by Joseph Roth
Now the church bell struck quarter past, then half past. Two-thirty: another hour and a half. He stepped into the hall, took his coat, adjusted the prescribed creases in the back for a long time, tugged his saber hilt through the slit in his pocket, donned the cap mechanically in front of the mirror, and left the house.
Chapter 4
HE TOOK THE habitual route, under the open railroad barriers, past the sleeping yellow tax office. From here one could already see the lonesome constabulary headquarters. He walked on. The small cemetery with the wooden gate lay ten minutes beyond the headquarters. The veil of rain seemed to cover the dead more densely. The lieutenant touched the wet iron handle; he entered. An unknown bird was warbling desolately. Where might it be hiding? Wasn’t it singing from a grave? He unlatched the cemetery office door; an old woman with spectacles on her nose was peeling potatoes. She let both peels and potatoes drop from her lap into the pail and stood up.
“I would like to see Frau Slama’s grave.”
“Next to last row, Fourteen, Grave Seven!” the woman said promptly, as if she had been expecting this question for the longest time.
The grave was still fresh: a tiny mound, a small temporary wooden cross, and a rain-drenched wreath of glass violets reminiscent of bonbons and pastry shops. KATHARINA LUISE SLAMA, BORN, DIED. She lay below; the fat curling worms were just starting to gnaw cozily on her round white breasts. The lieutenant shut his eyes and doffed his cap. The rain caressed his parted hair with wet tenderness. He paid no heed to the grave; the decaying body under this mound had nothing to do with Frau Slama: dead, she was dead—beyond reach, even though he was standing at her grave. The flesh buried in his memory was closer to him than the corpse beneath this mound. Carl Joseph donned his cap and pulled out his watch. Another half hour. He left the cemetery.
He reached the constabulary headquarters, rang the bell, no one came. The sergeant was not home yet. The rain gurgled over the dense wild grape leaves shrouding the veranda. Carl Joseph paced to and fro, to and fro, lit a cigarette, tossed it away, felt he must look like a sentry, turned his head whenever his eyes encountered that right-hand window from which Katharina had always looked; he pulled out his watch, pressed the white bell button once again, waited.
Four muffled strokes came slowly from the town’s church tower. Now the sergeant appeared. He saluted mechanically before he even saw who was there. As if responding not to a greeting but to a threat from the sergeant, Carl Joseph exclaimed, louder than he intended, “Good day, Herr Slama!” He stretched out his hand, virtually plunging into the greeting as into an entrenchment, and with the impatience of a man bracing himself for an attack he awaited the sergeant’s clumsy preparations, his strenuous effort in stripping off his wet cotton glove and his sedulous devotion to this enterprise and his lowered gaze. At last, the bare hand settled, damp, broad, and slack, into the lieutenant’s hand.
“Thank you for calling, Herr Baron!” said the sergeant, as if the lieutenant had not just arrived but were about to leave. The sergeant pulled out the key. He unlocked the door. A gust of wind lashed the pattering rain against the veranda. It seemed to be driving the lieutenant into the house. The hallway was gloomy. Didn’t a narrow streak light up, narrow, silvery, an earthly trace of the dead woman?
The sergeant opened the kitchen door; the streak drowned in the flooding light. “Please take off your coat,” said Slama. He was still in his, the belt still buckled.
My sincere condolences! thinks the lieutenant. I’ll say it fast and then leave. Slama’s arms are already widening to remove Carl Joseph’s coat. Carl Joseph yields to the courtesy, Slama’s hand momentarily grazes the back of the lieutenant’s neck, the hairline above the collar, the very place where Frau Slama’s hands used to interlock, a tender clasp of the beloved chain. When, at which exact point, can you finally unload the condolence formula? When entering the parlor or only after sitting down? Do you then have to stand up again? It’s as if you couldn’t utter the slightest sound until you say those stupid words—something you’ve brought along and carried in your mouth the whole time. It lies on the tongue, burdensome and useless, with a stale taste.
The sergeant pushes down the door handle; the parlor is locked. He says, “Excuse me!” although it is not his fault. He reaches back into the pocket of the coat, which he has already taken off—it seems very long ago—and jingles the keys. This door was never locked when Frau Slama was alive.
