The Radetzky March (10 page)

They took the train home. The district captain put away the documents, cradled his head between the red velvet cushions in the window corner, and closed his eyes.

This was the first time that Carl Joseph saw the district captain’s head in a supine position, the flaring nostrils of his narrow, bony nose, the delicate cleft in the clean-shaven powdered chin, and the whiskers calmly splayed into two small wide
black wings. Their extreme corners were already silvering; old age had already grazed him there and also on the temples. He’s going to die someday, thought Carl Joseph. He’s going to die and be buried. I’m going to remain.

They were alone in the compartment. The father’s slumbering countenance swayed peacefully in the reddish twilight of the upholstery. Under the black moustache, the pale tight lips formed a single line, the bald Adam’s apple on the narrow throat jutted out between the shiny corners of the stand-up collar, the infinitely wrinkled, bluish skin of the closed eyelids quivered steadily and quietly, the wide burgundy tie rose and sank evenly, and the hands were also asleep, buried in the armpits, the arms crisscrossed on the chest. A vast stillness emanated from the sleeping father. Unconscious and appeased, his severity was slumbering too, embedded in the silent vertical furrow between nose and forehead, the way a storm sleeps in the jagged fissure between mountains. Carl Joseph was familiar with this furrow, even intimate. It adorned his grandfather’s face on the portrait in the study: the same furrow, the angry insignia of the Trottas, the legacy of the Hero of Solferino.

His father opened his eyes. “How much longer?”

“Two hours, Papá!”

It began to rain. It was Wednesday. The condolence visit to Slama was scheduled for Thursday afternoon. It rained again on Thursday morning. A quarter hour after lunch, when they were having coffee in the study, Carl Joseph said, “I’m going to the Slamas, Papá”

“There’s only one, unfortunately,” replied the district captain. “You’ll most likely find him in at four.”

At that instant, they heard two clear strokes from the church tower; the district captain raised his forefinger and pointed toward the window, in the direction of the bells. Carl Joseph turned red. It seemed as if his father, the rain, the clocks, people, time, and nature itself were determined to make his trip even more difficult. On those afternoons when he had managed to visit the living Frau Slama, he had also listened for the golden stroke of the bells, as impatient as today, but intent on
not
finding the sergeant in. Those afternoons seemed buried behind many
decades. Death overshadowed and concealed them, Death stood between then and now, inserting his entire timeless darkness between past and present. And yet the golden stroke of the hours was still unchanged—and today, exactly as then, they were sitting in the study and drinking coffee.

“It’s raining,” said his father, as if first noticing it now. “Are you taking a carriage?”

“I like walking in the rain, Papá.” He wanted to say, The road I take must be long, long. Perhaps I should have taken a carriage back then, when she was alive.

It was still. The rain was drumming against the window. The district captain got to his feet. “I have to go over there.” He meant his office. “I’ll see you later.” He shut the door more gently than usual. Carl Joseph felt as if his father were standing outside for a while, eavesdropping.

Now the church bell struck quarter past, then half past. Two-thirty: another hour and a half. He stepped into the hall, took his coat, adjusted the prescribed creases in the back for a long time, tugged his saber hilt through the slit in his pocket, donned the cap mechanically in front of the mirror, and left the house.

H
E TOOK THE
habitual route, under the open railroad barriers, past the sleeping yellow tax office. From here one could already see the lonesome constabulary headquarters. He walked on. The small cemetery with the wooden gate lay ten minutes beyond the headquarters. The veil of rain seemed to cover the dead more densely. The lieutenant touched the wet iron handle; he entered. An unknown bird was warbling desolately. Where might it be hiding? Wasn’t it singing from a grave? He unlatched the cemetery office door; an old woman with spectacles on her nose was peeling potatoes. She let both peels and potatoes drop from her lap into the pail and stood up.

“I would like to see Frau Slama’s grave.”

“Next to last row, Fourteen, Grave Seven!” the woman said promptly, as if she had been expecting this question for the longest time.

