The war scarcely seemed to trouble Herr von Trotta. He picked up a newspaper only to conceal his trembling skull. He and Dr. Skowronnek never talked about victories or defeats. Mostly they played chess without exchanging a word. But sometimes one would say to the other, “Do you remember? That game two years ago? You were as unfocused as you are today.” It was as if they were talking about events that had occurred decades earlier.
A long time had passed since the news of the son’s death, the seasons had replaced one another, according to the ancient, steadfast laws of nature, yet were barely perceptible under the red veil of war—least of all to the district captain. His head still trembled constantly like a huge but light fruit on an all-too-thin stem. Lieutenant Trotta had long since rotted or been gobbled up by ravens, which circled over the deadly embankments in those days; but old Herr von Trotta still felt as if he had received the news of his son’s death only yesterday. And the letter from Major Zoglauer, who had likewise already died, remained in the district captain’s breast pocket; it was read anew every day and maintained in its dreadful freshness, the way a grave mound is maintained by loving hands.
What did old Herr von Trotta care about the hundred thousand new corpses that had meanwhile followed his son? What did he care about the hasty and confused directives that came from his superiors week after week? And what did he care about the end of the world, which he now saw coming more clearly than the prophetic Chojnicki had once seen it? His son was dead. His office was terminated. His world had ended.
Epilogue
OUR SOLE REMAINING task is to describe the district captain’s final days. They slipped by virtually like one day. Time flowed past him, a broad, even river, murmuring monotonously. The war communiqués and the governor’s extraordinary decrees and directives barely ruffled the district captain’s mind. He would have retired long since anyhow. He remained in office only because of the war. And so at times he felt he was merely living a second, paler life, long after completing his first and real life. His days did not seem to be hurrying toward the grave like the days of all other people. Petrified like his own gravestone, the district captain stood on the brink of days. Never had Herr von Trotta so closely resembled Kaiser Franz Joseph. At times he even dared to compare himself to the Kaiser. He thought of his audience at Schönbrunn, and in the manner of simple old men who talk about a catastrophe that has struck both of them, he would mentally say to Franz Joseph, What? If only someone had told us at the time! Told us two old men!…
Herr von Trotta slept very little. He ate without noticing what was put before him. He signed documents that he hadn’t carefully read. At times, he would appear at the café in the afternoon, before Dr. Skowronnek arrived. Herr von Trotta would then pick up a three-day-old newspaper and read something he was long familiar with. But if Dr. Skowronnek spoke about the latest events, the district captain would merely nod as if he had learned the news long ago.
One day he received a letter. A woman he had never heard of, Frau von Taussig, now a voluntary nurse at the Steinhof Insane Asylum in Vienna, informed Herr von Trotta that Count Chojnicki had returned from the front, insane, several months ago and that he spoke about the district captain very frequently: in his confused utterances, he kept reiterating that he had important information for Herr von Trotta. And if the district captain happened to be planning a trip to Vienna, his visit with the patient might unexpectedly restore his sanity, as had occurred in similar cases now and then. The district captain consulted Dr. Skowronnek.
“Anything is possible,” said Skowronnek. “If you can stand it—I mean, stand it easily….”
Herr von Trotta said, “I can stand anything.”
He decided to leave immediately. Perhaps the patient knew something important about the lieutenant. Perhaps he had something of the son’s to give the father. Herr von Trotta went to Vienna.
He was taken to the military section of the asylum. It was late autumn, a dreary day; the asylum was shrouded in a gray, persistent rain that had been pouring over the world for days now. Herr von Trotta sat in the dazzling white corridor, peering through the barred window at the denser and softer bars of rain, and thought of the embankment slope where his son had died. Now he’s getting soaked, thought the district captain, as if the lieutenant had died only today or yesterday and the corpse were still fresh.