So she’s not here! the lieutenant suddenly thinks, as if he had not come here because she simply is not here anymore, and he notices that all this time he has secretly believed that she could be here, sitting in a room and waiting. Now she is undeniably no longer here. She is truly lying outside, in the grave he has just seen.
A damp smells lingers in the parlor. Of the two windows one is curtained; the gray light of the dreary day floats through the other. “Please step in,” the sergeant says. He is right behind the lieutenant.
“Thank you,” says Carl Joseph. And he steps in and walks to the round table; he is quite familiar with the pattern of the ribbed cloth covering it, and the small jagged stain in the middle, the brown finish, and the curlicues of the grooved feet. There stands the sideboard with its glass doors, nickel-silver beakers behind them and small porcelain figures and a yellow clay pig with a slot for coins on its back.
“Please do me the honor of having a seat,” the sergeant murmurs. He stands behind a chair, his hands clutching its back; he holds it out like a shield.
Carl Joseph last saw him over four years ago. The sergeant was on duty then. He wore a scintillating panache on his black helmet; straps crisscrossed his chest; he stood with ordered arms, waiting outside the district captain’s office. He was Sergeant Slama, his name was like his rank, both the panache and the blond moustache were part of his physiognomy. Now the sergeant stands there bareheaded, no saber, no strap or belt; one sees the greasy luster of the ribbed uniform cloth on the slight curve of the belly over the back of the chair, and he is no longer the Sergeant Slama of those days, he is Herr Slama, a constable sergeant on duty, once the husband of Frau Slama and now a widower and master of this house. His close-cropped blond hair lies, parted down the middle, like a small double brush over the uncreased chin with the horizontal reddish stripes left by the permanent pressure of the hard cap. Without cap or helmet, his head is orphaned. The face without the shade of the visor is a perfect oval, filled out with cheeks, nose, moustache, and small, blue, stubborn, guileless eyes. He waits for Carl Joseph to sit down, then shifts his own chair, likewise sits down, and pulls out his cigarette case. Its lid is made of particolored enamel. The sergeant puts the case in the center of the table, between him and the lieutenant, and says, “Would you care for a cigarette?”
It is time to express my condolences, Carl Joseph thinks to himself. He stands up and says, “My sincere condolences, Herr Slama!”
The sergeant sits with both hands in front of him on the edge of the table, appears not to grasp what is happening, tries to smile, rises too late just as Carl Joseph is about to sit down again; the sergeant takes his hands from the table and puts them on his trousers, lowers his head, raises it, looks at Carl Joseph as if asking what to do. They sit down again. It is over. They are silent.
“She was a fine woman, Frau Slama; may she rest in peace!” says the lieutenant.
The sergeant puts his hand on his moustache and says, with a wisp of it between his fingers, “She was beautiful. The Herr Baron knew her, didn’t you?”
“I knew her, your wife. Was her death easy?”
“It took two days. By the time we sent for the doctor it was too late. Otherwise she would’ve survived. I had night duty. When I got home, she was dead. The financier’s wife across the road was with her.” And hard upon it: “Would you care for a raspberry drink?”
“Thank you, yes!” says Carl Joseph in a clearer voice, as if the raspberry drink could entirely alter the situation, and he sees the sergeant stand up and go to the side
board, and he knows there is no raspberry drink there. It is in the kitchen, in the white cabinet, behind glass; that was where Frau Slama always got it. He closely watches all the sergeant’s movements, the short strong arms in the tight sleeves, stretching to find the bottle on the top shelf, then sinking helplessly as his tiptoeing feet drop back on their soles; and Slama, virtually coming home from a foreign territory to which he has gone on a superfluous and, alas, unsuccessful expedition, turns around and with touching despair in his shiny blue eyes makes a simple announcement: “Please forgive me, I’m afraid I can’t find it.”
“It doesn’t matter, Herr Slama,” the lieutenant consoles him.
