The Radetzky March (25 page)

The stationmaster hurried to the platform. “Is this an official trip?” he asked.

And the district captain, in that expansive mood in which one occasionally likes to appear enigmatic, replied, “In a manner of speaking, Herr Stationmaster. It is sort of ‘official.’ ”

“Will you be gone a long time?”

“I’m not sure.”

“So you’ll probably be visiting your son?”

“If I can manage it!”

The district captain stood at the window, waving his hand. He cheerfully said goodbye to his district. He did not think about his return. He checked through all the stations in the timetable. “Change trains in Bogumin!” he repeated to himself. He compared the scheduled times of arrival and departure with the actual times and his watch with all the station clocks that the train passed. His heart was delighted—indeed, refreshed—by every irregularity. In Bogumin he let one train go by. Inquisitive, peering every which way, he walked across the platforms, through the waiting rooms, and briefly along the road to town. Returning to the station, he pretended he was late through no fault of his own and explicitly told the porter, “I’ve missed my train!” He was disappointed that the porter was not surprised. He had to change again in Crakow. He welcomed it. If he had not informed Carl Joseph of his arrival time and if that “dangerous nest” had been serviced by two trains a day, Herr von Trotta would gladly have stopped off to take a look at the world. Nevertheless, it could be viewed through the compartment window. Springtime greeted him all along the trip. He arrived in the afternoon.

Unruffled and sprightly, he got off the footboard with that “elastic step” that the newspapers always ascribed to the old Kaiser and that many elderly government officials had gradually mastered. For in those days people in the monarchy had a very distinctive and now completely forgotten way of leaving trains and carriages, entering restaurants, mounting perrons, stepping into houses, and approaching friends and relatives: it was a way of walking that may have been partly dictated by the snug trousers of the elderly gentlemen and by the rubber straps with which many of them fastened their trousers to their boots.

And so Herr von Trotta left the train with that distinctive step. He embraced his son, who had stationed himself in front of the footboard. That day Herr von Trotta was the only stranger leaving the first-or second-class coach. A few soldiers returning from furlough, some railroad workers, and some Jews in long black fluttering robes emerged from the third-class car. They looked at the father and the son. The district captain hurried to the waiting room. Here he kissed Carl Joseph on the forehead. At the buffet he ordered two brandies. The mirror hung on the
wall behind the shelves of bottles. While drinking, father and son each gazed at the other’s reflected face.

“Is the mirror wretched,” asked Herr von Trotta, “or do you really look so awful?”

Have you really turned so gray? Carl Joseph would have liked to ask. For he saw a lot of silver shimmering in his father’s dark whiskers and on his temples.

“Let me have a look at you!” the district captain went on. “It’s certainly not the mirror. Could it be the conditions out here perhaps? Is it bad?” The district captain ascertained that his son did not look like what a young lieutenant should look like. Maybe he’s sick, the father thought. Aside from the illnesses one died of, there were only those terrible illnesses that, according to hearsay, struck no small number of officers.

“Are you allowed to drink brandy?” he asked, to clear up the matter circuitously.

“Of course, Papá,” said the lieutenant. He could still hear that voice which had tested him years ago on silent Sunday mornings, that nasal government-official voice, the strict, slightly amazed, and questioning voice that made every lie perish on your tongue.

“Do you like the infantry?”

“Very much, Papá!”

“What about your horse?”

“I took it along, Papá!”

“Do you ride a lot?”

“Seldom, Papá!”

“You don’t like to?”

“No, I never liked it, Papá!”

“Stop calling me Papá,” Herr von Trotta suddenly said. “You’re big enough. And I’m on vacation!”

They drove into town.

“Well, it’s not all that wild,” said the district captain. “Can people have a good time here?”

“Very much so!” said Carl Joseph. “At Count Chojnicki’s home. Everybody comes. You’ll meet him. I like him a lot.”

“So he’d be the first friend you’ve ever had?”

“Dr. Max Demant was also my friend,” replied Carl Joseph.

“Here’s your room, Papá!” said the lieutenant. “The other officers live here and sometimes they get noisy at night. But there’s no other hotel. They’ll hold back as long as you’re here.”

