The Bride of Texas (4 page)

He and Cyril never found out how she managed it, but the second time he saw her, from the bar in the Hotel Savannah, she was dressed in turquoise blue, sitting at a table set with sparkling crystal on spotless linen, opposite the hopelessly smitten captain. A Negro waiter was standing over them, curly silver hair surrounding a fleshy face, pouring champagne from a silver-necked bottle into overflowing flutes. He never did find out how she’d done it, and later just accepted it as a matter of fact that it was Linda Toupelik. Outside the wide windows of the Hotel Savannah, moonlight was pouring down on the sycamores.

By the third time he saw her, he had heard all about her. But in the evening of that first day he knew nothing. Watching Kakuska take apart a huge clock and place one gearwheel beside another on a blue handkerchief spread out on the table, he saw Cyril Toupelik, not here in the room where he lay annihilated by some massa’s whisky, but pushing past him to confront the girl. The cornflower gaze faded, the sweetness in her face gave way to surprise, though what kind the sergeant couldn’t tell — certainly not pleasant, for the siblings neither embraced nor kissed. The sister just leaned against the pillar holding up the porch roof; Cyril leaned against the pillar opposite her, hands in
his pockets, feet crossed. Terse sentences flew back and forth between them. He couldn’t understand the words, he only heard the tone — at first questioning, then Linda’s voice became defiant, Cyril’s irritation increased, and then he caught himself staring at Linda Toupelik and, embarrassed, stepped back into the street and fell in with Sherman’s ragtag army, Kakuska’s tall clock ahead of him and a squealing pig behind him. He turned around to see Jan Amos Shake striding along with a huge, plundered cigar clamped in his teeth, the elegant hat of a Confederate colonel on his head; on a golden cord from somebody’s fancy drapes Shake was leading Clem Vallandigham, the porcine mascot of K Company of the Twenty-sixth Wisconsin, rooting about in the piles of refuse along the street. Kapsa took another quick look at Madam Russell’s Bakery, where Williams, Szymanowsky, and Bondy had disappeared — probably inside, since the evil moon in the doorway was gone and in her place stood Captain Baxter Warren II like a blue pillar of salt. Then the sergeant was swept forward in the flow of liquored-up Shermanites, borne along behind Kakuska’s clock on the song.

Kakuska was taking apart the clockworks he had removed from the shiny case with the etched-glass windows and, one by one, arranging cogs and sprockets side by side on a blue handkerchief, by size, while outside the sun was setting and the sycamores nodded in the wind.

Sergeant Kapsa had never been lucky with women. No, that wasn’t it. They never brought him luck. “Oh, you poor, poor man!” said a voice from the dark shadows in the little room at the end of
the barracks that housed the infirmary where they had left him to die
. “Ach, du mein armer Mann!”
He lay on his stomach, unable to turn over. His back felt on fire. And then suddenly he felt cooling water among the flames. He tried to look around but couldn’t. The flames flared up again. “Be still!” said the voice in Viennese German, a woman’s voice, cooing, consoling, and the water washed his wounds, cooling, soothing, merciful. He felt the touch of a woman’s hand. In the gloom a face suddenly surfaced before his eyes, a woman kneeling beside the infirmary bunk, looking at him. It was her. He had seen her that morning on the parade ground, with the other officers’ wives and their brats, but he had known her even before that. This encounter over the blood-soaked bed was not the first time their eyes had met. Frau Hauptmann von Hanzlitschek, the captain’s wife. When she had first walked past him, accompanied by a maid with a shopping bag, he had been standing guard, forbidden to move even his eyes, but when her grey eyes caught his he had moved them, and had watched her walk away, slender in a long grey dress with a bustle, and before vanishing around a corner she had looked back and smiled. The next time was on the promenade, arm in arm with her husband, with his sabre clanking in its shiny scabbard beneath a huge belly, and his waxed imperial moustache. Hanzlitschek. Another exchange of glances. She dropped her gaze coquettishly, and was that another smile on her lovely lips? A smile in the very shadow of the imperial moustache? And then he saw her one afternoon in the park, with a miniature version of the captain in a little velvet suit and, on a leash, a pug that also looked a little like the captain. A smile, a lowering of the eyes — he mustered his courage but it was impossible, a common soldier in the regiment commanded by her husband, and yet … but before he could summon the courage another lady appeared, with another pug on a leash and a little girl in a white lace dress. The pugs began to sniff each other, the miniature Hanzlitschek yanked the bonnet off the little girl’s golden curls, a slap, a howl, a yap, a growl; both ladies
took vigorous disciplinary action, whereupon Ursula — by then he knew her name — turned her stern face in his direction and broke into a smile — the situation allowed it — and the smile was clearly meant for him. He reddened, and she turned back to slap the wailing junior Hanzlitschek and stroke the shrieking girl’s golden locks. There were a few more encounters, just eyes and smiles. He kept mustering his courage, but still hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to speak when the summer of ’48 came, and the game that was no longer a game interrupted a full-blown infatuation. They got their orders and marched out of the little town in the Austrian Alps, all the way to Prague, where they joined forces with General Windischgraetz. There he first saw a face sliced in two by a sabre, brains dripping across half-opened lips, two halves of a student cap splattered with pink cranial matter and blood. He was not uninformed. Back home he had read Havlicek’s newspaper, his schoolteacher had lectured in the tavern about the Hussites and the noble kings who had ruled the ancient Czech kingdoms long before the Hapsburgs. He knew he was Czech. That was at the root of his crime. No, he hadn’t refused to shoot; that would have been impossible. He had simply fired into the air. But Hauptmann von Hanzlitschek was interrogating a grocer they had arrested, lashing his face with a cane. Blood flowed from the wounds, the grocer’s teeth were clenched, but he never uttered a sound, though his eyes blazed with a brutal rage. Hatred. Kapsa’s own hatred brought some furious words to his lips, and that was all it took. He was sentenced to run the gauntlet three times. Only three times — a mild punishment
.

