Beware of Pity (28 page)

Even I felt repelled by the cold, artificial sound of my own words. She must have sensed my misgivings at once, for suddenly her attitude changed. A touch of the sullen temper of someone abruptly shaken out of a dream dimmed her delight; the eyes that had just been sparking with enthusiasm were suddenly hard, the line between her brows deepened.

“Well, I haven’t noticed you taking it as such a delightful surprise yourself!”

I realised how badly I had injured her feelings, and tried to soothe her. “But my dear child … ”

That touched her on the raw. “Don’t call me ‘child’! You can’t be so very much older than me! I suppose I can be allowed to wonder why you weren’t very surprised, and most of all not very … very
interested
in all this. Come to think of it, surely you must be pleased? After all, this place will be shut up for a couple of months now, so you’ll have more free time to sit about in the café with your comrades, playing taroc. You’ll be free of the boring duties of a Good Samaritan! Oh yes, I can well believe you’re glad of that. You have a nice time ahead!”

She spoke so forcefully that she hit my guilty conscience hard. I must certainly have given myself away. To distract her mind—for I knew by now how dangerous her petulance at such moments could be—I tried to strike a light, humorous note.

“A nice time—oh, is that how you imagine it? A nice time for cavalrymen—what, in July, August and September? That’s when they really let the slave-drivers loose on us, didn’t you know? First it’s preparations for manoeuvres, then we’re off to who knows where, maybe Bosnia or Galicia, then the manoeuvres themselves, and all those big parades! Officers all flustered, men feeling driven, military exercises to the nth degree from morning to night! They lead us a merry dance right up to the end of September.”

“The end of September?” Suddenly she was thoughtful. “But then,” she finally said, “then when will you be coming?”

I didn’t understand. Really I did not understand what she meant. I asked, naively, “Coming where?”

Her brows arched again. “Don’t keep asking such silly questions! Coming to see us! To see me.”

“What, you mean in the spa in the Engadine valley?”

“Where else? Did you think I meant Tripsdrill amusement park or something?”

Only now did I understand her. When I had just spent my last seven crowns on the flowers I had brought her, when every trip to Vienna was a kind of luxury, even though as military men we could travel half price, the idea that I could afford a trip to the Engadine valley had really been too absurd even to occur to me.

“My word, now I really do see how you civilians imagine a soldier’s life!” I said with a genuine laugh. “Going to the café, playing billiards, walking on the promenade, then putting on civilian clothes when we feel like it and just taking off for a couple of weeks. A quick little pleasure trip, nothing easier! Tip your cap to the Colonel, say, ‘Cheers, Colonel, tell you what, I don’t fancy playing a game of soldiers any more, so expect
me when you see me!’ A nice idea you have of the treadmill of the military life! Do you know that if one of us wants a single hour extra off, he has to buckle his belt well on, click his heels smartly when he reports to put his request, kowtow
respectfully?
All that fuss just for a single hour more of leave! And for a whole day, well, you need an aunt to die at the very least, or some other family funeral. I wouldn’t like to see my colonel’s face if I asked him, however humbly, for a week’s leave to go to Switzerland in the middle of manoeuvres, just because I liked the idea! You might hear him utter a few expletives not to be found in any dictionary for family consumption! No, my dear Fräulein Edith, I’m afraid you think it’s a little too easy.”

“Oh, come along, anything’s easy if you really want to do it! Don’t act as if you were indispensable! I’m sure someone else could take charge of your Ruthenian rustics while you were away. Anyway, Papa can fix extra leave for you in no time at all. He knows a dozen people in the War Ministry, and if the word comes from on high you’ll get what you ask for. And it won’t hurt you to see more of the world for once than your riding school and parade ground. So no excuses—it’s all settled. Papa will see to it.”

It was stupid of me, but that dismissive tone annoyed me. After all, they spend your first few years in the army drilling a certain notion of your rank in society into you, and I felt it was condescending for a young, inexperienced girl like Edith to speak of doing as she liked with the generals of the War Ministry—godlike beings to us young officers—as if they were her father’s employees. But I kept the light-hearted tone going, irritated as I felt.

“Yes, that’s all very well—Switzerland, leave, the Engadine valley—oh, not bad at all. Excellent if it drops into my lap just
as you imagine, with no need for me to bow and scrape and ask permission. But your father would also have to ask the top brass in the War Ministry to come up with a special stipend allowing Lieutenant Hofmiller to travel!”

