Herr von Senny, more Magyar by blood than Herr von Nagy, was filled with sudden dread that someone of a Jewish background might outdo him in Hungarian nationalism; rising to his feet, he said, “If the Herr heir to the throne has been assassinated, well, first of all, we know nothing for certain, and secondly, it doesn’t concern us in the least!”
“It does concern us to some extent,” said Count Benkyö, “but he hasn’t been assassinated at all. It’s just a rumor!”
Outside the rain gushed on steadily. The bluish white flashes grew rarer and rarer; the thunder moved away.
First Lieutenant Kinsky, who had grown up on the banks of the Moldau, claimed that in any case the heir to the throne had been a highly precarious choice for the monarchy—assuming one could even use the word “been.” He himself, the first lieutenant, agreed with the men who had spoken before him: the news of the assassination of the heir to the throne had to be treated as a false rumor. They were so far away from the scene of the alleged crime that there was no way they could verify anything. And in any case they wouldn’t find out the whole truth until long after the party.
Count Battyanyi, who was drunk, hereupon began speaking Hungarian to his compatriots. The others didn’t understand a word. They remained silent, glancing at each speaker in turn and waiting, a bit stunned all the same. But the Hungarians seemed determined to go merrily along for the rest of the evening; perhaps it was a national custom. While the non-Hungarians were far from grasping even a syllable, they could tell by the faces of the Magyars that they were gradually starting to forget that anyone else was present. Sometimes they laughed in unison. The others were offended, not so much because laughter seemed inappropriate at this moment as because they couldn’t ascertain its cause.
Jelacich, a Slovene, hit the ceiling. He hated the Hungarians as much as he despised the Serbs. He loved the monarchy. He was a patriot. And there he stood, love of Fatherland in his helplessly outspread hands, like a flag you have to plant somewhere but can’t find a roof for. A number of his fellow Slovenes and his cousins, the Croats, lived directly under Hungarian rule. The whole of Hungary separated Rittmaster Jelacich from Austria and from Vienna and from Kaiser Franz Joseph. The heir to the throne had been killed in Sarajevo, practically Jelacich’s homeland, and perhaps by a Slovene, such as the rittmaster himself was. If the rittmaster now began defending the victim against blasphemy from the Hungarians (he was the only non-Hungarian here to understand their language), they could retort that the assassins were his compatriots. And he did feel a wee bit guilty. He didn’t know why. For some hundred and fifty years his family had been serving the Hapsburgs with sincerity and devotion. But both his teenage sons were already talking about independence for all southern Slavs, and they had pamphlets that they concealed from him—pamphlets that might come from a hostile Belgrade. Yet he loved his sons! Every afternoon at thirteen hundred hours, when his regiment passed the high school, his sons dashed over to him, fluttering out of the huge brown door of the school, their hair tousled, laughter pouring from their open mouths, and paternal tenderness compelled him to dismount and hug his children. He shut his eyes when he saw them reading suspicious newspapers, and he closed his ears when he heard them making suspicious remarks. He was intelligent and he knew that he stood powerless between his forebears and his offspring, who were destined to become the ancestors of a brand-new race. They had his features, his hair color, and his eyes, but their hearts beat to a new rhythm, their heads gave birth to strange thoughts, their throats sang new and strange songs that he had never heard. And though he was only forty, the rittmaster felt like an old man, and his sons seemed liked incomprehensible great-grandchildren.
None of that matters, he thought now, and he went over to the table and slapped it with his flat hand. “Gentlemen,” he said, “may we request that you continue the conversation in German.”
Benkyö, who was speaking, broke off and replied, “I will say it in German. We are in agreement, my countrymen and I: we can be glad the bastard is gone!”
