by Joseph Roth
“Come on!” whispered Frau Slama. She sat on his lap, kissed him hurriedly, and eyed him roguishly. A tuft of blond hair accidentally dropped into her forehead; she peered upward, trying to puff it away with puckered lips. He began feeling her weight on his legs; at the same time new energy gushed through him, tensing the muscles in his thighs and arms. He embraced the woman and felt the soft coolness of her breasts through the tough cloth of the uniform. A soft chuckle erupted from her throat, a bit like a sob and a bit like a warble. Tears formed in her eyes. Then she leaned back and with delicate precision began undoing button after button on his tunic. She placed a cool, tender hand on his chest, kissed his mouth with prolonged and systematic relish, and suddenly rose as if startled by some noise. He promptly leaped up, she smiled and slowly drew him along, stepping backward, with both hands outstretched and her head thrown back, a radiance in her face, moving toward the door, which she opened by kicking behind her. They glided into the bedroom.
As if helplessly fettered, he watched her through half-shut eyelids while she undressed him, slow, thorough, and motherly. Somewhat dismayed, he noticed his full-dress uniform falling slackly to the floor, piece by piece; he heard the thudding of his shoes and instantly felt Frau Slama’s hand on his foot. From below, a new billow of warmth and coolness swept up to his chest. He let himself go slack. He received the woman like a huge soft wave of bliss, fire, and water.
He woke up. Frau Slama stood before him, handing him his clothing piece by piece; he began to dress hastily. She hurried into the parlor, brought him his gloves and cap. She straightened his tunic. He felt her constant glances on his face but avoided looking at her. He banged his heels together, shook the woman’s hand while gazing stubbornly at her right shoulder, and went off.
A bell-tower clock struck seven. The sun was nearing the hills, which were now as blue as the sky and barely distinguishable from clouds. Sweet fragrance flowed from the trees along the way. The evening wind combed the small grasses of the sloping meadows on both sides of the road; he could see the grasses quivering and billowing under the wind’s broad, quiet, invisible hand. In distant marshes, the frogs began to croak. At an open window of a bright yellow cottage on the edge of town, a young woman stared at the empty road. Although Carl Joseph had never seen her before, he greeted her, stiff and reverential. She nodded back, rather surprised and grateful. It was as if he had said goodbye to Frau Slama only now. The strange, familiar woman stood at the window like a border guard between love and life. After greeting her, he felt restored to the world. He quickened his pace. At the stroke of seven-forty-five he was home, announcing his return to his father, pale, terse, and resolute, as is appropriate for men.
The sergeant had patrol duty every other day. Every other day, he came to the district captain’s headquarters with a stack of documents. He never ran into the district captain’s son. Every other day at four in the afternoon, Carl Joseph marched to the constabulary headquarters. He left it at 7 P.M. The fragrance he brought along from Frau Slama blended with the smells of the dry summer evenings, lingering on his hands day and night. At meals, he made sure never to get closer to his father than necessary.
“It smells of autumn here,” the old man said one evening. He was generalizing. Frau Slama always used mignonette.
Chapter 3
IN THE DISTRICT captain’s study, the portrait hung opposite the windows and so high on the wall that hair and forehead blurred into the dark-brown shadow under the old wooden ceiling. The grandson’s curiosity constantly focused on his grandfather’s blurring figure and vanished fame. Sometimes, on still afternoons (the windows open, the dark-green shadows of the chestnut trees in the town park filling the room with the entire mellow and powerful calm of the summer, the district captain heading one of his commissions outside the town, old Jacques’s ghostly steps shuffling from distant stairs as he trudged through the house in felt slippers, gathering shoes, clothes, ashtrays, candelabras, and floor lamps for cleaning and polishing), Carl Joseph would climb on a chair and view his grandfather’s portrait up close. It splintered into countless deep shadows and bright highlights, into brush strokes and dabs, into a myriad weave of the painted canvas, into a hard colored interplay of dried oil. Carl Joseph got down from the chair. The green shade of the trees flashed on the grandfather’s brown coat, the dabs and brush strokes merged back into the familiar but unfathomable physiognomy, and the eyes regained their usual remote look that blurred toward the darkness of the ceiling. The grandson’s mute conversations with the grandfather took place every summer vacation. The dead man revealed nothing; the boy learned nothing. From year to year, the portrait seemed to be growing paler and more otherworldly, as if the Hero of Solferino were dying once again and a time would come when an empty canvas would stare down upon the descendant even more mutely than the portrait.