The grave was still fresh: a tiny mound, a small temporary wooden cross, and a rain-drenched wreath of glass violets reminiscent of bonbons and pastry shops. K
ATHARINA
L
UISE
S
LAMA
,
BORN, DIED.
She lay below; the fat curling worms were just starting to gnaw cozily on her round white breasts. The lieutenant shut his eyes and doffed his cap. The rain caressed his parted hair with wet tenderness. He paid no heed to the grave; the decaying body under this mound had nothing to do with Frau Slama: dead, she was dead—beyond reach, even though he was standing at her grave. The flesh buried in his memory was closer to him than the corpse beneath this mound. Carl Joseph donned his cap and pulled out his watch. Another half hour. He left the cemetery.

He reached the constabulary headquarters, rang the bell, no one came. The sergeant was not home yet. The rain gurgled
over the dense wild grape leaves shrouding the veranda. Carl Joseph paced to and fro, to and fro, lit a cigarette, tossed it away, felt he must look like a sentry, turned his head whenever his eyes encountered that right-hand window from which Katharina had always looked; he pulled out his watch, pressed the white bell button once again, waited.

Four muffled strokes came slowly from the town’s church tower. Now the sergeant appeared. He saluted mechanically before he even saw who was there. As if responding not to a greeting but to a threat from the sergeant, Carl Joseph exclaimed, louder than he intended, “Good day, Herr Slama!” He stretched out his hand, virtually plunging into the greeting as into an entrenchment, and with the impatience of a man bracing himself for an attack he awaited the sergeant’s clumsy preparations, his strenuous effort in stripping off his wet cotton glove and his sedulous devotion to this enterprise and his lowered gaze. At last, the bare hand settled, damp, broad, and slack, into the lieutenant’s hand.

“Thank you for calling, Herr Baron!” said the sergeant, as if the lieutenant had not just arrived but were about to leave. The sergeant pulled out the key. He unlocked the door. A gust of wind lashed the pattering rain against the veranda. It seemed to be driving the lieutenant into the house. The hallway was gloomy. Didn’t a narrow streak light up, narrow, silvery, an earthly trace of the dead woman?

The sergeant opened the kitchen door; the streak drowned in the flooding light. “Please take off your coat,” said Slama. He was still in his, the belt still buckled.

My sincere condolences! thinks the lieutenant. I’ll say it fast and then leave. Slama’s arms are already widening to remove Carl Joseph’s coat. Carl Joseph yields to the courtesy, Slama’s hand momentarily grazes the back of the lieutenant’s neck, the hairline above the collar, the very place where Frau Slama’s hands used to interlock, a tender clasp of the beloved chain. When, at which exact point, can you finally unload the condolence formula? When entering the parlor or only after sitting down? Do you then have to stand up again? It’s as if you couldn’t utter the slightest sound until you say those stupid words—
something you’ve brought along and carried in your mouth the whole time. It lies on the tongue, burdensome and useless, with a stale taste.

The sergeant pushes down the door handle; the parlor is locked. He says, “Excuse me!” although it is not his fault. He reaches back into the pocket of the coat, which he has already taken off—it seems very long ago—and jingles the keys. This door was never locked when Frau Slama was alive.

So she’s not here! the lieutenant suddenly thinks, as if he had not come here because she simply is not here anymore, and he notices that all this time he has secretly believed that she could be here, sitting in a room and waiting. Now she is undeniably no longer here. She is truly lying outside, in the grave he has just seen.

A damp smells lingers in the parlor. Of the two windows one is curtained; the gray light of the dreary day floats through the other. “Please step in,” the sergeant says. He is right behind the lieutenant.

“Thank you,” says Carl Joseph. And he steps in and walks to the round table; he is quite familiar with the pattern of the ribbed cloth covering it, and the small jagged stain in the middle, the brown finish, and the curlicues of the grooved feet. There stands the sideboard with its glass doors, nickel-silver beakers behind them and small porcelain figures and a yellow clay pig with a slot for coins on its back.

“Please do me the honor of having a seat,” the sergeant murmurs. He stands behind a chair, his hands clutching its back; he holds it out like a shield.

