The Radetzky March (47 page)

“Let’s have a drink,” said Chojnicki. “You’re getting melancholy.”

They drank. Then Chojnicki stood up and closed the lieutenant’s trunk.

Brodnitzer himself carried the trunk down to the carriage.

“You were a cherished tenant, Herr Baron,” said Brodnitzer. He stood, hat in hand, beside the carriage. Chojnicki was already holding the reins. Trotta felt a burst of affection for Brodnitzer. Farewell! he wanted to say. But Chojnicki clicked his tongue, and the horses tugged at the reins, lifting their heads and tails simultaneously, and the high light wheels of the small carriage crunched across the sand of the street as if rolling through a soft bed.

They drove along between the swamps, which resonated with the din of the frogs.

“This is where you’ll live,” said Chojnicki.

It was a lodge on the edge of the Little Forest; it had green blinds like those on the windows of the district headquarters. The lodge was inhabited by Jan Stepaniuk, an assistant forester, an old man with a long drooping moustache of tarnished silver. He had served in the military for twelve years. Coming home to his army mother tongue, he addressed Trotta as “Herr Lieutenant.” He wore a coarse linen shirt with a narrow collar embroidered in blue and red. The wind billowed the broad sleeves of the shirt, making his arms look like wings.

And here Lieutenant Trotta remained.

He was determined not to see any of his fellow officers. In his wooden room, by the glow of the flickering candle, he wrote letters to his father on yellowish, fibrous official stationery, the salutation four fingers from the top, the text two fingers from the side. All the letters were as alike as timetables.

He had little to do. He entered the names of the day laborers into the huge black-and-green ledgers, the salaries, the requirements of Chojnicki’s guests. He added up the figures, with good intentions but incorrectly; reported on the state of the poultry, the pigs, the fruit that was sold or kept, the small plot where the yellow hops grew, and the kiln, which was leased to a commissioner every year.

He now spoke the local vernacular. He could pick up some of what the peasants said. He dealt with the red-haired Jews, who were already buying wood for the winter. He learned the different values of birches, pines, firs, oaks, lindens, and maples. He pinched pennies. Just like his grandfather, the Hero of Solferino, the Knight of Truth, he counted out hard silver coins with gaunt, hard fingers whenever he came to town for the Thursday pig market to purchase saddles, horse collars, yokes, and scythes, grindstones, sickles, rakes, and seed. If he spotted an officer walking by, he lowered his head. It was an unnecessary precaution. His moustache had grown and thickened; the stubble on his cheeks bristled hard, black, and dense. You could scarcely recognize him.

Everyone was preparing for the harvest. The peasants stood outside their huts, whetting their scythes on the round brick-red grindstones. Throughout the countryside, stone whirred against steel, drowning out the chant of the crickets. At night the lieutenant sometimes heard music and clamor from Chojnicki’s New Castle. He absorbed those voices into his sleep, along with the nocturnal crowing of roosters and the barking of dogs at the full moon. He finally felt content, lonesome, and at peace. It was as if he had never led any other life. Whenever he couldn’t sleep, he would get up, take his stick, walk across the fields, through the many-voiced chorus of the night, wait for morning, greet the red sun, breathe the dew and the gentle singing of the wind that ushers in the day. He felt as fresh as if he had slept all night.

Each morning he strolled through the adjacent villages. “Praised be Jesus Christ!” said the peasants. “Forever. Amen!” Trotta replied. Like them he walked with slightly bent knees. That was how the peasants of Sipolje had walked.

One day he passed through the village of Burdlaki. The tiny church spire stood—a finger of the village—against the blue sky. The afternoon was quiet. The roosters crowed drowsily. The mosquitoes hummed and capered along the village road. Suddenly a peasant with black hair and a full beard emerged from his hut, stood in the middle of the road, and greeted him. “Praised be Jesus Christ!”

“Forever. Amen!” said Trotta, about to move on.

“Herr Lieutenant, I’m Onufrij!” said the bearded peasant. The beard, a dense, black, outspread fan, camouflaged his face.

“Why did you desert?” asked Trotta.

“I only wen’ home,” said Onufrij.

It made no sense asking such foolish questions. He understood Onufrij. He had served the lieutenant just as the lieutenant had served the Kaiser. There was no more Fatherland. It was crumbling, splintering.

“Aren’t you afraid?” asked Trotta.

Onufrij was not afraid. He lived with his sister. The constables went through the village every week without checking anything. Besides, they were Ukrainians, peasants like Onufrij himself. If no one filed a written complaint with the sergeant-major, Onufrij had nothing to worry about. And in Burdlaki no one filed complaints.

