Beware of Pity (48 page)

“With respect, yes, sir.”

“And the pharmacist knows you said it?”

“He will tomorrow. Along with the whole town.”

The Colonel tugged at his heavy moustache and twisted its ends as hard as if he were trying to tear it out. I could see that something was at work behind his low brow. He began pacing up and down in annoyance, his hands clasped behind his back, up and down he went once, twice, five times, ten times, twenty times. The floor shook slightly under his hard tread, and his spurs jingled faintly. Finally he stopped again in front of me.

“Well, what are you thinking of doing now, then?”

“There’s only one way out—I’m sure you know that yourself, sir. I just came to say goodbye, and ask you, with respect, to make sure that—afterwards—everything is done quietly and as far as possible inconspicuously. I don’t want to bring shame on the regiment.”

“Nonsense,” he muttered. “Bloody nonsense. An upstanding, healthy, decent young man like you, over a crippled girl! I dare say that old fox Kekesfalva tricked you, and then you couldn’t see your way out of it. Well, what the devil are those folk at the castle to do with us? But as for your comrades, and if that rascally pharmacist knows about it … yes, of course that’s a difficult business!”

He began pacing up and down again, even more vigorously than before. Thinking seemed to put a considerable strain on him. Every time he turned and came back towards me his face was a shade darker, and the veins at his temples stood out like
fat black roots. At last he stopped pacing, with a determined expression on his face.

“Right, pay attention. This sort of thing has to be nipped in the bud, and fast. Once word gets around there’s not much to be done about it. First, which of our officers was present last night?”

I listed the names. Bubencic took his notebook out of his breast pocket—the notorious little notebook bound in red leather that he produced like a weapon whenever he caught out one of the regiment in unseemly conduct. Once you were entered in that notebook you could wave goodbye to your next leave. In his rustic manner, the Colonel licked the tip of his pencil before scrawling name after name with his fleshy, broad-nailed fingers.

“Is that all?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sure you’ve mentioned every one of them?”

“With respect, quite sure, sir.”

“Good.” He put the notebook back in his breast pocket as if he were sheathing a sword, with the same sharp sound as his utterance of that final “Good”.

“Right—that’s that, then. I’ll send for them tomorrow one by one, before any of them sets foot on the parade ground, and God have mercy on any man who dares to remember what you said once I’m through with him. I’ll see about the pharmacist separately. I’ll spin him some kind of yarn, depend upon it, I’ll think something up. Maybe that you wanted to ask my permission before saying anything officially, or … or wait!” He suddenly came so close to me that I could smell his breath, and looked me in the eye with that probing gaze. “Tell me honestly, and I mean
really
honestly, had you been drinking beforehand … I mean before you committed this act of folly?”

I felt ashamed. “With respect, sir, I did have a few cognacs before I left, and when I was still out there at … at dinner with the family I had a good deal to drink … but …”

I was expecting a furious outburst. Instead, he suddenly beamed broadly at me. Rubbing his hands together, he roared with laughter. He looked very pleased with himself.

“Famous, excellent, now I know what to do! That’s the way to get us out of the mire and away scot free! Clear as day! I’ll just tell ’em all you’d gone on the spree, been drinking like a fish, hadn’t the faintest what you were saying, couldn’t even hear straight and must have misunderstood whatever they asked you. Stands to reason. And I’ll tell the pharmacist I tore you off a strip myself for staggering over to the café dead drunk like that. Right, that’s point one dealt with.”

I was feeling increasingly bitter. He entirely misunderstood me. I didn’t like the way this well-meaning old bonehead was trying to get me out of the mess I was in. He might even think I’d come to him out of cowardice, wanting him to help me. For God’s sake, why couldn’t he understand the pitiful nature of what I’d done? I pulled myself together.

