The Radetzky March (49 page)

Then he took his hat and cane and went outdoors. All the people greeted him, surprised at his waggling head. Now and then the district captain stopped someone and announced, “My son is dead!” And he did not wait for the stunned man’s condolence; instead he kept walking, toward Dr. Skowronnek. Dr. Skowronnek was in uniform, a medical colonel, at the garrison hospital in the morning, at the café in the afternoon. He rose when the district captain entered, saw the old man’s waggling head, the band on his sleeve, and he knew everything. He took the district captain’s hand and gazed at the trembling head and the fluttering pince-nez.

“My son is dead!” Herr von Trotta repeated.

Skowronnek held his friend’s hand for a long time, for several minutes. Both remained standing, hand in hand. The district captain sat down, Skowronnek put the chessboard on a different table.

When the waiter came, the district captain announced, “My son is dead!” And the waiter bowed very low and brought him a cognac.

“Another one!” the district captain said. He finally removed his pince-nez. He remembered that the announcement of his son’s death had been left on the carpet of his office. The district captain stood up and headed back to the district headquarters. Dr. Skowronnek walked after him. Herr von Trotta didn’t seem to notice. Nor was he the least bit surprised when Skowronnek, without knocking, opened the door to the office, stepped inside, and halted. “Here is the letter!” said the district captain.

That night and many thereafter, old Herr von Trotta did not sleep. His head trembled and waggled on the pillows. Sometimes the district captain dreamt about his son. Lieutenant Trotta was standing in front of his father, his officer’s cap filled with water, and he said, “Drink, Papá, you’re thirsty!”

This dream kept recurring, more and more often. And gradually the district captain managed to call his son every night, and on some nights Carl Joseph showed up several times. Herr von Trotta began longing for night and bed, the day made him impatient. And when spring came and the days grew longer, the district captain darkened the rooms in the morning and the evening, prolonging his nights artificially. His head never stopped trembling. And he himself and everyone else got used to the constant trembling of his head.

The war scarcely seemed to trouble Herr von Trotta. He picked up a newspaper only to conceal his trembling skull. He and Dr. Skowronnek never talked about victories or defeats. Mostly they played chess without exchanging a word. But sometimes one would say to the other, “Do you remember? That game two years ago? You were as unfocused as you are today.” It was as if they were talking about events that had occurred decades earlier.

A long time had passed since the news of the son’s death, the seasons had replaced one another, according to the ancient, steadfast laws of nature, yet were barely perceptible under the red veil of war—least of all to the district captain. His head still trembled constantly like a huge but light fruit on an all-too-thin stem. Lieutenant Trotta had long since rotted or been gobbled up by ravens, which circled over the deadly embankments in those days; but old Herr von Trotta still felt as if he had received the news of his son’s death only yesterday. And the letter from Major Zoglauer, who had likewise already died, remained in the district captain’s breast pocket; it was read anew every day and maintained in its dreadful freshness, the way a grave mound is maintained by loving hands.

What did old Herr von Trotta care about the hundred thousand new corpses that had meanwhile followed his son? What did he care about the hasty and confused directives that came from his superiors week after week? And what did he care about the end of the world, which he now saw coming more clearly than the prophetic Chojnicki had once seen it? His son was dead. His office was terminated. His world had ended.

O
UR SOLE REMAINING
task is to describe the district captain’s final days. They slipped by virtually like one day. Time flowed past him, a broad, even river, murmuring monotonously. The war communiqués and the governor’s extraordinary decrees and directives barely ruffled the district captain’s mind. He would have retired long since anyhow. He remained in office only because of the war. And so at times he felt he was merely living a second, paler life, long after completing his first and real life. His days did not seem to be hurrying toward the grave like the days of all other people. Petrified like his own gravestone, the district captain stood on the brink of days. Never had Herr von Trotta so closely resembled Kaiser Franz Joseph. At times he even dared to compare himself to the Kaiser. He thought of his audience at Schönbrunn, and in the manner of simple old men who talk about a catastrophe that has struck both of them, he would mentally say to Franz Joseph, What? If only someone had told us at the time! Told us two old men!…

Herr von Trotta slept very little. He ate without noticing what was put before him. He signed documents that he hadn’t carefully read. At times, he would appear at the café in the afternoon, before Dr. Skowronnek arrived. Herr von Trotta would then pick up a three-day-old newspaper and read something he was long familiar with. But if Dr. Skowronnek spoke about the latest events, the district captain would merely nod as if he had learned the news long ago.

