The Radetzky March (17 page)

“That’s Trotta!” Schlegel echoed.

“We ought to look in on him.”

“He won’t like it!”

They jingled through the corridor, halted at Lieutenant Trotta’s door, and listened. Nothing stirred. First Lieutenant Schlegel reached for the knob but did not turn it. He withdrew his hand, and the two men walked off. They exchanged nods and entered their rooms.

Lieutenant Trotta had indeed not heard them. For the past four hours, he had been struggling to write his father a detailed letter. He could not get beyond the opening lines.

Dear Father,
he began,
I have innocently and unintentionally been the cause of a tragic affair of honor.
His hand was heavy. A dead, useless tool, it hovered with the trembling pen over the paper. This was the first difficult letter in his life. The lieutenant felt he could not possibly wait for the outcome of the affair before
writing to the district captain. Ever since the disastrous quarrel between Tattenbach and Demant, Trotta had been putting off the letter from one day to the next. But there was no possibility of not sending it today. Today, before the duel. What would the Hero of Solferino have done in his place? Carl Joseph felt his grandfather’s imperious gaze on the back of his neck. The Hero of Solferino dictated terse resoluteness to the timid grandson. He must write, instantly, on the spot. Why, he should have gone straight to his father. Between the dead Hero of Solferino and the wavering grandson stood the father, the district captain, the guardian of honor, the custodian of the legacy. The blood of the Hero of Solferino rolled alive and red in the district captain’s veins. By not telling his father in time, Carl Joseph would appear to be hiding something from his grandfather as well.

But in order to write this letter, he had to be as strong as his grandfather, as simple, as resolute, as close to the peasants of Sipolje. Trotta was only the grandson! This letter was a dreadful interruption in the leisurely routine of weekly reports that all sounded alike and that the sons in the Trotta family had always written to their fathers. A gory letter; it had to be written.

The lieutenant went on:

I had gone on a harmless stroll
—
albeit around midnight
—
with the wife of our regimental surgeon. The circumstances left me no choice. We were seen by other officers. Captain Tattenbach, who, unfortunately, is often drunk, made a shoddy insinuation aimed at the physician. Tomorrow morning at seven-twenty, the two men are shooting it out. I will probably be forced to challenge Tattenbach if he survives, as I hope he does. The conditions are stringent.

Your dutiful son,

Carl Joseph Trotta, Lieutenant

P.S. I may even have to leave the regiment.

Now the lieutenant felt the worst was over. But when his eyes wandered across the shadowy ceiling, he suddenly saw his grandfather’s admonishing face. Next to the Hero of Solferino he believed he also saw the white-bearded face of the Jewish tavern keeper, whose grandson was Regimental Surgeon Dr. Demant.
The dead seemed to be calling the living, and it was as if he himself would be reporting for the duel by tomorrow morning, at seven-twenty. Reporting for the duel and falling. Falling! Falling and dying!

On those long-vanished Sundays when Carl Joseph had stood on his father’s balcony while Herr Nechwal’s military band had intoned “The Radetzky March,” it would have been a bagatelle to fall and die. The cadet at the Imperial and Royal Military Academy had been intimate with the notion of death, but it had been a very remote death. Tomorrow morning, seven-twenty, Death was waiting for his friend, Dr. Demant; the day after tomorrow, or in a few days, for Lieutenant Carl Joseph von Trotta. Oh, horror and darkness! To be the cause of Death’s black arrival and finally to be his victim! And should he not become his victim, how many corpses still lined the roadway? Like milestones on other men’s roads, the gravestones lay along Trotta’s road. He was certain he would never see his friend again, just as he had never seen Katharina again. Never again! In front of Carl Joseph’s eyes, this word stretched out without shore or limit, a dead sea of numb eternity. The little lieutenant clenched his white weak fist against the grand black law, which rolled up the headstones but set no dam against the relentlessness of
never
and refused to illuminate the everlasting darkness. He clenched his fist; he stepped over to the window to raise his fist against heaven. But he raised only his eyes. He saw the cold twinkling of the winter stars. He remembered the night, the last time he had walked with Dr. Demant, from the barracks to the town. The last time, he had known then.

