by Joseph Roth
“Yessir, Papá!”
“He gave you your letters?”
“Yessir, Papá!”
“Sit down, please.”
“Yessir, Papá!”
The district captain finally lets go of the newspaper, props his elbows on the table, turns to his son, and says, “She’s given you a cheap brandy. I always drink Hennessy.”
“I’ll remember that, Papá!”
“I seldom drink anyway.”
“Yessir, Papá!”
“You’re still pale. Take off your coat. Major Kreidl is over there, just look.”
Carl Joseph stands up and bows to the major.
“Was Slama unpleasant?”
“No, quite a nice guy.”
“There you are!”
Carl Joseph takes off his coat.
“Where are the letters?” asks the district captain. His son removes them from his coat pocket. Old Herr von Trotta takes hold of them. He weighs them in his right hand, puts them down, and says, “Quite a lot of letters!”
“Yessir, Papá!”
It is still, one hears the clatter of the pool balls and the chess figures, and the rain is pouring outside.
“The day after tomorrow you’re reporting for duty!” says the district captain, glancing toward the window. All at once, Carl Joseph feels his father’s gaunt hand on his right hand. The district captain’s hand, cool and bony, a hard shell, lies on the lieutenant’s.
Carl Joseph lowers his eyes to the tabletop. He turns red. He says, “Yessir, Papá!”
“Check!” calls the district captain, removing his hand. “Tell the girl,” he remarks to the waiter, “that we only drink Hennessy.”
In a dead-straight diagonal they veer across the café to the door, the father and, behind him, the son.
Now it is only dripping in a gentle singsong from the trees as they slowly walk home through the humid garden. From the entrance to the district headquarters, Sergeant Slama emerges in a helmet, with a rifle and a fixed bayonet plus a rule book under his arm.
“Good day, my dear Slama!” says old Herr von Trotta. “No news, eh?”
“No news,” the sergeant echoes.
Chapter 5
THE BARRACKS LAY in the northern part of town. It closed off the broad well-kept highway, which started a new life behind the red brick construction, where it led far into the blue countryside. The barracks looked as if it had been thrust into the Slavic province by the Imperial and Royal Army as an emblem of the Hapsburg might. The ancient highway itself, which had become so broad and roomy after centuries of migrating Slavic generations, was blocked by the barracks. The highway had to yield. It looped around the barracks. If on a clear day you stood at the extreme northern edge of town at the end of the highway, where the houses grew smaller and smaller, finally becoming peasant huts, you could spy, in the distance, the broad, arched, black-and-yellow entrance to the barracks, a gate brandished like a mighty Hapsburg shield against the town: a threat, a protection, and both at once. The regiment was stationed in Moravia. But its troops were not Czechs, as might be expected; they were Ukrainians and Rumanians.
Twice a week, military exercises took place on the southern terrain. Twice a week, the regiment galloped through the streets of the little town. The clear blaring peal of the trumpets interrupted the regular clopping of the horses’ hooves at regular intervals, and the red trousers of the men astride the glossy brown bodies of the chargers filled the little town with gory splendor. The citizens paused on the curbs. The shopkeepers left their shops, the idle café patrons their tables, the town policemen their customary beats, and the farmers, coming from the villages and bringing fresh produce to the marketplace, their horses and wagons. Only the coachmen on the few fiacres lined up near the town park remained immobile on their boxes. From up above, they had an even better view of the military spectacle than the people standing at the curbs. And the old nags seemed to greet the splendid arrival of their younger and healthier brethren with dull indifference. The cavalry steeds were very distant relatives of the bleak horses that for fifteen years now had done nothing but pull droshkies to the station and back.