Everyone leaped up. Chojnicki and the cheery district commissioner left the room. The guests remained alone. They had been informed that no witness would be tolerated during internal army quarrels. Lieutenant Trotta stood by the door. He had drunk a lot. His face was ashen, his limbs were slack, his palate was dry, his heart hollow. He felt intoxicated, but to his amazement he missed the familiar beneficent fog in front of his eyes. Instead he appeared to see everything more distinctly, as if through clear, shiny ice. Although he had never seen these faces before, he felt he had known them a long time. Indeed, this whole occasion seemed utterly familiar, the realization of something he had often dreamed of. The Fatherland of the Trottas was splintering and crumbling.
At home, in the Moravian district seat of W, Austria might still exist. Every Sunday Herr Nechwal’s band played “The Radetzky March.” Austria existed once a week, on Sundays. The Kaiser, that forgetful old man with the white beard and the drop gleaming on his nose, and old Herr von Trotta were Austrians. Old Jacques was dead. The Hero of Solferino was dead. Regimental Physician Dr. Demant was dead. “Leave the army!” he had said. I’m going to leave the army, the lieutenant thought. My grandfather left it too. I’m gonna tell them, he thought. He felt compelled to do something, just as he had felt years ago in Frau Resi’s establishment. Was there no painting to rescue here? He felt his grandfather’s dark gaze on the back of his neck. He took a step toward the center of the room. He didn’t quite know what he wanted to say. A few of the men looked at him.
“I know,” he began and still knew nothing. “I know,” he repeated, taking another step forward, “that His Imperial-Royal Highness, the Archduke and Heir Apparent, has really been assassinated.”
He fell silent. He pressed his lips together. They formed a thin pale-pink strip. A clear, almost white light gleamed in his small dark eyes. His black, tangled hair overshadowed his low forehead, darkening the cleft between the eyebrows, the cavern of anger, the Trotta legacy. He kept his head down. His clenched fists hung on his slack arms. They all stared at his hands. Had they been acquainted with the portrait of the Hero of Solferino, they would have believed that old Trotta had returned from the grave.
“My grandfather,” the lieutenant resumed, still feeling the old man’s gaze on the back of his neck, “my grandfather saved the Kaiser’s life. And I, his grandson, will not allow anyone to insult the House of our Supreme Commander in Chief. These gentlemen are behaving scandalously.” He raised his voice. “Scandal!” he shouted. This was the first time he had ever heard himself shout. Unlike his fellow officers, he never shouted at his men. “Scandal!” he repeated. The echo of his voice reverberated in his ears. The drunken Count Benkyö took a staggering step toward the lieutenant.
“Scandal!” the lieutenant repeated once again.
“Scandal!” Rittmaster Jelacich echoed.
“If anyone else says another word against the dead man,” the lieutenant went on, “I’ll shoot him down!” He reached into his pocket. Since the drunken Count Benkyö was starting to murmur something, Trotta shouted “Silence!” in a voice that sounded borrowed, a thundering voice—perhaps it was the voice of the Hero of Solferino. He felt as one with his grandfather. He himself was the Hero of Solferino. That was his own portrait blurring under the ceiling of his father’s den.
Colonel Festetics and Major Zoglauer stood up. For the first time in the history of the Austrian army a lieutenant was ordering rittmasters, majors, and colonels to shut up. No one now believed that the assassination of the heir to the throne was merely a rumor. They could see him lying in a steaming pool of red blood. They feared they would see blood here too, in this room, any second now. “Order him to keep quiet,” Colonel Festetics whispered.
“Herr Lieutenant,” said Zoglauer, “leave us!”
Trotta turned toward the door. At that instant, it burst open. Countless guests poured in, with confetti and streamers clinging to their heads and shoulders. The door sta
yed open. They heard the women laughing in the other rooms and the music and the shuffling of the dancers.
Someone yelled, “The heir to the throne has been assassinated!”
“The Funeral March!” shouted Benkyö.
“The Funeral March!” several voices repeated.
They poured out the door. In the two huge rooms where the guests had been dancing, both military bands, led by their bright-red, smiling bandmasters, played Chopin’s Funeral March. All around, a few guests were circling, circling to the beat of the music. Gaudy streamers and confetti stars clung to their hair and shoulders. Men in uniform or in mufti escorted ladies. Their feet unsteadily obeyed the macabre and stumbling rhythm. For the bands were playing without scores, not conducted but accompanied by the slow loops that the black batons traced in the air. Sometimes one band lagged behind the other and then tried to catch up with the hastier one by skipping a few measures.