“With respect, Colonel Bubencic, sir, it doesn’t make anything any better where I’m concerned. I know what I’ve done, I know I can never look a decent person in the face again. I don’t want to live with all that on my conscience, and …”

“Oh, hold your stupid tongue!” he snapped at me, and added more mildly, “Sorry, but let me think in peace and don’t keep on chattering like that—I know best myself what I have to do, I don’t need any lessons from a toffee-nosed young prig. You think this is all about you, eh? No, my lad, that was just point one. Now for point two—you must clear out of here first thing in the morning. I can’t be doing with you any more. We
have to let the grass grow over this kind of thing, so you can’t stay here a day longer, or there’ll be more stupid questions and idle talk, and that doesn’t suit me. I won’t have anyone in my regiment being asked prying questions, people looking askance at him. I won’t stand for it. You’re transferred to the reserve troops at Czaslau, starting tomorrow … I’ll write out the order myself and give you a letter for the Lieutenant Colonel. What it says is none of your business. All you have to do is scarper, and leave the rest to me. Get your batman to help you pack this evening, and you’re to leave the barracks so early tomorrow that not a man jack among the rest of ’em sees you. On parade at noon they’ll be told you’re posted elsewhere on urgent business, that should keep ’em all quiet. How you settle things later with the old man up at the castle and the girl is none of my business either. Concoct some tale of your own to get you out of that fix—all that bothers me is not having any fuss kicked up about it and no talk in the barracks. So that’s all settled—come up here five-thirty in the morning, all ready, I’ll give you the letter, and then off you go, quick march. Understand?”

I hesitated. This wasn’t what I had come for. I didn’t want to make my escape. Bubencic noticed my unwillingness, and repeated, almost like a threat, “Understand?”

“With respect, yes, Colonel Bubencic, sir,” I replied in a cool military tone. In my mind I was telling myself—let the old fool say what he likes. I’ll do what I have to do.

“Right—so that’s it. First thing tomorrow morning, five-thirty.” I stood to attention. The Colonel came over to me.

“You of all people, getting involved in such idiotic stuff! I’m not glad to let them have you in Czaslau. Always liked you best of the young’uns, myself.”

I could tell that he was wondering whether to offer me his hand. The look in his eyes had softened.

“Anything else you need? If I can help at all, don’t hesitate to ask, I’ll be happy to do it. I wouldn’t want anyone to think you were ostracised, nothing like that. Anything I can do, then?”

“No, Colonel Bubencic, sir, but thank you very much indeed.”

“All the better, then. Well, God be with you. At five-thirty first thing tomorrow morning.”

“With respect, yes, sir.”

And now I look at him as you look at someone you are seeing for the last time. I know that this is the last person on earth to whom I will ever speak. Tomorrow only he will know the whole truth. I click my heels smartly as I stand to attention, straighten my shoulders and turn to leave.

But even with his slow mind, the Colonel must have noticed something about me. Something in my eyes or my bearing must have aroused his suspicions, for when my back is turned to him he barks out an order.

“Come here, Hofmiller!”

I turn around. Eyebrows raised, he looks me up and down with those piercing eyes, then he growls, in a tone that is both gruff and kindly, “I don’t like the look of you, boy. There’s something the matter with you. Strikes me you’re trying to fool me, you’re planning something stupid. But I’m not having you commit some folly over a wretched affair like this … some folly with your revolver or the like. I’m not having it, do you understand me?”

“With respect, yes, sir.”

“Never mind all that ‘with respect’! You don’t take me in … I wasn’t born yesterday.” His voice softens. “Give me your hand.”

I hold it out. He takes it firmly.

“And now,” he adds, looking me sharply, “now, Hofmiller, give me your word of honour that you won’t do anything stupid tonight! Give me your word of honour that you’ll be here at five-thirty in the morning to start for Czaslau.”

I can’t hold his gaze.

“My word of honour, sir.”

“Good. I was afraid you might do something on the spur of the moment. One never knows with you excitable young men. Always too quick off the mark with everything, including your revolvers … later you’ll see sense for yourself. A man survives this kind of muddle. Just wait and see, Hofmiller, nothing terrible is going to come of this, nothing at all. I’m going to sort it all out, and you’ll never do the same again. Right, now off you go. I’d have thought of it as a great loss.”

