The World as I Found It (56 page)

He couldn't shake it, this soul sickness. Grundhardt lived, and David Pinsent was dead. Wittgenstein had gotten the news only a few days ago, in a letter from Flo that Keynes had forwarded.

Keynes enclosed his own letter:

Pinsent's death was not the only blow Wittgenstein had had of late. First there had been the news of his brother Paul, who had lost his right arm while defending the Carso plateau against repeated, and futile, Italian attacks. Then there was his brother Kurt, a lieutenant, who had died five months before, during a Russian counterattack near Rovno. At first Wittgenstein was told only the date and place where Kurt died. Some days later, though, he was told off the record what had happened: the unexpected Russian attack had been a rout and Kurt's men deserted him, at which point Kurt shot himself in the head.

Wittgenstein's ambivalence about Kurt did not soften his reaction. In a family in which suicide and madness ran side by side, this death seemed less a loss than a judgment, as if Kurt were a mere harbinger, to use Pinsent's word, of his own fate. Wittgenstein left for Vienna a few weeks later, but he never told his family the true circumstances of Kurt's death. What was the point? With two sons as suicides already, the truth would have killed his mother — the news nearly killed her as it was. Besides, he thought, who was to say a Russian had not shot him? And what if Kurt had not shot himself? The Russians probably would have killed him anyway.

All that winter the pain had been gnawing its way to the surface, but now with Pinsent gone, it was almost uncontrollable. Wittgenstein was sure he was going to die. It wasn't just soldier's fatalism; he was quite certain, even resigned to it. Yet he was just as determined not to be a suicide, which was doubly hard when death could be had so easily, for just a moment's inattention. To die honorably, he had to want to live, and yet he was dead. Spring, with its coming offensives, only brought death that much closer. And then, just when Wittgenstein had thought he had sunk to the very bottom, he learned about Pinsent.

The irony was that he was at the height of his intellectual powers and he knew it, which should have been liberating but was instead a sorrow, when he saw how little had been achieved for all his efforts. His work stretched from the foundations of logic to the nature of the world, but in his own life that knowledge did him no good at all. He felt like the cormorant, that oily black waterbird the Chinese use for fishing. With an iron ring around its neck, the cormorant can't swallow the fish it catches. But far from discouraging the greedy bird, the iron ring only makes it dive that much deeper, straining against its choker to snatch the biggest fish it can find.

This image of the predatory cormorant seemed to apply to everything in Wittgenstein's life, even his Christianity. Now a disciple of Tolstoy, he carried the New Testament in one pocket of his tunic and Tolstoy's
Gospels
in the other. He wanted to live a life of simple charity and Christian faith, a faith prior to any church. Yet while he found himself faced with all the burdens of Christian faith, he garnered none of the peace that is supposed to come with it. Ethics consumed him: it was what was most important in life, and the key to his philosophy, but it was also fundamentally silent. Ethics could not be taught or expressed; it could only be shown through an exemplary life. And the whole point of his life and work was moral — otherwise what was the point of living? He knew, without being able to logically justify it, that the good life was the happy life. So, as an ethical matter, he had resolved to be happy in order to be good, but he succeeded only in being miserable and therefore false — straining to grasp the essence of life when, like the cormorant, he couldn't swallow it anyway.

And the ring wouldn't release him. Here he was, a good soldier, a decorated soldier, with a reputation for being cool headed under fire and for looking after his men. But even bravery was false when he hardly cared if he lived. At times Wittgenstein envied the cowards, wondering if they weren't the sane ones who truly cherished life. Yet those who cherished life, who were now so desperate they would do anything, even shoot themselves in the foot, to save their own skins — these men for whom he felt so responsible were the ones who, in a pinch, would probably not feel the least bit responsible for him. Lately, Wittgenstein feared he might even suffer Kurt's fate of being deserted in battle, leaving him with a loaded pistol and a choice to make.

Breakfast arrived. Wittgenstein put his notebook away, and was going down to supervise when Ernst came to him and said, We've got a bad problem. Antal's bleeding through his ears.

A crowd of men were standing around Antal's cutaway when Ernst and Wittgenstein got there. Here, move out of the way, said Ernst, pushing through. The big Hungarian's eyes were glazed over. A faint trickle of blood oozed out his ears and his pants were wet about the crotch. He didn't even have the strength to brush the flies from his face. What's the matter? asked Wittgenstein, leaning over him. Antal started weeping. I can't hardly move. I don't feel nothing.

His face was hot with sweat, and his body seemed oddly contorted. Turning to the other men, Wittgenstein asked, Who discovered this? Moder did, someone chimed up. He heard him getting sick last night. Then someone asked suspiciously, What's wrong with him? And someone else replied, Typhoid, stupid. He's got typhoid.

He doesn't have typhoid, said Wittgenstein irritably. Now clear out. All of you.

