The Radetzky March (37 page)

One day he received a surprise visit. While hunched over some papers in his office, he heard the familiar blustery voice of his boyhood friend Moser and his clerk’s useless efforts to repel the professor. The district captain rang his bell and had the visitor ushered in.

“Good day, Herr Governor!” said Moser. Given his slouch hat, his portfolio, and his lack of a coat, he did not look like someone who had taken a trip and had just gotten off the train; he seemed to be coming from the house across the way. And the district captain was terrified at the dreadful thought that Moser might be planning to settle permanently in W.

First the professor went back to the door, turned the key, and said, “Just so nobody walks in unexpectedly, my friend. It could hurt your career!”

Then he trudged back to the desk, embraced the district captain, and placed a resounding kiss on his bald head. Next he flopped down in the armchair by the desk, placed his hat and his portfolio on the floor in front of his feet, and fell silent.

Herr von Trotta likewise remained silent. He knew why Moser had come. He had sent the professor no money for three months. “I apologize!” said Herr von Trotta. “I’ll pay you everything immediately! Please forgive me. I’ve had a lot of problems lately.”

“I can imagine,” replied Moser. “That son of yours is expensive! I see him in Vienna every other week. He looks like he’s having a good time, the Herr Lieutenant.”

The district captain stood up. He reached for his breast pocket. He felt Carl Joseph’s letter there. He went over to the window. With his back toward Moser, his eyes fixed on the old chestnuts in the park, he asked, “Have you spoken to him?”

“We have a drink whenever we meet,” said Moser. “He’s certainly generous, your son!”

“So! He’s generous!” Herr von Trotta repeated.

He hurried back to the desk, yanked out a drawer, counted through some banknotes, pulled out a few, and handed them to the painter. Moser inserted the money in his hat, between the felt and the threadbare lining, and stood up.

“One moment!” said the district captain. He went to the door, unlocked it, and told his assistant, “Take the Herr Professor to the station. He’s going to Vienna. The train’s leaving in one hour.”

“Your devoted servant!” said Moser and bowed. The district captain waited a few minutes. Then he took his hat and cane and headed to the café.

He was a bit late. Dr. Skowronnek was already sitting at the table, with the figures already standing on the chessboard. Herr von Trotta sat down.

“Black or white, Herr District Captain?” asked Skowronnek.

“I’m not playing today,” said the district captain. He ordered a cognac, drank it, and began. “I’d like to pick your brain, if you’d allow me.”

“Please do!” said Skowronnek.

“It’s about my son,” the district captain went on. And in his slow, slightly nasal officialese, he described his problems as if talking about administrative matters to a government councilor. He classified his problems into main problems and subproblems, as it were. And item by item, in small paragraphs, he related his father’s history, his own, and his son’s. By the time he finished, all the patrons had vanished, and the greenish gas flames in the room had been lit and were hissing monotonously over the empty tables.

“Well, that’s it!” the district captain concluded.

A long silence ensued between the two men. The district captain did not dare look at Dr. Skowronnek. And Dr. Skowronnek did not dare look at the district captain. They cast down their eyes as if they had caught each other in an embarrassing moment. At last Skowronnek said, “Could some woman be involved? What reason would your son have to be in Vienna so often?”

The district captain would certainly never have thought of a woman. But now he was at a loss as to why something that obvious had not instantly occurred to him. For everything – and it was certainly not much—that he had ever heard about the nefarious influence that women can exert on young men suddenly crashed into his brain, simultaneously liberating his heart. If it had been merely a woman who had triggered Carl Joseph’s decision to leave the army, then, while nothing might be repaired as yet, they could at least see the cause of the disaster, and the end of the world was no longer the fault of dark, secret, unidentifiable forces that could not be warded off. A woman! he thought. No, he knew nothing about a woman. And he said in his officialese, “I have heard nothing about any female!”

“Female!” Dr. Skowronnek repeated with a smile. “It might possibly be a lady.”

“So you believe,” said the district captain, “that my son is seriously weighing marriage.”

“Not even that,” said Skowronnek. “One doesn’t have to many a lady.”

