The Radetzky March (40 page)

No one responded. They realized that nothing could be done. And yet each of them had hoped that by gathering in a room they could hit on all sorts of solutions. But now it suddenly dawned on them that terror alone had driven them together because each man dreaded remaining alone with his terror inside his own four walls. However, they also realized that it did them no good to herd together and that every single one of them, although among comrades, was nevertheless alone with his terror. Their heads rose and they exchanged glances and their heads drooped again. They had already sat together like that once before, after Captain Wagner’s suicide. Each of them thought of Captain Jedlicek’s predecessor, Captain Wagner; each of them now wished that Jedlicek too had shot himself. And each of them now had a suspicion that their dead comrade Wagner may have likewise shot himself only to avoid arrest.

“I’ll go to him, I’ll force my way in,” said Lieutenant Habermann, “and I’ll shoot him down.”

“First of all, you won’t be able to force your way in,” retorted Lippowitz. “Secondly, they’re already making sure that he’ll kill himself. As soon as they’ve gotten everything out of him, they’ll hand him a pistol and lock him up.”

“Yeah, right, that’s it!” cried several. They sighed in relief. They began hoping that the captain had already killed himself. And they felt as if all of them, by dint of their own intelligence, had only just introduced this sensible practice of military justice.

“I came within inches of killing someone tonight,” said Lieutenant Trotta.

“Who? How? Why?” they asked chaotically.

“It was Kapturak—you all know him,” Trotta began. He spoke slowly, cast about for words, turned crimson, and when he was done found it impossible to explain why he hadn’t thrust in his saber. He sensed they weren’t following him. No, they didn’t understand him.

“I would have killed him!” shouted one man.

“Me too,” another joined in.

“Me too,” said a third.

“It’s not so easy,” Lippowitz threw in.

“That bloodsucker, that Jew!” someone said—and they all froze upon remembering that Lippowitz’s father was Jewish.

Trotta resumed. “Yes, I suddenly”—and he was extremely surprised that he spontaneously thought of the dead Max Demant and the doctor’s grandfather, the white-bearded king of the innkeepers—“I suddenly saw a cross behind him!”

Someone laughed. Another said coldly, “You were drunk!”

“That’s it!” Hruba finally ordered. “We’ll report all this to Zoglauer tomorrow.”

Trotta peered at each face in turn: limp, weary, agitated faces, yet provocatively cheerful in their weariness and agitation. If only Demant were alive now, Trotta thought. I could talk to him, to the grandson of the white-bearded king of the innkeepers! The lieutenant tried to steal out unnoticed. He went to his room.

The next morning he reported the incident. He narrated it in the army lingo in which he had reported and recounted since boyhood, the jargon that was his mother tongue. But he felt that he hadn’t told everything, not even the gist, and that his experience and the report he was giving were separated by a vast, enigmatic gulf, virtually a whole strange country. Nor did he forget to tell about the shadow of the cross he believed he had seen.

And smiling just as Trotta had expected, the major asked, “How much did you have to drink?”

“Half a bottle,” said Trotta.

“Well, there you are!” Zoglauer remarked.

He had smiled only for an instant, that harried Major Zoglauer. This was a serious issue. The serious issues were piling up, alas. An embarrassing matter—in any case, it had to be reported to a higher authority. But it could wait.

“Do you have the cash?” asked the major.

“No,” said the lieutenant.

And they looked at each other helplessly, with blank, gaping eyes, the poor eyes of men who dared not even admit to themselves that they were helpless. Not everything was covered by
army regulations. You could leaf through the rule books from front to back and then from back to front; not everything was covered! Had the lieutenant done the right thing? Had he reached for his saber prematurely? Had that man done the right thing—loaning a fortune and demanding it back? And if the major were to call all his officers together and confer with them, who could come up with a way out? Who could be wiser than the commander of the battalion? And just what was wrong with this ill-fated lieutenant? It had already cost some effort to hush up that strike business. Disaster after disaster was piling up on Major Zoglauer’s head, disaster over Trotta, disaster over this battalion. He would have gladly wrung his hands, that Major Zoglauer, if only it had been possible to wring one’s hands in the army. And if all the officers in the battalion were to chip in, they couldn’t possibly raise the whole sum for Lieutenant Trotta! And the matter would only get more complicated if the loan were not repaid.

“Why did you need all that money?” asked Zoglauer, but then promptly recalled that he knew everything. He waved his hand. He wanted no details. “Write to your papá, you have to,” said Zoglauer. He felt he had expressed a brilliant idea. And so the report was terminated.

