The Radetzky March (26 page)

“Gold, of course!” said Chojnicki as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I know something about chemistry,” he went on. “It’s an old talent in our family. As you can see, I have the oldest and the most modern equipment.” He pointed to the walls. The district captain saw six rows of wooden shelves on each wall. On the shelves stood mortars, small and large paper bags, glass containers as in old-fashioned apothecaries, bizarre glass spheres filled with gaudy liquids, tiny lamps, gas burners, and test tubes.

“Very strange, strange, strange!” said Herr von Trotta.

“And I myself can’t really say whether I’m earnest or not. Yes, sometimes I’m overwhelmed with passion when I come here in the morning, and I read through my grandfather’s formulas and I go and test and laugh at myself and leave. And I keep coming again and keep testing again.”

“Strange, strange!” the district captain repeated.

“No stranger,” said the count, “than anything else I might do. Should I become Minister of Culture? It’s been suggested to me. Should I become section head in the Ministry of the Interior? That’s been suggested to me too. Should I go to court, become Comptroller of the Royal Household? I could do that too; Franz Joseph knows me.”

The district captain shifted his chair back two inches. He felt a pang whenever Chojnicki used the Kaiser’s name as intimately as if he were one of those ridiculous deputies who had been sitting in Parliament since the introduction of universal suffrage with a secret vote, one per person, or as if he were, at best, already dead and a figure in the Fatherland’s history.

Chojnicki corrected himself. “His Majesty knows me.”

The district captain shifted closer to the table and asked, “And why—if you’ll forgive me—would it be just as superfluous serving the Fatherland as making gold?”

“Because the Fatherland no longer exists.”

“I don’t understand!” said Herr von Trotta.

“I assumed you wouldn’t understand,” said Chojnicki. “We are all no longer alive!”

It was very still. The final glint of twilight had long since vanished. Through the narrow gaps of the green blinds they could have seen a few stars in the sky. The broad and blaring chant of the frogs had been replaced by the quiet metallic chant of the nightly field crickets. From time to time they heard the harsh cry of the cuckoo.

The district captain, put in an unfamiliar, almost enchanted state by the alcohol, the bizarre surroundings, and the count’s unusual words, stole a glance at his son, merely to see a close and familiar person. But Carl Joseph too seemed neither close nor familiar to him. Perhaps Chojnicki was correct and they all really no longer existed: not the Fatherland nor the district captain nor his son! Straining greatly, Herr von Trotta managed to ask, “I don’t understand. How can you say the monarchy no longer exists?”

“Naturally!” replied Chojnicki. “In literal terms, it still exists. We still have an army”—the count pointed at the lieutenant—“and officials”—the count pointed at the district captain—“but the monarchy is disintegrating while still alive; it is doomed! An old man, with one foot in the grave, endangered whenever his nose runs, keeps the old throne through the sheer miracle that he can still sit on it. How much longer, how much longer? This era no longer wants us! This era wants to create independent nation-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is
nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. Monarchy, our monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian nations. Our Kaiser is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty; no other is as apostolic, no other majesty in Europe is as dependent on the grace of God and on the faith of the nations in the grace of God. The German Kaiser still rules even when God abandons him; perhaps by the grace of the nation. The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God. But God
has
abandoned him!”

The district captain rose to his feet. He would never have believed there could exist a person in this world who could say that God had abandoned the Kaiser. All his life he had left matters of heaven to the theologians and regarded the church, the mass, the Corpus Christi ceremony, the clergy, and the Good Lord as institutions of the monarchy; but now all at once, the count’s statement seemed to explain all the confusion he had been feeling for the past few weeks, especially since old Jacques’s death. That was it: God had abandoned the old Kaiser! The district captain took a few steps, the old boards creaking under his feet. He went over to the window, and through the gaps in the blinds he saw the narrow stripes of the dark-blue night. All processes in nature and all events of everyday life suddenly achieved an ominous and incomprehensible meaning. Incomprehensible was the whispering chorus of crickets, incomprehensible the twinkling of the stars, incomprehensible the velvety blue of the night, incomprehensible the district captain’s trip to the border and his visit with this count. He returned to the table and ran his hand over one sideburn, as he would do whenever he felt a bit perplexed. A bit perplexed? Never had he been as perplexed as he was now!