Time wore by slowly. He saw people shuffling by with deranged faces and gruesomely contorted limbs, but for the district captain madness held little terror, even though this was his first visit to an insane asylum. Only death was terrible. Too bad! thought Herr von Trotta. If Carl Joseph had gone crazy instead of dying in action, I would have brought him back to his senses. And if I hadn’t succeeded, then I would have come to see him every day! Perhaps he would have contorted his arm as horribly as this lieutenant here that they’re walking past me. But it would have been only his arm, and you can caress a contorted arm. You can also look into twisted eyes! So long as they’re my son’s eyes. Happy the fathers whose sons are crazy!
Frau von Taussig came at last, a nurse like any other. He saw only her uniform—what did he care about her face? But she gazed and gazed at him and then said, “I knew your son!”
Only now did the district captain look at her face. It was the face of a woman who had grown old but was still beautiful. Indeed, the nurse’s coif rejuvenated her, as it does all women, because it is in their nature to be rejuvenated by kindness and compassion and also by the external insignia of compassion. She comes from high society, thought Herr von Trotta.
“How long ago,” he asked, “did you know my son?”
“It was before the war,” said Frau von Taussig. Then she took the district captain’s arm, led him down the corridor as she was accustomed to escorting patients, and murmured, “We were in love, Carl Joseph and I.”
The district captain asked, “Forgive me, but was that foolish scrape because of you?”
“Partly because of me,” said Frau von Taussig.
“I see, I see,” said Herr von Trotta. “Partly because of you.” Then he squeezed the nurse’s arm slightly and went on. “I wish Carl Joseph could still get into foolish scrapes because of you!”
“Now let’s go to the patient,” said Frau von Taussig. For she felt tears welling up, and she believed that she mustn’t weep.
Chojnicki sat in a bare room from which all objects had been removed because he sometimes had fits. He sat in a chair whose four feet were screwed into the floor. When the district captain entered, the count stood up, walked toward the guest, and said to Frau von Taussig, “Leave the room, Vally! We have something important to discuss!”
Now they were alone. The door had a peephole. Chojnicki went over to the door, covered the peephole with his back, and said, “Welcome to my home!”
For some unfathomable reason his bald head looked even balder. The patient’s large, blue, somewhat bulging eyes seemed to emanate an icy wind, a frost blasting over the gaunt and bloated yellow face and the wasteland of the skull. From time to time the right-hand corner of Chojnicki’s mouth twitched. It was as if he were trying to smile with that side. His ability to smile had simply lodged in that corner, abandoning the rest of the mouth forever.
“Sit down!” said Chojnicki. “I sent for you in order to give you some important information. Not a word to anyone else! Nobody but you and me must know about it: the Old Man is dying!”
“How do you know?” asked Herr von Trotta.
Chojnicki, still at the door, pointed his finger at the ceiling, then put it to his lips, and said, “From a higher source!”
Next he turned around, opened the door, cried “Nurse Vally!” and said to Frau von Taussig, who instantly appeared, “The audience is over!”
He bowed. Herr von Trotta left.
He walked down the long corridor, accompanied by Frau von Taussig, and descended the wide steps.
“Perhaps it worked,” she said.
Herr von Trotta took his leave and went to see
Railroad Councilor Stransky. He didn’t quite know why. He went to see Stransky, who had married a Koppelmann. The Stranskys were at home. They didn’t recognize the district captain right off. Then they greeted him, embarrassed and nostalgic and aloof at once—so it seemed to him. They served him coffee and cognac.
“Carl Joseph!” said Frau Stransky, née Koppelmann. “When he made lieutenant, he came to see us right away. He was a dear boy!”
The district captain stroked his whiskers silently. Then the Stransky son came in. He limped, it was unsightly. He limped quite severely. Carl Joseph did not limp! the district captain thought.
“They say the Old Man’s dying,” Railroad Councilor Stransky suddenly said.
The district captain instantly rose and left. After all, he knew the Old Man was dying. Chojnicki had told him, and Chojnicki had always known everything. The district captain went to see his boyhood friend Smetana at the Royal Comptroller’s office. “The Old Man’s dying!” said Smetana.