But, as if not hearing this solace or as if obeying a command that, expressly issued by a higher authority, can brook no interference from subalterns, the sergeant leaves the room. He can be heard rummaging in the kitchen; he comes back, bottle in hand, removes glasses with matte rim decorations from the sideboard, places a carafe of water on the table, pours the viscous ruby-red liquid from the dark-green bottle, and repeats, “Please do me the honor, Herr Baron!” The lieutenant pours water from the carafe into the raspberry juice; they remain silent. The water plunges from the sinuous mouth of the carafe, splashes a bit, and is like a small response to the tireless pouring of the rain outside, which they have been hearing all along. The rain, they know, envelops the lonesome house and seems to make the two men even more lonesome. They are alone. Carl Joseph raises his glass, the sergeant does likewise; the lieutenant tastes the sweet, sticky liquid. Slama drains his glass at one draught, he’s thirsty, a strange, inexplicable thirst on this cool day.
“Joining the Tenth Lancers?” asks Slama.
“Yes. I don’t know which regiment.”
“I know a sergeant there, Zenower, he’s in the audit department. He and I served with the riflemen, then he transferred. A great guy, very educated! He’s sure to pass the officer’s exam. People like us stay put. There are no prospects in the constabulary.”
The rain has grown more intense, the gusts are more vehement, the drops keep pelting the window. Carl Joseph says, “It’s generally difficult in our profession—I mean the military!” The sergeant bursts into a puzzling laughter; he seems utterly delighted that the profession practiced by him and the lieutenant is a difficult one. He laughs a bit harder than he intends. You can tell by his mouth, which is wider open than his laughter requires and which remains open longer than it lasts. So for an instant the sergeant, if only for physical reasons, might seem to have trouble regaining his normal earnest self. Is he truly delighted that he and Carl Joseph have such a difficult life?
“Herr Baron,” the sergeant begins, “is good enough to speak of ‘our’ profession. Please do not take it amiss, but it’s quite different for our kind.”
Carl Joseph does not know how to respond. He feels—vaguely—that the sergeant is nursing a grudge toward him, perhaps toward the overall conditions in the army and the constabulary. At military school they never learned anything about how an officer is to conduct himself in this kind of situation. At any rate, Carl Joseph smiles, a smile that pulls down and squeezes his lips together like an iron clamp; he looks as if he is being chary with expressing pleasure, which the sergeant heedlessly fritters away. The raspberry drink, so sweet upon the tongue, sends a bitter, vapid taste back from the throat; it would call for a brandy chaser. The reddish parlor seems lower and smaller than usual; perhaps it is being squashed by the rain.
On the table lies the familiar album with the hard, shiny brass mountings. Carl Joseph is well acquainted with each and every picture. Sergeant Slama says, “May I?” and opens the album and offers it to the lieutenant. The sergeant is photographed here in mufti, as a young bridegroom at his wife’s side. “In those days I was a still a platoon commander,” he says somewhat bitterly, as if he would rather say that a higher rank would have been more befitting by then. Frau Slama sits next to him in a snug light-colored summer frock with a wasp waist as in an airy armor, a white broad-brimmed hat slanting across her hair. What is this? Has Carl Joseph never seen this picture before? Then why does it look so new to him today? And so old? And so alien? And so ridiculous? Yes, he smiles as if he were viewing a quaint picture from times long gone and as if Frau Slama had never been close and dear to him and as if she had died, not just a few months ago but years ago.
“She was very pretty! You can tell!” says Carl Joseph, no longer out of embarrassment, as before, but in honest flattery. You have to say something nice about a dead woman in front of the widower you’re condoling with.
He instantly feels liberated, and also severed from the dead woman, as if everything were snuffed out. It was all a fantasy! He finishes the raspberry drink, stands, and says, “I’ll be going now, Herr Slama!” He does not wait, he wheels around, the sergeant barely has time to get up, they are already in the hallway, Carl Joseph already has his coat on, he slowly and luxuriously slips on his left glove, he suddenly has more time for that; and, upon saying, “Well, auf Wiedersehn, Herr Slama,” Carl Joseph is gratified to catch an alien, haughty sound in his own voice.
Slama stands there with downcast eyes and helpless hands, which are suddenly empty as if after holding something until this very moment they had only just dropped it and lost it forever. They shake hands. Does Slama have something to say? No matter. “Perhaps another time, Herr Lieutenant!” he nevertheless says. No, he probably doesn’t mean it, but Carl Joseph has already forgotten Slama’s face. All he sees are the golden-yellow braids on the collar and the three golden chevrons on the black sleeve of his constable tunic.
“Goodbye, sergeant!”
