“The monarchy is dead, it’s dead!” he cried and halted.
“Probably,” murmured the district captain.
He rang for his assistant. “Tell Fräulein Hirschwitz that we are lunching twenty minutes later today.”
Then he said, “Come on,” stood up, and took his hat and cane. They walked to the town park.
“Fresh air can’t hurt,” said the district captain. They avoided the pavilion where the blond girl served soda water with raspberry syrup. “I’m tired!” said the district captain. “Let’s sit down!” For the first time since he had begun serving in this town, Herr von Trotta sat on an ordinary bench in the park. With his cane tracing aimless lines and figures on the ground, he said, “I went to see the Kaiser. Actually I didn’t want to tell you. The Kaiser himself took care of your problem. Not another word about it!”
Carl Joseph slipped his hand under his father’s arm. He now felt the old man’s thin arm as he had felt it years ago during an evening stroll in Vienna. This time he didn’t remove his hand. They stood up together. They went home arm in arm.
Fräulein Hirschwitz came in her Sunday gray silk frock. A narrow strip of her lofty hairdo over the forehead had taken on the color of her festive garment. Despite the short notice she had managed to whip up a Sunday dinner: noodle soup, garnished roast, and cherry dumplings.
But the district captain didn’t waste a single word on the menu. It was as if he were eating a run-of-the-mill schnitzel.
Chapter 20
ONE WEEK LATER Carl Joseph left his father. They hugged in the vestibule before climbing into the fiacre. In old Herr von Trotta’s opinion, shows of affection should not take place on the railroad platform in front of chance witnesses. Their embrace was swift as usual, in the damp shade of the vestibule and the cool breath of the flagstones. Fräulein Hirschwitz was waiting on the balcony, as self-controlled as a man. Herr von Trotta had uselessly tried to explain to her that she need not wave. Apparently she considered it a duty. Although it wasn’t raining, Herr von Trotta opened his umbrella. A slight overcast struck him as reason enough. Shielded by the umbrella, he mounted the fiacre. Fräulein Hirschwitz couldn’t see him from the balcony. He didn’t say a word. It was only when his son was standing in the train that the old man raised his hand and pointed his forefinger.
“It would be good,” he said, “if you could get a medical discharge. One doesn’t leave the army without good grounds!”
“Yessir, Papá!” said the lieutenant.
Just before the departure of the train, the district captain left the platform. Carl Joseph saw him walking away, his back rigid and, under his arm, the rolled-up umbrella pointing aloft like a drawn sword. He did not look back, old Herr von Trotta.
Carl Joseph received his discharge.
“What d’you wanna do now?” the other officers asked.
“I have a position!” said Trotta, and they delved no further.
He inquired after Onufrij. The regimental office told him that the orderly Kolohin had deserted.
Lieutenant Trotta went to the hotel. He slowly changed clothes. First he unbuckled his sword, the weapon and emblem of his honor. He had dreaded this moment. He was surprised that he felt no melancholy. A bottle of 180 Proof stood on the table, but he didn’t need a drink. Chojnicki came to pick him up. His riding crop cracked downstairs—and now he was in the room. He sat and watched. It was afternoon, the church clock struck three. All the mellow voices of summer poured in through the open window. Summer itself was calling Lieutenant Trotta. Chojnicki, in a light-gray suit with yellow stripes, his yellow crop in his hand, was an envoy of summer. The lieutenant rubbed his sleeve across the dull scabbard, drew the sword, puffed on it, wiped the steel with his handkerchief, and placed the weapon in a case. It was like preparing a corpse for its funeral. Before strapping the sword case to the trunk, he balanced it once again on his palm. Then he buried Max Demant’s sword next to it. He read the inscription scratched under the hilt. “Leave the army!” Demant had said. Now he was leaving….
The frogs were croaking, the crickets were chirping. Chojnicki’s chestnuts were neighing under the window, softly tugging on the light carriage; its axles were groaning. The lieutenant stood there, his tunic unbuttoned, the black rubber neckband between the open green lapels of the blouse. He turned around and said, “The end of a career!”
“The career has ended,” Chojnicki remarked. “The career itself has come to an end!”
