Thomas Ochiltree (10 page)

The captain is nothing in this.
Hitherto, all of von Falkenburg’s efforts to understand the plot against him had always stopped dead in their tracks by the impossibility of imagining what the motives of his unknown enemies could be. He could imagine nothing he had ever done to anyone that would inspire such an elaborate scheme of revenge. Now, the remark reported by Lasky provided a partial explanation: if he was “nothing in this,” then the
real
motives of his enemies must not involve him at all.

That was a big step forward in his understanding, but it was a long way short of the knowledge – let alone the proof – that he had to acquire before his week was up.

Who
were his enemies, and
what
were their motives?

Perhaps, he reasoned, it was best to begin with the “who.” Lasky’s source, whom the reporter had described as sometimes incautious, had, by Lasky’s account, displayed extreme nervousness when questioned about the case. If this Colonel von Lauderstein was simply trying to cover up some wrongdoing by himself or a friend, why would Lasky’s source be so frightened? After all, von Lauderstein was just a colonel on the Staff.

That suggested that von Lauderstein, like Röderer, was merely part of something much bigger, with much more important participants. What had Lasky’s source said? “You can’t imagine how high this thing goes.” Those were not comforting words. Von Falkenburg knew perfectly well that protection and influence were utterly fundamental to the workings of Austria-Hungary. The higher-placed his foes, the proportionally smaller his chances of getting to them would be.

Or could this Colonel von Lauderstein have a personal hold of some kind on Lasky’s source that explained the latter’s nervousness? Von Falkenburg realized how careful he had to be about drawing conclusions. For every question there were always at least two possible answers, and often more. In choosing between them he would have to be guided by intelligence and intuition. And while there was no point in indulging in false modesty about his intelligence, he had less experience with his intuition.

“For real intuition one has to be a woman,” he told himself, and the word “woman” immediately suggested Helena.

“I wonder whom the bitch spent the night with?” he thought as he pulled his sword knot into place with a sharp tug. Then he smiled in spite of himself. Smiled because the ironies of life had always amused him, and he recognized that it was nice to think about Helena, even if the excuse for doing so was being angry with her.

He tried to put his thoughts of Helena behind him, but without success
. What a woman.
And dammit, she was right not to see him again. For the first time in his life, he felt he really understood a woman’s point of view. He remembered reading a translation of an English author who said of some woman that “to know her was a liberal education.”

If he could have known Helena longer, she would at least have given him the most complete education imaginable in that most mysterious of all subjects: the female sex.

Too bad he would not live long enough ever to learn the secrets she hinted at.

Too bad he would be dead soon.

Suddenly, from being an abstract nuisance, death once again presented itself as a very concrete and terrifying reality. It was fantastic, he reflected, how his mind was able to mask that reality. Fantastic and dangerous. Instead of wasting his time thinking about Helena, he had to find the answers to some very difficult questions. He gave a final glance at himself in the mirror to see that his
Adjustierung
was perfect, and then headed out of his rooms and for the street.

As he walked past the Parliament building, von Falkenburg thought about the words of Lasky’s informant to the effect that he was embroiled in a “political mess.”

The Parliament Building was constructed in as faithful an imitation of Greek architecture as the architect had been able to manage. But what went on inside, von Falkenburg knew, bore little relation to the golden age of Greece. It was not unheard of for representatives to throw inkwells at one another, and ethnic insults hung in the air thick enough to give the chamber its own special fog. German, Hungarians, Czechs, Solvaks, Poles, Ruthenians, Croatians, Jews, Slovenians, Bosnians…. How many peoples made up the crazy-quilt Empire that extended from Switzerland to Russia, from Germany to the middle of the Balkans? Von Falkenburg imagined that the only persons who might know would be one or two university professors, and perhaps one or two petty bureaucrats.

No, that was not quite right. One other person would know: Franz Joseph himself, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Apostolic King of Jerusalem, King of Bohemia, Duke of half a dozen more places – the man probably had even more titles than peoples in his Empire, though some of them, like that of King of Jerusalem, were mere memories of happier centuries.

