The Radetzky March (19 page)

Lieutenant Trotta rode in the second squadron as on any other day. The matte breath of the frost beaded on the sheaths of the heavy sabers and on the barrels of the light carbines. The frozen bugles awoke the sleeping town. The coachmen in their thick furs, at their usual station, raised their bearded heads. When the regiment reached the water meadow and dismounted, and the troops as usual formed a double line for early morning exercises, Lieutenant Kindermann stepped over to Carl Joseph and said, “Are you sick? Do you have any idea what you look like?” He pulled out a coquettish pocket mirror and held it up to Trotta’s eyes. In the small shimmering rectangle, Lieutenant Trotta spotted an ancient face that he was very familiar with: small black glowing eyes, the sharp bony ridge of a large nose, hollow ashen cheeks, and long thin clenched bloodless lips, which, like an old saber scar, isolated the chin from the moustache. Only that small brown moustache seemed alien to Carl Joseph. At home, under the ceiling of his father’s study, his grandfather’s blurring face had been stark naked.

“Thank you for asking,” said the lieutenant. “I didn’t sleep last night.” He walked off the drill grounds.

He veered left, between the trunks, where a path branched off to the wide highway. It was seven-forty. No shots had been heard. Everything’s fine, everything’s fine, he told himself; a miracle has occurred! Within ten minutes at the latest, Major Prohaska is sure to come riding along; then I’ll know everything. He could hear the hesitant noises of the small town awakening and the long shriek of a locomotive at the station.

When the lieutenant reached the spot where the path joined the highway, the major appeared on his chestnut; Lieutenant Trotta saluted.

“Good morning!” said the major, and nothing more. The narrow path was not wide enough for both horseman and pedestrian. So Lieutenant Trotta followed the riding major. Some two minutes from the water meadow—the commands of the junior officers could already be heard—the major pulled up, half turned in his saddle, and said only, “Both!” Then, riding on, he added, more to himself than to the lieutenant, “There was simply no way out.”

That day the regiment returned to the barracks a good hour earlier than usual. The bugles blared as on all other days. In the afternoon, the junior officers on duty read Colonel Kovacs’s announcement to the troops: Captain Count Tattenbach and Regimental Surgeon Dr. Demant had each died a soldier’s death for the honor of the regiment.

B
ACK THEN, BEFORE
the Great War, when the incidents reported on these pages took place, it was not yet a matter of indifference whether a person lived or died. If a life was snuffed out from the host of the living, another life did not instantly replace it and make people forget the deceased. Instead, a gap remained where he had been, and both the near and distant witnesses of his demise fell silent whenever they saw this gap. If a fire devoured a house in a row of houses in a street, the charred site remained empty for a long time. For the bricklayers worked slowly and leisurely, and when the closest neighbors as well as casual pas-sersby looked at the empty lot, they remembered the shape and the walls of the vanished house. That was how things were back then. Anything that grew took its time growing, and anything that perished took a long time to be forgotten. But everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically.

For a long time, the deaths of the regimental surgeon and Count Tattenbach stirred the emotions of the officers and troops of the lancer regiment and also the civilian populace. The deceased were buried according to the prescribed military and religious rites. Beyond their own ranks none of the officers had breathed a word about the manner of the deaths, but somehow the news had traveled through the small garrison that both men had fallen victim to their strict code of honor. And it was as if the forehead of every surviving officer now bore the mark of a close, violent death, and for the shopkeepers and craftsmen in the small town the foreign gentlemen had become even more foreign. The officers went about like incomprehensible worshipers
of some remote and pitiless deity, but also like its gaudily clad and splendidly adorned sacrificial animals. People stared after them, shaking their heads. They even felt sorry for them. They have lots of privileges, the people told one another. They can strut around with sabers and attract women, and the Kaiser takes care of them personally as if they were his own sons. And yet before you can even bat an eyelash, one of them insults another, and the offense has to be washed away with blood!

