The Radetzky March (22 page)

These festivals of Cossack horsemanship were not the only ones in the borderland between the monarchy and Russia. A dragoon regiment was also stationed in the garrison. Intimate ties between rifle officers, dragoon officers, and gentlemen of the Russian border regiments were established by Count Chojnicki, one of the richest Polish landowners in the area. Count Wojciech Chojnicki—kin to the Ledochowskis and the Potockis, related by marriage to the Sternbergs, friendly with the Thuns, a man of the world, forty years old but of no discernible age, a cavalry captain in the reserve, a bachelor, both happy-go-lucky and melancholy at once—loved horses, liquor, society, frivolity, and also seriousness. He always wintered in big cities and in the gambling casinos of the Riviera. But once the forsythia started blossoming on the railroad embankments, the count, like a migrant bird, would return to his ancestral homeland, bringing along a faintly perfumed whiff of high society and tales of gallantry and adventure. He was the sort of man who
could have no foes, but also no friends, only comrades, companions, or indifferent acquaintances. With his bright, smart, slightly bulging eyes, his smooth, bald, glossy head, his wispy blond moustache, his narrow shoulders, his exceedingly lanky legs, Chojnicki was liked by all the people whom he accidentally or deliberately encountered.

He alternated between two homes, which the populace knew and respected as the Old Castle and the New Castle. The so-called Old Castle was a huge ramshackle hunting lodge that the count, for unfathomable reasons, refused to fix up. The New Castle was a spacious two-story villa whose upper landing was constantly occupied by odd and at times even sinister strangers. These were the count’s “poor relations.” Even had he carried out the most painstaking genealogical investigation, he could not possibly have tracked down their degrees of kinship. It had gradually become customary for Chojnicki’s relatives to move into the New Castle and stay all summer. But as soon as the first flocks of starlings could be heard in the nights and the season for corn on the cob was over, these visitors, sated, relaxed, and sometimes even supplied with new clothes from the count’s local tailor, headed back to the unknown regions where they apparently were at home. The host noticed neither the arrivals nor the sojourns nor the departures of his guests. His Jewish steward had standing orders to check the visitors’ family credentials, regulate their food and drink, and make sure they left at the approach of winter. The house had two entrances. While the count and the nonrelated guests used the front door, his kinfolk had to take the wide detour through the orchard and go in and out through a small gate in the garden wall. Otherwise these uninvited boarders could do as they pleased.

Twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, Count Chojnicki gave his so-called small soirees and once a month his so-called parties. For the small soirees, only six rooms were lit and open to the guests, but for the parties there were twelve rooms. At the small soirees the footmen served without gloves and in dark-yellow liveries, but at the parties they wore white gloves and brick-brown coats with black velvet collars and silver buttons. The evening always began with vermouth and dry Spanish
wines. These gave way to burgundy and bordeaux. Next came the champagne. It was followed by cognac. And, paying the tribute due their homeland, they ended with the fruit of the local soil, the 180 Proof.

At these functions, the officers of the ultrafeudal dragoon regiment and the mostly nonaristocratic officers of the rifle battalion swore tearful oaths of lifelong friendship. The summer dawns peering through the broad arched windows of the castle witnessed a gaudy chaos of infantry and cavalry uniforms. The sleepers snored toward the golden sun. At around 5
A.M.
, a throng of despairing orderlies dashed over to the castle to awaken their masters. For at six the regiments began their drills. The host, who was never worn out by liquor, had long since returned to his small hunting lodge. There he fiddled around with peculiar test tubes, tiny flames, laboratory apparatuses. Rumor had it that the count was trying to make gold. He certainly appeared to be engaged in foolish alchemical experiments. But while he may not have succeeded in producing gold, he did know how to win at roulette. He occasionally let on that he had inherited an infallible “system” from a mysterious long-deceased gambler.

For years now, he had been a deputy to the Imperial Council, routinely reelected by his district, beating all other candidates with the help of money, violence, and surprise attacks; a minion of the government, he despised the parliamentary body to which he belonged. He had never given a speech and never heckled. Impious, derisive, fearless, and without qualms, Chojnicki used to say that the Kaiser was mindless and senile, the government a gang of nincompoops, the Imperial Council a gathering of gullible and grandiloquent idiots, and the national authorities venal, cowardly, and lazy. The German Austrians were waltzers and boozy crooners, the Hungarians stank, the Czechs were born bootlickers, the Ruthenians were treacherous Russians in disguise, the Croats and Slovenes, whom he called Cravats and Slobbers, were brushmakers and chestnut roasters, and the Poles, of whom he himself was one after all, were skirt chasers, hairdressers, and fashion photographers. Every time he came home from Vienna or another haunt of high society where
he romped about so familiarly, he would deliver a gloomy lecture, which went more or less:

“This empire is doomed. The instant the Kaiser shuts his eyes, we’ll crumble into a hundred pieces. The Balkans will be more powerful than we. All the nations will set up their own filthy little states, and even the Jews are going to proclaim a king in Palestine. Vienna already stinks of the sweat of the Democrats; I can’t stand being on Ringstrasse anymore. The workers wave red flags and don’t care to work. The mayor of Vienna is a pious janitor. The padres are already going with the people; their sermons are in Czech. The Burgtheater is playing Jewish smut, and every week a Hungarian toilet manufacturer becomes a baron. I tell you, gentlemen, if we don’t start shooting now, we’re doomed. We’ll live to see it for ourselves!”

The men listening to the count laughed and drank another round. They did not understand him. People fired bullets occasionally, especially around election time, in order to, say, assure Count Chojnicki’s mandate, thereby showing that the world could not go under without a fight. The Kaiser was still alive. He would be followed by his successor. The army drilled and shone in all the regulation colors. The nations in the empire loved the imperial dynasty and paid homage to it in the most disparate ethnic costumes. Chojnicki was a jokester.