He shuddered. Not from terror, but from the force of the grocer’s rage. Back in the alpine town where he was escorted in shackles, it was a murky morning. The grocer with the lacerated face was long behind bars, the student with the severed brain was in his grave, Prague was in abject peace. As he was being escorted back, he saw one of Windischgraetz’s cannon-balls fall out of a wall above a bookstore where it had partially lodged, killing a priest who was
walking, head bowed, to the Tyn Cathedral. On that murky morning, three hundred of his fellow soldiers stood in two rows facing each other in the courtyard of the barracks, once a Jesuit monastery. Sandstone statues still rimmed the courtyard, a wide-eyed kid perched on each one so as not to miss a thing — who knows why? For the perverse pleasure of it? For the greater hatred of the House of Hapsburg? God knows. Boys like that had been underfoot among the burghers on the barricades in Prague, too, throwing rocks at Windischgraetz’s troops. Under the statues stood groups of officers’ wives. They were certainly there for the perverse pleasure of it — except for one, whose face was paper-white, her grey eyes almost black in that deathly pallor
.

The provost and his henchmen ripped off Kapsa’s shirt, stuck a musket-ball in his mouth so he wouldn’t bite off his tongue, tied his mouth closed with a rag, and bound his hands in front of him. Then four old-timers hobbled along the rows, distributing willow switches and placing the extras in four piles at either end of the lines, in case somebody’s switch broke. Captain Hanzlitschek and two lieutenants marched briskly to the far end of the line. A fine drizzle began to fall. Two corporals stood behind Kapsa with bayonets in case he balked. The drummer started a drum-roll, slowly accelerating to a dance rhythm. Kapsa glanced down the long double row at Hanzlitschek, who seemed quite small. All the men were staring straight in front of them, and some of them were pale too; others were flushed with hatred. Everyone felt hatred. This could happen to any soldier. To many it already had. Some of those were gone. The drum-roll turned into something like a quickstep — an image that had occurred to him only here, in America, where this kind of discipline was unheard of — and then a quick gallop, and then the order came, barked in German
, “Lauf!”
Run! He started running, and the two corporals ran with him but on the outside of the double line, making sure each of his mates did his duty. The drum-roll crescendoed to a frenzy. It was raining
.

With the sun setting, Kakuska lit the candles in the porcelain candlestick. Outside, a soldier approached. He was bellowing a song about John Brown, but the words made no sense because the singer, unfamiliar with English, was merely imitating the sounds as he recalled them. The door was kicked open and there stood the singer, an inebriated, staggering Houska. His eye immediately fell on Kakuska’s array of gearwheels spread out on the blue handkerchief.

“Is it busted?”