So the men they were talking about were truly not to be envied. Even Captain Taittinger, who was rumored to have participated in several fatal duels in other regiments, altered his normal behavior. While the loud-mouthed and flippant were now silent and subdued, a strange uneasiness took hold of the usually soft-spoken, sweet-toothed, and haggard rittmaster. He could no longer spend hours sitting alone behind the glass door of the little pastry shop, devouring pastries or else wordlessly playing chess or dominoes with himself or with the colonel. Taittinger was now afraid of solitude. He literally clung to the other men. If no fellow officer was nearby, he would enter a shop to buy something he did not need. He would stand there for a long time, chatting with the storekeeper about useless and silly things, unable to make up his mind to leave—unless he spotted some casual acquaintance passing outside, whereupon Taittinger would instantly pounce on him. That was how greatly the world had changed. The officers’ club remained empty. They stopped their convivial outings to Frau Resi’s establishment. The orderlies had little to do. If an officer ordered a drink, he would look at the glass and muse that it was the very one from which Tattenbach had drunk just a couple of days ago. They still told the old jokes, but they no longer guffawed loudly; at most, they smiled. Lieutenant Trotta was seen only on duty.

It was as if a swift magical hand had washed the tinge of youth from Carl Joseph’s face. No similar lieutenant could have been found in the entire Imperial and Royal Army. He felt he had to do something extraordinary now, but nothing extraordinary could be found far and wide. Needless to say, he was to leave the regiment and join another. But he looked about for
some difficult task. He was really looking for a self-imposed penance. He could never have put it into words, but we may say that he was unspeakably afflicted by the thought of having been a tool in the hands of misfortune.

It was in this state of mind that he informed his father about the outcome of the duel and announced his unavoidable transfer to a different regiment. Although entitled to a brief furlough on this occasion, he concealed this from his father, for he was afraid to face him. But as it turned out, he underestimated the old man. For the district captain, that model of a civil servant, was well aware of military customs. And strangely enough, as could be read between the lines, he also seemed to know how to deal with his son’s sorrow and confusion. For the district captain’s answer went as follows:

Dear Son,

Thank you for your precise account and for your confidence. The fate your comrades met with touches me deeply. They died a death that befits men of honor.

In my day, duels were more frequent and honor far more precious than life. In my day, officers, it seems to me, were also made of sterner stuff. You are an officer, my son, and the grandson of the Hero of Solferino. You will know how to cope with your innocent and involuntary involvement in this tragic affair. Naturally you are sorry to leave the regiment, but you will still be serving our Kaiser in any regiment, anywhere in the army.

Your father,
Franz von Trotta

P.S. As for your two-week furlough, to which you are entitled with your transfer, you may spend it as you wish, either in my home or, even better, in your new garrison town, so that you may more easily familiarize yourself with your new situation.

F.v.T.

Lieutenant Trotta read the letter not without a sense of shame. His father had guessed everything. In the lieutenant’s eyes, the district captain’s image grew to an almost fearful magnitude. Indeed, it soon equaled his grandfather’s. And if the lieutenant had previously been afraid of facing the old man, it was now
impossible for him to spend his furlough at home. Later, later, when I get my regular furlough, thought the lieutenant, who was made of less stern stuff than the lieutenants of the district captain’s youth.

Naturally you are sorry to leave the regiment
, his father had written. Had he written it because he sensed that the opposite was true? What would Carl Joseph have been sorry to leave? This window, perhaps, the view of the troop rooms, the troops themselves perching on their cots, the mournful sounds of their harmonicas and the singing, the distant songs that sounded like uncomprehended echoes of similar songs crooned by the peasants in Sipolje. Perhaps he should go to Sipolje, the lieutenant wondered. He went over to the strategic map, the only wall decoration in this room. He could have found Sipolje in his sleep. It lay in the extreme south of the monarchy—the good, quiet village. The tiny hair-thin black letters spelling out the name of Sipolje were in the midst of a lightly cross-hatched pale brown. Nearby were: a draw well, a water mill, the small station of a monorail, a church and a mosque, a young broad-leafed wood, narrow forest trails, dirt roads, and lonesome cottages. It is evening in Sipolje. At the well, the women stand in particolored kerchiefs tinted golden by the glowing sunset. The Muslims lie in prayer on the old rugs in the mosque. The tiny engine of the forest train clangs through the dense dark green of the firs. The water mill clatters, the brook murmurs.

