The Radetzky March (35 page)

I know! thought Franz Joseph. He shook the old man’s hand. He turned around. He mounted his white horse.

He trotted to the left over the hard clods of the autumnal fields, his suite behind him. The wind brought him the words that Captain Kaunitz said to the friend riding at his side: “I didn’t understand a thing the Jew said.”

The Kaiser turned in his saddle and said, “He was speaking only to me, my dear Kaunitz,” and rode on.

Franz Joseph could make no sense of the maneuvers. All he knew was that the Blues were fighting the Reds. He had everything explained to him. “I see, I see,” he kept saying. He was delighted that the others believed he wanted to understand but couldn’t. Idiots! he thought. He shook his head. But they thought his head was waggling because he was an old man. “I see, I see,” the Kaiser kept saying. The operations were fairly advanced by now. For the past two days, the left wing of the Blues, stationed a few miles outside the village of Z, had been constantly retreating from the cavalry of the Reds, who kept thrusting forward. The center held the terrain around P, a hilly area, hard to attack, easy to defend, but also vulnerable to being surrounded if the Reds—and this was what they were now concentrating on—succeeded in cutting the two wings of the Blues off from their center. Though the left wing was in retreat, the right wing never flinched; indeed, it gradually pushed ahead, showing a tendency to fan out, as if intent on circling the enemy’s flank. To the Kaiser’s mind, the situation was quite banal. Had
he
been leading the Reds, he would have kept retreating farther and farther, enticing the impetuous wing of the Blues to focus its combat strength on the outermost lines until he eventually found an exposed position between that wing and the center.

But the Kaiser said nothing. He was distressed by the monstrous fact that Colonel Lugatti, a Triestino, vain as, in Franz Joseph’s unshakable opinion, only an Italian could be, was wearing a high overcoat collar, even higher than was permitted for a tunic; nevertheless he displayed his rank by leaving that dreadfully high collar coquettishly open.

“Tell me, Herr Colonel,” asked the Kaiser, “where do you have your overcoats made, in Milan? Unfortunately, I’ve totally forgotten the names of the Milanese tailors.”

Staff Colonel Lugatti clicked his heels and buttoned his over-coat collar.

“Now people could mistake you for a lieutenant,” said Franz Joseph. “You look young, you know!”

And he put spurs to his white horse and galloped up the hill, where, quite in keeping with older battles, the generals were stationed. The Kaiser was determined to stop the “fighting” if it lasted too long, since he yearned to see the march-past. Franz Ferdinand would certainly take a different approach. He would favor one army, side with it, start ordering it around, and always win, of course. Where was there a general who would have beaten the successor to the throne? The Kaiser’s old pale-blue eyes swept over the faces. Vain sorts, all of them! he mused. A few short years ago he would have been annoyed. But no more, no more! He wasn’t quite sure how old he was, but when the others surrounded him he felt he must be very old. Sometimes he felt he was actually floating away from people and from the earth. They all kept shrinking the longer he gazed at them, and their words reached his ears as if from a remote distance and fell away, indifferent clangs. And if someone met with some disaster, the Kaiser saw that they went to great lengths to inform him gingerly. Ah, they didn’t realize he could endure anything! The great sorrows were already at home in his soul, and the new sorrows merely joined the old ones like long-awaited brothers. He no longer got annoyed so dreadfully. He no longer rejoiced so intensely. He no longer suffered so painfully. Now he did in fact “stop the fighting,” and the march-past was to begin.

They fell in on the boundless fields, the regiments of all branches, unfortunately in field gray (another newfangled innovation that was not to the Kaiser’s liking). Nevertheless, the bloody red of the cavalry trousers still blazed over the parched yellow of the stubble fields, erupting from the gray of the infantrists like fire from clouds. The matte, narrow glints of the swords flashed before the marching columns and double columns; the red crosses on white backgrounds shone behind the
machine-gun divisions. The artillerists rolled along like ancient war gods on their heavy chariots, and the beautiful dun and chestnut steeds reared in strong, proud compliance.

Through his binoculars Franz Joseph watched the movements of each individual platoon; for several minutes he felt proud of his army and for several minutes he also felt sorry to lose it. For he already saw it smashed and scattered, split up among the many nations of his vast empire. The huge golden sun of the Hapsburgs was setting for him, shattered on the ultimate bottom of the universe, splintering into several tiny solar balls that had to shine as independent stars on independent nations.