In front of him stood a full glass. He swiftly drained it. “So,” he said, “you believe, you believe that we—”

“Are doomed,” Chojnicki completed. “We are doomed, you and your son and I. We are, I tell you, the last members of a world in which God sheds his grace on majesties, and lunatics like myself make gold. Listen! Look!” And Chojnicki stood up, went to the door, turned a switch, and the lights on the large
chandelier shone. “Look!” said Chojnicki again. “This is the age of electricity, not alchemy. Chemistry too, you know! Do you know what this thing is called? Nitroglycerine.” The count articulated each syllable. “Nitroglycerine!” he repeated. “No more gold! In Franz Joseph’s palace they still often burn candles. Do you understand? Nitroglycerine and electricity will be the death of us! It won’t last much longer, not much longer!”

The glow spread by the electric lamps aroused green, red, and blue reflections trembling narrow and broad in the test tubes on the wall shelves. Carl Joseph sat there, pale and silent. He had been drinking all this time. The district captain looked at the lieutenant. He thought of his friend Moser, the painter. And since he himself had already been drinking, old Herr von Trotta, he spotted, as if in a very remote mirror, the wan image of his drunken son under the green trees of the park, with a slouch hat on his head and a large portfolio under his arm, and it was as if the count’s prophetic gift for seeing the historical future had also been granted to the district captain, enabling him to know his offspring’s future. The plates, glasses, bottles, and tureens were half empty and dismal; the lights in the pipes all around the walls shone magically. Two old footmen with sideburns, both of them resembling Kaiser Franz Joseph and the district captain like brothers, started clearing the table. From time to time the harsh cry of the cuckoo fell like a hammer on the chirping of the crickets. Chojnicki held up a bottle. “You have to drink the local” (that was what he called the liquor). “There’s only a bit left!” And they drank the last of the “local.”

The district captain drew out his watch but could not precisely recognize the position of the hands. It was as if they were rotating so swiftly along the white circle of the face that there were a hundred hands instead of the regulation two. And instead of twelve numbers there were twelve times twelve, for they crowded into each other like the strokes indicating minutes. It could be nine in the evening or already midnight.

“Ten o’clock!” said Chojnicki.

The footmen with sideburns gently took the arms of the guests and led them out. Chojnicki’s large barouche was waiting. The sky was very close; a good familiar shell made of a familiar blue
glass, it lay within reach, over the earth. Earthly hands had pinned the stars into the nearby sky like tiny flags into a map. At times the entire blue night whirled around the district captain, rocking softly and then standing still. The frogs croaked in the unending swamps. The air smelled of rain and grass. The horses were ghostly white in front of the black carriage, and over them loomed the coachman in a black overcoat. The horses whinnied, and as soft as cat paws their hoofs scratched the damp, sandy ground.

The coachman clicked his tongue, and off they went.

They drove back along the route they had taken; they turned into the broad, macadamized, birch-lined avenue and reached the lanterns heralding the New Castle. The silver birch trunks shimmered more brightly than the lanterns. The strong rubber wheels of the barouche rolled smoothly and with a dull murmur over the macadam; only the hard thuds of the swift horse hooves could be heard. The barouche was wide and comfortable. They leaned back in it as on a sofa. Lieutenant Trotta was asleep. He sat next to his father. His pale face lay almost horizontal on the upholstered back; through the open window the wind wafted across it. From time to time a lantern illuminated his face. And then Chojnicki, sitting opposite his guests, could see the lieutenant’s bloodless parted lips and his hard, jutting, bony nose. “He’s sound asleep!” said Chojnicki to the district captain. They felt like two fathers of the lieutenant. The district captain was sobered by the night wind, but a vague fear nestled in his heart. He saw the world going under, and it was his world. Chojnicki sat across from him, to all appearance a live man, whose knees sometimes even bumped into Herr von Trotta’s shin, and yet sinister. The old revolver that Herr von Trotta had taken along pressed in his back pocket. What good was a revolver? They saw no bears and no wolves in the borderland. All they saw was the collapse of the world!

The carriage halted in front of the arched wooden gate. The coachman snapped his whip. The two wings of the gate opened, and the white horses gravely strode up the gentle rise. Along the full length of the window facade, yellow light fell upon the gravel and the grassy areas on both sides of the driveway. Voices could be heard, and a piano. It was without a doubt a “party.”

The partygoers had already eaten. The footmen were dashing about with large glasses of gaudy liquors. The guests were dancing, drinking, playing tarot or whist; someone was giving a speech to people who weren’t listening. A few were reeling through the rooms, others were sleeping in the corners. Only men were dancing with one another. The black dress shirts of the dragoons pressed against the blue ones of the riflemen. Chojnicki had candles burning in the rooms of the New Castle. The thick snow-white or wax-yellow candles loomed from huge silver candelabras that stood on stone plate rails and ledges or were held by footmen, who changed every half hour. The tiny flames sometimes trembled in the night breeze drawing in through the open windows. Whenever the piano fell silent for a few moments, one could hear the nightingales warbling and the crickets whispering and, from time to time, the wax tears dripping softly on the silver.

