Trotta managed to hold back his tears and ask in a sharp voice, “What are you doing here?”
Kapturak, cap in hand, stood right by the door; he barely loomed above the knob. His yellowish-gray face was smiling. He was dressed in gray. He wore gray canvas shoes. Their edges were coated with the gray, fresh, shiny springtime mire of this land. A few small gray locks curled distinctly on his tiny skull. “Good evening!” he said with a slight bow. At the same time, his shadow flitted up the white door and instantly crumpled again.
“Where’s my orderly?” asked Trotta. “And what do you want?”
“You haven’t gone to Vienna this time,” Kapturak began.
“I never go to Vienna,” said Trotta.
“You don’t need money this week,” said Kapturak. “I was expecting you today. I wanted to inquire about you. I’ve just left Captain Jedlicek’s room. He’s not at home!”
“He’s not at home,” Trotta repeated apathetically.
“Right,” said Kapturak. “He’s not at home. Something’s happened to him!”
Trotta did hear him say that something had happened to Captain Jedlicek. But he inquired no further. For one thing he wasn’t curious. (He wasn’t curious today.) Second, he felt that so terribly much had happened to him, too much, so he wasn’t at all concerned about anyone else. Third, he had absolutely no interest in listening to anything Kapturak had to say. He was furious that Kapturak was here, but he didn’t have the strength to do anything about the little man. A very vague memory of the six thousand crowns he owed his visitor kept resurfacing in him. An embarrassing memory; he wanted to suppress it. The money, he mentally tried to persuade himself, had nothing to do with his visit. They are two different persons: the one I owe money to is not here; the other, standing in this room, only wants to tell me something unimportant about Jedlicek. He stared at Kapturak. For a few seconds, his guest seemed to be melting and then piecing himself together out of gray, hazy splotches. The lieutenant waited until Kapturak was completely restored. It cost Trotta some effort to make quick use of that moment, for there was some danger that the small gray man might instantly melt and dissolve again. Kapturak came one step closer, as if aware that he was not distinctly visible to the lieutenant, and repeated somewhat louder, “Something has happened to the captain!”
“Well, just what has happened to him?” asked Trotta dreamily, as if asleep.
Kapturak took another step toward the table and whispered, cupping his hands over his mouth so that his whisper turned into a rustle, “He’s been arrested and shipped off. On suspicion of espionage.”
Upon hearing that word, the lieutenant rose. He now stood, propping both hands on the table. He barely sensed his legs. He felt he was standing on his hands. He almost buried them in the table. “I don’t wish to hear anything about it from you,” he said. “Get out!”
“Alas, impossible, impossible!” said Kapturak. He now stood close to the table, next to Trotta. Lowering his head as if confessing something shameful, he said, “I must insist on a partial repayment.”
“Tomorrow!” said Trotta.
“Tomorrow!” repeated Kapturak. “Tomorrow may be impossible. You can see what surprises each day may bring. I’ve lost a fortune with the captain. Who knows whether we’ll ever see him again? And you’re his friend!”
“What did you say?” asked Trotta. He raised his hands from the table and suddenly stood firmly on his feet. It dawned on him that Kapturak had said something monstrous yet true, and it sounded monstrous only because he was telling the truth. At the same time, the lieutenant recalled the only moment in his life when he had been dangerous to other people. He wished he were as well armed now as then, with sword and pistol, and backed up by his platoon. This small gray man was a lot more dangerous than the hundreds of strikers had been. And to make up for his defenselessness, the lieutenant tried to fill his heart with an alien rage. He clenched his fists. He had never done this before, and he sensed that he could not be menacing, that he could at most only play a menacing person. A blue vein swelled on his forehead, his faced reddened, the blood rose to his eyes, and he glared. He succeeded in looking dangerous. Kapturak flinched.
“What did you say?” Trotta repeated.
“Nothing,” said Kapturak.
“Repeat what you said!” Trotta commanded.
“Nothing,” Kapturak replied.
