Beware of Pity (34 page)

Think no more of it—what a childish request, as if strained nerves will ever submit to being harnessed by the will! Think no more of it, while ideas are chasing around the small space between my temples like timid runaway horses, their hooves hammering painfully away at me. Think no more of it, when memory keeps feverishly confronting me with images, while my nerves are on edge, and all my senses tense with rejection and counter-rejection! Think no more of it while the sheet of notepaper still scorches my hand with its burning words, while I pick it up and put it down again, and compare the first and second letters until every word is branded on my mind! Think no more of it when I can think only of one thing—how to get away, how to defend myself? How to save myself from that avid longing, the excessive emotion that was so unwelcome to me?

Think no more of it—exactly what I want myself, and I put out the light, because light keeps all ideas too vivid and wakeful. I want to crawl away and hide in the dark. I tear off all my clothes to breathe more easily, I throw myself on the bed hoping to feel less. But my thoughts will not let me rest. They flutter around my tired mind in confusion, like bats in their ghostly flight, greedy as rats nibbling and making their way through my leaden weariness. The more quietly I lie, the more restless are my memories, conjuring up flickering images in the darkness. So I get up again and put the light on once more to banish the ghosts. But the first thing that the lamplight, maliciously, falls on is the pale blue rectangle of the letter, and over the chair
hangs my tea-stained tunic, a reminder and a warning. Think no more of it—exactly what I want myself, but it can’t be done by willpower. So I wander up and down the room, back and forth, flinging open cupboards and the drawers in the cupboards one by one until I find the little glass container with my sleeping pills in it, and I stagger back to bed. But there is no escape. Even in dreams the scrabbling rats of my dark thoughts are on the move, gnawing at the black dish of sleep, always the same thoughts, always the same, and when I wake up in the morning I feel as if vampires had gutted me and sucked my blood dry.

So reveille comes as a relief, and my military duties—a kinder and better form of captivity—do me good. It is good to mount my horse and trot on with the others, to have to pay attention and concentrate the whole time. I have to obey and I have to command. For the hours of military exercises, perhaps four hours in all, I can escape, I can ride away from myself.

At first all goes well. Luckily there is a great deal to do today: preparation for the large-scale manoeuvres, a closing parade with every squadron drawn up in line to ride past the commanding officer, every horse’s head and every sword point perfectly aligned. Such spectacular parades call for hard work, you have to begin all over again ten or twenty times, keep your eye on every single lancer, and the whole exercise demands such close attention from every one of us officers that I have no choice but to keep my mind entirely on what I am doing and forget everything else—thank God!

But when we stop for ten minutes’ break to give the horses a breathing space, my roving eye happens to wander to the horizon. Against the steely blue of the sky, the fields with their sheaves and reapers stretch far and wide around us; the line of the horizon is straight—except, beyond a wood, for the curious
outline of a tower like a toothpick seen in silhouette. That, I think with a moment’s shock, is her tower with the terrace on it—I cannot help that idea returning, I cannot help staring and remembering—it’s eight in the morning, she will have been awake for some time and thinking of me. Perhaps her father is going to her bedside and talking about me, or perhaps she is sending for Ilona or Josef to ask whether a letter has come, the letter she longs for (oh, I should have written after all!)—or perhaps she has already gone up to the tower and is staring this way from there, clinging to the balustrade, staring in my direction just as I am now staring in hers. And as soon as I remember that there is someone there wanting so much to see me, I feel that familiar tugging sensation, pity clawing at my own heart. Now the exercise is resuming, commands shouted on all sides, the various groups coming together and moving apart in their predetermined formations, while I myself am shouting “Wheel left!” and “Wheel right!” in the general turmoil. I am in the thick of it, but my mind is elsewhere. At the deepest, most individual level of my consciousness I am thinking of nothing but the one thing that I don’t want to think of, that I ought not to think of.

