The Days of the King (2 page)

Joseph Strauss had never heard of that city and supposed that it must be thousands of miles away, somewhere in the colonies. In any case, the matter seemed to him preposterous and insignificant, especially since in his waiting room two men and a woman were fidgeting on their chairs, and the young officer, given how much pus had accumulated along his jawbone, was probably seeing pink elephants. Later, after lunch, however, the doctor found out by chance that the patient with an abscess as big as a walnut was the middle son of Prince Karl Anton, the military governor of Rhineland, adviser to Kaiser Wilhelm, and recently appointed prime minister. He was amazed. Then, for a good few weeks, he allowed his bachelor's life to flow on in its gentle course between his rented surgery, the room he occupied with Siegfried the tomcat in a sunny boarding house, Der Große Bär, and the Eleven Titties brothel. It was not until April 14, when the daffodils were in bloom and Siegfried had wounded his muzzle and paw in one of the neighborhood cat fights, that he read, to his astonishment, a short item in a gazette about the holding of a plebiscite: "
Today, the lieutenancy and the ministry have proclaimed, by means of bills posted on the streets, the candidacy of Prince Karl of Hohenzollern for the throne of Romania. The event seems to have filled the whole nation with rejoicing.
" That evening, as the jovial Karl of Prussia bantered with the other Karl (now at last a captain) in the foyer of the Berlin Opera House, addressing him as "Turk," the dentist felt no inclination for mugs of beer, for chatter and whist at the bar, or for the eleven titties, two per five lively wenches and the one huge one on the chest of Rosa. Frequently refilling his glass with schnapps, puffing his pipe, and gazing through the open window at the stars and the eaves of the houses across the way, Herr Strauss regretted not having taken the young officer seriously. He fell asleep dreaming of beautiful women and impatient crowds waiting at his door for him to quell their toothaches. A few days later, a courier of the dragoons regiment handed him a yellowish envelope with a crest and the seal of the house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. It was raining buckets, but the envelope was dry when it emerged from beneath the military cape.

I
N
J
UNE, WHEN
the solstice draws nigh, dawn is at its earliest. That Wednesday, however, for their eyes no sunrise sprang into view. At dawn, the coach laden with portmanteaus, bags, and trunks set in motion with a judder, one of the horses (a tallish gray mare) whinnied and chomped at the bit, the other (a sorrel with a scar on his throat) puffed out his chest, and from beneath the lid of a wicker basket Siegfried the tomcat mewled heartrendingly. The dentist lost sight of the green shutters of the boarding house, the door, the water barrel in the yard, and the clump of daisies by the gate, but he did see a stripy cat running along the fence tops with fleet and nimble steps, leaping over broken pales, stubbornly keeping pace with the horses. She seemed to him pretty, and large-bellied. At a crossroads, where the coach turned south, the cat must have wearied or floundered in the puddles, because he saw her no more, and soon after, along the streets leading to the Ober-baumbrücke, Siegfried stopped thrashing around and whining piteously and curled up in his basket, with his black ear pricked up and the tip of his tail aloft, while Herr Strauss, whose migraine had not yet relinquished him, gazed through the streaked window at the clouds, the wakening quays, the endless rows of buildings along the banks of the River Spree, the plumes of smoke rising from hundreds of chimneys, and the placid water reflecting a darkling sky, presaging rain. He thought of the hobs sizzling in countless kitchens, he was violently jolted for the length of a bridge, he felt an emptiness in his stomach, perhaps from the rattling of the coach, perhaps from the previous night's beer and champagne, perhaps from the mental image of the sausages, eggs, and bacon being fried in every house, perhaps because of the vista that was now vanishing, as though an unseen hand had wiped away the outlines and colors of a familiar painting.

The storm began at the morning's end, about an hour after the dentist had managed to throw up and rid himself of his grogginess. The lashing volleys of cold raindrops forced them to seek shelter. They stopped at an inn among the hills, where a man and a woman were whitewashing the walls and a lanky girl was halfheartedly scrubbing the floors. By the window, with a mug of warm milk cupped in his palms, Joseph observed how the coachman, soaked to the skin, took care to tether the horses in a spacious shed and to hang oat-filled nosebags from their necks. Inside, the innkeeper wielded his paintbrush with great rapidity, sweating heavily (he kept taking off his tattered hat and wiping his bald pate with a rag), the woman grunted and strained, standing on her tiptoes (hindered by her dumpy body), the girl moved back and forth on her knees, her blouse riding up from the waistband of her skirt (revealing a mole-covered patch of white skin on her back). The whitewash and lye could not drive away the smell of brandy, cider, and smoke in the room. A bitter smell, which rasped against the emptiness in his stomach. An old woman brought lunch: duck soup with peas for him, and the bones and gristle from a chicken leg for Siegfried. The cat did not even touch them.