Carl Joseph, Baron von Trotta, was unconcerned about the animals. At times he believed he felt the blood of his forebears inside himself: they had not been horsemen. With combing harrows in their hard hands, they had placed foot after foot on the ground. They had shoved the furrowing plows into the succulent clods of soil and trudged with buckling knees behind the massive pair of oxen. They had goaded the beasts with willow rods, not spurs and whips. And with arms raised high they had swung the polished scythes like flashes of lightning and harvested the rich crops they had sown themselves. His grandfather’s father had been a peasant. Sipolje was the village they came from. Sipolje: the name had an ancient meaning. No one, not even today’s Slovenes, really knew what it meant. But Carl Joseph felt he knew the village. He saw it whenever he recalled his grandfather’s portrait, which hung blurring under the ceiling of the study. The village lay cradled between unknown mountains, under the golden glow of an unknown sun, with squalid huts of clay and thatch. A lovely village, a good village! He would have given his whole career as an officer for it.
Ah, he was no peasant, he was a baron and a lieutenant in the lancers! Unlike the other officers, he had no room of his own in town. Carl Joseph lived in the barracks. His window faced the parade ground. Across from him were the troop rooms. Whenever he returned home to the barracks in the afternoon, and the huge double gate closed behind him, he felt trapped; never again would the gates open before him. His spurs jingled frostily on the bare stone staircase, and the tread of his boots echoed on the brown caulked wooden floor of the corridor. The whitewashed walls clung to a bit of vanishing daylight, radiating it now, as if making sure in their bleak thrift that the government kerosene lamps in the corners were not lit until evening had thickened completely, as if they had collected the day at the right time in order to dole it out in the destitution of darkness.
Carl Joseph did not turn on the light. Pressing his forehead against the window, which seemed to separate him from the darkness but was actually the cool, familiar outer wall of the darkness itself, he peered into the bright yellow coziness of the troop rooms. He would have gladly traded places with any of the privates. There they sat, half undressed, in their coarse yellowish army shirts, dangling their bare feet over the edges of their bunks, singing, talking, and playing harmonicas. Around this time of day—autumn was already well advanced—an hour after lockup and an hour and a half before taps, the entire barracks resembled a gigantic ship. And Carl Joseph also felt as if it were rocking gently and the chary yellow kerosene lamps with the broad white shades were bobbing in the steady rhythm of waves on an unknown ocean. The men were crooning in an unknown language, a Slavic language. The old peasants of Sipolje would have probably understood them. Carl Joseph’s grandfather might still have understood them! His enigmatic portrait blurred under the ceiling of the study. Carl Joseph’s memory clung to this portrait as the sole and final emblem bequeathed to him by the long line of his unknown forebears. He was their offspring. Since joining the regiment, he felt he was his grandfather’s grandson, not his father’s son; indeed, he was the son of his strange grandfather. They kept playing their harmonicas over there nonstop. He could clearly see sporadic glints of the metal and the movements of the coarse brown hands pushing the metal instruments back and forth in front of red mouths. The vast melancholy of these instruments poured through the closed windows into the black rectangle of the parade ground, filling the darkness with vague inklings of home and wife and child and farm. Back home they lived in dwarfed huts, making their wives fertile by night and their fields by day. White and high, the snow piled around their huts in winter. Yellow and high, the grain billowed around their hips in summer. They were peasants. Peasants! And the Trotta dynasty had lived no differently. No differently!
The autumn was already well advanced. When he sat up in bed in the morning
, the sun emerged like a blood-red orange on the eastern rim of the sky. And when physical training began on the water meadow, in the wide greenish glade framed by blackish firs, the silvery mists rose clumsily, torn apart by the vehement, regular motions of the dark-blue uniforms. Pale and dismal, the sun then rose. Its matte silver, cool and alien, broke through the black branches. Frosty shudders passed like a cruel comb over the russet skins of the horses, and their whinnying emerged from the nearby glade—painful cries for home and stable. The soldiers were doing “carbine exercises.” Carl Joseph could hardly wait to get back to the barracks. He dreaded the fifteen-minute break, which started punctually at ten, and the conversations with his fellow officers, who sometimes gathered in the nearby tavern to have a beer and wait for Colonel Kovacs. Even more awkward was the evening at the officers’ club. It would soon begin. Attendance was mandatory. Taps was fast approaching. The dark-blue jingling shadows of returning men flitted through the murky rectangle of the parade ground. Sergeant Reznicek was already stepping from his door, clutching his yellowly blinking lantern, and the buglers were gathering in the darkness. The yellow brass instruments shimmered against the dark shiny blue of the uniforms. From the stables came the drowsy whinnying of the horses. In the sky, the stars twinkled golden and silvery.