He realized that the district captain was one of those simple souls who virtually have to be sent back to school, so he decided to treat him like a child that has to learn its native tongue. “Let’s forget about the ladies, Herr District Captain. That’s not the issue. For some reason or other, your son does not care to remain in the army. And I can understand that.”

“You can understand?”

“Certainly, Herr District Captain! A young officer in our army cannot be satisfied with his career if he gives it any thought. He has to yearn for war, but he knows that war will spell the end of the monarchy.”

“The end of the monarchy?”

“The end, Herr District Captain! I’m sorry. Let your son do as he wishes. Perhaps he’d be better suited for some other profession.”

“Some other profession!” Herr von Trotta repeated. “Some other profession!” he said once again. There was a long pause. Then the district captain said for the third time, “Some other profession!”

He strove to familiarize himself with these words, but they remained as alien as, say, the words “revolutionary” or “national minorities.” And the district captain felt he would not have to wait very long for the end of the world. He banged his gaunt fist on the table, his round cuff rattled, and the greenish lamp wobbled slightly above the small table. “What sort of profession, Herr Doctor?” He asked.

“He could,” said Dr. Skowronnek, “perhaps get a job with the railroad.”

An instant later the district captain saw his son in a conductor’s uniform, holding a clipper to punch tickets. The word “job” sent a shudder through his old heart. He froze.

“Oh! You really think so?”

“I can’t think of anything else,” said Dr. Skowronnek. And since the district captain now got to his feet, Dr. Skowronnek likewise stood up, saying, “I’ll walk you back.”

They marched through the park. It was raining. The district captain did not open his umbrella. Here and there, heavy drops from the dense crowns of trees fell on his shoulders and his stiff hat. It was dark and still. Whenever they passed one of the meager streetlights, which concealed their silver tops in the dark foliage, the two men lowered their heads. And when they stood at the exit of the park, they hesitated for an instant. And Dr. Skowronnek abruptly said,
“Auf Wiedersehen
, Herr District Captain!” And Herr von Trotta crossed the street alone, toward the broadly arched entrance of his official residence.

He ran into his housekeeper on the stairs, said, “I’m not dining tonight, madam!” and hurried on. He wanted to take two steps at a time but, embarrassed, walked straight to his office with his usual dignity. This was the first evening since assuming his rank of district captain that he sat in his office. He lit the green table lamp, which burned in the afternoon only during winter. The windows were open. The rain beat vehemently against the metal windowsills. Herr von Trotta drew a sheet of official stationery from the drawer and wrote:

“Dear Son
,

Upon careful deliberation, I have decided to leave the responsibility for your future to you. All I ask is that you inform me of your decisions.

Your Father

Herr von Trotta sat in front of his letter for a long while. Several times he reread the two sentences he had penned. They sounded like his will. Earlier he would never have dreamt of taking his paternal role more seriously than his official role. But now that he was relinquishing his paternal authority with this letter, he felt that his life had lost all meaning and that he simultaneously had to stop being an official. What he was doing was not dishonorable, but he felt he was disgracing himself. He left his office, letter in hand, and went to the study. Here he lit all the lamps, the floor lamp in the corner and the lamp hanging
from the ceiling, and stood in front of the portrait of the Hero of Solferino. He could not see his father’s face sharply. The painting splintered into a hundred tiny, oily dabs and highlights, the mouth was a pale-red stroke, and the eyes were two black splinters of coal.

The district captain, who hadn’t stood on a chair since boyhood, climbed up on one, stretched, stood on tiptoe, and, holding the pince-nez to his eyes, just barely made out Moser’s signature in the portrait’s lower right-hand corner. He clambered down somewhat arduously, stifled a sigh, backed up toward the wall, banged violently and painfully into a corner of the table, and began studying the picture from a distance. He extinguished the ceiling light, and in the deep dusk he thought that his father’s face shimmered lifelike. It kept approaching and withdrawing, appeared to slip behind the wall and gaze into the room through an open window as if from immensely far away. Herr von Trotta felt a huge fatigue. He sat down in the armchair, adjusted it so that he was directly facing the portrait, and opened his vest. He heard the less and less frequent drops of the slackening rain, pattering hard and irregular against the windows, and from time to time he heard the wind soughing in the old chestnut trees opposite. He closed his eyes. And he nodded off, the letter in an envelope in his hand, which hung motionless over the arm of the chair.