One day he received a letter. A woman he had never heard of, Frau von Taussig, now a voluntary nurse at the Steinhof Insane Asylum in Vienna, informed Herr von Trotta that Count Chojnicki had returned from the front, insane, several months ago
and that he spoke about the district captain very frequently: in his confused utterances, he kept reiterating that he had important information for Herr von Trotta. And if the district captain happened to be planning a trip to Vienna, his visit with the patient might unexpectedly restore his sanity, as had occurred in similar cases now and then. The district captain consulted Dr. Skowronnek.

“Anything is possible,” said Skowronnek. “If you can stand it—I mean, stand it easily….”

Herr von Trotta said, “I can stand anything.”

He decided to leave immediately. Perhaps the patient knew something important about the lieutenant. Perhaps he had something of the son’s to give the father. Herr von Trotta went to Vienna.

He was taken to the military section of the asylum. It was late autumn, a dreary day; the asylum was shrouded in a gray, persistent rain that had been pouring over the world for days now. Herr von Trotta sat in the dazzling white corridor, peering through the barred window at the denser and softer bars of rain, and thought of the embankment slope where his son had died. Now he’s getting soaked, thought the district captain, as if the lieutenant had died only today or yesterday and the corpse were still fresh.

Time wore by slowly. He saw people shuffling by with deranged faces and gruesomely contorted limbs, but for the district captain madness held little terror, even though this was his first visit to an insane asylum. Only death was terrible. Too bad! thought Herr von Trotta. If Carl Joseph had gone crazy instead of dying in action, I would have brought him back to his senses. And if I hadn’t succeeded, then I would have come to see him every day! Perhaps he would have contorted his arm as horribly as this lieutenant here that they’re walking past me. But it would have been only his arm, and you can caress a contorted arm. You can also look into twisted eyes! So long as they’re my son’s eyes. Happy the fathers whose sons are crazy!

Frau von Taussig came at last, a nurse like any other. He saw only her uniform—what did he care about her face? But she gazed and gazed at him and then said, “I knew your son!”

Only now did the district captain look at her face. It was the face of a woman who had grown old but was still beautiful. Indeed, the nurse’s coif rejuvenated her, as it does all women, because it is in their nature to be rejuvenated by kindness and compassion and also by the external insignia of compassion. She comes from high society, thought Herr von Trotta.

“How long ago,” he asked, “did you know my son?”

“It was before the war,” said Frau von Taussig. Then she took the district captain’s arm, led him down the corridor as she was accustomed to escorting patients, and murmured, “We were in love, Carl Joseph and I.”

The district captain asked, “Forgive me, but was that foolish scrape because of you?”

“Partly because of me,” said Frau von Taussig.

“I see, I see,” said Herr von Trotta. “Partly because of you.” Then he squeezed the nurse’s arm slightly and went on. “I wish Carl Joseph could still get into foolish scrapes because of you!”

“Now let’s go to the patient,” said Frau von Taussig. For she felt tears welling up, and she believed that she mustn’t weep.

Chojnicki sat in a bare room from which all objects had been removed because he sometimes had fits. He sat in a chair whose four feet were screwed into the floor. When the district captain entered, the count stood up, walked toward the guest, and said to Frau von Taussig, “Leave the room, Vally! We have something important to discuss!”

Now they were alone. The door had a peephole. Chojnicki went over to the door, covered the peephole with his back, and said, “Welcome to my home!”

For some unfathomable reason his bald head looked even balder. The patient’s large, blue, somewhat bulging eyes seemed to emanate an icy wind, a frost blasting over the gaunt and bloated yellow face and the wasteland of the skull. From time to time the right-hand corner of Chojnicki’s mouth twitched. It was as if he were trying to smile with that side. His ability to smile had simply lodged in that corner, abandoning the rest of the mouth forever.

