by Joseph Roth
The regimental surgeon remained. After the intimate solitude of the graveyard, the solitude in his own home seemed gigantic, unfamiliar, almost hostile. For the first time in his life he poured himself a drink. Indeed, he felt as if he were drinking a liquid for the first time in his life. Make order, he thought, I have to make order. He was determined to speak to his wife. He stepped into the corridor.
“Where is my wife?”
“In the bedroom,” said the orderly.
Should I knock? the doctor wondered. No! his resolute heart commanded.
He opened the door.
There, at the closet mirror, his wife stood in blue panties, holding a large rosy powder puff.
“Ohh!” she cried, putting her hand across her bosom. The regimental surgeon remained in the doorway. “It’s you?” said his wife. It was a question that sounded like a yawn.
“It’s me!” replied the physician in a firm voice. It felt as if someone else were speaking. He had his glasses on, but he spoke into a fog. “Your father,” he began, “told me that Lieutenant Trotta was here today.”
She turned around. She stood in the blue panties, her right hand brandishing the puff like a weapon against her husband, and she said in a twittering voice, “Your friend, Trotta, was here. Papá came over. Have you see him already?”
“That’s precisely why,” said the regimental surgeon, instantly realizing he had made a false move.
He paused for a while.
“Why didn’t you knock?” she asked.
“I wanted to do something nice for you.”
“You’re scaring me!”
“I—” the regimental surgeon began. He wanted to say, I’m your husband.
But he said, “I love you!”
He really did love her. There she stood, in blue panties, holding the rosy powder puff. And he loved her.
Why, I’m jealous! he thought. He said, “I don’t like it when people come into the house without my knowing about it.”
“He’s a charming boy!” said his wife and began to powder herself in front of the mirror, slowly and lavishly.
The doctor stepped up close to his wife and clasped her shoulders. He peered into the mirror. He saw his brown, hairy hands on her white shoulders. She smiled. He saw it in the mirror—the glassy echo of her smile. “Be honest,” he pleaded. It was as if his hands were kneeling on her shoulders. He instantly knew she would not be honest, and he repeated, “Be honest, please!” He saw her swift, pale hands fluffing the blond hair on her temples. A superfluous movement: it excited him. From her mirror, her glance struck him, a gray, cool, dry, rapid glance, like a steel bullet. I love her, the doctor thought. She hurts me, and I love her. He asked, “Are you annoyed that I was away all afternoon?”
She half turned. Now, her upper body twisting at the hips, she sat, a lifeless being, a mannequin made of wax and silk lingerie. From under the curtain of her long black lashes, her bright eyes emerged, false, simulated, icy lightning. Her slender hands lay on the panties like white birds embroidered on the blue silk background. And in a deep voice that he believed he had never heard from her and that sounded as if produced by a mechanism in her chest, she said very slowly, “I never miss you.”
He began pacing up and down without looking at her. He pushed two chairs out of his way. He felt he had to clear a lot of things out of his way, perhaps shove back the walls, smash his head through the ceiling, kick the floorboards into the earth. His spurs jingled softly in his ears, from far away, as if worn by someone else. A single word galvanized his mind, it roared back and forth, it flew through his brain, incessantly: over, over, over!A small word. Swift, light as a feather yet weighing a ton, it flew through his head. His steps grew quicker and quicker; his feet kept time to the bouncy stroke of the word pendulating in his brain. Suddenly he halted.
“So you don’t love me?” he asked.
He was certain she would not answer. She’ll keep silent, he thought.
She answered, “No!” She raised the black curtain of her lashes and sized him up from head to foot with naked, dreadfully naked eyes, adding, “Why, you’re drunk!”
It dawned on him that he had drunk too much. He thought contentedly, I’m drunk and I want to be drunk. And he said in an alien voice, as if it were now his duty to be drunk and not be himself, “Aha, I see!” By his muddled lights, it was those words and that sound that a drunken man had to sing at such moments. So he sang. And he did something else. “I’m going to kill you!” he said, very slowly.
“Kill me!” she twittered in her clear, usual, familiar voice.
