What they had done in their youth, and what for millenniums had been man’s vocation, joy, and pleasure—to ride a horse, to plow in the morning the steaming field, to walk behind the oxen, to mow the yellow grain in the blazing summer heat while streams of sweat poured down the tanned body and the women who bound the sheaves could hardly keep in step with the mowers, to rest at noon for a meal in the shade of green trees—all this, praised by the poets since times immemorial, was now past and gone. Joy in labor had disappeared.
How can one explain this trend toward a more colorless and shallow life? Well, the work was easier, if less healthy, and it brought in more money, more leisure, and perhaps more entertainment. A day in the country is long and hard. And yet the fruits of their present life were worthless compared to a single coin of their former life: a rest in the evening and a rural festivity. That they no longer knew the old kind of happiness was obvious from the discontent which spread over their features. Soon dissatisfaction, prevailing over all other moods, became their religion. Where the sirens screamed, it was horrible. And soon there was hardly a corner left where sirens could not be heard.
Everyone had to become resigned to this. If not, if you wanted to persist in an outdated way of life as we horsemen did, the people from Manchester came for you. The old way of life had disappeared. Now the slogan was: Do or die. Wittgrewe had realized this before I did. I am, therefore, far from criticizing him and the others; I myself was forced to take the same turn.
Here was our situation: the men from Manchester had shown us what was what. We had to give up our horses. So we arrived with tanks “to smoke them out”; whereupon they treated us with a new surprise.
I admit that this succession of ever new models becoming obsolete at an ever increasing speed, this cunning question-and-answer game between overbred brains, had fascinated me for a while, especially when I was employed as a tank inspector. You see, the struggle for power had reached a new stage; it was fought with scientific formulas. The weapons vanished in the abyss like fleeting images, like pictures one throws into the fire. New ones were produced in protean succession.
The spectacle was fascinating—on this point I agreed with Wittgrewe. When new models were displayed to the masses at the great parades in the Red Square in Moscow or elsewhere, the crowds stood in reverent silence and then broke into jubilant shouts of triumph. What was the meaning of this thunderous roar, when on the ground turtles of steel and serpents of iron rolled past, while in the sky triangles, arrows, and rockets shaped like fish, arranged themselves with lightning rapidity into ever-changing formations? Though the display was continual, in this silence and these shouts something evil, old as time, manifested itself in man, who is an out-smarter and a setter of traps. Invisible, Cain and Tubalcain marched past in the parade of phantoms.
VI
Now I should describe how all this gradually filled me with disgust; but to do so would lead me too far afield. If I have spoken chiefly of the power aspect of the events, I meant to take a short cut. Everywhere hubris is dominant and great danger threatens.
I was now employed as an instructor, without definite rank, at the tank-inspecting station: I was one of the “new men”—a specialist—but my field was one which, though indispensable, is not particularly respected. On the other hand, I had little respect for my employers. Every master has the servant he deserves. The drawbacks of the profession are well known, but the work also has its advantages; among others, one does not immediately have to play the role of an accomplice. One can withdraw behind facts.
In my free time I was mainly occupied with my historical studies. Since my job made it almost impossible to carry books around with me, apart from a small “iron ration,” I used to go to libraries and lectures. I also formed a theory. I imagined that we were living during the period before Actium, burdened with the curse of a universal war, and that this period would be followed by another, in which Actiades would be celebrated—a series of great and peaceful centuries. Of course. in our lifetime we would only see misery.
As an instructor I had no difficulty with the technical side of the job, and neither did most of my friends. I even felt a certain passion for it. But anyone who has taught knows that this is not the principal point. In order to penetrate the subject matter there must be, in addition, the love of teaching and the love of learning, the give and take between teacher and student, example and imitation. Beyond the technical problem, there is a personal encounter similar to that of a savage training his sons in the use of bow’ and arrow, or of an animal guiding its young. I am firmly convinced that one of the high orders of the universe is a pedagogical order.
I felt an inner need to associate with young people. Since I lacked Monteron’s super-personal authority, I had to rely on my personality alone. In the beginning, my relation with them was comradely; later I intensified it with a fatherly affection. I had been denied a son though I wished for one, and I was excited to learn how these young men would master their lives. They had been born into an atmosphere of insecurity and had never known men with the absolute assurance of a Monteron. I could, therefore, realize better than they the measure of their threatened situation, their loneliness in uncharted seas, their dreadful position on the brink of nothingness.
I do not refer to physical dangers, though these, too, weighed heavily upon my mind on the last evening before we had to separate. The young men were sitting close together, huddled like birds in a nest. Of course, the usual phrases had been uttered: “We’ll show them,” and the like; but there was also an undertone of anxiety, a dark shadow, impossible to banish. And I thought, seeing them sit before me: “Yes, soon you will leave for a place where no teacher can follow you. But what will await you there?”
