Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics) (42 page)

Everyone turned with scorn, pity and a sense of superiority from the nascent artwork to me. I had to do something to save my honour, the honour of a lowly private, the honour of an intellectual. ‘Nonsense,’ I said, ‘I’m not trembling and I’m not pale. I’m ready to be tattooed on the spot.’

In part impressed, in part in doubt, somebody said: ‘Big mouth! Let’s see if he’s got the balls.’

A soldier who had just had himself tattooed cried out self-consciously: ‘He’ll never hold out to the end. It hurts like hell.’

‘But it lasts for ever,’ said somebody else.

‘Do you really want to have yourself tattooed?’ the lithographer asked.

‘Of course,’ I was obliged to reply, ‘I said it and I mean it.’

‘Okay.’

He proposed an incised ring on my left middle finger or a tattooed watchband on my wrist. But I didn’t want it to be visible.

‘Okay, so I’ll put it on your chest,’ he said, ‘… or better yet, on your back.’

At this latter remark, an infernal inspiration seemed to light up his look. But since no unauthorized person could possibly see such a tattoo, I gave my consent. We agreed on a harmless still life.

And he got to work on me. But he didn’t start up at the shoulders or at the collarbone, which surprised me.

‘So nobody sees it when you put on your swimming trunks.’

‘Sound grounds,’ I said and gave the go-ahead.

It hurt. I felt the pain of every prick. I bit down hard and repeated to myself: but it lasts for ever. Yet worse than the pain of the pricks, was when the repulsively filthy rag rubbed against my wounds. Even so, I did not let on to my disgust, for the whole gang of jailbirds was gathered in a ring around us.

‘Drop your trousers a little,’ said the master.

‘Why?’

‘I drew the fruits, and now comes the bowl to hold them.’

The onlookers laughed. I couldn’t fathom what could be so funny about a still life.

‘That apple looks good enough to bite into,’ somebody said, and again the whole gang burst out laughing.

‘Pull your trousers down a little lower,’ added the master.

‘Why?’

‘Because the grapes are hanging over the edge of the bowl.’

‘By that much?’

‘I made the bowl too wide, you see. That’s why I have to fill it with more fruit and let the grapes hang over the rim.’

I pulled my trousers down to my knees, felt the cold sting of the needle and the warm wipe of the rag, and heard first one, then another spectator give off a guffaw, and finally the whole lot split their sides laughing.

Finally it was over. I pulled on my shirt, hung around another moment or two in the guardroom and then hobbled back to my
cell. Sleep was not an option, it hurt too damn much, I could neither lie down nor sit up straight. My axillary gland was swollen, I had a burning fever. But it’ll last for ever, I tried to console myself.

The next morning I had to go for a medical check-up.

The barracks sick-bay was run by the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Böhm, an old buddy from way back when. He told me that just last night the girls at the Café Mikado had enquired when I’d be back. Then he asked what ailed me.

‘Serves you right!’ he laughed, when he found out. ‘You’ll be howling with pain for at least a week. And if you drink, the pain’ll be worse. Well, go ahead, show me.’ I showed him.

‘You filthy swine!’ thundered the Chief Medical Officer Dr Böhm, storm clouds darkening his sunny expression. ‘You swine, you!’ he exploded, whereby, the way he put it, the word ‘swine’ was hardly as injurious as the dagger-like thrust of that little word ‘you’.

‘Sergeant!’ he cried out into the adjoining room. ‘A criminal report on Private Kisch on the double!’

Stunned and bewildered, I dared point out that the Chief Medical Officer had just a moment ago laughed at my tattooing.

‘You think I’m a complete idiot? Did you really believe I wouldn’t recognize the subject of that tattoo? Do you think, maybe, I might ruin my career for your sake, make myself an accessory to your crime, punishable according to the military code?’

I swore, in vain, that I had no idea of what had transpired behind my back, while Chief Medical Officer Dr Böhm dictated the charges, which is how I found out what I was accused of.

The lithographer, that scoundrel! Now I understood what idea flashed through his brain when he suggested putting the tattoo on my back – on that unseen surface he intended, undisturbed, to slake his thirst for revenge. His revenge on our colonel. Instead of the agreed-upon still life, he slyly and insidiously pricked me with the most malicious caricature, namely a portrait of the colonel, with his head half hidden by the cap, his
neck-less corpulence hung with the kettle-lid-sized medal, and his flabby, red-violet berry-bedecked nose.