They just don’t want to be ruled by me anymore! thought the old man. What can you do? he added to himself. For he was an Austrian.

So to the dismay of all the chiefs he descended from his hill and began inspecting the motionless regiments, almost platoon by platoon. And occasionally he walked between the lines, viewing the new kit bags and the bread pouches, now and then pulling out a tin can and asking what was in it, now and then spotting a blank face and asking it about its homeland, family, and occupation, barely hearing the replies, and sometimes stretching out an old hand and clapping a lieutenant on the back. In this way he reached the rifle battalion in which Trotta served.

Four weeks had passed since Trotta had left the hospital. He stood in front of his platoon, pale, gaunt, and apathetic. But as the Kaiser drew nearer, Trotta began to notice his apathy and regret it. He felt he was shirking a duty. The army had become alien to him. The Supreme Commander in Chief was alien to him. Lieutenant Trotta resembled a man who has lost not only his homeland but also his homesickness for his homeland. He pitied the white-bearded oldster who drew nearer and nearer, curiously fingering kit bags, bread pouches, tin cans. The lieutenant wished for the intoxication that had overcome him in all festive moments of his military career: at home, during the summer Sundays, on his father’s balcony, at every parade, when he had received his commission, and just a few months ago at the Corpus Christi pageant in Vienna. Nothing stirred in Lieutenant Trotta as he stood five paces in front of his Kaiser, nothing stirred in his
thrust-out chest except pity for an old man. Major Zoglauer rattled out the regulation formula. For some reason the Kaiser didn’t like him. Franz Joseph suspected that things weren’t quite as they should be in the battalion commanded by this man, and he decided to have a closer look. He gazed hard at the unstirring faces, pointed to Carl Joseph, and asked, “Is he sick?”

Major Zoglauer reported what had happened to Lieutenant Trotta. The name rang a bell in Franz Joseph, something familiar yet irksome, and he recalled the incident as described in the files, and behind the incident that long-slumbering incident at the Battle of Solferino. He could still plainly see the captain who, in a ridiculous audience, had so insistently pleaded for the removal of a patriotic selection from a reader. Selection No. 15. The Kaiser remembered the number with the pleasure aroused by minor evidence of his “good memory.” His mood improved visibly. Major Zoglauer seemed less unpleasant.

“I remember your father very well,” the Kaiser said to Trotta. “He was very modest, the Hero of Solferino!”

“Your Majesty,” the lieutenant replied, “that was my grandfather.”

The Kaiser took a step back as if shoved away by the vast thrust of time that had suddenly loomed up between him and the boy. Yes, yes! He could still recall the selection number but not the legion of years that he had already lived through.

“Ah!” he said. “So that was your grandfather! I see, I see! And your father is a colonel, isn’t he?”

“District commissioner of W.”

“I see, I see!” Franz Joseph repeated. “I’ll make a note of it,” he added, as if vaguely apologizing for the mistake he had just made.

He stood in front of the lieutenant for a while, but he saw neither Trotta nor the others. He no longer felt like striding along the lines, but he had to go on lest people realized he was frightened by his own age. His eyes, as usual, peered into the distance, where the edges of eternity were already surfacing. But he failed to notice that a glassy drop appeared on his nose, and that everyone was staring, spellbound, at that drop, which finally fell into his thick, silvery moustache, invisibly embedding itself.

And everyone felt relieved. And the march-past could begin.

V
ARIOUS MAJOR CHANGES
were occurring in the district captain’s home and life. He noted them, astonished and a bit grim. Minor signs—which, however, he regarded as tremendous—convinced him that the world was changing all around him, and he thought about its doom and about Chojnicki’s prophecies. He was looking for a new butler. Much younger and clearly respectable men with impeccable references had been recommended to him, men who had served in the army for three years and had even made sergeant. The district captain took one or another into his home on a trial basis. He kept none, however. Their names were Karl, Franz, Alexander, Joseph, Alois, or Christoph, or whatever. But he tried to call each one “Jacques.” After all, the real Jacques had originally been christened something else and only adopted this name and proudly borne it his entire long life, the way a famous poet bears his nom de plume, under which he writes immortal songs and poems. Within a few days, however, it turned out that the Aloises, the Alexanders, the Josephs, and the others refused to respond to the illustrious name of Jacques, and the district captain regarded this unruliness not only as insubordination toward him and toward the order of the world but also as an insult to the irrevocable dead. What? They minded being called Jacques? These good-for-nothings without experience or caliber, intelligence or discipline?