And Lieutenant Trotta went home and sat down and began writing to his papá. He couldn’t do it without liquor. And so he went down to the café, ordered a 180 Proof, plus ink, pen, and paper. He began. What a hard letter! What an impossible letter! Lieutenant Trotta took a few stabs at it, crumpled the paper up, started again. Nothing is more difficult for a lieutenant than describing events that involve him, even endanger him. It turned out on this occasion that Lieutenant Trotta, who had long hated serving in the military, still possessed enough soldierly ambition to avoid being drummed out of the army. And while trying to present the intricate facts to his father,’ he unexpectedly changed into Trotta the cadet, who, on the balcony of his father’s house, had wished to die for Hapsburg and Austria while hearing “The Radetzky March.” So strange, so mutable, and so confused is the human soul.

It took Trotta over two hours to set down the facts of the case. By now it was late afternoon. The cardplayers and roulette
players were already gathering in the café. They were joined by the proprietor, Herr Brodnitzer. His cordiality was unusual and terrifying. He bowed low before the lieutenant, who instantly realized that Brodnitzer wanted to remind him of his scene with Kapturak and his own presence as a witness. Trotta went to look for Onufrij. He walked into the vestibule and shouted Onufrij’s name up the stairs several times. But Onufrij did not respond. Brodnitzer, however, came over and reported, “Your orderly left early this morning.”

So the lieutenant took off for the station himself in order to mail his letter. It was only en route that he realized Onufrij had left without permission. Trotta’s military upbringing dictated anger toward the orderly. He himself, the lieutenant, had frequently slipped off to Vienna—AWOL and in mufti. Perhaps, he thought, the orderly had only been emulating his officer. I’m gonna lock him up and throw away the key! thought Lieutenant Trotta. But he also realized that this phrase was not of his own devising and he didn’t mean it seriously. It was a mechanical formula, forever ready—one of the countless mechanical formulas that replace thoughts and anticipate decisions in military minds.

No, Onufrij had no girl in his village. He had four and a half acres, inherited from his father and looked after by his brother-in-law, and he had twenty gold ten-crown ducats buried in the ground, by the third willow left of the hut, on the path leading to his neighbor, Nikofor. Onufrij had gotten up before sunrise, polished the lieutenant’s boots, brushed his uniform, placed the boots outside the door, and draped the uniform over the chair. He had then taken his cherrywood stick and marched off to Burdlaki.

He hiked along the narrow willow-lined path, the only path that revealed the dryness of the soil. For the willows used up all the wetness of the swamps. On both sides of the narrow path, the gray, ghostly morning fog rose in its many shapes, which billowed toward him, compelling him to cross himself. With quivering lips he kept incessantly murmuring the Lord’s Prayer. Nevertheless he was in high spirits. Now, to his left, came the large railroad storehouses with their slate roofs, reassuring him
somewhat because they stood where he had expected them to stand. He crossed himself once more, this time out of gratitude for God’s goodness, which allowed the railroad storehouses to stand in their usual place.

He reached the village of Burdlaki an hour after sunrise. His sister and his brother-in-law were already out in the fields. He entered his father’s hut, where they lived. The children were still asleep in the cradles, which hung from thick ropes winding around iron hooks attached to the ceiling. He got a spade and a rake from the small vegetable patch in the rear and went off in quest of the third willow to the left of the hut. First he stood with his back to the door and his eyes on the horizon. It took him awhile to convince himself that his right arm was his right, his left arm his left; then he headed left, toward his neighbor Nikofor, to the third willow. Here he began to dig. From time to time he glanced around to make sure no one was watching. No! Nobody saw what he was doing. He dug and dug. The sun rose so fast in the sky that he thought it was already noon. But it was only 9
A.M.

At last he heard the iron tongue of his spade hit something hard and resonant. He put down the spade, began gently caressing the loosened soil with his rake, then tossed the rake aside as well, lay down on the ground, and used all ten fingers to comb away the loose crumbs of damp earth. He touched a linen handkerchief, groped for the knot, and pulled out the cloth. There was his money: twenty gold ten-crown ducats.

He took no time to count them. He stowed the treasure in his trouser pocket and went to the Jewish innkeeper in the village of Burdlaki, a man named Hirsch Beniover, the only banker in the world whom he knew personally.