But Lieutenant Trotta, more sensitive than his comrades, sadder than they, his soul constantly echoing with the dark, roaring wings of Death, which he had already encountered twice—the lieutenant sometimes felt the dark weight of these prophecies.

E
VERY WEEK WHEN
he was on barracks duty, Lieutenant Trotta would pen his monotonous accounts to the district captain. The barracks had no electric light. In the guardrooms they still burned the regulation government candles, as in the days of the old Hero of Solferino. Now they had “Apollo candles” made of spongier snow-white stearin, with well-plaited wicks and steady flames. The lieutenant’s letters revealed nothing about his changed way of life and the unusual conditions at the border. The district captain avoided asking any questions. His replies, routinely dispatched to his son every fourth Sunday, were as monotonous as the lieutenant’s letters.

Every morning old Jacques brought the mail into the room where the district captain had been breakfasting for many years. It was a somewhat out-of-the-way room that was never used during the day. The window, facing east, willingly let in all the mornings—the cloudy, the warm, the cool, and the rainy ones; it was open during breakfast in both summer and winter. In the winter, the district captain wrapped his legs in a warm shawl and the table was moved close to the wide stove, which crackled with a fire lit by old Jacques half an hour earlier. Every fifteenth of April, Jacques stopped lighting the stove. Every fifteenth of April, the district captain, regardless of the weather, resumed his summer-morning constitutionals.

The barber’s assistant, groggy and himself unshaven, came to Trotta’s bedroom at 6
A.M.
By six-fifteen the district captain’s chin lay smooth and powdered between the slightly silver pinions of his whiskers. His bald skull had already been massaged and slightly reddened by a few drops of cologne that had been rubbed in, and all superfluous hair—some sprouting from the nostrils,
some from the ear conches or even on the back of the neck, welling over the high stand-up collar—had been removed without a trace. Then the district captain reached for the light-colored cane and the gray silk hat and headed toward the municipal park. He wore a white high-necked waistcoat with gray buttons and a dove-gray morning coat. The narrow creaseless trousers were fastened by dark-gray straps to the narrow pointed boots, untipped and seamless and made of the softest kidskin.

The streets were still empty. The sprinkler wagon, pulled by two lumbering brown horses, came rattling over the bumpy cobblestones. Upon spotting the district captain, the driver on his high seat lowered his whip, looped the reins over the brake handle, and swung his hat so low that it grazed his knees. He was the only person in the town—nay, the district—whom Herr von Trotta greeted with a cheerful, almost exuberant wave of his hand. At the entrance to the park, the policeman saluted. Without moving his hand, the district captain wished him a hearty “Good day!” Then he strolled on toward the blond owner of the soda-water stand. Here he tipped his silk hat, drank a glass of tonic, drew a coin from his waistcoat pocket without removing his gray gloves, and continued his stroll. Bakers, chimney sweeps, grocers, butchers came his way. Each one greeted him. The district captain responded by gently placing his forefinger on his hat brim.

He did not doff his hat until he encountered Kronauer, the pharmacist, who likewise enjoyed morning constitutionals and was also, incidentally, the borough councilor. Sometimes Herr von Trotta would also say, “Good morning, Herr Pharmacist,” stand still, and ask, “How are you?”

“Excellent!” said the pharmacist.

“Glad to hear it!” remarked the district captain, doffing his hat once more and resuming his stroll.

He never came back before 8
A.M.
Sometimes he ran into the postman in the vestibule or out on the steps. Next he would spend some time in his office. For he liked finding the letters next to his breakfast tray. It was impossible for him to see, much less speak to, anyone during breakfast. Old Jacques might happen to walk in on winter days to check the stove or on summer
days to shut the window if it was raining all too hard. But Fräulein Hirschwitz was out of the question. The sight of her before 1
P.M.
was anathema to the district captain.

One morning in May, Herr von Trotta returned from his constitutional at five minutes after eight. The mailman must have come long since. Herr von Trotta sat down at the table in the breakfast room. The egg, soft-boiled as usual, was in its silver cup. The honey shimmered golden, the fresh kaiser rolls smelled of fire and yeast, the butter shone yellow, embedded in a gigantic dark-green leaf, the coffee steamed in the gold-rimmed porcelain. Nothing was missing. Or at least it seemed to Herr von Trotta at first glance that nothing was missing. But then he promptly stood up, put down his napkin, and scrutinized the table again. The letters were missing from their usual place. For as long as the district captain could remember, no day had ever passed without official mail. First Herr von Trotta went to the open window as if to convince himself that the world still existed outside. Yes, the old chestnut trees in the city park still wore their dense green crowns. The invisible birds were making their usual morning racket in the foliage. The milk wagon, which normally drew up at his residence around this time, stood there today, nonchalant, as if this were a day like any other. So nothing has changed outside, the district captain determined. Was it possible that there had been no mail? Was it possible that Jacques had forgotten it? Herr von Trotta shook the handbell. Its silvery peal scurried through the silent house. No one came. The district captain did not touch his breakfast for now. He shook the bell once more. Finally there was a knock. He was amazed, startled, and offended upon seeing his housekeeper, Fräulein Hirschwitz, enter.

She wore a kind of morning armor in which he had never viewed her before. A huge apron of dark-blue oilcloth covered her from throat to foot and a white coif perched rigidly on her head, displaying her big ears with their soft, broad, fleshy lobes. It made her extraordinarily repulsive to. Herr von Trotta—he could not stand the smell of oilcloth.

“Highly annoying!” he said without returning her greeting. “Where is Jacques?”

“Jacques has been stricken with an indisposition today.”

“Stricken?” the district captain repeated, not understanding immediately. “Is he sick?” he then asked.