Now Trotta took off his tunic, the Kaiser’s tunic. He spread the blouse flat across the table as he had learned to do at the military academy. First he pushed back the stiff collar, then folded the sleeves across it and put them into the cloth. Next he folded the lower half of the blouse. It was already a small package. The gray moiré lining was iridescent. Next came the trousers, folded twice. Now Trotta put on his gray civilian suit, but he kept the belt—the last reminder of his career (he had never understood how to deal with suspenders).
“One day my grandfather,” he said, “must have packed up his military personality in much the same way.”
“Probably,” Chojnicki confirmed.
The trunk was still open. Trotta’s military personality lay inside it, a corpse folded according to army regulations. It was time to close the trunk. Now the lieutenant felt a sudden stab of pain. His throat tightened, and tears came to his eyes; he turned to Chojnicki, trying to speak. At the age of seven Trotta had started boarding school, at ten military school. He had been a soldier all his life. Trotta the soldier had to be buried and mourned. You didn’t lower a corpse into the ground without weeping. It was good that Chojnicki was there.
“Let’s have a drink,” said Chojnicki. “You’re getting melancholy.”
They drank. Then Chojnicki stood up and closed the lieutenant’s trunk.
Brodnitzer himself carried the trunk down to the carriage.
“You were a cherished tenant, Herr Baron,” said Brodnitzer. He stood, hat in hand, beside the carriage. Chojnicki was already holding the reins. Trotta felt a burst of affection for Brodnitzer. Farewell! he wanted to say. But Chojnicki clicked his tongue, and the horses tugged at the reins, lifting their heads and tails simultaneously, and the high light wheels of the small carriage crunched across the sand of the street as if rolling through a soft bed.
They drove along between the swamps, which resonated with the din of the frogs.
“This is where you’ll live,” said Chojnicki.
It was a lodge on the edge of the Little Forest; it had green blinds like those on the windows of the district headquarters. The lodge was inhabited by Jan Stepaniuk, an assistant forester, an old man with a long drooping moustache of tarnished silver. He had served in the military for twelve years. Coming home to his army mother tongue, he addressed Trotta as “Herr Lieutenant.” He wore a coarse linen shirt with a narrow collar embroidered in blue and red. The wind billowed the broad sleeves of the shirt, making his arms look like wings.
And here Lieutenant Trotta remained.
He was determined not to see any of his fellow officers. In his wooden room, by the glow of the flickering candle, he wrote letters to his father on yellowish, fibrous official stationery, the salutation four fingers from the top, the text two fingers from the side. All the letters were as alike as timetables.
He had little to do. He entered the names of the day laborers into the huge black-and-green ledgers, the salaries, the requirements of Chojnicki’s guests. He added up the figures, with good intentions but incorrectly; reported on the state of the poultry, the pigs, the fruit that was sold or kept, the small plot where the yellow hops grew, and the kiln, which was leased to a commissioner every year.
He now spoke the local vernacular. He could pick up some of what the peasants said. He dealt with the red-haired Jews, who were already buying wood for the winter. He learned the different values of birches, pines, firs, oaks, lindens, and maples. He pinched pennies. Just like his grandfather, the Hero of Solferino, the Knight of
Truth, he counted out hard silver coins with gaunt, hard fingers whenever he came to town for the Thursday pig market to purchase saddles, horse collars, yokes, and scythes, grindstones, sickles, rakes, and seed. If he spotted an officer walking by, he lowered his head. It was an unnecessary precaution. His moustache had grown and thickened; the stubble on his cheeks bristled hard, black, and dense. You could scarcely recognize him.
Everyone was preparing for the harvest. The peasants stood outside their huts, whetting their scythes on the round brick-red grindstones. Throughout the countryside, stone whirred against steel, drowning out the chant of the crickets. At night the lieutenant sometimes heard music and clamor from Chojnicki’s New Castle. He absorbed those voices into his sleep, along with the nocturnal crowing of roosters and the barking of dogs at the full moon. He finally felt content, lonesome, and at peace. It was as if he had never led any other life. Whenever he couldn’t sleep, he would get up, take his stick, walk across the fields, through the many-voiced chorus of the night, wait for morning, greet the red sun, breathe the dew and the gentle singing of the wind that ushers in the day. He felt as fresh as if he had slept all night.