In the courtyard below, in the shade of the wooden balcony, Jacques sat on a stool in front of an orderly military line of waxed boots. Whenever Carl Joseph returned home from Frau Slama, he would go over to Jacques in the courtyard and perch on a ledge. “Tell me about Grandfather, Jacques.” And Jacques would put down brush, shoe wax, and brass polish and rub his hands as if cleansing them of work and dirt before starting to talk about the deceased. And as usual, like a good twenty times in the past, he would begin.
“I always got on fine with him. I wasn’t so young when I came to the farm. I never married; the baron wouldn’t have liked that. He never cared much for women, aside from his own Frau Baroness, but she soon died—her lungs. Everyone knew he had saved the Kaiser’s life at the Battle of Solferino, but he kept mum about it, never a peep out of him. That was why they wrote ‘The Hero of Solferino’ on his gravestone. He wasn’t so old when he died; it was in the evening, around nine, in November. It was already snowing. That afternoon he’d been standing in the courtyard, and he said, ‘Jacques, where did you put my fur-lined boots?’ I didn’t know where, but I said, ‘I’ll get them, Herr Baron.’ ‘Tomorrow’s soon enough!’ he says—and tomorrow he no longer needed them. I never got married.”
That was all.
Once—it was the last summer vacation; a year from now Carl Joseph was to join the regiment—when the boy was leaving, the district captain said, “I hope everything goes smoothly. You are the grandson of the Hero of Solferino. Think about it, then nothing can happen to you!”
The colonel, all the teachers, and all the junior officers likewise thought about it, and so indeed nothing could happen to Carl Joseph. Although he was not an excellent horseman, was weak in topography, and had utterly failed trigonometry, he was graduated “with a good average,” given a lieutenant’s commission, and assigned to the Tenth Lancers.
His eyes intoxicated with his own new glory and the commencement mass, his ears ringing with the colonel’s thunderous farewell speeches, his body sporting the azure tunic with gold buttons, the silver bandolier with its august golden two-headed eagle on its back, the czapka with a metal chinstrap, the horsehair plume in his left hand, bright-red jodhpurs, mirrorlike boots, and singing spurs, and on his hip the broad-hilted saber: that was how Carl Joseph presented himself to his father one hot summer day. This time it was not a Sunday. A lieutenant could also arrive on a Wednesday.
The district captain was sitting in his study. “Make yourself comfortable!” he said. He took off the pince-nez, squinted, stood up, scrutinized his son, and found everything in order. He hugged Carl Joseph. They kissed one another casually on the cheek. “Sit down!” said the district captain, pressing the lieutenant into a chair. He himself then paced up and down the room. He was casting about for a suitable approach. A rebuke was not appropriate this time, nor could one start on a note of satisfaction.
“You should now,” he finally said, “study the history of your regiment and read a bit in the history of the regiment in which your grandfather fought. I have to spend two days in Vienna on business. You’ll be accompanying me.” Then he swung the handbell. Jacques came. “Frä
ulein Hirschwitz,” the district captain commanded, “is to have some wine brought up today and, if possible, prepare beef and cherry dumplings. Today we’re lunching twenty minutes later than usual.”
“Yessir, Herr Baron,” said Jacques. He looked at Carl Joseph and whispered, “Congratulations!”
The district captain went to the window; the scene threatened to turn poignant. Behind his back he heard his son shaking the butler’s hand, Jacques scraping his feet, murmuring something unintelligible about the deceased lord. The father turned around only after Jacques left the room.