“Goodbye and good luck, Onufrij!” said Trotta. He walked up the winding road, which unexpectedly opened into the vast fields. Onufrij followed him as far as the bend. Trotta heard the thumping of the hobnailed military boots on the gravel of the road. Onufrij had taken along his army boots.

Trotta went to the village tavern owned by the Jew Avramtshik. You could buy curd soap here, liquor, cigarettes, tobacco, and postage stamps. The Jew had a fiery red beard. He sat outside the arched entrance of his tavern, shining far and wide, over more than a mile of the road. When he grows old, thought the lieutenant, he’ll be a white-bearded Jew like Max Demant’s grandfather.

Trotta had a drink, bought tobacco and stamps, and left. From Burdlaki the road led past Oleksk to the village of Sosnov, then Bytók, Leshnitz, and Dombrova. He took this route every day. He crossed the railroad tracks twice—two nondescript black-and-yellow
gates and the glassy signals ringing incessantly in the booths. Those were the merry voices of the great world, voices that no longer concerned Baron Trotta. The great world was snuffed out. His years in the military were snuffed out as if he had been walking across fields and along country roads all his life, stick in hand and never with sword at hip. He lived like his grandfather, the Hero of Solferino, and like his great-grandfather, the retired veteran in the castle park of Laxenburg, and perhaps like his nameless, unknown ancestors, the peasants of Sipolje. Always the same route, always past Oleksk, toward Sosnow, toward Bytók, toward Leshnitz and Dombrova. These villages lay around Chojnicki’s castle; they all belonged to him. From Dombrova a willow-lined path led to Chojnicki. It was still early. If Trotta strode faster he would reach the castle by six without running into any of his former comrades. Trotta lengthened his stride. Now he stood under the windows. He whistled. Chojnicki appeared at the window, nodded, and emerged.

“It’s finally come!” said Chojnicki. “The war’s begun. We’ve been expecting it for a long time. But it will still catch us unprepared. I don’t think any Trotta is destined to live very long in freedom. My uniform is ready. I assume we’ll both be marching off in a week or two.”

To Trotta it seemed as if nature had never been so peaceful as at this moment. You could look straight into the sun, it was sinking westward with visible haste. Receiving the sun, a stiff wind came, curling the white cloudlets in the sky, rippling the wheat and rye stalks on the earth, and caressing the red faces of the poppies. A blue shadow floated across the green meadows. In the east the Little Forest sank into dusky violet. Stepaniuk’s white lodge, where Trotta was residing, shone at the edge of the forest, the melting sunlight burned in the windows. The crickets chirped louder. The wind carried their voices far away. There was a moment of hush; he could hear the breathing of the earth. Suddenly a faint, hoarse shrieking came from above, under the sky. Chojnicki raised his arm.

“Do you know what that is? Wild geese! They’re leaving us earlier than usual. The summer’s only half over. They can already hear the gunfire. They know what they’re doing!”

It was Thursday, the day of the “small soiree.” Chojnicki turned around. Trotta slowly walked toward the glittering windows of his lodge.

That night he got no sleep. At midnight he heard the hoarse shrieks of the wild geese. He dressed. He stepped outdoors. Stepaniuk, in his shirt, lay in front of the threshold, his pipe gleaming reddish. He lay flat on the ground and said without moving, “Can’t sleep tonight.”

“The geese!” said Trotta.

“That’s right, the geese,” Stepaniuk confirmed. “I’ve never heard them this early in all my life. Listen, listen!”

Trotta looked at the sky. The stars were twinkling as usual. Nothing else could be seen up there. Yet the hoarse shrieks persisted under the stars.

“They’re practicing,” said Stepaniuk. “I’ve been lying out here for a long time. Sometimes I can see them. They’re only a gray shadow. Look!”

Stepaniuk stretched his gleaming pipe toward the sky. At that instant, they saw the tiny gray shadow of the wild geese under the cobalt blue. They wafted away, a small clear veil, among the stars.

“That’s not all!” said Stepaniuk. “This morning I saw hundreds of ravens, a lot more than usual. Foreign ravens, they’re coming from foreign parts. I think they’re from Russia. Around here people say that the ravens are the prophets among the birds.”

A broad silver stripe ran along the northeastern horizon. It grew visibly brighter. A wind arose. It brought a hubbub of sounds from Chojnicki’s castle. Trotta lay down next to Stepaniuk. He drowsily gazed at the stars, listened to the shrieking of the geese, and fell asleep.