“Good God above, what the devil d’you think you’re doing? Back! Get apart, you rabble, disengage!” It’s Colonel Bubencic speaking, red as a turkey cock in the face, galloping up and shouting across the entire parade ground. And with good reason. Someone must have given the wrong command, because two lines of men who were supposed to swerve as they passed each other, one of them mine, have ridden head to head at full tilt and are now dangerously intermingled. In the confusion a couple
of horses shy and bolt, others rear up, one of the lancers has fallen from his mount and is under the horses’ hooves, the ranks of men are in uproar. We hear the clink of weapons, horses whinnying, stamping and thunderous noise as if we were in the middle of a real battle. Only gradually do the officers who come galloping up manage to separate the shouting tangle of men. At a call on the bugle the squadrons, now back together, get into close formation again to present a united front. But now an ominous silence descends. Everyone knows that someone will be called to account. The horses, still foaming at the mouth after their near collision, and perhaps infected by their riders’ own nervousness, are restless, pulling at the reins, so that the whole line of helmets sways slightly, like a steel telegraph wire stretched taut in the wind. The Colonel now rides forward into this tense silence. Even the way he sits in the saddle, feet braced in the stirrups, slapping his riding crop against his boots, makes it clear that a storm is brewing. A light pull on his reins, and his horse stands still. Then a couple of words, like the sound of a chopper falling, carry sharply over the whole parade ground. “Lieutenant Hofmiller!”

Only now do I realise how this happened. I was the man who gave the wrong command. My thoughts must have been straying. I was thinking once again of the terrible business that had upset me so much. I alone am to blame. The responsibility is all mine. A slight pressure of the thighs, and my gelding trots past my comrades, who look away in embarrassment as I approach the Colonel. He is waiting motionless some thirty feet in front of the line of men. I stop at the prescribed distance from him. By now even the faintest clinking and chinking of the men’s equipment has died away. A final, soundless, truly deadly silence sets in, like the silence at an execution before the firing squad is
given the command. Everyone, even the least of the Ruthenian farmers’ boys back there, knows what lies ahead for me.

I would rather not remember what happens next. At least the Colonel deliberately lowers his dry, cutting voice, so that the men can’t hear the names he is calling me, but sometimes a good round curse—“Bloody fool!” or “Sheer damn idiocy!”—rises in the silence. And the way he is snorting, red as a lobster in the face, accompanying his staccato remarks with a slap of the crop against his boot, tells all of them, right to the back row, that I am being hauled over the coals like a schoolboy, or worse. I sense a hundred curious and perhaps amused glances on my back, while the choleric Colonel tips a load of verbal manure over me. None of us, in months and months, has suffered such a storm of abuse as I do on this fine June day with swallows flying unwittingly overhead against that steely blue sky.

My hands tremble on the reins with impatience and anger. I would like to strike my horse smartly on his hindquarters and gallop off and away. But in obedience to the regulations I sit there impassively, my face frozen, and I have to wait patiently while Bubencic concludes by saying that he is not letting such a pathetic incompetent muck up the entire exercise. I’ll be hearing more from him tomorrow, he says, and he doesn’t want to see my face again today. Then, swift and sharp as a kick, he snaps, “Dismiss!” slapping his own boot with his riding crop one last time.

However, I have to put my hand obediently to my helmet before I can turn and ride back to the front line. None of my comrades will look me in the face, they all cast their eyes down under the shadow of their helmets in embarrassment. They are all ashamed for me, or at least that is how I feel. Luckily I don’t have to ride the gauntlet between them all the way; a
word of command cuts it short. Another bugle call, and the exercise begins again, the front breaks up and resolves into separate lines. Ferencz takes advantage of this moment—why are the least intelligent also the kindest?—to bring his horse up to mine as if by chance and whisper, “Don’t take it to heart! Could happen to anyone.”

He means well, but it’s more than I can take. “Mind your own business!” I snap at him, turning away. At that moment I have felt, in my own person for the first time, how pity can wound you with its clumsy efforts. For the first time—and too late.

Chuck it in! I’ll chuck it all in, I think as we ride back to the town. I’ll get away from here, away, I’ll go somewhere else, I’ll find some place where no one knows me, where I’ll be free of everyone and everything! I just want to get away, away—subconsciously that word becomes part of the rhythm of my trot.

Back at the barracks I throw the reins to one of the lancers and leave the yard. I’m not going to eat in the officers’ mess today, I don’t want to be the butt of mockery, still less an object of pity. But I don’t really know where to go. I have no plan and no destination in mind—I feel I can’t live in either of my two worlds, the Kekesfalva estate outside town and the barracks here. But I must get away, get away, my hammering pulse tells me, away, away. I feel the word thudding in my temples. I have to get out of here, go somewhere, anywhere away from this damn barracks, away from the town! Down the unattractive main street once more and then just go on and on.