Someone knocked on the door. Carl Joseph did not stir. It’s his orderly; he’ll come in all the same. He’ll come in right away. His name is Onufrij. How long did it take to learn this name, Onufrij? Grandfather would have been familiar with this name!
Onufrij came in. Carl Joseph was pressing his forehead against the window. Behind him he heard the orderly clicking his heels. Today was Wednesday. Onufrij had leave. The light had to be switched on and a pass signed.
“Switch on the light!” Carl Joseph ordered without looking around. Across the square the men were still playing harmonicas.
Onufrij switched on the light. Carl Joseph heard the click of the switch on the door molding. Behind him the room lit up. But outside the window the rectangular darkness was still gaping, and across the square the cozy yellow light of the troop rooms was flickering. (Electric light was a privilege reserved for officers.)
“Where are you going tonight?” asked Carl Joseph, still gazing at the troop rooms.
“To see a girl,” said Onufrij. This was the first time the lieutenant had used the familiar form with him.
“What girl?” asked Carl Joseph.
“Katharina!” said Onufrij. His tone indicated that he was standing at attention.
“At ease!” Carl Joseph ordered. Onufrij audibly put his right foot in front of his left. Carl Joseph turned around. Before him stood Onufrij, big horse teeth shimmering between his full red lips. He could never stand at ease without smiling. “What does she look like, your Katharina?” asked Carl Joseph.
“Lieutenant, sir, if I may say so, big white breast!”
“Big white breast!” The lieutenant’s hands became hollows and he felt a cool memory of Kathi’s breasts. She was dead. Dead!
“The pass!” Carl Joseph ordered. Onufrij held out the pass. “Where is Katharina?” asked Carl Joseph.
“Maid, works for rich people,” replied Onufrij. “Big white breast!” he added happily.
“Let me see it!” said Carl Joseph. He took the pass, smoothed it, signed. “Go to Katharina!” said Carl Joseph. Onufrij once again clicked his heels. “Dismissed!” Carl Joseph ordered.
He switched off the light. He groped for his coat in the darkness. He stepped out into the corridor. The instant he shut the door downstairs, the buglers launched into the final part of taps. The stars flickered in the sky. The sentry at the gate presented arms. The gate closed behind Carl Joseph. The road shimmered silvery in the moonlight. The yellow lights of the town greeted him like fallen stars. His steps rang hard on the freshly frozen ground, autumnal and nocturnal.
In back of him he heard Onufrij’s boots. The lieutenant walked faster so his orderly would not catch up with him. But Onufrij likewise quickened his pace. And so, one behind the other, they hurried along the hard, lonesome, reverberating road. Plainly, Onufrij enjoyed the idea of overtaking his lieutenant. Carl Joseph stood still and waited. Onufrij loomed clearly in the moonlight. He seemed to be growing; he raised his head against the stars as if drawing new strength for his encounter with his superior. His arms jerked in the same rhythm as his legs; it was as if his hands were treading air. Three paces ahead of Carl Joseph he halted, flinging his chest out once more, with a dreadful bang of his boot heels, and his hand saluted with five consolidated fingers. Flustered, Carl Joseph smiled. Anyone else, he mused, would have found something nice to say. It was touching the way Onufrij followed him. He had never really looked at him closely. So long as Carl Joseph had failed to recall his name, it had also been impossible to see his face. It was as if he had had a different orderly every day. Other officers talked about their orderlies with meticulous expertise, the way they talked about girls, clothes, favorite dishes, and horses. But whenever conversation turned to servants, Carl Joseph thought about old Jacques at home—old Jacques, who had even served Carl Joseph’s grandfather. Aside from old Jacques, there was no other servant in the world! Now Onufrij stood in front of him on the moonlit highway, with a tremendously pumped-up chest, glittering buttons, and boots polished like mirrors, his broad face convulsively suppressing his glee at running into the lieutenant. “Stand! At ease!” said Carl Joseph.