“The hell it’s busted,” Kakuska retorted.

“You need another clock? I’ll get one!”

“Sit down. Thirsty?”

“You guessed it, chum.”

“There’s some water over there.” Kakuska pointed to a huge earthenware demijohn on the floor beside the table. “Firewater,” he added, noting Houska’s scowl. They hadn’t stolen the demijohn; it was a gift from an old black man, with his old woman and a little chocolate-coloured girl, who couldn’t have been her daughter, in tow.

“Go on, take a drink, gentlemen,” the old man had said to the ragtag soldiers. “Good stuff from massa’s cellar.” As they were taking a swig, Sherman galloped by with General Schofield, followed by Lieutenant Dolfa Chladek, another Czech, the general’s adjutant.

“Beulah, look dere, chile!” shrieked the old woman, pointing a gnarled finger at the man with the deeply furrowed face on the fast horse. “Dar’s the man that rules the world!”

The sergeant was stirred by a soldier’s affection for the general. “Long live General Sherman! Hurrah!” he exclaimed, tossing his cap in the air.

Stejskal, Kabinus, and Paidr followed suit. “Hurrah!” Sherman looked back, grinned, saluted. When he disappeared around the corner, their attention returned to the whisky.

The old Negro was kneeling on the ground beside the demijohn, his arms raised to the heavens, hollering, “Mine eyes have seen the glory! Mine eyes have seen —”

“So what’s this clock for?” Houska asked Kakuska.

“Well, Gambetta said clocks have wheels in them with sharp teeth, and they’re supposed —”

The sergeant’s thoughts drifted away. Women never brought him luck. In the distance beyond the window, a band was playing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”. Home? Never, he thought. Wouldn’t ever want to. Yes, the meadows smelled sweet there, and so did the forests, a wild mushroom smell, and the frogs in the pond could sing. But what was the point? And anyway everything was fine here, it really was. Yet Annie — her shiny braids, her neat little apples under that blouse with the rosemary embroidery — “Johnny, I love you so much!” He was lucky with women. He’d picked the prettiest one, and she had a dowry. Even her father liked him, he was a farmer’s son. True, he was just the second son, but he was from a farm all the same. Annie, the only daughter, came from a big farm, and her father had taken a shine to him. Then, as luck would have it, the crimps took a shine to him too. Nothing worked. Bribes, entreaties, even intercession from as high up as the vicarage in town.

Annie wept: “I’ll wait for you, Johnny! If it takes years!” But the seven years he’d be in the army would be too long.

“You must understand, John, Annie’s eighteen,” said the farmer guardedly, and a little sadly. “When she’s out of your sight, she’s out of your mind. And besides, you might not come home from the war at all. Annie could wind up an old maid —”

No, women simply never brought him luck. Within a year Annie was hitched. She was nineteen by then. True, she’d held back. She’d wept, she’d despaired, and a friend of his wrote that she’d even wanted to take arsenic. But where would she get it?
In the end, she went to the altar and he stayed in the army. And then along came Ursula.

He ran, caught a glimpse of her — two black coals in a white face — felt the first lash, the second, the third, the pain, blood pouring down, and at the end of the line his back was on fire. He stopped before the belly with the imperial moustache, von Hanzlitschek, took a quick glance back — her face was turned away from the spectacle, her head leaning against the robe of a sandstone saint, the sweet arc of her body in a grey dress, the pain —

“Move!” shrieked Hanzlitschek, and Kapsa turned and started running back. He glimpsed the corporal yanking an ashen soldier out of the line. Can’t have done his duty, a limp willow switch in his hand, may find himself running the same gauntlet in a few days. But the others did their share, vultures flaying his back. At the start of the sixth lap, darkness came over him. He felt them carry him off, lay him face down on a slab. An order was barked out and he felt the rhythm of marching feet, each beat into his burning back like a red-hot saw. His last thought: if I croak here, my buddies will still have to finish, because I collapsed before they were done. They’ll take my carcass and scourge me, under the watchful eye of the corporal, till they’ve given the corpse its full eighteen hundred lashes. Darkness embraced him. The very last thought: I hate — if there’s a heaven — and then a sad, tender, Viennese voice: “Oh, you poor, poor man!” and cooling water soothing body and soul, grey eyes in the grey dusk, a soft, fragrant mouth on his own cracked lips
.