An Ermine in Czernopol (21 page)

The two officers did indeed decline, thanked Năstase, and went back to Tildy to convey everything that had been said, as faithfully as possible, down to the intonation of every syllable.

But before Tildy had a chance to proceed to the next step, he was ordered to see his commanding officer.

Given the exertions of the previous night, it was perfectly understandable that the colonel had shown up late at the barracks the following morning—too late to prevent Tildy from sending his seconds to Năstase. In other words, it took much explaining, and much hard work to activate Turturiuk's memory, before he had any idea what the whole incident was about. But then he began to rage like a rabid buffalo.

Nor was his rage directed solely at Tildy. He roared through all the guardrooms and sleeping quarters of the vast barracks grounds, raged through the stables, inspected the ostensibly freshly groomed horses with a thoroughness that made the long-serving sergeant green with envy, and yelled until his throat hurt when he scratched a fingernail's worth of dust from just below a bad-tempered kicking horse's tailbone. Then he stormed into the arena, where a pack of hapless recruits in a hard trot on the stiffest old training mounts were having what was left of their brains pounded out of their peasant skulls, picked up a longe whip, and took over the instruction himself, until the arena looked like a witch's cauldron. When a bit of tanbark abundantly laden with horse manure landed on the colonel's shoulder, an eager corporal attempted to brush it off, whereupon Turturiuk turned around and soundly slapped the man.

Having thus worked himself into the proper mood, the colonel reminded the first-years on the parade ground of their duties,
blasting away
at them—as the proper term goes—for a good half hour from a practiced throat, and especially upbraiding them for their rampant alcoholism. After that, he meted out a few hefty punishments among the higher ranks, which were bound to set off chain reactions lower down, and then, spurs clanging, his heavy cavalry saber trailing between his Cossack legs, his collar opened down to his chest, his shako boldly shoved into his neck, he marched back into his lion's den.

There the two officers Tildy had sent to Năstase as seconds were already waiting, clearly anything but happy with that assignment. Turturiuk didn't even take the trouble to close the door behind him, but
blasted
them the moment he stepped over the threshold, using expressions the noncommissioned officers would repeat much later in the mess hall, with great awe and admiration, as if the words of a poet. After he had promised to demote them and ship them off to the Okna salt mines for a few years' forced labor, he had them present a fully detailed report on Năstase's reply, though they had to explain to him its sheer malice sentence by sentence. Finally he was ready to face Tildy one-on-one.

Whether because the colonel's anger failed him, like the excessive passion of a lover when he finally holds the object of his desires in his arms, or because Tildy's calm and correct demeanor, his inviolable “English” composure made it impossible to be
blasted
—in any event, the private conversation did not transpire as dramatically as would have been expected. On the contrary: Turturiuk's ire first changed into a sullen paternal grumbling, then into a whiny tone weakly cloaked in coarseness.

To be sure, he did try to begin things with a look that he considered so ferocious a tiger would have crawled away and hid, but which Tildy withstood with an unruffled calm that had not a hint of disdain or disregard—nothing but cool and earnest patience. So the colonel's furious stare turned more and more inward, as if that somehow helped him collect his very scattered thoughts, and swelled into a blank, animal-like gawking that was completely devoid of ideas and imagination, like the remote look of a constipated man following an explosive exertion.

Thanks to his great gift for storytelling, Herr Tarangolian was able give us a vivid recreation of events, and Uncle Sergei didn't spare his own humorous commentaries, so even though we found the incident extremely upsetting, because it concerned our secret idol, the retelling gained something daringly amusing, something fantastic—an inconsistency that placed great demands on our ability to bear the psychological tension, and certainly did nothing to strengthen our character.

I will never forget how masterfully the prefect was able to reproduce Turturiuk's expression, his bloodshot, alcohol-ridden eyes, the befuddled rage rising and dissipating into silliness, the pitiful attempt to remobilize its momentum, and, finally, his complete bewilderment, and the vague realization dawning on him that he had been doomed to lose the match from the very beginning.