She rose. She rose, lithe and nimble, the powder puff in her right hand. The full, slender curves of her silky legs vaguely reminded him of limbs in the windows of fashion salons; the entire woman was put together, pieced together. He no longer loved her, no longer loved her. He was filled with a hatred that he himself hated, an anger that had come to him like an unknown enemy from distant regions and now lived in his heart. He said aloud what he had been thinking an hour ago. “Make order! I’m going to make order!”
She guffawed in an uproarious voice that he was unfamiliar with. A theatrical voice, he thought.
An irrepressible urge to show her that he could make order gave his muscles power, gave his weak eyes an unwonted strength. He said, “I’ll leave you to your father! I’m going to find Trotta.”
“Go ahead, go ahead!” said the woman.
He left. Before going out, he returned to the study for another drink. He returned to the liquor as to a close friend—for the first time in his life. He poured himself a small snifter, then another, and a third. He left the house with jingly steps. He went to the officers’ club. He asked the orderly, “Where is Herr Lieutenant Trotta?”
Lieutenant Trotta was not at the club.
The regimental surgeon turned into the dead-straight highway leading to the barracks. The moon was already waning, but it still shone strong and silvery, almost a full moon. Not a breath was stirring on the silent highway. The scraggy shadows of the bare chestnut trees on both sides drew a tangled net on the slightly bulging center of the roadway. Dr. Demant’s steps rang out hard and frozen. He was going to find Lieutenant Trotta. From far away he spotted, in bluish white, the tremendous wall of the barracks; he charged toward it, toward the enemy stronghold. Toward him came the cold brassy call of taps. Dr. Demant marched straight toward the frozen metallic sounds; he trampled them to bits. Soon, at any moment, Lieutenant Trotta was bound to appear. He detached himself, a black stroke, from the tremendous white of the barracks and approached the physician. Three more minutes. Now they stood face-to-face. The lieutenant saluted. Dr. Demant heard himself as if from an infinite distance. “You visited my wife this afternoon, Herr Lieutenant?”
The question echoed from the blue glassy vault of the sky. For a long time now, for weeks, they had been on familiar terms. They used the familiar form with one another. But now they stood face-to-face like enemies.
“I visited your wife this afternoon, Herr Regimental Surgeon,” said the lieutenant.
Dr. Demant stepped up close to the lieutenant. “What is going on between my wife and you, Herr Lieutenant?” The physician’s thick glasses were sparkling. The regimental surgeon had no eyes left, only glasses.
Carl Joseph kept silent. It was as if there were no answer to Dr. Demant’s question in the whole big wide world. One could have wasted years searching for an answer, as if human speech were exhausted and dried up for all eternity. His heart pounded against his ribs with swift, dry, hard strokes. Dry and hard, the tongue stuck to the palate. A huge cruel emptiness roared through his brain. It was as if he were standing right in front of a nameless danger that had already wolfed him down. He stood on the brink of a gigantic black abyss and was already overwhelmed by its darkness. Dr. Demant’s words resounded from an icy, glassy distance—dead words, corpses of words.
“Answer me, Herr Lieutenant!”
Nothingness. Silence. The stars twinkle and the mo
on shimmers.
“Answer me, Herr Lieutenant!”
That means Carl Joseph, he has to answer. He musters the woeful remnants of his strength. From the roaring void in his head, a thin, worthless sentence winds out. The lieutenant clicks his heels (out of military instinct and also to hear some kind of noise), and the jingle of his spurs calms him. And he murmurs very softly, “Herr Regimental Surgeon, there is nothing whatsoever going on between your wife and me.”
Nothingness. Silence. The stars twinkle and the moon shimmers. Dr. Demant says nothing. Through dead glasses he peers at Carl Joseph.
The lieutenant repeats very softly, “Nothing whatsoever, Herr Regimental Surgeon.”
He’s gone crazy, the lieutenant thinks. And: It is shattered! Something is shattered. He feels as if he has heard a dry, splintery shattering. “Broken faith” crosses his mind—he once read that phrase somewhere. Shattered friendship. Yes, it is a shattered friendship.