The rain is still falling, mild, tireless, with sporadic warm mountain gusts. It feels as if evening should have come long ago, and yet evening cannot come. Eternal, this wet gray hatchwork. For the first time since he began wearing a uniform—indeed, for the first time since he began thinking—Carl Joseph feels he ought to pull his coat collar up. He even raises his hands for an instant, then recalls that he is in uniform and drops them again. It is as if he had forgotten his profession for a second. He walks slowly and jingly over the wet, crunching gravel of the front yard and delights in his slowness. He has no need to hurry; nothing has happened, it was all a dream. What time might it be? His watch is buried too deep under his tunic in the small trouser pocket. Not worth unbuttoning his coat. The church clock will be striking soon anyway.
He opens the garden gate, he steps into the road. “Herr Baron!” the constable suddenly says behind him. Mystifying how silently he has followed him. Yes, Carl Joseph is startled. He halts but cannot make up his mind to turn straightaway. Perhaps a pistol barrel is resting right in the hollow between the regulation creases in his coat. A grisly and childish idea! Is everything starting all over again?
“Yes?” he says, still with an arrogant casualness that almost arduously prolongs his leave-taking and is a great strain on him—and he wheels around.
Coatless and bareheaded, the sergeant stands in the rain, with his wet, small, double brush and thick beads of water on his blond, smooth forehead. He holds a small blue packet tied crosswise with a thin silver ribbon. “This is for you, Herr Baron,” he says, with downcast eyes. “Please excuse me. I have orders from the district captain. I took it to him right away. The district captain skimmed it and said I should give it to you personally!”
The hush lasts for an instant. Only the rain pelts down on the poor little pale-blue packet, staining it utterly dark; it can no longer wait—the packet. Carl Joseph takes it, plunges it deep into his coat pocket, reddens, thinks momentarily about stripping the glove from his right hand, changes his mind, holds his leather-clad hand out to the sergeant, says, “Thank you very much,” and leaves quickly.
He can feel the letters in his pocket. From there, through his hand, along his arm, an unknown heat swells up, turning his face a deeper red. He now feels that he should loosen his collar, just as he believed earlier that he should turn it up. The bitter after
taste of the raspberry drink is back in his mouth. Carl Joseph takes out the packet. Yes, there is no doubt. These are his letters.
Evening should finally come and the rain stop. A number of things should change in the world: the evening sun perhaps send a final beam here. Through the rain the meadows exhale the familiar fragrance, and an alien bird lets out a lonesome cry; it has never been heard here before; this is like an alien land. He hears five o’clock striking: so it was exactly one hour ago—no more than one hour. Should one walk fast or slow? Time has an alien, enigmatic motion, an hour is like a year. The bell strikes a quarter past five. He has barely gone a few paces. Carl Joseph starts tramping faster. He crosses the rails; here is where the town’s outlying houses begin. He walks past the town cafe; this is the only place with a modern revolving door. It might be good to go in, have a brandy at the bar, and then leave. Carl Joseph goes in.
“Quick, a brandy,” he says at the counter. He keeps on his cap and coat, a few patrons stand up. You can hear the clattering of the pool balls and the chess figures. Garrison officers sit in the alcove shadows; Carl Joseph does not see them, does not salute them. Nothing is more urgent than the brandy. He is ashen. The pale-blond cashier smiles maternally from her lofty seat and, with a kind hand, places a sugar cube next to the cup. Carl Joseph drains it at one swoop. He instantly orders a refill. All he sees of the cashier’s face is a light-blond shimmer and two gold caps in the corners of her mouth. He feels he is doing something forbidden, and he has no idea why drinking two brandies should be forbidden. After all, he is no longer a cadet. Why is the cashier ogling him with such a bizarre smile? Her navy-blue gaze disconcerts him, as does the charred blackness of her eyebrows. He turns and peers into the room. There in the corner by the window sits his father.
Yes, he is the district captain—and what’s so amazing about that? He sits there every day, from five to seven, reading the Foreign News and the Civil Service Gazette and smoking a Virginia cigar. The whole town knows, it has known for three decades. The district captain sits there, watching his son, and he seems to be smiling. Carl Joseph doffs his cap and walks over to his father. Old Herr von Trotta glances up from his newspaper without putting it down and says, “Are you coming from Slama?”