The district captain looked for his son. A nameless fear drove the old man through the rooms. His son—where was he? Neither among the dancers, nor among the reeling drunks, nor among the gamblers, nor among the older, well-bred men who were conversing in nooks here and there. The lieutenant was sitting alone in a secluded room. The huge bulging bottle stood at his feet, loyal and half drained. Next to the thin collapsed drinker it looked tremendous, almost as if it could devour him. The district captain stood in front of the lieutenant. The tips of his narrow boots touched the bottle.

The son noticed two and more fathers; they multiplied by the second. He felt harried by them. It made no sense getting up in front of all of them and paying all of them the respect due to only one. It made no sense, so the lieutenant remained in his strange position—that is, he sat, lay, and crouched simultaneously.

The district captain did not stir. His brain was working very rapidly; it birthed a thousand memories at once. He saw, for instance, Carl Joseph the cadet on the summer Sundays when he had sat in the study, the snow-white gloves and the black cap on his lap, answering every question in a ringing voice and with obedient childlike eyes. The district captain saw the freshly promoted cavalry lieutenant, blue, gold, and blood-red, entering the same room. But now this young man was very remote
from the old Herr von Trotta. Why did it hurt so badly, seeing an alien, drunken rifle lieutenant? Why did it hurt so badly?

Lieutenant Trotta did not stir. He was able to remember that his father had just arrived, and he was able to register that it was not this one father but several fathers standing before him. But he failed to understand why his father had happened to come precisely today or why he was multiplying so intensely or why he himself, the lieutenant, was incapable of rising.

Several weeks ago Lieutenant Trotta had gotten accustomed to the 180 Proof. It never went to your head, it went, as the connoisseurs liked phrasing it, “only to your feet.” First it created an agreeable warmth in your chest. The blood started rolling faster through your veins; appetite replaced queasiness and the desire to vomit. Then you drank another 180 Proof. No matter how cool or dismal the morning, you stepped into it boldly and in the best possible mood, as if it were a sundrenched, happy morning. During halts, you had a snack with fellow officers in the border tavern, near the border forest, where the riflemen drilled, and you drank another 180 Proof. It ran down your throat like a swift fire that snuffs itself. You barely felt that you had eaten. You returned to the barracks, changed, and went to the railroad station for lunch. Even though you had walked a long way, you weren’t at all hungry. And so you drank another 180 Proof. You ate and were promptly sleepy. So you had a black coffee and then another 180 Proof. In short, in the course of the boring day there was never an opportunity not to have a drink. On the contrary: there were any number of afternoons and any number of evenings on which a drink was called for.

For life became easy as soon as you drank. Oh, miracle of this borderland! It made life hard for a sober man, but whom did it leave sober? Whenever he drank, Lieutenant Trotta saw his comrades, superiors, and subalterns as old and good friends. He was as intimate with the little town as if he had been born and bred here. He could step into the tiny shops, which were dark, narrow, convoluted, crammed with all kinds of goods, and dug like hamster holes into the thick walls of the bazaar, and there he could haggle over useless things: false corals, cheap mirrors, a
miserable soap, aspen combs, and plaited dog leashes; he was just cheerfully heeding the calls of the red-haired vendors. He smiled at all the people—the peasant women in their gaudy kerchiefs and with the large bast baskets under their arms, the decked-out daughters of the Jews, the officials of the district administration, and the high school teachers. A broad torrent of kindness and friendliness surged through this small world. Cheerful greetings poured toward the lieutenant from all people. Nor was there anything embarrassing anymore. Nothing embarrassing in his service or outside his service. He implemented everything smoothly and quickly. People understood Onufrij’s language. Occasionally the lieutenant came to one of the surrounding villages; he asked the peasants for directions, and they replied in a foreign tongue. He understood them. He never rode his horse. He lent it to one or another fellow officer: good horsemen, who could appreciate a horse. In a word, he was content. Only Lieutenant Trotta didn’t realize that his gait was unsteady, his blouse had stains, his trousers had no pleat, buttons were missing from his shirt, his skin was yellow in the evening and ashen in the morning, and his gaze had no goal. He never gambled—that in itself calmed Major Zoglauer. There were times in every man’s life when he had to drink. It didn’t matter, it was just a phase! Liquor was cheap. Most of the men were destroyed only by their debts. Trotta was no less neglectful in his work than anyone else. He never made a ruckus like any number of other men. On the contrary, he grew gentler the more he drank. Some day he’ll get married and sober up, thought the major. He has friends in the highest places. He’ll advance quickly. He’ll get into the general staff if he wants to.