Franz Joseph…the Supreme War Lord…the old Emperor….

Von Falkenburg thought of an incident that took place nine months before, when he was returning from an amorous adventure in an outlying district, and was walking back to the center of the city along the Mariahilferstrasse at six in the morning, for the regiment had exercises at eight.

Despite the early hour, crowds of shabby people pressed by him, some of them looking with timid curiosity at the elegance of his uniform as they clutched their threadbare dresses and jackets about them. Workers going to begin their twelve or more hours of drudgery. Von Falkenburg tried to tell himself that he was going to work too, but he had known that that was not quite the same thing, and he had felt self-conscious about the glittering scabbard that swung at his side.

Then he had heard it, the sound of horses’ hooves, the hooves of horses going at a fast and perfect trot. Puzzled, he had looked around, for the only horses he could imagine in this neighborhood at this time would be plodding drays.

And then in the faint gray light he had seen the horses of a detachment of the Imperial Life Guards Mounted, and behind them, the open carriage pulled by a magnificent set of bays, its lacquered body swinging on the springs, the postillions holding on at the rear, and seated on the leather cushions an old man with a wrinkled face and great, snowy side whiskers.

Von Falkenburg had understood in time, and snapped to attention, his heels meeting at the instant that his white-gloved fingers touched the bill of his képi. And the old man had turned his head and saluted too, for he had seen the officer and loved his army, in whose ranks perhaps his last loyal subjects served.

And then the carriage had rolled by, rolled down the hill towards the Central City, between the ragged ranks of work-bound men and women. For the Emperor Franz Joseph was also bound for work, bound from the summer palace of Schönbrunn to the downtown palace of the Hofburg, where for sixteen hours or more the old man would labor, as he had always done, to ensure the happiness of subjects who no longer appreciated his efforts, would work to keep together an empire whose joints seemed to creak more with every year that was added to the already terrible burden of years which weighed down on its ruler.

Von Falkenburg paused in front of the university building, remembering that strange morning, savoring the impression it had made on him then, and which he was experiencing again now. He recalled the surge of loyalty he had felt for the poor old man who almost by himself sought to hold the land together: the old Emperor who was known to have granted private audiences to persons of the lowest classes, and to have personally righted the wrongs done against them.

Franz Joseph. Was he the last Austro-Hungarian? von-Falkenburg wondered.

No. Disloyal Parliamentary deputies and Jew-baiters like Vienna’s Mayor Lüger who sought to sow dissention among Austria-Hungary’s many peoples notwithstanding. For the army was loyal to the Emperor.

Or
most
of the army, von Falkenburg realized with a start. For the “filthy political mess” which Lasky’s source had mentioned involved members of the army, and involved disloyalty to Austria-Hungary too.

Von Falkenburg suddenly felt himself overpowered with rage, a rage in which the hatred he felt for those who had slandered his name mixed with a more intense hatred for those high-placed, over-privileged persons (such as he imagined them to be) who seemed to be trying to tear down that which the old man with the big side-whiskers, and the ordinary officers of von Falkenburg’s regiment and of all the other regiments, sought to protect.

Von Falkenburg saw now that his desire to clear his own name and to save his own life were of very secondary importance to his duty to serve his country as his father, and grandfather, and generations of von Falkenburgs had done; to his duty to serve an old man whom age, and the terrible loneliness of his rank, made vulnerable, just as Lasky’s religion, and poverty had made Lasky vulnerable. That the men who were working against his Emperor had also sent paid bully boys to stab to death the patriotic little reporter did not surprise von Falkenburg in the least. It was all the same cowardly baseness, and by God, he was going to get to the bottom of it! Protecting his Emperor and his country, avenging Lasky, and clearing his own name all fused in his mind into one single task, and von Falkenburg swept down the street with great pounding strides, quivering with determination.