He awoke at sunrise. He felt as if he had napped only half an hour, but at least four hours must have slipped by. Instead of the familiar twittering of birds that greeted every new morning, he heard the black croaking of hundreds of ravens. Stepaniak got up at Trotta’s side. His pipe had grown cold while he slept; he took it out of his mouth and pointed the stem at the surrounding trees. The large black birds sat rigid on the branches—sinister
fruit fallen from the air. They sat motionless, the black birds, only croaking. Stepaniuk tossed stones at them, but the ravens merely flapped their wings a few times. They clung to the branches like fruit.

“I’m gonna shoot,” said Stepaniuk.

He went indoors, he got his rifle, he shot. A few birds tumbled down, the rest seemed not to have heard the blast. They all remained on the branches. Stepaniuk picked up the black corpses. He had bagged a good dozen; he held his quarry in both hands and carried it indoors, blood dripping on the grass.

“Strange ravens,” he said. “They don’t stir. They are the prophets among the birds.”

It was Friday. In the afternoon Carl Joseph walked through the villages as usual. The crickets weren’t chirping, the frogs weren’t croaking, only the ravens were shrieking. They perched everywhere, on the lindens, the oaks, the birches, the willows. Perhaps they always come before the harvest, thought Trotta. They hear the peasants sharpening the scythes, and then they simply gather.

He walked through the village of Burdlaki, secretly hoping that Onufrij would reappear. But Onufrij did not come. The peasants stood outside their huts, grinding the steel on the reddish whetstones. Now and then they looked up. They were worried by the croaking of the ravens and they fired black curses at the black birds.

Trotta walked past Avramtshik’s tavern; the red-haired Jew sat at the entrance, his beard shining. Avramtshik stood up. He tipped his black velvet cap, pointed aloft, and said, “Ravens have come! They’ve been shrieking all day. Wise birds! We’d better watch out!”

“Maybe, yes, maybe you’re right,” said Trotta and walked on, along the familiar willow-lined path, to Chojnicki’s home. Now Trotta stood under the windows. He whistled. No one came.

Chojnicki must have gone to town. Trotta headed there, taking the route across the swamps to avoid running into anyone. Only the peasants used this path A few came toward
him. The path was so narrow they couldn’t go past one another. One person had to stand and let the other squeeze by. All the people who came toward Trotta seemed to be walking faster than usual. They greeted more hastily than usual. They took longer strides. They walked with bent heads like people absorbed in a single weighty thought. And all at once, Trotta spotted the tollgate marking the town limit. There were more people out, a group of twenty or more, now walking in single file.

Trotta halted. He saw they must be workers, bristle workers returning to their villages. Perhaps some of them were people he had fired at. He halted to let them pass. They hurried by mutely, one after another, each with a small bundle on a shouldered stick. The evening seemed to gather more swiftly, as if the hastening people were increasing the darkness. The sky was faintly overcast; the sun was setting red and small; the silvery-gray fog rising over the swamps was an earthly brother of the clouds, striving toward his sisters.

Suddenly all the bells in town began to toll. The wayfarers paused for a moment, listened, and then strode on. Trotta stopped one of the last to ask why the bells were tolling.

“It’s because of the war,” the man replied without looking up.

“Because of the war,” Trotta repeated. It was obvious: war. He felt he had known it since daybreak, since last night, since the day before yesterday, since weeks ago, since his discharge and the ill–fated celebration of the dragoons. Here was the war for which he had prepared himself since the age of seven. It was his war, the grandson’s war. The days and the heroes of Solferino were returning.

The bells tolled endlessly. Now the customs barriers came. The sentry with the wooden leg stood outside his booth, surrounded by people; a radiant black-and-yellow poster hung on the door. The first few words, black on yellow, could be read even from far away. Like heavy beams they loomed over the heads of the assembled onlookers: To MY PEOPLES!

Peasants in short odorous sheepskins, Jews in fluttering black-and-green gaberdines, Swabian farmers from the German colonies wearing green loden coats, Polish burghers, merchants,
craftsmen, and government officials surrounded the customs officer’s booth. On each of the four bare walls a huge poster was pasted, each in a different tongue and starting with the Kaiser’s salutation: To MY PEOPLES! Those who were literate read the text aloud. Their voices mingled with the booming chant of the bells. Some onlookers went from wall to wall, reading the text in each language. Whenever one bell died out, another instantly started booming. Throngs poured from the little town, surging into the broad street that led to the railroad station. Trotta walked toward them into town.