For an instant he again dissolved into gray, hazy splotches. The lieutenant was overcome with a tremendous fear that the little man had the ghostly ability to crumble into bits and then piece himself back into a whole. The lieutenant was filled with an irresistible yearning to experience Kapturak’s substance—a yearning similar to the indomitable passion of a scientist. In back of him, on the bedpost, hung the saber, his weapon, the defender of his military and private honor and oddly enough, at this moment, a magical instrument capable of exposing the law of governing sinister phantoms. He felt the glittering saber behind him and a magnetic force emanating from it. And virtually pulled by that force he jumped back, his eyes fixed on the endlessly disintegrating and reconstituting Kapturak. The lieutenant’s left hand grabbed the scabbard, his right hand whipped out the blade. Kapturak jumped toward the door, and his cap slipped from his hands and landed at his gray canvas shoes; Trotta followed him, waving his saber. And without knowing what he was doing, the lieutenant held the point of his blade against the chest of the gray phantom, felt the resistance of cloth and body through the full length of steel, sighed in relief because he finally had proof that Kapturak was human—and yet the lieutenant was unable to drop the blade.
It was only for an instant. But in that instant Lieutenant Trotta heard, saw, and smelled everything that was alive in the world: the voices of the night, the stars in the sky, the light of the lamp, the objects in the room, his own shape—as if he were standing in front of it rather than carrying it—the dance of the mosquitoes around the light, the damp haze of the swamps, and the cool breath of the nocturnal wind. All at once Kapturak spread out his arms. His small thin hands dug into the right and the left doorpost. His bald head with its few gray curls sank to his shoulder. At the same time, he put one foot in front of the other, twisting his ludicrous gray shoes into a knot. And in back of him, on the white door, before Lieutenant Trotta’s bulging eyes, there suddenly loomed the black, reeling shadow of a cross.
Trotta’s hands trembled and he dropped the blade. It landed with a soft, jingly whimper. That same moment, Kapturak’s arms sank. His head slid from his shoulder and slumped forward on his chest. His eyes were shut. His lips trembled. His whole body trembled. There was silence. They could hear the fluttering of the mosquitoes around the lamplight and, through the open window, the frogs, the crickets, and, intermittently, the nearby barking of a dog.
Lieutenant Trotta staggered. He turned around. “Sit down!” he said and pointed to the only chair in the room.
“Yes,” said Kapturak, “I’ll sit down.”
As he stepped briskly toward the chair, briskly, as if—so it seemed to Trotta—nothing had happened, Kapturak’s toes grazed the saber on the floor. He bent over and picked it up. As if assigned to make order in the room, he walked oh, holding the naked steel between two fingers of a lifted hand, to the table where the scabbard lay. Without glancing at the lieutenant, Kapturak slipped in the saber and hung it back on the bedpost. Then he circled the table and sat down opposite Trotta, who remained standing. Only then did Kapturak look at him.
“I’m just staying for a moment,” he said, “to recover.”
The lieutenant held his tongue.
“Please have the entire sum for me a week from today, at this exact time,” Kapturak went on. “I don’t wish to haggle with you. It amounts to seven thousand two hundred fifty crowns in all. I must also inform you that Herr Brodnitzer is standing outside the door and has heard everything. This year, as you know, Count Chojnicki is returning later than normal, perhaps not at all. I would like to leave, Herr Lieutenant!”
He rose, walked to the door, bent down, picked up his cap, and took a last look around. The door shut behind him.
The lieutenant was now completely sober. Nevertheless, it all seemed like a dream. He opened the door. Onufrij sat on a chair as usual, even though it must have been very late. Trotta glanced at his watch. It was nine-thirty.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” he asked.
“Because of visit!” replied Onufrij.
“Did you hear everything?”
“Everything!” said Onufrij.
“Was Brodnitzer here?”
“Yessir!” Onufrij confirmed.