The guests walked in a circle around the empty, mirrorlike parquet floor. They circled round and round, each person a mourner behind the corpse of the one in front of him, and, at the center of the room, the invisible corpses of the heir apparent and the monarchy. Everyone was drunk. And if someone hadn’t drunk enough, his head spun anyway from the indefatigable circling.
Gradually the bands accelerated the beat, and the legs of the walkers began to march. The drummers drummed incessantly, and the heavy sticks began pelting the bass drum like lively young drumsticks. The intoxicated drummer struck a silver triangle, and Count Benkyö pranced for joy. “The bastard’s gone!” the count yelled in Hungarian. But everyone understood him as if he had spoken German. Suddenly a few guests began to hop; the bands boomed out the Funeral March faster and faster. In between, the triangle smiled, sharp, silvery, and drunk.
Eventually Chojnicki’s footmen began clearing away the instruments. The smiling musicians put up with it. The violinists stared googly-eyed after their violins, the cellists after their cellos, the horn players after their horns. A couple of string players were still sliding their bows over the deaf-and-dumb cloth of their sleeves, with their heads swaying to the strains of inaudible melodies that were simmering in their drunken minds. When the drummer’s percussions were hauled away, he kept brandishing his sticks in the air. Eventually, the bandleaders, having drunk the most, were dragged away like the instruments, each by two footmen. The guests laughed. Then the rooms grew still. No one uttered a sound. They all remained wherever they stood or sat and did not budge. After the instruments the bottles were cleared away, and any half-full glass remaining in anyone’s hand was removed.
Lieutenant Trotta left the house. On the steps leading to the entrance sat Colonel Festetics, Major Zoglauer, and Rittmaster Zschoch. The rain had stopped. Every now and then drops fell from the thinning clouds and from the eaves. Huge white sheets had been draped over the stones for the three men to sit on. They looked as if they were sitting on their own shrouds. Large jagged splotches of rain gaped from their dark-blue backs. The wet tatters of a streamer now clung permanently around the rittmaster’s neck.
The lieutenant halted before them. They didn’t stir. Their heads stayed down. They recalled a group of military dummies in a waxworks.
“Herr Major,” said Trotta to Zoglauer, “tomorrow I’m going to apply for my discharge from the army!”
Zoglauer stood up. He held out his hand, tried to speak, but was tongue-tied. The sky was gradually turning light. A gentle breeze tore the clouds apart; the faces could be seen distinctly in the shimmering silver of the brief night, which already contained an inkling of morning. Everything was astir in the major’s haggard face. The tiny creases shifted into one another, the skin twitched, the jaw wandered to and fro, it seemed to be almost swinging, a few tiny muscles rippled around the cheekbones, the eyelids fluttered, and the cheeks quivered. Everything was astir because of the turmoil unleashed by the confused words, unspoken and unspeakable, inside the mouth. A hint of madness flickered across this face. Zoglauer squeezed Trotta’s hand for a few seconds—eternities. Festetics and Zschoch were still squatting motionless on the steps. They could smell the strong scent of elder. They heard the gentle dripping of the rain and the delicate rustling of wet trees, and now the voices of animals, which had gone silent before the storm, began timidly awakening. The music inside the house had faded. Human speech was all that drifted through the closed and curtained windows.
“Maybe you’re doing the right thing, you’re young!” Zoglauer finally said. It was the most meager, the most ludicrous fraction of what he had been thinking during those seconds. He swallowed the rest of his thoughts, a huge tangled coil.
It was long past midnight. But in the small town the people were still standing in front of their houses, talking on the wooden sidewalks. They fell silent when the lieutenant walked past.