But even as they were pulling back, more men, some from farther down the line, were crowding up to see, craning over one another's shoulders as Antal lay there in a heap, sobbing. Wittgenstein was about to order them off again, when another man said, If it's not typhoid, then what's he got?

Wittgenstein was losing his temper. I'm not discussing it! Do you hear me? Now, for the last time, clear out!

Rumors were flying by the time Wittgenstein's superior, Lieutenant Stize, arrived, dogged as always by his orderly, Krull. The son of a wealthy chocolate maker now rumored to be a black marketeer, Stize was about thirty, balding and slender, with a narrow collie's face, a thin mustache and protuberant lips, which frequently became bibulous with tots of wine and brandy. Few senior officers, much less front-line officers, were better supplied or turned out than Stize, in his tailored, fur-collared greatcoat, kid gloves and binoculars. Rubber boots were virtually impossible to obtain, but Stize had a pair; and with lice everywhere, Stize had none, thanks to Krull, who would spend hours picking his clothes free of nits before fumigating them with ether. Short, bald and bowlegged, Krull was about fifty and had been with the lieutenant's family from the time Stize had been a boy. Other officers had tried to bribe Krull for his secret source of starched shirts, fresh eggs and fruit, brandy and caviar. Krull told them to keep their money, having already made a bundle on the black market selling the surfeit of chocolate and other dainties from Stize's cache, which not even that truffle swine Grundhardt had been able to sniff out.

Krull was a cool one. At the whistle of the first shell, while his master was cravenly diving for cover, Krull would be meandering along, watching the sky with all the crafty grace of a man who somehow knows he'll come through without a scratch. Stize had no such certainty and spent every possible moment in the safety of the officers' dugout, a deeply mined room thirty-five feet underground that was decorated like a Viennese café, with a gramophone, wooden floors, booths and fake curtained windows painted with Alpine scenes by an officer who had studied under Kokoschka. Stize would have made a brilliant supply officer and, with Krull's help, kept their mess well provisioned with jam and real coffee and even fresh meat. When Prince Primkin admired his patent precision Solingen steel cigar clipper, Stize quickly had one engraved with the prince's initials and, with the most high-flown and abasing rhetoric, presented it to him at his birthday party. Truly, Stize's sole purpose in the war, so far as Wittgenstein could see, was to strengthen his shaky social connections. Stize was especially anxious to ingratiate himself with the prince, a lanky unhorsed cavalryman and wag in his mid-thirties, with a red drinker's face and a sad little belly. The prince loved to cavort with the young officers, but Stize, as a Jew, was not part of that set. Indeed, their main interest in Stize seemed to be his extraordinary ability to procure the unprocurable. That and his willingness, in these days of rampant inflation, to lend sums of money at no interest — that is, when it advanced his social interests.

Stize dearly wanted a staff position, but because he had no connections his petitions went nowhere. If only he could have been a general's aide! Stize was something of a military history buff and could regale staff officers touring the front with tales of Napoleon's troubles in Russia or passionate discourses on the effectiveness of the square against cavalry, complete with faulty allusions to Homeric battles. Of course, these digressions had absolutely nothing to do with trench warfare, but that was precisely why they held such deep appeal for his superiors, with their inbred love of the arcane, byzantine and impractical. The fact was that Stize was one of those remarkable talkers who is knowledgeable about, and good at, virtually everything except what he is responsible for. Stize was positively inspired when advising others on how they might better do their jobs. He was likewise brilliant at inventing unwieldy procedures and unmanageable schedules, and was forever off on some trumped-up business, seeming to truly believe that the success of their sector of the front depended on his tact and diplomacy. He was always full of new ideas. In the washroom of some rear area, he would run into Duke X, a confused eminence with a three-hyphen title, who would hardly have buckled himself back together before the indefatigable lieutenant would be sharing his brainstorm about booting horses to guard against hoof disease and muffle their sound. For the next two days in the officers' mess, Stize would talk up his meeting and his idea, blithely unaware that by then Duke X had forgotten their conversation and his name, remembering only the name of Napoleon's horse or some other tidbit that Stize had left with him. So horses went bootless and Stize's petitions went bootless as well. Around subordinates, Stize was vague, evasive and imprecise, concealing his uneasiness with pompousness and sloughing off problems.

Now, looking at the sick man, working at the pliant kid of his gloves, Stize pettishly said, Well, do you know what's wrong with him?

Leaning forward, Wittgenstein whispered the rumor. Taking a discreet step back, Stize asked, And is it true?

Wittgenstein shook his head. I don't know, sir. But it is turning into a nasty rumor. That's why these men are standing around.

Stize glared at him like an inept waiter who had served him from the wrong side. Well, tell them to
get out
. He was unusually decisive. Krull, he said, turning to his man. Have a stretcher sent back. Then he turned to Ernst. Corporal, why are all these men idling about? Clear the area.