But suddenly someone calls a cheerful “Afternoon!” behind me. Instinctively I stare at the speaker. Who’s greeting me as
if he knew me—this tall man in civilian clothes, breeches, grey coat, plaid cap? Never seen him before—at least, I don’t remember him. This stranger is standing beside a motor car, and two mechanics in blue overalls are busy hammering away at it. And now, obviously not noticing my confusion, he is coming towards me. It’s Balinkay, whom I have seen before only in his uniform.

“Exhaust wheezing again,” he laughs, pointing to the car. “Happens whenever I take her for a spin. I guess it’ll be a good twenty years before anyone can really rely on chugging along the road in these contraptions. Horses were simpler; at least you knew where you were with a horse.”

I feel a strong, instinctive liking for this stranger. His movements are so free and easy, and he has the warm, bright eyes of a man who takes life as it comes. And as soon as I hear his unexpected greeting, an idea flashes into my mind—you could confide in him, I tell myself. Within a fraction of a second, at the speed with which the brain works at moments of great tension, I have associated a whole chain of other ideas with this first one. He is in civilian clothes, he’s his own master. He’s been through something similar to my plight himself. He helped Ferencz’s brother-in-law, they say he helps anyone who asks him, why wouldn’t he help me? Before I’ve even taken a deep breath, this whole swiftly forming chain of thought has coalesced into an abrupt decision. I pluck up my courage and go closer to Balinkay.

“Excuse me,” I say, amazed at my own audacity, “but could you spare me five minutes?”

He looks a little startled, but then his teeth flash in a smile.

“With pleasure, my dear Hoff … Hoff? …”

“Hofmiller,” I say.

“Entirely at your disposal. Where would we be if a man had no time for a comrade? Like to go into the restaurant, or shall we go up to my room?”

“Up to your room, if it’s all the same to you, and I really want only five minutes. I don’t mean to delay you”

“Take as long as you like. It’s going to be another half-an-hour before they get that clatterbox on the road again. Only you won’t think my room very comfortable. The landlord always wants to give me a grand first-floor room, but call it sentimental if you like, I prefer to stay where I once did in the old days. And when I was there … but never mind that.”

We go upstairs. It is true, his room is a very modest one for such a rich man. Single bed, no wardrobe, no armchair, just two rickety wicker chairs between the window and the bed. Balinkay takes out his gold cigarette case, offers me a cigarette and eases my way by saying at once, “Well, my dear Hofmiller, what can I do for you?”

No havering, I tell myself, and I come out with it at once.

“I’d like to ask your advice, Balinkay. I want to resign my commission and get out of Austria. Do you happen to know of any openings for me?”

Balinkay suddenly looks serious. His features set into a graver expression, and he tosses his cigarette away.

“Nonsense—a young fellow like you? What’s got into your head?”

But I suddenly feel determined. The decision that I hadn’t even yet made ten minutes ago is strong and hard as steel.

“My dear Balinkay,” I say, in the firm tone that precludes any further discussion, “would you be kind enough to allow me to forgo explanation? Every man knows what he wants to do and what he has to do. No one else, no outsider can understand
these things. Believe me, I have to draw a line under my life in the army.”

Balinkay looks at me thoughtfully. He must have seen that I mean it.

“Look, I don’t want to meddle with your affairs, but I assure you, Hofmiller, this isn’t a good idea. You don’t know what you’re doing. I’d guess you’re around twenty-five, twenty-six, you’ll soon make the grade to first lieutenant. And that’s quite an achievement. Here you have your military rank, you’re someone. But the moment you branch out on your own, you’re lower in the social scale than any ruffian, any grubby errand boy, because that sort don’t go around weighed down with our prejudices. Believe you me, when one of us takes off his uniform there’s not much of his old self left, and I do beg you, don’t deceive yourself just because I happen to have hauled myself out of the mire again. That was pure chance, a one-in-a-thousand chance, and I hate to think what’s become of others who didn’t have the luck to get a helping hand from the good Lord.”