Suddenly he felt a longing for his friend and also the hope that it was still possible to save the doctor. It was one-twenty. Dr. Demant had six more hours to live, six big hours. Now this time span seemed almost as mighty to the lieutenant as the shoreless eternity had seemed. He dashed over to the clothes hook, strapped on his saber and yanked on his coat, hurried along the corridor and practically soared down the stairs, raced across the nocturnal rectangle of the parade ground, out the gates, past the sentry, ran through the silent landscape, reached the little town in ten minutes and, a while later, the only sleigh that was on
lonely night duty; and he glided amid the comforting jingling toward the southern edge of the town, toward the physician’s house. Behind the gate the small house slept with sightless windows. Trotta rang the bell. The hush continued. He shouted Dr. Demant’s name. Nothing stirred. He waited. He told the coachmen to crack his whip. No one responded.

Had he been looking for Count Tattenbach, it would have been easy The night before his duel he was probably at Frau Resi’s, drinking his own health. But there was no guessing where Dr. Demant might be. Perhaps he was walking the streets of the town. Perhaps he was strolling among the familiar graves, already seeking his own.

“The cemetery!” the lieutenant ordered the startled coachman.

Not far from here the cemeteries lay side by side. The sleigh halted at the old wall and the locked gate. Trotta got out. He walked over to the gate. Heeding the crazy whim that had driven him here, he cupped his hands on his mouth and in an alien voice, which came like a wailing from his heart, he called Dr. Demant’s name to the graves. He himself believed, while shouting, that he was already calling the dead man and no longer the living man; and he took fright and began trembling like one of the naked shrubs between the graves, over which the winter night storm was now whistling; and the saber rattled on the lieutenant’s hip.

The coachman, on the box of the sleigh, was terrified of his passenger. He thought, simple as he was, that the officer was either a ghost or a madman. But he was too scared to whip his horse and drive off. His teeth chattered; his heart raced wildly against the thick coat of cat fur.

“Please get in, Herr Officer,” he said.

The lieutenant obeyed. “Back to town!” he said. In the town, he got out and trudged conscientiously through the narrow winding alleys and across the small squares. The tinny strains of a pianola blaring somewhere through the nocturnal hush gave him a momentary goal; he hurried toward the metallic rattle. It resounded through the dimly lit glass door of a tavern near Frau Resi’s establishment, a tavern patronized by the troops but off limits to officers. The lieutenant stepped up to the brightly
glowing window and peered over the reddish curtain into the taproom. He could see the counter and the haggard proprietor in shirtsleeves. At one table, three men, likewise in shirtsleeves, were playing cards; at another table, a corporal was sitting, with a girl at his side and beer glasses in front of them. In the corner, a man sat alone, holding a pencil, hunched over a sheet of paper. He wrote something, broke off, sipped a drink, and stared into space. All at once his glasses focused on the window. Carl Joseph recognized him: it was Dr. Demant in mufti.

Carl Joseph knocked on the glass door; the tavern keeper came over; Carl Joseph asked him to send out the gentleman sitting alone. The regimental surgeon stepped into the street.

“It’s me, Trotta!” said the lieutenant, holding out his hand.

“So you’ve found me,” said the doctor. He spoke softly, as was his wont, but more distinctly than usual—or so it appeared to the lieutenant—for in some enigmatic way his quiet words drowned out the blaring pianola. This was the first time Trotta had ever seen him in civilian attire. The familiar voice emerging from the physician’s altered appearance came toward the lieutenant like a warm greeting from home. Indeed, the voice sounded all the more familiar because Demant looked so alien. All the terrors that had confused the lieutenant during this night dissolved under his friend’s voice, which Carl Joseph had not heard for many long weeks and which he had missed. Yes, he had missed it; now he knew. The pianola stopped blaring. They could hear the night wind howl from time to time, and their faces felt the snowy powder that it whirled up.

The lieutenant took one step closer to the doctor—he could not get close enough. You are not to die! he wanted to say. He realized that Demant was standing in front of him without a coat, in the snow, in the wind. If you’re in civvies, it’s not so obvious, he thought. And in a tender voice he said, “You’re going to catch cold.”

Dr. Demant’s face promptly lit up with the old familiar smile, which gathered up his lips somewhat, raised his black moustache slightly. Carl Joseph reddened. Why, he won’t be able to catch cold, the lieutenant thought. At the same time, he heard Dr. Demant’s
gentle voice. “I have no time left to get sick, my dear friend.” He spoke while smiling. The doctor’s words went right through the old smile, and yet it remained whole all the same; a small sad white veil, it hung before his lips. “But let’s go inside,” the physician continued.