There was no doubt about it, everything had happened just as Lieutenant Trotta had experienced it. So he had to report the whole matter the next morning. His fellow officers had not yet returned. He went from door to door; the rooms were empty. They must have been in the officers’ mess, discussing Captain Jedlicek’s case, the dreadful case of Captain Jedlicek. He would be court-martialed, dishonorably discharged, and shot.
Trotta buckled on his saber, grabbed his cap, and went downstairs. He had to wait for his comrades there. He marched to and fro outside the hotel. More important than the scene he had just gone through with Kapturak was, strangely enough, the Jedlicek affair. He believed he could detect the insidious machinations of some dark power; he felt it was an uncanny coincidence that Frau von Taussig had gone off to see her husband today of all days, and gradually the lieutenant saw all the somber events of his life fitting together in a somber mosaic as if manipulated by some powerful, hateful, invisible wire puller who was intent on destroying him. It was obvious—it was, as they say, clear as the nose on his face—that Lieutenant Trotta, the grandson of the Hero of Solferino, in part caused the doom of others and in part was drawn along by the doomed, and that in any case he was one of those ill-fated persons on whom an evil power had cast an evil eye.
He walked up and down the silent street, his footsteps echoing from the other side, from the illuminated and curtained windows of the café where music was playing, cards were pattering on tables, and a new entertainer, not the old Nightingale, was singing and dancing—the old songs and the old dances. Today none of the officers could be sitting there. In any case, he did not wish to check. For Captain Jedlicek’s disgrace lay on Trotta even though he had long hated his service in the army. The captain’s disgrace weighed on the entire battalion. Lieutenant Trotta’s military upbringing was so thorough that he couldn’t understand how after the news of the Jedlicek case the officers in this garrison dared to go out on the street in uniform. Yes, that Jedlicek! He was big, strong, and cheerful, a good comrade, and he needed lots and lots of money. He took everything on his broad shoulders. Zoglauer loved him, the troops loved him. To all of them he had seemed more powerful than the swamp and the border. And he had been a spy!
Music tinkled from the café, tangled voices resounded and cups clattered, and all the sounds kept melting into the nocturnal chorus of the tireless frogs. Spring was here! But Chojnicki wouldn’t be coming. The only man whose money could have helped him! Trotta’s debt had long since grown beyond six thousand, it was now seven thousand two hundred fifty! Payment was due next week at exactly this time. If he didn’t pay, some sort of link would be fabricated between him and Captain Jedlicek. He had been Jedlicek’s friend! But then everyone had been his friend. Nevertheless, anything was possible for this ill-fated Lieutenant Trotta! Destiny, his destiny! Just two weeks ago at this time he had been a free and cheerful man in civvies. At this very time he had met Moser the painter and had had a drink with him! And today he envied Professor Moser.
He heard familiar steps from around the corner. The other officers were coming home. All who lived at the Hotel Brodnitzer were coming, they walked along, a mute pack. He headed toward them.
“Oh, you haven’t left!” said Winter. “So you know! Awful! Horrible!”
They walked upstairs in single file, wordless, each striving to be as quiet as possible. They almost crept up the steps.
“Everybody to room nine!” First Lieutenant Hruba ordered. Number nine was his, the largest in the hotel. Heads drooping, they all entered Hruba’s room.
“We have to do something,” Hruba began. “You saw Zoglauer. He’s at his wits’ end! He’s going to shoot himself! We have to do something!”
“Nonsense, Herr First Lieutenant,” said Lieutenant Lippowitz. He had been late in joining the army, only after two semesters of law. He never managed to slough off the “civilian,” and people showed him the somewhat timid and somewhat mocking respect paid to reserve officers. “There’s nothing we can do here,” said Lippowitz. “Keep quiet and keep serving! This isn’t the first case. Nor will it, unfortunately, be the last in the army!”