All at once he knows that the regimental surgeon has been his friend for weeks: a friend! They have gotten together daily. Once he and the regimental surgeon went strolling through the cemetery, among the graves.
“There are so many graves,” said the regimental surgeon. “Don’t you feel as I do the way we live off the dead?”
“I live off my grandfather,” said Trotta. He saw the portrait of the Hero of Solferino blurring under the ceiling of his father’s house. Yes, something brotherly came from the regimental surgeon, brotherliness rushed like a small flame from Dr. Demant’s heart.
“My grandfather,” the regimental surgeon said, “was an old, tall Jew with a silver beard.”
Carl Joseph saw the old, tall Jew with the silver beard. They were grandsons, they were both grandsons. When the regimental surgeon mounts his horse, he looks a bit silly, smaller, tinier than on foot; the horse carries him on its back like a small sack of oats. Carl Joseph rides just as wretchedly. He knows exactly what he looks like. He sees himself as in a mirror. In the entire regiment there are two officers behind whose backs the others have something to whisper about: Dr. Demant and the grandson of the Hero of Solferino. The only two in the entire regiment. Two friends.
“Your word of honor, Herr Lieutenant?” the physician asks. Without answering, Trotta holds out his hand. The physician says “Thank you!” and shakes it. Together they walk back along the highway, ten paces, twenty paces, not saying a word.
All at once, the regimental surgeon begins. “Please don’t hold it against me. I’ve been drinking. My father-in-law came by today. He saw you. She doesn’t love me. She doesn’t love me. Can you understand?
“You’re young!” says the regimental surgeon after a while, as if to say that he has spoken in vain. “You’re young!”
“I understand,” says Carl Joseph.
They march in lockstep, their spurs jingling, their sabers rattling. Yellowish and cozy, the lights of the town beckon to them. Both men wish that the road would never end. They would like to march side by side like that for a long, long time. Each of them has something to say, yet both keep silent. A word, a word so easily spoken: it is not spoken. This is the last time, the lieutenant thinks, this is the last time we’ll be walking side by side.
Now they reach the edge of town. The regimental surgeon has to say something else before they enter the town. “It’s not because of my wife,” he says. “That’s no longer important. I’m over that. It’s for your sake.”
He waits for an answer, knowing that none will come.
“It’s all right, thank you!” he blurts out. “I’m going to the club. Are you coming along?”
No. Lieutenant Trotta is not going to the officers’ club today. He is going back. “Good night,” he says and wheels around. He goes to the barracks.
Chapter 7
THE WINTER CAME. In the morning, when the regiment marched out, the world was still dark. The delicate film of ice on the streets splintered under the hooves of the horses. Gray breath streamed from the nostrils of the animals and the mouths of the riders. The matte breath of the frost beaded on the sheaths of the heavy sabers and on the barrels of the light carbines. The small town grew even smaller. The muted, frozen bugle calls lured none of the usual spectators to the curbs. Only the coachmen at their usual station raised their bearded faces every morning. They drove sleighs whenever a lot of snow had fallen. The little bells on the harnesses of their horses jingled softly, incessantly moved by the restlessness of the shivering animals. The days resembled one another like snowflakes. The officers of the lancer regiment were waiting for some extraordinary event to break the monotony of their days. No one knew what kind of event it might be. But this winter seemed to be concealing some kind of dreadful surprise in its jingling bosom. And one day it erupted from the winter like red lightning from white snow.…
That day, Rittmaster Taittinger was not sitting as usual behind the huge mirror pane at the door of the pastry shop. Since early afternoon the captain, surrounded by younger officers, had kept to the small back room. He struck them as paler and more haggard than normal. Mind you, all of them were pale. They drank many liqueurs, but their faces did not redden. They did not eat. Yet today, as always, a mountain of pastries loomed in front of the captain. Indeed, he may have been indulging his sweet tooth even more than on other days. For grief was gnawing at his innards; it was hollowing him out, and he had to keep alive. And as his haggard fingers shoved one pastry after another into his gaping mouth, he reiterated his story, for the fifth time already, to his ever-eager audience.