By the time he reached the hotel, day was dawning. He opened his closet. He put two uniforms, the civilian suit, the underclothes, and Max Demant’s sword into the trunk. He worked slowly in order to fill out the time. He clocked the length of each motion. He stretched out his movements. He feared the empty time remaining until his report.
Morning had come. Onufrij brought the dress uniform and the glossy waxed boots.
“Onufrij,” said the lieutenant, “I’m leaving the army.”
“Yessir, Herr Lieutenant,” said Onufrij. He went out, along the corridor, down the stairs, into his room, packed his belongings in a colored handkerchief, tied it to the thick end of his stick, and placed everything on the bed. He decided to return home, to Burdlaki; the harvesting would be starting soon. Now there was nothing to keep him in the Imperial and Royal Army. This was known as “deserting,” and you could be shot. But the constables reached Burdlaki only once a week, and he could hide. How many others had already done the same! Panterleimon, Ivan’s son; Grigorii, Nikolai’s son; pockmarked Pavel; red-haired Nikofor. Only one man had been caught and condemned, but that had been a long time ago.
As for Lieutenant Trotta, he submitted his discharge request during his report. He was instantly furloughed. He took leave of his fellow officers on the drilling grounds. They didn’t know what to say to him. They surrounded him in a loose circle until Zoglauer finally hit on the right wording. It was extremely simple—“Good luck!”—and everyone repeated it.
The lieutenant went to see Chojnicki.
“There’s room here any time,” said the count. “By the way, let me pick you up!”
For a second, Trotta thought of Frau von Taussig.
Chojnicki read his mind and said, “She’s with her husband. His current attack is going to last for a long time. He may stay there for good. And he’s right. I envy him. Incidentally, I’ve visited her. She’s grown old, dear friend, she’s grown old!”
The next morning at ten, Lieutenant Trotta entered the district headquarters. His father was sitting in his den. As soon as the lieutenant opened the door, he saw him. His father sat opposite the door, next to the window. Through the green blinds the sun traced thin stripes on the dark-red carpet. A fly buzzed, a clock ticked on the wall. The room was cool, shady, and filled with summery hush, as it had been long ago during vacations. Nevertheless a vague new glow clung to all the objects here. One couldn’t tell where it came from. The district captain stood up. He himself emanated the new shimmer. The pure silver of his beard tinged the greenish light of the day and the reddish glow of the carpet. It exhaled the radiant mildness of an unknown, perhaps otherworldly day that was already dawning in the midst of Herr von Trotta’s earthly life, just as the mornings of this world begin to dawn while the stars of the night are still shining. Many years ago, when the boy had come from Hranice to spend his vacation, his father’s whiskers had been a small black cloud divided in two.
The district captain remained standing at his desk. He let his son approach, placed his pince-nez on the documents, and held out his arms. They kissed quickly.
“Sit down!” said the old man, pointing to the armchair where Carl
Joseph had sat as a cadet on those Sundays, from 9 to 12 A.M., his cap on his knees and his radiant snow-white gloves on the cap.
“Father,” Carl Joseph began, “I’m leaving the army.”
He waited. He instantly sensed that he could explain nothing while sitting. So he got up, stood facing his father at the other end of the desk, and looked at the silvery whiskers.
“After this disaster,” said the father, “that struck us two days ago, such an act amounts to…to…desertion.”
“The whole army has deserted,” Carl Joseph replied. He left the desk. He began walking up and down the room, his left hand on his back, his right hand accompanying his words. Many years ago, that was how the old man had walked through the room.
A fly buzzed, the clock ticked. The sunny stripes on the carpet grew brighter and brighter. The sun was rising quickly; it must be very high by now. Carl Joseph broke off and glanced at the district captain. The old man sat there. Both hands dangled limply, half hidden in the stiff, round, shiny cuffs on the arms of the chair. His head sank to his chest, and his whiskers rested on his lapels. He’s young and foolish, the son thought. He’s a dear young fool with white hair. Perhaps I’m his father, the Hero of Solferino. I’ve grown old; he has merely lived for many years. Carl Joseph walked up and down, explaining.