No one responded. They realized that nothing could be done. And yet each of them had hoped that by gathering in a room they could hit on all sorts of solutions. But now it suddenly dawned on them that terror alone had driven them together because each man dreaded remaining alone with his terror inside his own four walls. However, they also realized that it did them no good to herd together and that every single one of them, although among comrades, was nevertheless alone with his terror. Their heads rose and they exchanged glances and their heads drooped again. They had already sat together like that once before, after Captain Wagner’s suicide. Each of them thought of Captain Jedlicek’s predecessor, Captain Wagner; each of them now wished that Jedlicek too had shot himself. And each of them now had a suspicion that their dead comrade Wagner may have likewise shot himself only to avoid arrest.
“I’ll go to him, I’ll force my way in,” said Lieutenant Habermann, “and I’ll shoot him down.”
“First of all, you won’t be able to force your way in,” retorted Lippowitz. “Secondly, they’re already making sure that he’ll kill himself. As soon as they’ve gotten everything out of him, they’ll hand him a pistol and lock him up.”
“Yeah, right, that’s it!” cried several. They sighed in relief. They began hoping that the captain had already killed himself. And they felt as if all of them, by dint of their own intelligence, had only just introduced this sensible practice of military justice.
“I came within inches of killing someone tonight,” said Lieutenant Trotta.
“Who? How? Why?” they asked chaotically.
“It was Kapturak—you all know him,” Trotta began. He spoke slowly, cast about for words, turned crimson, and when he was done found it impossible to explain why he hadn’t thrust in his saber. He sensed they weren’t following him. No, they didn’t understand him.
“I would have killed him!” shouted one man.
“Me too,” another joined in.
“Me too,” said a third.
“It’s not so easy,” Lippowitz threw in.
“That bloodsucker, that Jew!” someone said—and they all froze upon remembering that Lippowitz’s father was Jewish.
Trotta resumed. “Yes, I suddenly”—and he was extremely surprised that he spontaneously thought of the dead Max Demant and the doctor’s grandfather, the white-bearded king of the innkeepers—“I suddenly saw a cross behind him!”
Someone laughed. Another said coldly, “You were drunk!”
“That’s it!” Hruba finally ordered. “We’ll report all this to Zoglauer tomorrow.”
Trotta peered at each face in turn: limp, weary, agitated faces, yet provocatively cheerful in their weariness and agitation. If only Demant were alive now, Trotta thought. I could talk to him, to the grandson of the white-bearded king of the innkeepers! The lieutenant tried to steal out unnoticed. He went to his room.
The next morning he reported the incident. He narrated it in the army lingo in which he had reported and recounted since boyhood, the jargon that was his mother tongue. But he felt that he hadn’t told everything, not even the gist, and that his experience and the report he was giving were separated by a vast, enigmatic gulf, virtually a whole strange country. Nor did he forget to tell about the shadow of the
cross he believed he had seen.
And smiling just as Trotta had expected, the major asked, “How much did you have to drink?”
“Half a bottle,” said Trotta.
“Well, there you are!” Zoglauer remarked.
He had smiled only for an instant, that harried Major Zoglauer. This was a serious issue. The serious issues were piling up, alas. An embarrassing matter—in any case, it had to be reported to a higher authority. But it could wait.
“Do you have the cash?” asked the major.
“No,” said the lieutenant.
And they looked at each other helplessly, with blank, gaping eyes, the poor eyes of men who dared not even admit to themselves that they were helpless. Not everything was covered by army regulations. You could leaf through the rule books from front to back and then from back to front; not everything was covered! Had the lieutenant done the right thing? Had he reached for his saber prematurely? Had that man done the right thing—loaning a fortune and demanding it back? And if the major were to call all his officers together and confer with them, who could come up with a way out? Who could be wiser than the commander of the battalion? And just what was wrong with this ill-fated lieutenant? It had already cost some effort to hush up that strike business. Disaster after disaster was piling up on Major Zoglauer’s head, disaster over Trotta, disaster over this battalion. He would have gladly wrung his hands, that Major Zoglauer, if only it had been possible to wring one’s hands in the army. And if all the officers in the battalion were to chip in, they couldn’t possibly raise the whole sum for Lieutenant Trotta! And the matter would only get more complicated if the loan were not repaid.