“Well, the main thing, gentlemen, is absolute discretion in regard to the civilian populace. When I was in the Ninth Dragoons, we had a chatterbox—in the reserves, of course, and filthy rich, by the way—and just as he joined, the incident took place. Naturally, by the time we buried poor Baron Seidl, the whole town knew why he had died so suddenly. I hope, gentlemen, that this time we can have a more discreet—” he wanted to say “funeral” but paused, mulled and mulled, failed to hit on a word, and peered at the ceiling, while a dreadful silence roared around his head and the heads of the listeners. Finally the rittmaster concluded, “Can have a more discreet procedure.” He heaved a momentary sigh, swallowed a small pastry, and gulped down his water.
They all felt that he had summoned Death. Death hovered over them, and they were completely unfamiliar with the feeling. They had been born in peacetime and become officers in peaceful drills and maneuvers. They had no idea that several years later every last one of them, with no exception, would encounter death. Their ears were not sharp enough to catch the whirring gears of the great hidden mills that were already grinding out the Great War. A white winterly peace reigned in the small garrison. And black and red, death fluttered over them in the twilight of the small back room.
I can’t understand it!” said one of the boys. They had all said similar things.
“But I’ve already told you umpteen times!” replied Taittinger. “The touring players, that’s how it began! I don’t know what got into me, going to that very operetta, that—what was the title? Now I’ve even forgotten the title. What was it now?”
“The Wandering Tinker,” someone said.
“Right! Well, it all began with The Wandering Tinker. Just as I’m coming out of the theater, there’s Trotta standing lonesome and godforsaken in the snow on the square. You see, I ducked out before the end; I always do that, gentlemen. I can never stand waiting till the final curtain. If it’s got a happy ending, you can tell right away at the start of the third act, and then I know everything, so I simply tiptoe out, as quiet as possible. Besides, I’d already seen the thing three times! Well, anyway, poor Trotta is standing there all by his lonesome in the snow. I say, ‘The play was nice.’ And then I tell him about how strange Demant’s been acting. He barely glanced at me; he left his wife alone during the second act and just simply walked out and didn’t come back! He could have asked me to look after her, you know—but just up and leaving like that, it’s scandalous, and I tell Tro
tta all about it.
“ ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I haven’t talked to Demant for a long time.’ ”
“Trotta and Demant were seen together for weeks on end!” someone cried.
“I know, I know, and that’s why I told Trotta about how strangely Demant was acting. But I don’t butt into other people’s business, so I ask Trotta if he wants to stop off at the pastry shop with me. ‘No,’he says, ‘I have an appointment.’ So I leave. And tonight of all nights, the pastry shop closed early. Fate, gentlemen! So I’m off to the club, of course. And I innocently tell Tattenbach and whoever else was there about Demant and about Trotta having an appointment in the middle of the theater square. I can still hear Tattenbach whistling. ‘What are you whistling about?’ I ask. ‘Doesn’t mean a thing,’ he says. ‘Watch out! All I can say is, Watch out! Trotta and Eva, Trotta and Eva,’ he sings twice, like a cabaret ditty, and I don’t know who Eva is, I figure it’s Eve from the Garden of Eden—sort of symbolic and generally speaking, you know, gentlemen! Understand?”
They all understood, which they confirmed with nods and shouts. They not only understood the captain’s story, they knew it intimately, from start to finish. But nevertheless, they wanted to hear about the events over and over, for in their most foolish heart of hearts they hoped that the rittmaster’s story would eventually change and allow some meager prospect of a happier end. They kept asking Taittinger over and over. But his story was always the same. There was no change in even the least of the sad details.
“What now?” someone asked.
“You already know the rest,” the rittmaster replied. “Just as we’re leaving the club—Tattenbach, Kindermann, and I—Trotta and Frau Demant practically walk right into us. ‘Watch out!‘ says Tattenbach. ’Didn’t Trotta say he had an appointment?’ ‘It could be a coincidence,’ I say to Tattenbach. And it was a coincidence, as I know now. Frau Demant came out of the theater alone. Trotta felt obligated to see her home. He had to miss his appointment. Nothing would have happened if Demant had entrusted his wife to me during intermission. Nothing!”