Each morning he strolled through the adjacent villages. “Praised be Jesus Christ!” said the peasants. “Forever. Amen!” Trotta replied. Like them he walked with slightly bent knees. That was how the peasants of Sipolje had walked.
One day he passed through the village of Burdlaki. The tiny church spire stood—a finger of the village—against the blue sky. The afternoon was quiet. The roosters crowed drowsily. The mosquitoes hummed and capered along the village road. Suddenly a peasant with black hair and a full beard emerged from his hut, stood in the middle of the road, and greeted him. “Praised be Jesus Christ!”
“Forever. Amen!” said Trotta, about to move on.
“Herr Lieutenant, I’m Onufrij!” said the bearded peasant. The beard, a dense, black, outspread fan, camouflaged his face.
“Why did you desert?” asked Trotta.
“I only wen’ home,” said Onufrij.
It made no sense asking such foolish questions. He understood Onufrij. He had served the lieutenant just as the lieutenant had served the Kaiser. There was no more Fatherland. It was crumbling, splintering.
“Aren’t you afraid?” asked Trotta.
Onufrij was not afraid. He lived with his sister. The constables went through the village every week without checking anything. Besides, they were Ukrainians, peasants like Onufrij himself. If no one filed a written complaint with the sergeant-major, Onufrij had nothing to worry about. And in Burdlaki no one filed complaints.
“Goodbye and good luck, Onufrij!” said Trotta. He walked up the winding road, which unexpectedly opened into the vast fields. Onufrij followed him as far as the bend. Trotta heard the thumping of the hobnailed military boots on the gravel of the road. Onufrij had taken along his army boots.
Trotta went to the village tavern owned by the Jew Avramtshik. You could buy curd soap here, liquor, cigarettes, tobacco, and postage stamps. The Jew had a fiery red beard. He sat outside the arched entrance of his tavern, shining far and wide, over more than a mile of the road. When he grows old, thought the lieutenant, he’ll be a white-bearded Jew like Max Demant’s grandfather.
Trotta had a drink, bought tobacco and stamps, and left. From Burdlaki the road led past Oleksk to the village of Sosnov, then Bytók, Leshnitz, and Dombrova. He took this route every day. He crossed the railroad tracks twice—two nondescript black-and-yellow gates and the glassy signals ringing incessantly in the booths. Those were the merry voices of the great world, voices that no longer concerned Baron Trotta. The great world was snuffed out. His years in the military were snuffed out as if he had been walking across fields and along country roads all his life, stick in hand and never with sword at hip. He lived like his grandfather, the Hero of Solferino, and like his great-grandfather, the retired veteran in the castle park of Laxenburg, and perhaps like his nameless, unknown ancestors, the peasants of Sipolje. Always the same route, always past Oleksk, toward Sosnow, toward Bytók, toward Leshnitz and Dombrova. These villages lay around Chojnicki’s castle; they all belonged to him. From Dombrova a willow-lined path led to Chojnicki. It was still early. If Trotta strode faster he would reach the castle by six without running into any of his former comrades. Trotta lengthened his stride. Now he stood under the windows. He whistled. Chojnicki appeared at the window, nodded, and emerged.
“It’s finally come!” said Chojnicki. “The war’s begun. We’ve been expecting it for a long time. But it will still catch us unprepared. I don’t think any Trotta is destined to live very long in freedom. My uniform is ready. I assume we’ll both be marching off in a week or two.”
To Trotta it seemed as if nature had never been so peaceful as at this moment. You could look straight into the sun, it was sinking westward with visible haste. Receiving the sun, a stiff wind came, curling the white cloudlets in the sky, rippling the wheat and rye stalks on the earth, and caressing the red faces of the poppies. A blue shadow floated across the green meadows. In the east the Little Forest sank into dusky violet. Stepaniuk’s white lodge, where Trotta was residing, shone at the edge of the forest, the melting sunlight burned in the windows. The crickets chirped louder. The wind carried their voices far away. There was a moment of hush; he could hear the breathing of the earth. Suddenly a faint, hoarse shrieking came from above, under the sky. Chojnicki raised his arm.