“I’d like to go to Schönbrunn!” said Herr von Trotta. And he went to Schönbrunn.
The thin, relentless drizzle shrouded the castle of Schönbrunn just as it did the Steinhof Insane Asylum. Herr von Trotta walked up the garden lane, the same lane he had followed long, long ago, to the secret audience about his son. His son was dead. And the Kaiser was dying too. And for the first time since learning of his son’s death Herr von Trotta believed he knew that his son had not died by chance. The Kaiser cannot outlive the Trottas! the district captain thought. He cannot outlive them! They saved his life, and he will not outlive the Trottas.
He remained outside. He remained outside among the people of lower ranks. A gardener in a green apron and with a spade in his hand came from Schönbrunn Park and asked the onlookers, “How’s he doing?” And the onlookers—foresters, coachmen, minor officials, janitors, and war veterans like the father of the Hero of Solferino—replied: “No news. He’s dying!”
The gardener took off, went with his spade to dig up the flower beds, the eternal earth.
Rain was falling, quiet, dense, and increasingly denser. Herr von Trotta doffed his hat. The lower court officials standing there took him for one of their own or for a mailman from the Schönbrunn Post Office. And one or another of them asked the district captain, “Did you know him, the Old Man?”
“Yes,” replied Herr von Trotta. “He once spoke to me.”
“Now he’s dying!” said a forester.
At that moment the priest entered the Kaiser’s bedroom with the Most Holy Sacrament.
Franz Joseph’s temperature was 102.9; it had just been taken.
“I see, I see,” he said to the Capuchin monk. “So this is death!” He sat up in the pillows. He heard the relentless rain outside the windows and now and then the grinding of feet walking across the gravel. To the Kaiser these noises sounded alternately very far and very near. At times he realized that the rain was causing the gentle trickle outside the window. But then he soon forgot that it was the rain. And he asked his physician several times, “Why is it whispering like that?” For he could no longer pronounce the word trickle although it was on the tip of his tongue. But after inquiring about the cause of the whispering, he truly believed that all he heard was a whispering. The rain was whispering. The footfalls of people walking by were also whispering. The word and the sounds it signified for him appealed to the Kaiser more and more. Besides, it didn’t matter what he asked, for they couldn’t hear him. He only moved his lips, but he believed he was speaking, his voice audible if a bit soft, but no different than in the past few days. At times he was surprised that no one responded. But then he promptly forgot both his questions and his surprise at the muteness of the listeners. And once again he surrendered to the gentle whispering of the world, which lived around him while he lay dying—and he resembled a child that gives up all resistance to sleep, compelled by the lullaby and wrapped up in it.
He closed his eyes. But after a while he reopened them and saw the plain silver cross and, on the table, the blinding candles waiting for the priest. And now he knew that the priest would be coming soon. And he moved his lips and began reciting what he had been taught as a boy:
“In contrition and humility I confess my sins!”
But that too went unheard. Besides, he instantly saw that the Capuchin was already here.
“I’ve had to wait a long time!” he said. Then he thought about his sins. “Pride” occurred to him. “I was proud!” he said.
He went through sin after sin, as listed in the catechism. I was emperor for too long! he mused. But he thought he had said it aloud. “Everyone has to die. The Kaiser dies too.” And he felt as if at the same time, somewhere, far from here, that part of him that was imperial was dying. “War is also a sin!” he said aloud. But the priest didn’t hear him. Franz Joseph was again surprised. Every day brought casualty lists; the war had been raging since 1914. “Let it end!” said Franz Joseph. No one heard him. “If only I’d been killed at Solferino!” he said. No one heard him. Perhaps, he thought, I’m already dead and I’m talking as a dead man. That’s why they don’t understand me. And he fell asleep.