It became more and more unbearable for me to know of their loneliness out there. Two or three times I succeeded in getting permission to accompany them; although this was frowned upon and, indeed, was of scant use, since all too soon the moment comes when we have to abandon those close to us. As if separated from them by an ocean, we cannot bring them aid. I would have been happy to risk my own life for them, since I no longer had much to expect in this world—I had amortized myself. But the bullets passed me by.
Time and again I was amazed at their courage, their capacity for endurance. When the politicians were at their wits’ end, these young men had to step in and pay the debts of their fathers and forefathers. Remember: it was no longer a question of cavalry charges; they were sent into miserable furnaces! And they went without a word of reproach. In this respect I believe I saw slightly more than Monteron would have, because the zone of profound, anonymous suffering that begins below the established orders was bound to be hidden from him.
I didn’t think much about politics. I had a feeling that like Lorenz we were all jumping out of windows, and sooner or later we were bound to crash. At the moment we were, so to speak, suspended in mid-air. I mentioned before that a number of my friends had advanced into high military and political positions. I stayed modestly in their wake. It was, after all, necessary to join something.
No doubt, there are some insights which are not only useless but rather harmful. He who looks too closely into the kitchen spoils his appetite. That our cause had its seamy side, and that not everything on the opponent’s side was as black as it was painted—to know this and to express it was unnecessary for me. My attitude made me suspect both sides and deprived me of the advantages of partisanship.
I was a skeptic, and my chief weakness was that I lacked the unscrupulousness of the party member—a weakness soon recognized. Very closely connected with this trait was my bias toward the underdog, which frequently caused me to make strange changes of position. Later I shall return to all this when I talk about Spichern Heights.
Such peculiarity and weakness of character did not remain a secret; so in spite of my satisfactory work, I did not get ahead. Charges of sophistry, hairsplitting and indecision accompanied me in all my service records. In any offic
e or organization, there are clever chaps with whom one must be cautious: during the Asturian campaign a chief of staff distinguished himself by writing on my conduct sheet: “Outsider with defeatist inclinations.” Since he really expressed it concisely, I shall profit from his mental feat and talk of my defeatism whenever this quality, which complicated my career, has to be mentioned in the future.
It was at this point that my listing changed from party member to specialist—although this corresponded with my inclinations, the identification was nevertheless unfavorable for my prospects. There was an additional obstacle, which I realized only by degrees: the fact that I could be sure of reaching an audience of a hundred or two but not of a thousand or more. This seems strange at first sight, since if one has the ability to make an impression, a quantitative extension of it should be irrelevant. But that is not the case, though it took me many years to find it out.
As matters stood, I could manage well enough with my specialist’s knowledge on the one hand and my personal inclination on the other, but all this was not sufficient when I was confronted by more than my two hundred students. Facing larger units, a conclusive judgment on the state of the times is expected in addition to everything else. This judgment needn’t be right, but it should be conclusive. Monteron could deliver such judgments; therefore he was the right person to head a military academy. I lacked them—I had the perspective of a man who is jumping out of the window. Too intelligent for the vulgar certainty of a party member, I nevertheless failed to reach any stable valuations of my own. A secret is attached to inner certainty, and one needs too many big words to express it; but it may be described as an armor which protects one, at whatever level of intelligence, against the world. If I may say a word for myself, at least I have never simulated certainty.
As for the chief of staff in Asturia—he reached the same conclusion with less effort when he supplemented my record with the postscript: “Unsuited for positions of leadership.” His name was Lessner; he belonged to the younger generation and made amazing, instantaneous judgments which for some time have been admired, if not idolized, to an increasing degree.
These were the reasons why I accomplished little. I spent those years in ever-changing theaters of action but with consistent inclinations. We ourselves are the last to notice that we are not making any headway. It is brought to our notice from the outside; former students suddenly emerge as our superiors. As we grow older, the respect we receive diminishes: the disproportion between our age and our position becomes evident, first to other people and finally to ourselves. Then it is time to retreat.
Help, if it comes, frequently turns up from an unexpected quarter: from the weak. This happened to me when I met and married Teresa. My defeatism reached a climax: I went the whole distance, finally turning my back on the struggle for power. It all seemed meaningless and futile, a wasted effort, time lost. I wanted to wipe it from my memory. I came to recognize that one single human being, comprehended in his depth, who gives generously from the treasures of his heart, bestows on us more riches than Caesar or Alexander could ever conquer. Here is our kingdom, the best of monarchies, the best republic. Here is our garden, our happiness.
My taste returned to simple, natural things, to the always accessible pleasures. Why was it, then, that the past now returned like a wave that seizes and sucks under the swimmer who has already reached his island? And why did it have to happen in an ugly, discreditable form? Was it a bill presented me for intelligence wasted in the turmoil of the times? Or did I feel so uneasy because my vision had been sharpened?