“It’s all right, it’s all right!” said the district captain.

He unpacked a round tin box from the suitcase, opened the lid, and showed the box to Carl Joseph. “It’s a kind of root—it’s supposed to be good for swamp fever. It’s from Jacques.”

“How is he?”

“He’s up there!” The district captain pointed at the ceiling.

“He’s up there!” the lieutenant repeated.

To the district captain he sounded like an old man. His son must have a lot of secrets. The father did not know them. One said “father and son,” but many years lay between them, huge mountains. He knew little more about Carl Joseph than about any other lieutenant. He had joined the cavalry and had transferred to the infantry. He wore the green lapels of the riflemen instead of the red ones of the dragoons. Oh, well. That was all the father knew. He was obviously growing old. He no longer belonged to his office and to his duties. He belonged to Jacques and to Carl Joseph. He had brought the stone-hard weathered root from one to the other.

The district captain, still leaning over the valise, opened his mouth. He spoke into the valise as into an open grave. But he did not say, I love you, my son, as he meant to; he said, “He died an easy death. It was a true May evening, and all the birds were chirping. Do you remember his canary? It twittered the loudest. Jacques polished all the boots. Then he died, in the courtyard, on the bench. Slama was also there. He was running a fever just that morning. He sent you his best.”

Then the district captain glanced up from the valise and looked into his son’s face. “That’s exactly how I would like to die some day.”

The lieutenant went to his room, opened the wardrobe, and put the bit of root, the remedy for fever, in the top drawer, next to Katharina’s letters and Max Demant’s saber. He pulled out the doctor’s watch. He thought he saw the thin second hand circling faster than any other along the tiny round and thought he heard the jingly ticking more intensely. Soon I’ll also be
hearing Papá’s watch; he’s going to leave it to me. The portrait of the the Hero of Solferino will hang in my room and Max Demant’s saber and an heirloom from Papá. With me everything will be buried. I am the last Trotta.

He was young enough to draw sweet delight from his grief and a painful dignity from the certainty that he was the last. From the nearby swamps came the broad, blaring croaking of the frogs. The setting sun reddened the walls and furniture in the room. He heard a lightweight carriage rolling up, the soft clatter of hooves on the dusty street. The carriage halted, a straw-yellow britska, Count Chojnicki’s summer vehicle. Three times, his snapping whip interrupted the chant of the frogs.

He was curious, that Count Chojnicki. No other passion than curiosity sent him traveling into the wide world, fettered him to the tables of the great gambling casinos, locked him behind the doors of his old hunting lodge, sat him on the bench of the parliamentarians, ordered him home every spring, made him hold his usual festivities, and blocked the path to suicide. Curiosity was all that kept him alive. He was insatiably curious. Lieutenant Trotta had told him that he was expecting his father, the district captain, and although Count Chojnicki was acquainted with a good dozen Austrian district captains and countless fathers of lieutenants, he was still eager to meet District Captain Trotta.

“I am your son’s friend,” said Chojnicki. “You are my guest. Your son must have told you. Incidentally, we’ve met before. Aren’t you acquainted with Dr. Swoboda in the Ministry of Commerce?”

“We were schoolmates.”

“There you are!” cried Chojnicki. “Swoboda is my good friend. He’s getting a little odd in the course of time, but a fine man! May I be completely honest with you? You remind me of Franz Joseph.”

A momentary hush ensued. The district captain had never spoken the Kaiser’s name. On solemn occasions one said “His Majesty.” In everyday life one said “the Kaiser.” But this Chojnicki said “Franz Joseph,” just as he had said “Swoboda.”

“Yes, you remind me of Franz Joseph,” Chojnicki repeated.

They were driving along. On both sides the unending choruses of the frogs were clamoring, the unending blue-green swamps were stretching out. The evening floated toward them, violet and golden. They heard the soft rolling of the wheels in the soft sand of the dirt road and the clear crunching of the axles. Chojnicki halted at the small hunting lodge.