He would have liked to say something pleasant. Grandfather would have said something pleasant to Jacques. Onufrij loudly put his right foot in front of his left. His chest remained pumped up; the order had no effect.
“Stand comfortably,” said Carl Joseph, a bit sad and impatient.
“Sir, I am standing comfortably,” replied Onufrij.
“Does she live far from here, your girl?” asked Carl Joseph.
“Lieutenant, sir, not far, an hour’s march!”
No, it was not working. Carl Joseph was tongue-tied. He was choking on some kind of unknown affection. He could not deal with orderlies. Whom could he deal with? His helplessness ran deep; he was tongue-tied even with his fellow officers. Why did they all start whispering whenever he left them or was about to join them? Why did he sit a horse so badly? Ah, he knew himself. As if watching himself in a mirror, he could see the figure he cut; it was no use pretending. The other officers whispered behind his back. He understood their answers only after they were explained to him, and even then he could not laugh: especially then! Yet Colonel Kovacs really liked him. And his record was certainly excellent. He lived in his grandfather’s shadow. That was it! He was the grandson of the Hero of Solferino, the only grandson. He constantly felt his grandfather’s dark enigmatic gaze on the back of his neck. He was the grandson of the Hero of Solferino!
For a couple of minutes, Carl Joseph and his orderly, Onufrij, stood facing each other silently on the milky, shimmering highway. The hush and the moonlight lengthened the minutes. Onufrij did not stir. He stood like a monument, all aglow in the silvery moonlight. Suddenly Carl Joseph turned and began to march. Onufrij followed exactly three paces behind him. Carl Joseph heard the regular banging of the heavy boots and the iron ringing of the spurs. It was allegiance itself following him. Every bang of the boots was like a terse stamped repeat of an orderly’s oath of allegiance. Carl Joseph was afraid to turn around. He wished that this dead-straight highway would suddenly branch off into an unexpected, unknown side road, offering escape from Onufrij’s obstinate officiousness. The orderly followed him in step. The lieutenant tried to keep pace with the boots in back of him. He was afraid of disappointing Onufrij by heedlessly changing pace. Onufrij’s allegiance lay in those reliably tramping boots. And every single bang stirred Carl Joseph anew. It was as if a clumsy man behind him were trying to knock on his master’s heart with heavy soles—the helpless tenderness of a spurred and booted bear.
At last they reached the edge of town. Carl Joseph had thought of an apt phrase to say goodbye wit
h. He turned and said, “Have fun, Onufrij!” And he swiftly cut into a side street. The orderly’s thank-you reached him only as a remote echo.
He had to take a detour. He reached the club ten minutes later. It was on the second floor of one of the finest mansions on the Old Ring. All windows, as on every evening, were pouring light upon the square, upon the promenade of the townsfolk. It was late; he had to thread his way adroitly through the dense swarms of burghers taking their constitutionals with their wives. Day after day he endured the same unspeakable agony of emerging in jingly colorfulness among the dark civilians, encountering nosy, spiteful, or lustful looks, and finally plunging like a god into the bright entrance of the club. Today he quickly wound through the strollers. It took two minutes to get through the rather lengthy Promenade, a disgusting two minutes! He climbed the steps two at a time. Meet no one! You had to avoid meeting anyone on the stairs: bad omens. Warmth, light, and voices came toward him in the hallway.
He entered, he exchanged greetings. He looked for Colonel Kovacs in his usual corner. Every evening, the colonel played dominoes there, every evening with a different man. He was a domino enthusiast—perhaps out of an immoderate dread of cards. “I’ve never held a card in my hand,” he would say. It was not without malevolence that he pronounced the word card; and he would glance at his hands as if they held his sterling character. “Gentlemen,” he would sometimes add, “I advise you all to play dominoes. They are clean and they teach moderation.” And now and then he would lift up one of the many-eyed black-and-white dominoes like a magic instrument for freeing depraved cardplayers of their demon.