“It’s hot, isn’t it?” the old man began.
“Yessir, Pápa!”
“I think we out to go out.”
“Yessir, Pápa!”
The district captain took the black ebony stick with the silver pommel, not the yellow cane that he ordinarily liked to carry on bright mornings. Nor did he hold his gloves in his left hand, he slipped them on. He donned his silk hat and left the room, followed by the boy. Slowly and without exchanging a word, they walked through the summery stillness of the town park. The town policeman saluted. Men rose from the banks and greeted them. Next to the old man’s dark gravity, the boy’s jingling colorfulness seemed even noisier and more radiant. At the park promenade, where a light-blond girl under a red sunshade was pouring soda water with raspberry juice, the old man halted and said, “A cool drink couldn’t hurt!” He ordered two sodas plain and, with stealthy dignity, observed the blond girl, who, lustful and will-less, seemed utterly absorbed in Carl Joseph’s colorful effulgence. They drank and walked on. Sometimes the district captain swung his cane slightly; it hinted at an exuberance that knows where to stop. Though his usual silent and earnest self, today he struck his son as almost breezy. From his cheery interior, a slight coughing occasionally broke forth, a kind of laughter. If someone greeted him, he briefly raised his hat. There were moments when he even ventured to come out with bold paradoxes: for example, “Politeness too can become burdensome!” He preferred to say something daring rather than betray his delight at the astonished looks from passersby. As they were approaching the front gates of the house, he halted once again. Turning his face to his son, he said, “In my youth, I would have liked to become a soldier. Your grandfather explicitly prohibited it. Now I’m glad that you’re not a government official.”
“Yessir, Pápa!” replied Carl Joseph.
There was wine; they had also managed to muster up beef and cherry dumplings. Fräulein Hirschwitz came in her gray Sunday silk and, upon seeing Carl Joseph, relinquished most of her severity without further ado. “I am utterly delighted,” she said, “and congratulate you from the bottom of my heart”—using the German word beglückwünschen for “congratulate.” The district captain translated it into the Austrian word gratulieren. And they began to eat.
“You don’t have to hurry!” said the old man. “If I finish first, I’ll wait a little.”
Carl Joseph looked up. He realized his father must have always known what an effort it was to keep up with him. And for the first time he felt he could see through the old man’s armor, into his living heart and into the web of his secret thoughts. Though he was already a lieutenant, Carl Joseph turned red. “Thank you, Pápa,” he said. The district captain kept eating his soup. He seemed not to hear.
A few days later, they boarded the train for Vienna. The son was reading a newspaper, the old man documents. At one point the district captain glanced up and said, “We’ll have to order you a pair of dress trousers in Vienna, you’ve only got two.”
“Thank you, Pápa!” They continued reading.
They were just fifteen minutes from Vienna when the father put away the documents. The son instantly folded the newspaper. The district captain peered at the windowpane, then for a few seconds at the son. All at once, he said, “You know Constable Sergeant Slama, don’t you?”
The name banged against Carl Joseph’s memory, a cry from lost times. He instantly saw the road leading to the constabulary headquarters, the low room, the flowery dressing gown, the wide well-upholstered bed; he caught the scent of meadows and also Frau Slama’s mignonette. He listened.
“Unfortunately he was widowed this year,” the old man went on. “Sad. His wife died in childbirth. You should call on him.”
All at once the train compartment was unbearably hot. Carl Joseph tried to loosen his collar. As he vainly struggled for appropriate words, a hot, foolish, childish desire to weep rose up in him, strangling him; his palate was dry as if he had drunk nothing for days. He felt his father’s eyes, peered strenuously at the countryside, sensed the nearness of the destination toward which they were heading inexorably, felt it as a sharpening of his torment, longed to be at least in the corridor, and simultaneously realized that he could not escape the old man’s eyes and news. He quickly gathered a bit of weak, temporary strength and said, “I’ll call on him.”