Outside, among the lower ranks, Herr von Trotta waited, the son of the Hero of Solferino, holding his hat, in the persistently trickling rain. The trees in Schönbrunn Park sighed and soughed; the rain whipped them, gentle, patient, lavish. The evening came. Curiosity-seekers came. The park filled up. The rain wouldn’t stop. The onlookers spelled one another; they came, they went. Herr von Trotta remained. The night set in, the steps were empty, the people went home to bed. Herr von Trotta pressed against the gate. He heard carriages draw up; sometimes a window was unlatched over his head. Voices called. The gate was opened, the gate was closed. He was not seen. The rain trickled, gentle, relentless; the trees soughed and sighed.
At last the bells began to toll. The district captain walked away. He went down the flat steps, along the lane to the iron gate. It was open tonight. He walked the whole long way back to the city, bare-headed, clutching his hat; he encountered no one. He walked very slowly as if following a hearse. Day was dawning when he reached the hotel.
He went home. It was also raining in the district seat of W. Herr von Trotta sent for Fräulein Hirschwitz and said, “I’m going to bed, madam. I’m tired.” And for the first time in his life he went to bed during the day.
He couldn’t fall asleep. He sent for Dr. Skowronnek.
“Dear Dr. Skowronnek,” he said, “would you tell them to bring me the canary.” They brought the canary from old Jacques’s cottage. “Give it a piece of sugar!” said the district captain. And the canary got a piece of sugar.
“The dear creature!” said the district captain.
Dr. Skowronnek repeated, “A dear creature!”
“It will outlive us all,” said Trotta. “Thank goodness!”
Then the district captain said, “Send for the priest. But come back!”
Dr. Skowronnek waited for the priest. Then he came back. Old Herr von Trotta lay silently in the pillows. His eyes were half shut. He said, “Your hand, dear friend! Would you bring me the picture?”
Dr. Skowronnek went to the den, climbed on a chair, and unhooked the portrait of the Hero of Solferino. By the time he came back, holding the picture in both hands, Herr von Trotta was no longer able to see it. The rain drummed softly on the windows.
Dr. Skowronnek waited with the portrait of the Hero of Solferino on his lap. After a few minutes he stood up, took hold of Herr von Trotta’s hand, leaned over the district captain’s chest, breathed deeply, and shut the dead man’s eyes.
This was the day on which the Kaiser was buried in the Capuchin Vault. Three days later Herr von Trotta’s corpse was lowered into the grave. The mayor of the town of W spoke. His funeral oration, like all speeches during that period, began with the war. The mayor went on to say that though the district captain had given his only son to the Kaiser he had nevertheless gone on living and serving. Meanwhile the tireless rain w
ashed over all the bared heads of the mourners gathered at the grave, and it sighed and soughed all around from the wet shrubs, wreaths, and flowers. Dr. Skowronnek, in a uniform that was unfamiliar to him, that of a home reserve medical corporal, did his best to stand at attention with a very military bearing, although he by no means considered that a crucial expression of piety, civilian that he was. After all, death is no staff surgeon! thought Dr. Skowronnek.
He then was one of the first to approach the grave. He waved off the spade offered him by a gravedigger; instead he bent down and broke off a clod of wet soil and crumbled it in his left hand and his right hand tossed the individual crumbs upon the coffin. Then he stepped back. It occurred to him that it was afternoon, chess time was approaching. He had no one to play with now; but he decided to go to the café anyhow.
When they left the graveyard, the mayor invited him into his carriage. Dr. Skowronnek got in.
“I would like to have added,” said the mayor, “that Herr von Trotta could not outlive the Kaiser. Don’t you agree, Herr Doctor?”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Skowronnek replied. “I don’t think either of them could have outlived Austria.”
Dr. Skowronnek told the coachman to drop him off at the café. He went to his usual table as on any other day. The chessboard lay there as if the district captain hadn’t died. The waiter came to clear it away, but Skowronnek said, “Leave it!” And he played a game against himself, smirking, occasionally looking at the empty chair across the table, his ears filled with the gentle noise of the autumn rain, which was still running tirelessly down the panes.
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