The dead Jacques lived on in the district captain’s memory as a servant of exemplary qualities, as the very model of a human being. And surprised as Herr von Trotta was at the unruliness of the successors, he was even more amazed at the carelessness of the employers and authorities who had written favorable references for such miserable wretches. Take a certain individual
named Alexander Cak, a man whose name he would never forget, a name spoken with a certain malice, so that if the district captain pronounced that name, it sounded as if Cak had been shot. Now if it was at all possible that this Cak belonged to the Social Democratic Party, yet had made sergeant in his regiment, then one had to despair not only of this regiment but of the entire army. And the army, in the district captain’s opinion, was the only force that you could still rely on in the monarchy.

The district captain felt as if the whole world were suddenly made up of Czechs—a people he viewed as unruly, hardheaded, and stupid and as the inventors of the very concept of “nation.” A lot of peoples might exist, but no nations. And besides, the governor’s office kept sending him various barely comprehensible decrees and orders detailing a gentler treatment of “national minorities”—one of the terms that Herr von Trotta hated most, for by his lights “national minorities” were nothing but large communities of “revolutionary individuals.” He was totally surrounded by revolutionary individuals. He even thought he noticed that they were multiplying unnaturally, in a way that was not suitable for human beings. It had become quite clear to the district captain that the “loyal elements” were growing less and less fertile and bearing fewer and fewer children, as proved by the census statistics, which he sometimes leafed through. He could no longer squelch the dreadful thought that providence itself was displeased with the monarchy; and although he was, in the usual sense, a practicing but not very devout Christian, he nevertheless tended to assume that God Himself was punishing the Kaiser.

Indeed, he was having all kinds of strange thoughts. The dignity he had borne since the first day on which he had become district captain of W had instantly aged him. Granted, even when his whiskers had still been black, nobody would have ever dreamt of regarding Herr von Trotta as a young man. Yet it was only now that the people in his small town were starting to say that the district captain was growing old. He had been forced to discard all sorts of long-ingrained habits. Thus, since old Jacques’s death and his son’s return from the border garrison, Herr von Trotta had stopped taking his pre-breakfast constitutional,
lest any of the suspect and so frequently changing wretches who served him forgot to place the mail on the breakfast table or open the window. He despised his housekeeper. He had always despised her but had addressed her now and then. Ever since old Jacques had stopped serving, the district captain refused to speak at the table. For in reality his nasty comments had always been for Jacques’s benefit and were, to some extent, meant to court his approval. Only now that the old man was dead did Herr von Trotta realize that he had spoken only for Jacques, like an actor who knows that a seasoned admirer of his art is sitting in the orchestra. And if the district captain had always eaten hastily, he now strove to leave the table after a few nibbles. For he felt it was blasphemous enjoying the garnished roast while the worms were devouring old Jacques in the grave. And if he glanced upward now and then, hoping with an innate piety that the dead man was in heaven and could see him, the district captain saw only the familiar ceiling of his room, for he had abandoned his simple faith, and his senses no longer obeyed the dictates of his heart. Oh, it was dreadful!

Now and then the district captain even forgot to go to the office on normal days. And on some mornings, say, on a Thursday, he would actually slip into his black Sunday coat in order to go to church. It was not until he was outdoors that all sorts of indubitable weekday signs convinced him it was not Sunday, so that he turned around and changed into his everyday suit. Then again he forgot to go to church on some Sundays, while remaining in bed longer than usual and remembering that it was Sunday only when Kapellmeister Nechwal appeared down below with his musicians. Roast garnished with vegetables was served, as on all Sundays. And Herr Nechwal came for coffee. They sat in the study. They smoked Virginia cigars. Herr Nechwal had likewise gotten older. He was due to retire soon. He did not travel to Vienna so often now, and when he told jokes, even the district captain felt he had known them verbatim for years. He still did not understand them, but he recognized them, like certain people he kept running into without knowing their names.