VII
These were the thoughts that oppressed me while I looked out over the meadowland with the brook running through it. The peasant was still drawing his furrows, and little by little the brown surface of the plowed-up earth increased in extent. His was a better balance sheet than mine.
Thoughts do not assail us in the way I have been reporting them, assembled coherently and all accounted for. We arrange them in a logical juxtaposition which they do not have when they rise in our mind. There they shine like meteors in the firmament—now as places, now as names, now as amorphous signs. The dead mingle with the living, and dreams with actual experiences. What are these portents; where do we wander at night? I saw the noble face of Lorenz who jumped out of the window. Wasn’t this our common destiny, our own reality? Some day, we too would bash our heads in. There had been times when life was almost exclusively concerned with preparation for this moment; perhaps those times had been less senseless than the present.
A slight noise made me start. Someone must have entered the room. Jumping to my feet, I found myself confronted by an old man who was contemplating me. He must have come from his study. Its door stood open, and I could see the corner of a large table, which, in spite of the hour, was still lit by a lamp. The table was covered with papers, written and printed, and with opened books.
The stranger was a little old man—but while I was registering these facts, I felt that they did not mean anything. Was he really a stranger? And was he really old and little? Of a great age, certainly, because I could see his hair shining white under the green visor which shaded his eyes. Moreover, his features revealed a cast that is molded and imparted by a long life. A similar cast can be observed in the faces of great actors who have mirrored the spirit of their times. In them, however, destiny works, as it were, in the hollow mold. It had worked in this man at the core. He was not an impersonator.
Establishing his age was of secondary importance, since spirit is ageless: this old man was more capable of taking risks—whether physical, moral, or spiritual—than a great many young people, and he would come off better, because he combined power and insight, acquired cunning and innate dignity. What was his heraldic beast? A fox, or lion, or one of the large predatory birds? I rather imagined it to be a chimera, like those which roost on our cathedrals and look down on the town with a knowing smile.
In the same way that he seemed to be old and yet not old, he was also small and yet not small; his whole bearing belied the impression of smallness and age. I had often met eminent persons—I think of those involved with the innermost wheels of our machinery of state and who are very close to the invisible axle. Some were men whose names appear in all the newspapers, some were total strangers. Good or evil, active or inactive, they all had something in common, something imposing, which is recognized, if not by everyone, then by a great many people, especially those with simple rather than complicated natures. A philosopher, for instance, a rearranger of facts and ideas, who is endowed with this spirit, can fascinate his listeners even when they don’t understand a word of his lecture. Spellbound, they will hang on his lips. The same effect is possible in other fields. Apparently a direct recognition of greatness exists, wholly independent of intellectual comprehension. We react like magnets to an electric current. That his impact is composed of letters, words, texts is another matter—often they even weaken the power of attraction. But although the phenomenon is not easy to describe, since it has no definite form, it translates itself into works and action, into mental and moral symbols. It may even exert its influence through inactivity—perhaps through asceticism, sacrifice, and meditation. In any case our recognition underlies the disclosure and precedes it. A dim feeling corresponds to the undifferentiated impression. It’s as though we said to ourselves: “He’s got something,” or we simply sense a breath of mystery.
And this is what I felt at the sight of Zapparoni. I thought: “That man has the formula” or, “He is an initiate, one of the elect.” Suddenly, “knowledge is power” took on a new, immediate, and dangerous meaning.
Above all, his eyes were extremely powerful. They had the royal look, the open gaze, revealing the white of the eyeball above and beneath the iris. The impression was at the same time slightly artificial, as if it resulted from some delicate operation. Moreover the eye had a fixed stare, peculiar to people of southern countries. It was the eye of a big, blue, century-old parrot, with the nic
titating membrane twitching over it. This was not the blue of the sky, not the blue of the sea, nor the blue of precious stones—it was a synthetic blue, fabricated in remote places by a master artist who wished to excel nature. Such a bird had flashed on the edge of primeval streams and flown over the clearings. Sometimes a shrill red and a fabulous yellow darted out of its plumage.
The iris of its eye was the color of amber; exposed to the light, it showed a tinge of yellow, while in the shadow, it looked brownish-red with age-old inclusions. This eye had seen enormous copulations in realms where procreative power is not yet sporadic, where land and sea intermix and phallic rocks loom up at the delta. It had remained cold and hard like yellow cornelian, untouched by love. Only when it looked into the shadow did it become dark and velvety. The beak, too, had remained hard and sharp through having cracked nuts, hard as diamonds, for more than a hundred years. Not a single problem remained unsolved. The eye and the problems—they fitted one into the other like lock and key. His look cut like a blade of flexible steel. Then the objects moved back into their accustomed places.
I had always believed that Zapparoni’s monopolies rested upon the skillful exploitation of inventors—but one look was sufficient to see there was more at work in him than a mercurial intelligence which derives profit from Plutonian zones. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune were in powerful conjunction. It was probably more true that this little old man knew how to invent the inventors—that he found them whenever his mosaic required.