Beware of Pity (36 page)

“Or is that leaving it too late for you?”

“No,” I said hesitantly. “Of course not, as soon as I know something’s certain. But … but well, it would be better if …”

Balinkay thought for a moment. “Would you be free today, for instance? I mean because my wife is still in Vienna, and the business is hers, not mine, so it’s for her to say.”

“Oh yes … of course I’m free,” I said quickly. It had occurred to me that the Colonel didn’t want to see my face again today.

“Excellent! Famous! Then you’d better come along with me in that clatterbox of mine. There’ll be room for you next to the chauffeur. No spare space in the back, because I’ve said I’ll take
my old friend Baron Lajos and his good lady with me. We’ll be at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna at five, I’ll have a word with my wife at once, and then you’re up and running, she’s never yet said no if I ask her a favour for a comrade of mine.”

I shook his hand warmly, and we went downstairs. The mechanics had taken off their blue overalls, the car was ready, and two minutes later it was chugging along the road with us inside.

There is something heady and intoxicating about physical and mental speed alike. As soon as the car was out of the town streets and in open country I felt curiously relaxed. The chauffeur drove fast, trees and telegraph poles flew away behind us as if chopped down at an angle, as we passed through the villages house tottered against house, an unsteady picture, while white milestones loomed ahead and then retreated before you had time to read what they said. The strong wind blowing in our faces gave me some idea of the daring pace at which we were bowling along. But my astonishment at the speed with which my own life was racing on at the same time was even greater. I had taken so many decisions in these few hours! In the usual way, hazy ideas tinged with many shades of feeling hover between vague wishfulness, dawning intention and final performance, and it is even secretly pleasurable to begin by toying uncertainly with decisions before making up your mind to carry them through. This time, however, everything had happened at dreamlike speed, and as the villages and roads and trees and meadows retreated into the background, finally and never to return, as the car engine hammered away, everything that had made up my life until now was speeding into the distance: the
barracks, my military career, my comrades, the Kekesfalvas, their castle, my room, the riding school, my entire apparently secure and well-regulated life. A single hour had changed my ideas of the world.

At five-thirty we drew up outside the Hotel Bristol, jolted about, covered with dust, yet wonderfully refreshed by the exhilarating drive.

“Hey, you can’t come up and meet my wife like that!” laughed Balinkay, looking at me. “Anyone would think someone had tipped a sack of flour all over you. And maybe it would be better for me to have a word with her alone first—I can speak more freely then, and there’ll be nothing for you to feel awkward about. I think you’d better go to the cloakroom, have a good wash, and then sit in the bar. I’ll come back in a few minutes’ time and tell you what she says. And don’t worry, I’ll make sure it goes the way you want.”

Sure enough, he didn’t keep me waiting long. Five minutes later he came back, laughing.

“There, what did I tell you? Everything’s fine—that is, if it suits you. You can think it over as long as you like, and you can say no any time. My wife—she really is a clever woman—knew just the thing at once. You board a ship for the Dutch East Indies, mainly so that you can learn the local languages and have a good look around. You’ll go as assistant to the purser, get a uniform, eat at the officers’ table, travel about a bit when you get to the East Indies, and help with the clerical work. Then we’ll find you a position either back here or over there, just as you like, my wife’s promised that.”

“Oh, thank you so—”

“No need to thank me. Perfectly natural for me to help you out. But once again, Hofmiller, don’t do this without thinking.
As far as I’m concerned you’re welcome to set off the day after tomorrow and report for duty—I’ll send the director a telegram anyway, so that he’ll know your name, but of course it would be a good idea for you to sleep on it. I’d say you were better off in the regiment, but
chacun à son goût
. As I said, if you want to join the ship you can do just that, and if you change your mind we won’t complain. Well,” he said, offering me his hand, “whichever way you decide, yes or no, I’ve enjoyed meeting you. So long!”

I looked at this man, sent to me by Fate, with strong emotion. With his wonderfully easy manner he had lightened the worst of my burden—asking for help, hesitating, the torment of making up my mind. And now there was nothing left for me to do but observe the one little formality of resigning my commission. Then I would be free and delivered from my troubles.