Because ultimately the colonel had been forced to break off his lion-taming stare, and since he had evidently lost the connection to the events, he simply stared ahead and sighed. Then he looked at Tildy once again, and, shaking his head, said in his deepest, smokiest, most soldierly bass voice: “Tildy—you! You, Tildy, an officer, a gentleman, a man of decency and reason, a man of form and breeding, an educated man—by all Christendom's holy …” At this point Herr Tarangolian substituted the rest of Turturiuk's expression with a wave of the hand, in consideration of the ladies present. “You, Tildy, a major in one of the most renowned regiments of this country, which you have the honor of serving with your arms—you are bringing disgrace on your flag, disgrace on your comrades, on me, your commander, your fatherly superior, your oldest and only friend—you are disgracing me because you are disgracing yourself! You, whom I have fostered like a relative, defended against resentment and suspicion, you who have grown close to my heart like a mother's weakest child—by the seven church bells of …” Herr Tarangolian made another gesture that unleashed a torrent of laughter from Uncle Sergei. “You, Tildy, a serious man, go and make a fool and a buffoon of yourself in front of all the whoresons of the city, the layabouts and loafers, the procurers and drunks, the sodomites and flaneurs—you hit one of them in my home during a celebration in my honor, and you let another one entangle you in a quarrel and then you send two of your comrades-in-arms, two respectable young people who don't know any better, who don't dare contradict you—you send them to take part in your disgrace—in the disgrace of all of us! And what have we become because of you? Laughable. Or did you expect that this whoreson hack, this gigolo, this little piece of snot and filth would accept your challenge and duel with you? All you could have expected was that he would laugh in your face and mock you. Shame and disgrace, that's what you could have expected. And not just
your
shame and
your
disgrace, but the shame and disgrace of all your comrades, the entire regiment, the shame and disgrace of your colonel and superior officer, who has been like a father to you, who has taught you by his own example, who has led you and protected you! … Or have you forgotten, Tildy, that you were once our enemy? That you once shot at men who are now your comrades? That you killed many of them? If you have forgotten that, then very good, I commend you. But others haven't forgotten that you used to be with the Austrians. The ones who are just lurking in wait ready to pounce on me because I protected and promoted you, now they will have their opportunity. For forty-five years I have been carrying this uniform honorably just so that you can come along, you Austrian, and throw filth on it, and make a clown and a buffoon out of me! So that the idlers on the street can pull each other by the sleeve and say: Look there goes the colonel of the regiment whose officers break out into fisticuffs at his house and who want to have duels with us for no reason at all! Because what did he do to you, this gigolo? He told you that he knows your sister-in-law. That everyone knows her. He wasn't telling you anything but the truth. So you want to challenge a man to a duel because he tells you the truth, is that right? You want to play the knight to defend her honor,
Herr
Major? For your sister-in-law, when every rascal off the street knows that she's a harlot, and can prove it, too! Do you want to hear it from everyone, Herr Major Tildy, that your sister-in-law is a whore? All right, then hear it: your sister-in-law is a whore. There, now you've heard it, Herr Major! But that's not the end of the world, do you understand, you German fool, on the contrary: the world will go on like clockwork, because it's the pure truth that was said there, by all the … sacraments of the devil, the pure truth, and speaking the truth is doing a work that is pleasing to God. You want to shoot a man because he's doing work that is pleasing to God? Fine, Herr Major, so you can duel with me. I am screaming the truth into your face. More than that: I'm going to open this window here and shout out the truth, so that every bastard of a recruit can hear it. And if you want to, Herr Major, then you can have a shooting match with me! Your sister-in-law, do you hear,
is a whore
!”

Naturally Herr Tarangolian substituted a hand gesture for this particular expression as well. But the colonel did not, and before he could catch his breath after this denouement and continue his speech in a more dignified flow, possibly bringing it to a more conciliatory ending, Tildy had turned on his heel and left the room. One hour later, two men appeared as Tildy's seconds and delivered the major's challenge to Colonel Turturiuk.

Tildy had been downright crafty, as Herr Tarangolian assured us, in his choice of seconds. One was a major whose career on the general staff had been ruined by Turturiuk; the other was a lieutenant colonel who had his eye on succeeding Turturiuk as regimental commander. With that, the case became bitterly earnest.