Now she was the one to be taken aback. She sensed some cryptic reference that she didn’t understand in my words. Her brows came down over her impatient eyes, her frown was deeper than ever.

“So do see reason, my dear child … sorry, I mean let’s talk reasonably, Fräulein Edith. It really isn’t as simple as you imagine. Tell me, have you stopped to think what a trip like that costs?”

“Oh,
that’s
what you’re talking about?” she said, not at all abashed. “Surely it can’t be that much! A few hundred crowns at the most. That can’t make such a difference.”

But here I couldn’t control my annoyance any longer, for she had hit my most sensitive point. I think I have already said how much I disliked being one of those officers in our regiment who had not a penny of their own, and having to depend on my pay and my aunt’s small allowance went against the grain with me in military circles when other men spoke lightly of money in front of me, as if it grew on trees. This was
my
sore point, this was where
I
was lame, and had to rely on crutches of my own. That was the only reason why it annoyed me out of all proportion to hear this spoilt, wilful girl, even though she suffered infernal torments herself because of her disadvantages, unable to understand mine. Against my will, I spoke almost roughly.

“A few hundred crowns at the most? Oh, I suppose that’s nothing. A little detail beneath an officer’s notice! So naturally you think it’s poor form for me to mention a little thing like
that at all. Isn’t that what you mean, poor form? Have you ever stopped to think what those like me have to live on? How we have to make do and mend?”

And as she was still looking at me with that frowning and, as I foolishly supposed, scornful expression, I was suddenly overcome by a need to show her the extent of my poverty. Just as she had hobbled across the room on her crutches on purpose to torment us, the able-bodied, to avenge herself on our good health by showing us that challenging sight, so I now felt a kind of angry pleasure in revealing my constrained, dependent circumstances to her.

“Do you have any idea of a lieutenant’s pay?” I fired at her. “Have you ever stopped to think of that? Well, just for your information, two hundred crowns on the first of the month to last the full thirty or thirty-one days, and we’re expected to live on that and keep up standards in line with our station in life. On that miserly sum a lieutenant has to pay his housekeeping expenses, bed and board, the tailor, the cobbler, and those little luxuries appropriate to his rank. Not to mention his plight if (God forbid) something happens to his horse. And if he manages his budget well enough to have a few coins left over, then he can splash out in that paradise the café, the place you’re always teasing me about—ah, yes, if he’s really saved hard he can buy himself all the delicacies this world has to offer in the shape of a cup of coffee frothed with milk.”

I know today that it was stupid, indeed criminally stupid of me to let myself be provoked into expressing so much of my bitterness. How was a child of seventeen, spoilt and brought up in isolation from the real world, how was a lame girl always tied to her room to know anything about the value of money, and a soldier’s pay, and the wonderful poverty in which we young
officers lived? But the urge to revenge myself on someone for countless little humiliations, just for once, had somehow crept up on me, and I struck out blindly, mindlessly, without letting my own hand feel the force of the blow it inflicted.

As soon as I looked up, however, I knew how brutal I had been. With an invalid’s quick perception, she had felt at once that she had unconsciously hit me in that most sensitive spot of mine. Irresistibly, a tinge of red crept into her face—I saw her try to defend herself against it, raising her hand as a shield. Obviously a particular thought had drawn the blood into her cheeks.

“And even so … and even so you buy me such expensive flowers?”

Now there was an awkward moment, and it lasted a long time. I was ashamed in front of her, and she in front of me. Each of us had unintentionally wounded the other, and now we were afraid to say anything else. All at once the warm wind in the branches of the trees could be heard, and the cackling chickens down below in the yard, and now and then, far away, the faint sound of a carriage or cart going along the road. Then she pulled herself together.

“And I’m stupid enough to go along with your nonsense! I’m
really
stupid, I’m quite cross with myself. Why should it bother you what a trip to Switzerland costs? If you come to see us of course you will be our guest. Do you think, if you’re kind enough to visit us, that Papa would allow you to go to the expense of travelling? And I let you fool me … so not another word about it … no, not another word, I say!”

But this was a point on which I could not give way, for nothing was more intolerable to me, as I have said before, than the idea of being thought to sponge on other people.