When the earth had aired a little in the wind and the afternoon sun, the coach set out once more. A light trot that straightaway became a gallop conveyed the doctor into the heart of that rare (blessed? accursed? he had no way of guessing) journey, a convoluted and risky journey, fragmented and odd, which he urged himself to believe would not prove to be an irreparable mistake. The longest journey he had ever taken, and the only important one, so important that he sometimes likened it to a journey to the next world, for after all he was heading to a place of verdure or, at least, a place of golden wheat, endless wheat, as a spice merchant had told him. He was following the trail of the captain of dragoons like a belated shadow, copying his steps and movements at an interval of seven weeks, taking precisely the same route, abiding by his advice, and spending his money. After the epistle in the middle of April, to which he had replied hastily and gratefully with his assent, Herr Strauss had a month later received, from the hand of a lean functionary, another envelope, this time accompanied by a little packet wrapped in waxed paper. Using a paper knife with a silver handle, he had opened both, careful not to break the seals, one familiar, that of the house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the other unfamiliar, likely the insignia of the new monarch. His former patient, Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig, now elevated to the throne of a land of five million souls, had sent him a pouch of pipe tobacco in which he had hidden so many groschen, guilders, and florins that Joseph had grown faint at the sight, along with a map of the continent on which he had traced out a route in red ink and marked with brown crosses a number of key points. In the letter, he laid out meticulously what Joseph would have to undertake on that exhausting journey, especially since war with Austria was about to break out, and he, a Prussian physician, would have to cross hostile territory, to pass through enemy border posts and checkpoints, to endure suspicion and prying questions. He was asked to conceal his identity, which meant not only procuring false papers, a matter explained in detail, but also one rather laughable duty, namely, getting rid of any petty items that might betray him. Joseph Strauss had obeyed sullenly, even grudgingly, and on one of the days when he was making ready his luggage, he had removed, using a pair of nail scissors, the monograms stitched in his underwear, scraped the letter
S
off his doctor's bag with a razor, concealed a diploma and other documents in the lining of a fur overcoat, and, examining each of his books in turn, torn out the flyleaves that bore his signature.