Because it wasn't acceptable for an officer to deliver a direct challenge to his immediate superior, an honor court was convened, but this did not reach a verdict. Of course Tildy was temporarily dismissed from service, and it was clear that his career as an officer was over.

Uncle Sergei discoursed on the affair with cheerful expertise. He considered it a truly tragic conflict of two ethical principles: honor and obedience.

“Permit me to raise an objection,” Herr Tarangolian replied. “Fundamentally you are correct. But with Tildy the matter is different: he should have gone out of his way to prevent the misunderstanding that his challenge was over the wounded honor of his sister-in-law. He could have demanded satisfaction from Năstase for, let us say, a more than insinuating remark about his wife. But not because the man had defamed his sister-in-law. Anyone who knows Colonel Turturiuk—and I appreciate his human, or I might say all-too-human, traits, but one should not overestimate his intellectual capacities on their account—should have expected him to miss this subtle difference in a chain of smug provocations. Tildy, too, should have been prepared for that. His otherwise superior calm, his model self-discipline, should have withstood the—admittedly harsh—test of Turturiuk's loutish behavior, for the clarity of the case.”

“What is this clarity?” Uncle Sergei countered. “Is it not clear enough that he has to have shooting match, no matter who it is with? Take Nikolai Pavlovich Vinogradov …”

Herr Tarangolian parried with a smile. “Excuse me, dear sir, but this is a different situation, and a different epoch as well. What might suit a Lermontovian hero of nineteen years …”

“But Nikolai Pavlovich shot himself when he was twenty-one years, in 1911, and Lermontov,
je vous en prie
, was killed in 1841 in duel with Martinoff. In the Kavkaz. So what you are speaking about?”

Herr Tarangolian maintained his considerate smile. “I am speaking about Lermontov's bold young descendant. What might have redounded to the credit of a young officer of the guard in a golden era—and please believe me when I say that I mourn its passing as well, because I experienced it—what was a beautiful sign of courage and passion, in such a profaned time as ours can be read as an atavistic throwback in a mature man, a relapse into impulsive belligerence … My friend, don't forget: we live in Czernopol.”

“
Eh bien, alors!
And you are not happy to find someone is here who is establishing honor and order?”

A shadow of old, wise melancholy fell across Herr Tarangolian's smile, narrowing it with a shade of irony. “I would welcome such an effort if I thought it might prove successful,” he said. “Because, in this case, failure would be worse than not having attempted it at all. I understand exactly what you mean; I interpreted Tildy's actions in the same way. He is concerned with establishing order within the world he inhabits—the order that he loves so much because it is the only one he knows, the only one he knows exists … At least its appearance is essential. Maybe that would mean something, maybe that would be all that was needed, if the appearance of order were established, don't you think? If it is strong enough that someone is ready to risk his life on its behalf. I see that just as you do. He is a hussar, this strange Nikolaus Tildy. He loves bravery, style, and élan, it's in his blood. To ride out in single combat against the slovenliness of a city, of a country—that is truly a deed for hussars—beautiful and mad. But permit me to say that he did not handle it skillfully. By allowing this mix-up, by letting people think he was demanding satisfaction on behalf of his sister-in-law, by challenging his commander expressly on her account, makes the whole case a farce. With all due respect for chivalry, dueling on behalf of Madame Lyubanarov is more than quixotic: it is the act of a clown. Above all, and what strikes me as even more important, he is no longer championing a pure cause. We should not underestimate the mystical requirements of heroism—or should one simply call this an act of martyrdom? Tildy knows that he is no longer representing a pure cause. You understand me, yes? It is no longer a pure cause, and therefore he will not succeed in defending it with victory. And he knows that. He is no longer setting forth with the beautiful but painful knowledge of the hero who is bound to perish, but with a bad conscience, and therefore he is at fault. For me that is reason enough to declare him the loser. If in my capacity as prefect of this province I should have to decide for or against Tildy—I'm speaking very hypothetically, because in reality this could never occur, since these things are completely outside my sphere of influence—even so, assuming it did come to that, I can say right now without the slightest hesitation that I would decide against Tildy, that I would let him fall. And not out of a sense of justice so much as just to be on the safe side—sheer superstition, if you will. Or else belief—or whatever you choose to call it.”