The back wall leaned against the dark edge of the fir forest. It was separated from the narrow road by a small garden and a stone fence. The hedges lining both sides of the short path from the garden gate to the front door had not been trimmed in a long time, and they proliferated wildly and randomly here and there across the path, bending their branches toward one another and allowing only one person at a time to pass through. So the three men walked in single file; obediently the horse followed them, pulling the small carriage; the horse appeared to be familiar with this path, and it seemed to live in the lodge like a human being. Behind the hedges vast areas stretched out, dotted with blossoming thistles, guarded by the broad dark-green faces of the coltsfoot. To the right loomed a broken stone pillar, perhaps the vestige of a tower. Like a mighty broken tooth, the stone grew from the bosom of the front garden against the sky, with many dark-green moss spots and soft black cracks. The heavy wooden front door bore the Chojnickis’ coat of arms, a tripartite blue shield with three gilt stags, their antlers inextricably entangled. Chojnicki turned on the light. They stood in a vast low room. The final twilight of the day was still falling through the narrow cracks of the green blinds. The set table under the lamp bore plates, bottles, pitchers, silver cutlery, and tureens.

“I took the liberty of preparing a little snack for you,” said Chojnicki. He poured the 180 Proof, clear as water, into three small glasses, handed two of them to the guests, and raised the third one himself. They all drank. The district captain was somewhat confused when he put the glass back on the table. However, the reality of the food contradicted the mysterious character of the lodge, and the district captain’s appetite was greater than his confusion. The brown liver pâté, studded with pitch-black truffles, lay in a glittering wreath of fresh ice crystals. The tender breast of pheasant loomed lonesome on the snowy
platter, surrounded by a gaudy retinue of green, red, white, and yellow vegetables, each in a bowl with a blue-gold rim and a coat of arms. In a spacious crystal vase, millions of pearls of black-gray caviar teemed within a circle of golden lemon slices. And the round pink wheels of ham, guarded by a large three-pronged silver form, lined up obediently in an oval bowl, surrounded by red-cheeked radishes that reminded one of small crisp country girls. Boiled, roasted, and marinated with sweet-and-sour onions, the fat broad pieces of carp and the narrow slippery pike lay on glass, silver, and porcelain. Round loaves of bread, brown and white, rested in simple, rustically pleated straw baskets, like babies in cradles, almost invisibly sliced, and with the slices so artfully rejoined that the bread looked hale and undivided. Among the dishes stood fat-bellied bottles and tall narrow crystal carafes with four or six sides and smooth round ones, some with long and others with short necks, with or without labels; and all followed by a regiment of glasses in various shapes and sizes.

They began to eat.

For the district captain, this unusual manner of having a “snack” at an unwonted time was an extremely pleasant sign of the unusual customs at the border. In the old Imperial and Royal Monarchy, even people with Spartan natures, like Herr von Trotta, were thoroughgoing hedonists. A long time had passed since the district captain had had an extraordinary meal. The occasion had been the going-away party for the governor, Prince M, who had left with an honorable commission for the freshly occupied territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina, thanks to his renowned linguistic abilities and his alleged knack for “taming wild nations.” Yes, at that time the district captain had eaten and drunk unwontedly. And that day, along with other days of drinking and banqueting, had lodged in his memory as sharply as the special days when he had received praise from the governor’s office and, later on, been named district captain. As was his habit, he tasted the exquisiteness of food with his eyes as others did with their palates. His eyes swept across the rich table a few times, enjoying and lingering here and there in enjoyment. He had forgotten the mysterious, indeed sinister surroundings. They ate. They drank from various bottles. And the district
captain praised everything by saying “delicious” or “excellent” whenever he went on from one dish to another. His face slowly reddened. And his sideburns kept moving.

“I have invited you gentlemen here because we would have been disturbed in the New Castle. There my door is always open, so to speak, and my friends can all drop in whenever they like. Otherwise I usually work here.”

“You work?” asked the district captain.

“Yes,” said Chojnicki, “I work. I work for the fun of it, so to speak. I am merely continuing the tradition of my forebears. Frankly, I am not always so earnest about it as my grandfather was. The peasants in this region regarded him as a powerful sorcerer, and perhaps he
was.
They regard me as one too, but I’m not. So far I haven’t succeeded in producing even a speck.”

“A speck?” asked the district captain. “What sort of speck?”