He parted with the gray mare and the sorrel at Magdeburg railway station. He paid the coachman his fee, allowed a porter to take care of his luggage, and with the wicker basket on his arm went at dusk into a nearby tavern where a greenish lamp swayed above the door. Although he ordered trout in cream, so that they could enjoy dinner together, the tomcat again refused to eat. It was the eleventh time he had done so since their departure. Curled up in a ring, his fur tousled and his forepaws pressed to his eyes, Siegfried seemed very ill. The dentist blinked, lit his pipe, blew smoke rings toward the ceiling, and sipped a blackcurrant liqueur. Then they spent their first night and morning on the train, amid the rumbling of the wheels, the puffing and the whistling of the locomotive, the vernal southern landscapes, the imperturbable amiability of the conductor, and the chattering of a lowly bank agent, who was visiting his sister at a sanatorium in Graubünden. It was
not until Zurich, in the attic room of a cheap hotel, that Joseph took his friend in his arms—he stroked him on the crown of his head and under his chin, he clutched him to his breast and spoke to him volubly, he explained to him things that the tomcat surely did not want to hear, for example, why they had not elected to take the railway from the outset but had instead crawled along for a hundred miles in the coach, why they had not headed directly southeast but instead set off southwest, ending up in Switzerland, why a false passport had been necessary, because the drums of two armies were rumbling, the flags of battle were waving, and the troops were on the march, why the landlady of the boarding house in Berlin, his friends, and the girls from the Eleven Titties brothel had had to think he was moving to Stuttgart and not setting out on the trail of an adventurer prince, why a king is a king whatever the state of his teeth, what it means to count out and hold gold coins in your palm, why clocks chime the world over, and, finally, how people grow old. Here, at the words about time and ageing, Siegfried gave a start, pricked up his black ear (the white one remained limp), and lifted the tip of his tail. His master's voice had softened, his caresses had slowed, and the air in the room was growing warmer. Herr Strauss, who in the middle of the previous winter, in January on the eighth day of the month, had turned thirty, was saying all kinds of things, he was not telling a story, he was no longer chirring away meaninglessly, he was merely saying that he wanted to get out of a rut, that there was a whole host of titties in the world, in any case many more than eleven, that everything was numbingly monotonous, that beer and schnapps were good, but wine is not to be sniffed at, that every town is full to bursting with stripy, spotted, black and white, gray, yellow, plump or lean, squint-eyed, and lame cats, cats of every shape and size, that a fire that robs you of a mother and a sister goes on roasting your heart forever, it dries you and smokes you like pastrami, that there comes an hour, all of a sudden, when nothing binds you to anyone anymore, that beyond an empire, three mountain ranges, and boundless plains it is possible to be born again, that to be dentist to a king is not the same as draining the pus from the mouth of a captain of dragoons, that a wife means children, that a new country is a new place, and a new place is a new opportunity, that games of whist can be played anywhere at all, that the present looks like a lump of shit and that the future might, with the mercy of God, look better, that a wife means a mother, that a young tomcat has seed enough to fill the earth with kittens, that beyond an empire, three mountain ranges, and a boundless plain there might not be heaven, but nor can it be hell, that geese saved Rome, that the land where they are headed is called Romania and that there will likely be plenty of goose liver there to fry with slices of apple, black pepper, and onion, that a wife is a sister, that no road is without return, and that a wife means a woman, not just any woman, but one who comes out of an angel's or a devil's egg. And so on and so forth. These were the things that Joseph Strauss said in the garret of a hotel in Zurich, while the room grew blazing hot, and at last he begged the tomcat's forgiveness and fell silent. Siegfried, after sprawling for a while on the chest of that lean, chestnut-haired man, his muzzle resting between the clavicles of that pale, warm-hearted man, looking straight into the eyes of that hazel-eyed, large-eyed man, suddenly leapt toward the window and caught a huge fly on the wing. He swallowed it, then mewled sharply, as though hunger had just pierced his belly.

They feasted forthwith on goose liver prepared in the oven, with slices of roulade covered in sweet paprika, ginger, and acacia
flowers, and later they asked for cognac and cold milk: one preferred slow sips, so that he could roll the liquor around the inside of his cheeks and under his tongue; the other favored rapid slurps that sent the cool drink gliding down his throat. Thus they made their peace until peace itself, as a state of affairs, seemed derisory and boring, and then they strolled down tranquil streets, they climbed countless steps and arrived once more in the suffocating garret, convinced that idleness is a supreme virtue, they tasted the sweetness of sleep, one in a bed not quite soft, the other on the carpet in the rays of the sun, and one let out a sigh and the other a mewl when a knock was heard at the door. To Joseph's amazement, into the chamber stepped the same lean functionary who sixteen days earlier, in Berlin, had handed him the envelope with two seals and the little waxed-paper packet. It was only now that they became formally acquainted, as they perspired together, and the eyes of the dentist felt heavy as lead, his attire unseemly. The visitor was called Wolf Dieter Trumpp, and he was the private secretary of Princess Maria, the youngest member of the Hohenzollern family. He seemed not to notice that the doctor was fastening the buttons of his shirt, putting on his waistcoat, and smoothing the creases from his trousers. That gentleman gave a light cough, as though this might have assisted in some way, placed the dentist's new passport on the table, professed his surprise at the hotel's habit of keeping tomcats in the rooms (to guard the guests against mice, he supposed), and explained that the document was in good order, with all the official headings, stamps, and signatures, issued by the governor of the Canton of Saint Gallen himself, Herr Äpli, and not fabricated by some forger. Offering his opinion that a little rain would not go amiss, would reinvigorate the vegetation, the guest also uttered a name, Joseph Kranich, which the dentist would have to assume for the rest of the journey, this choice of name being the fruit of the governor's inspiration or whimsy, as he had reckoned that an ostrich and a crane,
eine Strauss und eine Kranich,
were somewhat akin. With his hands clasped behind his back, the secretary added that he had made a reservation on the train that left Bavaria on Friday, after nightfall. Finally, Herr Trumpp removed from his pocket a little box covered in maroon velvet, wiped it with his fingertips, and placed it next to the passport. The little lead soldier within, in a victorious attitude of attack, must have once belonged to the young king. It was from his youngest sister, Maria, who had found it hidden under a sheaf of military treatises on his desk in Sigmaringen Castle.