It was the intimate game he had played as a cadet. The familiar images emerged instantly. His grandfather’s enigmatic gaze shone over everything else. There was probably no cavalry garrison nearby, so he would have to transfer to the infantry. It was not without pity that the mounted comrades looked down at the foot soldiers; it was not without pity that they would look down at the transferred lieutenant. His grandfather had likewise been a simple infantry captain. Marching across his native soil would almost mean coming home to his peasant forebears. They trudged across the hard clods with heavy feet, they plunged the plow into the rich flesh of the fields, they scattered the fruitful seeds with gestures of blessing. No! The lieutenant was not the least bit sorry to leave this regiment—perhaps to leave the
cavalry. His father would have to give his consent. The lieutenant would have to pass an infantry training course, a bit tedious perhaps.

He had to make his farewells. A small soiree at the officers’ club. A round of drinks. A brief speech by the colonel. A bottle of wine. Cordial handshakes with his comrades. They were already whispering behind his back. A bottle of champagne. Perhaps—who knows?—they would end the evening with a full-strength march to Frau Resi’s place. Another round of drinks. Ah, if only these farewells were done with! He would take his orderly Onufrij to the new post. He could not struggle with a new name. He could avoid visiting his father. On the whole, he would try to escape all tedious and difficult aspects of transferring. Of course, he still had the hard, hard task of calling on Dr. Demant’s widow.

What a task! Lieutenant Trotta tried to convince himself that after her husband’s funeral Frau Eva Demant had gone back to her father in Vienna. So Trotta thought to stand outside the house, ringing and ringing in vain, find out her Viennese address, and write her a terse and extremely sympathetic letter. It is very pleasant to think that you have only one letter to write. You are anything but brave, the lieutenant thought simultaneously. Didn’t he constantly feel his grandfather’s dark, enigmatic gaze on the back of his neck? Who could say how woefully he would stagger through this arduous life? He was brave only when he thought about the Hero of Solferino. He had to keep returning to his grandfather for a bit of strength.

The lieutenant slowly set out to perform his hard chore. It was three in the afternoon. The small storekeepers, wretched and frozen, stood outside their doors, waiting for their rare customers. From the workshops of the craftsmen came familiar productive noises. A cheerful hammering resounded from the smithy, a hollow metallic thunder rattled from the plumber’s shop, a swift clattering rose from the cobbler’s basement, and saws ground in the cabinetmaker’s workshop. The lieutenant knew all the faces and all the noises of these workshops. He rode past them twice a day. From his saddle he could see over the old blue-and-white signs, his head looming above them. Every day
he saw the morning interiors of the upstairs rooms, the beds, the coffeepots, the men in shirtsleeves, the women with their hair down, the flowerpots on the windowsills, pickles and dried fruit behind ornamental ironwork.

Now he stood outside Dr. Demant’s house. The gate creaked. He entered. The orderly opened the front door. The lieutenant waited. Frau Demant came. He trembled slightly. He remembered the condolence visit he had paid Sergeant Slama. He felt the sergeant’s heavy, clammy, loose handshake. He saw the dark vestibule and the reddish parlor. His palate had the stale aftertaste of the raspberry drink. So she’s not in Vienna, the lieutenant thought, the instant he spied the widow. He was surprised by her black dress. It was as if this were his first inkling that Frau Demant was the wife of the regimental surgeon. Nor was the room he now entered the same one he had sat in when his friend had been alive. On the wall hung a large crape-lined portrait of the dead man. It kept shifting farther away, like the Kaiser at the officers’ club, as if it were not close to the eyes and within reach of the hands but unattainably far behind the wall, as if seen through a window.

“Thank you for coming,” said Frau Demant.

“I wanted to say goodbye,” replied Trotta.

Frau Demant raised her wan face. The lieutenant saw the lovely bright-gray shine of her large eyes. They were focused straight on his face, two round lights of glittering ice. In the twilight of the winter afternoon, all that shone was the woman’s gaze. The lieutenant’s eyes darted to her narrow white forehead and then to the wall, to the remote portrait of her dead husband. These preliminaries were dragging on far too long. It was time Frau Demant asked him to sit. But she said nothing. Yet one could feel the darkness of the nearby evening falling through the window, and he childishly feared that no light would ever be switched on in this house. No suitable words came to the lieutenant’s rescue. He could hear the woman’s quiet breathing.