But all this did not yet amount to a crime according to the military code. The punishable crime consisted therein that the portrait was painted backwards. The head was turned upside-down and from the mouth an exceedingly long tongue extended over hill and dale, disappearing beyond the horizon. This tongue, then, was the ‘overhanging grape’, for whose sake I had to drop my trousers. That’s why the art connoisseurs split their sides laughing; that’s why Chief Medical Officer Dr Böhm feared being charged as an accessory to a crime, according to the military code, and brought charges against me. Insubordination, insulting a superior officer, the regimental commander to boot, which amounted to outright mutiny.

That very afternoon I was hauled off before a military tribunal. The commission appointed to establish the facts of the case comprised three officers. One of them, a lieutenant from my company, was a young and amiable fellow – unfortunately, however, honest and naive. No sooner did he cast a glance at the tattoo than he cried out that it was unquestionably the spitting image of our colonel. Even the depiction of Emperor Ferdinand on the medal was a perfect likeness. After having in this way faithfully offered his expert opinion, he happily took his leave.

Then the next one, a captain, jurist and head of the commission, took a look at the tattoo. He was a sly one, he was, careful not to recognize in a disgusting caricature any likeness to his commanding officer. ‘There’s not a speck of similarity,’ he said, ‘it would be an offence to the colonel to suggest otherwise.’

The lieutenant who had just testified to the contrary turned pale as a corpse.

‘And to see any similarity between that inept depiction on the medal and the wise visage of His Majesty the late Emperor Ferdinand is an outright
Crimen lasae majestatis
.’

Trembling with fear, the poor lieutenant listened. He did not catch the hint of irony with which the captain spoke of the wise face of Emperor Ferdinand; Emperor Ferdinand had been notoriously dim-witted and looked just like his tattooed likeness on the medal.

The major, the third to step forward and offer his expert opinion, was perhaps not very sly by nature. But he was sly enough to grasp why the captain had disputed any similarity between the portrait and the original. Even before donning his pince-nez for closer inspection he declared: ‘There’s not the slightest hint of a likeness. It is sheer impertinence, an insubordination to even speak of likeness.’

The lieutenant stood at the wall as if awaiting his execution.

‘Imagine comparing that puss, that ugly mug,’ the major cried out, ‘with the face of our colonel! Scandalous! Our colonel is a handsome man, an imposing figure.’ And since such a bare-faced lie seemed to be laying it on a bit too thick, the major made a big to-do of supporting this assertion with closer observation. He leant forward, practically poking his nose so deeply in the tattoo that I felt his hot breath. ‘Our honoured colonel …’ he began again.

Whereupon the door swung open wide, and in the span of its swing no lesser a personage than the model for the aforementioned tattoo appeared in the flesh. Broad-hipped and mighty, Colonel Knopp von Unterhausen strode in. His eyes flashed beneath the brim of his cap. All leapt to attention, but the colonel hardly took the time to think. ‘Where is the man with the tattoo?’ he asked.

‘Colonel, sir,’ the major replied, ‘permit me to remark that there is not the slightest resemblance. Only a malicious or a foolish mind could possibly infer …’

The colonel waved him off. ‘Where is he, I want to know.’

The man in question stood still as a statue, the male equivalent of Venus de Milo. But instead of the skimpy gown she tried to hide behind, he attempted to do the same with his dropped trousers.

‘About-turn,’ commanded the colonel, and at the precise moment when I’d completed my turn, a din like the sum total of a thunderous boom, the clash of swords and the sound of a cavalry charge rang out in the barracks: ‘It’s me! By God, it’s me! The low-down dirty scoundrel!’

A long pause followed this outburst. All you could hear was the snorting of a wounded tiger, a pained and angry sputtering.
Then he let loose a barrage of salvos against the monstrous reproach of the drawing.

‘I served under His Excellency Field Marshal Count von Radetzky,’ he began with pride and pathos, adding in the same breath that never in all his days serving under His Excellency Field Marshal Count von Radetzky had he ever done what the drawing suggested.