“Yes, there will be another word! We don’t want any misunderstandings. So to make it perfectly clear—I am not having anyone request leave from the regiment for me, and I am not going to ask for it myself. I don’t like asking favours, or having exceptions made for me. I want to share with my comrades, like with like, I don’t want anything extra or special treatment. I know you mean well, and I know your father means well. But many people just can’t have all the good things in life served up to them on a platter … and let’s not discuss it any more.”

“So you don’t want to come?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to come, I explained perfectly clearly why I can’t.”

“Not even if my father asks you to?”

“Not even then.”

“And … not even if
I
ask you? If I ask you with all my heart, in a spirit of friendship?”

“Please don’t. There’s no point in it.”

She bowed her head. But I had already seen the ominous quivering and working of her mouth that always heralded one of her moods of dangerous petulance. This poor spoilt child, whose slightest wish was the command of all in the house, had just had a new experience; she had encountered resistance. Someone had said no to her, and it left her bitter. She snatched up my flowers from the table and flung them angrily over the balustrade.

“Good!” she said, between her teeth. “Now at least I know what to think of your friendship. Just as well to have tested it and found out! You hide behind excuses simply in case some of your friends might talk in the café! Just because you’re afraid to get a bad mark in the regimental report, you spoil your friends’
pleasure! Very well, I won’t ask you any more. You don’t want to come and see us, and that’s that! Good!”

I felt her anger hadn’t died away entirely yet, because she repeated that “Good!” several more times, with a certain harsh obstinacy, at the same time bracing both her hands hard on the arms of her chair to raise herself in it, as if about to lunge forward in attack. Suddenly she turned sharply to me.

“Very well, that’s the end of that. Our humble request is refused. You won’t come and see us, you don’t want to come and see us. It doesn’t suit you. Good! We’ll survive. After all, we used to get along perfectly well without you … but there’s something I’d like to know—will you answer me honestly?”

“Of course I will.”

“I mean really honestly—on your word of honour! Give me your word of honour.”

“If you absolutely insist—on my word of honour.”

“Good. Good.” She kept repeating that hard, cutting “Good”, as if using it like a knife to strip something away. “Good. Don’t worry, I’m not going to request the pleasure of your distinguished company again. I just want to know one thing—and you’ve given me your word. Just this one thing. Well—so it doesn’t suit you to come and visit us because you feel awkward about it, because it would embarrass you … or for reasons of some other kind, why should I care what they are? Good … good. That’s settled. But now, tell me clearly and honestly—why do you come here to visit us at all?”

I had been prepared for any other question, but not this one. In my astonishment, and playing for time, I stammered a preparatory, “Why … why, that’s simple! You didn’t need to ask my word of honour …”

“Oh … simple, is it? Good. All the better. Go on, then.”

There was no getting out of it now. It seemed to me easiest to tell the truth, but I realised that I must choose my words very carefully. So I embarked on my reply as naturally as I could.

“Oh, dear Fräulein Edith … don’t go looking for any mysterious motives of mine! You know me well enough, after all, to know me as a man who doesn’t think much about himself. I promise you, I never thought of examining the reasons why I seek out this person and that, why I like some people more than others. Upon my word—all I can say, and whether it’s clever or stupid I don’t know, is that I keep coming to see you because I like it here, I feel a hundred times better here than anywhere else. I think you imagine the life of a cavalry officer like something out of an operetta, always bright and merry, a kind of permanent carnival. Well, from the inside it’s not all fun, and even our much-vaunted comradely spirit is sometimes not so straightforward. Where you get a few dozen harnessed to the same carriage, there’s always one who’s pulling harder than his neighbour, and when it comes to promotion and lists of ranking you can easily tread on someone else’s toes. You have to watch every word you say, you’re never quite sure of not arousing the ire of your superiors, in fact there’s always the chance of a storm brewing. We’re on military service—which means
serving
, and servants are dependent. Then again, a barracks and a table at the inn are not like a proper home, no one needs you there, no one really minds about you. Yes, I know we sometimes strike up good, faithful friendships among comrades, but ultimately that never provides a real sense of security. But if I come here to visit you, I leave such anxieties behind at the same time as I take off my sword, and if I talk so cheerfully to all of you here then …”