“The train ride doesn’t seem to be agreeing with you,” the father remarked.
“Yessir, Pápa”
Mute and upright, plagued by a torment that he could not have named, that he had never known, that was like an enigmatic disease from distant climes, Carl Joseph went to the hotel. He barely managed to say, “Excuse me, Pápa!” Then he locked his door, unpacked his suitcase, and pulled out the folder containing a few letters from Frau Slama in their envelopes, as they had come, with the encoded address: General Delivery, Hranice, Moravia. The blue pages were the color of the sky and had a hint of mignonette, and the black, dainty letters soared off like an orderly flight of sleek swallows. Letters from a dead Frau Slama! To Carl Joseph they seemed like early harbingers of her sudden end, with the spectral grace that emanates only from doomed hands, anticipatory greetings from the beyond. He had not answered her last letter. The induction, the speeches, the leave-taking, the mass, his commission, his new rank, and the new uniforms lost their meaning before the dark, weightless procession of the letters sweeping across the blue background. The traces of the dead woman’s caressing hands still lay upon his skin, and his own warm hands still contained the memory of her cool breasts, and with closed eyes he saw the blissful weariness in her love-sated face, the parted red lips and the white shimmer of the teeth, the indolently bent arm, in every line of the body the flowing reflection of contented dreams and happy sleep. Now the worms were crawling over her breasts and thighs, and decay was thoroughly devouring her face. The more intense the dreadful images of rot before the young man’s eyes, the more vehemently they kindled his passion. It seemed to be reaching out into the incomprehensible boundlessness of those regions where the dead woman had vanished. I probably would never have visited her again, the lieutenant mused. I would have forgotten her. Her words were tender, she was a mother, she loved me, she died! It was clear that her death was his fault. She lay on the threshold of his life, a beloved corpse.
It was Carl Joseph’s first encounter with death. He did not remember his mother. All he knew of her was a grave and flowerbed and two photographs. But now death flashed up before him like a black lightning bolt, striking his harmless joys, scorching his youth, and hurling him to the brink of the gloomy abyss that divides the living from the dead. Ahead of him lay a life of grief. He braced himself to endure it, pale and resolute, as befits a man. He packed away her letters. He shut the suitcase. He stepped into the corridor, knocked on his father’s door, entered, and heard the old man’s voice as if through a thick glass wall: “You seem to have a soft heart!” The district captain adjusted his tie at the mirror. He had some business at the governor’s residence, the police headquarters, the Higher Regional Court. “You’re accompanying me,” he said.
They drove in the two-horse carriage on rubber wheels. The streets looked more festive than ever to Carl Joseph. The vast summery gold of the afternoon flowed over houses and trees, trolleys, pedestrians, policemen, green benches, monuments, and gardens. You could hear the swift clippity-clop of the hooves on the cobblestones. Young women glided by like bright, dai
nty lights. Soldiers saluted. Shopwindows glistened. The summer wafted gently through the big city.
But all the beauties of summer glided unseen past Carl Joseph’s indifferent eyes. His father’s words banged against his ears. The old man was noting hundreds of changes: relocated tobacco shops, new kiosks, extended bus lines, shifted stops. A lot had been different in his day. But his loyal memory clung to all that had vanished as well as all that was preserved; with soft and unusual tenderness his voice raised tiny treasures from buried times; his thin hand moved to greet the places where his youth had once blossomed. Carl Joseph kept silent. He too had just lost his youth. His love was dead, but his heart was open to his father’s nostalgia, and he began to sense that behind the district captain’s bony hardness someone else was hidden, a mysterious yet familiar man, a Trotta, descendant of a Slovenian war invalid and of the singular Hero of Solferino. And the livelier the old man’s cries and remarks, the sparser and softer the boy’s obedient and habitual confirmations, and the smart and dutiful “Yessir, Pápa,” drilled into his tongue since infancy, now sounded different: brotherly and confidential. The father seemed to be growing younger and the son older.