The chancery registration form, a folio sheet measured to the precise millimetre specified for its particular format, was perhaps the most essential requisite of the pre-war Austrian civil service and military administration. Every petition, every official document, every report had to be made out on this form, neatly trimmed to size. Its unique format clearly marked the line between official and private papers, and some day, perhaps, the millions and millions of registration forms filed away in the chancery offices will give an idea of the entire social history of the Habsburg monarchy. No communication was considered correct unless it was entered on this white rectangle, and so the first thing for me to do was to buy two such forms in the nearest tobacconist’s, along with a “lazy man’s guide”—the
lined sheet to place under the form so that you were sure to write neatly—and the proper size of envelope. Then I would go over to a café, for all business, whether serious or frivolous, is transacted in cafés in Vienna. In twenty minutes’ time, around six o’clock, I could have my resignation written out, and then I would be my own master and mine alone.

I remember every detail of the way in which I filled out that form with uncanny clarity—after all, this was the most important decision of my life so far. I remember the small, round marbletopped table in a window corner of the on the Ringstrasse, I remember the briefcase on which I placed the sheet of paper, then using a knife to help me fold it exactly down the middle so that the line of the fold would be faultless. I can still see the rather watery blue-black ink before me in photographic detail, and I remember the little shake I gave myself as I set to work to give the first character I wrote the right rounded, attractive curve. For I wanted to carry out this, my last military duty, particularly correctly. As the wording of the form was predetermined, I could emphasise the solemnity of my resignation only by taking special care to write well and neatly.

But as I was writing out the first lines, I fell into a curiously dreamy state of mind. I stopped writing, and began thinking what would happen tomorrow, when my form reached the regimental offices. Probably the first reaction would be a baffled look on the face of the duty sergeant, and then surprised whispering among the clerks—you don’t hear of a lieutenant simply resigning his commission every day. Then the form would be passed on from office to office until it reached the Colonel himself. I suddenly saw him before me to the life, jamming his pince-nez over his long-sighted eyes, startled by the first words and then, in his usual choleric way, banging his fist down on
the table—that forthright officer is only too used, I thought, to seeing his subalterns happily wagging their tails the day after he has bawled them out when he says something jovial to show that the storm has passed over. But this time, I thought, he will see that he’s come up against someone as obstinate as he is, none other than young Lieutenant Hofmiller, who’s not putting up with that sort of thing. And when it comes out later that Hofmiller has resigned his commission twenty or forty heads will suddenly look up in surprise. All my comrades, each in his own way, will be thinking—what a fine fellow Hofmiller is! He’s not taking rough treatment. This may turn out pretty awkward for Colonel Bubencic, they’ll think. As far as we can remember no one in the regiment has left with more credit than Hofmiller, no one’s behaved better in resigning his commission.

I am not ashamed to admit that while I indulged in this daydream, I began feeling very pleased with myself. Vanity is always one of the strongest motives for our actions, and weak natures are particularly inclined to succumb to the temptation of doing something that will make them appear strong, brave and determined. For the first time I had a chance to show my comrades that I was a real man, a man who respected himself! I wrote out the prescribed twenty lines of formal resignation faster and faster and, as I thought, in an ever more energetic hand. What had begun as an irritating formality became a personal pleasure.

Now for the signature, and then it would be done. A glance at the time—it was six-thirty. I must call the waiter over and pay. Then I would walk along the Ringstrasse in my uniform once again, for the last time, and catch the night train home. Tomorrow I would hand in that form, everything would be signed, sealed and decided, and my new life would begin.

So I took the sheet of paper, folded it first lengthwise and then across, to stow the fateful document away carefully in my breast pocket. At that moment something unexpected happened.

This was the unexpected thing—in the split second as I put away the rather large envelope in my breast pocket with a sense of certainty, self-confidence, even happiness—you always feel glad when a task is completed—I felt something rustling in there already, leaving no room for my envelope. What’s in there? I wondered, instinctively feeling for it. But my fingers were already shrinking away, as if even before I myself remembered they knew what I had forgotten, what was already in my breast pocket. It was Edith’s letter, both her letters sent to me yesterday, the first and the second.