He stood, a black, immobile shadow, outside the dimly lit door, casting a second, paler shadow on the snowy street. The silvery snow powdered his black hair, which was lit by the dim glow from the tavern. The heavenly world already shimmered over his head, and Trotta was almost ready to turn back. Good night! he wanted to say and hurry off.

“Let’s go inside,” the doctor repeated. “I’ll ask whether you can slip in unnoticed.”

He entered, leaving Trotta outside. Then he returned with the proprietor. After cutting through a hallway and across a yard, they reached the tavern kitchen.

“Do people know you here?” asked Trotta.

“I sometimes come here,” replied the physician. “That is, I used to come here a lot.”

Carl Joseph stared at the doctor.

“You’re surprised? Well, I had my particular habits.”

Why does he say “had”? thought the lieutenant and remembered from his schooldays that this was called the past tense. “Had”! Why did the regimental surgeon say “had”?

The tavern keeper brought a small table and two chairs to the kitchen and lit a greenish gas lamp. In the taproom, the pianola blared away again—a potpourri of familiar marches, among which the opening drumbeats of “The Radetzky March,” distorted by hoarse crackling but still recognizable, boomed at specific intervals. In the greenish shadows that the lampshade drew across the whitewashed kitchen walls, the familiar portrait of the Supreme Commander in Chief in the sparkling white uniform surfaced between two gigantic pans of reddish copper. The Kaiser’s white uniform was densely flyblown as if riddled by minute grapeshot, and Franz Joseph’s eyes, undoubtedly painted china blue as a matter of course, were snuffed in the shadow of the lampshade. The doctor stretched his finger toward the imperial image.

“Just a year ago it was hanging in the taproom,” he said. “Now the tavern keeper no longer feels like proving that he is a loyal subject.”

The pianola hushed up. That same instant, a wall clock struck two hard strokes.

“Two o’clock already!” said the lieutenant.

“Five more hours,” replied the regimental surgeon.

The proprietor brought some slivovitz. “Seven-twenty” hammered in the lieutenant’s brain.

He reached for the glass, raised it, and said in the strong voice trained for snapping orders, “To your health! You have to live!”

“To an easy death!” replied the regimental surgeon and drained his glass while Carl Joseph put his back on the table.

“This death is senseless,” the doctor went on. “As senseless as my life was.”

“I don’t want you to die!” shouted the lieutenant, stamping on the tiles of the kitchen floor. “And I don’t want to die either! And my life is senseless too!”

“Be quiet,” Dr. Demant replied. “You are the grandson of the Hero of Solferino. He almost died as senselessly. Though it does makes a difference whether you go to your death with his deep faith or as faintheartedly as we two.” He fell silent. “As we two,” he began after a while. “Our grandfathers did not bequeath us great strength—little strength for life, it’s just barely enough to die senselessly. Ahh!” The doctor pushed his glass aside, and it was as if he were shoving the entire world far away, including his friend. “Ahh,” he repeated, “I’m tired, I’ve been tired for years. Tomorrow I’m going to the like a hero, a so-called hero, completely against my grain, and against the grain of my forebears and my tribe and against my grandfather’s will. One of the huge old tomes he used to read says, ‘He who raiseth his hand against his neighbor is a murderer.’ Tomorrow someone is going to raise a pistol against me, and I’m going to raise a pistol against him. And I will be a murderer. But I’m nearsighted. I’m not going to take aim. I’ll have my little revenge. Without my glasses, I can see nothing at all, nothing at all, and I will shoot without seeing. That will be more natural, more honest, and altogether fitting.”

Lieutenant Trotta did not fully grasp what the doctor was saying. The doctor’s voice was familiar to him, and once he got accustomed to his friend’s mufti, his face and shape likewise grew familiar. But Dr. Demant’s thoughts came from an utterly immense distance, that immensely faraway region where Demant’s grandfather, the white-bearded king of Jewish tavern keepers, might have lived. Trotta cudgeled his brain, as he had once done in trigonometry at military school, but he understood less and less. He only felt that his new faith in the possibility of saving everything was gradually weakening, just as his hope slowly smoldered out into white, flimsy ashes, as frail as the threads glowing out over the small singing gas flame. His heart pounded as loudly as the tinny, hollow strokes of the wall clock. He did not understand his friend. Perhaps he had come too late. He had a lot more to say. But his tongue lay heavy in his mouth, burdened by weights. His lips parted. They were pale, trembling vaguely; he could barely close them.