“Sit down!” said Chojnicki. “I sent for you in order to give you some important information. Not a word to anyone else!
Nobody but you and me must know about it: the Old Man is dying!”

“How do you know?” asked Herr von Trotta.

Chojnicki, still at the door, pointed his finger at the ceiling, then put it to his lips, and said, “From a higher source!”

Next he turned around, opened the door, cried “Nurse Vally!” and said to Frau von Taussig, who instantly appeared, “The audience is over!”

He bowed. Herr von Trotta left.

He walked down the long corridor, accompanied by Frau von Taussig, and descended the wide steps.

“Perhaps it worked,” she said.

Herr von Trotta took his leave and went to see Railroad Councilor Stransky. He didn’t quite know why. He went to see Stransky, who had married a Koppelmann. The Stranskys were at home. They didn’t recognize the district captain right off. Then they greeted him, embarrassed and nostalgic and aloof at once—so it seemed to him. They served him coffee and cognac.

“Carl Joseph!” said Frau Stransky, née Koppelmann. “When he made lieutenant, he came to see us right away. He was a dear boy!”

The district captain stroked his whiskers silently. Then the Stransky son came in. He limped, it was unsightly. He limped quite severely. Carl Joseph did not limp! the district captain thought.

“They say the Old Man’s dying,” Railroad Councilor Stransky suddenly said.

The district captain instantly rose and left. After all, he knew the Old Man was dying. Chojnicki had told him, and Chojnicki had always known everything. The district captain went to see his boyhood friend Smetana at the Royal Comptroller’s office. “The Old Man’s dying!” said Smetana.

“I’d like to go to Schönbrunn!” said Herr von Trotta. And he went to Schönbrunn.

The thin, relentless drizzle shrouded the castle of Schönbrunn just as it did the Steinhof Insane Asylum. Herr von Trotta walked up the garden lane, the same lane he had followed long, long ago, to the secret audience about his son. His son was dead.
And the Kaiser was dying too. And for the first time since learning of his son’s death Herr von Trotta believed he knew that his son had not died by chance. The Kaiser cannot outlive the Trottas! the district captain thought. He cannot outlive them! They saved his life, and he will not outlive the Trottas.

He remained outside. He remained outside among the people of lower ranks. A gardener in a green apron and with a spade in his hand came from Schönbrunn Park and asked the onlookers, “How’s he doing?” And the onlookers—foresters, coachmen, minor officials, janitors, and war veterans like the father of the Hero of Solferino—replied: “No news. He’s dying!”

The gardener took off, went with his spade to dig up the flower beds, the eternal earth.

Rain was falling, quiet, dense, and increasingly denser. Herr von Trotta doffed his hat. The lower court officials standing there took him for one of their own or for a mailman from the Schönbrunn Post Office. And one or another of them asked the district captain, “Did you know him, the Old Man?”

“Yes,” replied Herr von Trotta. “He once spoke to me.”

“Now he’s dying!” said a forester.

At that moment the priest entered the Kaiser’s bedroom with the Most Holy Sacrament.

Franz Joseph’s temperature was 102.9; it had just been taken.

“I see, I see,” he said to the Capuchin monk. “So this is death!” He sat up in the pillows. He heard the relentless rain outside the windows and now and then the grinding of feet walking across the gravel. To the Kaiser these noises sounded alternately very far and very near. At times he realized that the rain was causing the gentle trickle outside the window. But then he soon forgot that it was the rain. And he asked his physician several times, “Why is it whispering like that?” For he could no longer pronounce the word
trickle
although it was on the tip of his tongue. But after inquiring about the cause of the whispering, he truly believed that all he heard was a whispering. The rain was whispering. The footfalls of people walking by were also whispering. The word and the sounds it signified for him appealed to the Kaiser more and more. Besides, it didn’t matter what he asked, for they couldn’t hear him. He only moved his
lips, but he believed he was speaking, his voice audible if a bit soft, but no different than in the past few days. At times he was surprised that no one responded. But then he promptly forgot both his questions and his surprise at the muteness of the listeners. And once again he surrendered to the gentle whispering of the world, which lived around him while he lay dying—and he resembled a child that gives up all resistance to sleep, compelled by the lullaby and wrapped up in it.