I can’t precisely describe the emotion that overcame me at this abrupt reminder. I think it was not so much alarm as a kind of shame. For at that moment a mist of self-delusion cleared from my eyes. In a flash I saw that all I had done and thought in the last few hours had been entirely unreal—my resentment of my disgrace during exercises, the pride I felt in heroically resigning my commission. But I was not resigning because the Colonel had torn me off a strip (after all, he did that to someone every week). In reality I was running away from the Kekesfalvas, from my fraudulent practices, my responsibility. I was running away because I couldn’t bear to be loved against my will. Like someone severely ill who forgets his real, mortal suffering when he has an ordinary toothache, I had forgotten what really drove me mad, made me a coward and sent me running away, or at least I was trying to forget it. I had transferred my reason
for wanting to get away, instead, to my minor and ultimately unimportant mishap. But now I saw that I was not making a heroic farewell gesture because my honour was wounded. I was taking to cowardly, pitiful flight.

However, something once done weighs heavily, and now that I had written my formal resignation I didn’t want to change my mind. Damn it all, I said angrily to myself, what’s it to me if she is waiting and weeping out there? They’ve given me enough trouble and caused me enough confusion. What’s it to me if a stranger loves me? With her millions, she’ll find someone else, and if she doesn’t it’s not my fault. Isn’t it enough for me to be throwing up my career and leaving the army? What business of mine are her hysterics and whether she gets better or not? I’m not a doctor …

But as the word ‘doctor’ came into my mind my thoughts stopped short, like a machine rotating at high speed suddenly braking at a signal. The word ‘doctor’ had reminded me of Condor. And it’s
his
business, I told myself at once. He’s paid to cure the sick. She’s his patient, not mine. Let him pick up the pieces! I’d better go straight to him and tell him I’m getting right out of this muddle.

I look at the time. A quarter to seven, and the express train doesn’t leave until after ten. So I have plenty of time, I don’t need to explain much, just that I want nothing more to do with it. But where does he live? Did he never tell me, or have I forgotten? Well, as a general practitioner he must be in the telephone book, so I hurry off to the telephone booth and leaf through its pages. Be … Bi … Bu … Ca … Co … there were several Condors: Condor, Anton, businessman … Condor, Dr Emmerich, general practitioner, Vienna Eight, 97 Florianigasse, no other doctors on the whole page—that must be him. I
repeat the address to myself two or three times as I run, I don’t have a pencil on me, I’ve forgotten everything in my desperate haste—I call the address out to the nearest
horse-drawn
cab, and while it carries me quickly and smoothly on its rubber tyres I am making my plan. I shall be brief but firm. No acting as if I hadn’t made up my mind. I certainly won’t let him suspect that I’m leaving because of the Kekesfalvas, I must present my departure as a fait accompli. It all began months ago, I shall say, but only today have I heard of the excellent position open to me in the Netherlands. If he asks a lot of questions all the same, I must simply decline to answer them. After all,
he
didn’t tell
me
everything. I must stop thinking of other people all the time.

The cab stops. Has the driver lost his way, or did I give the wrong address in my haste? Can Condor really live in such a shabby place? He must be earning pots of money from the Kekesfalvas alone, and no eminent doctor lives in a tumbledown place like this. But no, he does live here, there’s his plate up in the hall of the apartment building. “Dr Emmerich Condor, second courtyard, third floor, consulting hours two to four.” Two to four, and now it’s nearly seven. Still, he’ll surely see me. I quickly pay off the cab and cross the poorly paved yard. What a wretched staircase this is, a spiral staircase with its steps worn down, the paint on the walls peeling, graffiti all over them, a smell of plain cooking, of WCs with the doors not properly closed. Women in dirty dressing gowns are talking in the corridors, looking suspiciously at this cavalry officer whose spurs clink as he passes them rather awkwardly in the dim light.