it wasn’t his fault. But he was incapable of speaking to them or leaving immediately. He did not want to appear timorous, so he had several more drinks in a row. The men were still hushed. Perhaps they were making signs behind his back. He did not turn around. At last he left the tavern, squeezing past th
e hard rock of silence, and hundreds of gazes bristled on the back of his neck like dark lances.
Upon reaching his platoon again, he felt he should order the men to fall in even though it was only ten hundred hours. He was bored, and he had also learned that troops are demoralized by boredom, while rifle drills boost their morale. In a flash his platoon stood before him in the regulation two lines, and suddenly, and no doubt for the first time in his soldierly life, it seemed to him as if the precise limbs of the men were dead components of dead machines that produced nothing. The entire platoon stood motionless, all the men with bated breath. But after feeling that dark, weighty hush on his back at the tavern, Lieutenant Trotta suddenly realized that there are two kinds of silence. And perhaps, he thought further, there are several kinds of silence just as there are several kinds of noises? No one had ordered the workers to fall in when he had entered the tavern. Nevertheless they had hushed all at once. And their silence had poured out a dark, dumb hatred, the way pregnant and infinitely silent clouds sometimes pour out the mute electric sultriness of an unspent thunderstorm.
Lieutenant Trotta listened. But from the dead silence of his motionless platoon nothing came pouring. One stony face waited next to another. Most of them vaguely resembled his orderly, Onufrij. They had broad mouths, and heavy lips that could barely close, and blank, bright, narrow eyes. And as he stood there in front of his platoon, poor Lieutenant Trotta, overarched by the blue radiance of the early-summer day, surrounded by blaring larks, chirping crickets, and humming mosquitoes, and yet believing he could hear the dead hush of his soldiers more strongly than all the voices of the day, was overwhelmed by the certainty that he did not belong here. But then where did he belong? he wondered, while the platoon awaited his further orders. Where do I belong? Not among the men in the tavern. In Sipolje, perhaps? Among the fathers of my father? Does the plow belong in my hand and not the sword? And the lieutenant kept his platoon at rigid attention.