Carl Joseph last saw him over four years ago. The sergeant was on duty then. He wore a scintillating panache on his black helmet; straps crisscrossed his chest; he stood with ordered arms, waiting outside the district captain’s office. He was Sergeant Slama, his name was like his rank, both the panache and the blond moustache were part of his physiognomy. Now the sergeant stands there bareheaded, no saber, no strap or belt; one sees the greasy luster of the ribbed uniform cloth on the slight curve of the belly over the back of the chair, and he is no longer the Sergeant Slama of those days, he is Herr Slama, a constable
sergeant on duty, once the husband of Frau Slama and now a widower and master of this house. His close-cropped blond hair lies, parted down the middle, like a small double brush over the uncreased chin with the horizontal reddish stripes left by the permanent pressure of the hard cap. Without cap or helmet, his head is orphaned. The face without the shade of the visor is a perfect oval, filled out with cheeks, nose, moustache, and small, blue, stubborn, guileless eyes. He waits for Carl Joseph to sit down, then shifts his own chair, likewise sits down, and pulls out his cigarette case. Its lid is made of particolored enamel. The sergeant puts the case in the center of the table, between him and the lieutenant, and says, “Would you care for a cigarette?”

It is time to express my condolences, Carl Joseph thinks to himself. He stands up and says, “My sincere condolences, Herr Slama!”

The sergeant sits with both hands in front of him on the edge of the table, appears not to grasp what is happening, tries to smile, rises too late just as Carl Joseph is about to sit down again; the sergeant takes his hands from the table and puts them on his trousers, lowers his head, raises it, looks at Carl Joseph as if asking what to do. They sit down again. It is over. They are silent.

“She was a fine woman, Frau Slama; may she rest in peace!” says the lieutenant.

The sergeant puts his hand on his moustache and says, with a wisp of it between his fingers, “She was beautiful. The Herr Baron knew her, didn’t you?”

“I knew her, your wife. Was her death easy?”

“It took two days. By the time we sent for the doctor it was too late. Otherwise she would’ve survived. I had night duty. When I got home, she was dead. The financier’s wife across the road was with her.” And hard upon it: “Would you care for a raspberry drink?”

“Thank you, yes!” says Carl Joseph in a clearer voice, as if the raspberry drink could entirely alter the situation, and he sees the sergeant stand up and go to the sideboard, and he knows there is no raspberry drink there. It is in the kitchen, in the white cabinet, behind glass; that was where Frau Slama always got it. He closely watches all the sergeant’s movements, the short
strong arms in the tight sleeves, stretching to find the bottle on the top shelf, then sinking helplessly as his tiptoeing feet drop back on their soles; and Slama, virtually coming home from a foreign territory to which he has gone on a superfluous and, alas, unsuccessful expedition, turns around and with touching despair in his shiny blue eyes makes a simple announcement: “Please forgive me, I’m afraid I can’t find it.”

“It doesn’t matter, Herr Slama,” the lieutenant consoles him.

But, as if not hearing this solace or as if obeying a command that, expressly issued by a higher authority, can brook no interference from subalterns, the sergeant leaves the room. He can be heard rummaging in the kitchen; he comes back, bottle in hand, removes glasses with matte rim decorations from the sideboard, places a carafe of water on the table, pours the viscous ruby-red liquid from the dark-green bottle, and repeats, “Please do me the honor, Herr Baron!” The lieutenant pours water from the carafe into the raspberry juice; they remain silent. The water plunges from the sinuous mouth of the carafe, splashes a bit, and is like a small response to the tireless pouring of the rain outside, which they have been hearing all along. The rain, they know, envelops the lonesome house and seems to make the two men even more lonesome. They are alone. Carl Joseph raises his glass, the sergeant does likewise; the lieutenant tastes the sweet, sticky liquid. Slama drains his glass at one draught, he’s thirsty, a strange, inexplicable thirst on this cool day.

“Joining the Tenth Lancers?” asks Slama.

“Yes. I don’t know which regiment.”

“I know a sergeant there, Zenower, he’s in the audit department. He and I served with the riflemen, then he transferred. A great guy, very educated! He’s sure to pass the officer’s exam. People like us stay put. There are no prospects in the constabulary.”

The rain has grown more intense, the gusts are more vehement, the drops keep pelting the window. Carl Joseph says, “It’s generally difficult in our profession—I mean the military!” The sergeant bursts into a puzzling laughter; he seems utterly delighted that the profession practiced by him and the lieutenant is a difficult one. He laughs a bit harder than he intends. You can
tell by his mouth, which is wider open than his laughter requires and which remains open longer than it lasts. So for an instant the sergeant, if only for physical reasons, might seem to have trouble regaining his normal earnest self. Is he truly delighted that he and Carl Joseph have such a difficult life?