“I know you!” said Hirsch Beniover. “I knew your father, too. Do you need sugar, flour, Russian tobacco, or money?”

“Money!” said Onufrij.

“How much do you need?” asked Beniover.

“A lot!” said Onufrij—and spread out his arms as wide as he could to show how much he needed.

“Fine,” said Beniover. “Let’s see how much you’ve got.”

And Beniover opened a huge book. This book indicated that Onufrij Kolohin owned four and a half acres of land. Beniover was prepared to lend him three hundred crowns on that.

“Let’s go to the mayor,” said Beniover. He called his wife, told her to mind the store, and he and Onufrij Kolohin went to the mayor.

Here he gave Onufrij three hundred crowns. Onufrij sat down at a brown worm-eaten table and began writing his name at the bottom of a document. He removed his hat. The sun was already high up in the sky. It managed to send its burning rays through the tiny windows of the peasant hut where the mayor of Burdlaki officiated. Onufrij was perspiring. The beads of sweat grew on his low brow like transparent crystal boils. Every letter that Onufrij wrote produced a crystal boil on his forehead. These boils ran, ran down like tears wept by Onufrij’s brain. At last his name was at the bottom of the document. And with the twenty gold ten-crown ducats in his trouser pocket and the three hundred-crown bills in his blouse pocket, Onufrij Kolohin set out on his hike back.

He appeared at the hotel that afternoon. He went into the café, asked where his officer was, and had stationed himself amid the cardplayers when, as carefree as if he were standing in the barrack square, he spotted Trotta. The orderly’s whole broad face beamed like a sun. Trotta glared and glared at him, with tenderness in his heart and severity in his eyes.

“I’m gonna lock you up and throw away the key!” said the lieutenant’s lips, obeying the dictates of his military brain. “Come up to my room!” And Trotta got to his feet.

The lieutenant climbed the stairs. Onufrij followed precisely three steps behind him. They stood in the room.

Onufrij, his face still sunny, reported, “Herr Lieutenant, here is money!” and from his trouser pocket and tunic pocket he pulled out everything he owned; he came over and put the money on the table. Silvery gray bits of mud still stuck to the dark-red handkerchief that had so long concealed the twenty gold ten-crown ducats in the ground. Next to the handkerchief lay the blue banknotes. Trotta counted them. Then he undid the cloth. He counted the gold pieces. Then he added the bills to the
gold pieces in the cloth, reknotted it, and handed Onufrij the bundle.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t take any money from you, do you understand?” said Trotta. “It’s against regulations, do you understand? If I take money from you, I’ll be demoted and drummed out of the army, do you understand?”

Onufrij nodded.

The lieutenant stood there, holding the bundle in his raised hand. Onufrij kept nodding. He reached out and took the bundle. It swung in the air awhile.

“Dismissed!” said Trotta, and Onufrij left with the bundle.

The lieutenant remembered that autumn night in the cavalry garrison when he had heard Onufrij stamping behind him. And he recalled the military humoresques he had read in the slim green-bound booklets at the military hospital. They teemed with poignant orderlies, uncouth peasant boys with hearts of gold. Now Lieutenant Trotta had no literary taste, and whenever he heard the word
literature
he could think of nothing but Theodor Körner’s drama
Zriny
and that was all, but he had always felt a dull resentment toward the melancholy gentleness of those booklets and their golden characters. Lieutenant Trotta wasn’t experienced enough to know that uncouth peasant boys with noble hearts exist in real life and that a lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written.

All in all, Lieutenant Trotta’s experiences amounted to very little.

O
NE FRESH AND
sunny spring morning the district captain received the lieutenant’s unhappy letter. Herr von Trotta balanced the envelope on his palm before opening it. This letter felt heavier than any other he had ever received from his son. It had to be two pages long, a letter of exceptional length. Herr von Trotta’s aged heart filled up with grief, paternal anger, joy, and anxious forebodings. When he opened the envelope, the hard cuff rattled slightly on his old hand. His left hand clutched the pince-nez, which had gotten somewhat shaky during the past few months, and his right hand brought the letter rather close to his face so that the edges of his whiskers rustled softly against the paper. Herr von Trotta was as terrified by the obvious haste of the handwriting as he was by the extraordinary contents. The district captain likewise searched between the lines for any other hidden terrors, for he suddenly felt that the letter did not hold enough and he had long been waiting for the worst news day after day, especially since his son had stopped writing. That was probably why he remained calm when he put the letter down.