“Do you know what that is? Wild geese! They’re leaving us earlier than usual. The summer’s only half over. They can already hear the gunfire. They know what they’re doing!”
It was Thursday, the day of the “small soiree.” Chojnicki turned around. Trotta slowly walked toward the glittering windows of his lodge.
That night he got no sleep. At midnight he heard the hoarse shrieks of the wild geese. He dressed. He stepped outdoors. Stepaniuk, in his shirt, lay in front of the threshold, his pipe gleaming reddish. He lay flat on the ground and said without moving, “Can’t sleep tonight.”
“The geese!” said Trotta.
“That’s right, the geese,” Stepaniuk confirmed. “I’ve never heard them this early in all my life. Listen, listen!”
Trotta looked at the sky. The stars were twinkling as usual. Nothing else could be seen up there. Yet the hoarse shrieks persisted under the stars.
“They’re practicing,” said Stepaniuk. “I’ve been lying out here for a long time. Sometimes I can see them. They’re only a gray shadow. Look!”
Stepaniuk stretched his gleaming pipe toward the sky. At that instant, they saw the tiny gray shadow of the wild geese under the cobalt blue. They wafted away, a small clear veil, among the stars.
“That’s not all!” said Stepaniuk. “This morning I saw hundreds of ravens, a lot more than usual. Foreign ravens, they’re coming from foreign parts. I think they’re from Russia. Around here people say that the ravens are the prophets among the birds.”
A broad silver stripe ran along the northeastern horizon. It grew visibly brighter. A wind arose. It brought a hubbub of sounds from Chojnicki’s castle. Trotta lay down next to Stepaniuk. He drowsily gazed at the stars, listened to the shrieking of the geese, and fell asleep.
He awoke at sunrise. He felt as if he had napped only half an hour, but at least four hours must have slipped by. Instead of the familiar twittering of birds that greeted every new morning, he heard the black croaking of hundreds of ravens. Stepaniak got up at Trotta’s side. His pipe had grown cold while he slept; he took it out of his mouth and pointed the stem at the surrounding trees. The large black birds sat rigid on the branches—sinister fruit fallen from the air. They sat motionless, the black birds, only croaking. Stepaniuk tossed stones at them, but the ravens merely flapped their wings a few times. They clung to the branches like fruit.
“I’m gonna shoot,” said Stepaniuk.
He went indoors, he got his rifle, he shot. A few birds tumbled down, the rest seemed not to have heard the blast. They al
l remained on the branches. Stepaniuk picked up the black corpses. He had bagged a good dozen; he held his quarry in both hands and carried it indoors, blood dripping on the grass.
“Strange ravens,” he said. “They don’t stir. They are the prophets among the birds.”
It was Friday. In the afternoon Carl Joseph walked through the villages as usual. The crickets weren’t chirping, the frogs weren’t croaking, only the ravens were shrieking. They perched everywhere, on the lindens, the oaks, the birches, the willows. Perhaps they always come before the harvest, thought Trotta. They hear the peasants sharpening the scythes, and then they simply gather.
He walked through the village of Burdlaki, secretly hoping that Onufrij would reappear. But Onufrij did not come. The peasants stood outside their huts, grinding the steel on the reddish whetstones. Now and then they looked up. They were worried by the croaking of the ravens and they fired black curses at the black birds.
Trotta walked past Avramtshik’s tavern; the red-haired Jew sat at the entrance, his beard shining. Avramtshik stood up. He tipped his black velvet cap, pointed aloft, and said, “Ravens have come! They’ve been shrieking all day. Wise birds! We’d better watch out!”
“Maybe, yes, maybe you’re right,” said Trotta and walked on, along the familiar willow-lined path, to Chojnicki’s home. Now Trotta stood under the windows. He whistled. No one came.
Chojnicki must have gone to town. Trotta headed there, taking the route across the swamps to avoid running into anyone. Only the peasants used this path A few came toward him. The path was so narrow they couldn’t go past one another. One person had to stand and let the other squeeze by. All the people who came toward Trotta seemed to be walking faster than usual. They greeted more hastily than usual. They took longer strides. They walked with bent heads like people absorbed in a single weighty thought. And all at once, Trotta spotted the tollgate marking the town limit. There were more people out, a group of twenty or more, now walking in single file.