Our decisions depend far more than we like to admit on the familiar criteria of our rank in life and our environment. A large part of the mind automatically accepts impressions and influences made on us long before, and if a man has been brought up from childhood in the drill of military discipline, the psychological effect of an order from a superior officer is compelling and cannot be ignored. Every military command has a power over him that is logically inexplicable, but cancels out his own will. Even if he is well aware of the pointlessness of what he is told to do, in the straitjacket of his uniform he does what he is told to do like a sleepwalker, without resisting and almost unconsciously.

I myself, having spent fifteen of my twenty-five years in training at military academy and then in barracks, stopped thinking
and acting for myself as soon as I heard the Colonel’s order. I wasn’t thinking at all any more, I only followed orders. My brain knew nothing except that I had to report promptly at five-thirty in the morning, ready to set off, and before then I must make all my preparations flawlessly. So I woke my batman, told him briefly that as a result of urgent orders we were setting off for Czaslau in the morning, and with his assistance I packed my belongings one by one. We just finished in time, and on the stroke of five-thirty I was duly standing in the Colonel’s room to sign the army forms. Unobserved, as he had specified, I left the barracks.

It’s true that this hypnotic sapping of my willpower lasted only as long as I was still within the military sphere of influence, and until I had finished carrying out the Colonel’s orders. My mind shed its paralysis with the first jolt of the engine that set the train moving, and I came back to myself with a start, like a man knocked flat by the blast from an explosion who stumbles up and discovers, to his amazement, that he is unhurt. My first astonishment was to find that I was still alive. My second was that I was sitting in a train puffing its way along the tracks, snatched from my normal daily life. And as soon I began to remember, it all came back to me at feverish speed. I had wanted to put an end to it all, and someone had taken the revolver out of my hand. The Colonel had said he would sort it all out. But he meant only, as I now reflected to my dismay, so far as the regiment and my alleged good reputation as an officer were concerned. My comrades could be standing in front of him in the barracks at this very moment, and of course they were swearing a solemn oath not to let a word slip about the incident. But no orders could keep them from thinking their own thoughts, and they would all know how cravenly I had
run away. Perhaps Bubencic will talk the pharmacist round, I think now, but what about Edith, her father, the others? Who’s going to tell them, who will explain it all to them? Seven in the morning, I tell myself, she’ll be waking up, and her first thought will be for me. Perhaps she’s already looking down at the parade ground from the terrace—that terrace, why do I shudder whenever I think of the balustrade?—looking through the telescope, perhaps she sees our regiment trotting there, and doesn’t know, doesn’t guess that one man is absent. But when afternoon comes she will begin waiting, and then I won’t arrive, and no one will have said anything to her. I didn’t write her even a line. She’ll telephone, she’ll be told that I have been transferred, and she won’t understand, she will be unable to grasp it. Or even worse—she
will
understand, she’ll understand immediately, and then … Suddenly I see Condor’s warning expression behind the polished lenses of his pince-nez; I hear him again telling me that running away “would be a crime … it would be murder!” And another image is already superimposed on the first—Edith bracing herself to get out of her chair and fling herself against the balustrade of the terrace, the abyss below, the suicidal expression in her eyes.

I must do something, I must do something at once! I must send her a telegram from the station, use the telegraph wires to give her a message. I absolutely must keep her from doing anything rash in a moment of despair, anything final. No, wait; Condor had said that
I
was not to do anything sudden and irrevocable, and if anything went wrong I was to let him know at once. I promised him solemnly, and as a man of honour I must keep my promise. Thank God I have two hours to wait in Vienna. My connection doesn’t leave until midday. Perhaps I can reach Condor in time. I
must
reach him.

As soon as the train gets into the station I leave my luggage with my batman, telling him to take it on to the North-West Station and wait for me there. Then I take a cab straight to Condor’s apartment, praying (I am not usually a devout man)—God, let him be at home, let him be at home! He’s the only man to whom I can explain, he’s the only one who can understand me and help me.

But only the maidservant comes to the door with her casual, shuffling gait, a brightly coloured scarf that she evidently wears when doing housework tied around her head. No, the doctor’s not at home. Can I wait for him? He won’t be back before midday, she says. Does she know where he has gone? She doesn’t; he goes from one patient to another. Could I perhaps speak to Frau Condor? She agrees to ask, shrugging her shoulders, and goes away.