When he awoke, full morning was streaming through the three big arched windows. The district captain first looked at the portrait of the Hero of Solferino, then he felt the letter in his hand, saw the address, read his son’s name, and got up, sighing. His shirtfront was crumpled, his broad dark-red tie with white dots was twisted to the left, and for the first time since wearing long pants Herr von Trotta noticed dreadful horizontal creases in his striped trousers. He studied himself in the mirror for a while. He saw that his whiskers were tousled and that a few wretched gray hairs were curling on his bald head and that his prickly eyebrows were as straggly as if a small storm had swept across them. The district captain checked his watch. And since the barber was due any minute, Herr von Trotta tore off his clothes and slipped into bed, trying to feign a normal morning
for the barber’s benefit. But he kept the letter in his hand. And he held it while his face was lathered and shaved, and after that, when he was washing, the letter lay on the edge of the small table where the basin lay. It was only when the district captain sat down to breakfast that he handed the letter to his assistant, ordering him to dispatch it with the next government mail.

He went to work as on any other day. And no one would have been able to notice that Herr von Trotta had lost his faith, for he took care of his obligations no less meticulously than on other days. Except that his meticulousness was very, very different. Herr von Trotta resembled a virtuoso in whom the fire has died, whose soul has become empty and hollow, and whose fingers strike the right notes only with cold, seasoned precision thanks to their own dead memory. But, as we have said, no one noticed. And in the afternoon, Sergeant Slama came as usual. And Herr von Trotta asked him, “Tell me, Slama, have you ever remarried?”

He himself did not know why he asked this question today and why the constable’s private life suddenly concerned him.

“No, Herr Baron,” said Slama. “And I won’t ever remarry!”

“You’re doing the right thing!” said Herr von Trotta. But he did not know why the constable was doing the right thing by resolving not to remarry.

This was his normal time for appearing at the café, so that was where he went. The chessboard was already on the table. Dr. Skowronnek arrived at the same time, and they sat down.

“Black or white, Herr District Captain?” the doctor asked, as on any other day.

“Whatever you like,” said the district captain.

And they began to play. Herr von Trotta played carefully today, almost reverently, and won.

“You’re gradually turning into a real chess champion,” said Skowronnek.

The district captain felt truly flattered. “Maybe I could have become one!” he replied. And he mused that it would have been better, that everything would have been better. “By the way, I’ve written to my son,” he began after a while. “He can do as he likes.”

“That sounds right to me,” said Dr. Skowronnek. “One cannot bear responsibility. No man can bear responsibility for another.”

“My father bore responsibility for me, and my grandfather for my father.”

“Things were different back then,” Skowronnek replied. “Now not even the Kaiser bears responsibility for his monarchy. Why, it even looks as if God Himself no longer wishes to bear responsibility for the world. It was easier in those days! Everything was so secure. Every stone lay in its place. The streets of life were well-paved. Secure roofs rested on the walls of the houses. But today, Herr District Captain, the stones on the street lie askew and confused and in dangerous heaps, and the roofs have holes, and the rain falls into the houses, and everyone has to know on his own which street he is taking and what kind of house he is moving into. When your late father said you would become a public official rather than a farmer, he was right. You have become a model official. But when you told your son he had to be a soldier, you were wrong. He is not a model soldier.”

“Yes, yes!” confirmed Herr von Trotta.

“And that’s why we should let everyone do as he wishes, each on his own path. When my children refuse to obey me, all I do is try not to lose my dignity. That is all one can do. I sometimes look at them when they’re asleep. Their faces then look very alien to me, almost unrecognizable, and I see that they are strangers, from a time that is yet to come and that I will not live to see. My children are still very young. One is eight, the other ten, and they have round, rosy faces when they sleep. Sometimes I feel it is the cruelty of their time, the future, that overcomes the children in their sleep. I would not care to live that long.”