There was treason afoot, and he, Ernst von Falkenburg, captain in the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment No. 4 “Hoch- und Deutschmeister,” was going to get to the bottom of it.

But
how?

Suddenly, the fearful question placed itself in front of him like a lamppost he might have run into in his haste.

All that he had to go on was the name of a colonel about whom knew nothing except that he worked somewhere on the General Staff. Lasky was dead, and his death would certainly not encourage his former source – whose name von Falkenburg did not even know – to provide any answers to someone selected as the scapegoat of a “filthy political mess” which he had advised the little Jewish reporter to stay out of for his own sake.

The clock on the Rathaus tower struck nine. Early enough in the day, still, but it was the third day, and time was passing quickly.

Von Falkenburg knew that objectively, it was not merely possible but highly probably – indeed almost certain – that his enemies would succeed in destroying him, and in accomplishing their higher objective, whatever that might be. Lasky was dead. Presumably his corpse had been found by the police with the dawn, and taken to the city morgue. Somehow von Falkenburg felt that Lasky had no family, and that he would be buried in an unmarked grave. In a few days, von Falkenburg would be dead. He would be buried in the family vault at Falkenburg, along with his father and all the other von Falkenburgs. And a few years later, the Emperor would be dead from age, and buried with magnificent and gloomy honors in the crypt of the Kapuzinerkirche, where his forefathers, and his brother who was shot by the Mexicans, and Rudolph, his only son, who had shot himself, also lay. And soon after that, it would be the Austria-Hungary itself that would be dead….

For all his patriotism, von Falkenburg had few illusions about the long-term prospects for Austria-Hungary. He was too much of a realist for that. But it was his duty to protect it as long as he could. That his enemies, the enemies of his Emperor, the murderers of Lasky, the men who sought to destroy him by implicating him in a monstrous crime he had not committed, might bring Austria-Hungary to ruin and smirk over their success…that was a thought he could not bear, a prospect more terrible than that of his own death, for all that he loved life….

Von Falkenburg tried to halt the headlong dash of his emotions. He knew that wild passion and hatred would achieve nothing. He had to force himself to be calm and rational.

But how? How was he to prove his innocence and unmask the guilt of his enemies, who were also the enemies of the Emperor he had sworn to protect and the country he loved? He saw clearly that every time he had seemed to make progress – in discovering that his direct accuser, Röderer was a morphine addict who had shot himself when his supply of the drug was cut off, in hearing what Lasky knew – he had found himself where he had been before: staring at a brick wall with no idea of how to get over it or go around it.

And yet, he realized, he
had
made some progress, though perhaps not enough to help him. He did know more now than when he was first faced with the terrible accusations. Discouragement had followed hope, but hope had also followed discouragement.

He had reached the Promenadencafé now, and he decided to go in and have breakfast in the hope that it would allow his frantically racing mind to slow down. But no breakfast, excellent though the one he was served was, could suffice to bring under control the feelings boiling within him. So as to give himself a moment’s much-needed respite from the conspiracy, Lasky, the Emperor, and his own fate, he decided to think about Helena, about the way here serene, almost cool face could suddenly be transformed by one of the most deliciously feminine smiles he had ever seen; about the perfect whiteness of her skin, and she smoothness of her belly once he had released it from the confinement of her corset – a corset she hardly needed, given the slimness of her waist.

But most of all, he thought about her enigmatic personality: cool and passionate, feminine and yielding, and yet with a strength which von Falkenburg was surprised to find he admired. It was a quality totally different from the demanding bitchiness of some other women, or from the tempestuousness and stubbornness of that gypsy dancer – Zara? – he had known for one night in Budapest. And that, he suspected, was because Helena’s strength was unalloyed with any selfishness.

He put down his coffee cup and rose from the table, on which he negligently crumpled his white linen napkin.

Back at the barracks it was Captain’s Report for his company, and although his life and much more hung in the balance, he still had to find time to dish out punishments for the petty offenses some of his men had committed.