‘I served under His Excellency Chief of the General Staff Baron von Benedek,’ the colonel continued, and swore that here too he had never … In this way he ran through his record of service, one commanding officer at a time, strictly according to rank, finally declaring in conclusion: ‘And I am not about to let a lowly pri—’

He stopped mid-word. The very thought of somehow associating with a mere fledgling private proved so repulsive to him that his voice held its ground. But he began again: ‘And I am not about to kiss a lowly private on the a—’

And with that solitary vowel, the pronouncement, sentence and life force of the colonel came to a sudden end. He collapsed, still panting: ‘a—a—’

Everyone converged on him, everyone called for the regimental doctor, for the orderlies to look for a doctor, for ice from the officers’ mess and a pillow to rest his head on.

I, too, wanted to help, but the captain in charge of the court panel, who just a few moments before had given testimony that favoured my case and now seemed consumed by his efforts to care for the colonel in the wake of his heart attack, never let me out of eyeshot. ‘You stay here!’ he sharply commanded.

For now my case had taken a turn. The colonel had decided that the caricature represented him, and just one glimpse at the reclining man with the death rattle in his throat dispelled any doubt that, to the crime of which I was accused, the insidious phrase ‘with fatal outcome’ would be added.

The dying colonel was transported to sick-bay in the west wing of the armoury; the fledgling private, the case against him now fanned by collective fury at the fatal outcome of his alleged actions, was taken to the east wing. The colonel found his eternal rest that very evening, consoled in his last moments by the
regimental chaplain; the private, on the other hand, bereft of consolation, could not shut an eye. In time to the rhythm of the words ‘with fatal outcome’, I paced back and forth in my cell.

The military justice division was already on the trail of the tattoo artist, the lithographer, but that very morning he had been escorted to a higher court. His crime was forgery, not because the tattoo falsely imputed the colonel’s culpability in conduct unbefitting an officer, but rather on account of his having taken it upon himself to promote a corporal to the rank of sergeant.

The lithographer’s successor debuted with the reproduction of a printed invitation: ‘Those officers who feel the heartfelt desire to mark the passing of our dear fallen comrade-in-arms are herewith respectfully invited to attend a memorial service for Colonel Knopp von Unterhausen the day after tomorrow (Tuesday) at the officers’ mess.’ As to those who may not have shared the heartfelt sentiment, the respectful invitation noted: ‘Excuses will not be considered.’

Private Kysela, a painter in civilian life, was commissioned to produce a life-size portrait of the late colonel for the occasion.

‘But I never saw the colonel,’ said Kysela. ‘At our swearing-in ceremony I was standing way back in the sixteenth company, second division. I have no idea what he looked like.’

He asked for a photograph, but there was none. A person who has a monstrous snout slap in the middle of his face is not inclined to have himself photographed.

The regimental adjutant had no choice but to refer Kysela to my tattoo. I was called to the guardroom, where the preliminary sketch for the portrait had, the day before yesterday, been incised in my skin.

‘Dear me,’ cried Kysela, with feigned horror at the sight of the tattoo, ‘the graphic is hung upside-down. How do you expect me to copy it?’

The adjutant commanded me to lay myself flat on my belly on the table, but Kysela said it wouldn’t do. If I did a handstand, then perhaps he could manage to sketch a faithful copy. But nobody can hold a handstand for an hour.

‘Could one not with a reflex camera achieve the desired effect?’ the adjutant enquired.

Photography was not his thing, replied Kysela; only in his studio could he manage to make a colour copy.

So, despite the suspicion of my having committed a crime with fatal outcome, according to the military code, of having committed the murder of the regimental commander or at least bearing responsibility for his death – despite all that the adjutant was obliged to issue an order for my release from my cell, indeed from the entire perimeter of the armoury. So I received a twenty-four-hour furlough!

Twenty-four hours of freedom! Ordinarily after lights-out, no soldier was allowed out on the street or in a bar, unless he had done overtime duty and, therefore, had an exit permit until a certain hour. But Kysela and I had no time limit. Despite the doctor’s warning that alcohol would aggravate the pain of the tattoo, I drank till I dropped. There’d be time and leisure enough for sickness during my prison sentence.

The following morning, as we went staggering up to the house in which Kysela had his studio, we had an awful fright. Two soldiers were stationed outside. Were we under arrest? Or perforce under guard? Neither. The regimental adjutant had, the day before, sent the uniform of the late colonel for the painter to copy, and the two soldiers had been ordered personally to hand it over to the painter. Since Kysela was not at home they spent the whole night waiting.